Generaly speaking, if a hypothesis makes a prediction, and the predition turns out to be true, then the hypothesis is reasonable at least for the domaain probed by that experiment, and represent at least a small part of reality.
We can take three cases. First, the flat earth. On a small scale, the earth seems flat, and in every day life we treat it so. The success of this theory is shown by out upstanding building and bridges. The problem occurs when we try to assume that local flatness is universal.
Second, Newtons law of motion. For slow speeds, they seem to be correct. We can make all sorts of predictions, and have those predictions experiemental proven true. Again the problem occurs when we assume the laws are valid at all speeds.
Third, we have the theory that all waves require a medium, and therefore, lights as waves require a medium. This is multi layer difficulty. We assumed an aether to fullfill an unverified assumption of the nature 'all swans I have seen are white, therefore all swans are white'. We also made the then reasonable assumption that things are either waves or massive It is now clear that niether of these are universaly true, but both were useful constructs.
So, the issue is not that there is a better explaination, as science does not make judgements, it just finds models for observations. The issue is whether they hypothesis can be used to create a theory that can be used to usefully predict behavior.
Have we already forgoten x-files? Sculley was the ultimate uber geek, and occasionaly they even acknowledged the particular pressures of womanhood.
I haven't really watched any of those others, but x-files might be a very good representation of what it is like to be a woman in tech. Good old boys on a crusade to prove their pet theories. The rational woman entering to bring a bit of reality to the culture deprived and unsophisticated male dominated office. have you ever thought of this? Did you consider this? And then the woman pushed aside because she is a woman and could really have nothing interesting to say.
I have worked in places dominated by women and men. If one dominates, something is lost. The nice thing about x-files is after a while, no one really dominated, and the two grew to appreciate each others tactics. It is no longer enough to have a women as a supporting character, a telephone operator perhaps. We must now represent the women geek as an equal.
The problem is that so much of the world speaks of percentage income, and not percentage expendable income. For instance, a family earning $20,000 is not half as worse off as a family of equal size $40,000. At higher levels it is even sillier. A family earning $100K can in no way say to be doing badly, though that family may think they have the problems of $40K people.
So, one should look at the amount of money available, the amount given, and then take points away for publizing donation, as the tax man now expects us to not deduct the reasoble value of the benifits we recieve. Perhaps we should also deduct lavish expensives.
I give bussinesses points for donated 5% of profits, as this clearly is a good percentage of expendable income. I don't know if a middle class family can donate 5% of even net pay.
What I do know is that when a man has a 200 foot yatch and one of the largest houses in history, any money given to charity is clearly causing no pain, and is likely to be a benavolent tax dodge, so is not as valuable as the pauper who gives his last few pennies.
There is no argument that if steve jobs is not donating a significant of money he probably should be. However, if he is donating money, and just not talking about it, then kudos for him. As we see from the christian tradition, one should not like th hypocrite expect honors and recognition for just being a good person.
I guess it is what you consider 'old macs'. The tiPB, as opposed to the AL models, did require the removal of the bottom cover, about 8 screws, to put in a hard disk or Airport card, while memory was under the keyboard. The Al models are much simpler to work with, though memory is now harder, but perhaps more secure.
On the desktop side, once we get past the classic design, upgrading, at least memory and hard disk and wireless, is much easier than most PC. On desktop machines like the Mac II and performas, the top just popped off. Memory slipped into clearly visible and accesible slots. Hard disk could be removed with just a few screws. No lifting out the disk holder, no calastenics. The early machines would not take a lot of extra stuff. On the tower G4 and G5, which dates back 6or 7 years, it is a simple matter of lifting a lever and the entire box is displayed. No need to remove a harddisk to put in memory, but again if one wants another CD drive one is screwed. It is important to remember that the Mac has a SCSI or Firewire port for external devices. The culture is more an applience that can be plugged into, rather than a box that can be added to.
The thing is machines like the eMac are made not to be easily taken apart, and are not expected to need to be upgraded. They are workhorses, like the old VT100. One big problem in schools is that if a machine is easy to get into, then your memory and HD often disapper. The G4 and G5 have a cable slot to lock the case, but many of the PCs do not.
One problem with using a full commidity system is one them has to go to great and often silly lengths to make it look non comodity, else everyone else just copyies it. If Apple wants to limit Mac OS use to Apple equipment, then Apple should just say it won't support anyone who is not using Apple equpipment. Honestly, the foray into non-Apple hardware proved that cost cutting merely causes problems. I don't know anyone who bought one of those non-Apple machines that did not have big problems.
Now, with regard to the text in question software is to protect Apple copyrighted materials from unauthorized copying and use. this could merely indicate that Apple is going get more aggressive about insuring that the OS in use is indeed paid for. That is, if a single user copy is bought, then it is only used on the single computer. I have no problems with this, as a five user edition can be acquired for less than Windows XP. Now, if this copy protection becomes too much of hassle and wastes my time, such as typing in long serial numbers, I will likely be looking for an OS with less hassle.
But the facts remains that the move to intel will expose Apple to a greater risk of unlicensed use of thier product, and they are likely to react accordingly, no matter how silly. I hope they don't make me pay for an extra chip to manage thier shrinkage issue. I hope that it is a simple matter of registering the machine and the serial of the software at Apple, as they appear to do now, and then just leave us alone. Honestly, if I wish to install one of my licensing of Mac OS on an extra PC, and I cannot, then I am likley to an become an irate customer. And given how ambivilant many of us are about the move to intel, I would hope that Apple would think long and hard about transforming that ambivilance to outright annoyance.
