I wonder why so many of the plans are PC only. How difficult is it to write a device driver for other OS COuld be very hard, bus so hard that one forfiets a good part of the market with money?
I wonder if it is a softwar thing. I remember a few years ago SBC was not supporting Macs. The only thing I could figure is that on a Mac you did not have to install the SBC software, which was basically a PPOE driver and some other stuff that was very close to spyware. SInce the Mac already has a PPOE driver and would automagically connect most of the time, I think SBC would lose money on whatever ad schemes they were pulling. I just put in a Router so I would not have to mess with the software config at all.
So, does this software that has to be installed limit use, or insure that license agreement is complied with? Is it, like SBC, some sort of cross marketing thing? Do the cards actually work on any machine, but is not just not supported?
Most people talk about the human line and the chimp line. I am pretty happy if they say 'chimp' instead of 'monkey' That, at least shows some progress. The linked article and the nature article clearly is talking about distant ancestors.
What is often interesting is that certain creatures are in the direct ancestral line of the Homo Sapien Sapien. The 'hypothetical' part of evolution, and of especial concern to those that really have no perspective on the laws, is often exactly which creatures are on the path and which aren't. So, in this case we have a suggestion that certain creatures that would have previously been considered outside of the line. Of course this was before the Genus of Homo even existed, so I guess we are talking only a family relation, and the interbreeding was still in the family.
But the nitpicking of names is not even the most overlooked thing in this paper. The paper presents a suggestion on how we might reconcile the genetic record with the fossil record. There is little evidence that such interbreeding occured. The suggestion is only taken seriously becuase it purportedly provides an elegant solution to the problem. Furthermore, we do not even know if the problem exists, scienctists may be misinterpreting the genetic or fossil record.
In any case, the notion should be taken as an elegant idea, not a statement or even assertion of truth. If the idea pans out, fine. But if a more elegant solution is found, and the idea does not pan out, then a lot of good scientists are going to be look like a fool due to bad reporting.
I honestly can barely get XP to run on 1GHZ laptop with 384MB ram and plenty of HD space. It takes several minutes to boot up, and OO.org will barely run. And this is with a fresh install of XP, and no apparent viruses or spyware. I know that RAM is critical, but I just haven't upgraded.
Since you brought up the mac, I do run latest OS X, OO.org, slow as it is, on a Powerbook G4 running at 550 MHZ. I also do quite reasonable work on an even older PowerMac,but with more memory.
But what I really wanted to say is that I hope these specs indicate that they have made more Vista more effecient than XP, because if I can get Vista to run on old PC laptop, I will buy it, as long as I can figure out how to upgrade the RAM.
Looking at the history of technology, and the acceleration, the days of the PC, as a primary force, may be limited. It has had it 20 year run, and that is about as long as any computer mature computer technology has lasted.
The best case in point in the mainframe. It was developed into a mature product over the mid 1900s, and then reached it peak in the late 60's. By the late 80's, the microcomputer underdog was replacing the mainframe in many applications. Sure there are still places a mainframe is used, but the PC was seen to be more flexible, and allowed a more democratic use of technology. The PC became the GPC, and the mainframe was relegated to a few verticle markets.
Well the PC has had it's time in the sun, and we are seeing the same problems. Huge investments, not really in hardware, but in software. Single vendor lock backed by the holding for ransom of critcal company data in proprietary formats. Incredible problems on managing thousands of individual machines. THe expectations that novices can manage thier own machines. All this has proven quite unrealistic.
Some of us will continue to use the PC for many years in the same way that some of us welcomed mainframe access until the terminal was torn away from our grasps. However, those that just want a solution, might choose other routes. Web services might be that route. For a bussiness we might have a hybrid situation of central servers and cheap smart terminals. This has been tried, but what has killed it is that MS still wants the full license fee, so there is not cost saving. We still need to pay MS, and we still need to have a computer that can run the OS, even if we need this power for nothing else.
Some enterprising accountant will one day force the question of why does every worker bee need an individualized mid range computer, when all we really run is 2 applications that can be served over the network, email, and a browser, all of which can be run on a much cheaper machine and *nix. No reason to have MS extort money, no reason to have the BSA on our asses and in our bussinesses. I know people who worked with IBM, and they said this kind of greedy behavior is exactly what almost killed IBM, and it will be what kills the PC.
And Dell and the others are scared. MS needs to sell upgrades of the OS. Dell needs an excuse for consumers to by new machines. If the office goes to cheaper appliances to run the few applications, instead of the GPC, then the employess will run the same stuff at home. Some who wants games might go with a PC, or a console. Other might go with Apple. But most might go witht the Wal*Mart special that will do what it needs to do, connect to the web services, and not require the $100 investment in spyware protection, the continuous security upgrades, and the annoying serial numbers. It will just work.
Gates want the pc era to last forever because MS does not learn the lessons of history. Therefore they are going to be destined to repeat the history. In 10 years it will be as quaint to have a PC in your house as it is to have a wood burning stove.
At some point we must accept that we are subjects to the laws of the juridiction in which we operate. At the very least, we are expected to respect those laws in exchange for the freedom to operate. This could involve stopping at lights when driving, or omplying with safety regulations, or a dress code. Granted, in a reasonable society there is always leeway in the laws, but the basic need to respect the rule of law is central. No matter if we agree with it or not.
If we disagree we have two choices. We can not operate in that jurisdiction, or we can try to change the laws. The problem with the later is that there is often the danger that we are asking laws to be changed to increase our personal profit, not to help the larger community. Althogh there is nothing wrong with this, The US was founded on such self serving principles, it hardly is ethical to expect a ticker tape parade.
The problems with firms ignoring reasonable laws of the land, no matter how unfair, is clear. In the US many feel the immigration laws are unfair, yet when firms ignore those laws and bring in undocumented workers, costs are incurred on the larger society that would otherwise often be imposed on the firms. Likewise, when firms refuse to pay taxes, the penalty is put on future generations that must pay off the debt.
Now, I, like most in the US, know very little about China. I know we forced our way in with a gunboat. I know we are all keen on selling the masses our stuff. And I know we desperately need thier money to finance a housing boom and a war in Iraq. But I don't know how Yahoo ignoring the Unjust laws will make anything any better. If the bus companies had ignored the segration laws, would MLK ever have marched on Selma? Maybe not. The best thing to do is to work with the laws and let the negative consequences appear. The laws will adjust. THe only problem is that every few generation everyone forgets about past experiene, and in a fit of greed tries to bring back the broken laws in hopes of getting rich quick, which some do, but at a great expense to society.
So, If we are going to operate in China we must do so with our laws, just like we expect those to operate in the US according to our laws. And before anyone gets on the high horse, just check how many objects you own that are from china, and think about how much oppression you are funding. Or how much you bought from Wal*Mart, and think about the number of illigal immigrants that were smuggled in to clean up that store. We are all culpible, and crying that someone else is not all high and mighty is simply counterproductive.
I am not saying we should not fight unjust laws. I am simply saying we should be realistic. And if we do want to fight the unjust laws, we do it outselves, and not complain that someons else is not.
This has been typical for a very long time. MS or the BSA sends a threatening letter to audit and bill multiple damages. This can be avoided if you install thier spyware app on all your computers. This costs massive amounts, on top the massive amount spent on licensing to MS, in terms of IT and the lost productivity of those using the computers. There is also often an 'inspection' in which MS lists all non-MS outfitted kit, followed by a hard sell to switch MS kit.
