Sure this is great if you're doing simulations or animating/rendering stuff . But for Joe Schmoe who surfs the web and reads his e-mail, what's the big deal? How will this affect network security?
Well, I guess the obvious answer is that this is Slashdot. News for Nerds. Stuff that matters. Not News for Joe Schmoe.
what keeps the jobs of innovation from shifting off-shore as internationals become increasingly more adept?
This is what you are asking for in any field one chooses to compete in. There will always be someone that will copy what you have created in all fields from basic science to arts to commercial enterprises. Just ask Apple Computer. They have served as the R&D for most of the PC industry.
The trick is to realize this is the fundamental nature of the system and either out compete and out-innovate or get out of the kitchen.
We never thought it could happen to us: globalization was just supposed to make stuff cheaper to buy. But the race to the bottom can happen at all levels of employment, for all tasks that don't need to be performed on site. This includes us, the white collar IT workers.
The thing that made the US a center for IT was the innovation. When that innovation became comoditized (in terms of current IT), the jobs went where business placed priorities. i.e. money. There is very little loyalty these days in business and it could be argued that perhaps there should not be from a true business perspective (however abhorrent that is). The trick for IT (if IT workers want to maintain their status) is to continue innovating.
It could be as cool as when I had my Macintosh Quadra 840av, only more so. I had three NUBUS graphics cards on that that could along with FA-18 Hornet 1.0 display both front views and side views at the same time making for a seriously impressive simulator experience almost a decade ago back in 1993. Think about it. This possibility is made somewhat possible with dual outputs of many current video cards, but think of the immersive environments that could be created.
I would not be surprised if the increase in file-sharing was due to a bunch of new folks coming on-line to see what the hub-bub was about, while the decrease is most certainly due to the folks that were sharing large collections with lots of easily trackable bandwidth that got spooked.
I saw the article and thought "Oh cool a new power workstation" but after looking at the specs, 700mhz cpu's and such, is it? Wouldnt the new Apple G5's with dual 2 ghz cpus crush it?
Well, I have some history with using SGI Octanes and O2's, and I would say that for my needs, there is absolutely no need for the SGI's anymore. The G5 can address 8GB of RAM, it can support multiple displays, as just about every Mac since 1987 has been able to do. (you are only limited by the number of available PCI slots or back when things were NUBUS, NUBUS slots).
In fact, the G5 has many of the technologies that made the Octanes so tasty back in their time. (Completely separate busses for memory, storage, IO etc....), even clustering is possible with the G5's, so if the software is available, I will save my $$'s and go for the better solution, which is the G5.
All of that said, there may be some that can benefit greatly from the SGI's, particularly those in rendering since that is apparently the Tezro's strongpoint (from looking at the specs). Too bad they stuck it with that awful name.
Well, this is disturbing on one level due to the lack of competition if Peoplesoft were absorbed by Oracle, and yet I find myself not being too concerned due to the overwhelming costs and grief that Peoplesoft software has put certain organizations I know of through. Yes, I realize it is complex software, but I felt as if we were actually beta testing Peoplesoft code for them when we implemented it. Soooo, perhaps things might actually turn out for the better?
"DUDE!!1 A bl0g iz a plaze 4 ur shit dat u write n stuff! U can put linkz n shit in there! Write back, k?"
Say, that's pretty good. You must have been talking with the undergraduate in our lab. Seriously, this dude walks in talking schnizzle this and fizzle that and he honestly writes his emails like that. I feel really old sometimes....
Interestingly he comments that he doesn't like Napster, he thinks that people should have easier access to music but that artists should get paid for what they do.
Why would anyone let someone else keep their daily journal for them?
