Because that ice age will also select against big brains necessary for technological civilization. It takes a lot of calories to maintain a big brain, which makes it a disadvantage in that situation. If the big-brained animal is advanced enough to come up with techniques for surviving in that environment, then they will also be less affected by the selective evolutionary pressure that would make longevity more likely. Inuit have lived in cold environments for a long time, but they don't live significantly longer than other humans.
Of course, that's why I said natural lifespan. Once you start changing genomes and applying cybernetics, you're no longer subject to the normal evolutionary selection processes (but are instead subject to a completely different set of artificial evolutionary selection processes). I did read painandgreed's post as indicating natural life span but it seems reasonable since he was contrasting it to natural human lifespans. If you start talking about artificially augmented life spans through cellular repair machines, then that should eventually be available to humans too.
Sorry but what species are you talking about? Sturgeons? Koi fish? Tortoises? Mollusks? Or are you thinking plants like redwoods? The thing is that they all occupy ecological niches that are substantially different from those of species with larger brains necessary to develop the technology for space faring. So they are subject to substantially different evolutionary pressures for those niches.
That said, I have to correct myself in that I do think there is potential for space-faring life with longer natural life spans. While I expect that similar evolutionary pressures would apply to self-conscious sentient organisms based on CHON processes, advanced technological lifeforms based on a different chemistry (such as silicon bonds, or a liquid helium condensate as proposed Larry Niven for his Outsiders species) could have different optimal lifespan ranges. That's because organisms with those chemistries probably would live and evolve in environments that are over-hostile to CHON lifeforms and therefore wouldn't have to compete with them.
I think it's fairly likely that there will not be too much variation in natural lifespan in space-faring races (+/-50%?). Evolution probably places an upper bound on lifetime - much longer than a century and either you need low birth rates or a high attrition rate (think how proportionally few humans made it past 35 years prior to the 18th Century) to avoid a Malthusian population problem (which would act as a selector for different traits). However if you have a low birth rate and long generations, then the species will take longer to evolve and would probably lose any competition with species that have a shorter lifespan.
With significantly shorter lifespans, the problem arises from the information transfer between individuals necessary to advance socio-cultural/scientific progress to the level of complex space-faring civilization. The lower bound on average lifespan probably is more flexible because a species could evolve a more efficient of inter-generational information transfer than we have with oral traditions and written texts. However that's not the bound on lifespan that needs to be flexible to survive a long interstellar trip.
Hmm. I think the point is that for the work to be downloaded legally in Brazil, it would have had to be public domain. I think the big question is whether the work is also public domain in the US (since copyright durations sometimes differ across national boundaries). If the work was PD in both countries, then I think you would be OK since the activity that the DMCA would define as illegal, breaking the DRM, would be out of US jurisdiction. There's nothing illegal about importing a public domain work so no blade to fall on the importer. However, just to be on the safe side, that DRM cracker should stay safely in Brazil and avoid the US and avoid a Sklyarov situation
Heh. The rules of curling are actually pretty simple. It's mostly like bocce/petanque on ice, with bigger rocks that nobody in their right mind tries to throw. The strategies and techniques for curling however, are more complex.
While there is some merit to the argument that many scientists can be poor communicators, the best communication skills are going to be stumped when faced with massive cognitive dissonance. Far too many of the US public wallow in deliberate ignorance or the rants of people who cater to their prejudices. You have a huge segment of the media industry there that is based around stimulating emotional reactions to trump reasoned arguments. Their opponents hold most of the media propagation cards, but it's the scientists' fault for being poor communicators. Talk about blaming the victim.
Nah. Although, IMHO, they've moved and hidden too many things to "simplify the interface for new users", Windows 7 is actually a pretty decent product, especially compared to Vista's lackluster efficiency/performance. People have been waiting to upgrade past XP - some have jumped to Apple, and a few have moved on to Linux. However there's a lot of pent-up demand for something better than XP. Windows 7 pretty well sells itself once people become aware that it's available and doesn't require a machine with enough power consumption to make a noticeable increase in their monthly electric bill. The Windows 7 ads may also be better than the ones for Vista, but that doesn't mean they don't suck.
One man's DRM is another man's virus/worm protection. When I buy a smartphone, I'll buy an Android because I may choose to write my own software to work on it.
