It is interesting that the subject of corridor brought these two things to mind.
The first place i read about the sci fi corridor was in a set of books written using Walt Disney characters in a a space setting. IIRC, they were written at a high level for the demographic, and one of the favorite words was corridor. It took me a while to determine what a corridor was. The character were always going up and down corridors.
I really enjoyed many of the corridors in Dr. Who. Not so much the tardis, but the other places they went. What I found interesting was one set of commentary where one of the companions talked about the types of corridor acting they had to master. Perhaps they were joking, but it does seem that acting while in or walking down a corridor is different from acting in a larger space.
I wonder how many corridors we see are caused by budget constraints. For instance, it is said that Buffy only had one or two corridors that were redressed for the Sunnydale High School.
I see many kids with cell phones not because they are old enough to text their friends, but because the parent don't think they are old enough to be on their own. Kids today don't get any alone time. They are at their parents beck and call. When I was growing up, I ran out of the house to play in the morning and did not return until the street lights came on. There was nothing to get me back home, or to micromanage my day. I was on my on to play and create. Now kids have an hourly reminder of where one is to be,and need to check in frequently from school. What is the point. No wonder we have kids graduating from college with no job prospects. They never learned to manage their own time, or complete a task on their own inititative.
A library is more than a collection of printed pages. It is a professional that can help you find those pages. It is years of custom that allows a patron to read those pages without undue government interference. Sure, it is paid for the government, but it is paid knowing that an educated populous is critical to democracy. Some would argue that a dangerous person might be planning an attack on their government using the library, or might be planning something that others might not like, for instance researching the facts to prepare for an abortion, but those people who wish to limit the freedoms of the library are trading security for democracy and deserve neither.
Google books, OTOH, is just a collection of pages. The pages you read are part of their database, which they will use to understand and better serve the user, and, if the committee on un-American affairs come knocking, will likely give up quite willingly. Furthermore, while modern database search has become very easy, researching a topic is still not trivial. Serious searches will still turn up more trivia than useful fact. If we confuse google with a library, there is a chance that our educational opportunities might become limited. The child that wants to read about their emerging sexuality, for example, instead of just playing it out through naked pictures, may not be able to do so. This is an unknown thing,and there is nothing wrong with thinking about ramifications, as long as we realize this thing is going to happen no matter what.
This is what we are talking about, and having 5% to spend is not easy. It requires planning and determination. We can see how difficult this is at the micr level with families. Take an average family bringing in 4K a month. How many spend even $200 a month on education? Sure some invest in private school, but I am talking about suitable books, cultural events, etc.
So firms must find the 5%. This happens through efficiencies and prices. A choice must be made between all those wasteful middle managers that do nothing, or research.Everyone has a useless in law that needs a job, so create another wasteful middle manager position. Or perhaps someone needs external validation, so build another wasteful highrise to stroke someone ego.
The there is profit. The pharmaceutical firms are doing research, but then what happens when they try to pay for the research? Everyone screams, like drugs are an entitlement. It is the pursuit of happiness, but the entitle to it. Is everyone going to be able to afford all drugs in the US. Perhaps is universal healthcare is passed, otherwise it will be the free market deciding that those with money will live, and those without will just have to make do.
Then, of course, on has to convince the stockholders that a reduction in per share profit is a good thing. Not an easy sell when many will buy solely on the basis of net profit.
I am not sure if industrial research labs are going to work in the current climate. Research based companies seem to get clobbered by those who merely derive products from the research. The model emerging over the past 20 years of so, private public research partnerships, seem to be a pretty good job. The reason we see so little of it in the US is that owners of firms are primarily concerned abut their 100 million dollar paychecks, not the long term effects they have on the company, the country, and the world. Why else would the auto manufacturers not use their windfall over the past decade to build the next big thing. Why would oil companies use their windfall to create false document, a la big tobacco, against alternative energy sources rather than develop those alternative energy source. Why else would MS buy a virtualization company, way before MS Vista, a not integrate that technology into Vista to form a transitional compatibility layer, as Apple did between OS 9 and OS X.
Really, research labs are not the issue, cowardice is. When we have leaders that are not scared of their own shadows, when we have leaders that will go out a defend us against the real enemy, and not waste a trillion dollars attacking a fake proxy enemy or create FUD to distract us, then we will have progress.
I am a small business owner that provides integrated computers systems and support to other small businesses. As part of the package I provide M!cr0s0ft Offices, supplied to me, with authenticity seals by M!cr0s0ft of China.
Recently I was informed that Microsoft, USA, wants to put a restraining order on this perfectly legal software claiming that it is byte for byte copy of their suite of office products. While I disagree with this, for instance MS Office clearly uses ribbons, while M!cr0s0ft Offices uses menus, I realize that this is a decision for the courts.
All I ask is that the restraining order be revoked. The only way I can provide value to my customers is that M!cr0s0ft provides a hard disk which I use to image all my other computers. I pay a license fee for each image, but otherwise the labor is very cheap. If I had to install each piece of software, or even create a new image, this would destroy my competitive advantage I have over the other bigger firms.
