I call shenanigans: I'm a prototypical member of the "iPod generation," yet am one of the biggest proponents of renewed and expanded efforts in space exploration. And all my friends, also members of this misnomered generation, are as well.
Oh Slashdot, the drivel you'll accept and post is astounding sometimes.
"...has left the Windows-based player market to the four big players -- SanDisk, Samsung, Sony, and Creative."
So, let's do some math here. Apple currently has, according to the most recent reports, about a 75% market share in the portable music player market. If Apple has sold 50+ million iPods to date, that would give us a rough estimate of about 67 million portable music players sold, in total, from all companies who produce said products. 50M iPods, 17M "others."
Last quarter, Apple sold a little over 1M Mac computers, while it sold over 8M iPods. This is not a new trend, either: there are far less Mac owners than there are iPod owners in the world.
So, you're really trying to convince us that out of the 50M iPods that have been sold, there are more people who bought one of the 17M other players that use Windows than there are iPod users who use Windows?!
Did everyone already forget how a big a boon iTunes for Windows was for both Apple and iPod sales?
Ha ha, very funny (why it's modded to 4 I'll never know). SLO kids may ride the short bus, but I don't see you designing, construction, planning, and coordinating the launch of student-built sats from all over the world.
Vermont is one of the poorer states in the nation, where a large percentage of the population has serious trouble during the winter heating their homes. But at the same time, Vermont has dairy farms every where you look, it's one of the dominant traits of the landscape. Might as well use what you've got!
Also, kudos to the people who thought to start this program in the summer, give it time to work out all the kinks. I've always admired Vermont for their forward-looking thinking, after all the yeller Howard Dean was their gov'na for long time (and despite his unfortaunte public persona, he's got great ideas too).
First, a quick correction: as they did at the Lab in it's "hey-day."
Next, from the article:
Congressman Bart Stupak [asked] "Is there any really unique science that can only be done at Los Alamos and nowhere else?" It is that last point in particular that the new managers must address.
There's one very important thing that everyone asking this question simply doesn't understand, because they don't look closely enough: Los Alamos has gained itself the type of reputation that takes sixty years of world-class science to earn. This in turn draws the best minds from anywhere and everywhere to the highlands of New Mexico, where they voluntarily isolate themselves from the world at large while they work on the problems that the entirety of humankind needs solved.
This reputation is worth far more than even the money it cost to entirely shut the lab down and restart operations: it needed to be done to keep a sixty-year old priceless institution alive, because we simply cannot afford to loose it.
I was just chatting tonight with a manager in one of the larger divisions at LANL who said that, all in all, not much has changed with the recent change in management. And speaking from personal experience (three years, on and off), the people at LANL today are doing science that is just as amazing - if not more so - as they at the Lab in it's "hey-day."
It turns out that, for government labs, any PR really isn't always good PR.
Will reattach a remote session or create a new one if none exists: allows you to continue screen sessions across logins completely transparently. Brilliant!
"Yeah, but this guy is a nutcase. What he describes isn't the world of the future. It's a world of fairy elf magic."
The man is a science fiction writer, what do you expect? If you're stupid enough to actually take the article as an accurate description of 10 years from now, then You Just Don't Get It(tm).
In fact, Sawyer is one of the more brilliant and creative SF writers of our decade... go to his site and read some of the premises of his novels. I've read a few of his and throughly enjoyed them, and have a few more of his books on the way.
Give the man a break: he writes fake stuff for a living, you cannot honestly expect him to try to extrapolate perfectly the world 10 years from now.
Maybe that's because our current science is only good enough to detect incredibly massive (*cough cough gas giants cough*) planets? Gee, thanks CNN, great job writing another logically inadequate article for the igrnorant masses to buy right into.
No, you're wrong. We've taken the term "virus" from the medical field, so lets take one more: vaccine. Wikipedia says a vaccine "[is] a weakened bacterium or virus that lost its virulence, or a toxoid (a modified, weakened toxin or particle from the infectious agent)." Straight from the horses mouth, if you will.