Hmmmm, perhaps Lessig trusts him? Or perhaps this is an effort at getting exposure to a portion of the voting public they find valuable to their cause? Given that Lessig has recognition in this crowd (this did get posted on/. afterall), and/. is recognized in the press quite a bit and is often used for background research by a number of folks in the press etc...etc...etc... Really, think about it. Who reads Lessig's blogs? Typically they are educated, reasonably well connected to technology, are aware of current legal issues as well as political ones and finally, this is a rather inexpensive manner to get out the message Deans is trying to extend to the voting public.
Given the position the Democratic party is in right now with reasonable candidates, Dean has got my attention. While Dean is not an academic per se, he did go to Yale and then received his MD from Albert Einsten College of Medicine, so one would surmise he can think to some degree, unfortunately missing in certain administrations. Additionally, this guy actually worked for a living as does his wife as physicians so there is a certain intimate knowledge of how screwed up our health care system has become, particularly under HMO's.
All in all, I would say this strategy (if indeed this is strategy) has worked so far. They got my attention, and judging from the almost 400 posts as I write this, they got a few others attention as well.
I would be interested to see what in the way of technical writing and documentation goes into this sort of thing. It would force many technical writers to also focus on interface much more than they do now with standard Robohelp systems or other standard documentation.
You'd have to be crazy to waste that much time on a woefully obsolete machine instead of using the modern one you've already got for the same purpose.
Except the beautiful thing about the Apple ]['s were the learning one could get out of them. My Apple ][+ at least shipped with full schematics to the computer including all wiring and chip ID's. It was a fantastic opportunity for a then 11 year old back in 1981 or so, and some would argue that even modern adults can learn quite a bit from such an old architecture that is extensible enough to still function with much more modern technologies.
The other thing to consider is that this machine (Apple ][+) was essentially designed from scratch by one person. Steve Wozniak. Thank you Steve.
I should have also said that a number of contracts that one might expect would be internal government projects have more and more been bid out to private contractors. For instance, you might be surprised to find that a number of very sensitive database projects, military police actions and military interventions in the Balkans and Central America are being handled by companies such as Dyncorp.
Given the recent push to commercialize various aspects of government, this is one of the potential pitfalls. Businesses will subcontract work to the lowest bidder and eliminate one of the internal controls that many government software projects have had in the past.
Terrorists are certainly angry, and may well feel disenfranchised, but they are not, as a rule, uneducated, poor or underprivileged.
One should make a distinction between the organizers and the individuals who martyr themselves. I am making no judgement on any group other than to say that I believe terrorism in any form is wrong, but on the whole, like any organization with agendas, the folks who carry out the actions are less well off, less educated, and at a distinct financial disadvantage. Thus the psychology of advantage and recruitment that brings martyrs into such action.
Not to pick on you personally, but it amazes me how all the information we receive about terrorism doesn't make the slightest dent in that comforting notion that they're just unhappy because they're poor.
No offense taken. I completely agree with you here in that I hold no such misconceptions about folks being unhappy just because they are poor. Rather they have strong feelings based upon belief and are reacting to what actions they see being perpetrated upon them and their beliefs. In many cases these feelings are perfectly justified based upon actions our government has taken and is taking. What many Americans have a problem with is that not everyone in the world wants to be like us and we need to respect that.
The twin tower attack was a one-time thing; neither it nor anything like it will ever work again, especially after all the media attention and tactical commentary the attack received.
Actually, there is nothing preventing a dedicated individual or group from doing just this thing. If one owns their own large aircraft, (lots and lots of individuals own large commercial type aircraft) there is nothing to prevent crazed people from doing just this sort of thing on innumerable targets. The problem with terrorism is that it is almost impossible to prevent all possible events without a complete lockdown on society. The best possible solution is to prevent folks from feeling disenfranchised, uneducated and angry.
The problem with any society is that there is always going to be some low life that does not want to work for what they have. Rather they want to take it without appreciation for the investment in time and effort that any thing worth while takes to either manufacture or compensate the creator of that item for. Technology will always facillitate this and will open new pathways for old crimes.
