Despite what Apple and MS imply, there is no flashing "Click me to integrate everything" button
Funny that you should say that, because apparently in Tiger Server there is:
Home Server Setup -- Anyone Can Do It
Perfect for small offices and home offices, the new Gateway Setup Utility in Tiger Server makes it easy for anyone to set up her own Internet Gateway, Firewall and VPN. Simply connect a network cable from your server to your DSL or cable modem and another cable from your network to your server. When run, the Gateway Setup Utility automatically configures the server as a router, configures DHCP and VPN address ranges, enables DHCP and NAT, configures firewall rules and enables DNS caching. With just a few clicks you can set up complex services that even seasoned administrators find challenging.
NT Migration Tool
Tiger Server makes it a snap to upgrade your aging Windows NT network to a Mac OS X server. The new NT Migration Tool automatically extracts all of your user and group account information from an existing Windows Primary Domain Controller and moves it into Open Directory. Tiger Server can then take over as your Primary Domain Controller for your Windows clients and even host your Windows users' home directories, group folders, roaming profiles and shared printers.
'Course, your point remains and I second it; see my post above. But it struck me as funny that Apple will include something that at least purports to do this...
Should I pursue this question or give up and place the Microsoft Server at the top of the hierarchy?
While interesting, I would suggest that you look at Apple centric boards for resolution of this kind of question. How many Slashdotters know or care? Here's some examples:
I'm sure there's more, but those are the quick few that you could at least get better resources from if they don't directly answer your question. I won't kid you--I don't think it'll be easy. But it would be helpful to start with people that might actually know the answer, than to start with people that probably don't.
You might also consider a Server Support agreement from Apple; they can help with this kind of integration. Sure, it costs; but then you didn't think that we'd do your job for you either, right? And I believe that you could get this kind of support for the cheapest plan: $5995, and even have a few more calls left over for the rest of the year.
Sure, any employee is dispensable. But my point was: why make it easy? Why write the rationale yourself? For example: in my job, I am needed on site, to rewire the LAN, screw things into the racks, unjam the printer. That's stuff that you can't do over the phone--and if they offered me a job that I could telecommute from, I don't think I'd take it.
I have also done my damnedest to build confidence in the value of having my skills onsite--maybe not enough to save my job, but it'd help if my users were polled on the decision before it was made. And some of my users are indeed important enough that they would be able to influence that decision.
Not only would I not suggest that I not receive as much of a pay increase, I would fight telecommuting with every argument I could muster. 'Cause, after all, if they are comfortable with you working 30 miles away and only contacting you by phone/email/internet presence, why not do the same thing with someone 4000 miles away? And, oh yeah, they'd save a lot of money too.
I think it's clear that America has become a service economy--which means you need to provide a service, not a good, to your employers. That means as much face time as you can manage, because, frankly, the good you produce can be done cheaper elsewhere. You need to keep your employer aware of how indispensable and irreplaceable you are, and that's easier to do in person than over the phone.
You know you've been playing too much World of Warcraft when you look at the headline and start thinking up ways to min/max the gnome character, and how to spend the money from the bounty for doing so...
Here's the issue as I see it: I work with a bunch of people, and we all have defined jurisdictions. There's things that I can do that others can't, and vice versa.
So when I call up someone, and ask for a favor, they're only too happy to grant it; maybe somewhere down the line they'll be in a bind, and need a favor from me to get their own work done, so they want to have that marker that they can use with me. There might be a "right" way to do things, but that can take 10x as long as doing a work around. And if the person I ask for a favor insists on making my job 10x harder, then, whenever they need a favor from me, I'm likely to make their job 10x harder out of spite. And who wants their job to be 10x harder? So favors and back-scratching gets done.
The problem then evolves to trying to do favors for all the service people that we come across, so they don't throw up barriers to our own work, even if we don't personally know them. When was the last time you checked a UPS driver's badge, and then verified the accuracy of their badge ID number? But how hard to you think it is to get a brown suit and a laser-printed badge? You could check the validity of that stuff, sure, and make him wait an hour for the confirmation phone call. But do you think your packages will come as timely next time?
Seriously, I wish Mamet would give social engineering a play treatment. I think it has good material, and is in line with his other work wrt to con men.
