So he saved about $330/month. It cost him $36K (which really cost $50K, but let's say). So it'll take 109 months to get back the money, or 9 years, not adjusting for inflation and investment opportunity cost. Let's say that brings it up to 12 years. Not including maintenance and repairs. It might even need complete replacement at that point. At 50K, which is the real cost, we're talking more like 16-18 years.
That's still a bit too long an investment for this to be really practical. Prices need to come down to about a four year payoff before I'd be really interested.
On another subject, I'm kind of glad to see someone who actually uses more electricity than I do.:)
I don't know what the practical limit on distance would be, but even if I were to assume that you could traverse several hundred light years, you would still be talking about only a few hundred or thousand stars within your reach, not billions.
Think geometric expansion. Once they reach one star system and establish a colony, then eventually they'll get another set of group(s) that goes off from there. Even if it took 100 million years to fill the galaxy, odds are it would've happened a long time ago -- if there were someone else. As I said, it only takes one. If you had automated self-replicating probes, it would take even less time.
Note this only applies to within galaxies. The distance to another galaxy is too absurd at travel at sublight speeds.
There seems to be a flawed assumption underlying the Fermi Paradox, namely, that intelligent life will invariably make a concerted effort to contact other intelligent life on other planets.
What makes the Fermi Paradox so powerful is it only takes one. It only takes one civilization creating a sublight self-reproducing probe to geometrically fill a galaxy in around 1-10 million years, a blip in the history of the galaxy. Or, using sleep ships, a civilization could fill the galaxy in around the same amount of time.
If life is very common, it seems highly improbable that not one civilization over the last four BILLION years ever decided to expand, either via themselves or by sending probes.
And second, if interstellar travel is practical, do you really want to broadcast the fact that your planet is habitable to all those nice Kzinti out there?
Again, it only takes one. Would those Kzinti be shy about seeding the galaxy with themselves? Or, for that matter, will we be shy about it in a few thousand or 10s of thousands of years, when our technology has advanced enough to do self-replicating probes or sleep ships?
Maybe. So far everything is being done in the interests of space tourism. I'd like to see private industry strive to do something useful.
Useful? If you don't like tourism, private industry already puts satellites in orbit.
But I would say Tourism is by far the most useful thing we could be doing right now. That puts direct downward cost pressure on putting people in space for as little money as possible. The biggest holdup in whatever your definition of "useful" is, is the cost to put payload in space. If that problem gets improved, then other opportunities start to open up. Not to mention, investors are more willing to take risks on your new "useful" usages when there are regular, profitable space trips going on.
A video like that really helps you realize how small and insignificant you really are.
On the contrary, if you accept what the Fermi Paradox implies, it shows how unbelievably special, improbable and unique we are in the entire galaxy, if not the entire Universe. [personally, I suspect intelligent life is so improbable that it takes 2.55e35 cycles of the universe(s) for it to happen, on the average.]
I think if Sagan was miraculously reconstituted today, he would take one look at the shape of our Education System and of the Sciences and Space Program in the States and he would die of shock and sadness.
He only died in 1996. You think things have changed much in 12 years?
As far as Space goes, there are actually some encouraging signs, much more than 12 years ago. The shuttle is finally being put in the shitcan like the unbelievably wasteful pile junk it is, we have several landers on other planets, and private industry (finally) looks like it might produce some interesting private space trips.
Unless your sole metric for success is government largess, space is much healthier than it was 12 years ago.
Thats... typically american. "Don't do anything, it'll fix itself"... *sigh*
Are you joking? Take a look at European history sometime, and see how often Europe sits on its hands when there's business to be done (e.g., Germany, Kosovo, Africa, etc), and then look how often the United States steps in to proactively take care of things.
I suspect Apple is every bit as evil as Microsoft, just less successful.
Suspect? Imagine a world where Apple won the PC wars rather than Microsoft. Imagine what we'd be paying for computers with only a single supplier.
Of course, if Apple *had* won, they probably would've been broken up long ago as a monopoly, but it would've set the computer industry back at least a decade.