However my wife got herself an iPhone because she doesn't really need that kind of flexibility. She's not using all the apps at her disposal now. She uses the core phone and web browsing functionality, some of the PIM functions, the Facebook app, takes photos and video of our son if he's doing something unusual and cute (the best camera in the world is the one in your hands when the opportunity presents itself), and not much more. But having that functionality available for her anytime/anywhere is a big win (such as if our son has a nap while they're out on a bus). So yes, over time she may wind up using additional apps but she's seriously unlikely to run into the iPhone's limitations because she doesn't have the time to explore what those might be and has fairly limited requirements. I installed Shazam for her but when she was curious about a song's title and author, she didn't think to use it. That was because I installed it, not her, but she wouldn't have taken the time to look for it and install it herself.
Now here's the kicker. There's probably at least 4 times as many people in the world who are like my wife, where their needs are sufficiently fulfilled by the iPhone, as there are people like you and me. For them, the fact that software has to be signed to run on the iPhone is feature, not a bug, because it means that they are less likely to get infected by a virus, worm or trojan because of Apple's vetting process.
Yep, it's the effects of perspective (or the lack thereof). When you're way out there on the right, everything from the center and leftwards looks close together near the horizon.
You have a point regarding government control over news organizations. That said it's just as wrong from a point of view of government taxes supporting for-profit public corporations that are getting hammered by structural economic problems. If the news organizations were run by "independent" non-profit NGOs then it would be supportable but this FTC suggestion is ridiculous. Set up some non-profits corps and if the public for-profit corps close, give the non-profits the money to buy the assets at fire sale prices and pick up where the public for-profit corps left off. News is important to democracy, but if it can't be run profitably then there's no reason why some for-profit corp should get to skim a cut for its investors of whatever money the government needs to pay to ensure a valid news ecosystem.
Efficient allocation of capital is extremely useful. It enables all kinds of progressive development that would never occur otherwise and stock markets (and derivative markets) are the best way humanity has come up with to do it.
Stock markets for efficient allocation of capital, sure. Derivative markets, that's questionable, and in some cases downright laughable.
Thank you for a well considered and cogent post. I actually agree on most points you make regarding relative costs of testing for a more varied deployment range. On the other hand, the constant recertification required for new versions by Apple's store imposes its own uncertainties and costs on developers. Apple's propensity for exclusive contracts with cell phone companies will likely also restrict the market on the demand side.
Apple's approach has its points, but I do think you're looking at a replay of the open PC vs. closed Mac battle of the 80s. That said, Steve Jobs has 30 years more experience in the trenches under his belt so I think it will be a much closer battle this go round.
Actually the RHCE involves a practical exam where the boot configuration of a system is buggered up in a number of ways and you have to fix it within a time period. It's not particularly difficult to fix but it does involve investigating a problem to identify the causes and resolving them. i.e. you actually have to understand a bit about the boot sequence and do more than just rote memorization and regurgitation of a sequence of answers to a series of questions (which is how you get certified people with no understanding of the subject matter) . They were probably inspired by the well established and respected advanced Cisco exam that also includes a practical test.
Not really. It only matters if it's not sustainable. If the costs on the Android are low enough that HTC and Verizon still make money (maybe just not as much), and if the promotion gets them word-of mouth advertising and mindshare that would have required more money to secure through just advertising, then it's still a win for them. Were Verizon hemorrhaging customers to AT&T iPhone contracts and did this campaign help them retain customers profitably?
To put it another way, Windows PCs outsell macs by a huge margin and the price tag is a big part of the reason for that. People don't argue that the sales prices on Windows PCs mean that their market share can't be compared to that of Macs. I don't see why that line of reasoning would apply any more to Android vs. iPhone.
Yep. The iPads are the modern equivalent of the original Palm Pilot. A different compromise between functionality and battery life that meets the needs of a large market. Eventually, the battery and CPU power capabilities may move the sweet spot to a more functional platform (as it has with smartphones vs. PDAs) but for now, Apple have hit the sweet spot desired by a large number of customers.
Well, I think you're confusing two types of different QA: the QA a software developer would do in putting a package together for sales and the QA an IT shop should do in deploying a package, because you're doing both for the government. While I can see a game developer testing their game on major chip generations from nVidia, ATI, and Intel hardware (and perhaps other older manufacturers as well) because there is significant variations (including bugs) in the implementations of 3D graphics rendering pipelines, there isn't much point in doing that with 2D applications using standard windowing calls. You would test typical resolutions 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, 1600x1200 (and maybe the comparable 16:9 aspect ratio resolutions) to make sure your layout algorithms didn't do something stupid. But, believe or not! you don't actually need to buy separate test systems for each of those resolutions! Even if you're doing work in full screens and not windows, it's actually possible to have screens that switch between those resolutions through software!
Now when it comes to deployment in your production environment, you absolutely should test the app with all your typical systems configuration. But no shrink wrap software developer is ever going to do this for the massive combination of devices and vendors in the PC compatible market. They may test with a number of the vendors with the largest market share, but not even Microsoft can validate every driver for every piece of hardware out there (which is why there are so many hardware vendors that ship unsigned drivers).