Personally, I find the news posts more interesting than the comic itself--mostly because I think the writing style is so conceptually graphic. I'm not even much of a gamer, but they keep on coming up with vibrant and different imagery to describe pleasure/displeasure.
Doesn't TiVo have a huge amount of debt? While their product may be interesting, I am under the belief that if Apple were to purchase Tivo, it would mean also having to acquire that debt--whereas, if anything, if Apple just purchased the rights to the TiVo software (to run on a mini, etc) they don't have to take on that debt too.
What does Apple gain from a TiVo purchase vs a license to their tech? If Tivo were making money, there'd be that--but they aren't and their prospects are dim.
I can see Apple licensing the tech, releasing it for free (for Macs) or as part of their iLife tools--and then charging a sub to hit Apple servers for schedule download. And I think they could do really interesting things with DRM content with OS X as a platform. I guess we'll see.
You might consider that if the product isn't to your liking, to find another competing product to consume. Not revolutionary--but broadcast TV is already feeling some pressure, due to loss of watchers to game consoles. I might suggest that if you don't care for the options, and don't want to be restricted by what they try to shovel down your throat, to purchase a PS 3 or Xbox 2 instead.
This is certainly true in consumer electronics and computers. Not so much so with items like cars.
I think the difference is that cars are used in the public space, so their ostentatious display is a signal that you are wealthy, that you are powerful, and that you deserve respect.
However lame that is, the reasons are primal; and unfortunately, having a Tivo doesn't really do the same thing, as it's kept hidden in the TV rack.
I don't believe that's correct. I think it's because you can pick it and see the difference in 5 mins or less at an Apple Store, or anywhere else that they're on display. The display requirements for the TiVo, OTOH, are too much--so they sit in a box with a brochure. Consumers Don't Read.
hey'll get bought by someone. I'd like it to be Apple, but I'm skeptical.
Nope. Too much debt--if you buy the company, I'm pretty sure that means having to purchase the debt too. Much more likely someone buys the patents and does their own thing with it; or buys the subscriber list.
Maybe that'd be Apple, but they'd have to figure out how to avoid the same fate; maybe because they could showcase the product int their stores whereas Best Buy doesn't exactly have TiVo units hooked up to TVs as demos; or maybe Apple does it to move mini Macs as Home Media centers, and take a loss on the actual interface (ala the reverse razor-blades strategy that they've been using with the iTunes Music Store and iPods)
But Tivo as we know it wouldn't be likely to continue.
We'll see how this plays out. Either the technical superiority of TiVo will win out or the lower-cost, lower-quality options that the cable companies can offer will win out.
As an Apple watcher for 20 years, I would say this: pack up your desk. Cheaper almost always wins in the marketplace; US consumers are trained to evaluate on price first, features second. The feature has to be really visible--visible in the Best Buy or WalMart floor space where the consumer makes their purchasing decision--for it to trump price. And your features aren't; you only see the value after use. That means either taking the plunge because you didn't know alternatives exist, or were pointed to it by a friend. Compared to the free advertising ComCast has on their own channels, good luck with that.
While your product is stellar, and I'm a fanatic user myself, I think it takes too long for folks to appreciate the advantages of the TiVo. And, "too long", in this case, means >10 minutes. How do you market the advantages, without saying simply "easier to use"?
I'm really hoping that the NetFlix deal can save your asses. I'm guessing it won't; it's too far away before release, it'll take too long to download stuff, and/or not enough stuff will be available. TivoToGo, while maybe nice (I dunno, I'm a Mac user), doesn't seem to be the killer feature, either: too long to transfer.
I might suggest that you have some chance if you declare war on ComCast, since they didn't play ball with the distribution deal: allow for unrestricted copying/transfer/ad skip/archiving without ads, and only stop it if they come back to the table. That's pretty chancy, but it might the the only shot y'all have.
Good luck--really. But if it all falls apart, please consider releasing enough info to keep the current boxes useful.
Really, I gotta wonder, what the hell are you running that requires that many pages to be in memory at the same time.
How about the entire genomic sequences of >4 organisms? That way you can compare them to each other simultaneously, and learn which sequences are similar and which are different.
