First of all, Intel is not going to do anything that could jeopardize the x86 line. Dilluting the market (by increasing the number of PowerPC's in production) will not help Intel, even if they're selling them.
Ah, but as it is, Intel is locked to Microsoft. Who has been courting AMD. Maybe Intel wants to diversify out of the WinTel alliance themselves, in case Microsoft starts seeing other CPU partners? Or, at least to have options that they can negotiate with?
Perhaps Intel has been convinced that the market is right for Apple to regain some marketshare. If those number are in, Intel may be seeing a gap with which they can get out from under the thumb of Microsoft.
I will concede that your other point is interesting--that it's hard to imagine that Intel could make better PPCs than IBM; and Intel has had troubles of their own in moving to a 90nm process, IIRC. But if I had to guess, I'd guess that Intel is more likely to make PPCs than Apple is to move to x86.
As a Mac evangelist, let me say: I hope so. If consoles get priority treatment, and PCs are relegated to getting late leftovers, it'll be one less reason to purchase a PC over a Mac--both will be equally neglected.
That said, until consoles get a better controller, I don't see how they can replace the flexibility of the keyboard+mouse. Maybe you bundle a Bluetooth (or USB with long cable) keyboard with built-n trackball? Then your console can be a lightweight PC too, as so many people think is the Xbox strategy? Perhaps.
But until it comes bundled, then game developers won't develop games for it; and I still can't see how you can point weapons in FPS with any accuracy or speed, or discontiguous select with a console controller.
Think you could edit Unreal maps with just an analog stick? If that's being done now, I would sure like to see a demonstration.
Apple's Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" includes, for free, the screen reader technology they call "VoiceOver".
It is purported to remove the need to see the screen; I haven't used it myself, much, because I'm not blind. The Mac also includes some voice control, which every one on a Mac tries for a week and then quits using, mostly because using the mouse is faster and who likes to hear themselves talk all the time? I don't know how well the voice control stands up for day to day use.
I think it's worth emphasizing that both products are free and included with 10.4. I understand that screen reader technology is usually pretty expensive; since it's now bundled with OS X I wonder if that makes the Mac more cost-effective for your situation vs. PCs with an additional software package required.
You could get BlueTooth or USB headphones and microphones that would improve the performance of both products. And don't forget that you could use the mini with your current keyboards and monitors. There's also the Mac's "ease of use" and minimized need to teach users about internet security, and it seems like it might be a good solution for you.
It's a new kind of troll. Apparently, someone wrote a bot that will scrub the highest rated comments from one story, and post them into another randomly chosen story.
To what end, the mind boggles. But there you go.
I suppose you could argue that you have the ownership of the original post, and so it can't be reposted without your permission; but that would be much harder to enforce with posts that are originally made by an AC, and it would be hard to stop even if you could demonstrate that you originally wrote the original content.
What people do with too much time on their hands is pretty amazing, really. It's all I can to read slashdot, let alone write bots to vandalize it.
I recently purchased an EDGE compatible phone, and have been connecting to Cingular's "all you can eat" data plan for $25/month. I've been less than impressed.
While I was able to (finally) get the phone to allow my laptop to connect, after calling customer service and having them flip a switch that was missed during the original configuration, I get about 20-40Kbs, based on some of the free "measure your connection speed" tools on the internet. While I never intended to play games via this method, I was still hoping for better than dial up. I thought EDGE would give me that.
Details of my situation, any of which could be a contributing factor: I am connecting via BlueTooth from a PowerBook, running OS X 10.4.1 using Ross Barkman's 3G scripts. I am using a Moto v551, which for sure is EDGE compatible; and I have been testing the speed of the connection from Gaithersburg MD, which is a scant 30 minutes N of Washington DC. While I'm not actually in the city itself, I would bet that if my speed with Cingular isn't so good here, it's not going to be any better in any of the corn states either.