So, no, most professional software developers making shrink-wrapped software don't waste money doing what you do. They only do QA for the variables that are relevant for their application and don't waste time and money duplicating testing that should have been done by the device manufacturer or O/S vendor. An IT department however does have to do UAT to validate all software against their various system configurations.
Yep, believe it or not those are all taken care of by the operating system and applications and you just need to worry about width and height of the screen. If you're working at a fairly low level, you might worry about the dot pitch and do something accordingly (i.e. ensure that graphic objects match the font scaling factor). On starting your application, you may need to do a handful of calculations to figure out proportional layouts for your screen.
CRT? LCD? Plasma? TV?
Again, unless you're an employee of the video card manufacturer and writing the graphics drivers, that is all abstracted away to screen devices with width and height. No need to worry about VGA vs. DVI vs. DisplayPort. No need to worry about display technology unless you're dealing with professional graphics tools that need to support colour correction (I don't think that will be an issue on smartphones).
Do you seriously think all PC developers buy 15", 17", 19", 21" and 24" monitors just to test their apps at different resolutions? Or every single graphics card made in the last 10 years by nVidia, ATI, and Intel? Maybe a few specialty app developers like Adobe and AutoCAD buy a representative set, but for most apps it just doesn't make enough difference to matter. If a device is sufficiently different from the norm in the market that a whole bunch of apps break on it, that device will be the one with the bad reputation, not all the apps that fail to run on it. Yes, it may be a bit of a support headache until that device's flaws become apparent to everyone, so take account of that in your cost model and charge accordingly. At least that's within your control, as opposed to iPhone App Market approval.
Most of the features that you indicate as being variable on the Android platform are also variable on PCs. Yet, somehow, application development on the PC has not died and software developers have coped despite Apple having full hardware and software control on the competing Mac platform. Is the CPU on the original iPhone still the same as that on the iPhone 3Gs? Is the display resolution the same on the iPhone as on the iPad?
The Android market is certainly different from that of the iPhone, and will require additional skills and practices. However if the response of established iPhone developers is to shun those added challenges, then all it does is open the door to those who are willing to tackle them.
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Because that ice age will also select against big brains necessary for technological civilization. It takes a lot of calories to maintain a big brain, which makes it a disadvantage in that situation. If the big-brained animal is advanced enough to come up with techniques for surviving in that environment, then they will also be less affected by the selective evolutionary pressure that would make longevity more likely. Inuit have lived in cold environments for a long time, but they don't live significantly longer than other humans.
Of course, that's why I said natural lifespan. Once you start changing genomes and applying cybernetics, you're no longer subject to the normal evolutionary selection processes (but are instead subject to a completely different set of artificial evolutionary selection processes). I did read painandgreed's post as indicating natural life span but it seems reasonable since he was contrasting it to natural human lifespans. If you start talking about artificially augmented life spans through cellular repair machines, then that should eventually be available to humans too.
Sorry but what species are you talking about? Sturgeons? Koi fish? Tortoises? Mollusks? Or are you thinking plants like redwoods? The thing is that they all occupy ecological niches that are substantially different from those of species with larger brains necessary to develop the technology for space faring. So they are subject to substantially different evolutionary pressures for those niches.
That said, I have to correct myself in that I do think there is potential for space-faring life with longer natural life spans. While I expect that similar evolutionary pressures would apply to self-conscious sentient organisms based on CHON processes, advanced technological lifeforms based on a different chemistry (such as silicon bonds, or a liquid helium condensate as proposed Larry Niven for his Outsiders species) could have different optimal lifespan ranges. That's because organisms with those chemistries probably would live and evolve in environments that are over-hostile to CHON lifeforms and therefore wouldn't have to compete with them.
I think it's fairly likely that there will not be too much variation in natural lifespan in space-faring races (+/-50%?). Evolution probably places an upper bound on lifetime - much longer than a century and either you need low birth rates or a high attrition rate (think how proportionally few humans made it past 35 years prior to the 18th Century) to avoid a Malthusian population problem (which would act as a selector for different traits). However if you have a low birth rate and long generations, then the species will take longer to evolve and would probably lose any competition with species that have a shorter lifespan.
With significantly shorter lifespans, the problem arises from the information transfer between individuals necessary to advance socio-cultural/scientific progress to the level of complex space-faring civilization. The lower bound on average lifespan probably is more flexible because a species could evolve a more efficient of inter-generational information transfer than we have with oral traditions and written texts. However that's not the bound on lifespan that needs to be flexible to survive a long interstellar trip.