The problem is that in a GPC one does not know what the useless or rarely used fuctionality is. That is why it is general purpose. For instance, for years I had no use for a cigarrete lighter, but now it is repurposed as a power source, I am glad that it was not removed.
So who do we approach building a GPC OS. With MS it is putting all the functionality at the OS level so that users can have guaranteed access, and then work to secure the system. On *nix, it is have a large group of utilities, install a small base, and then educate users on what they need add, perhaps with warnings about those that are installed or removed at some significant cost.
The problem with MS and some *nix is that the defaults are ruled by user experience, not be security. This means that everything gets installed, everything is wide open. When the pendulum swings, we get distracting messaging about the fact we are trying to do some work, and perhpas we do not want to do the work.
So, in the end it still comes down to some basic decisions. What is going to be considered basic in the OS. How much security can the bussiness plan take, and how much must you force the user to leave open so that the customer can be monetized. How much flexibility in final configuration should be allowed, and how open should the system be to third part applications.
The bottom line, as always, is that if money cannot be made, then neither should the product. This is very clear with the ActiveX thing. Windows Update uses ActiveX so that every Windows computer has to have it on, so that developers can feel confident using this nonstandard web technology.
If MS products only cost you a few dollars, then you have already paid MS the licensing fee for all thier products. In fact, if one works at least 30 hours for a school, and takes classes, then perhaps one has paid MS twice. The thing that the 'few dollars' pay for is the cost to produce the media.
The actual educational licensing fee for MS Office is around $150 for Standard edition on up to $300+ dollars for the pro edition, although some schools seem to license copies for $100.
Since people tend to learn products and not skills, it is still important for a student to learn MS Office. For me, since collarboration is not a big deal, and I do not want to run into the file format issues I dealt with a few years back, OO.org works well for me. If I could get it for $50 I might do so just to use Excel, but hopefully we will get a replacement soon.
The bottom line is that MS does make a lot of money off Office, if for no other reason than they can include a schools Macs in site licensing deals. Apple does not a fully competitive product for MS Office, and MS Office mac makes sure no one else will either.
This is interesting because if a firm is selling other peoples stuff or depends significantly on the innovations of others, and does not add unique value, the firm logevity is limited.
I mean look at KMart and Sears. Very good store with very good prices. Both added some value to through the product initially, through selection and location, but failed to continue to push that value. Walmart can in and they were toast. Dell is the same thing, but worse. Dell has the added cost of repackaging, but limited flexibility in terms of managing costs. OTOH, Apple has shown that will act aggressively to manage hardware cost, and is able to make changes to the OS to so do.
Dell is succesful becuase they are able supply large number of cheap computers to large firms. As long as they can win contracts, they will survive. However growth is out of their hands. Growth depends on MS maintaining a release schedule that encourages fast upgrade schedules, which they have not done. Growth depends on firms growing enough to add machines, which has happened. Growth depends Windows providing enough value so that large firms double license at least some machines. Growth depends on new machine running Windows, and not *nix, unless of course Dell is so cheap that even with the MS license the machine is a good value.
That is to say Dell has little control over it's future. It may decide to risk the MS gravy train and set out on it's own, but no one at Dell sounds that creative. At some point someone else will do MS Windows machines better, perhaps MS, or the desktop PC may become a thing of the past, and we will see how Dell does on low margins and low volumes. I mean, is anyone actually going to buy Dell at even a 10% markup?
I use.mac for one reason. To backup data offsite and allow remote access. I can keep an offline copy of my work on one macine, and acess it on several others. I can also keep iCal and Adress Book current on both my machines. Is this worh $8.33 a month? I can't really think of a more convient or cheaper solution. I have backed up to other machines, but is was not as often as the backups with.mac are. If I want an archival copy, I can still backup to DVD, which are built in in most macs for the past couple years.
The other services, that are useful to some, are also competively priced. What I think most analysts miss is that Mac useres are willing to pay for quality service, as opposed to PC users which tend to be more willing to sacrifice usability to reduce cost. For instance, the amount of 'other offers' on the Dell desktop is incredible.
Anyway the whole point is really silly. A free one year subscription would raise the overall costs of the computer, which is a disservice to those who do not want or need.Mac. Anyone who wants to can already get a free 60 trail, and if they find the service useful pay for the year. As long as Apple continues to raise the value fo the service, without raising the price, I am happy.
I would think that Apple could aquire or license a product that ran other OS in secure sandbox. I was sad they did not aquire Virtual PC, so they might have the virtualization that MS now has.
I really like having Windows and Linux in their own windows. Dual booting was never as useful as having simultaneous access. If Mac OS became the Host OS, then Apple could easily beat MS at thier own game.
Reality is that consumer product live and die on market perception. Apple has some succes because the market percieves that there is an added value to Apple products, which translates into higher margins. On of the big marketing advantages is that the default behavior of Apple products is less invasive that the competitors. This is woth a lot to some people, and in some way drives sales.
If the default behavior was that the mini store would not recomend music, but there were a button you press to turn the recomendation on, either temporarily or permanantly, the issue would no exist so much. The defualt behavior would be private and secure. Instead, like the links to music stores, Apple is caving into pressure to monetize the user rather than make money on a superior experience.
It is not surprising, but still disappointing. I said it before and I said it agian. Now that Apple is on Intel, it is a prime opportunity to have a third party come in do the job that Apple used to do.