Please, do not place an injunction against M!cr0s0ft. If the courts do find the software infringes on Microsoft product, then Microsoft can sueM!cr0s0ft and recover damages, and I will have time to find another supplier. If M!cr0s0ft is found not to be infringing, then you will be destroying a legitimate small business for no reason. I know the knee jerk reaction in this case is to assume culpability, but I assure you there are many differences between the two products, and M!cr0s0ft is not infringing. Trust me. I am the entrepreneurial backbone of this country.
I will add that Apple tried to minimize foot print and maximize efficiency in this release. We have yet to see what they will no longer support. We know that OS 10.6 does not support PPC. I think I have read that printer drivers are no longer included, and must be downloaded as they are needed. I have seen no list of no longer supported printers. Only time will tell what other support is no longer in 10.6
Due to the reported increased speed and efficiency, I was going to upgrade one machine in the next couple days just to see what it would be like. However, given that a 10.5 is reported to break a few of my key applications, and hardware support may be a bit sketchy, I probably will wait a month or so and wait for the fallout.
Recall that traditionally in the US a device manufacturer develops a base phone and then modifies that phone to meet the profit requirements for the mobile provider. The classic case was the Razr which apparently came in a full fledged version in europe, but with significant changes in the US. I recall that it took forever for a Razr to come out for Cingular because of all the changes the wanted. Later on we saw the impossibility of getting a phone that played and downloaded music. There was no upside for the cell company so it did not happen.
The reason that Apple is popular is that found a hungry phone company, the new ATT, that would allow it build a phone that had the end user in mind for the customer, and not the the cell company, as is normally the case.Therefore, for the first time, we had a phone that did what we wanted it to do, not a phone that maximized the amount of money we had to spend to get simple things done.
The reason that the google phone is not so good is because there are now two profit interests between the end user and the phone. The Google, who has control over manh of the features, has a interest to maximize ad revenue. No ads, not google. The cell phone company, such as t-mobile, has to maximize billing. In the google world, the end user has moved from a distant third to a distant fourth.
We see the failure of the Google attempt to Googles blatant use of the FCC to hijack a market that it cannot win through fair competition. This is not the first that google has tried this.
The Google app on the iPhone would be interesting, but what people do not realize is that the iPhone, as a product, does not have to have every App on it. We could instead live in a competitive environment in which products are not all low mark up commodity products, but rather a mix of commodity and differentiated high end products. In this world, consumers have an opportunity to buy a product that fits their needs rather than a product that is minimally acceptable. If consumers want the highly integrated google experience, then by all means there should be a google phone that provides such an experience, and maybe Verizon or T-Mobile will sacrifice profit to provide such an experience. For now, iPhone users seem to appreciate the integrated Apple experience, and I for one see no need for google, with it's privacy destroying metrics, to degrade that experience.
It is an interesting observation, I did not notice it because they did not list OS !0.5 as a requirement for upgrading to OS 10.6. They should have done so and it is annoying they did not.
A couple other observations. This is upgrade pricing is nice because is it the first break Apple have given users in a very time This is, for all intents and purposes, giving away the upgrade. I think it is a good modification to their strategy.
Second, the box set includes iLife and iWork. Although many may not use these apps, it is interesting to note that they are now throwing in these two packages for what is effectively the cost of iWork. The last Mac OS X update was around $130, and it may have included a copy of iLife, but we are again seeing a price break. From Apple even.
OTOH, the family box set is now an very good value. In the past, the products would have cost well over $300, now for $229.
Last, I would not bother to be in hurry to stockpile 10.4 or 10.5 10.5 was a not an upgrade from 10.4, it did not require 10.4 on the disk. I have installed 10.5 to a blank disk on a few occasions. The same goes for 10.4. I see it 10.4 on ebay for $60, and I suspect that the same will be true for 10.5, as many people will just buy the full version. The aftermarket for Apple is good. The original airport cards were available for years, at very reasonable prices, long after apple discontinued them.
Entering a space number would defeat on of the advantages of the system. That is, at least in most cases, you can pay for a day, keep the receipt, and park anywhere. We have this, and the meters are far superior. Only a truly lazy person is bothered by 'the half block walk, especially since there is often a multiple block walk to get from the parking space to whereever you are going anyway.
As far as the quarter thing is concerned, for anyone who is around downtown, many urban people for that matter, quarters are a fact of life. Not only for parking meters, but also for laundry. I suspect that many who still live at home in an suburban setting don't really do laundry mats. In any case, parking meters are no longer just quarters, and these smart meters do dollars, even twenty sometimes.
For people who don't carry cash, they probably have at least a debit card, which is why these smart meters are better. All in all, for people who use these things practically, and not create theoretical situations in which they have no practical experience, the meters are far superior to the previous situation.
