English is the most sophisticated 'adaptive' language ever put together by humankind, the language is many times larger than german, the second-largest language, which is several times larger than french.*
English doesn't need 'saving' as you put it, but America needs saving from the scourge of multilanguageitis that infects Quebec, much of Europe, and arguably killed the Roman Empire.
English is the standard for every organization that needs to communicate across cultural boundaries (commerce, law, medicine, science, math, aviation, shipping). Americans push for English from our immigrants to help them become better Americans and thereby strengthen the country.
Leave your superficial, liberal, USA-Hate at the door please.
*'size of language' being defined here by many factors including raw vocabulary, homonyms, homophones, homographs, possible constructions, possible meaning subtleties, word order, prefixes, infixes, suffixes, tenses (and tense-subtitles ex: past pluperfect), etc., many of which don't even exist in other languages.
Spoken like a true 'hit it with a bigger hammer' mentality if I've ever heard it. Stay away from my servers, stay away from my internal organs, and stick to the ditches of Windows-workstation-maintenance where you belong.
You know, the framers of the constitution wanted inefficiency to be built into the government, it prevented it from being 'too good' at robbing citizens of our rights before we knew it was happening.
Flash is a interpreted programming environment using its own video rendering, its own code-base, and in most cases, its own internal language-within-a-language API-set to make matters worse. All of this runs floating high atop the application-layer. Even Java, as a language, has the *possibility* of JIT and hooking native graphics/text engines.
Flash is simply the most inefficient way to build anything today. Yes, all that inefficiency buys compatibility, but at a tremendous cost that no portable-device hw engineer should have to bail-out. I don't blame Apple in the least for baring the biggest sham bloat-ware to hit the internet to date. Flash is a shining example of all thats wrong with the computer industry today. Kudos to Apple for realizing this.
(Now, the fact is that I've not seen this said here, so either the Adobe Flash Gestapo has mind-controlled the slashdot mod's or else there's not true OSI-wielding code monkey left in these parts, sad.)
Forgive me this rant... but Yale is a great school, Stanford is a great school, MIT, Caltech, and a whole score of others are truly a cut above. Harvard is... a has-been that now rests on its name, not alot more.
Do yourself a favor and don't be so in awe of an epic name and lose sight of reality. Harvard has repeatedly demonstrated its cluelessness about anything but dead novelists.
Not questioning this crap is exactly why people with an H-brand resume walk into jobs ahead of *gasp* qualified people.
Finally, I think its amusing that a Harvard apologist couldn't do better than "... eat shit and die you shit-flinging pin head mother fuckers..."; just wow.
I'd like to see the in-depth math on this, I don't buy these numbers, its smells of environmental-shock-value reasoning... Example - if they are dividing the total power used by google by the number of searches, that would only be applicable if google were working at 100% capacity and if *all* they did was searches...
This is kinda like the Greenpeace founder who hated nuclear power till they read a freaking book. Boo.
Thats corporate speak for "we're going to change the name of our stuff so SCO haters don't know they're buying SCO". This guy needs to go down in history appropriately for destroying SCO.
I'd really appreciate an ongoing list during this process so that we know what clever new names the software is marketed under so that we can all boycott anything software-formerly-known-as-SCO.
While the theatrics of tank-rolling, smashing, etc. are alluring, the fact is that this is more a symptom of incompetent users. If a competent security geek (they're a scary lot) puts out a physically non-destructive data-erasure procedure, take a guess on the likelihood that users will *actually* follow the procedure any better than the last 30 procedures they were sent that involved a mouse... Its low. Guess who gets the blame when the data is "loosed"? The security geek.
Instead, said geek issues a 'meatspace' method to make the data totally irrecoverable and the chances of erasure go up astronomically. That, and that alone, is the reason for the ongoing list of these inane and wildly extreme procedures.
(Most people are stupid, we know this; I imagine the HD's being smashed by the apes with bones at the beginning of 2001.)