I hope that the move to intel does not lead to the useless single number specification of clock speed. The Mac is not a machine that is randomly thrown together in hope of producing a passable machine. It is designed, often minimally, to meet perfomance standards.
The consumer machines tend to be designed to meet lower standards. For instance, in the early and mid 90's Apple started making machine aimed at consumers, and these machines did not use SCSI disks, though they still had a controller. This, along with slower bus speeds, meant that the machines were typically slower than the pro machines. For instance, i owned consumer and pro notebooks, and there were marked differences. Evidently, given the reports on the Mac Mini and problems with iBooks, this trend has continued.
Which means that It would be easy to believe that the new Intel iMacs and iBooks are faster than the current iMacs and iBooks, but knowing how fast the cureent Powerbooks and Powermacs are, even compared to Wintel machines, I would be hard pressed to believe that we will see an eqaul perfomance on the consumer line for a while.
OTOH I am sure that the MacBooks will be faster that Powerbooks, since the Powerbook has not been seriously updated for almost two years, but I wouldn't buy a Macbook for at least six months. If not for the quality concerns, then for availablility of software. Can we say OpenOffice?
And don't forget that the Atlantic hurricane season ends nov. 30, yet:
We have hurrican episilon, with advisories running Nov 29 to Dec.8
And TS Zeta with advisories running from Dec 30 to Jan 6.
Also, count the number of storms that formed off the coast of Europe or near Canada. I seem to recall one advisory starting 'if it looks like a hurricane...', the storm impacting Spain or Porugal. A facinating season. It is fun to talk about the weather.
I find the 'new' family guy was a big let down. I think they would have done better to put all the effort into American Dad and just let Family Guy rest in peace.
There are certainly benifits to bringing old shows back, mostly a known audience and fewer development costs, but in terms of entertainment I find that these shows add very little.
I enjoyed Family Guy, but face the facts. It was cancelled because it pushed too hard (When you wish upon a Weintstein), and clearly they show was nuetered before it was let back on the air.
This is the kind of elitist bullshit that drives all right minded people to MS. I mean it is all pop. It is all 99% crap.
People who buy the U2 iPod are just dreaming of the days when they were cool. I understand this. I dream of the days when I was cool, or at least cooller. OTOH, Timberlake appeals to the consumers who are old enough to have money, but still do not depend on useless expensive toys to be cool. That nice time of being a young adult.
If anything, this really means that MS understands the market. They are not going to get the high school kids,which will probably still go to Yahoo and thier friends. They are not going to the assholes who, like the classisits, are not going to listen to anything they does not have the backing of a hgih brow critic. MS will continue aiming for the middle, where money will be made.
The biggest mistake they made was the one size fits all. It would have been a big deal to fit in some accordian type fit. Probably this will work for teenagers and small adults, but not for children and regular adults.
The other issue is that one must get it on and off with one hand. While opening a closing a clasp on a bracelet once a day might be bearable for many, taking this thing off a few time a day might be unbearable.
The price is pretty good, and it comes in colors, so i can see many people buying it as a fun thing, and wearing it a few time, but the necklace style seem to have much more staying power.
The only difference between a stock sale and cash sale is the scammer gets the sale price no matter how horrible the company is. By selling for stock, the seller takes on some amount of risk. The seller only gets the full price if the firm maintains value
As far as profitability is concerned, the difference lies only in exsiting resources. The dot com people spent incredible amounts of money building and buy physical and IT and virtual resources and infrastucture. Ultimately advertising and direct sales could not maintain all that infrastructure, causes the consolidation we saw. This is really ok because the infrastructure needed to be built, and models needed to be tested. If there was an error it was that investors mistook the experiment for sustainable production, as well as living in a dilusional world in which advertising rates were seen as stable, instead of seeking a rational level. This later part really killed many companies because commisions on advertising only deals were paid up front, and the salespeople really had no oversight to prevent them inflating the value of deal whose real value was approximately zero.
The advantage now is that bloggers do not have to pay build infrastructure, but merely to use it. And since we have excess infrastuture, it is a sellers market. Therefore, the investment needed is small, and all one really needs to cover is salary of the blogger. Compare this to the case at the beginning fo the dot com where perhaps one would have to pay a software developer, and IT admistrator, and the perhpas the cost of a T1 line. This company would potential be worth much more than a the firm we saw in this case, if for nothing else that physical resources. It is also harder to tell if the current model is 'losing' money as the resources are potentially much more fluid.
The MS monopoly is about the desktop, and about using the desktop monopoly to expand into other areas.
Just because they have not been able to expand the monopoly into servers and search does not mean that the monopoly goes not exist. MS Windows is still the de facto OS and development platform for the micro computer. MS is still pushing IE as the primary browser, but decreasing the platforms on which it was inevitable.
Really, nothing can be inferred until we see what happens in Vista. Will MS continue to abuse the desktop monopoly? Will we see the old tricks applied to Google? We will see true interoperability with Linux, or merely tools to allow the Unix people to continue transitioning to MS.
All the positing in the article only applies to the current situation in which MS is weak and have not been able to use thier money to destroy the compition. And even if this context, the supposition makes no sense. The MS-AOL attempted merger could only benifit MS in the sense that it could be used to destroy Google. We can only assume that AOL realized that MS uses it parnters to gain expertise, then throws them out when they are done.
I agree with you completely, and that is why, at least in my experience, MS might be in trouble. The basic problem is that MS is not making a machine that works well with others, but one that is made to lock a consumer into a particular place. This is bad.