An alternative, which I would wholly support, it the congestion charge. Have all cars pay a fixed amount, say $30, to enter the downtown zone. In my area, we have toll tags which can be used to pay the zone. Just put the readers in on the specific streets that allow downtown access. As part of the fee, one can park where one likes. Have cheap parking lots outside the downtown zone with trains or trolleys. Personally, when I wasn't able to pay for downtown parking, I just took the bus in.
Which is the way science works. A theory is developed that explains all relevant known observations, and is considered the prevailing theory until it no longer adequately predicts new observations. Very often, at least initially, new observations that are not predicted by the theory are dismissed. There are many reasons for this, the primary of which is normal human suspicion of new things, which grows stronger as one grows older.
In any case, when an counter example observation is validated, the theory is adjusted, or the domain is restricted, or sometimes it is thrown away. In any case, the primary enemy of science is not the counter example, or the people who don't believe it, but impatience. If an observation is real, it will eventually be put into the theories. if the observations are false, then impatience will only cause bad science.
A classic example of this is quasars. The popular press got a hold of these objects as 'proof' that relativity was wrong and object in the universe could move faster than light. We could think that is the case and throw out the theory of relativity, which frankly causes us some head ache. Or we could simply explain the apparent faster than light measurement as an artifact of the method of our observation. I don't think anyone knows for sure which is the right decision. Given that relativity is doing rather well, the majority seems to be in favor of keeping it, although that may change is other things, like gravity waves, fail to materialize.
In any case, if reletivity did fall, it would only be because a better theory, which will be the long awaited GUT, comes along. We saw this with QM. Just because we knew that black box radiation did not in fact develop infinities, did not mean that we left classical mechanics, at least not until we had a developed theory of quantum mechanics. Likewise, if we do not understand why the upper atmosphere is deficient of electrons, then the mere presence of such lightening is only half the work.
Not everyone lost. Those that wanted to bring the US government to the brink of bankruptcy and make foreign government richer and more in control of US politics won. All evidence points to the drug war being responsible for at lest 10% of the total public debt.
It also helps employ a great number of people, people who arguably might have trouble getting other jobs. Not just the drug dealers and the muscle, but the guards the administrators, the high level officials that must be employed to keep the politics in line.
In fact it is a great way to minimize unemployment in the US. We might complain that it costs US$50K is incarcerate a person, but that 50K pays not only for the prisoner, but also all those other jobs. On could argue that if these people were living on social security instead of being in prison or having a prison related job life might be better. After all, social security is less than US$15K a year, o that is 4 social security checks for the same amount of money, but we rather have artificially low unemployment numbers than civil liberties.
As the WSJ well knows, a firm is not going to give away a product unless there is an additional revenue stream or some other advantage to compensate for it. Google, like MS, can effectively give away product because there is a profit benefit to being in a oligopoly with only minor competition. As long as google can be a primary service is a business that apparently has a significant capitol cost but relatively small marginal costs, then it makes sense for google to build brand loyalty by giving away freebies. The key thing to keep a large base to pay those fixed costs and generate a profit through advertising.
OTOH ATT has to relies on direct payment from customers for real services. It has to provide a level of service to keep customers, a level of service that likely has high marginal costs. So the article states the bleeding obvious. Of course ATT does not like google voice anymore than it liked the competition for cheap long distance or the ability of cell phone users to make intrastate calls at a fraction of the cost of a land line.
What makes no sense is suggesting that an incumbent would provide such a profit destroying service. It would be like saying the WSJ should set up a competing site that all the features of the premium site but at no charge.
There isn't much choice on this issue. MS Windows XP is 10 years old. It has been stable for six years or so, but is now showing sign of age. On my older XP machines I am going to have to do a clean install to get them running, and the machines are older anyway, so they are not working really well. The Vista machines I have seen do not seem to work real well, have trouble doing simple things, so I don't think Vista is the way to go. But if MS Windows 7 does work, and if the major apps work, I certainly would want to try it. I suspect it will be at least a year before it is stable enough.
If it true that 20% of the people control 80% of the money, then it is clear that the those 20% are cocaine users, while the rest of us use crack, which is mostly filler ingredients. And, since we don't have the money, this explains why crack is so prosecuted. No defense money means that the public prosecutors don't have to work very hard to get a conviction.
Even considering the issue of being publicly employed, if someone were following me, posting my every activity on a blog, with personal details, I would certainly want to do something to have them stopped. I know that if she had done this to some people I know, locking her up would have been a kindness. Some people don't have the sense that god gave a turnip.
Funny how everyone picks on the IRS. I suppose you want soldiers to not have weopons, or to come home to nonexistent medical care. Or for children to vandalize houses rather than being safely locked up in school.
In any case, the IRS is not the primary motivation for these suits. In most cases, it appears the existing gambling interests that are fighting to keep their monopolies alive and safe from free market competition. They want to control the online gambling as they do the offline. Competition that might increase the payouts to consumers and cut profits are just not in the cards, so to speak.