On a technical front, random-data rewrites work. If you don't feel safe with 7, 13, or your favorite random lucky number, use 30. the data WILL be gone. If you're the theatrical type, fire isn't very hot at all: prepare some nice 3.5" pucks of thermite and when you want to destroy a drive, take the condemned outside, put a thermite cookie on top (covering the platter), and light'er up. Problem solved.
wikipedia looks a little light on coverage, but they're enormous geeky fun- they are 1 'piece' of linked rings that (when put together correctly) are a smooth comfortable wearable ring, but if unlocked, loosely resemble a gnarly keychain of a bunch of mashed rings...
there are I think 3 different 'types' of puzzles and all use an odd number of bands. The more bands, the more obnoxious the puzzle on a geometric curve. 3(easy), 5(fun), 7(tricky) are common, but I have an 11(yikes, don't take it off), and in a discussion with a ring maker, we thought up to a 21(shudder) should be possible with an extremely hard metal (we discussed platinum or nickel).
There is an added tie-in to old-world tradition in that the idea behind puzzle-rings seems to be that they were given to brides as insurance of fidelity - upon being removed, they would become difficult to solve and put back on.
googling found this place to give you an idea (probably custom make for a wedding ring though).
The AEGIS weapon system IS *entirely* based on Windows (see my other comment on this story...) And yes... the worst you can imagine is exactly what happens.
If the app's, input devices, or anything but the OS crashed, the rest of the system should not have gone down. This is called 'modern computing' and every other OS on the planet, save Windows gets this by now. Only Microsoft continues to create an OS so fragile that the whole thing comes crashing down if mishandled.
I've read a couple of anecdotes about Windows NT being behind the AEGIS Missile Destoyers. This isn't an overkill situation, but a horrific use of windows nonetheless. When NT fails (as NT does), it takes down everything... weapons, guidance, radar, steering, propulsion, navigation, communications, and even power. The crews resort to using battery-powered semaphore spotlights or hand-held maritime radios to call for help. The new "teeth" of our Navy's attack power is rendered utterly impotent in a nanosecond.
Subsequent to reading the stories, I had a rather coincidental chat with a guy on a plane (single-serving friend) who worked for a contractor that ran ocean-going tugs for the US Navy out of Boston(?). According to him.... (with a chuckle) "...a couple? More than that, I know exactly what you're talking about - we get called out a couple times a month to tow in those destroyers, and yeah its always 'computer problems'..."
I wonder what Navy patsy was stupid enough to sign the dotted line for this nightmare. Take a cue from the army and go *nix guys...
Gee, I seem to remember this gripe about USB when Apple introduced it.
(substitute "hard drives", "ethernet", "802.11", "gigabit", "mice", "trackballs", "trackpads", "IR ports", "DVD burners", "sound-out", "sound-in", "24-bit color", "power-management", "video cards", "memory controllers", "bus-controllers", "mutitasking" or any other Apple-adopted-first standard technology as necessary to obtain clue.)
Fact: Steve is smarter than both of us, and he's 4 steps ahead of the industry, accept it and buy his machines and enjoy the ride as the world catches up.
I'm not sure if you meant this as a joke or not, but you're more right than you may think:
Apple has been materials-obsessed since the early days. The company has used experimental processes, exotic metals and alloys, and a range of "plastic" formula's that would give a non-organic chemist nightmares.