Of course this scam is older than MS, and is seen when a company can no longer compete on innovation. For instance, IBM lost many customer due their scare tactics and general lack of respect for the customer. OTOH, IBM has many years of experience in delivering a full package of productivity enhanacement to customers, not just machines, not just software, but process, so IBM was able to revive itself as a provider of integrated solutions. I am told that IBM is much more respectful now.
Even further back we have the oil tycoons and the indescriminate use of force. Like MS, they learned that giving money away is a very cost effectvie manner to clean up a dirty image.
MS provides software. Someone else makes and supports the hardware. Someone else makes and supports the work flow. Someone else makes and support the bussiness plan. MS does not have Rational or anything like it. I wonder if MS is going to be able to reinvent itself, or merely continue to threaten customers and milk the monopoly for as long as it can.
This is not really news or new. Companies will continue to use MS products as long as that remains the path of least resistance. The money and lost producivity is not always such a great issue. Just force the schedule and punish the code monkeys when they don't meet it.
I will expand that and say writing is not the same thing as formating. And the type of product dictates the process one uses.
To expand on that, I see people worrying about not only spelling and grammer, but about character spacing, intra paragraph spacing, fonts, and which characters are to be bold, all before they get anything meaningful on paper. These are the people who demand HTML in email.
Another issue any college professor is going to go against is the 5 paragraph essay literary form, everything can be done starting as a graphic organizer, first draft, and then final draft. The creativity is placed in providing personal detail, not in the structuring the paper to present a clear argument. Any technical paper, be it a summary, a research note, an instruction manual, will have a creative structure dictated by the subject, but will necesarily start with an overview. And what is confusing is that overview is the last thing that is written, but is the first part of the paper. This is something that took me a very long time to learn.
It is really just like a long proof. If your kirkoff's diagrams are screwed, or the forces on the beams are not effeciently distributed, or the chemical form is not drawn right, the problems become much harder to solve. Writing is simply a matter of knowing how to set up the problem so that solution flows. I think what engineers do is try to reinvent the writing process every time they start a new paper. Journals have fixed formats for a reason. A professor should encourage a fixed format, just as the physics teacher makes everyone draw thier inclined plane the same way. Eventually a good engineer will develop a format that works for her.
So, the student should be told to get the ideas, steps, critical parts of the argument, down on paper. In the old days, we put these things on index cards and rearranged them to create a clear progression. Any formatting, other than a heirachy, should be strictly forbidden. And there is nothing wrong with priniting out the paper, and then literally cutting it apart. Once this is done, the ideas should be placed in a handy format, and the paper should write itself.
Good luck on getting the students to be creative and clear. Many years ago when I was in engineering school, writing was also the big topic. All the big firms hated the fact that the schools were graduating students who could not write. I prefered writing to solving the same equation 100 times, so I went on to other things.
The talk lately has been that plenty of technology exists to help in rescue efforts and insure the trapper persons survive until rescue happens. The probelm seems to be funding for production, the market for these devices is very small, following existing safety regulation, and training. THE VLF frequency radio is nothing new, and this just seems like a way promote the technology and encourage the federal authorities to mandate the device, and probably use tax monies to partially fund the deployment. I don't know why we would want to do this insted of enforcing the current regulation, perhaps raise fines on violation, and, if we want to be realy radical, actually expect the fines to be paid. In fact USA Today, which I am lothe to quote, seems to think that the current rash of accidents are a result of lack of enforcement over the past several years, and not the direct result of the lack of any safety equipment. I know that I would much rather be at the dinner table with my family than trapped in a mine, even if I did have the ability to say goodbye with my last dying breath, and with the full knowledge that the mine company will get the digging equipment in as soon as humanly possible, and would pay the $5000 fine for the accident, if it survived the appeal.
Which is not to say that accidents never happen, but when a mine has been cited at nearly every safety inspection, and has not paid fines, one wonders whether more safety gizmos are really going to do any good.
Some of these rumours are just, like, what do you expect.
The pro line is called the MacBook Pro, so the consumer line is called the MacBook. I expect the Intel towers, if they ever appear, to be called the Mac, MacTower, MacPC, or the like. They do seem to be moving away from the brand of 'power' to the brand of book.
As far as the screen size, the industry does seen to be standardizing on the 13.3 screen as the small entrant. In terms of cost, this is probably the best choice for the entry level portable. What is interesting is that this probably means that we will see a consolodation of the iBook and Powerbook into a Macbook. The MacBook will be a compromise dimension betwen 12 and 15 inches, while the pro models will be 15 and 17 inches.
Which also leaves the 12" models in limbo. These are really a perfect size, and if the 12" PowerBooks are ever $800 dollars I may buy one, as we are unlikely to see such a machine again. I wonder how long Apple is going to produce PowerPC based macines, which is, really to ask, how long until the PowerMacs are replaced. Or is Apple just going to produce laptops and media centers, and leave the pro image editing to the MS crowd? I shudder to think.
In any case, we will see what happens over the next few day and the next year. Certainly Apple has plenty of time to pull an rabbit out of it's hat since we won't see big PC sales until christmas of 2007 when MS vista will be ready for prime time.
Oh, the joys of life. Perhaps I will get a PowerMac G5 yet, even if they slurp electricity like it is water.
Google is supposed to index the internet. The searcher is supposed to get an list of sites that are of likely interest based on the search criterea. If google starts to say this site is good and this site is bad, based on it's own metrics, that is censorship. Likewise, if humans have a direct impact on the results, that is also censorship.
Now, we do know that some people, mostly persons looking to maximize their click through advertising, will make a page appear to be useful for a certain search result. when in fact it is not. This is exactly the thing that killed the search engines prior to Google. Google is big now becuase of the innovation that rather than looking at key words, they will look also at the links to the page, thereby reducing the rank of pages that merely contain all the words int he dictionary.
The problem is that this meant these persons who wanted to trick users into clicking on thier page now had to have multiple sites pointed to each other so that Google would think the site was populat, when all it was really was that the advetiser has 50 sites instead of 1. THe blogging was just anohther tool for this naughty behavior. The end result is that in addition to the natural growth of the internet, one had a secondary effect of millions of pages that existed merely to increase the original pages google rank.
So, the current state of the internet, with a significant percentage of pages being link farms, is of Googles own making. While it is wrong to for google to state that this page is 'good' while this page is 'bad' is pretty much censorship, especially since Google has said it would index the web, and not just the web it likes, there is nothing wrong with it promoting pages that are not link farms, which are generally of little use to the average user.
In the end the only thing we can do it to have another innovate search technique that will make link farms unprofitable, in the same way that Google made keywords ineffective. As I have mentioned before my main disappointment is that Google has not created that innovation, and indeed is looking like Altavista prior to it's demise, and no other vendor has stepped in, particularly MSN.
I think that this is because the search bussiness has become merely another way to connect advetisers to people. There is no reason to create higher quality results than is needed to keep advertisers happy. It is just like TV. So, even if the results suck, as long as they are good enough to bring eyeballs, and as long as no one is doing anything better, life is good.