Here's another application, off the top of my head: simulate the gravitational mechanics of any large system of objects. Think you want to swap that kind of thing to disk?
I submit that there are many scientific applications of this much RAM; and you're not likely to recognize or understand the need unless you're in the field yourself. A LOT of bleeding edge computing work is being driven by scientific researchers who demand, really, a heavy amount of resources to do their simulations on--and computing structures that are designed for database work/gaming is just not comparable.
Personally, we use HP quad Opterons, with 64GB of RAM each (running Linux, btw); and while you could build that kind of thing yourself, the reliability issues at that scale just aren't worth it.
A good interface is one that works as you expect it to: it defaults to things that you wish it defaulted to; it suggests you're making an error only when you're actually making one; and it keeps the easy things simple while also scaling gracefully for more complexity.
Unfortunately, the first line is key: it must work as expected. What you expect of it as a developer is different than what you users will expect of it; and even different users will expect different behavior depending on their own computing background, and how they relate computer use in general to the physical world. Don't laugh: everyone, even experienced users, think of their data as discrete files with words, not as 1s and 0s that are scattered throughout a few platters of HD. That is, we all operate the computer depending on some abstraction from it's electrical reality.
Your goal, then, would be to survey your users--not hypothetical ones, but real users that this app will be designed for--to learn how most of them expect certain behaviors to behave. IE: when you close the window, does the quit the application? does tab or return change fields?
I offer that doing this correctly is hard: most users don't think about their computer use any more than they think about the act of typing. But you have an advantage in that you'll be developing an application for a closed market, so you can identify the expectations of the users, rather than trying to anticipate the expectations of the world wide market of anonymous consumers.
You missed a reason: because of regional differences, episodes have aired overseas and yet I have to wait a week to get my fix. I'm talking to you, BattleStar Galactica.
This is the first show that I am sore tempted to download from the UK market, simply because I hate waiting a week to see how the teaser plays out. Really, the only fact stopping me is that I want the show to continue, and for that to happen I know that it needs (legitimate) viewers. But I'm pretty close to not caring; and oh yeah, I could watch it commercial free.
Actually, that's a lie. There's another show: MI-5, also in the UK. While I believe it shows there the same time, they have to cut 20 minutes out of the 60 minute show to make room for American commercials. That means 20 mins less of character development, and this particular show depends on that.
So basically, another reason people download shows is to thwart the counter-productive and artificial limitations the studios put on regional broadcasts. Newsflash: there are no regions on the Internet. The artificial market of scarcity and prohibition will only drive more folks, like me, away from your commercials. The sooner you learn that, the sooner you can figure a way to continue making money off me.
Nobody's going to overthrow any government using the weapons that are legal for U.S. citizens to own.
You might consider the Russian expulsion from Afghanistan.
While the military certainly outclasses anything a citizen's militia can muster, you forget that if the citizens revolt they have superior numbers, and can persistently harangue domestic industry and infrastructure.
Governments always maintain more sophisticated weaponry and indeed military skills than their citizens; but nevertheless there have been successful uprisings in the not-too distant past.
Those are interesting observations. I suspect that both arise from our (rather recent) history of developing a continent; as such, we learned to be self-reliant, to distrust central authority, and to make use of available resources.
(a) Cell was co-designed by IBM which has an interest in selling workstations etc with that chip, Sony didn't it's not their business
There's a lot of vaio developers that will be unhappy to hear that.
Sure, IBM and Sony both like the Cell CPU a lot. However, IBM likes the PPC chip that Apple uses, and yet it still hasn't a) taken over the world, or even b) been put into use by IBM themselves. Why doesn't IBM use Apple workstations across the enterprise? After all, they make the CPU, and for awhile even made the hard drives. Answer: cause it doesn't run the apps they need, and they don't control enough apps themselves to make the switch. The Cell will suffer the same fate outside of it's dedicated use in the PS3.
Would you buy a new Cell workstation for anything besides PS3 development? What would you run on it if you did? Yellow Dog Linux, maybe? If you're enamored of the PPC, are you more likely to develop for the G5, already with a marketshare, or for the non-existant marketshare of the Cell? Maybe--and this is a big maybe--if you needed a CPU that needed high visualization components. But then I guess you'd go with SGI.