Even when you think you know a material (from their own advertising), you're probably not quite correct. The Ti and Al machines are both actually powder-coated/painted because the naked metal wasn't pretty enough, the parts that feel 'rubber' on the Lombards were actually a rubberized pvc because rubber was too heavy (on the Wallstreets it was rubberized copper). The Ti-books have a metal-based cement that actually bonds pure Titanium to carbon fiber with structural strength (try that one sometime). The "white plastic" you refer to, at least in the case of the iBooks wasn't. It was transparent PVC with white paint inside to give the case a pearlescent look. I still have no idea what the shiny rim around the iPhone's screen is made of- some nickel alloy I'm sure, but its startlingly strong to protect the glass. Apple has used RF-blocking conductive plastics in quite a few places as well as painting conductive coatings inside of plastics since the early days, and now plays with ways to cleverly sneak RF out of the case for wireless. Meanwhile they have an obsession with neodymium magnets family-wide that stiffens keyboards, actuates latches and just makes things just work better mechanically. Apple laser-etches the letters on the keyboard for the backlit keyboard trick. Most recently, Apple has developed the ability to laser-etch LED windows into the case that disappear when the LED is off by using holes smaller than the pits in the finish itself. (The NeXT boxes were no different, bizarre materials showed up everywhere with a stunning aesthetic impact.)
I'm an amateur, however- few people have the expertise to critique Apple's cases/materials use, and I think Steve's got most of them on payroll and close to him.
...and this type of flowery-minded thinking is exactly why Microsoft is as powerful as it is today. Every step, taken independently, sounds so reasonable, then suddenly you find that the path has led somewhere you never intended to go and wonder how you got there. "Choice is always a good idea, obviously!" "Compatibility is always a good idea, obviously!" "More functionality is always a good idea, obviously!"
Have you ever tacked a sail boat? No matter how hard the wind tries to push the boat east, the boat steadily makes westward progress... Microsoft figured out how to 'tack' in marketing decades ago, and has been cheating naive consumer every day since.
Take a giant step back, this is like holding a charity telathon to fight hunger, then taking the donations and using them to build a few hundred McDonalds in the inner city, and handing out 'half off' coupons to the poor neighborhood kids to help them with their empty stomachs..
I think Negroponte and the rest of the board could be personally liable for conversion and fraud. They raised enormous support from the community in the form of programming efforts, money, and time under the guise of FOSS only to turn the whole thing over to directly support Microsoft's strategy for commercial success in the third-world. One is left wondering how long ago Negroponte planned this and what his personal gain is from the deal.
Remember, when you're on the board of an organization -even a nonprofit, you can't just act on your own whim. Save The Dolphins can't just go open up a gill-netting operation and cackle merrily all the way to the bank, the board has a fiduciary duty to stakeholders that binds their actions. I, for one, would love to see them all thrown in jail.
Actually, the way a way any propagating wave moves and bounces off of a surface is similar with regards to angle of incidence equalling angle of reflection, be it electromagnetic or sound. While there are other techniques at work with stealth including materials technology, most of stealth is shape alone.
Years ago, I played with this when the F-117 was first declassified. I spray-painted a Testors model kit of the Nighthawk with chrome paint and shined a flashlight against it from across a darkened room... like magic it was all but impossible to see. Reflections peppered the room like a disco ball, but nothing came back to my eye and the flashlight. To quote the pilots "This stealth shit works..."
You Russian parrots are hilarious. Do you think Americans are so dumb that we don't notice the mass spew of pro-Russian comments (we used to call it propaganda back in the day) that follows any story about America's military? The days that Russia could build anything to challenge our forces died long before your country's economy. Get over it.
To make a substantive argument; the SU-37 is a prototype effectively bolting some advanced systems to a cold-war-style airframe. The F-22 is a completely stealthy post-stall maneuvering air-dominance fighter sporting the most advanced electronic warfare and radar systems ever built into a fighter. It's been developed for the last 20 years while Russia has been working out how to get enough electricity to light its streets.
I know Russians are a proud people, but don't be ignorant. I'm glad the country is getting on its feet, but you're not suddenly-a-superpower again. We've been busy while you put your country back together. You're not a threat anymore.
I second this recommendation unconditionally. I read very few books (lots of magazines & news sites, but few real books), this is an exception. I true pleasure and insight into a world few of us have ever imagined existed. I searched this story for a comment about Ben Rich's book to make sure someone had mentioned it.