What doesn't surprise me is that the WSJ once again published an article that is so out of touch with the laws of reality, physics, and logic. One pervasive problem in bussiness, the thing that allowed the dot com bubble and Enron, is that bussiness people seem to have never learned or have choosen to ignore the basic law of conservation. They believe that as long as an account has, following good accounting practices, shown something to be true, then it is. Even the consumer belives that if a reputable firm advertises something, that is truth. And as long as a highly paid consultant has shown something to be true, then it is no matter what ones own eyes and ears say. It is like a person continuing to claim there are not black swans when a black swan is standing right there.
My favorite current example is the frequent flyer miles. I have read that currently the airlines have maybe 10 trillion miles of racked up to frequent flyers, around 50 million trips. If one believes the ad copy that each mile is worth 1-2 cents, then that is a liability of 1 trillion dollars, or 10% of the US GDP. If you believe the accounting that is evidently used in the industry, the liability is more like 100 million dollars. The truth is certanly somewhere in between, and is likely never to be known, because valid numbers seem to be no use to the bussiness community.
This is the same thing. If the industry is losing 6 billion dollars per year, then that represents 25% of worldwide sales. Show me a firm that can tolerate a 25% shrinkage of sales, and still manage record profits, and I will show you an industry that needs to be audited by the government for price gouging, and unlike the Oil industry is likely to be found in violation of any number of laws. Clearly this so-called piracy has almost no impact the bottom line, and merely represents an untapped market. It is like WalMart knowing that if they could only force the middle and upper class to shop at thier stores they would be doing as well, on a per store basis, as Target, but, unfortuantely, Wal*mart has no legal way to force a customer to shop at Wal*mart. Clearly these other industries want to make laws that force people to consume products in a prescribed manner that is clearly not the prefered method of consumption.
I think this a philosophical issue. Is it better to have a mal formed or unregisted domain return a 404 or a list of alternative sites? Some would feel that running everything typed into the URL line should pass through a search engine so if the user made a mistake alternatives could be presented. Others would say that browser should simple do the best with a URL and try to find a domain. In practical expereince this means that one browser would take th input amazon, run it through a search engine, and return a list results along with ads, while another browser might just tack on the http://www/ and com and go to the amazon website.
From the user point of view, the browser simply going to amazon is the better experience. From the search engine point of view, forcing users to view ads is better. This is why IE is set to set MSN for anything but the most perfectly formed URL. This, of course, screws advertisers as they are paying to present ads to users that are in fact not searching for anything but merely have been hijacked on the way to the desired destination.
I have a grand idea. Perhaps they could find a way to transmit quality audio to a large number of people, say over a wireless or wire connection. And say they bought a bunch of recordings that were popular and people wanted to listen to and played these recordings. Then, when they had a bunch of people listening, they could have firm pay to talk to these people about products and services these firms were selling, thereby generating a revenue stream to offset the costs of the tranmision and recording and labor. And to get the listeners more involved, perhaps the listeners could choose the recording that were played.
My God, this is at least as original one click shopping. I must go out and patent it. Now none of y'all get the idea of stealing it from me!
So we start blaming the immigrants for everything. The fact that joe is not working has nothing to do with the fact that he is an unskilled lazy person, it is that some immigrant took his job. The fact that jane is not pretty is not because she looks like a pig, but becaue the immigrants are so much prettier and will put out for half as much.
The reality, at least in Texas is that every child must have immunizations to go to school or attend a child care facility. If no immunizations, no school. This is taken very seriously. I see kids kicked out of school all the time because of this. I missed a day of school because of this. This is practcially the only requirement to be let into a public school.
Even day care centers are required to have all children immunized. Some immunizations have to happen as early as two years old. Now, parent may choose to put their kids into day care centers of private schools that are not in complience, but all public schools and reputable day care centers must follow these rules. There are public health centers set up everywhere to give these shots, no questions asked. Unfortunately the shots do cost around $10.
The only exception is if the doctor thinks the shot might harm the child, or if the parent does not want to have the child have the shot. If the parent chooses not to, it still requires significant effort in terms of an affidavit. Now, tell me, who do you think is going to get such an affidavit. An immigrant that is worried about status, or a US citizen that has been watching too much daytime TV?
This only has to do with the immigration debate if we start forcing health care providers to screen patients for status, while allowing employer to hire whomever the wish. The last thing we need is a bunch of kids afraid to get thier shots, wandering the street because they can't get into school, while their parent pack chickens at Tysons, cleans the Wal*mart, or keep the house and lawns in the nice area of town. Ultimately the firms want these immigrants for cheap labor, and the rich people want them for cheap housekeeping, and it is not costing us that much for education, and most pay taxes, at least on goods they buy, and it is always good to give kids an american education so they are biased to our way of life and don't feel like everyone in the US is evil, so all we really need to do is manage the labor supply, create a felony for those that don't do due process and hire them, create a tracking system so employer can conduct due process, and continue to provide basic healthcare for all persons who need it.
pretty much these all boil down to the fact that we are at two generation that have no experience with the deadly impliciation of these childhood illnesses. I suspect that very few people even have a grandparent that has been striken by polio of mumps or cholera.
It is not that we, at least in the US, do not try to immunize everyone. Every child who attends school must be immunized. No exceptions. I do not believe that health providers, unless the fucked up congress has done something lately, need to ask about anything before giving a shot. These shots are so critical to our public health that we ought to just be giving them away for free to every child. I mean the cost of the shot versus the cost of treating the illness and all. There is no reason to track kids. Just make sure they have shots before putting them in closed groups. Colleges should do the same.
Again, the issue is people not understanding the security implications. Before vaccine, the number of cases and deaths were measured in thousands every year. Two generations ago Polio paralyzed at least 20,000 people per year, and now we are worried about a few hundrend with autism allegedly caused by the vaccine? Would these kids have been strong enough to survive without the vacine anyway? Sure we should make it as safe as possible, but get some perspective. In the case of mumps, there were a few hundred thousand people a years that got mumps, and perhaps a hundred died. Now the number of cases are a few thousand, with perhaps no one dies. Which world do you want to live in? It is like all thes fanatics wanting a simpler world, but who many woulg give up the air conditioning, car, fast food, non-wood stove, or TV?
I am sure that the left and right wing wackos will be the first to complain when an outbreak occurs, but it will be their fault. There is no absolute security, but vaccines has certainly seem to make the world an overall safer place. Whether it is good to have children who would have died under normal circumstances live is up for debate, but what is not is that vaccines seem to help us all.
On a last note, in this case it may be that the virus has outgrown the vaccine, and certainly the overuse of antibiotics and anti-viral agents, especially hand sanitizer, will help create a supervirus that could destroy us all. But vaccines are not there to kiil the virus, just to prepare our bodies for the eventual attack.
I think this is what is up with daredevil. Let's assume that form the most part, the average adult equates the internet with IE. In other words, when they want to browse, the say I need to open the internet, but what they do is open IE. These people are lost. Let's further assume that, like in most households I know, the kids are the tech support. This commercial is therefore targeted to the middle school group who has some control over the computer. These kids will respond to the little girl, as the girl does not tell anyone what to do, but merely equates the use of a product with a life style. It is how we got kids to smoke, and how we now get kids to go to McDonalds. It is how we get kids who are really to young to care about fashion to spend huge amounts of thier parents money on products they do not comprehend. It is a winning, if somewhat unethical, formula.
Oh, and I belive skateboarding was invented by surfers so they could keep in shape when they could not surf. So, for the vast majority of kids who do not surf, skateboarding a much more accessible connection.