OK, so you could lug around a TEN pound Toshiba or a 6.8 pound Apple. When I am travelling on business and need a portable workstation, I know which one I want. Three lbs is a huge difference when it comes to cross country flights.
The thing I don't see any of these articles discussing is the technology that has been hiding in the wide open for this project for years. The aerospike technology of the X-33 has been an engine test-bed for this bomber for years now. Darpa funding has simply allowed a direct competition from manufacturers for the project now that a major technological hurdle has been passed. Come to think of it, this is kinda how stealth technology came about. Only when proof of concept was demonstrated with that program, everything went black.
It should make us wonder if this sort of rapid response is always a good thing to have? Perhaps having more than two hours to decide to blow someone up is a good thing given some folks apparent rash decisions.
I will be an advocate for those tools that I find to be the best with which to accomplish my work. Apple has historically provided the most innovative products in the PC industry and I have been able to take advantage of those innovations in my work. That's all.
You just can't say enough about your platform of choice.
Advocacy is a way to ensure that tools of choice remain and the companies that produce those tools can compete in the face of significant competition from larger companies with more market share.
Consider: Linux on AMD
I absolutely have considered and used a couple of Linux distros. However, my research typically consists of about a week at the bench in the "wet-lab" and three weeks behind a computer screen for about 14-15 hours/day analyzing data and writing. This time cannot be spent configuring drivers or screwing around getting things to work. The plug and play nature of the Macintosh ensures that this is a tool that simply works when I ask it to. Furthermore, the text handling of OS X makes hours in front of the display much easier on the eyes.
As far as your price comparison, a $500 Linux system does not remotely equate to a $3000 loaded dual CPU OS X system. Actually take the time to look at what you are getting with each of those systems and you will see what I mean. Superdrive, SATA drives, completely parallel bus architectures for memory, storage, CPU, and IO. Firewire 400 and 800, USB 2.0, expandable to 8GB of RAM etc...etc...etc... When I config a Linux workstation remotely comparable, I am within a couple hundred $$'s which is easily eaten up by the time required to support the Linux system vs the OS X box.
At the low end, when I configure a Linux system comparable to a $1100 iMac, I come up with around an $800 system without the software bundle or OS X which is easily worth the money, especially in terms of support costs.
I am not saying that Linux boxes have no place. Quite the contrary. I absolutely believe that there is a right place for them for many from the rank and file to the dedicated workstations, but in terms of a desktop system that can do it all, there is no substitute for an OS X based system. Try it with an open mind and you will understand.
They just plain don't write this stuff for Macs. And they never will.
Actually, there have been a number of companies bringing their high end specialized *NIX code to the Mac including apps for molecular modeling, bioinformatics, GIS etc....
I think a lot of non-open source, non-in-house developed UNIX applications probably won't ever be ported to Mac OS X because it's not taken seriously by folks who write these kinds of apps as a viable platform.
Funny, I have had just the opposite experience.
But the guys who run UNIX at the high-end of the spectrum don't see it as a UNIX, it's a Mac, and it's nice for graphic designers and desktop publishers, and maybe even has some room for people doing surface modeling for design purpose,
I use OS X at the "high-end" of the spectrum to perform computational molecular phenotyping, manuscript preparation, creation of presentations, porting code, surfing the web, experimenting with performing reconstruction using yes, CAD software etc...etc...etc.... and....
IT buyers are continuing a trend of cutting costs, favoring utility over cutting-edge effect.
This is the reason we are investing in OS X. In general to be productive, you use the tools that best help you to accomplish the job at hand. Yes, Linux and other open source solutions are often a part of this, but when one desktop system can replace several others including Wintel and traditional UNIX workstations such as SGI and Sun, all while running the same *NIX apps as before right along with productivity applications such as Photoshop and Office, it saves money and increases productivity, making it an easy decision.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure this is great if you're doing simulations or animating/rendering stuff . But for Joe Schmoe who surfs the web and reads his e-mail, what's the big deal? How will this affect network security?