The books is Ben Rich's memoirs from working for Lockheed, up through working as director. This is punctuated by a string of fascinating anecdotes from pilots, enlisted men, and so forth, with memories of the aircraft. As a preview, one of the anecdotes that sticks with me describes the confidence gained in the F-117 by pilots leaving from bases in Saudi Arabia. Apparently the base's local bat population was unable to 'see' the airplane at all with echolocation and the hangers were littered with their tiny corpses... Amazing.
Once upon a time, big software companies made software they thought was so great, they charged thousands of dollars for it, even though it wasn't that hard to create.
The GPL was created to fill this void, and effectively put good software, at low-cost, in the hands of the consumers instead of only corporate customers.
Along comes Apple, who does a pretty fine job of being a 'good corporate citizen' conforming to standards when it can without compromising design, and generally making 'insanely great' products available and affordable to consumers.
Apple, is doing exactly what the FSF/GPL were created to do, in function. Apple's goal is to protect the device from malware that can wreak havoc on its installed base of users when a hyper-wireless device is at issue, not to keep software closed so they can charge $5000/seat for it.
I'm suggesting that you look at the goals of the FSF/GPL as opposed to the anti-corporate mantra that it largely has become.
(and... re: your reception- that sounds like a HW issue, mine is better than most att phones I've used until now, though I've noticed att's network is incredibly bad at cell-to-cell handoffs now and again - it could be location-dependent, I know att's network is a patch-job at best composed of many, many acquisitions)
I've seen a lot of tech demos. I've seen alot of prototypes. And yet, the iPhone for all of its closed terrible-ness is the most advanced piece of technology I've ever seen- and it gets better... I own one. Its in my hand. I use it every day. This isn't something we drool over and fantasize about owning some day, this is extremely attainable.
The point is that while I am a FSF and EFF supporter, GPL still doesn't deliver with jaw-dropping results. Apple does. The open movement was created largely in response to advanced technology being kept out-of-reach of average consumers ($5000/seat UNIX comes to mind) largely out of ignorance on the part of the companies developing the software.
Today, we have Apple solidly delivering to the consumer what many are calling *the* next platform, and the GPL community is throwing stones. Meanwhile Android has failed to be more than 'cute' and certainly nothing to write home about.
Finally, the GPL community needs to gain perspective. Would it be nice to have a few GPL projects one iPhone? Sure. Will I miss their absence? Not a chance. This is *not* a desktop, this is a digital prosthetic. If the FSF is hoping to pressure Apple to change policy, stop now. Instead look at changing GPL to accommodate a company that is (in its own way) delivering on the goals that FSF was created to accomplish.
I think there's a simple bottom line here if you wade through all the posts (and do a little research).
If you are in the business of creating, that means photographers, graphic designers, web developers, film/video editors, and the like, you belong on a matte display. Matte means you don't have visual 'noise' on the display from reflections, color display is much more accurate and expressive of the true color, not a 'liquid' version of the color. Glossy displays really don't do 'subtle' well.
If you're a consumer of content, that means web browsing, watching movies, and the like, get a glossy display. Blacks will seem darker, colors will pop, and overall the 'wow' factor is higher.
The special situation of outdoors, its a tossup:
Direct sunlight glossy is better because matte will scatter the light in all directions and drown out the light from the display.
Indirect sunlight outdoors, a matte display is better, because the random reflections from well-lit objects behind you will be overwhelming, and matte won't reflect them.
Slashdot Mirror
English is the most sophisticated 'adaptive' language ever put together by humankind, the language is many times larger than german, the second-largest language, which is several times larger than french.*
English doesn't need 'saving' as you put it, but America needs saving from the scourge of multilanguageitis that infects Quebec, much of Europe, and arguably killed the Roman Empire.
English is the standard for every organization that needs to communicate across cultural boundaries (commerce, law, medicine, science, math, aviation, shipping). Americans push for English from our immigrants to help them become better Americans and thereby strengthen the country.
Leave your superficial, liberal, USA-Hate at the door please.