Here is my take. Linux now providess a good OS, but in the initial development of the internet, it was almost a non player. The diversity and quantity of jobs we enjoy now are a direct result on MS not being allowed to make the Internet and IE only space, which was due to the likes of Sun.
In the late 80's, there was some question as to who was going to be the dominant player. The commodization of the PC had not yet happened. Apple had a good machine in the Mac, bussinesses were being rebuilt on it and Excel, MS had good applications but not a good OS, and mainframes and mini were still abundant.
By the early 90's, nearly everyone has moved to a commodized cheap PC running windows. It was did not neccesarily work well, but it was affordable infrastructure. Nearly everthing was built on windows. The only exceptions were specilized firms and instituions running Mac OS, Sun, or SGI, at the high end. The later two were expecially significant because they kept the *nix flavor running on bussiness hardware.
The popular use of the Internet then happened, and Netscape became a big player. As soon as MS realized that once agian it was letting the money fetish get in the way innovation, it fought back by hacking the standards and attempting to create a PC centric Internet. MS almost succeded. There were two things that kept that from happening. First was the number of people who ran on non MS software. Much of this was Netscape, but a finite audience was the universities and bussinesses, those precise people who had resources to use the internet, running on non-commodity hardware. Therefore, even when netscape imploded, the likes of Yahoo and Amazon never went to a exclusive MS based, or even Flash based, experience. Such a move would have cost it a number of customers that they must think is significant. This, and the fact that the servers were often still non-commodity. Even in the late 90's, when MS finnaly developed a minimialy functinal OS, the server market still have a significant number of non-MS based solutions.
The second factor is Java. As much as people hate it, it does provde a mechanism to do some specific things that are platform independent. This means that many people who might have switched simply to be compatible, did not have to. This means that many sites that would have had to moved to an IE based solution to provide a service had an alternative. The danger of Java can be seen it the massive effort MS put forth to destroy it. The benifit of Java can be seen in that unlike Netscape,it was never quite as destroyed.
MS has shown that it will get lazy without competition. The fiasco that was Office during much of the 90's. The late arrival to the internet. The fiasco that is IE now. If we did not have the likes of Sun pushing the technology, if MS had gained control of the Internet, we would not have the rich experience that we have now. We would probably be stuck with IE in '95. Just look at the lack of innovation in bandwidth the US has experienced in the last five years that the Telco and CableCo has been allowed to control the lines, as opposed to the growth we in the 90's when the Telcos were told to be much more liberal. Just look at the lame cell phone service and crippled headsets we have now. Imiagine if the US auto companies had no comptition, and we all still being forced to drive cars that god 15 mpg at gas that $3 a gallon.
I don't what Linux is actually going to do. I am afraid that MS will succedd in building a virtualization layer, and Linux will just ride on top of that. I have more faith in the GNU tools allowing growth than Linux.
Ok, this is not about an open mind. This is not about if Wal*Mart is, overall, a good thing. This is about trying to inhibit the conversation about if, on balance, after talking about all the things, positive or negative, Wal*Mart is a good thing. No one needs to fabricate evidence because, as with any rational corporation, Wal*mart does spin all evidence to it's advantage and attempts to minimize negatvie stories. I myself submitted a story to/. about Wally courted blogger to astroturf, and there have numerous additional stories about 'wally's war room'. In the end, it is silly to talk about having an open mind when the subject at hand is unwilling to have an unbiased debate.
The other issue is vested interests. If a person is paid so little that they need the low wally prices, they will not look too hard at why the prices are so low. If a every other job has been chased out of town, they will be greatful for the wally job. If a person is getting wealthy over wally stock, they are not going to care where the money is coming from. And since so many people fit these catagories, and the rest feel dearly threatened by the encroachment, one can hardly assume a unbaised argument is possible, but one does now who holds the bulk of the resources.
The issue here is that because Apple has never, ever, made a long term commitment to a piece of application software, few people belive they will, and even fewer, who hope to build a long term enterprise, should be willing to use such software.
Typically, the consumer and small bussiness stuff is good. However, I don't do much in Pages becuase I do not now when apple will drop support, as it did for MacWrite. Filemaker is good, but it is now an independent piece of software, and who know when it will go bust. I do not encode anything in iTunes as ACC, becuase who knows what will happen with iTunes, although that has a better chance as it is linking with the currently popular iPod.
I think that this is another stake in the Apple coffin as an trusted application provider. Even with MS, whose cost and versioning is outrageous, at least has the history showing you will have an application for the next release. I like Apple computers, but I generally look somewhere else, mor frequently OSS, for application software.
It seems to me that one can be against an act, but still not want to excessively prosecute it. For instance, many would be against spam, but not want to impose the regulation or allow the the control by the big telco that would eradicate the problem. I think this is what is occuring with many artists. They want the money, so are unhappy with the drop in sales. OTOH, they do not see any net benifit in suing the fans into oblivion. Such artiest try to increase sales using more creative methods. They included a DVD with music videos along with the music CD. They link the sale of the CD to concert tickets, or vice versa. Some might even have a big promotion on iTunes with exclusive content in an attempt to compete with unlicensed acquistion.
This is pretty much just the standard story of MS, who has a difficult time keepping schedules and limited experience in sophisticated hardware. The XBOX 360 launch was clearly just a desperate attempt to get a product that was not ready launched for the christmas season. This wass further complicated by the lack of planning in distribution. As you mentioned, rather than just a US launch, they insisted on a simulataneous international launch, which is just crazy.
Again this shows the differences between producing software and selling licenses and producing hardware, and actually having to manufacture the product. In the later MS has shown it lack of competance. Perhpas that is why they are not producing their new fangled tablet design, and instead leaving it to the pros.
The common average, or the mean, is probably not the best measure in this case. What we are looking for is a price that market forces, has, over time, indicated to be the most resonable price for a console. The mean does not provide this number as it can be corrupted buy sellers who offer products at artifically high or low prices. For instances, one can sell a shirt for $300, but for the most part shirts are sold for $25, and selling for more or less might sacrifice sales or profits. Since MS primary goal seems to be sales, we might assume that they looked for such a sweet spot.
If we put the numbers in order, we note two things. First, there are four prices less than $300 and four prices more than $400. These can be considered outliers, consoles that were priced outside of the historical norm. Second, the six remaining prices are around the mid 300s, which means that it is likely that a price significantly under $400 is probably a good place to be. Therefore, from the point fo view of selling consoles $399 is as high as it is safe to go. Though essentially $400, it is psychologically less than $400. We can conclude that MS probably set the price as low as they could afford to, and as high as they dared. $350 would have been much more reasonable given historical data, but probably represented too much of a loss for MS.
I am sure there is some reason to want the new iBook, like we need to run windows, but consider what one really needs an ultraportable for. To do some basic work, to do some basic email, to do some basic browsing. The 12" powerbook is not so great for video editing. It is not so great for picture editing. It is not so great for most high power applications. It is not because it is slow. It is not slow, it is plenty fast. It is because the screen is small and the unit gets very hot when it does a lot of work.
The new 13.3" MacBooks will likely be bigger. If I wanted a small computer, I would wait for a 12" to come up refurbished, and get it for a song, or a least about as much as you would have to pay Dell. The Sonys are also cute, but way expensive.