The basic reason is that most of us trust the traditional outlets, and want new ways to interact with those outlets. If there is a way to continue to support those outlets, that would be good as well. The issue creeeps up in how we are going to interact with those.
The first thing that is needed is broadband. MS has done nothing to help this problem. They have not partnered with broadband providers. They tried, but the AOL deal fell through. They have not partnered with cable providers, nor has cable providers moderated their rates. As a result broadband is beyond my parents ability becuase DSL is our of reach and cable is too expensive. Without broadband, the computer, in most incarnations, is irrelevent.
The second thing is that have not been consumer focused. It is not about what services the consumer wants, or what changes in policy might help consumers. Rather the questions are more like how can we work with content providers to maximize margins. WMA has much more security that is neccesary. The appplications are more concerned with protecting media than the user experienc. As a result I have seen family and freinds leaving the windows platform and moving to the mac for thier internet and media needs. It provides a more consumer centric experience.
As MS moves into the serious hardware bussiness, they are going to have to compete with old timers that know how to balance the need of consumers and margins. MS is now competing with firms that have been making complex devices, not just mice and toys. I wish them luck, but without some major media deals, are they really going to be able to compete with Lost on iTunes in the US or the PS3 in the rest of the world.
The future isn't in people charging for things like content, it is for people charging for things like service
What do you think the music industry is providing? Services of course! They artist write and perform. The studios record. The labels distribute. The point is that there is no product. Entertainment is solely a service. This is why the cost is so low. There are fixed costs, like equipment to buy, and training to be had, but the variables costs tend to be very low
So the question is how much is this service worth. One could pay an artists to come to your house for a recording session, or one could simply perform the music oneself, but clearly there is demand for prerecorded music. As you state, people should charge for service. Consumers do have a choice of what services to purchase, but even if service has already been rendered, there is often an obligation to pay.
OTOH, all these lawsuits are counter productive. The industry tried to screw itself over with radio, almost screwed itself over with MTV, and is doing a pretty good job screwing itself with internet and satillite distribution. A few dollar compulsary license charge on internet access would not be out of to cover the cost of provided services. Given the reality of college, a few dollar per student compulsary liscense charge is not unreasonable for universities.
Beyond all this, the grim reality is that the people provided the service are going to see reduced income from the investments. If we all have music on our computers, to transfer as we wish, we are going to see fewer cases of consumer purchasing the same track several time during thier lives. Boxed sets are going to become less valuable. Therefore, a new compromise of the value of the service has to be reached, and this is what much of the wrangling is about. I mean look how much Michael Jackson is making off the Beatles music. Do you think that any contempoary artist is going to have a library that valuable, given that most of the content can be had on demand for little or no cost.
And NORAD was good enough for me when I was a kid, and it should be good enough for the kids today.
I mean, what is Google going to do if Santa starts leaving WMD for one of the few small Eastern European countries that does not already have them. Ask the UN for a non binding resolution?
Disclaimer: I love Santa. Santa has always been very good to me, but that is not the reason I love him. I love him just becuase. I never want to see anything happen to him, so I dearly hope the Norad tracking is for entertainment purposes, and will not become part of the increasingly paranoid politics. Kids be good just becuase it is the right thing to do, and the benifits will follow!
One mistake that most non-scientists make, especially those non-scientists that like to the cafeteria style philosophy and religion, is that science is an attempt to bring the natural world under a consitant and rigorous framework. At the heart of science, there is no strict seperations of fields, no rules that say these tools can only be used in these cases, or results in one field cannot be at least tennetively applied to anohter. The only rules have to do with how we might make a valid claim. For instance, have empirical evidence indicated that it is valid, a framework can be built describing why it is valid, a model that can be used to other claim that can then be tested for validity, and a description of who the new claims fits in the current cannon.
What this means is the following. The same theory of radiocative decay that is used to date Noah's Ark, and Jesus shroud, and the temples in Israel and Palestine, are also valid to date date the artifacts found in archaelogical digs, and the same assumptions, that animals tend to die around thier stuff and radioactive decay is constant over a long period, are used. The same theory that are used to gentically match relatives, can also be used to catalog other remains. The same theory that is used to adapt medical treatment to resistant viruses, is also used to map changes in the genome over time. The same anthropology that is used to study how consumers respond to products, is also used to study how civilizations evolve.
The fundemental fallacy of these opportunistic people who wish to violate the will of God by the application of technology to medicine and better lifestyle, but cry foul when we make mention of the logical consequences, is that one cannot arbitrarilily limit the domain of a theory, any more than one can arbitrarily limit the domain of god, despite the fact that so many religous people wish to do both by cliaming to not only know the domain of the science, buy also by getting on the TV and claiming to know the mind of god. Both will take us to a better place, if we are open minding enough to allow the truth to set us free.
And don't be fooled. It would be easier if we could just wave a magic wand and limit the domain of a theory. I am sure many current headache would be healed if we could limit quantum mechanics to the subatomic and atomic world, classical mechanics to the conventional world, and General Reletivitiy to the macro world. And on a practical level we do so, just like when we assume the world is flat for calculating distances. However, if we had made such sortcuts reality, I would not be typing on this computer, and we would not have the cool LED christmas lights.