This is why airborne missiles are the best choice for the scenario. This is not the Reagan/Bush faith based impractical star wars. This is a defense against a very few missiles launched from a limited number of locations to the US mainland. Given the probable locations of these launches, the problem boils down to destroying the missiles before their trajectory would allow them to penetrate the west coast, even if they lost power and guidance.
Decoys, within the scenario as I understand it, are not an issue. If the missile is destroyed during boost phase, which is what the laser does, the missile has not yet released the warheads, with is where the decoys are likely to come in. A missile might carry one warhead and many decoys. The chance of warhead after release is slim. The problem statement, as I understand it, does not allow for decoy missiles. As has been widely reported, such a system is not intended to neutralize the major powers ability to attack the US, which would jeopardize the long standing policy of mutually assured destruction, but to neutralize the emerging powers, to maintain a policy of unilateral destruction by the US.
So these panes will be flying around with lasers, and if they can detect and verify a launch, there is no reason why they will not be able to destroy a missile. And this is why the reported test is of so little consequence. It simply means that the relatively simple problem of destroying a known boogie has been solved. This was just a matter of scaling up a laser and creating a form factor that will fit in a plane.
It does not identify a bogie in a time frame that is measure in tens of seconds rather than minutes.
To do this a launch must be detected and confirmed form a hostile and possibly unknown location, meaning no one site survelience. The launch must be confirmed as hostile, and probably trajectory to US soil. Likely very little time for human human verification of high level briefing. We are talking software sophisticated enough so that the decision made by the software is trusted, and sensors sensitive enough sot hey can detect a launch and verify the projectile. Despite what was said earlier, it would be possible to launch large tin cans as decoys if the detection software is bad.
Here is my issue. We will be spending money for several of these planes. We will be spending money to fuel and staff these relatively large planes. For what purpose? To defend against a minor threat that does not yet even exist? This, to me, is wasted money and misguided. For instance, N. Korea was well on the way to giving up nuclear capability, but then they had a food crisis again. The nuclear capability can be used by N. Korea to get hard cash, for instance by selling nuclear material, which can be used to feed it's people. It is not a geat solution, and they were willing to stop the program for food, but then everyone said, hey, n korea should feed themselves, which is what they are doing. Israel has bombs, and their history proves they have no problem going to war, so any sane enemy of israel is also going to have nuclear capability. QED.
We are going down the rabbit hole, and it is a freaky world were nations with one or two bombs can cause massive expenditures in their more wealthy neighbors. It is one way to even the playing field.
o'reilly has a cosistent level of quality, like McDonnell's. Not necessarily the best, but acceptable. From what I here, they hire competent writers and then backs them up with editors. I don't know this for sure. What I do know is they are a relatively complete, but sometimes have critical errors. I learned HTML from their books in the mid 90's.. Currently I only buy their books if they on the remainder bin.
Addison Wesley is a the best publisher if one if looking for rigor. It is sometimes hard to read, but relatively error free, both implicate and explicate. I tend to favor these books when i am learning new concepts. They published the practice of programing, a game changing book from my point of view.
One should not rule out MS press on some of the basic techniques of programing, expecially those books coming from the macintosh side. I have not seen any books of late, but they have some classics on software development.
A challenger to o'reilly, and a higher quality mass production outlet, IMHO, is the pragmatic programmer. Where O'reilly is HTMl, pragmatic programer is best practices and Ruby.The former is a critical issue. One complaint I have about O'reilly is that they are limited in their scope. They don't really lay the ground work for a person to become a good programmer, only a passable one. Of course, when O'reilly began, it was not the fashion in the popular computer press to talk about best practices on the macro scale. That has changed. The Prgamatic programmer considers the whole process. For someone looking for accessible, complete, and overall correct coverage this is not a bad place to start.
The publishers I avoid. Anyhing for dummies or any variation. I know it is toungue in cheek, but if one thinks one is a dummy, success is not forthcoming. Any other silly variations. Sams Publishing. I have never bout a book from them that is helpfu. No Starch press has been of limited value to me, but then I don;t do all that much of what they write about. If I did I might have a different opinion, but my QT book is not no-starch, but prentice hall.
What I will say is this. I tend to know what I want for the stuff I already do. When I interested in learning something, new, I take a look at all the books. Just because a publisher does on thing well, doesn't mean they do everything well.
If only it were this simple. If it were more difficult to buy MS word in texas, then the entire reange of MS products might not be used. And I can think of nothing more sweet that a Texas without the MS virus. We could actualy open files without paying the MS protection money.
I have found some benefit to going to the place where the technology was created. For instance, if I was more interested in history I would certainly have been to Philadelphia.
As I am ore interested in technology, I have visited NASA Houston and Cape Canaveral. Though the displays are often very kiddie centered, seeing the original mission control is worth the trip. As long one is in Houston, the Museum of Health is worth a trip, as well as the other 5-10 museums in the area. One of the best is the Menil Collection which is a testement to the social value of oil money. The Menil is a collection of several indoor and outdoor exhibitions.