The problem is you're not even addressing the "good" viruses These could be Trojan. Well then they wouldn't be the *good* viruses anymore, would they.
Not only are these "good" virsues the perfect way to patch security holes that both the vendors and users are not patching, but they are the natural evolution of computer viruses. If we're to continute to use the biological metaphor in computing, we might as well exploit it to the fullest.
Haha, good point. To be honest, I don't consider myself a "Mac user," as I just bought my first Mac three months ago after a life of PC's and Linux. In fact, I still have three machines clustered around me running Linux, so I'm not completely naive as to the cost of good PC's, although I do agree I overshot my estimate. For a more concrete reference, my actual gaming PC cost me just a little over a grand two years ago.
You make a good point, but at the same time, you have to realize that consoles and PC's are two very different beasts too. Many people like console gaming because it requires no setup, no hardware or software knowledge: plug it in, plug in the controllers, insert the game, frag away.
Not to mention that where consoles, on some levels, promote social interaction by nature, PC gaming discourages it (you have to sit in your room playing online, on drag your machine to a LAN party). The addition of PC gaming capability to a console broadens the horizons of both types of gaming, it does not diminish it.
I said: And yes, I understand that this console wouldn't actually be anywhere near equivalent to a $2000 PC Then you said: You are assuming that gameplay on an XBox2 will be equivalent to a $2000 PC.
Did you even read my comment before replying? I realize gameplay will most likely be fairly lackluster, but if they're going to market the console as a PC-game-playing console, then I can promise you that it will at least run those games at a level that is playable, and for many consumers (such as myself), that's all that matters.
And I'm well aware that I can grab a PS2 for 150 bucks or a Gamecube for 99. However, XBox2, if released as stated, will be fundamentally different from these consoles, not to mention next-gen, so the comparison isn't really valid.
My actual, vocalized reply upon reading the last line of the post: "yes, absof**kinglutley!"
As someone who uses a Mac as my desktop machine and only has Linux installed on my other hardware (all of which are incapable of running the games I actually want to play), I would be infinitely more stoked to pay 600 bucks for a console on which I could play games from two platforms, rather than paying $400 for the next XBox and then another couple thou to buy myself a decent gaming machine.
And yes, I understand that this console wouldn't actually be anywhere near equivalent to a $2000 PC, but that's exactly the point: the only time I ever use Windows or ever need a powerful machine is to play games, so craming both consoles into one sounds like a great idea to me.
This all coming from someone who has always had an extreme aversion to dropping 400 clams on a console because I thought they never did enough "stuff." I certainly hope this fantasy comes true, even if it is from Microsoft!
Supposedly the third edition of Linux Device Drivers will be released soon, and will be geared towards 2.6 development (obviously). Anyone who's ever wanted/needed to do linux module programming should definitely take a look at this book, it's basically *the* reference.
Is there nothing that can be said for style these days? I've never seen a single digital watch that's half as stylish and good-looking as even a moderatley-priced analog watch.
Beautiful analog watches are works of *art* people, you can never replace art with technology, no matter what the/. crowd says.
I worked upstairs from Emil this summer, and I do have to admit that even other physicsts at LANL are somewhat skeptical of his ideas. Fulvio Melia even admited that he had talked to Emil about the concept, but couldn't understand where all the math fit in so he doesn't buy it, yet. Just some interesting first-hand exprience for y'all. I'd like to see what my buddy Gabe would say about all this mess, too...
Emil has been working on this for years, and he's presented it at numerous conferences over the past year or so, including one I attended in Santa Fe over the summer. Check out this article, published Jan. 22, 2002 as well.
Clarke once said "the elevator will be built 50 years after people stop laughing".
This morning he was so bold as to say that this might actually be the time when people have stopped laughing, but then he promptly redacted and reducded the figure to 10 years from now instead of 50. So there is still hope, and all the conference attendees are quite excited about that hope.
Slashdot Mirror
I call shenanigans: I'm a prototypical member of the "iPod generation," yet am one of the biggest proponents of renewed and expanded efforts in space exploration. And all my friends, also members of this misnomered generation, are as well.