Say what you want about Microsoft, but at least they never leveraged their OS dominance by producing a "Microsoft PC" and then "phasing out" all the other hardware manufacturers. If Steve Jobs, through some twist of fate, had been in charge of Microsoft rather than Apple when he returned, that's exactly what would've happened.
And let's not even get into the fact that Apple competes via lawsuit orders of magnitude more often than Microsoft.
Apple is *far and away* more evil than Microsoft ever dreamed of being. They're fortunately just not the dominant player.
[And no, I'm not defending whatever evil Microsoft has done, only that they are not nearly as evil as they could've been.]
No, I said people are buying Macs to run Windows and Windows only. You can argue around it all you want.
I didn't argue around it, in fact, in my original post, I allowed that some do. But the key phrase is "very few." You don't seriously believe that a large number of people buy Apple hardware to solely run Windows, do you? If you believe that, then I'll need to see the extraordinary evidence to go along with the extraordinary claim.
Oddly enough, more and more people buy Macs today not only because they can run Windows, but also because they can ditch OS X if they don't like it. IOW you are wrong.
No, that proves I'm even more right. As you admit, people are buying Apple hardware for OS/X -- but are more comfortable doing it because they have a safety exit to get rid of it if they don't like it. What if it was even more safe -- without the hardware requirement at all? Then it's a question of spending a relatively small amount of money to try OS/X on their existing hardware, which they definitely know they can go back if they don't like OS/X.
Your own evidence shows that people are willing to try OS/X when they don't feel like it's a no-turning-back investment.
because they have no installed, mainstream software base. [...] I hear the same about the Mac all the time.
Which is completely true -- relative to the Windows world. But there's enough that someone can actually get reasonable work done, occasional frustration notwithstanding.
People use applications, not operating systems. [...] So you say Apple should focus on selling their OS because nobody will buy it - and thus they make more money.
People drive cars, not engines -- but that doesn't mean they don't want to buy an engine with the car. But very few people choose cars based on the engine. They are far more interested in seating capacity, fuel economy, etc, etc.
Consumers want a computer that does what they want it to do. If it doesn't have an application they really need and/or want, then it's a non-starter (e.g., BeOS). Apple has enough brand awareness that if it was sold next to Windows on an even field (i.e., without the requirement that one buy Apple hardware), then it's a much smaller jump for those who are frustrated with Windows.
So are you saying that there's no stability problems with Vista and the large number of apparent problems are all down to the large number of users?
Not that I've done an exhaustive study, but my finger on the pulse tells me that very little of Vista's problems are related to stability (I've actually heard of none at all, though I'm sure you could find some). Most of Vista's problems are related to backward compatibility and the sheer annoyance factor of the way various features are implemented.
but what about NeXT dropping their own 68k based hardware to sell their OS exclusively for third party Intel machines? [...] and came to the conclusion that Linux killed the commercial PC OS market for everyone but Microsoft. There was no future for OS/2, BeOS, QNX, Plan-9 nor anyone else.
The reason NeXT failed, as well as OS/2, BeOS, etc, etc is because they have no installed, mainstream software base. People use applications, not operating systems. Linux has nothing to do with anything; it's just one more player struggling with having a mainstream application base.
The reason OS/X is different is because Apple has enough traction that software companies are (somewhat) willing to produce a version of their software for it, not to mention the hardware companies writing drivers for it. That's an entirely unique position compared to Microsoft.
But setting that aside, if there are bugs in Windows drivers and there aren't in OS X drivers because there are fewer of them and the combinations are easier to test, doesn't that just prove the point?
No bugs in OS X drivers? Please, don't be absurd. Searching for "buggy osx driver" produces plenty of hits; Apple doesn't have some magic wand to prevent bugs. And of course searching for buggy anything in Vista is going to return a lot of hits -- the Vista user base is far larger than the Mac user base, and people only post when there is a complaint, not when things work perfectly.
Which doesn't explain why all of Microsoft's driver certification programmes seem to have done little to enhance the stability of Windows.
Do you have a study that proves this? And how many manufacturers tout certification? Not many, because people don't care that much.