Really, in the mature PC economy of today, I don't see how any new CPU architecture can get a foothold; it's a chicken and egg thing with developers and consumers to support the developers. Even Apple, with a legion of crazy fans (of whom I am one) can just barely sustain itself, not insignificantly due to inertia. If Apple has trouble getting developers to code for their CPU, I just don't see who would develop for a VAIO (or ThinkPad) Cell workstation or laptop, until 1 Million of such units are sold; but who buys them until the developers are there? Gamers, as a PS3--and after Sony sells 100 MIllion, releases a browser and office suite?
Satellite radio has limited appeal. I don't know many people that are excited about the idea of radio you have to pay for, commercials or not. Digital Radio (Digital FM & AM) will offer CD quality broadcasts in the near future effectively killing the satellite Radio market.
Now I'm just dependant on friends to introduce me to new music. I think they have better taste then the DJ's and what the big labels want to shove down my though any way.
The point of satellite radio is not it's quality. At least, that's what I've been led to believe. The point of sat radio is that the spectrum is so broad that they can carry many more different channels than are commercially viable in the AM/FM market. One of the biggest pushes of sat radio is the variety of choices now available; you only have to listen to Clear Channel crap if you want to, whereas AM/FM it's harder to find a station that's not CC.
That said, I don't have sat. radio either. But if I were more interested in music I would; it's becoming the refuge of "not mainstream" music genres.
Hm, that's interesting...I've had the same thing happen to me, with about the same frequency--but I'd get a blue screen, instead of a black. It is pretty annoying; hopefully it's fixed.
Slashdot Mirror
Despite what Apple and MS imply, there is no flashing "Click me to integrate everything" button
Funny that you should say that, because apparently in Tiger Server there is:
Home Server Setup -- Anyone Can Do It
Perfect for small offices and home offices, the new Gateway Setup Utility in Tiger Server makes it easy for anyone to set up her own Internet Gateway, Firewall and VPN. Simply connect a network cable from your server to your DSL or cable modem and another cable from your network to your server. When run, the Gateway Setup Utility automatically configures the server as a router, configures DHCP and VPN address ranges, enables DHCP and NAT, configures firewall rules and enables DNS caching. With just a few clicks you can set up complex services that even seasoned administrators find challenging.
NT Migration Tool
Tiger Server makes it a snap to upgrade your aging Windows NT network to a Mac OS X server. The new NT Migration Tool automatically extracts all of your user and group account information from an existing Windows Primary Domain Controller and moves it into Open Directory. Tiger Server can then take over as your Primary Domain Controller for your Windows clients and even host your Windows users' home directories, group folders, roaming profiles and shared printers.
'Course, your point remains and I second it; see my post above. But it struck me as funny that Apple will include something that at least purports to do this...
Should I pursue this question or give up and place the Microsoft Server at the top of the hierarchy?
While interesting, I would suggest that you look at Apple centric boards for resolution of this kind of question. How many Slashdotters know or care? Here's some examples:
- AFP 548
- OS X Enterprise
- Apple's Server mailing list,this question is right up that alley.
- X server boards on Apple's website
- Apple's PDF on Open Directory Administration.
I'm sure there's more, but those are the quick few that you could at least get better resources from if they don't directly answer your question. I won't kid you--I don't think it'll be easy. But it would be helpful to start with people that might actually know the answer, than to start with people that probably don't.You might also consider a Server Support agreement from Apple; they can help with this kind of integration. Sure, it costs; but then you didn't think that we'd do your job for you either, right? And I believe that you could get this kind of support for the cheapest plan: $5995, and even have a few more calls left over for the rest of the year.
Sure, any employee is dispensable. But my point was: why make it easy? Why write the rationale yourself? For example: in my job, I am needed on site, to rewire the LAN, screw things into the racks, unjam the printer. That's stuff that you can't do over the phone--and if they offered me a job that I could telecommute from, I don't think I'd take it.
I have also done my damnedest to build confidence in the value of having my skills onsite--maybe not enough to save my job, but it'd help if my users were polled on the decision before it was made. And some of my users are indeed important enough that they would be able to influence that decision.
