> Uh, not really. The Intel Macs run pretty much exactly as much software as Intel PCs.
Except that these PCs are not marketed as being able to run Mac OS X and its apps, and never will be. OSx86 is a hack. Windows on Intel Macs was originally a hack too, but once Boot Camp came out, it became a selling point.
> There is no more OS 9, or even older versions of OS X.
True, but I can run OS 9 apps in Sheepshaver on an Intel Mac. I don't know if there's anything similar for Windows, but Sheepshaver won't run on Windows.
> I tend to wonder why that even matters. There's not really much point in running an OS if you're always having to switch to a different one in order to actually do anything.
I often wonder that too, but I soon realized that I now have 1 computer to do what I used to do on 3!
And with Parallels or VMWare Fusion, switching from one OS to the other is no harder than logging out and logging in again.:)
> There's not much point in paying a premium for hardware if it all runs the same software, unless there's a quantifiable quality advantage.
True, and I wouldn't argue that Windows on an Intel Mac is more powerful than on a PC, or a 'better experience,' but it works well enough for most purposes. Sure, I can't do any hardcore 3D gaming on it, but when I need to do some work in, say, Access or Outlook, it saves me the trouble of hunting down a PC.
> You gotta be kidding me and FYI, I'm not kidding. A "mac" running Windows is just an overpriced windows PC.
Unless you have to buy a Mac AND a PC to run Mac and PC software. You could just buy the Mac and run both, cheaper.
> By macs can't run 99% of software, I meant actual macs can't run 99% of software.
Funny, my Macbook Pro running Windows still looks like an 'actual Mac'.
> It's kinda sad when being able to run your main competetor's OS is the biggest selling point.
Yeah, sad all the way to the bank. I'm sure Microsoft is really sad about selling a few copies of Windows to Mac users too.
> And what can macs run that PCs can't? Umm...final cut.
Garage Band, Keynote, Pages, etc. but that's not the point. The point is that Macs can run DOS/Windows software in ADDITION to Mac software. Yes, you have to install Windows to do it-- but maybe not for long if Wine on Darwin gets up to speed.
Oh, and you can run a helluva lot of Unix software on Macs. That's without installing a second OS like Linux.
> That's all I can think of at the moment and I'm happy with the PC version of Adobe Premiere and some Ulead products so yeah, > macs are kinda pointless except as some douchey, almost status symbol.
> You gotta be kidding me and FYI, I'm not kidding. A "mac" running Windows is just an overpriced windows PC.
Unless you have to buy a Mac AND a PC to run Mac and PC software. You could just buy the Mac and run both.
> By macs can't run 99% of software, I meant actual macs can't run 99% of software.
Funny, my Macbook Pro running Windows still looks like an 'actual Mac'.
> It's kinda sad when being able to run your main competetor's OS is the biggest selling point.
Yeah, sad all the way to the bank. I'm sure Microsoft is really sad about selling a few copies of Windows to Mac users too.
> And what can macs run that PCs can't? Umm...final cut.
Garage Band, Keynote, Pages, etc. but that's not the point. The point is that Macs can run DOS/Windows software in ADDITION to Mac software. Yes, you have to install Windows to do it-- but maybe not for long if Wine on Darwin gets up to speed.
Oh, and you can run a helluva lot of Unix software on Macs. That's without installing a second OS like Linux.
> That's all I can think of at the moment and I'm happy with the PC version of Adobe Premiere and some Ulead products so yeah,
> macs are kinda pointless except as some douchey, almost status symbol.
Whatever, dude.
>> anarchy means no laws > I'm not sure this is true. Anarchy is generally agreed to mean the absence of government, and this is different from "no laws". Wikipedia agrees
Actually, the Wikipedia article you linked gives "state of lawlessness" as part of its first definition - I would consdier "no laws" to be synonymous with "lawlessness."
And while it describes anarchy as absence of "government," not laws, the words "legislation" and "democracy" and "enforcement" are all absent from the article. Given that a typical role of government is to write and enforce the laws, I would consider an anarchist society to be void of rules as well. A rule that is agreed upon by all, but not enforced, has no teeth. It would rely on people to police themselves, at which point the rules become rather flexible.
>> Having a "self-policing community" means having laws
> Not true either. Anarchists (including prominent ones like Chomsky) have often put stated that their form of government does include rules, > though I don't know enough about anarchism to state exactly what.
That's all very interesting, and I will read more about it-- but "rules" mean rulers. If some authority enforces it upon others, it's effectively the same thing as a law. As our democratic experiment has shown, self-rule doesn't automatically lead to more freedom or eliminate authority.