Actually, I can't remember the last time I've had a hardware driver crash Windows. Have bugs, yes, but not destabilize the O/S. I don't know if you can chalk that up to driver certification or not.
Well last I checked FreeBSD hasn't been doing all that well.
FreeBSD also doesn't have the mainstream application base that Apple has, nor does it have the mainstream brand recognition to dispel the fear of something new.
No, they didn't. They licensed their operating system to a limited set of approved hardware. Of course, people bought that hardware instead, because it was less expensive. That's a totally different model than selling huge numbers of copies of software.
And are you seriously arguing that pure software companies never make money? It really hasn't harmed Microsoft too much. Are you suggesting that Microsoft can produce a general operating system that makes a lot of money, but Apple can't?
One of the strengths of OS X is that it runs on a limited, well-understood suite of hardware. Bugs are easier to fix, components are easier to tweak, and new features are more easily added.
Sorry, but you're just simply wrong. Hardware is a question of drivers. Now, you could make an argument that *approved* hardware from Apple would be more reliable, but opening the hardware doesn't affect what they do at a feature level at all.
Because Steve is a control freak who likes selling a boutique all-in-one unit that he has total control over. The fact that he would make more money or have a far greater marketshare is less important than the fact he has total control.
Well, that's what Apple and their fans claim. It's never been true, especially now. Proof? How many people buy Apple hardware to NOT run OS/X? (Very few) How many people buy Apple hardware solely to RUN OS/X? (Almost all of them) How successful would Apple be if they chose to simply become just another Windows PC company, and REALLY depended on their hardware? (Somewhat successful, but their prices would have to drop significantly)
And finally, how successful would OS/X be if Apple sold it as software for any platform, Microsoft-style? It would be earth-shakingly successful, probably garnering 50% marketshare within one year. And probably making 10x more money than they do now.
Oddly enough, this is exactly how radio works. As I understand it, anyone is allowed to play any song on any radio, so long as they pay their royalties through a system which has been established for this purpose.
Yes, but the royalties are negotiated among both partners. You can get a license for a public performance of a movie as well, if you want to.
Now, it would be interesting if there was some sort of radio model for movies, but the difference is that radio stations choose the play list. They don't just let people upload songs that get broadcast, and then pay the piper later.
What Viacom is doing is absolutely pointless. Want to make money? Have free downloads of *all* your shows on your website. And upload a bunch on YouTube too, why? Because YouTube is an easy way to watch videos, and I believe that Google will pay you to have ads in your videos.
That's like a movie theater making an illegal print of a movie, showing it in their theaters, then sending a token $1 for each showing back to the theater. And when the studios complain, they say, "Shaddup. What are you complaining about? You're making money, aren't you?"
Maybe Viacom (and anyone else) want to be able to decide where their work shows and how much money it makes.
The US troops were left in Europe to hold the USSR back, not to prevent another war in Europe. In fact Europe was to be the battleground.
It's true that much of the reason was to hold the USSR back (though, let's not forget that Eastern Europe is still Europe), but after two world wars, do you really think the nature of the countries of Europe suddenly turned into peaceful loving countries? Hardly. The United States might've primarily been talking about holding back the USSR from aggressive expansion (which was absolutely a threat), but there was no doubt that Western Europe still had all the old hatreds and desires. You would think they would have learned after WW/I, but they didn't. And they didn't learn after WW/II. They were just forced to learn.
For some bizarre reason, Europe has now styled itself as always having been this mature, peace loving continent. And I'm not going to get into a worthless debate about the wars of the United States in the 20th century that you'll never agree with. It's fashionable to bash the US, so I highly doubt you'll be objective. I'll just say that the wars the US is involved with have had fundamentally different motivations than the wars of Europe.
Slashdot Mirror
*sigh* Slashdot! Where doing math is considered trolling!
So he saved about $330/month. It cost him $36K (which really cost $50K, but let's say). So it'll take 109 months to get back the money, or 9 years, not adjusting for inflation and investment opportunity cost. Let's say that brings it up to 12 years. Not including maintenance and repairs. It might even need complete replacement at that point. At 50K, which is the real cost, we're talking more like 16-18 years.