Good thing it's babbys and not babys that are being brined.
Manfred Mann said "man sed | man -s earth band"
Hmm. I think the point is that for the work to be downloaded legally in Brazil, it would have had to be public domain. I think the big question is whether the work is also public domain in the US (since copyright durations sometimes differ across national boundaries). If the work was PD in both countries, then I think you would be OK since the activity that the DMCA would define as illegal, breaking the DRM, would be out of US jurisdiction. There's nothing illegal about importing a public domain work so no blade to fall on the importer. However, just to be on the safe side, that DRM cracker should stay safely in Brazil and avoid the US and avoid a Sklyarov situation
Heh. The rules of curling are actually pretty simple. It's mostly like bocce/petanque on ice, with bigger rocks that nobody in their right mind tries to throw. The strategies and techniques for curling however, are more complex.
While there is some merit to the argument that many scientists can be poor communicators, the best communication skills are going to be stumped when faced with massive cognitive dissonance. Far too many of the US public wallow in deliberate ignorance or the rants of people who cater to their prejudices. You have a huge segment of the media industry there that is based around stimulating emotional reactions to trump reasoned arguments. Their opponents hold most of the media propagation cards, but it's the scientists' fault for being poor communicators. Talk about blaming the victim.
Decorated with the Irony Cross, no less.
Nah. Although, IMHO, they've moved and hidden too many things to "simplify the interface for new users", Windows 7 is actually a pretty decent product, especially compared to Vista's lackluster efficiency/performance. People have been waiting to upgrade past XP - some have jumped to Apple, and a few have moved on to Linux. However there's a lot of pent-up demand for something better than XP. Windows 7 pretty well sells itself once people become aware that it's available and doesn't require a machine with enough power consumption to make a noticeable increase in their monthly electric bill. The Windows 7 ads may also be better than the ones for Vista, but that doesn't mean they don't suck.
Not only that, but I own 20 year old paperbacks. It's not clear that Kindles will last anywhere near that long.
One man's DRM is another man's virus/worm protection. When I buy a smartphone, I'll buy an Android because I may choose to write my own software to work on it.
However my wife got herself an iPhone because she doesn't really need that kind of flexibility. She's not using all the apps at her disposal now. She uses the core phone and web browsing functionality, some of the PIM functions, the Facebook app, takes photos and video of our son if he's doing something unusual and cute (the best camera in the world is the one in your hands when the opportunity presents itself), and not much more. But having that functionality available for her anytime/anywhere is a big win (such as if our son has a nap while they're out on a bus). So yes, over time she may wind up using additional apps but she's seriously unlikely to run into the iPhone's limitations because she doesn't have the time to explore what those might be and has fairly limited requirements. I installed Shazam for her but when she was curious about a song's title and author, she didn't think to use it. That was because I installed it, not her, but she wouldn't have taken the time to look for it and install it herself.
Now here's the kicker. There's probably at least 4 times as many people in the world who are like my wife, where their needs are sufficiently fulfilled by the iPhone, as there are people like you and me. For them, the fact that software has to be signed to run on the iPhone is feature, not a bug, because it means that they are less likely to get infected by a virus, worm or trojan because of Apple's vetting process.
Yep, it's the effects of perspective (or the lack thereof). When you're way out there on the right, everything from the center and leftwards looks close together near the horizon.
You have a point regarding government control over news organizations. That said it's just as wrong from a point of view of government taxes supporting for-profit public corporations that are getting hammered by structural economic problems. If the news organizations were run by "independent" non-profit NGOs then it would be supportable but this FTC suggestion is ridiculous. Set up some non-profits corps and if the public for-profit corps close, give the non-profits the money to buy the assets at fire sale prices and pick up where the public for-profit corps left off. News is important to democracy, but if it can't be run profitably then there's no reason why some for-profit corp should get to skim a cut for its investors of whatever money the government needs to pay to ensure a valid news ecosystem.
And we know more now about who got the most greedy.
Stock markets for efficient allocation of capital, sure. Derivative markets, that's questionable, and in some cases downright laughable.
Thank you for a well considered and cogent post. I actually agree on most points you make regarding relative costs of testing for a more varied deployment range. On the other hand, the constant recertification required for new versions by Apple's store imposes its own uncertainties and costs on developers. Apple's propensity for exclusive contracts with cell phone companies will likely also restrict the market on the demand side.
Apple's approach has its points, but I do think you're looking at a replay of the open PC vs. closed Mac battle of the 80s. That said, Steve Jobs has 30 years more experience in the trenches under his belt so I think it will be a much closer battle this go round.