I would also recommend the Bradbury Science Museum in Los Alamos, yes the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History in Albuquerque. It has artifacts I have not seen elsewhere, such as fully reconstructed planes and missles. Way cool. Of course, the Trinity site is also a museum piece, though I have never been able to make it. It is only open twice a year.
One would think so, but evidence does not support it. Those tricked out trucks are not cheap, yet I have heard many people who own such things complain about gas prices. In fact I would say the opposite is true. Those with reasonably priced vehicles that consume reasonable amounts of gas are not really effected by gas prices, because those people have not overextended themselves. It is the people that are trying to live a lifestyle they cannot afford, with big cars and long commutes from their expansive suburban homes, that are sensitive to a penny in the price of a gallon of gas.
The chrome logo is one the most freaky, scary things around. The big eye looking under the bed, in the drawers and behind he picture frames for any secrets that may be made public for a profit.
I just wonder if the upcoming chrome OS is going to get he same scrutiny when it 'phones home' as other OS do.
There are so many bad "designs". baby butterflies dying because they can't get out of the cocoon. Reasonable from an evolutionary perspective, but what designer would want to kill baby butterflies.
Or what about pain that will never go away. What is the purpose of have a burn victim still feel pain days after the injury. Or lifelong back pain. What kind of design relishes in making organisms suffer for no apparent reason?
Then of course there is sex. From a procreation point of view, one would the process to be as simple as possible, not a few to several minutes of interaction. One could have designed us so the interaction was separate from reproduction. That way we could couple as needed, to have orgasms, but then make babies only when it was useful. The combination of the two is obvious trickery, and it says something about the design.
Consumers want cheap machines, OEM need to make a profit. There may be some value in having suppliers and anufacutere collude to provide cheap machines. We see the same thing happen with firewire. USB is a cheaper technology, also happens to be intel, so we have USB rather than firewire. Is there some net loss, maybe. Screen size is the same thing. If Intel is optimizing the atom for machines that run on a 10" screen, so that larger machines will need to run more expensive materials, then there we go. People get the cheap machine most seem to want, and those that are willing to pay more get the extras. I don't think we are entitled to a laptop wih at 12" screen.
The problem if there is real collusion to keep products off the market, as has been the case with the apparent MS bundling deals or the like.
Slashdot Mirror
The first place i read about the sci fi corridor was in a set of books written using Walt Disney characters in a a space setting. IIRC, they were written at a high level for the demographic, and one of the favorite words was corridor. It took me a while to determine what a corridor was. The character were always going up and down corridors.
I really enjoyed many of the corridors in Dr. Who. Not so much the tardis, but the other places they went. What I found interesting was one set of commentary where one of the companions talked about the types of corridor acting they had to master. Perhaps they were joking, but it does seem that acting while in or walking down a corridor is different from acting in a larger space.
I wonder how many corridors we see are caused by budget constraints. For instance, it is said that Buffy only had one or two corridors that were redressed for the Sunnydale High School.
I see many kids with cell phones not because they are old enough to text their friends, but because the parent don't think they are old enough to be on their own. Kids today don't get any alone time. They are at their parents beck and call. When I was growing up, I ran out of the house to play in the morning and did not return until the street lights came on. There was nothing to get me back home, or to micromanage my day. I was on my on to play and create. Now kids have an hourly reminder of where one is to be,and need to check in frequently from school. What is the point. No wonder we have kids graduating from college with no job prospects. They never learned to manage their own time, or complete a task on their own inititative.
Google books, OTOH, is just a collection of pages. The pages you read are part of their database, which they will use to understand and better serve the user, and, if the committee on un-American affairs come knocking, will likely give up quite willingly. Furthermore, while modern database search has become very easy, researching a topic is still not trivial. Serious searches will still turn up more trivia than useful fact. If we confuse google with a library, there is a chance that our educational opportunities might become limited. The child that wants to read about their emerging sexuality, for example, instead of just playing it out through naked pictures, may not be able to do so. This is an unknown thing,and there is nothing wrong with thinking about ramifications, as long as we realize this thing is going to happen no matter what.
So firms must find the 5%. This happens through efficiencies and prices. A choice must be made between all those wasteful middle managers that do nothing, or research.Everyone has a useless in law that needs a job, so create another wasteful middle manager position. Or perhaps someone needs external validation, so build another wasteful highrise to stroke someone ego.
The there is profit. The pharmaceutical firms are doing research, but then what happens when they try to pay for the research? Everyone screams, like drugs are an entitlement. It is the pursuit of happiness, but the entitle to it. Is everyone going to be able to afford all drugs in the US. Perhaps is universal healthcare is passed, otherwise it will be the free market deciding that those with money will live, and those without will just have to make do.
Then, of course, on has to convince the stockholders that a reduction in per share profit is a good thing. Not an easy sell when many will buy solely on the basis of net profit.