And if one believes that politics can be seperated from reality, that is another myth that needs to be destroyed. Making decision for purely political reason, with no regard to the negative consequences, is surely bad. However, focusing attention on information that might be useful to expand and more engage the public is a wider conversation is surely good. For instance, Melvin Laird has a article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs in which he discusses the US withdrawl from Vietnam, and the lessons we might apply to the current situation in Iraq. I do not see this as purely political. I see this a man with something to say, and believing now is the right time to say it.
Although I am really bummed that the Mac is going to hobbled by a legacy processor with legacy hacks, I think we will have fun playing the game of who has the computer with more value. As has often been suggested, when comparing major vendor to major vendor, Apple has never really been overpriced.
Take this for instance. The NEC machine is 2000, with 512Mb, 100 Gig, 14 inch screen, and the other bells a whistles n would expect. The only real weakness is that it priced with XP toy, so it will cost $150 to get the pro version. Why anyone would sell a $2000 machine with XP home is beyond me.
OTOH, a current mac with similar specs is also $2000. When Apple moves to intel, we can assume that they will stay with these similar specs and similar price. Therefore we can expect to get a Mac, possible with a bigger screen, but smaller hard disk, not to mention built in Airport, for the same money. To make matters better, the extra $150 goes a long way to putting 1 gig RAM in slot A, which leaves the other slot free for an additional gig. And of course lets not forget that XCode and WebObjects are now free.
I am sure we will see Dell undercut the price with tricks such as rebates and the XP Home maneuver, but in the end list prices for the MS Window machines are sure to continue to be higher.
So like a newbie I decided to click and read the article. I saw about 10 cookies try to set themselves, and about 6 ads, but for the life of me I cannot find the article. I am sure it was somewhere around there in the flash and car ad, but where? Do I go on a treasure hunt and look for it? Or do I decide that Anandtech is just another place that is not worthwhile to visit.
The courts do not have time to fuckin' hear 10,000 cases every time some dipshit corporate sleazeoid does something stupid. It is simply a waste of taxpayers money. It has nothing to do with too many lawyers, or complex legal systems. It only has to do with shit for brains trying to manipulate current laws so they can engage in activities that any reasonble person would deem illegal.
Sony violated the laws of Texas. In fact they violate the law of reaon. There is no cause for every person in texas who was stupid and purchased a CD to sue Sony. That would make more money for the lawyers than anyone else. It is simpler for the State to bitch slap the idiots and tell them to behave. This way, the only way the lawyers make money is if Sony tries to pretend no laws were violated.
No matter how simple the laws are, the evil doers will get the bad lawyers to figure own how to meet the letter of the law, but not the spirit, and the good lawyers will defend us against those that prize currency over common decency.
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We can take three cases. First, the flat earth. On a small scale, the earth seems flat, and in every day life we treat it so. The success of this theory is shown by out upstanding building and bridges. The problem occurs when we try to assume that local flatness is universal.
Second, Newtons law of motion. For slow speeds, they seem to be correct. We can make all sorts of predictions, and have those predictions experiemental proven true. Again the problem occurs when we assume the laws are valid at all speeds.
Third, we have the theory that all waves require a medium, and therefore, lights as waves require a medium. This is multi layer difficulty. We assumed an aether to fullfill an unverified assumption of the nature 'all swans I have seen are white, therefore all swans are white'. We also made the then reasonable assumption that things are either waves or massive It is now clear that niether of these are universaly true, but both were useful constructs.
So, the issue is not that there is a better explaination, as science does not make judgements, it just finds models for observations. The issue is whether they hypothesis can be used to create a theory that can be used to usefully predict behavior.
I haven't really watched any of those others, but x-files might be a very good representation of what it is like to be a woman in tech. Good old boys on a crusade to prove their pet theories. The rational woman entering to bring a bit of reality to the culture deprived and unsophisticated male dominated office. have you ever thought of this? Did you consider this? And then the woman pushed aside because she is a woman and could really have nothing interesting to say.
I have worked in places dominated by women and men. If one dominates, something is lost. The nice thing about x-files is after a while, no one really dominated, and the two grew to appreciate each others tactics. It is no longer enough to have a women as a supporting character, a telephone operator perhaps. We must now represent the women geek as an equal.
So, one should look at the amount of money available, the amount given, and then take points away for publizing donation, as the tax man now expects us to not deduct the reasoble value of the benifits we recieve. Perhaps we should also deduct lavish expensives.
I give bussinesses points for donated 5% of profits, as this clearly is a good percentage of expendable income. I don't know if a middle class family can donate 5% of even net pay.
What I do know is that when a man has a 200 foot yatch and one of the largest houses in history, any money given to charity is clearly causing no pain, and is likely to be a benavolent tax dodge, so is not as valuable as the pauper who gives his last few pennies.
There is no argument that if steve jobs is not donating a significant of money he probably should be. However, if he is donating money, and just not talking about it, then kudos for him. As we see from the christian tradition, one should not like th hypocrite expect honors and recognition for just being a good person.
On the desktop side, once we get past the classic design, upgrading, at least memory and hard disk and wireless, is much easier than most PC. On desktop machines like the Mac II and performas, the top just popped off. Memory slipped into clearly visible and accesible slots. Hard disk could be removed with just a few screws. No lifting out the disk holder, no calastenics. The early machines would not take a lot of extra stuff. On the tower G4 and G5, which dates back 6or 7 years, it is a simple matter of lifting a lever and the entire box is displayed. No need to remove a harddisk to put in memory, but again if one wants another CD drive one is screwed. It is important to remember that the Mac has a SCSI or Firewire port for external devices. The culture is more an applience that can be plugged into, rather than a box that can be added to.