First, I really wonder why everyone complians that books cost too much. A general audience hardback book is $20. A DVD, which has a much lower cost to press, is $15. Is the book really that expensive?
Second, when one thinks of a text or referece book, this represents an incredible amount of effort on the part of the writers and editors. Gettting everything right is hard. For examples, the cheaper computer books are full of significant errors and misprints. Even reilly has a tough time getting it perfect, and these are often mid priced books. I am just now reading a Ruby book from them and in the first few pages is a passage that is either awkwardly presented, or an example is missing. Sure, if I am just reading it for fun that is acceptable, but since I tend to be somewhat serious in my computer stuff, I want the real things. So I have little problem paying more for something that is correct. When I was working computers, $80 for a good book was nothing compared to what is saved me on my jobs.
Now as far as school is concerned there are three issues. First, the writers have to be paid. These are often proffesors that have a skill of writing things down in such a way that a student has a good chance of understanding what is going on. They also provide relevent problem sets with solutions. The publisher has to be paid, without whom we would not have a book, as someone probably had to front some money. We also need a store, so publishers can ship limited quantities of books to certain well known locations for students to buy.
Now, here is the rub. College textbooks are not neccesarily that expensive. As has mentioned, at least some of the books can be bought used and sold, whcih means that any one book, at least at the lower levels, is unlikely going to cost more than $50. Second, books can be shared. Find someone in to go halfsies. And third, I had very few proffesors that actually demanded and checked we had the most recent version of the book.
So, what can be done. I think the publisher should sell electronic versions of the books that expire after one year. The books should be 1/3 the cost of the orignal book. Second, the univsersity should be able to buy an affordable site license to the book so that it can be read on any library computer. Finally, the reissuing of books for the purpose of stopping reselling must be halted, though this may not be such a big issue as with reselling no student will be stuck with more than half the cost.
My gut feeling is that most of this has more to do with the expectation of the student rather than the cost of the books. Books represent an opportunity cost to most people, not an investment. I think when someone buys a book, they are thinking of the beer that they cannot afford. OTOH, when someone buy a bag of chips and a coke every day for a week, they do not think of the book they could have bought. School is about education, and sometimes we have to give something up to become educated. On problem I see with the modern compulsary public educational system is that they parent and kids expect everything to be given to them. Clothes, books, supplies, transportation. Now some of this is appropriate, and much is needded. However to be educated one needs to begin to take some responsibility and sacrifice at leat a little. If that measn that a student does not get a new clothes, or a car, or even prefered meal, perhaps at the college level that is ok.
One last thing. Some of the increase in books relate to student needs. For instance when i was in college, the Physics textbook transitions from a simple black and white print with line drawing. This was a cheap book to produce, and for the amount of information was very reasonable priced. However, presumable due the MTV generation, it became a much more expensive book with color drawing, color photos, and the like. There was no more physics in it, no better teaching, just fancier and more expensive graphics. Go figure. Students paid more money and perhaps sacrificed education for glitz.
The nanos were clearly created to replace the minis, which were cute but had limited battery life due to the power requirements of the hard drives, and as they were so small could not have larger batteries.
As the minis were phased out, they had a capacity of 6 gig. I have been expecting the nano to increase to 8 gig for a while. Of course the nano still has a short battery life, and perhpas the added memeory is just going to make that worse.
The 4GB are available, and given Apple discounts are not overly expensive. I do not see a 10 gig nano, as the nanos seem to have pairs of cards. Hopefully they will come out with a 8 gig Nano in the $250 price range, and drop the other prices according. That might be enough space to make it worthwhile. I would also like to see a 2gig shuffle, though that product line also seems to be dead.
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I wonder if it is a softwar thing. I remember a few years ago SBC was not supporting Macs. The only thing I could figure is that on a Mac you did not have to install the SBC software, which was basically a PPOE driver and some other stuff that was very close to spyware. SInce the Mac already has a PPOE driver and would automagically connect most of the time, I think SBC would lose money on whatever ad schemes they were pulling. I just put in a Router so I would not have to mess with the software config at all.
So, does this software that has to be installed limit use, or insure that license agreement is complied with? Is it, like SBC, some sort of cross marketing thing? Do the cards actually work on any machine, but is not just not supported?
What is often interesting is that certain creatures are in the direct ancestral line of the Homo Sapien Sapien. The 'hypothetical' part of evolution, and of especial concern to those that really have no perspective on the laws, is often exactly which creatures are on the path and which aren't. So, in this case we have a suggestion that certain creatures that would have previously been considered outside of the line. Of course this was before the Genus of Homo even existed, so I guess we are talking only a family relation, and the interbreeding was still in the family.
But the nitpicking of names is not even the most overlooked thing in this paper. The paper presents a suggestion on how we might reconcile the genetic record with the fossil record. There is little evidence that such interbreeding occured. The suggestion is only taken seriously becuase it purportedly provides an elegant solution to the problem. Furthermore, we do not even know if the problem exists, scienctists may be misinterpreting the genetic or fossil record.
In any case, the notion should be taken as an elegant idea, not a statement or even assertion of truth. If the idea pans out, fine. But if a more elegant solution is found, and the idea does not pan out, then a lot of good scientists are going to be look like a fool due to bad reporting.
Since you brought up the mac, I do run latest OS X, OO.org, slow as it is, on a Powerbook G4 running at 550 MHZ. I also do quite reasonable work on an even older PowerMac,but with more memory.
But what I really wanted to say is that I hope these specs indicate that they have made more Vista more effecient than XP, because if I can get Vista to run on old PC laptop, I will buy it, as long as I can figure out how to upgrade the RAM.
The best case in point in the mainframe. It was developed into a mature product over the mid 1900s, and then reached it peak in the late 60's. By the late 80's, the microcomputer underdog was replacing the mainframe in many applications. Sure there are still places a mainframe is used, but the PC was seen to be more flexible, and allowed a more democratic use of technology. The PC became the GPC, and the mainframe was relegated to a few verticle markets.
Well the PC has had it's time in the sun, and we are seeing the same problems. Huge investments, not really in hardware, but in software. Single vendor lock backed by the holding for ransom of critcal company data in proprietary formats. Incredible problems on managing thousands of individual machines. THe expectations that novices can manage thier own machines. All this has proven quite unrealistic.
Some of us will continue to use the PC for many years in the same way that some of us welcomed mainframe access until the terminal was torn away from our grasps. However, those that just want a solution, might choose other routes. Web services might be that route. For a bussiness we might have a hybrid situation of central servers and cheap smart terminals. This has been tried, but what has killed it is that MS still wants the full license fee, so there is not cost saving. We still need to pay MS, and we still need to have a computer that can run the OS, even if we need this power for nothing else.
Some enterprising accountant will one day force the question of why does every worker bee need an individualized mid range computer, when all we really run is 2 applications that can be served over the network, email, and a browser, all of which can be run on a much cheaper machine and *nix. No reason to have MS extort money, no reason to have the BSA on our asses and in our bussinesses. I know people who worked with IBM, and they said this kind of greedy behavior is exactly what almost killed IBM, and it will be what kills the PC.