I hope to get into the city to see if it just doesn't extend this far out; could be an issue with the modem scripts too, I suppose, or maybe BT connections are limited. Or something.
Bottomline is that I found this an incredibly frustrating experience, purchasing my first phone: all of these vendors are long on promise and short on delivery, with complicated, expensive plans, limited explanation of what they'll actually deliver for the price, and you have to sign up for 2 years just to find all that out. I'm really much more interested in having the feature work than just listed in the brochure, believe it or not. And based on this experience I sure as hell am not inclined to to purchase any of the other services that they want to cram down my throat.
- but there are some things on which they simply will not budge
I imagine that they think so. It appears that there are things on which the EU will not budge, either. I wonder who wins that battle?
Incidentally, Microsoft is perfectly capable of pulling its business completely out of EU nations.. . Note that such a move would be disastrous for consumers there..., but Microsoft would continue as ever.
It would hurt the EU, too. Except, as noted above the EU could respond by voiding MSFT patents; then it's free software day until the transition is complete. I imagine that there would be diplomatic fallout, also, with the WTO; and it's likely that the Bush Admin would go to bat for them, which can only encourage Microsoft to call the EU's bluff.
However, I think you or your friend fail to realize what losing another market the size of the EU would do to the prized "network effect"; Microsoft would be out of the world's two biggest economies, China and the EU. The use of Microsoft in the US would be akin to our use of the standard english measuring unit. And, Microsoft would have fewer markets to grow in--what's left? Africa, and South America? Not only would they lose the immediate market, but they would lose the position of running the world, too. Then, to communicate with colleagues in the EU or Asia, I would have to use Open Formats--leading to losses even here.
I would like nothing better than for MSFT to pull this move. The fallout would be tremendously interesting to watch. In the long run it would only validate the value of OSS for maintaining sovereignty: countries that don't adopt MSFT in the first place wouldn't be subject to that kind of extortion, and the EU would be a reminder to everyone forever.
Nothing forces me to install iTunes on my Powerbook; I can omit it from the installation.
A more apt comparison would be to attempt to remove QuickTime from OS X. You can't. Although you can remove the player interface, QT APIs are an important part of OS X.
I suspect that if you remove everything that is a QT API in OS X your finder won't draw. Or, at least, your video iChat won't display video. Although iChat's and QuickTime's relationship is superficially tangential.
At least that's my understanding. I would be interested to be told otherwise by someone who actually knows.
same here. I'll buy it if you want to sell me it, but I won't beg.
Christ when will they get it. Newsflash: the intarweb makes the entire world one big market, and we laugh at the attempts to use 20th century notions of regionalism on us.
How about you try to change your models to accomodate piracy, instead of just whinge about it? 'Cause it has been amply demonstrated by now that there is no technical or legislative fix. The only way to manage piracy is by changing the demand structure, which, believe it or not, means giving consumers what we want when we want it.
It's up to you to charge us for it; failing that, we'll steal it. And until you can patent 1s and 0s, there's not a lot you can do about it. Simple, really.
So they ended up with two episodes full of exposition.
And we're likely to get a whole 'nother run through for the first 20 minutes of the movie. Joss must be getting tired of telling the same story, paraphrased.
You have to get over High School. I know, I know, it took me a long time, and not a few recreational drugs, for me to as well. But, as they say, the best revenge is to live well.
Really, it was only 4 years. At this point in my life, I've owned socks for longer than that.
the universe is not, in fact, deterministic and at a quantum level things do behave probablistically.
If that's in fact true, I'm afraid it blows my mind. I guess I have good company.
That an isotope will not decay one moment, but will the next, for truly no reason at all...if there is no reason that precipitates the decay, then why does it at all?
Well. I guess it'd take more math than I know to have it proved to me, but I can see why it made Einstein uneasy. It's almost like ascribing a will to quantum components.
Philosophical question: what's meant by truly random? Everything can be predicted if you know the variables that go into it's creation; you could predict the roll of a die, for instance, if you could precisely measure it's velocity when hitting the table and the amount of friction that results.