The thing is machines like the eMac are made not to be easily taken apart, and are not expected to need to be upgraded. They are workhorses, like the old VT100. One big problem in schools is that if a machine is easy to get into, then your memory and HD often disapper. The G4 and G5 have a cable slot to lock the case, but many of the PCs do not.
Now, with regard to the text in question
software is to protect Apple copyrighted materials from unauthorized copying and use.
this could merely indicate that Apple is going get more aggressive about insuring that the OS in use is indeed paid for. That is, if a single user copy is bought, then it is only used on the single computer. I have no problems with this, as a five user edition can be acquired for less than Windows XP. Now, if this copy protection becomes too much of hassle and wastes my time, such as typing in long serial numbers, I will likely be looking for an OS with less hassle.
But the facts remains that the move to intel will expose Apple to a greater risk of unlicensed use of thier product, and they are likely to react accordingly, no matter how silly. I hope they don't make me pay for an extra chip to manage thier shrinkage issue. I hope that it is a simple matter of registering the machine and the serial of the software at Apple, as they appear to do now, and then just leave us alone. Honestly, if I wish to install one of my licensing of Mac OS on an extra PC, and I cannot, then I am likley to an become an irate customer. And given how ambivilant many of us are about the move to intel, I would hope that Apple would think long and hard about transforming that ambivilance to outright annoyance.
So who do we approach building a GPC OS. With MS it is putting all the functionality at the OS level so that users can have guaranteed access, and then work to secure the system. On *nix, it is have a large group of utilities, install a small base, and then educate users on what they need add, perhaps with warnings about those that are installed or removed at some significant cost.
The problem with MS and some *nix is that the defaults are ruled by user experience, not be security. This means that everything gets installed, everything is wide open. When the pendulum swings, we get distracting messaging about the fact we are trying to do some work, and perhpas we do not want to do the work.
So, in the end it still comes down to some basic decisions. What is going to be considered basic in the OS. How much security can the bussiness plan take, and how much must you force the user to leave open so that the customer can be monetized. How much flexibility in final configuration should be allowed, and how open should the system be to third part applications.
The bottom line, as always, is that if money cannot be made, then neither should the product. This is very clear with the ActiveX thing. Windows Update uses ActiveX so that every Windows computer has to have it on, so that developers can feel confident using this nonstandard web technology.
The actual educational licensing fee for MS Office is around $150 for Standard edition on up to $300+ dollars for the pro edition, although some schools seem to license copies for $100.
Since people tend to learn products and not skills, it is still important for a student to learn MS Office. For me, since collarboration is not a big deal, and I do not want to run into the file format issues I dealt with a few years back, OO.org works well for me. If I could get it for $50 I might do so just to use Excel, but hopefully we will get a replacement soon.
The bottom line is that MS does make a lot of money off Office, if for no other reason than they can include a schools Macs in site licensing deals. Apple does not a fully competitive product for MS Office, and MS Office mac makes sure no one else will either.
I mean look at KMart and Sears. Very good store with very good prices. Both added some value to through the product initially, through selection and location, but failed to continue to push that value. Walmart can in and they were toast. Dell is the same thing, but worse. Dell has the added cost of repackaging, but limited flexibility in terms of managing costs. OTOH, Apple has shown that will act aggressively to manage hardware cost, and is able to make changes to the OS to so do.
Dell is succesful becuase they are able supply large number of cheap computers to large firms. As long as they can win contracts, they will survive. However growth is out of their hands. Growth depends on MS maintaining a release schedule that encourages fast upgrade schedules, which they have not done. Growth depends on firms growing enough to add machines, which has happened. Growth depends Windows providing enough value so that large firms double license at least some machines. Growth depends on new machine running Windows, and not *nix, unless of course Dell is so cheap that even with the MS license the machine is a good value.
That is to say Dell has little control over it's future. It may decide to risk the MS gravy train and set out on it's own, but no one at Dell sounds that creative. At some point someone else will do MS Windows machines better, perhaps MS, or the desktop PC may become a thing of the past, and we will see how Dell does on low margins and low volumes. I mean, is anyone actually going to buy Dell at even a 10% markup?
The other services, that are useful to some, are also competively priced. What I think most analysts miss is that Mac useres are willing to pay for quality service, as opposed to PC users which tend to be more willing to sacrifice usability to reduce cost. For instance, the amount of 'other offers' on the Dell desktop is incredible.
Anyway the whole point is really silly. A free one year subscription would raise the overall costs of the computer, which is a disservice to those who do not want or need .Mac. Anyone who wants to can already get a free 60 trail, and if they find the service useful pay for the year. As long as Apple continues to raise the value fo the service, without raising the price, I am happy.
I really like having Windows and Linux in their own windows. Dual booting was never as useful as having simultaneous access. If Mac OS became the Host OS, then Apple could easily beat MS at thier own game.
If the default behavior was that the mini store would not recomend music, but there were a button you press to turn the recomendation on, either temporarily or permanantly, the issue would no exist so much. The defualt behavior would be private and secure. Instead, like the links to music stores, Apple is caving into pressure to monetize the user rather than make money on a superior experience.
It is not surprising, but still disappointing. I said it before and I said it agian. Now that Apple is on Intel, it is a prime opportunity to have a third party come in do the job that Apple used to do.