Oh Slashdot, the drivel you'll accept and post is astounding sometimes.
Ah, very true, that thought hadn't even crossed my mind: kudos for catching the important distinction that I missed!
"...has left the Windows-based player market to the four big players -- SanDisk, Samsung, Sony, and Creative."
So, let's do some math here. Apple currently has, according to the most recent reports, about a 75% market share in the portable music player market. If Apple has sold 50+ million iPods to date, that would give us a rough estimate of about 67 million portable music players sold, in total, from all companies who produce said products. 50M iPods, 17M "others."
Last quarter, Apple sold a little over 1M Mac computers, while it sold over 8M iPods. This is not a new trend, either: there are far less Mac owners than there are iPod owners in the world.
So, you're really trying to convince us that out of the 50M iPods that have been sold, there are more people who bought one of the 17M other players that use Windows than there are iPod users who use Windows?!
Did everyone already forget how a big a boon iTunes for Windows was for both Apple and iPod sales?
Ha ha, very funny (why it's modded to 4 I'll never know). SLO kids may ride the short bus, but I don't see you designing, construction, planning, and coordinating the launch of student-built sats from all over the world.
Vermont is one of the poorer states in the nation, where a large percentage of the population has serious trouble during the winter heating their homes. But at the same time, Vermont has dairy farms every where you look, it's one of the dominant traits of the landscape. Might as well use what you've got!
Also, kudos to the people who thought to start this program in the summer, give it time to work out all the kinks. I've always admired Vermont for their forward-looking thinking, after all the yeller Howard Dean was their gov'na for long time (and despite his unfortaunte public persona, he's got great ideas too).
Next, from the article:
There's one very important thing that everyone asking this question simply doesn't understand, because they don't look closely enough: Los Alamos has gained itself the type of reputation that takes sixty years of world-class science to earn. This in turn draws the best minds from anywhere and everywhere to the highlands of New Mexico, where they voluntarily isolate themselves from the world at large while they work on the problems that the entirety of humankind needs solved.
This reputation is worth far more than even the money it cost to entirely shut the lab down and restart operations: it needed to be done to keep a sixty-year old priceless institution alive, because we simply cannot afford to loose it.
I was just chatting tonight with a manager in one of the larger divisions at LANL who said that, all in all, not much has changed with the recent change in management. And speaking from personal experience (three years, on and off), the people at LANL today are doing science that is just as amazing - if not more so - as they at the Lab in it's "hey-day."
It turns out that, for government labs, any PR really isn't always good PR.
In screen, type CTRL+A, C to get new screen windows... as many virtual terminals as you want, all within the same physical terminal. Again, brilliant!
It's too bad moderation seems on the fritz, this post is a bit underrated.
"Yeah, but this guy is a nutcase. What he describes isn't the world of the future. It's a world of fairy elf magic."
The man is a science fiction writer, what do you expect? If you're stupid enough to actually take the article as an accurate description of 10 years from now, then You Just Don't Get It(tm).
In fact, Sawyer is one of the more brilliant and creative SF writers of our decade... go to his site and read some of the premises of his novels. I've read a few of his and throughly enjoyed them, and have a few more of his books on the way.
Give the man a break: he writes fake stuff for a living, you cannot honestly expect him to try to extrapolate perfectly the world 10 years from now.
all contain seemingly only gas giants
Maybe that's because our current science is only good enough to detect incredibly massive (*cough cough gas giants cough*) planets? Gee, thanks CNN, great job writing another logically inadequate article for the igrnorant masses to buy right into.
No, you're wrong. We've taken the term "virus" from the medical field, so lets take one more: vaccine. Wikipedia says a vaccine "[is] a weakened bacterium or virus that lost its virulence, or a toxoid (a modified, weakened toxin or particle from the infectious agent)." Straight from the horses mouth, if you will.
The problem is you're not even addressing the "good" viruses These could be Trojan. Well then they wouldn't be the *good* viruses anymore, would they.