Not only would I not suggest that I not receive as much of a pay increase, I would fight telecommuting with every argument I could muster. 'Cause, after all, if they are comfortable with you working 30 miles away and only contacting you by phone/email/internet presence, why not do the same thing with someone 4000 miles away? And, oh yeah, they'd save a lot of money too.
I think it's clear that America has become a service economy--which means you need to provide a service, not a good, to your employers. That means as much face time as you can manage, because, frankly, the good you produce can be done cheaper elsewhere. You need to keep your employer aware of how indispensable and irreplaceable you are, and that's easier to do in person than over the phone.
You know you've been playing too much World of Warcraft when you look at the headline and start thinking up ways to min/max the gnome character, and how to spend the money from the bounty for doing so...
Here's the issue as I see it: I work with a bunch of people, and we all have defined jurisdictions. There's things that I can do that others can't, and vice versa.
So when I call up someone, and ask for a favor, they're only too happy to grant it; maybe somewhere down the line they'll be in a bind, and need a favor from me to get their own work done, so they want to have that marker that they can use with me. There might be a "right" way to do things, but that can take 10x as long as doing a work around. And if the person I ask for a favor insists on making my job 10x harder, then, whenever they need a favor from me, I'm likely to make their job 10x harder out of spite. And who wants their job to be 10x harder? So favors and back-scratching gets done.
The problem then evolves to trying to do favors for all the service people that we come across, so they don't throw up barriers to our own work, even if we don't personally know them. When was the last time you checked a UPS driver's badge, and then verified the accuracy of their badge ID number? But how hard to you think it is to get a brown suit and a laser-printed badge? You could check the validity of that stuff, sure, and make him wait an hour for the confirmation phone call. But do you think your packages will come as timely next time?
Seriously, I wish Mamet would give social engineering a play treatment. I think it has good material, and is in line with his other work wrt to con men.
Personally, I find the news posts more interesting than the comic itself--mostly because I think the writing style is so conceptually graphic. I'm not even much of a gamer, but they keep on coming up with vibrant and different imagery to describe pleasure/displeasure.
Doesn't TiVo have a huge amount of debt? While their product may be interesting, I am under the belief that if Apple were to purchase Tivo, it would mean also having to acquire that debt--whereas, if anything, if Apple just purchased the rights to the TiVo software (to run on a mini, etc) they don't have to take on that debt too.
What does Apple gain from a TiVo purchase vs a license to their tech? If Tivo were making money, there'd be that--but they aren't and their prospects are dim.
I can see Apple licensing the tech, releasing it for free (for Macs) or as part of their iLife tools--and then charging a sub to hit Apple servers for schedule download. And I think they could do really interesting things with DRM content with OS X as a platform. I guess we'll see.
You might consider that if the product isn't to your liking, to find another competing product to consume. Not revolutionary--but broadcast TV is already feeling some pressure, due to loss of watchers to game consoles. I might suggest that if you don't care for the options, and don't want to be restricted by what they try to shovel down your throat, to purchase a PS 3 or Xbox 2 instead.
They might eventually get the message.
This is certainly true in consumer electronics and computers. Not so much so with items like cars.
I think the difference is that cars are used in the public space, so their ostentatious display is a signal that you are wealthy, that you are powerful, and that you deserve respect.
However lame that is, the reasons are primal; and unfortunately, having a Tivo doesn't really do the same thing, as it's kept hidden in the TV rack.
he iPod is a hit,why? Advertising!
I don't believe that's correct. I think it's because you can pick it and see the difference in 5 mins or less at an Apple Store, or anywhere else that they're on display. The display requirements for the TiVo, OTOH, are too much--so they sit in a box with a brochure. Consumers Don't Read.
hey'll get bought by someone. I'd like it to be Apple, but I'm skeptical.
Nope. Too much debt--if you buy the company, I'm pretty sure that means having to purchase the debt too. Much more likely someone buys the patents and does their own thing with it; or buys the subscriber list.