The consumer machines tend to be designed to meet lower standards. For instance, in the early and mid 90's Apple started making machine aimed at consumers, and these machines did not use SCSI disks, though they still had a controller. This, along with slower bus speeds, meant that the machines were typically slower than the pro machines. For instance, i owned consumer and pro notebooks, and there were marked differences. Evidently, given the reports on the Mac Mini and problems with iBooks, this trend has continued.
Which means that It would be easy to believe that the new Intel iMacs and iBooks are faster than the current iMacs and iBooks, but knowing how fast the cureent Powerbooks and Powermacs are, even compared to Wintel machines, I would be hard pressed to believe that we will see an eqaul perfomance on the consumer line for a while.
OTOH I am sure that the MacBooks will be faster that Powerbooks, since the Powerbook has not been seriously updated for almost two years, but I wouldn't buy a Macbook for at least six months. If not for the quality concerns, then for availablility of software. Can we say OpenOffice?
We have hurrican episilon, with advisories running Nov 29 to Dec.8
And TS Zeta with advisories running from Dec 30 to Jan 6.
Also, count the number of storms that formed off the coast of Europe or near Canada. I seem to recall one advisory starting 'if it looks like a hurricane...', the storm impacting Spain or Porugal. A facinating season. It is fun to talk about the weather.
There are certainly benifits to bringing old shows back, mostly a known audience and fewer development costs, but in terms of entertainment I find that these shows add very little.
I enjoyed Family Guy, but face the facts. It was cancelled because it pushed too hard (When you wish upon a Weintstein), and clearly they show was nuetered before it was let back on the air.
People who buy the U2 iPod are just dreaming of the days when they were cool. I understand this. I dream of the days when I was cool, or at least cooller. OTOH, Timberlake appeals to the consumers who are old enough to have money, but still do not depend on useless expensive toys to be cool. That nice time of being a young adult.
If anything, this really means that MS understands the market. They are not going to get the high school kids,which will probably still go to Yahoo and thier friends. They are not going to the assholes who, like the classisits, are not going to listen to anything they does not have the backing of a hgih brow critic. MS will continue aiming for the middle, where money will be made.
The other issue is that one must get it on and off with one hand. While opening a closing a clasp on a bracelet once a day might be bearable for many, taking this thing off a few time a day might be unbearable.
The price is pretty good, and it comes in colors, so i can see many people buying it as a fun thing, and wearing it a few time, but the necklace style seem to have much more staying power.
As far as profitability is concerned, the difference lies only in exsiting resources. The dot com people spent incredible amounts of money building and buy physical and IT and virtual resources and infrastucture. Ultimately advertising and direct sales could not maintain all that infrastructure, causes the consolidation we saw. This is really ok because the infrastructure needed to be built, and models needed to be tested. If there was an error it was that investors mistook the experiment for sustainable production, as well as living in a dilusional world in which advertising rates were seen as stable, instead of seeking a rational level. This later part really killed many companies because commisions on advertising only deals were paid up front, and the salespeople really had no oversight to prevent them inflating the value of deal whose real value was approximately zero.
The advantage now is that bloggers do not have to pay build infrastructure, but merely to use it. And since we have excess infrastuture, it is a sellers market. Therefore, the investment needed is small, and all one really needs to cover is salary of the blogger. Compare this to the case at the beginning fo the dot com where perhaps one would have to pay a software developer, and IT admistrator, and the perhpas the cost of a T1 line. This company would potential be worth much more than a the firm we saw in this case, if for nothing else that physical resources. It is also harder to tell if the current model is 'losing' money as the resources are potentially much more fluid.
Just because they have not been able to expand the monopoly into servers and search does not mean that the monopoly goes not exist. MS Windows is still the de facto OS and development platform for the micro computer. MS is still pushing IE as the primary browser, but decreasing the platforms on which it was inevitable.
Really, nothing can be inferred until we see what happens in Vista. Will MS continue to abuse the desktop monopoly? Will we see the old tricks applied to Google? We will see true interoperability with Linux, or merely tools to allow the Unix people to continue transitioning to MS.
All the positing in the article only applies to the current situation in which MS is weak and have not been able to use thier money to destroy the compition. And even if this context, the supposition makes no sense. The MS-AOL attempted merger could only benifit MS in the sense that it could be used to destroy Google. We can only assume that AOL realized that MS uses it parnters to gain expertise, then throws them out when they are done.
The basic reason is that most of us trust the traditional outlets, and want new ways to interact with those outlets. If there is a way to continue to support those outlets, that would be good as well. The issue creeeps up in how we are going to interact with those.
The first thing that is needed is broadband. MS has done nothing to help this problem. They have not partnered with broadband providers. They tried, but the AOL deal fell through. They have not partnered with cable providers, nor has cable providers moderated their rates. As a result broadband is beyond my parents ability becuase DSL is our of reach and cable is too expensive. Without broadband, the computer, in most incarnations, is irrelevent.
The second thing is that have not been consumer focused. It is not about what services the consumer wants, or what changes in policy might help consumers. Rather the questions are more like how can we work with content providers to maximize margins. WMA has much more security that is neccesary. The appplications are more concerned with protecting media than the user experienc. As a result I have seen family and freinds leaving the windows platform and moving to the mac for thier internet and media needs. It provides a more consumer centric experience.
As MS moves into the serious hardware bussiness, they are going to have to compete with old timers that know how to balance the need of consumers and margins. MS is now competing with firms that have been making complex devices, not just mice and toys. I wish them luck, but without some major media deals, are they really going to be able to compete with Lost on iTunes in the US or the PS3 in the rest of the world.