I am not sure if industrial research labs are going to work in the current climate. Research based companies seem to get clobbered by those who merely derive products from the research. The model emerging over the past 20 years of so, private public research partnerships, seem to be a pretty good job. The reason we see so little of it in the US is that owners of firms are primarily concerned abut their 100 million dollar paychecks, not the long term effects they have on the company, the country, and the world. Why else would the auto manufacturers not use their windfall over the past decade to build the next big thing. Why would oil companies use their windfall to create false document, a la big tobacco, against alternative energy sources rather than develop those alternative energy source. Why else would MS buy a virtualization company, way before MS Vista, a not integrate that technology into Vista to form a transitional compatibility layer, as Apple did between OS 9 and OS X.
Really, research labs are not the issue, cowardice is. When we have leaders that are not scared of their own shadows, when we have leaders that will go out a defend us against the real enemy, and not waste a trillion dollars attacking a fake proxy enemy or create FUD to distract us, then we will have progress.
Recently I was informed that Microsoft, USA, wants to put a restraining order on this perfectly legal software claiming that it is byte for byte copy of their suite of office products. While I disagree with this, for instance MS Office clearly uses ribbons, while M!cr0s0ft Offices uses menus, I realize that this is a decision for the courts.
All I ask is that the restraining order be revoked. The only way I can provide value to my customers is that M!cr0s0ft provides a hard disk which I use to image all my other computers. I pay a license fee for each image, but otherwise the labor is very cheap. If I had to install each piece of software, or even create a new image, this would destroy my competitive advantage I have over the other bigger firms.
Please, do not place an injunction against M!cr0s0ft. If the courts do find the software infringes on Microsoft product, then Microsoft can sueM!cr0s0ft and recover damages, and I will have time to find another supplier. If M!cr0s0ft is found not to be infringing, then you will be destroying a legitimate small business for no reason. I know the knee jerk reaction in this case is to assume culpability, but I assure you there are many differences between the two products, and M!cr0s0ft is not infringing. Trust me. I am the entrepreneurial backbone of this country.
Due to the reported increased speed and efficiency, I was going to upgrade one machine in the next couple days just to see what it would be like. However, given that a 10.5 is reported to break a few of my key applications, and hardware support may be a bit sketchy, I probably will wait a month or so and wait for the fallout.
The reason that Apple is popular is that found a hungry phone company, the new ATT, that would allow it build a phone that had the end user in mind for the customer, and not the the cell company, as is normally the case.Therefore, for the first time, we had a phone that did what we wanted it to do, not a phone that maximized the amount of money we had to spend to get simple things done.
The reason that the google phone is not so good is because there are now two profit interests between the end user and the phone. The Google, who has control over manh of the features, has a interest to maximize ad revenue. No ads, not google. The cell phone company, such as t-mobile, has to maximize billing. In the google world, the end user has moved from a distant third to a distant fourth.
We see the failure of the Google attempt to Googles blatant use of the FCC to hijack a market that it cannot win through fair competition. This is not the first that google has tried this.
The Google app on the iPhone would be interesting, but what people do not realize is that the iPhone, as a product, does not have to have every App on it. We could instead live in a competitive environment in which products are not all low mark up commodity products, but rather a mix of commodity and differentiated high end products. In this world, consumers have an opportunity to buy a product that fits their needs rather than a product that is minimally acceptable. If consumers want the highly integrated google experience, then by all means there should be a google phone that provides such an experience, and maybe Verizon or T-Mobile will sacrifice profit to provide such an experience. For now, iPhone users seem to appreciate the integrated Apple experience, and I for one see no need for google, with it's privacy destroying metrics, to degrade that experience.
A couple other observations. This is upgrade pricing is nice because is it the first break Apple have given users in a very time This is, for all intents and purposes, giving away the upgrade. I think it is a good modification to their strategy.
Second, the box set includes iLife and iWork. Although many may not use these apps, it is interesting to note that they are now throwing in these two packages for what is effectively the cost of iWork. The last Mac OS X update was around $130, and it may have included a copy of iLife, but we are again seeing a price break. From Apple even.
OTOH, the family box set is now an very good value. In the past, the products would have cost well over $300, now for $229.
Last, I would not bother to be in hurry to stockpile 10.4 or 10.5 10.5 was a not an upgrade from 10.4, it did not require 10.4 on the disk. I have installed 10.5 to a blank disk on a few occasions. The same goes for 10.4. I see it 10.4 on ebay for $60, and I suspect that the same will be true for 10.5, as many people will just buy the full version. The aftermarket for Apple is good. The original airport cards were available for years, at very reasonable prices, long after apple discontinued them.
As far as the quarter thing is concerned, for anyone who is around downtown, many urban people for that matter, quarters are a fact of life. Not only for parking meters, but also for laundry. I suspect that many who still live at home in an suburban setting don't really do laundry mats. In any case, parking meters are no longer just quarters, and these smart meters do dollars, even twenty sometimes.