> While I am certainly no expert (nor anarchist) you're putting forward statements that are clearly untrue, even at a glance.
No, it just depends on your definitions. I think the very idea of a "self-policing community" is in contradiction with anarchy, which I consider to be based on the idea of the individual having authority over him or herself and no other. "Rules" without government end up being nothing more than a consensus of "best practices."
> Out of the hands of anarchists... and into the hands of self-policing communities. What exactly does he think anarchism means in practical terms?
Simple, really-- anarchy means no laws. Given that, every individual is either self-policed or policed by others (or both). Having a "self-policing community" means having laws. It conflicts with anarchy. Whether the laws are voted on or imposed from above, or whether the policing is done by volunteers or the government, is really irrelevant next to the fact that a group of individuals is telling other individuals how to behave.
In short, anarchy = self-policing individuals. A self-policing community can't be anarchic.
Some fresh water and glucose do a much better job at raising alertness than a brown mug of acidic dirt. Unless it's in an energy drink, which actually also contains fuel as well as afterburner for the brain.
Well, I don't know how you like your coffee, but I make mine with fresh water, and then I add glucose.:)
Okay, maybe that was a bad example - but Eli Whitney is also a poor example. He only held one patent on the cotton gin, and his company went under before he ever came out with a revised version.
However, you are right that he wouldn't have had to patent new versions, but only because he held the patent on the original. You can't infringe your own patent. Even so, you can get a new patent if you have revised or improved at least 10% of the original design - I'll leave it to the courts to decide whether that means 10% of lines of code or 10% of bytes.
You are mistaken, though, about the patent being on what the machine did. It was a machine patent, not a process patent. I'm certainly no expert on patents, but I do know that that you can't patent the purpose of a machine or process - you have to patent the method, i.e. the "how" and not the "why." Certainly the process of separating cotton counts for thousands of years' prior art; there is no way Whitney could have been "patenting the verb," he was in fact patenting the noun. He didn't even want to sell the gin - he wanted to charge for service instead! Most of the cotton gins sold, which revolutionized the cotton industry, were not Whitney's.
The television analogy was meant to illustrate how the same hardware can be applied in nearly infinite ways, just by changing the patterns of electrons running through it. I would say that yes, some shows indeed are 'useful,' but that's not the point. The point is that the hardware is general-purpose hardware and doesn't become a new invention just because you change the programming. Software is a separate invention, just as the holodeck program would be - but the key is that it is almost infinitely reconfigurable, even while it's running. That's something no physical invention can match.
You said that it's possible to build hardware that will do what any given program can do, but nobody does this - partly because it's not practical, as you said, but mostly because it would rob the machine of its flexibility, which is the main justification for using a general-purpose computer in the first place. There have been a spate of ill-advised patents which are nothing more than "use a computer to do xyz," where "xyz" is an existing process. I'm sorry, but I can't see how that deserves a new patent.
Programmable computers are truly unique in the history of technology. From a physical standpoint, they don't even "do" anything other than consume power and generate heat. The hardware is useless without software, and the software is useless without hardware. Software isn't strictly a design, it isn't strictly text, it isn't strictly a machine - it has elements of all these things, and therefore deserves separate consideration.
Patents on software rob the computer of its flexibility, it's as basic as that. Someone once pointed out that the vast majority of software out there today infringes someone's patent. It's practically impossible to write a significant program today that doesn't step on someone's patent. If software patents were enforced to the same degree that they are granted, the computer would cease to be a useful device. To maintain an information economy, programmers need to be free to implement solutions without this kind of encumbrance.
Making a distinction between hardware and software is both arbitrary and meaningless. For every piece of software you can write, you can create a piece of hardware which performs the same function. It's just more efficient to do it in software. Similarly, you can take a set of standard off-the-shelf gears and levers and build a machine which does something in a way that no one else has done before.
It's neither arbitrary nor meaningless - in fact, it's a very important distinction. If it weren't, then every time you issued an update to a patented program, you would have to re-apply for a patent on your new "invention."
Let me ask you this: does a television become a new invention every time you change the channel?
I can understand why people object to obvious patents, or to patents with not demonstrable implementation, but for all the whining people do about the evils of "software patents" I don't think people understand how similar the situation is with plain old mechanical patents. There are just as many bad patents on physical devices; why is the concern here only about software?
Because computers are general-purpose machines, and to say that a computer acting in one manner is a different invention than a computer acting in another manner is basically pretty silly.