What do you think the music industry is providing? Services of course! They artist write and perform. The studios record. The labels distribute. The point is that there is no product. Entertainment is solely a service. This is why the cost is so low. There are fixed costs, like equipment to buy, and training to be had, but the variables costs tend to be very low
So the question is how much is this service worth. One could pay an artists to come to your house for a recording session, or one could simply perform the music oneself, but clearly there is demand for prerecorded music. As you state, people should charge for service. Consumers do have a choice of what services to purchase, but even if service has already been rendered, there is often an obligation to pay.
OTOH, all these lawsuits are counter productive. The industry tried to screw itself over with radio, almost screwed itself over with MTV, and is doing a pretty good job screwing itself with internet and satillite distribution. A few dollar compulsary license charge on internet access would not be out of to cover the cost of provided services. Given the reality of college, a few dollar per student compulsary liscense charge is not unreasonable for universities.
Beyond all this, the grim reality is that the people provided the service are going to see reduced income from the investments. If we all have music on our computers, to transfer as we wish, we are going to see fewer cases of consumer purchasing the same track several time during thier lives. Boxed sets are going to become less valuable. Therefore, a new compromise of the value of the service has to be reached, and this is what much of the wrangling is about. I mean look how much Michael Jackson is making off the Beatles music. Do you think that any contempoary artist is going to have a library that valuable, given that most of the content can be had on demand for little or no cost.
I mean, what is Google going to do if Santa starts leaving WMD for one of the few small Eastern European countries that does not already have them. Ask the UN for a non binding resolution?
Disclaimer: I love Santa. Santa has always been very good to me, but that is not the reason I love him. I love him just becuase. I never want to see anything happen to him, so I dearly hope the Norad tracking is for entertainment purposes, and will not become part of the increasingly paranoid politics. Kids be good just becuase it is the right thing to do, and the benifits will follow!
What this means is the following. The same theory of radiocative decay that is used to date Noah's Ark, and Jesus shroud, and the temples in Israel and Palestine, are also valid to date date the artifacts found in archaelogical digs, and the same assumptions, that animals tend to die around thier stuff and radioactive decay is constant over a long period, are used. The same theory that are used to gentically match relatives, can also be used to catalog other remains. The same theory that is used to adapt medical treatment to resistant viruses, is also used to map changes in the genome over time. The same anthropology that is used to study how consumers respond to products, is also used to study how civilizations evolve.
The fundemental fallacy of these opportunistic people who wish to violate the will of God by the application of technology to medicine and better lifestyle, but cry foul when we make mention of the logical consequences, is that one cannot arbitrarilily limit the domain of a theory, any more than one can arbitrarily limit the domain of god, despite the fact that so many religous people wish to do both by cliaming to not only know the domain of the science, buy also by getting on the TV and claiming to know the mind of god. Both will take us to a better place, if we are open minding enough to allow the truth to set us free.
And don't be fooled. It would be easier if we could just wave a magic wand and limit the domain of a theory. I am sure many current headache would be healed if we could limit quantum mechanics to the subatomic and atomic world, classical mechanics to the conventional world, and General Reletivitiy to the macro world. And on a practical level we do so, just like when we assume the world is flat for calculating distances. However, if we had made such sortcuts reality, I would not be typing on this computer, and we would not have the cool LED christmas lights.
And if one believes that politics can be seperated from reality, that is another myth that needs to be destroyed. Making decision for purely political reason, with no regard to the negative consequences, is surely bad. However, focusing attention on information that might be useful to expand and more engage the public is a wider conversation is surely good. For instance, Melvin Laird has a article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs in which he discusses the US withdrawl from Vietnam, and the lessons we might apply to the current situation in Iraq. I do not see this as purely political. I see this a man with something to say, and believing now is the right time to say it.
Take this for instance. The NEC machine is 2000, with 512Mb, 100 Gig, 14 inch screen, and the other bells a whistles n would expect. The only real weakness is that it priced with XP toy, so it will cost $150 to get the pro version. Why anyone would sell a $2000 machine with XP home is beyond me.
OTOH, a current mac with similar specs is also $2000. When Apple moves to intel, we can assume that they will stay with these similar specs and similar price. Therefore we can expect to get a Mac, possible with a bigger screen, but smaller hard disk, not to mention built in Airport, for the same money. To make matters better, the extra $150 goes a long way to putting 1 gig RAM in slot A, which leaves the other slot free for an additional gig. And of course lets not forget that XCode and WebObjects are now free.
I am sure we will see Dell undercut the price with tricks such as rebates and the XP Home maneuver, but in the end list prices for the MS Window machines are sure to continue to be higher.
So like a newbie I decided to click and read the article. I saw about 10 cookies try to set themselves, and about 6 ads, but for the life of me I cannot find the article. I am sure it was somewhere around there in the flash and car ad, but where? Do I go on a treasure hunt and look for it? Or do I decide that Anandtech is just another place that is not worthwhile to visit.
Sony violated the laws of Texas. In fact they violate the law of reaon. There is no cause for every person in texas who was stupid and purchased a CD to sue Sony. That would make more money for the lawyers than anyone else. It is simpler for the State to bitch slap the idiots and tell them to behave. This way, the only way the lawyers make money is if Sony tries to pretend no laws were violated.
No matter how simple the laws are, the evil doers will get the bad lawyers to figure own how to meet the letter of the law, but not the spirit, and the good lawyers will defend us against those that prize currency over common decency.