For people who don't carry cash, they probably have at least a debit card, which is why these smart meters are better. All in all, for people who use these things practically, and not create theoretical situations in which they have no practical experience, the meters are far superior to the previous situation.
An alternative, which I would wholly support, it the congestion charge. Have all cars pay a fixed amount, say $30, to enter the downtown zone. In my area, we have toll tags which can be used to pay the zone. Just put the readers in on the specific streets that allow downtown access. As part of the fee, one can park where one likes. Have cheap parking lots outside the downtown zone with trains or trolleys. Personally, when I wasn't able to pay for downtown parking, I just took the bus in.
In any case, when an counter example observation is validated, the theory is adjusted, or the domain is restricted, or sometimes it is thrown away. In any case, the primary enemy of science is not the counter example, or the people who don't believe it, but impatience. If an observation is real, it will eventually be put into the theories. if the observations are false, then impatience will only cause bad science.
A classic example of this is quasars. The popular press got a hold of these objects as 'proof' that relativity was wrong and object in the universe could move faster than light. We could think that is the case and throw out the theory of relativity, which frankly causes us some head ache. Or we could simply explain the apparent faster than light measurement as an artifact of the method of our observation. I don't think anyone knows for sure which is the right decision. Given that relativity is doing rather well, the majority seems to be in favor of keeping it, although that may change is other things, like gravity waves, fail to materialize.
In any case, if reletivity did fall, it would only be because a better theory, which will be the long awaited GUT, comes along. We saw this with QM. Just because we knew that black box radiation did not in fact develop infinities, did not mean that we left classical mechanics, at least not until we had a developed theory of quantum mechanics. Likewise, if we do not understand why the upper atmosphere is deficient of electrons, then the mere presence of such lightening is only half the work.
It also helps employ a great number of people, people who arguably might have trouble getting other jobs. Not just the drug dealers and the muscle, but the guards the administrators, the high level officials that must be employed to keep the politics in line.
In fact it is a great way to minimize unemployment in the US. We might complain that it costs US$50K is incarcerate a person, but that 50K pays not only for the prisoner, but also all those other jobs. On could argue that if these people were living on social security instead of being in prison or having a prison related job life might be better. After all, social security is less than US$15K a year, o that is 4 social security checks for the same amount of money, but we rather have artificially low unemployment numbers than civil liberties.
OTOH ATT has to relies on direct payment from customers for real services. It has to provide a level of service to keep customers, a level of service that likely has high marginal costs. So the article states the bleeding obvious. Of course ATT does not like google voice anymore than it liked the competition for cheap long distance or the ability of cell phone users to make intrastate calls at a fraction of the cost of a land line.
What makes no sense is suggesting that an incumbent would provide such a profit destroying service. It would be like saying the WSJ should set up a competing site that all the features of the premium site but at no charge.
There isn't much choice on this issue. MS Windows XP is 10 years old. It has been stable for six years or so, but is now showing sign of age. On my older XP machines I am going to have to do a clean install to get them running, and the machines are older anyway, so they are not working really well. The Vista machines I have seen do not seem to work real well, have trouble doing simple things, so I don't think Vista is the way to go. But if MS Windows 7 does work, and if the major apps work, I certainly would want to try it. I suspect it will be at least a year before it is stable enough.
If it true that 20% of the people control 80% of the money, then it is clear that the those 20% are cocaine users, while the rest of us use crack, which is mostly filler ingredients. And, since we don't have the money, this explains why crack is so prosecuted. No defense money means that the public prosecutors don't have to work very hard to get a conviction.
For those who wish additional simulation, check out The PhET Simulations.
Even considering the issue of being publicly employed, if someone were following me, posting my every activity on a blog, with personal details, I would certainly want to do something to have them stopped. I know that if she had done this to some people I know, locking her up would have been a kindness. Some people don't have the sense that god gave a turnip.
In any case, the IRS is not the primary motivation for these suits. In most cases, it appears the existing gambling interests that are fighting to keep their monopolies alive and safe from free market competition. They want to control the online gambling as they do the offline. Competition that might increase the payouts to consumers and cut profits are just not in the cards, so to speak.
Decoys, within the scenario as I understand it, are not an issue. If the missile is destroyed during boost phase, which is what the laser does, the missile has not yet released the warheads, with is where the decoys are likely to come in. A missile might carry one warhead and many decoys. The chance of warhead after release is slim. The problem statement, as I understand it, does not allow for decoy missiles. As has been widely reported, such a system is not intended to neutralize the major powers ability to attack the US, which would jeopardize the long standing policy of mutually assured destruction, but to neutralize the emerging powers, to maintain a policy of unilateral destruction by the US.
So these panes will be flying around with lasers, and if they can detect and verify a launch, there is no reason why they will not be able to destroy a missile. And this is why the reported test is of so little consequence. It simply means that the relatively simple problem of destroying a known boogie has been solved. This was just a matter of scaling up a laser and creating a form factor that will fit in a plane.