Not to mention that computers give you almost infinite flexibility in achieving a task. To restrain that freedom is counterproductive and fundamentally unfair. To quote the League for Programming Freedom, "no one should be able to dictate what kinds of programs you can write."
Going back to the first personal computers, the IBM PC and some apple model -- IBM didn't even try to sue competitors for compatible BIOS's, but apple did -- anyone remember the "Franklin" apple-knockoffs?
I would never defend everything Apple has done, but there is a crucial difference in these two cases. In the IBM clone wars, Compaq reverse-engineered the IBM BIOS and produced their own compatible BIOS based on their own code.
In Franklin's case, they simply copied Apple's ROM and shipped it with their computers, as if it were their own work. That's why Apple sued them for copyright violation.
I would, however, agree that the "look and feel" lawsuit was complete bullshit.
"Interestingly, this is during the totality of Wednesday's lunar eclipse, which may or may not make debris easier to observe."...unless it doesn't. In which case, yes, the answer is 'no.'
It keeps resurfacing every now and then. Get this through your thick skulls: It's my computer. Keep your God damned hands off of it. I don't care how good your intentions are, you have no right to infect MY computer with anything at all, good or bad.
Word. Who was it who defined computer security as "being able to rely on your computer(s) to behave in a predictable manner" ?
Once you open the door to external influences modifying your system software, all bets are off re: predictable behavior!
> Hmmm, sounds like gravity is sure helping the situation...
Not really, it's just providing us a way of exploiting the energy the sun infuses.
It takes just as much energy to raise an object to a given height in a gravitational field as you will get out of it when you drop it - so gravity can't be the *source* of that energy in this case.
> Gravity is a force that we exploit as a source of potential and kinetic energy. How do you think weight-driven clocks, hydroelectricity, or tidal energy work?
Hydroelectricity works by solar energy - the heat of the sun evaporates water, raising it into the atmosphere and increasing its potential energy. We extract some of that energy as it condenses, rains down, and flows through our generators, but the actual source is the sun, not gravity.
Slashdot Mirror
I take it back... Sheepshaver will run on Windows!
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:sYO2-f2qoMcJ:gwenole.beauchesne.info/projects/sheepshaver/
The gap has narrowed! :)
> Uh, not really. The Intel Macs run pretty much exactly as much software as Intel PCs.
:)
Except that these PCs are not marketed as being able to run Mac OS X and its apps, and never will be. OSx86 is a hack. Windows on Intel Macs was originally a hack too, but once Boot Camp came out, it became a selling point.
> There is no more OS 9, or even older versions of OS X.
True, but I can run OS 9 apps in Sheepshaver on an Intel Mac. I don't know if there's anything similar for Windows, but Sheepshaver won't run on Windows.
> I tend to wonder why that even matters. There's not really much point in running an OS if you're always having to switch to a different one in order to actually do anything.
I often wonder that too, but I soon realized that I now have 1 computer to do what I used to do on 3!
And with Parallels or VMWare Fusion, switching from one OS to the other is no harder than logging out and logging in again.
> There's not much point in paying a premium for hardware if it all runs the same software, unless there's a quantifiable quality advantage.
True, and I wouldn't argue that Windows on an Intel Mac is more powerful than on a PC, or a 'better experience,' but it works well enough for most purposes. Sure, I can't do any hardcore 3D gaming on it, but when I need to do some work in, say, Access or Outlook, it saves me the trouble of hunting down a PC.
(CRAP, forgot to preview...)
> You gotta be kidding me and FYI, I'm not kidding. A "mac" running Windows is just an overpriced windows PC.
Unless you have to buy a Mac AND a PC to run Mac and PC software. You could just buy the Mac and run both, cheaper.
> By macs can't run 99% of software, I meant actual macs can't run 99% of software.
Funny, my Macbook Pro running Windows still looks like an 'actual Mac'.
> It's kinda sad when being able to run your main competetor's OS is the biggest selling point.
Yeah, sad all the way to the bank. I'm sure Microsoft is really sad about selling a few copies of Windows to Mac users too.
> And what can macs run that PCs can't? Umm...final cut.
Garage Band, Keynote, Pages, etc. but that's not the point. The point is that Macs can run DOS/Windows software in ADDITION to Mac software. Yes, you have to install Windows to do it-- but maybe not for long if Wine on Darwin gets up to speed.
Oh, and you can run a helluva lot of Unix software on Macs. That's without installing a second OS like Linux.
> That's all I can think of at the moment and I'm happy with the PC version of Adobe Premiere and some Ulead products so yeah,
> macs are kinda pointless except as some douchey, almost status symbol.