And Dell and the others are scared. MS needs to sell upgrades of the OS. Dell needs an excuse for consumers to by new machines. If the office goes to cheaper appliances to run the few applications, instead of the GPC, then the employess will run the same stuff at home. Some who wants games might go with a PC, or a console. Other might go with Apple. But most might go witht the Wal*Mart special that will do what it needs to do, connect to the web services, and not require the $100 investment in spyware protection, the continuous security upgrades, and the annoying serial numbers. It will just work.
Gates want the pc era to last forever because MS does not learn the lessons of history. Therefore they are going to be destined to repeat the history. In 10 years it will be as quaint to have a PC in your house as it is to have a wood burning stove.
If we disagree we have two choices. We can not operate in that jurisdiction, or we can try to change the laws. The problem with the later is that there is often the danger that we are asking laws to be changed to increase our personal profit, not to help the larger community. Althogh there is nothing wrong with this, The US was founded on such self serving principles, it hardly is ethical to expect a ticker tape parade.
The problems with firms ignoring reasonable laws of the land, no matter how unfair, is clear. In the US many feel the immigration laws are unfair, yet when firms ignore those laws and bring in undocumented workers, costs are incurred on the larger society that would otherwise often be imposed on the firms. Likewise, when firms refuse to pay taxes, the penalty is put on future generations that must pay off the debt.
Now, I, like most in the US, know very little about China. I know we forced our way in with a gunboat. I know we are all keen on selling the masses our stuff. And I know we desperately need thier money to finance a housing boom and a war in Iraq. But I don't know how Yahoo ignoring the Unjust laws will make anything any better. If the bus companies had ignored the segration laws, would MLK ever have marched on Selma? Maybe not. The best thing to do is to work with the laws and let the negative consequences appear. The laws will adjust. THe only problem is that every few generation everyone forgets about past experiene, and in a fit of greed tries to bring back the broken laws in hopes of getting rich quick, which some do, but at a great expense to society.
So, If we are going to operate in China we must do so with our laws, just like we expect those to operate in the US according to our laws. And before anyone gets on the high horse, just check how many objects you own that are from china, and think about how much oppression you are funding. Or how much you bought from Wal*Mart, and think about the number of illigal immigrants that were smuggled in to clean up that store. We are all culpible, and crying that someone else is not all high and mighty is simply counterproductive.
I am not saying we should not fight unjust laws. I am simply saying we should be realistic. And if we do want to fight the unjust laws, we do it outselves, and not complain that someons else is not.
Of course this scam is older than MS, and is seen when a company can no longer compete on innovation. For instance, IBM lost many customer due their scare tactics and general lack of respect for the customer. OTOH, IBM has many years of experience in delivering a full package of productivity enhanacement to customers, not just machines, not just software, but process, so IBM was able to revive itself as a provider of integrated solutions. I am told that IBM is much more respectful now.
Even further back we have the oil tycoons and the indescriminate use of force. Like MS, they learned that giving money away is a very cost effectvie manner to clean up a dirty image.
MS provides software. Someone else makes and supports the hardware. Someone else makes and supports the work flow. Someone else makes and support the bussiness plan. MS does not have Rational or anything like it. I wonder if MS is going to be able to reinvent itself, or merely continue to threaten customers and milk the monopoly for as long as it can.
This is not really news or new. Companies will continue to use MS products as long as that remains the path of least resistance. The money and lost producivity is not always such a great issue. Just force the schedule and punish the code monkeys when they don't meet it.
To expand on that, I see people worrying about not only spelling and grammer, but about character spacing, intra paragraph spacing, fonts, and which characters are to be bold, all before they get anything meaningful on paper. These are the people who demand HTML in email.
Another issue any college professor is going to go against is the 5 paragraph essay literary form, everything can be done starting as a graphic organizer, first draft, and then final draft. The creativity is placed in providing personal detail, not in the structuring the paper to present a clear argument. Any technical paper, be it a summary, a research note, an instruction manual, will have a creative structure dictated by the subject, but will necesarily start with an overview. And what is confusing is that overview is the last thing that is written, but is the first part of the paper. This is something that took me a very long time to learn.
It is really just like a long proof. If your kirkoff's diagrams are screwed, or the forces on the beams are not effeciently distributed, or the chemical form is not drawn right, the problems become much harder to solve. Writing is simply a matter of knowing how to set up the problem so that solution flows. I think what engineers do is try to reinvent the writing process every time they start a new paper. Journals have fixed formats for a reason. A professor should encourage a fixed format, just as the physics teacher makes everyone draw thier inclined plane the same way. Eventually a good engineer will develop a format that works for her.
So, the student should be told to get the ideas, steps, critical parts of the argument, down on paper. In the old days, we put these things on index cards and rearranged them to create a clear progression. Any formatting, other than a heirachy, should be strictly forbidden. And there is nothing wrong with priniting out the paper, and then literally cutting it apart. Once this is done, the ideas should be placed in a handy format, and the paper should write itself.
Good luck on getting the students to be creative and clear. Many years ago when I was in engineering school, writing was also the big topic. All the big firms hated the fact that the schools were graduating students who could not write. I prefered writing to solving the same equation 100 times, so I went on to other things.
Which is not to say that accidents never happen, but when a mine has been cited at nearly every safety inspection, and has not paid fines, one wonders whether more safety gizmos are really going to do any good.
The pro line is called the MacBook Pro, so the consumer line is called the MacBook. I expect the Intel towers, if they ever appear, to be called the Mac, MacTower, MacPC, or the like. They do seem to be moving away from the brand of 'power' to the brand of book.
As far as the screen size, the industry does seen to be standardizing on the 13.3 screen as the small entrant. In terms of cost, this is probably the best choice for the entry level portable. What is interesting is that this probably means that we will see a consolodation of the iBook and Powerbook into a Macbook. The MacBook will be a compromise dimension betwen 12 and 15 inches, while the pro models will be 15 and 17 inches.
Which also leaves the 12" models in limbo. These are really a perfect size, and if the 12" PowerBooks are ever $800 dollars I may buy one, as we are unlikely to see such a machine again. I wonder how long Apple is going to produce PowerPC based macines, which is, really to ask, how long until the PowerMacs are replaced. Or is Apple just going to produce laptops and media centers, and leave the pro image editing to the MS crowd? I shudder to think.
In any case, we will see what happens over the next few day and the next year. Certainly Apple has plenty of time to pull an rabbit out of it's hat since we won't see big PC sales until christmas of 2007 when MS vista will be ready for prime time.
Oh, the joys of life. Perhaps I will get a PowerMac G5 yet, even if they slurp electricity like it is water.
Now, we do know that some people, mostly persons looking to maximize their click through advertising, will make a page appear to be useful for a certain search result. when in fact it is not. This is exactly the thing that killed the search engines prior to Google. Google is big now becuase of the innovation that rather than looking at key words, they will look also at the links to the page, thereby reducing the rank of pages that merely contain all the words int he dictionary.
The problem is that this meant these persons who wanted to trick users into clicking on thier page now had to have multiple sites pointed to each other so that Google would think the site was populat, when all it was really was that the advetiser has 50 sites instead of 1. THe blogging was just anohther tool for this naughty behavior. The end result is that in addition to the natural growth of the internet, one had a secondary effect of millions of pages that existed merely to increase the original pages google rank.
So, the current state of the internet, with a significant percentage of pages being link farms, is of Googles own making. While it is wrong to for google to state that this page is 'good' while this page is 'bad' is pretty much censorship, especially since Google has said it would index the web, and not just the web it likes, there is nothing wrong with it promoting pages that are not link farms, which are generally of little use to the average user.