*'size of language' being defined here by many factors including raw vocabulary, homonyms, homophones, homographs, possible constructions, possible meaning subtleties, word order, prefixes, infixes, suffixes, tenses (and tense-subtitles ex: past pluperfect), etc., many of which don't even exist in other languages.
Spoken like a true 'hit it with a bigger hammer' mentality if I've ever heard it. Stay away from my servers, stay away from my internal organs, and stick to the ditches of Windows-workstation-maintenance where you belong.
People like you cause airliner crashes, Warships to become impotent, and ATC to shutdown for 3 hours endangering millions.
There are those who belong in enterprise, and there are those who do not. Know which you are, those on the other side of the tracks sure as hell do.
You know, the framers of the constitution wanted inefficiency to be built into the government, it prevented it from being 'too good' at robbing citizens of our rights before we knew it was happening.
This whole administration is dangerous.
Flash is a interpreted programming environment using its own video rendering, its own code-base, and in most cases, its own internal language-within-a-language API-set to make matters worse. All of this runs floating high atop the application-layer. Even Java, as a language, has the *possibility* of JIT and hooking native graphics/text engines.
Flash is simply the most inefficient way to build anything today. Yes, all that inefficiency buys compatibility, but at a tremendous cost that no portable-device hw engineer should have to bail-out. I don't blame Apple in the least for baring the biggest sham bloat-ware to hit the internet to date. Flash is a shining example of all thats wrong with the computer industry today. Kudos to Apple for realizing this.
(Now, the fact is that I've not seen this said here, so either the Adobe Flash Gestapo has mind-controlled the slashdot mod's or else there's not true OSI-wielding code monkey left in these parts, sad.)
Get a fscking clue here people, This "leak" is a marketing project from the word go.
Step 1: Build a virtually-nonfunctional but highly stable show-off OS with all of the important (and wildly unstable) compatibility turned off.
Step 2: Leak said software as your next great release and bemoan the loss of your great surprise unveiling.
Step 3: Pay lots of reviewers to fill comment sites about how terrific the fantastic OS is before most have ever seen it.
Step 4: Enjoy a *positive* rollout on the heals of your abomination of a release called 'Vista' and that horseshit "not vista" campaign that followed.
Step 5: Profit
Forgive me this rant... but Yale is a great school, Stanford is a great school, MIT, Caltech, and a whole score of others are truly a cut above. Harvard is... a has-been that now rests on its name, not alot more.
Do yourself a favor and don't be so in awe of an epic name and lose sight of reality. Harvard has repeatedly demonstrated its cluelessness about anything but dead novelists.
Not questioning this crap is exactly why people with an H-brand resume walk into jobs ahead of *gasp* qualified people.
Finally, I think its amusing that a Harvard apologist couldn't do better than "... eat shit and die you shit-flinging pin head mother fuckers..."; just wow.
I'd like to see the in-depth math on this, I don't buy these numbers, its smells of environmental-shock-value reasoning... Example - if they are dividing the total power used by google by the number of searches, that would only be applicable if google were working at 100% capacity and if *all* they did was searches...
This is kinda like the Greenpeace founder who hated nuclear power till they read a freaking book. Boo.
Thats corporate speak for "we're going to change the name of our stuff so SCO haters don't know they're buying SCO". This guy needs to go down in history appropriately for destroying SCO.
I'd really appreciate an ongoing list during this process so that we know what clever new names the software is marketed under so that we can all boycott anything software-formerly-known-as-SCO.
While the theatrics of tank-rolling, smashing, etc. are alluring, the fact is that this is more a symptom of incompetent users. If a competent security geek (they're a scary lot) puts out a physically non-destructive data-erasure procedure, take a guess on the likelihood that users will *actually* follow the procedure any better than the last 30 procedures they were sent that involved a mouse... Its low. Guess who gets the blame when the data is "loosed"? The security geek.