That's still a bit too long an investment for this to be really practical. Prices need to come down to about a four year payoff before I'd be really interested.
On another subject, I'm kind of glad to see someone who actually uses more electricity than I do. :)
I don't know what the practical limit on distance would be, but even if I were to assume that you could traverse several hundred light years, you would still be talking about only a few hundred or thousand stars within your reach, not billions.
Think geometric expansion. Once they reach one star system and establish a colony, then eventually they'll get another set of group(s) that goes off from there. Even if it took 100 million years to fill the galaxy, odds are it would've happened a long time ago -- if there were someone else. As I said, it only takes one. If you had automated self-replicating probes, it would take even less time.
Note this only applies to within galaxies. The distance to another galaxy is too absurd at travel at sublight speeds.
There seems to be a flawed assumption underlying the Fermi Paradox, namely, that intelligent life will invariably make a concerted effort to contact other intelligent life on other planets.
What makes the Fermi Paradox so powerful is it only takes one. It only takes one civilization creating a sublight self-reproducing probe to geometrically fill a galaxy in around 1-10 million years, a blip in the history of the galaxy. Or, using sleep ships, a civilization could fill the galaxy in around the same amount of time.
If life is very common, it seems highly improbable that not one civilization over the last four BILLION years ever decided to expand, either via themselves or by sending probes.
And second, if interstellar travel is practical, do you really want to broadcast the fact that your planet is habitable to all those nice Kzinti out there?
Again, it only takes one. Would those Kzinti be shy about seeding the galaxy with themselves? Or, for that matter, will we be shy about it in a few thousand or 10s of thousands of years, when our technology has advanced enough to do self-replicating probes or sleep ships?
Maybe. So far everything is being done in the interests of space tourism. I'd like to see private industry strive to do something useful.
Useful? If you don't like tourism, private industry already puts satellites in orbit.
But I would say Tourism is by far the most useful thing we could be doing right now. That puts direct downward cost pressure on putting people in space for as little money as possible. The biggest holdup in whatever your definition of "useful" is, is the cost to put payload in space. If that problem gets improved, then other opportunities start to open up. Not to mention, investors are more willing to take risks on your new "useful" usages when there are regular, profitable space trips going on.
A video like that really helps you realize how small and insignificant you really are.
On the contrary, if you accept what the Fermi Paradox implies, it shows how unbelievably special, improbable and unique we are in the entire galaxy, if not the entire Universe. [personally, I suspect intelligent life is so improbable that it takes 2.55e35 cycles of the universe(s) for it to happen, on the average.]
I think if Sagan was miraculously reconstituted today, he would take one look at the shape of our Education System and of the Sciences and Space Program in the States and he would die of shock and sadness.
He only died in 1996. You think things have changed much in 12 years?
As far as Space goes, there are actually some encouraging signs, much more than 12 years ago. The shuttle is finally being put in the shitcan like the unbelievably wasteful pile junk it is, we have several landers on other planets, and private industry (finally) looks like it might produce some interesting private space trips.
Unless your sole metric for success is government largess, space is much healthier than it was 12 years ago.
Thats ... typically american. "Don't do anything, it'll fix itself" ... *sigh*
Are you joking? Take a look at European history sometime, and see how often Europe sits on its hands when there's business to be done (e.g., Germany, Kosovo, Africa, etc), and then look how often the United States steps in to proactively take care of things.
"Phasing out"? What are you talking about?
Changing the license agreement a la Apple so that Windows would only run on their own hardware they produce.
Bollocks. You're just making shit up because you hate Apple.
Are you serious? Apple is notorious for their lawsuits, starting from the infamous "look and feel" many moons ago.
I suspect Apple is every bit as evil as Microsoft, just less successful.
Suspect? Imagine a world where Apple won the PC wars rather than Microsoft. Imagine what we'd be paying for computers with only a single supplier.