Actually the RHCE involves a practical exam where the boot configuration of a system is buggered up in a number of ways and you have to fix it within a time period. It's not particularly difficult to fix but it does involve investigating a problem to identify the causes and resolving them. i.e. you actually have to understand a bit about the boot sequence and do more than just rote memorization and regurgitation of a sequence of answers to a series of questions (which is how you get certified people with no understanding of the subject matter) . They were probably inspired by the well established and respected advanced Cisco exam that also includes a practical test.
Not really. It only matters if it's not sustainable. If the costs on the Android are low enough that HTC and Verizon still make money (maybe just not as much), and if the promotion gets them word-of mouth advertising and mindshare that would have required more money to secure through just advertising, then it's still a win for them. Were Verizon hemorrhaging customers to AT&T iPhone contracts and did this campaign help them retain customers profitably?
To put it another way, Windows PCs outsell macs by a huge margin and the price tag is a big part of the reason for that. People don't argue that the sales prices on Windows PCs mean that their market share can't be compared to that of Macs. I don't see why that line of reasoning would apply any more to Android vs. iPhone.
Yep. The iPads are the modern equivalent of the original Palm Pilot. A different compromise between functionality and battery life that meets the needs of a large market. Eventually, the battery and CPU power capabilities may move the sweet spot to a more functional platform (as it has with smartphones vs. PDAs) but for now, Apple have hit the sweet spot desired by a large number of customers.
Well, I think you're confusing two types of different QA: the QA a software developer would do in putting a package together for sales and the QA an IT shop should do in deploying a package, because you're doing both for the government. While I can see a game developer testing their game on major chip generations from nVidia, ATI, and Intel hardware (and perhaps other older manufacturers as well) because there is significant variations (including bugs) in the implementations of 3D graphics rendering pipelines, there isn't much point in doing that with 2D applications using standard windowing calls. You would test typical resolutions 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, 1600x1200 (and maybe the comparable 16:9 aspect ratio resolutions) to make sure your layout algorithms didn't do something stupid. But, believe or not! you don't actually need to buy separate test systems for each of those resolutions! Even if you're doing work in full screens and not windows, it's actually possible to have screens that switch between those resolutions through software!
Now when it comes to deployment in your production environment, you absolutely should test the app with all your typical systems configuration. But no shrink wrap software developer is ever going to do this for the massive combination of devices and vendors in the PC compatible market. They may test with a number of the vendors with the largest market share, but not even Microsoft can validate every driver for every piece of hardware out there (which is why there are so many hardware vendors that ship unsigned drivers).
So, no, most professional software developers making shrink-wrapped software don't waste money doing what you do. They only do QA for the variables that are relevant for their application and don't waste time and money duplicating testing that should have been done by the device manufacturer or O/S vendor. An IT department however does have to do UAT to validate all software against their various system configurations.
Yep, believe it or not those are all taken care of by the operating system and applications and you just need to worry about width and height of the screen. If you're working at a fairly low level, you might worry about the dot pitch and do something accordingly (i.e. ensure that graphic objects match the font scaling factor). On starting your application, you may need to do a handful of calculations to figure out proportional layouts for your screen.
Again, unless you're an employee of the video card manufacturer and writing the graphics drivers, that is all abstracted away to screen devices with width and height. No need to worry about VGA vs. DVI vs. DisplayPort. No need to worry about display technology unless you're dealing with professional graphics tools that need to support colour correction (I don't think that will be an issue on smartphones).
Do you seriously think all PC developers buy 15", 17", 19", 21" and 24" monitors just to test their apps at different resolutions? Or every single graphics card made in the last 10 years by nVidia, ATI, and Intel? Maybe a few specialty app developers like Adobe and AutoCAD buy a representative set, but for most apps it just doesn't make enough difference to matter. If a device is sufficiently different from the norm in the market that a whole bunch of apps break on it, that device will be the one with the bad reputation, not all the apps that fail to run on it. Yes, it may be a bit of a support headache until that device's flaws become apparent to everyone, so take account of that in your cost model and charge accordingly. At least that's within your control, as opposed to iPhone App Market approval.
Most of the features that you indicate as being variable on the Android platform are also variable on PCs. Yet, somehow, application development on the PC has not died and software developers have coped despite Apple having full hardware and software control on the competing Mac platform. Is the CPU on the original iPhone still the same as that on the iPhone 3Gs? Is the display resolution the same on the iPhone as on the iPad?
The Android market is certainly different from that of the iPhone, and will require additional skills and practices. However if the response of established iPhone developers is to shun those added challenges, then all it does is open the door to those who are willing to tackle them.