So while the OP wants to draw a distinction between "pseudo-random" and "truly random", at what point does a generator change from one to the other?
That said, I would suppose that a "truly random" generator would involve, for instance, isotope degeneration--not that there is no reason that an isotope decays or not, but it is beyond our (current) understanding of quantum physics to predict it. But surely it must still be the effect of some cause, even if the cause is as yet imperceptible...
Aesop continued: "And if you continue to pursue this democratic foolishness, you will suffer a continuous stream of tyrants, each who will have 4 or 8 years to empower and enrich themselves, before leaving office to another who will do the same in turn.
"If you allow only one tyrant with a lifetime appointment, you will only need to suffer the depredations of a single man and his administration; whereas, if you remove that man and his staff from office every 4 years, you will find yourselves enriching a litany of men without end."
Hear that, that static? That is the sound of Clear Channel execs loosing steam from their ears. One thing that the sat. radio folks don't have is market penetration with their devices. You can go out of your way to get one in your car; sometimes they come standard. But really, I don't know anyone with sat. radio.
On the other hand, I know about 20 people who have iPods. And it looks like that trend is going to continue. Although you'll probably have to upgrade your iPod to make this work--or maybe get a hardware dongle--I don't think that would be a serious barrier over time.
Clear Channel just got leapfrogged, mostly because they have a sanitized and unoriginal lineup, with ads. In 15 years the folks that only have access to FM radio may be the same folks who don't have cell phones. Too bad for CC. They bought a condo on a swamp, and mistook sanitizing for competitiveness.
but the fact is that we don't have the balls to do anything like this anymore
The sad thing is, we don't either. This project was launched thirty years ago, is slated to be killed to save a paltry few million because NASA's budget has been reduced to a shadow of it's former self, and we don't have any other missions slated that will have the scope of this.
Unless you count the fantasy of a Mars Mission.
Here's to hoping the Chinese put a sputnik in space. Then it'll be back on, baby. Until then, most Americans don't see the point when there's terrorists still alive.
I was fascinated to learn that Microsoft used
actual Apple G5s to represent what the Xbox 360 will be capable of when it's actually working. It's one thing to ship G5s to your developers for use as compile targets for your Xbox IDE; I think it's another to use the box as the working machine for a demo presentation at E3, of all places. For G5s to be used in that venue, they have to be both fast and stable platforms for your code.
In short, that makes it I think more likely that we'll get Xbox games on the G5 if Microsoft has any desire to ship that. Still an admittedly slim chance, but it's warming to know that these actually run game code full speed.
I work for a department of the NIH--the National Institute of Health. I have been closely associated with some large computer purchases, and I can tell you that, over a certain dollar amount, we must also source from US manufacturing plants.
The details of how this works aren't 100% clear to me--but I believe that major manufacturers have a manufacturing plant for just this purpose, although I don't know if they serve any other gov't institutes besides the NIH.
I can tell you that we can purchase Dell, Apple, and HP following the US sourcing rules. While it does indeed complicate the bidding process, it's not impossible. I would imagine that the DHS would tap the same resources; in fact, their use of these resources might drive down the prices for all gov't buyers who are currently constrained by this rule. The more the merrier.
The fact that you can't purchase "Made in the USA" computer goods at Best Buy really has no relation to the purchasing power of the US gov't.
It's also absurd to think that an American company wouldn't take such an action if asked/ordered to by the government--ANY company in ANY country would do so if their respective governments came calling.
My pet theory is that Microsoft was offered a deal that they couldn't refuse from the US Gov't: water down the DOJ anti-trust proceedings if you agree to backdoor Windows, and give the NSA the key. The neo-cons in government have long viewed China as the ascendent threat; Ashcroft was a Neo-Con of the first order; Ashcroft failed to punish Microsoft with the full penalty of law.