Of course, if Apple *had* won, they probably would've been broken up long ago as a monopoly, but it would've set the computer industry back at least a decade.
Say what you want about Microsoft, but at least they never leveraged their OS dominance by producing a "Microsoft PC" and then "phasing out" all the other hardware manufacturers. If Steve Jobs, through some twist of fate, had been in charge of Microsoft rather than Apple when he returned, that's exactly what would've happened.
And let's not even get into the fact that Apple competes via lawsuit orders of magnitude more often than Microsoft.
Apple is *far and away* more evil than Microsoft ever dreamed of being. They're fortunately just not the dominant player.
[And no, I'm not defending whatever evil Microsoft has done, only that they are not nearly as evil as they could've been.]
No, I said people are buying Macs to run Windows and Windows only. You can argue around it all you want.
I didn't argue around it, in fact, in my original post, I allowed that some do. But the key phrase is "very few." You don't seriously believe that a large number of people buy Apple hardware to solely run Windows, do you? If you believe that, then I'll need to see the extraordinary evidence to go along with the extraordinary claim.
Oddly enough, more and more people buy Macs today not only because they can run Windows, but also because they can ditch OS X if they don't like it. IOW you are wrong.
No, that proves I'm even more right. As you admit, people are buying Apple hardware for OS/X -- but are more comfortable doing it because they have a safety exit to get rid of it if they don't like it. What if it was even more safe -- without the hardware requirement at all? Then it's a question of spending a relatively small amount of money to try OS/X on their existing hardware, which they definitely know they can go back if they don't like OS/X.
Your own evidence shows that people are willing to try OS/X when they don't feel like it's a no-turning-back investment.
because they have no installed, mainstream software base. [...] I hear the same about the Mac all the time.
Which is completely true -- relative to the Windows world. But there's enough that someone can actually get reasonable work done, occasional frustration notwithstanding.
People use applications, not operating systems. [...] So you say Apple should focus on selling their OS because nobody will buy it - and thus they make more money.
People drive cars, not engines -- but that doesn't mean they don't want to buy an engine with the car. But very few people choose cars based on the engine. They are far more interested in seating capacity, fuel economy, etc, etc.
Consumers want a computer that does what they want it to do. If it doesn't have an application they really need and/or want, then it's a non-starter (e.g., BeOS). Apple has enough brand awareness that if it was sold next to Windows on an even field (i.e., without the requirement that one buy Apple hardware), then it's a much smaller jump for those who are frustrated with Windows.
So are you saying that there's no stability problems with Vista and the large number of apparent problems are all down to the large number of users?
Not that I've done an exhaustive study, but my finger on the pulse tells me that very little of Vista's problems are related to stability (I've actually heard of none at all, though I'm sure you could find some). Most of Vista's problems are related to backward compatibility and the sheer annoyance factor of the way various features are implemented.
but what about NeXT dropping their own 68k based hardware to sell their OS exclusively for third party Intel machines? [...] and came to the conclusion that Linux killed the commercial PC OS market for everyone but Microsoft. There was no future for OS/2, BeOS, QNX, Plan-9 nor anyone else.
The reason NeXT failed, as well as OS/2, BeOS, etc, etc is because they have no installed, mainstream software base. People use applications, not operating systems. Linux has nothing to do with anything; it's just one more player struggling with having a mainstream application base.
The reason OS/X is different is because Apple has enough traction that software companies are (somewhat) willing to produce a version of their software for it, not to mention the hardware companies writing drivers for it. That's an entirely unique position compared to Microsoft.
But setting that aside, if there are bugs in Windows drivers and there aren't in OS X drivers because there are fewer of them and the combinations are easier to test, doesn't that just prove the point?
No bugs in OS X drivers? Please, don't be absurd. Searching for "buggy osx driver" produces plenty of hits; Apple doesn't have some magic wand to prevent bugs. And of course searching for buggy anything in Vista is going to return a lot of hits -- the Vista user base is far larger than the Mac user base, and people only post when there is a complaint, not when things work perfectly.
Which doesn't explain why all of Microsoft's driver certification programmes seem to have done little to enhance the stability of Windows.