In the end the only thing we can do it to have another innovate search technique that will make link farms unprofitable, in the same way that Google made keywords ineffective. As I have mentioned before my main disappointment is that Google has not created that innovation, and indeed is looking like Altavista prior to it's demise, and no other vendor has stepped in, particularly MSN.
I think that this is because the search bussiness has become merely another way to connect advetisers to people. There is no reason to create higher quality results than is needed to keep advertisers happy. It is just like TV. So, even if the results suck, as long as they are good enough to bring eyeballs, and as long as no one is doing anything better, life is good.
My favorite current example is the frequent flyer miles. I have read that currently the airlines have maybe 10 trillion miles of racked up to frequent flyers, around 50 million trips. If one believes the ad copy that each mile is worth 1-2 cents, then that is a liability of 1 trillion dollars, or 10% of the US GDP. If you believe the accounting that is evidently used in the industry, the liability is more like 100 million dollars. The truth is certanly somewhere in between, and is likely never to be known, because valid numbers seem to be no use to the bussiness community.
This is the same thing. If the industry is losing 6 billion dollars per year, then that represents 25% of worldwide sales. Show me a firm that can tolerate a 25% shrinkage of sales, and still manage record profits, and I will show you an industry that needs to be audited by the government for price gouging, and unlike the Oil industry is likely to be found in violation of any number of laws. Clearly this so-called piracy has almost no impact the bottom line, and merely represents an untapped market. It is like WalMart knowing that if they could only force the middle and upper class to shop at thier stores they would be doing as well, on a per store basis, as Target, but, unfortuantely, Wal*mart has no legal way to force a customer to shop at Wal*mart. Clearly these other industries want to make laws that force people to consume products in a prescribed manner that is clearly not the prefered method of consumption.
From the user point of view, the browser simply going to amazon is the better experience. From the search engine point of view, forcing users to view ads is better. This is why IE is set to set MSN for anything but the most perfectly formed URL. This, of course, screws advertisers as they are paying to present ads to users that are in fact not searching for anything but merely have been hijacked on the way to the desired destination.
My God, this is at least as original one click shopping. I must go out and patent it. Now none of y'all get the idea of stealing it from me!
The reality, at least in Texas is that every child must have immunizations to go to school or attend a child care facility. If no immunizations, no school. This is taken very seriously. I see kids kicked out of school all the time because of this. I missed a day of school because of this. This is practcially the only requirement to be let into a public school.
Even day care centers are required to have all children immunized. Some immunizations have to happen as early as two years old. Now, parent may choose to put their kids into day care centers of private schools that are not in complience, but all public schools and reputable day care centers must follow these rules. There are public health centers set up everywhere to give these shots, no questions asked. Unfortunately the shots do cost around $10.
The only exception is if the doctor thinks the shot might harm the child, or if the parent does not want to have the child have the shot. If the parent chooses not to, it still requires significant effort in terms of an affidavit. Now, tell me, who do you think is going to get such an affidavit. An immigrant that is worried about status, or a US citizen that has been watching too much daytime TV?
This only has to do with the immigration debate if we start forcing health care providers to screen patients for status, while allowing employer to hire whomever the wish. The last thing we need is a bunch of kids afraid to get thier shots, wandering the street because they can't get into school, while their parent pack chickens at Tysons, cleans the Wal*mart, or keep the house and lawns in the nice area of town. Ultimately the firms want these immigrants for cheap labor, and the rich people want them for cheap housekeeping, and it is not costing us that much for education, and most pay taxes, at least on goods they buy, and it is always good to give kids an american education so they are biased to our way of life and don't feel like everyone in the US is evil, so all we really need to do is manage the labor supply, create a felony for those that don't do due process and hire them, create a tracking system so employer can conduct due process, and continue to provide basic healthcare for all persons who need it.
It is not that we, at least in the US, do not try to immunize everyone. Every child who attends school must be immunized. No exceptions. I do not believe that health providers, unless the fucked up congress has done something lately, need to ask about anything before giving a shot. These shots are so critical to our public health that we ought to just be giving them away for free to every child. I mean the cost of the shot versus the cost of treating the illness and all. There is no reason to track kids. Just make sure they have shots before putting them in closed groups. Colleges should do the same.
Again, the issue is people not understanding the security implications. Before vaccine, the number of cases and deaths were measured in thousands every year. Two generations ago Polio paralyzed at least 20,000 people per year, and now we are worried about a few hundrend with autism allegedly caused by the vaccine? Would these kids have been strong enough to survive without the vacine anyway? Sure we should make it as safe as possible, but get some perspective. In the case of mumps, there were a few hundred thousand people a years that got mumps, and perhaps a hundred died. Now the number of cases are a few thousand, with perhaps no one dies. Which world do you want to live in? It is like all thes fanatics wanting a simpler world, but who many woulg give up the air conditioning, car, fast food, non-wood stove, or TV?
I am sure that the left and right wing wackos will be the first to complain when an outbreak occurs, but it will be their fault. There is no absolute security, but vaccines has certainly seem to make the world an overall safer place. Whether it is good to have children who would have died under normal circumstances live is up for debate, but what is not is that vaccines seem to help us all.
On a last note, in this case it may be that the virus has outgrown the vaccine, and certainly the overuse of antibiotics and anti-viral agents, especially hand sanitizer, will help create a supervirus that could destroy us all. But vaccines are not there to kiil the virus, just to prepare our bodies for the eventual attack.
Oh, and I belive skateboarding was invented by surfers so they could keep in shape when they could not surf. So, for the vast majority of kids who do not surf, skateboarding a much more accessible connection.
In the late 80's, there was some question as to who was going to be the dominant player. The commodization of the PC had not yet happened. Apple had a good machine in the Mac, bussinesses were being rebuilt on it and Excel, MS had good applications but not a good OS, and mainframes and mini were still abundant.
By the early 90's, nearly everyone has moved to a commodized cheap PC running windows. It was did not neccesarily work well, but it was affordable infrastructure. Nearly everthing was built on windows. The only exceptions were specilized firms and instituions running Mac OS, Sun, or SGI, at the high end. The later two were expecially significant because they kept the *nix flavor running on bussiness hardware.
The popular use of the Internet then happened, and Netscape became a big player. As soon as MS realized that once agian it was letting the money fetish get in the way innovation, it fought back by hacking the standards and attempting to create a PC centric Internet. MS almost succeded. There were two things that kept that from happening. First was the number of people who ran on non MS software. Much of this was Netscape, but a finite audience was the universities and bussinesses, those precise people who had resources to use the internet, running on non-commodity hardware. Therefore, even when netscape imploded, the likes of Yahoo and Amazon never went to a exclusive MS based, or even Flash based, experience. Such a move would have cost it a number of customers that they must think is significant. This, and the fact that the servers were often still non-commodity. Even in the late 90's, when MS finnaly developed a minimialy functinal OS, the server market still have a significant number of non-MS based solutions.
The second factor is Java. As much as people hate it, it does provde a mechanism to do some specific things that are platform independent. This means that many people who might have switched simply to be compatible, did not have to. This means that many sites that would have had to moved to an IE based solution to provide a service had an alternative. The danger of Java can be seen it the massive effort MS put forth to destroy it. The benifit of Java can be seen in that unlike Netscape,it was never quite as destroyed.