Maybe that'd be Apple, but they'd have to figure out how to avoid the same fate; maybe because they could showcase the product int their stores whereas Best Buy doesn't exactly have TiVo units hooked up to TVs as demos; or maybe Apple does it to move mini Macs as Home Media centers, and take a loss on the actual interface (ala the reverse razor-blades strategy that they've been using with the iTunes Music Store and iPods)
But Tivo as we know it wouldn't be likely to continue.
We'll see how this plays out. Either the technical superiority of TiVo will win out or the lower-cost, lower-quality options that the cable companies can offer will win out.
As an Apple watcher for 20 years, I would say this: pack up your desk. Cheaper almost always wins in the marketplace; US consumers are trained to evaluate on price first, features second. The feature has to be really visible--visible in the Best Buy or WalMart floor space where the consumer makes their purchasing decision--for it to trump price. And your features aren't; you only see the value after use. That means either taking the plunge because you didn't know alternatives exist, or were pointed to it by a friend. Compared to the free advertising ComCast has on their own channels, good luck with that.
While your product is stellar, and I'm a fanatic user myself, I think it takes too long for folks to appreciate the advantages of the TiVo. And, "too long", in this case, means >10 minutes. How do you market the advantages, without saying simply "easier to use"?
I'm really hoping that the NetFlix deal can save your asses. I'm guessing it won't; it's too far away before release, it'll take too long to download stuff, and/or not enough stuff will be available. TivoToGo, while maybe nice (I dunno, I'm a Mac user), doesn't seem to be the killer feature, either: too long to transfer.
I might suggest that you have some chance if you declare war on ComCast, since they didn't play ball with the distribution deal: allow for unrestricted copying/transfer/ad skip/archiving without ads, and only stop it if they come back to the table. That's pretty chancy, but it might the the only shot y'all have.
Good luck--really. But if it all falls apart, please consider releasing enough info to keep the current boxes useful.
Really, I gotta wonder, what the hell are you running that requires that many pages to be in memory at the same time.
How about the entire genomic sequences of >4 organisms? That way you can compare them to each other simultaneously, and learn which sequences are similar and which are different.
Here's another application, off the top of my head: simulate the gravitational mechanics of any large system of objects. Think you want to swap that kind of thing to disk?
I submit that there are many scientific applications of this much RAM; and you're not likely to recognize or understand the need unless you're in the field yourself. A LOT of bleeding edge computing work is being driven by scientific researchers who demand, really, a heavy amount of resources to do their simulations on--and computing structures that are designed for database work/gaming is just not comparable.
Personally, we use HP quad Opterons, with 64GB of RAM each (running Linux, btw); and while you could build that kind of thing yourself, the reliability issues at that scale just aren't worth it.
We Neo-Cons are just watching (and learning from) the incredible effectiveness of the EU and UN in dealing with these (and other) matters.
We liberals are just watching (and learning from) the incredible effectiveness of the coalition forces in dealing with Iraq.
How many more 1/4 trillion $ wars do you think we can fight before the world (China, the EU) stops lending us money?
A good interface is one that works as you expect it to: it defaults to things that you wish it defaulted to; it suggests you're making an error only when you're actually making one; and it keeps the easy things simple while also scaling gracefully for more complexity.
Unfortunately, the first line is key: it must work as expected. What you expect of it as a developer is different than what you users will expect of it; and even different users will expect different behavior depending on their own computing background, and how they relate computer use in general to the physical world. Don't laugh: everyone, even experienced users, think of their data as discrete files with words, not as 1s and 0s that are scattered throughout a few platters of HD. That is, we all operate the computer depending on some abstraction from it's electrical reality.
Your goal, then, would be to survey your users--not hypothetical ones, but real users that this app will be designed for--to learn how most of them expect certain behaviors to behave. IE: when you close the window, does the quit the application? does tab or return change fields?
I offer that doing this correctly is hard: most users don't think about their computer use any more than they think about the act of typing. But you have an advantage in that you'll be developing an application for a closed market, so you can identify the expectations of the users, rather than trying to anticipate the expectations of the world wide market of anonymous consumers.
You missed a reason: because of regional differences, episodes have aired overseas and yet I have to wait a week to get my fix. I'm talking to you, BattleStar Galactica.