Do you have a study that proves this? And how many manufacturers tout certification? Not many, because people don't care that much.
Actually, I can't remember the last time I've had a hardware driver crash Windows. Have bugs, yes, but not destabilize the O/S. I don't know if you can chalk that up to driver certification or not.
Well last I checked FreeBSD hasn't been doing all that well.
FreeBSD also doesn't have the mainstream application base that Apple has, nor does it have the mainstream brand recognition to dispel the fear of something new.
They tried that before.
No, they didn't. They licensed their operating system to a limited set of approved hardware. Of course, people bought that hardware instead, because it was less expensive. That's a totally different model than selling huge numbers of copies of software.
And are you seriously arguing that pure software companies never make money? It really hasn't harmed Microsoft too much. Are you suggesting that Microsoft can produce a general operating system that makes a lot of money, but Apple can't?
One of the strengths of OS X is that it runs on a limited, well-understood suite of hardware. Bugs are easier to fix, components are easier to tweak, and new features are more easily added.
Sorry, but you're just simply wrong. Hardware is a question of drivers. Now, you could make an argument that *approved* hardware from Apple would be more reliable, but opening the hardware doesn't affect what they do at a feature level at all.
So why don't they then?
Because Steve is a control freak who likes selling a boutique all-in-one unit that he has total control over. The fact that he would make more money or have a far greater marketshare is less important than the fact he has total control.
Apple is and always has been a hardware company.
Well, that's what Apple and their fans claim. It's never been true, especially now. Proof? How many people buy Apple hardware to NOT run OS/X? (Very few) How many people buy Apple hardware solely to RUN OS/X? (Almost all of them) How successful would Apple be if they chose to simply become just another Windows PC company, and REALLY depended on their hardware? (Somewhat successful, but their prices would have to drop significantly)
And finally, how successful would OS/X be if Apple sold it as software for any platform, Microsoft-style? It would be earth-shakingly successful, probably garnering 50% marketshare within one year. And probably making 10x more money than they do now.
Oddly enough, this is exactly how radio works. As I understand it, anyone is allowed to play any song on any radio, so long as they pay their royalties through a system which has been established for this purpose.
Yes, but the royalties are negotiated among both partners. You can get a license for a public performance of a movie as well, if you want to.
Now, it would be interesting if there was some sort of radio model for movies, but the difference is that radio stations choose the play list. They don't just let people upload songs that get broadcast, and then pay the piper later.
No, they should be able to decide how much to CHARGE. Very distinct and important difference.
That's what I meant, though I phrased it poorly. :)
What Viacom is doing is absolutely pointless. Want to make money? Have free downloads of *all* your shows on your website. And upload a bunch on YouTube too, why? Because YouTube is an easy way to watch videos, and I believe that Google will pay you to have ads in your videos.
That's like a movie theater making an illegal print of a movie, showing it in their theaters, then sending a token $1 for each showing back to the theater. And when the studios complain, they say, "Shaddup. What are you complaining about? You're making money, aren't you?"
Maybe Viacom (and anyone else) want to be able to decide where their work shows and how much money it makes.
The US troops were left in Europe to hold the USSR back, not to prevent another war in Europe. In fact Europe was to be the battleground.
It's true that much of the reason was to hold the USSR back (though, let's not forget that Eastern Europe is still Europe), but after two world wars, do you really think the nature of the countries of Europe suddenly turned into peaceful loving countries? Hardly. The United States might've primarily been talking about holding back the USSR from aggressive expansion (which was absolutely a threat), but there was no doubt that Western Europe still had all the old hatreds and desires. You would think they would have learned after WW/I, but they didn't. And they didn't learn after WW/II. They were just forced to learn.
For some bizarre reason, Europe has now styled itself as always having been this mature, peace loving continent. And I'm not going to get into a worthless debate about the wars of the United States in the 20th century that you'll never agree with. It's fashionable to bash the US, so I highly doubt you'll be objective. I'll just say that the wars the US is involved with have had fundamentally different motivations than the wars of Europe.