Is it too hard to think that Ashcroft, operating at the direction of the White House, made such a deal? I don't think that the China CIO is willing to take that chance. I know I wouldn't, even if the scenario is merely improbable.
How in the hell is this box supposed to sell for less than $500, even after Microsoft's subsidy? I mean, holy crap. I think either of these things is going on:
Those aren't your father's IBM 970s. How much they bear in relation to the 64bit PPCs shipping in Macs I think remains to be seen.
Microsoft is going to untold lengths to subsidize these boxes, in the expectation that they'll make it up with Live subscriptions and game licensing. Like cellphone providers.
Microsoft could have seriously missed the market. I'm sure they've done extensive market research; they're known for that. Even so, I have hard time believing that anyone is going to pay >$500 for a console. Maybe they know that the the Sony PS3 is going to be $500 too, so they feel safe in developing this kinda thing? Anyways, if it it's more than $150 more than the PS3, I think we can kiss it goodbye, no matter how much it rules.
If this ships with three real CPUs that are mostly similar to the ones that Apple uses, for less than $500, lots of Apple fanbois, myself included, are going to wonder wtf is up with that, and why Apple can't do the same. I think there is still a lot that remains to be seen.
(Addendum: I see now that at least a couple of commenters have figured this out already. Good for them. You all suck for stealing my surprise. One of them even nailed the big challenge, still to date unsolved, right on the head. I wonder if you guys will know it when you see it?)
I would decrypt that to mean that you're looking at how to a) purchase movies/TV shows from an "iTunes Video Store" or it's like; b) download the product to your computer; c) stream from your computer to an Airport Extreme connected to your TV via a TV-friendly out, like S-video, DVI, or analog. I have to admit, that would be pretty sweet, depending on price and download speed. Hope you work something out with NetFlix/Movie provider.
What's the big issue? I can guess a few things: DRM agreement among the video producers, but that's a political issue more than anything; download speeds over even broadband speeds; speed of transferring from the computer to the TV via APE--but if you could get it from the internet in a reasonable size/timeframe, I would think it would be trivial getting it to the TV via the APE. Hm...
btw, friend, I hope you have a nice legal plan. I would suggest that you're getting pretty close to "stealing Jobsian thunder" and well, we know how that goes.
Re:Ahem.... Without MS applications?
on
Gates on Google
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Right. And if Netscape taught us one thing--and Adobe is going to learn again with "Mosaic"--if you build your house on rented land, where will you move that house when the lease on the land expires?
Microsoft can break compatibility with Google's stuff any time it wants--"Longhorn not done 'till Google won't run." Google should be very careful of this, and design their strategy such that they don't need Windows APIs--either by releasing their own browser, to which they can control the interface, or supporting an ecology of multiple OSes.
I am really interested to see how Microsoft's Mosaic format goes over at Adobe--the world's biggest software manufacturer is taking on the second largest; and although Adobe has had a strained relationship with alternative OSes lately (read Apple), this might serve as their wakeup call that Windows may be "rented land."
OTOH, could be MSFT is just bluffing--that Mosaic is never intended to go into production. Could be that it's a dealmaker: we'll drop Mosaic plans if you drop Photoshop for OS X. For instance. Does Adobe buy this, or retaliate with Photoshop on Linux? Interesting times.
I prefer the order of importance to be 3,2,1 and Star Wars seems to fit that type for me quite well.
I hope you hate Serenity. It'll have spaceships, sure, but only because people are more likely to watch a future-period piece than a historical-period piece.
We're LITTLECO. Somebody like Crucial is BIGCO. See?
Sounds to me like Apple should buy it's RAM from Crucial, then. If your negotiated price with RAMCO is still higher than Crucial's retail price, or better, whatever price you could negotiate with Crucial, it sounds like you'd be better off. Really.
Slashdot Mirror
First of all, Intel is not going to do anything that could jeopardize the x86 line. Dilluting the market (by increasing the number of PowerPC's in production) will not help Intel, even if they're selling them.