Instead, said geek issues a 'meatspace' method to make the data totally irrecoverable and the chances of erasure go up astronomically. That, and that alone, is the reason for the ongoing list of these inane and wildly extreme procedures.
(Most people are stupid, we know this; I imagine the HD's being smashed by the apes with bones at the beginning of 2001.)
On a technical front, random-data rewrites work. If you don't feel safe with 7, 13, or your favorite random lucky number, use 30. the data WILL be gone. If you're the theatrical type, fire isn't very hot at all: prepare some nice 3.5" pucks of thermite and when you want to destroy a drive, take the condemned outside, put a thermite cookie on top (covering the platter), and light'er up. Problem solved.
"I will not weaponize space." (and technically, weaponize doesn't mean what his puppeteers think it means)
Look into puzzle rings...
wikipedia looks a little light on coverage, but they're enormous geeky fun- they are 1 'piece' of linked rings that (when put together correctly) are a smooth comfortable wearable ring, but if unlocked, loosely resemble a gnarly keychain of a bunch of mashed rings...
there are I think 3 different 'types' of puzzles and all use an odd number of bands. The more bands, the more obnoxious the puzzle on a geometric curve. 3(easy), 5(fun), 7(tricky) are common, but I have an 11(yikes, don't take it off), and in a discussion with a ring maker, we thought up to a 21(shudder) should be possible with an extremely hard metal (we discussed platinum or nickel).
There is an added tie-in to old-world tradition in that the idea behind puzzle-rings seems to be that they were given to brides as insurance of fidelity - upon being removed, they would become difficult to solve and put back on.
googling found this place to give you an idea (probably custom make for a wedding ring though).
The AEGIS weapon system IS *entirely* based on Windows (see my other comment on this story...) And yes... the worst you can imagine is exactly what happens.
If the app's, input devices, or anything but the OS crashed, the rest of the system should not have gone down. This is called 'modern computing' and every other OS on the planet, save Windows gets this by now. Only Microsoft continues to create an OS so fragile that the whole thing comes crashing down if mishandled.
I've read a couple of anecdotes about Windows NT being behind the AEGIS Missile Destoyers. This isn't an overkill situation, but a horrific use of windows nonetheless. When NT fails (as NT does), it takes down everything... weapons, guidance, radar, steering, propulsion, navigation, communications, and even power. The crews resort to using battery-powered semaphore spotlights or hand-held maritime radios to call for help. The new "teeth" of our Navy's attack power is rendered utterly impotent in a nanosecond.
Subsequent to reading the stories, I had a rather coincidental chat with a guy on a plane (single-serving friend) who worked for a contractor that ran ocean-going tugs for the US Navy out of Boston(?). According to him.... (with a chuckle) "...a couple? More than that, I know exactly what you're talking about - we get called out a couple times a month to tow in those destroyers, and yeah its always 'computer problems'..."
I wonder what Navy patsy was stupid enough to sign the dotted line for this nightmare. Take a cue from the army and go *nix guys...
Gee, I seem to remember this gripe about USB when Apple introduced it.
(substitute "hard drives", "ethernet", "802.11", "gigabit", "mice", "trackballs", "trackpads", "IR ports", "DVD burners", "sound-out", "sound-in", "24-bit color", "power-management", "video cards", "memory controllers", "bus-controllers", "mutitasking" or any other Apple-adopted-first standard technology as necessary to obtain clue.)
Fact: Steve is smarter than both of us, and he's 4 steps ahead of the industry, accept it and buy his machines and enjoy the ride as the world catches up.
I'm not sure if you meant this as a joke or not, but you're more right than you may think:
Apple has been materials-obsessed since the early days. The company has used experimental processes, exotic metals and alloys, and a range of "plastic" formula's that would give a non-organic chemist nightmares.