Not only are these "good" virsues the perfect way to patch security holes that both the vendors and users are not patching, but they are the natural evolution of computer viruses. If we're to continute to use the biological metaphor in computing, we might as well exploit it to the fullest.
Haha, good point. To be honest, I don't consider myself a "Mac user," as I just bought my first Mac three months ago after a life of PC's and Linux. In fact, I still have three machines clustered around me running Linux, so I'm not completely naive as to the cost of good PC's, although I do agree I overshot my estimate. For a more concrete reference, my actual gaming PC cost me just a little over a grand two years ago.
You make a good point, but at the same time, you have to realize that consoles and PC's are two very different beasts too. Many people like console gaming because it requires no setup, no hardware or software knowledge: plug it in, plug in the controllers, insert the game, frag away.
Not to mention that where consoles, on some levels, promote social interaction by nature, PC gaming discourages it (you have to sit in your room playing online, on drag your machine to a LAN party). The addition of PC gaming capability to a console broadens the horizons of both types of gaming, it does not diminish it.
I said: And yes, I understand that this console wouldn't actually be anywhere near equivalent to a $2000 PC
Then you said: You are assuming that gameplay on an XBox2 will be equivalent to a $2000 PC.
Did you even read my comment before replying? I realize gameplay will most likely be fairly lackluster, but if they're going to market the console as a PC-game-playing console, then I can promise you that it will at least run those games at a level that is playable, and for many consumers (such as myself), that's all that matters.
And I'm well aware that I can grab a PS2 for 150 bucks or a Gamecube for 99. However, XBox2, if released as stated, will be fundamentally different from these consoles, not to mention next-gen, so the comparison isn't really valid.
My actual, vocalized reply upon reading the last line of the post: "yes, absof**kinglutley!"
As someone who uses a Mac as my desktop machine and only has Linux installed on my other hardware (all of which are incapable of running the games I actually want to play), I would be infinitely more stoked to pay 600 bucks for a console on which I could play games from two platforms, rather than paying $400 for the next XBox and then another couple thou to buy myself a decent gaming machine.
And yes, I understand that this console wouldn't actually be anywhere near equivalent to a $2000 PC, but that's exactly the point: the only time I ever use Windows or ever need a powerful machine is to play games, so craming both consoles into one sounds like a great idea to me.
This all coming from someone who has always had an extreme aversion to dropping 400 clams on a console because I thought they never did enough "stuff." I certainly hope this fantasy comes true, even if it is from Microsoft!
Now I can spend countless hours creating a real, true-to-life fake of a machine that has been obsolete for only 50 years! WOOO HOOO!
Oh look, a spoon. I shall commence stabbing myself with it.
Supposedly the third edition of Linux Device Drivers will be released soon, and will be geared towards 2.6 development (obviously). Anyone who's ever wanted/needed to do linux module programming should definitely take a look at this book, it's basically *the* reference.
Is there nothing that can be said for style these days? I've never seen a single digital watch that's half as stylish and good-looking as even a moderatley-priced analog watch.
/. crowd says.
Beautiful analog watches are works of *art* people, you can never replace art with technology, no matter what the
I work for the government. Beat that.
We've been reading about it for years -- hell, the guy wrote an epic three part series about it. Sounds like a great idea to me, where do I sign up?
I worked upstairs from Emil this summer, and I do have to admit that even other physicsts at LANL are somewhat skeptical of his ideas. Fulvio Melia even admited that he had talked to Emil about the concept, but couldn't understand where all the math fit in so he doesn't buy it, yet. Just some interesting first-hand exprience for y'all. I'd like to see what my buddy Gabe would say about all this mess, too...
Emil has been working on this for years, and he's presented it at numerous conferences over the past year or so, including one I attended in Santa Fe over the summer. Check out this article, published Jan. 22, 2002 as well.
Clarke once said "the elevator will be built 50 years after people stop laughing".
This morning he was so bold as to say that this might actually be the time when people have stopped laughing, but then he promptly redacted and reducded the figure to 10 years from now instead of 50. So there is still hope, and all the conference attendees are quite excited about that hope.