Ah, but as it is, Intel is locked to Microsoft. Who has been courting AMD. Maybe Intel wants to diversify out of the WinTel alliance themselves, in case Microsoft starts seeing other CPU partners? Or, at least to have options that they can negotiate with?
Perhaps Intel has been convinced that the market is right for Apple to regain some marketshare. If those number are in, Intel may be seeing a gap with which they can get out from under the thumb of Microsoft.
I will concede that your other point is interesting--that it's hard to imagine that Intel could make better PPCs than IBM; and Intel has had troubles of their own in moving to a 90nm process, IIRC. But if I had to guess, I'd guess that Intel is more likely to make PPCs than Apple is to move to x86.
I guess we'll know tomorrow.
As a Mac evangelist, let me say: I hope so. If consoles get priority treatment, and PCs are relegated to getting late leftovers, it'll be one less reason to purchase a PC over a Mac--both will be equally neglected.
That said, until consoles get a better controller, I don't see how they can replace the flexibility of the keyboard+mouse. Maybe you bundle a Bluetooth (or USB with long cable) keyboard with built-n trackball? Then your console can be a lightweight PC too, as so many people think is the Xbox strategy? Perhaps.
But until it comes bundled, then game developers won't develop games for it; and I still can't see how you can point weapons in FPS with any accuracy or speed, or discontiguous select with a console controller.
Think you could edit Unreal maps with just an analog stick? If that's being done now, I would sure like to see a demonstration.
Apple's Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" includes, for free, the screen reader technology they call "VoiceOver".
It is purported to remove the need to see the screen; I haven't used it myself, much, because I'm not blind. The Mac also includes some voice control, which every one on a Mac tries for a week and then quits using, mostly because using the mouse is faster and who likes to hear themselves talk all the time? I don't know how well the voice control stands up for day to day use.
I think it's worth emphasizing that both products are free and included with 10.4. I understand that screen reader technology is usually pretty expensive; since it's now bundled with OS X I wonder if that makes the Mac more cost-effective for your situation vs. PCs with an additional software package required.
You could get BlueTooth or USB headphones and microphones that would improve the performance of both products. And don't forget that you could use the mini with your current keyboards and monitors. There's also the Mac's "ease of use" and minimized need to teach users about internet security, and it seems like it might be a good solution for you.
Is this some new kind new kind of troll
It's a new kind of troll. Apparently, someone wrote a bot that will scrub the highest rated comments from one story, and post them into another randomly chosen story.
To what end, the mind boggles. But there you go.
I suppose you could argue that you have the ownership of the original post, and so it can't be reposted without your permission; but that would be much harder to enforce with posts that are originally made by an AC, and it would be hard to stop even if you could demonstrate that you originally wrote the original content.
What people do with too much time on their hands is pretty amazing, really. It's all I can to read slashdot, let alone write bots to vandalize it.
I recently purchased an EDGE compatible phone, and have been connecting to Cingular's "all you can eat" data plan for $25/month. I've been less than impressed.
While I was able to (finally) get the phone to allow my laptop to connect, after calling customer service and having them flip a switch that was missed during the original configuration, I get about 20-40Kbs, based on some of the free "measure your connection speed" tools on the internet. While I never intended to play games via this method, I was still hoping for better than dial up. I thought EDGE would give me that.
Details of my situation, any of which could be a contributing factor: I am connecting via BlueTooth from a PowerBook, running OS X 10.4.1 using Ross Barkman's 3G scripts. I am using a Moto v551, which for sure is EDGE compatible; and I have been testing the speed of the connection from Gaithersburg MD, which is a scant 30 minutes N of Washington DC. While I'm not actually in the city itself, I would bet that if my speed with Cingular isn't so good here, it's not going to be any better in any of the corn states either.
I hope to get into the city to see if it just doesn't extend this far out; could be an issue with the modem scripts too, I suppose, or maybe BT connections are limited. Or something.