Even when you think you know a material (from their own advertising), you're probably not quite correct. The Ti and Al machines are both actually powder-coated/painted because the naked metal wasn't pretty enough, the parts that feel 'rubber' on the Lombards were actually a rubberized pvc because rubber was too heavy (on the Wallstreets it was rubberized copper). The Ti-books have a metal-based cement that actually bonds pure Titanium to carbon fiber with structural strength (try that one sometime). The "white plastic" you refer to, at least in the case of the iBooks wasn't. It was transparent PVC with white paint inside to give the case a pearlescent look. I still have no idea what the shiny rim around the iPhone's screen is made of- some nickel alloy I'm sure, but its startlingly strong to protect the glass. Apple has used RF-blocking conductive plastics in quite a few places as well as painting conductive coatings inside of plastics since the early days, and now plays with ways to cleverly sneak RF out of the case for wireless. Meanwhile they have an obsession with neodymium magnets family-wide that stiffens keyboards, actuates latches and just makes things just work better mechanically. Apple laser-etches the letters on the keyboard for the backlit keyboard trick. Most recently, Apple has developed the ability to laser-etch LED windows into the case that disappear when the LED is off by using holes smaller than the pits in the finish itself. (The NeXT boxes were no different, bizarre materials showed up everywhere with a stunning aesthetic impact.)
I'm an amateur, however- few people have the expertise to critique Apple's cases/materials use, and I think Steve's got most of them on payroll and close to him.
...and this type of flowery-minded thinking is exactly why Microsoft is as powerful as it is today. Every step, taken independently, sounds so reasonable, then suddenly you find that the path has led somewhere you never intended to go and wonder how you got there. "Choice is always a good idea, obviously!" "Compatibility is always a good idea, obviously!" "More functionality is always a good idea, obviously!"
Have you ever tacked a sail boat? No matter how hard the wind tries to push the boat east, the boat steadily makes westward progress... Microsoft figured out how to 'tack' in marketing decades ago, and has been cheating naive consumer every day since.
Take a giant step back, this is like holding a charity telathon to fight hunger, then taking the donations and using them to build a few hundred McDonalds in the inner city, and handing out 'half off' coupons to the poor neighborhood kids to help them with their empty stomachs..
I think Negroponte and the rest of the board could be personally liable for conversion and fraud. They raised enormous support from the community in the form of programming efforts, money, and time under the guise of FOSS only to turn the whole thing over to directly support Microsoft's strategy for commercial success in the third-world. One is left wondering how long ago Negroponte planned this and what his personal gain is from the deal.
Remember, when you're on the board of an organization -even a nonprofit, you can't just act on your own whim. Save The Dolphins can't just go open up a gill-netting operation and cackle merrily all the way to the bank, the board has a fiduciary duty to stakeholders that binds their actions. I, for one, would love to see them all thrown in jail.
How about it? Go go gadget EFF!
Actually, the way a way any propagating wave moves and bounces off of a surface is similar with regards to angle of incidence equalling angle of reflection, be it electromagnetic or sound. While there are other techniques at work with stealth including materials technology, most of stealth is shape alone.
Years ago, I played with this when the F-117 was first declassified. I spray-painted a Testors model kit of the Nighthawk with chrome paint and shined a flashlight against it from across a darkened room... like magic it was all but impossible to see. Reflections peppered the room like a disco ball, but nothing came back to my eye and the flashlight. To quote the pilots "This stealth shit works..."
You Russian parrots are hilarious. Do you think Americans are so dumb that we don't notice the mass spew of pro-Russian comments (we used to call it propaganda back in the day) that follows any story about America's military? The days that Russia could build anything to challenge our forces died long before your country's economy. Get over it.
To make a substantive argument; the SU-37 is a prototype effectively bolting some advanced systems to a cold-war-style airframe. The F-22 is a completely stealthy post-stall maneuvering air-dominance fighter sporting the most advanced electronic warfare and radar systems ever built into a fighter. It's been developed for the last 20 years while Russia has been working out how to get enough electricity to light its streets.
I know Russians are a proud people, but don't be ignorant. I'm glad the country is getting on its feet, but you're not suddenly-a-superpower again. We've been busy while you put your country back together. You're not a threat anymore.