It does not identify a bogie in a time frame that is measure in tens of seconds rather than minutes.
To do this a launch must be detected and confirmed form a hostile and possibly unknown location, meaning no one site survelience. The launch must be confirmed as hostile, and probably trajectory to US soil. Likely very little time for human human verification of high level briefing. We are talking software sophisticated enough so that the decision made by the software is trusted, and sensors sensitive enough sot hey can detect a launch and verify the projectile. Despite what was said earlier, it would be possible to launch large tin cans as decoys if the detection software is bad.
Here is my issue. We will be spending money for several of these planes. We will be spending money to fuel and staff these relatively large planes. For what purpose? To defend against a minor threat that does not yet even exist? This, to me, is wasted money and misguided. For instance, N. Korea was well on the way to giving up nuclear capability, but then they had a food crisis again. The nuclear capability can be used by N. Korea to get hard cash, for instance by selling nuclear material, which can be used to feed it's people. It is not a geat solution, and they were willing to stop the program for food, but then everyone said, hey, n korea should feed themselves, which is what they are doing. Israel has bombs, and their history proves they have no problem going to war, so any sane enemy of israel is also going to have nuclear capability. QED.
We are going down the rabbit hole, and it is a freaky world were nations with one or two bombs can cause massive expenditures in their more wealthy neighbors. It is one way to even the playing field.
Addison Wesley is a the best publisher if one if looking for rigor. It is sometimes hard to read, but relatively error free, both implicate and explicate. I tend to favor these books when i am learning new concepts. They published the practice of programing, a game changing book from my point of view.
One should not rule out MS press on some of the basic techniques of programing, expecially those books coming from the macintosh side. I have not seen any books of late, but they have some classics on software development.
A challenger to o'reilly, and a higher quality mass production outlet, IMHO, is the pragmatic programmer. Where O'reilly is HTMl, pragmatic programer is best practices and Ruby.The former is a critical issue. One complaint I have about O'reilly is that they are limited in their scope. They don't really lay the ground work for a person to become a good programmer, only a passable one. Of course, when O'reilly began, it was not the fashion in the popular computer press to talk about best practices on the macro scale. That has changed. The Prgamatic programmer considers the whole process. For someone looking for accessible, complete, and overall correct coverage this is not a bad place to start.
The publishers I avoid. Anyhing for dummies or any variation. I know it is toungue in cheek, but if one thinks one is a dummy, success is not forthcoming. Any other silly variations. Sams Publishing. I have never bout a book from them that is helpfu. No Starch press has been of limited value to me, but then I don;t do all that much of what they write about. If I did I might have a different opinion, but my QT book is not no-starch, but prentice hall.
What I will say is this. I tend to know what I want for the stuff I already do. When I interested in learning something, new, I take a look at all the books. Just because a publisher does on thing well, doesn't mean they do everything well.
If only it were this simple. If it were more difficult to buy MS word in texas, then the entire reange of MS products might not be used. And I can think of nothing more sweet that a Texas without the MS virus. We could actualy open files without paying the MS protection money.
As I am ore interested in technology, I have visited NASA Houston and Cape Canaveral. Though the displays are often very kiddie centered, seeing the original mission control is worth the trip. As long one is in Houston, the Museum of Health is worth a trip, as well as the other 5-10 museums in the area. One of the best is the Menil Collection which is a testement to the social value of oil money. The Menil is a collection of several indoor and outdoor exhibitions.
I would also recommend the Bradbury Science Museum in Los Alamos, yes the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History in Albuquerque. It has artifacts I have not seen elsewhere, such as fully reconstructed planes and missles. Way cool. Of course, the Trinity site is also a museum piece, though I have never been able to make it. It is only open twice a year.
One would think so, but evidence does not support it. Those tricked out trucks are not cheap, yet I have heard many people who own such things complain about gas prices. In fact I would say the opposite is true. Those with reasonably priced vehicles that consume reasonable amounts of gas are not really effected by gas prices, because those people have not overextended themselves. It is the people that are trying to live a lifestyle they cannot afford, with big cars and long commutes from their expansive suburban homes, that are sensitive to a penny in the price of a gallon of gas.
I just wonder if the upcoming chrome OS is going to get he same scrutiny when it 'phones home' as other OS do.
Or what about pain that will never go away. What is the purpose of have a burn victim still feel pain days after the injury. Or lifelong back pain. What kind of design relishes in making organisms suffer for no apparent reason?
Then of course there is sex. From a procreation point of view, one would the process to be as simple as possible, not a few to several minutes of interaction. One could have designed us so the interaction was separate from reproduction. That way we could couple as needed, to have orgasms, but then make babies only when it was useful. The combination of the two is obvious trickery, and it says something about the design.
The problem if there is real collusion to keep products off the market, as has been the case with the apparent MS bundling deals or the like.