Whatever, dude.
> You gotta be kidding me and FYI, I'm not kidding. A "mac" running Windows is just an overpriced windows PC. Unless you have to buy a Mac AND a PC to run Mac and PC software. You could just buy the Mac and run both. > By macs can't run 99% of software, I meant actual macs can't run 99% of software. Funny, my Macbook Pro running Windows still looks like an 'actual Mac'. > It's kinda sad when being able to run your main competetor's OS is the biggest selling point. Yeah, sad all the way to the bank. I'm sure Microsoft is really sad about selling a few copies of Windows to Mac users too. > And what can macs run that PCs can't? Umm...final cut. Garage Band, Keynote, Pages, etc. but that's not the point. The point is that Macs can run DOS/Windows software in ADDITION to Mac software. Yes, you have to install Windows to do it-- but maybe not for long if Wine on Darwin gets up to speed. Oh, and you can run a helluva lot of Unix software on Macs. That's without installing a second OS like Linux. > That's all I can think of at the moment and I'm happy with the PC version of Adobe Premiere and some Ulead products so yeah, > macs are kinda pointless except as some douchey, almost status symbol. Whatever, dude.
> I don't think they were referring to the fact that it won't run 99% of software out there
:)
I know you're joking, but you are aware that Intel Macs can run Windows, Mac and Unix software these days... right?
In fact, I can't think of a single machine ever marketed that runs as much software as an Intel Mac.
>> anarchy means no laws
> I'm not sure this is true. Anarchy is generally agreed to mean the absence of government, and this is different from "no laws". Wikipedia agrees
Actually, the Wikipedia article you linked gives "state of lawlessness" as part of its first definition - I would consdier "no laws" to be synonymous with "lawlessness."
And while it describes anarchy as absence of "government," not laws, the words "legislation" and "democracy" and "enforcement" are all absent from the article. Given that a typical role of government is to write and enforce the laws, I would consider an anarchist society to be void of rules as well. A rule that is agreed upon by all, but not enforced, has no teeth. It would rely on people to police themselves, at which point the rules become rather flexible.
>> Having a "self-policing community" means having laws
> Not true either. Anarchists (including prominent ones like Chomsky) have often put stated that their form of government does include rules,
> though I don't know enough about anarchism to state exactly what.
That's all very interesting, and I will read more about it-- but "rules" mean rulers. If some authority enforces it upon others, it's effectively the same thing as a law. As our democratic experiment has shown, self-rule doesn't automatically lead to more freedom or eliminate authority.
> While I am certainly no expert (nor anarchist) you're putting forward statements that are clearly untrue, even at a glance.
No, it just depends on your definitions. I think the very idea of a "self-policing community" is in contradiction with anarchy, which I consider to be based on the idea of the individual having authority over him or herself and no other. "Rules" without government end up being nothing more than a consensus of "best practices."
> Out of the hands of anarchists... and into the hands of self-policing communities. What exactly does he think anarchism means in practical terms?
Simple, really-- anarchy means no laws. Given that, every individual is either self-policed or policed by others (or both). Having a "self-policing community" means having laws. It conflicts with anarchy. Whether the laws are voted on or imposed from above, or whether the policing is done by volunteers or the government, is really irrelevant next to the fact that a group of individuals is telling other individuals how to behave.
In short, anarchy = self-policing individuals. A self-policing community can't be anarchic.
Well, I don't know how you like your coffee, but I make mine with fresh water, and then I add glucose. :)
Surely you must get inspired by the billions of coffee shops with stupid "bean," "grind" or "grounds" puns in their names..?
"The Daily Grind"
"The Stomping Grounds"
"Bean Vivant"
etc. etc.
I've probably saved hundreds of dollars just by sitting and reading Wikipedia, instead of going out to restaurants and the cinema!
Funny, that reminds me of an old Groucho quote:
"I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book."
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Groucho_Marx
Okay, maybe that was a bad example - but Eli Whitney is also a poor example. He only held one patent on the cotton gin, and his company went under before he ever came out with a revised version.
However, you are right that he wouldn't have had to patent new versions, but only because he held the patent on the original. You can't infringe your own patent. Even so, you can get a new patent if you have revised or improved at least 10% of the original design - I'll leave it to the courts to decide whether that means 10% of lines of code or 10% of bytes.