Bottomline is that I found this an incredibly frustrating experience, purchasing my first phone: all of these vendors are long on promise and short on delivery, with complicated, expensive plans, limited explanation of what they'll actually deliver for the price, and you have to sign up for 2 years just to find all that out. I'm really much more interested in having the feature work than just listed in the brochure, believe it or not. And based on this experience I sure as hell am not inclined to to purchase any of the other services that they want to cram down my throat.
- but there are some things on which they simply will not budge
I imagine that they think so. It appears that there are things on which the EU will not budge, either. I wonder who wins that battle?
Incidentally, Microsoft is perfectly capable of pulling its business completely out of EU nations.. . Note that such a move would be disastrous for consumers there ..., but Microsoft would continue as ever.
It would hurt the EU, too. Except, as noted above the EU could respond by voiding MSFT patents; then it's free software day until the transition is complete. I imagine that there would be diplomatic fallout, also, with the WTO; and it's likely that the Bush Admin would go to bat for them, which can only encourage Microsoft to call the EU's bluff.
However, I think you or your friend fail to realize what losing another market the size of the EU would do to the prized "network effect"; Microsoft would be out of the world's two biggest economies, China and the EU. The use of Microsoft in the US would be akin to our use of the standard english measuring unit. And, Microsoft would have fewer markets to grow in--what's left? Africa, and South America? Not only would they lose the immediate market, but they would lose the position of running the world, too. Then, to communicate with colleagues in the EU or Asia, I would have to use Open Formats--leading to losses even here.
I would like nothing better than for MSFT to pull this move. The fallout would be tremendously interesting to watch. In the long run it would only validate the value of OSS for maintaining sovereignty: countries that don't adopt MSFT in the first place wouldn't be subject to that kind of extortion, and the EU would be a reminder to everyone forever.
Nothing forces me to install iTunes on my Powerbook; I can omit it from the installation.
A more apt comparison would be to attempt to remove QuickTime from OS X. You can't. Although you can remove the player interface, QT APIs are an important part of OS X.
I suspect that if you remove everything that is a QT API in OS X your finder won't draw. Or, at least, your video iChat won't display video. Although iChat's and QuickTime's relationship is superficially tangential.
At least that's my understanding. I would be interested to be told otherwise by someone who actually knows.
same here. I'll buy it if you want to sell me it, but I won't beg.
Christ when will they get it. Newsflash: the intarweb makes the entire world one big market, and we laugh at the attempts to use 20th century notions of regionalism on us.
How about you try to change your models to accomodate piracy, instead of just whinge about it? 'Cause it has been amply demonstrated by now that there is no technical or legislative fix. The only way to manage piracy is by changing the demand structure, which, believe it or not, means giving consumers what we want when we want it.
It's up to you to charge us for it; failing that, we'll steal it. And until you can patent 1s and 0s, there's not a lot you can do about it. Simple, really.
So they ended up with two episodes full of exposition.
And we're likely to get a whole 'nother run through for the first 20 minutes of the movie. Joss must be getting tired of telling the same story, paraphrased.
You have to get over High School. I know, I know, it took me a long time, and not a few recreational drugs, for me to as well. But, as they say, the best revenge is to live well.
Really, it was only 4 years. At this point in my life, I've owned socks for longer than that.
the universe is not, in fact, deterministic and at a quantum level things do behave probablistically.
If that's in fact true, I'm afraid it blows my mind. I guess I have good company.
That an isotope will not decay one moment, but will the next, for truly no reason at all...if there is no reason that precipitates the decay, then why does it at all?
Well. I guess it'd take more math than I know to have it proved to me, but I can see why it made Einstein uneasy. It's almost like ascribing a will to quantum components.
Philosophical question: what's meant by truly random? Everything can be predicted if you know the variables that go into it's creation; you could predict the roll of a die, for instance, if you could precisely measure it's velocity when hitting the table and the amount of friction that results.