MS has shown that it will get lazy without competition. The fiasco that was Office during much of the 90's. The late arrival to the internet. The fiasco that is IE now. If we did not have the likes of Sun pushing the technology, if MS had gained control of the Internet, we would not have the rich experience that we have now. We would probably be stuck with IE in '95. Just look at the lack of innovation in bandwidth the US has experienced in the last five years that the Telco and CableCo has been allowed to control the lines, as opposed to the growth we in the 90's when the Telcos were told to be much more liberal. Just look at the lame cell phone service and crippled headsets we have now. Imiagine if the US auto companies had no comptition, and we all still being forced to drive cars that god 15 mpg at gas that $3 a gallon.
I don't what Linux is actually going to do. I am afraid that MS will succedd in building a virtualization layer, and Linux will just ride on top of that. I have more faith in the GNU tools allowing growth than Linux.
Ok, this is not about an open mind. This is not about if Wal*Mart is, overall, a good thing. This is about trying to inhibit the conversation about if, on balance, after talking about all the things, positive or negative, Wal*Mart is a good thing. No one needs to fabricate evidence because, as with any rational corporation, Wal*mart does spin all evidence to it's advantage and attempts to minimize negatvie stories. I myself submitted a story to /. about Wally courted blogger to astroturf, and there have numerous additional stories about 'wally's war room'. In the end, it is silly to talk about having an open mind when the subject at hand is unwilling to have an unbiased debate.
The other issue is vested interests. If a person is paid so little that they need the low wally prices, they will not look too hard at why the prices are so low. If a every other job has been chased out of town, they will be greatful for the wally job. If a person is getting wealthy over wally stock, they are not going to care where the money is coming from. And since so many people fit these catagories, and the rest feel dearly threatened by the encroachment, one can hardly assume a unbaised argument is possible, but one does now who holds the bulk of the resources.
Typically, the consumer and small bussiness stuff is good. However, I don't do much in Pages becuase I do not now when apple will drop support, as it did for MacWrite. Filemaker is good, but it is now an independent piece of software, and who know when it will go bust. I do not encode anything in iTunes as ACC, becuase who knows what will happen with iTunes, although that has a better chance as it is linking with the currently popular iPod.
I think that this is another stake in the Apple coffin as an trusted application provider. Even with MS, whose cost and versioning is outrageous, at least has the history showing you will have an application for the next release. I like Apple computers, but I generally look somewhere else, mor frequently OSS, for application software.
It seems to me that one can be against an act, but still not want to excessively prosecute it. For instance, many would be against spam, but not want to impose the regulation or allow the the control by the big telco that would eradicate the problem. I think this is what is occuring with many artists. They want the money, so are unhappy with the drop in sales. OTOH, they do not see any net benifit in suing the fans into oblivion. Such artiest try to increase sales using more creative methods. They included a DVD with music videos along with the music CD. They link the sale of the CD to concert tickets, or vice versa. Some might even have a big promotion on iTunes with exclusive content in an attempt to compete with unlicensed acquistion.
Again this shows the differences between producing software and selling licenses and producing hardware, and actually having to manufacture the product. In the later MS has shown it lack of competance. Perhpas that is why they are not producing their new fangled tablet design, and instead leaving it to the pros.
If we put the numbers in order, we note two things. First, there are four prices less than $300 and four prices more than $400. These can be considered outliers, consoles that were priced outside of the historical norm. Second, the six remaining prices are around the mid 300s, which means that it is likely that a price significantly under $400 is probably a good place to be. Therefore, from the point fo view of selling consoles $399 is as high as it is safe to go. Though essentially $400, it is psychologically less than $400. We can conclude that MS probably set the price as low as they could afford to, and as high as they dared. $350 would have been much more reasonable given historical data, but probably represented too much of a loss for MS.
The new 13.3" MacBooks will likely be bigger. If I wanted a small computer, I would wait for a 12" to come up refurbished, and get it for a song, or a least about as much as you would have to pay Dell. The Sonys are also cute, but way expensive.
Second, when one thinks of a text or referece book, this represents an incredible amount of effort on the part of the writers and editors. Gettting everything right is hard. For examples, the cheaper computer books are full of significant errors and misprints. Even reilly has a tough time getting it perfect, and these are often mid priced books. I am just now reading a Ruby book from them and in the first few pages is a passage that is either awkwardly presented, or an example is missing. Sure, if I am just reading it for fun that is acceptable, but since I tend to be somewhat serious in my computer stuff, I want the real things. So I have little problem paying more for something that is correct. When I was working computers, $80 for a good book was nothing compared to what is saved me on my jobs.
Now as far as school is concerned there are three issues. First, the writers have to be paid. These are often proffesors that have a skill of writing things down in such a way that a student has a good chance of understanding what is going on. They also provide relevent problem sets with solutions. The publisher has to be paid, without whom we would not have a book, as someone probably had to front some money. We also need a store, so publishers can ship limited quantities of books to certain well known locations for students to buy.
Now, here is the rub. College textbooks are not neccesarily that expensive. As has mentioned, at least some of the books can be bought used and sold, whcih means that any one book, at least at the lower levels, is unlikely going to cost more than $50. Second, books can be shared. Find someone in to go halfsies. And third, I had very few proffesors that actually demanded and checked we had the most recent version of the book.
So, what can be done. I think the publisher should sell electronic versions of the books that expire after one year. The books should be 1/3 the cost of the orignal book. Second, the univsersity should be able to buy an affordable site license to the book so that it can be read on any library computer. Finally, the reissuing of books for the purpose of stopping reselling must be halted, though this may not be such a big issue as with reselling no student will be stuck with more than half the cost.
My gut feeling is that most of this has more to do with the expectation of the student rather than the cost of the books. Books represent an opportunity cost to most people, not an investment. I think when someone buys a book, they are thinking of the beer that they cannot afford. OTOH, when someone buy a bag of chips and a coke every day for a week, they do not think of the book they could have bought. School is about education, and sometimes we have to give something up to become educated. On problem I see with the modern compulsary public educational system is that they parent and kids expect everything to be given to them. Clothes, books, supplies, transportation. Now some of this is appropriate, and much is needded. However to be educated one needs to begin to take some responsibility and sacrifice at leat a little. If that measn that a student does not get a new clothes, or a car, or even prefered meal, perhaps at the college level that is ok.
One last thing. Some of the increase in books relate to student needs. For instance when i was in college, the Physics textbook transitions from a simple black and white print with line drawing. This was a cheap book to produce, and for the amount of information was very reasonable priced. However, presumable due the MTV generation, it became a much more expensive book with color drawing, color photos, and the like. There was no more physics in it, no better teaching, just fancier and more expensive graphics. Go figure. Students paid more money and perhaps sacrificed education for glitz.
As the minis were phased out, they had a capacity of 6 gig. I have been expecting the nano to increase to 8 gig for a while. Of course the nano still has a short battery life, and perhpas the added memeory is just going to make that worse.
The 4GB are available, and given Apple discounts are not overly expensive. I do not see a 10 gig nano, as the nanos seem to have pairs of cards. Hopefully they will come out with a 8 gig Nano in the $250 price range, and drop the other prices according. That might be enough space to make it worthwhile. I would also like to see a 2gig shuffle, though that product line also seems to be dead.