I second this recommendation unconditionally. I read very few books (lots of magazines & news sites, but few real books), this is an exception. I true pleasure and insight into a world few of us have ever imagined existed. I searched this story for a comment about Ben Rich's book to make sure someone had mentioned it.
The books is Ben Rich's memoirs from working for Lockheed, up through working as director. This is punctuated by a string of fascinating anecdotes from pilots, enlisted men, and so forth, with memories of the aircraft. As a preview, one of the anecdotes that sticks with me describes the confidence gained in the F-117 by pilots leaving from bases in Saudi Arabia. Apparently the base's local bat population was unable to 'see' the airplane at all with echolocation and the hangers were littered with their tiny corpses... Amazing.
Once upon a time, big software companies made software they thought was so great, they charged thousands of dollars for it, even though it wasn't that hard to create.
The GPL was created to fill this void, and effectively put good software, at low-cost, in the hands of the consumers instead of only corporate customers.
Along comes Apple, who does a pretty fine job of being a 'good corporate citizen' conforming to standards when it can without compromising design, and generally making 'insanely great' products available and affordable to consumers.
Apple, is doing exactly what the FSF/GPL were created to do, in function. Apple's goal is to protect the device from malware that can wreak havoc on its installed base of users when a hyper-wireless device is at issue, not to keep software closed so they can charge $5000/seat for it.
I'm suggesting that you look at the goals of the FSF/GPL as opposed to the anti-corporate mantra that it largely has become.
(and... re: your reception- that sounds like a HW issue, mine is better than most att phones I've used until now, though I've noticed att's network is incredibly bad at cell-to-cell handoffs now and again - it could be location-dependent, I know att's network is a patch-job at best composed of many, many acquisitions)
Even without husk-gripping, coconuts move... they're supposed to, thats how they get from island to island...
I think this is a note to self: do NOT eat coconuts that you find on the seashore. I wonder if anyone's realized that little issue...
I've seen a lot of tech demos. I've seen alot of prototypes. And yet, the iPhone for all of its closed terrible-ness is the most advanced piece of technology I've ever seen- and it gets better... I own one. Its in my hand. I use it every day. This isn't something we drool over and fantasize about owning some day, this is extremely attainable.
The point is that while I am a FSF and EFF supporter, GPL still doesn't deliver with jaw-dropping results. Apple does. The open movement was created largely in response to advanced technology being kept out-of-reach of average consumers ($5000/seat UNIX comes to mind) largely out of ignorance on the part of the companies developing the software.
Today, we have Apple solidly delivering to the consumer what many are calling *the* next platform, and the GPL community is throwing stones. Meanwhile Android has failed to be more than 'cute' and certainly nothing to write home about.
Finally, the GPL community needs to gain perspective. Would it be nice to have a few GPL projects one iPhone? Sure. Will I miss their absence? Not a chance. This is *not* a desktop, this is a digital prosthetic. If the FSF is hoping to pressure Apple to change policy, stop now. Instead look at changing GPL to accommodate a company that is (in its own way) delivering on the goals that FSF was created to accomplish.
I think there's a simple bottom line here if you wade through all the posts (and do a little research).
If you are in the business of creating, that means photographers, graphic designers, web developers, film/video editors, and the like, you belong on a matte display. Matte means you don't have visual 'noise' on the display from reflections, color display is much more accurate and expressive of the true color, not a 'liquid' version of the color. Glossy displays really don't do 'subtle' well.
If you're a consumer of content, that means web browsing, watching movies, and the like, get a glossy display. Blacks will seem darker, colors will pop, and overall the 'wow' factor is higher.
The special situation of outdoors, its a tossup:
Direct sunlight glossy is better because matte will scatter the light in all directions and drown out the light from the display.
Indirect sunlight outdoors, a matte display is better, because the random reflections from well-lit objects behind you will be overwhelming, and matte won't reflect them.