So while the OP wants to draw a distinction between "pseudo-random" and "truly random", at what point does a generator change from one to the other?
That said, I would suppose that a "truly random" generator would involve, for instance, isotope degeneration--not that there is no reason that an isotope decays or not, but it is beyond our (current) understanding of quantum physics to predict it. But surely it must still be the effect of some cause, even if the cause is as yet imperceptible...
You forgot the last bit:
Aesop continued: "And if you continue to pursue this democratic foolishness, you will suffer a continuous stream of tyrants, each who will have 4 or 8 years to empower and enrich themselves, before leaving office to another who will do the same in turn.
"If you allow only one tyrant with a lifetime appointment, you will only need to suffer the depredations of a single man and his administration; whereas, if you remove that man and his staff from office every 4 years, you will find yourselves enriching a litany of men without end."
Hear that, that static? That is the sound of Clear Channel execs loosing steam from their ears. One thing that the sat. radio folks don't have is market penetration with their devices. You can go out of your way to get one in your car; sometimes they come standard. But really, I don't know anyone with sat. radio.
On the other hand, I know about 20 people who have iPods. And it looks like that trend is going to continue. Although you'll probably have to upgrade your iPod to make this work--or maybe get a hardware dongle--I don't think that would be a serious barrier over time.
Clear Channel just got leapfrogged, mostly because they have a sanitized and unoriginal lineup, with ads. In 15 years the folks that only have access to FM radio may be the same folks who don't have cell phones. Too bad for CC. They bought a condo on a swamp, and mistook sanitizing for competitiveness.
Sure. But wait until they build a permanent moon base. Maybe it has nukes, maybe it doesn't. Then you'll see some excitement.
but the fact is that we don't have the balls to do anything like this anymore
The sad thing is, we don't either. This project was launched thirty years ago, is slated to be killed to save a paltry few million because NASA's budget has been reduced to a shadow of it's former self, and we don't have any other missions slated that will have the scope of this.
Unless you count the fantasy of a Mars Mission.
Here's to hoping the Chinese put a sputnik in space. Then it'll be back on, baby. Until then, most Americans don't see the point when there's terrorists still alive.
I was fascinated to learn that Microsoft used actual Apple G5s to represent what the Xbox 360 will be capable of when it's actually working. It's one thing to ship G5s to your developers for use as compile targets for your Xbox IDE; I think it's another to use the box as the working machine for a demo presentation at E3, of all places. For G5s to be used in that venue, they have to be both fast and stable platforms for your code.
In short, that makes it I think more likely that we'll get Xbox games on the G5 if Microsoft has any desire to ship that. Still an admittedly slim chance, but it's warming to know that these actually run game code full speed.
I work for a department of the NIH--the National Institute of Health. I have been closely associated with some large computer purchases, and I can tell you that, over a certain dollar amount, we must also source from US manufacturing plants.
The details of how this works aren't 100% clear to me--but I believe that major manufacturers have a manufacturing plant for just this purpose, although I don't know if they serve any other gov't institutes besides the NIH.
I can tell you that we can purchase Dell, Apple, and HP following the US sourcing rules. While it does indeed complicate the bidding process, it's not impossible. I would imagine that the DHS would tap the same resources; in fact, their use of these resources might drive down the prices for all gov't buyers who are currently constrained by this rule. The more the merrier.
The fact that you can't purchase "Made in the USA" computer goods at Best Buy really has no relation to the purchasing power of the US gov't.
It's also absurd to think that an American company wouldn't take such an action if asked/ordered to by the government--ANY company in ANY country would do so if their respective governments came calling.
My pet theory is that Microsoft was offered a deal that they couldn't refuse from the US Gov't: water down the DOJ anti-trust proceedings if you agree to backdoor Windows, and give the NSA the key. The neo-cons in government have long viewed China as the ascendent threat; Ashcroft was a Neo-Con of the first order; Ashcroft failed to punish Microsoft with the full penalty of law.