This is the first show that I am sore tempted to download from the UK market, simply because I hate waiting a week to see how the teaser plays out. Really, the only fact stopping me is that I want the show to continue, and for that to happen I know that it needs (legitimate) viewers. But I'm pretty close to not caring; and oh yeah, I could watch it commercial free.
Actually, that's a lie. There's another show: MI-5, also in the UK. While I believe it shows there the same time, they have to cut 20 minutes out of the 60 minute show to make room for American commercials. That means 20 mins less of character development, and this particular show depends on that.
So basically, another reason people download shows is to thwart the counter-productive and artificial limitations the studios put on regional broadcasts. Newsflash: there are no regions on the Internet. The artificial market of scarcity and prohibition will only drive more folks, like me, away from your commercials. The sooner you learn that, the sooner you can figure a way to continue making money off me.
Closed hardware from Broadcom. If Broadcom would let Apple open it, it stand to reason that they would.
Nice try, though.
It is a novel but based on solid science.
How do you know? Because he says so? Because he has established his scientific credibility with other novels, like Jurassic Park?
Nobody's going to overthrow any government using the weapons that are legal for U.S. citizens to own.
You might consider the Russian expulsion from Afghanistan.
While the military certainly outclasses anything a citizen's militia can muster, you forget that if the citizens revolt they have superior numbers, and can persistently harangue domestic industry and infrastructure.
Governments always maintain more sophisticated weaponry and indeed military skills than their citizens; but nevertheless there have been successful uprisings in the not-too distant past.
Those are interesting observations. I suspect that both arise from our (rather recent) history of developing a continent; as such, we learned to be self-reliant, to distrust central authority, and to make use of available resources.
(a) Cell was co-designed by IBM which has an interest in selling workstations etc with that chip, Sony didn't it's not their business
There's a lot of vaio developers that will be unhappy to hear that.
Sure, IBM and Sony both like the Cell CPU a lot. However, IBM likes the PPC chip that Apple uses, and yet it still hasn't a) taken over the world, or even b) been put into use by IBM themselves. Why doesn't IBM use Apple workstations across the enterprise? After all, they make the CPU, and for awhile even made the hard drives. Answer: cause it doesn't run the apps they need, and they don't control enough apps themselves to make the switch. The Cell will suffer the same fate outside of it's dedicated use in the PS3.
Would you buy a new Cell workstation for anything besides PS3 development? What would you run on it if you did? Yellow Dog Linux, maybe? If you're enamored of the PPC, are you more likely to develop for the G5, already with a marketshare, or for the non-existant marketshare of the Cell? Maybe--and this is a big maybe--if you needed a CPU that needed high visualization components. But then I guess you'd go with SGI.
Really, in the mature PC economy of today, I don't see how any new CPU architecture can get a foothold; it's a chicken and egg thing with developers and consumers to support the developers. Even Apple, with a legion of crazy fans (of whom I am one) can just barely sustain itself, not insignificantly due to inertia. If Apple has trouble getting developers to code for their CPU, I just don't see who would develop for a VAIO (or ThinkPad) Cell workstation or laptop, until 1 Million of such units are sold; but who buys them until the developers are there? Gamers, as a PS3--and after Sony sells 100 MIllion, releases a browser and office suite?
Satellite radio has limited appeal. I don't know many people that are excited about the idea of radio you have to pay for, commercials or not. Digital Radio (Digital FM & AM) will offer CD quality broadcasts in the near future effectively killing the satellite Radio market.
Now I'm just dependant on friends to introduce me to new music. I think they have better taste then the DJ's and what the big labels want to shove down my though any way.
The point of satellite radio is not it's quality. At least, that's what I've been led to believe. The point of sat radio is that the spectrum is so broad that they can carry many more different channels than are commercially viable in the AM/FM market. One of the biggest pushes of sat radio is the variety of choices now available; you only have to listen to Clear Channel crap if you want to, whereas AM/FM it's harder to find a station that's not CC.
That said, I don't have sat. radio either. But if I were more interested in music I would; it's becoming the refuge of "not mainstream" music genres.
Hm, that's interesting...I've had the same thing happen to me, with about the same frequency--but I'd get a blue screen, instead of a black. It is pretty annoying; hopefully it's fixed.
I've never seen an Apple-branded camera
Well, now you have. That was 1994, btw.