You are mistaken, though, about the patent being on what the machine did. It was a machine patent, not a process patent. I'm certainly no expert on patents, but I do know that that you can't patent the purpose of a machine or process - you have to patent the method, i.e. the "how" and not the "why." Certainly the process of separating cotton counts for thousands of years' prior art; there is no way Whitney could have been "patenting the verb," he was in fact patenting the noun. He didn't even want to sell the gin - he wanted to charge for service instead! Most of the cotton gins sold, which revolutionized the cotton industry, were not Whitney's.
The television analogy was meant to illustrate how the same hardware can be applied in nearly infinite ways, just by changing the patterns of electrons running through it. I would say that yes, some shows indeed are 'useful,' but that's not the point. The point is that the hardware is general-purpose hardware and doesn't become a new invention just because you change the programming. Software is a separate invention, just as the holodeck program would be - but the key is that it is almost infinitely reconfigurable, even while it's running. That's something no physical invention can match.
You said that it's possible to build hardware that will do what any given program can do, but nobody does this - partly because it's not practical, as you said, but mostly because it would rob the machine of its flexibility, which is the main justification for using a general-purpose computer in the first place. There have been a spate of ill-advised patents which are nothing more than "use a computer to do xyz," where "xyz" is an existing process. I'm sorry, but I can't see how that deserves a new patent.
Programmable computers are truly unique in the history of technology. From a physical standpoint, they don't even "do" anything other than consume power and generate heat. The hardware is useless without software, and the software is useless without hardware. Software isn't strictly a design, it isn't strictly text, it isn't strictly a machine - it has elements of all these things, and therefore deserves separate consideration.
Patents on software rob the computer of its flexibility, it's as basic as that. Someone once pointed out that the vast majority of software out there today infringes someone's patent. It's practically impossible to write a significant program today that doesn't step on someone's patent. If software patents were enforced to the same degree that they are granted, the computer would cease to be a useful device. To maintain an information economy, programmers need to be free to implement solutions without this kind of encumbrance.
It's neither arbitrary nor meaningless - in fact, it's a very important distinction. If it weren't, then every time you issued an update to a patented program, you would have to re-apply for a patent on your new "invention."
Let me ask you this: does a television become a new invention every time you change the channel?
Because computers are general-purpose machines, and to say that a computer acting in one manner is a different invention than a computer acting in another manner is basically pretty silly.
Not to mention that computers give you almost infinite flexibility in achieving a task. To restrain that freedom is counterproductive and fundamentally unfair. To quote the League for Programming Freedom, "no one should be able to dictate what kinds of programs you can write."
Moist towelette
Cleans up all the mess
You can see your face
In a mirror image on the
Moist towelette
http://www.amiright.com/parody/80s/thenormal1.shtml
> How amusing. My first click on to view the article gave me a 404 not found :-)
:)
Netcraft confirms it.
I would never defend everything Apple has done, but there is a crucial difference in these two cases. In the IBM clone wars, Compaq reverse-engineered the IBM BIOS and produced their own compatible BIOS based on their own code.
In Franklin's case, they simply copied Apple's ROM and shipped it with their computers, as if it were their own work. That's why Apple sued them for copyright violation.
I would, however, agree that the "look and feel" lawsuit was complete bullshit.
"Interestingly, this is during the totality of Wednesday's lunar eclipse, which may or may not make debris easier to observe." ...unless it doesn't. In which case, yes, the answer is 'no.'
I'm Leonard Nimoy.
"Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it."
- Richard Feynman
Well, a rolling scone gathers no moss.
Besides, one pun baguettes another...
I love Halo, but for me, the backstory just gets in the way of gameplay.
It's a FPS at heart, so why do I need to know how and why the Flood got on the ring?
I'm with Vasquez on this one... "I only need to know ONE thing, man... where they are!"
Word. Who was it who defined computer security as "being able to rely on your computer(s) to behave in a predictable manner" ?
Once you open the door to external influences modifying your system software, all bets are off re: predictable behavior!
Oh, absolutely. This is what happens when engineers get primacy over marketing. ;-)
> Hmmm, sounds like gravity is sure helping the situation...
Not really, it's just providing us a way of exploiting the energy the sun infuses.
It takes just as much energy to raise an object to a given height in a gravitational field as you will get out of it when you drop it - so gravity can't be the *source* of that energy in this case.
Sorry, but that quote's an urban legend.
> Gravity is a force that we exploit as a source of potential and kinetic energy. How do you think weight-driven clocks, hydroelectricity, or tidal energy work?
Hydroelectricity works by solar energy - the heat of the sun evaporates water, raising it into the atmosphere and increasing its potential energy. We extract some of that energy as it condenses, rains down, and flows through our generators, but the actual source is the sun, not gravity.