Is it too hard to think that Ashcroft, operating at the direction of the White House, made such a deal? I don't think that the China CIO is willing to take that chance. I know I wouldn't, even if the scenario is merely improbable.
How in the hell is this box supposed to sell for less than $500, even after Microsoft's subsidy? I mean, holy crap. I think either of these things is going on:
- Those aren't your father's IBM 970s. How much they bear in relation to the 64bit PPCs shipping in Macs I think remains to be seen.
- Microsoft is going to untold lengths to subsidize these boxes, in the expectation that they'll make it up with Live subscriptions and game licensing. Like cellphone providers.
- Microsoft could have seriously missed the market. I'm sure they've done extensive market research; they're known for that. Even so, I have hard time believing that anyone is going to pay >$500 for a console. Maybe they know that the the Sony PS3 is going to be $500 too, so they feel safe in developing this kinda thing? Anyways, if it it's more than $150 more than the PS3, I think we can kiss it goodbye, no matter how much it rules.
If this ships with three real CPUs that are mostly similar to the ones that Apple uses, for less than $500, lots of Apple fanbois, myself included, are going to wonder wtf is up with that, and why Apple can't do the same. I think there is still a lot that remains to be seen.Hm, maybe that's the rumored "Asteroid" product? Maybe it does HD decoding, as well as breakout?
(Addendum: I see now that at least a couple of commenters have figured this out already. Good for them. You all suck for stealing my surprise. One of them even nailed the big challenge, still to date unsolved, right on the head. I wonder if you guys will know it when you see it?)
I would decrypt that to mean that you're looking at how to a) purchase movies/TV shows from an "iTunes Video Store" or it's like; b) download the product to your computer; c) stream from your computer to an Airport Extreme connected to your TV via a TV-friendly out, like S-video, DVI, or analog. I have to admit, that would be pretty sweet, depending on price and download speed. Hope you work something out with NetFlix/Movie provider.
What's the big issue? I can guess a few things: DRM agreement among the video producers, but that's a political issue more than anything; download speeds over even broadband speeds; speed of transferring from the computer to the TV via APE--but if you could get it from the internet in a reasonable size/timeframe, I would think it would be trivial getting it to the TV via the APE. Hm...
btw, friend, I hope you have a nice legal plan. I would suggest that you're getting pretty close to "stealing Jobsian thunder" and well, we know how that goes.
Right. And if Netscape taught us one thing--and Adobe is going to learn again with "Mosaic"--if you build your house on rented land, where will you move that house when the lease on the land expires?
Microsoft can break compatibility with Google's stuff any time it wants--"Longhorn not done 'till Google won't run." Google should be very careful of this, and design their strategy such that they don't need Windows APIs--either by releasing their own browser, to which they can control the interface, or supporting an ecology of multiple OSes.
I am really interested to see how Microsoft's Mosaic format goes over at Adobe--the world's biggest software manufacturer is taking on the second largest; and although Adobe has had a strained relationship with alternative OSes lately (read Apple), this might serve as their wakeup call that Windows may be "rented land."
OTOH, could be MSFT is just bluffing--that Mosaic is never intended to go into production. Could be that it's a dealmaker: we'll drop Mosaic plans if you drop Photoshop for OS X. For instance. Does Adobe buy this, or retaliate with Photoshop on Linux? Interesting times.
I prefer the order of importance to be 3,2,1 and Star Wars seems to fit that type for me quite well.
I hope you hate Serenity. It'll have spaceships, sure, but only because people are more likely to watch a future-period piece than a historical-period piece.
We're LITTLECO. Somebody like Crucial is BIGCO. See?
Sounds to me like Apple should buy it's RAM from Crucial, then. If your negotiated price with RAMCO is still higher than Crucial's retail price, or better, whatever price you could negotiate with Crucial, it sounds like you'd be better off. Really.