Well, I guess the obvious answer is that this is Slashdot. News for Nerds. Stuff that matters. Not News for Joe Schmoe.
What's holding them back - red tape, technical issues?
There is an interesting article in the latest edition of Wired on some of the differences between the US and the EU and why this may be the case.
what keeps the jobs of innovation from shifting off-shore as internationals become increasingly more adept?
This is what you are asking for in any field one chooses to compete in. There will always be someone that will copy what you have created in all fields from basic science to arts to commercial enterprises. Just ask Apple Computer. They have served as the R&D for most of the PC industry.
The trick is to realize this is the fundamental nature of the system and either out compete and out-innovate or get out of the kitchen.
We never thought it could happen to us: globalization was just supposed to make stuff cheaper to buy. But the race to the bottom can happen at all levels of employment, for all tasks that don't need to be performed on site. This includes us, the white collar IT workers.
The thing that made the US a center for IT was the innovation. When that innovation became comoditized (in terms of current IT), the jobs went where business placed priorities. i.e. money. There is very little loyalty these days in business and it could be argued that perhaps there should not be from a true business perspective (however abhorrent that is). The trick for IT (if IT workers want to maintain their status) is to continue innovating.
It could be as cool as when I had my Macintosh Quadra 840av, only more so. I had three NUBUS graphics cards on that that could along with FA-18 Hornet 1.0 display both front views and side views at the same time making for a seriously impressive simulator experience almost a decade ago back in 1993. Think about it. This possibility is made somewhat possible with dual outputs of many current video cards, but think of the immersive environments that could be created.
I would not be surprised if the increase in file-sharing was due to a bunch of new folks coming on-line to see what the hub-bub was about, while the decrease is most certainly due to the folks that were sharing large collections with lots of easily trackable bandwidth that got spooked.
I saw the article and thought "Oh cool a new power workstation" but after looking at the specs, 700mhz cpu's and such, is it? Wouldnt the new Apple G5's with dual 2 ghz cpus crush it?
Well, I have some history with using SGI Octanes and O2's, and I would say that for my needs, there is absolutely no need for the SGI's anymore. The G5 can address 8GB of RAM, it can support multiple displays, as just about every Mac since 1987 has been able to do. (you are only limited by the number of available PCI slots or back when things were NUBUS, NUBUS slots).
In fact, the G5 has many of the technologies that made the Octanes so tasty back in their time. (Completely separate busses for memory, storage, IO etc....), even clustering is possible with the G5's, so if the software is available, I will save my $$'s and go for the better solution, which is the G5.
All of that said, there may be some that can benefit greatly from the SGI's, particularly those in rendering since that is apparently the Tezro's strongpoint (from looking at the specs). Too bad they stuck it with that awful name.
Well, this is disturbing on one level due to the lack of competition if Peoplesoft were absorbed by Oracle, and yet I find myself not being too concerned due to the overwhelming costs and grief that Peoplesoft software has put certain organizations I know of through. Yes, I realize it is complex software, but I felt as if we were actually beta testing Peoplesoft code for them when we implemented it. Soooo, perhaps things might actually turn out for the better?
"DUDE!!1 A bl0g iz a plaze 4 ur shit dat u write n stuff! U can put linkz n shit in there! Write back, k?"
Say, that's pretty good. You must have been talking with the undergraduate in our lab. Seriously, this dude walks in talking schnizzle this and fizzle that and he honestly writes his emails like that. I feel really old sometimes....
Interestingly he comments that he doesn't like Napster, he thinks that people should have easier access to music but that artists should get paid for what they do.
iTMS anyone?
Why would anyone let someone else keep their daily journal for them?
/. afterall), and /. is recognized in the press quite a bit and is often used for background research by a number of folks in the press etc...etc...etc... Really, think about it. Who reads Lessig's blogs? Typically they are educated, reasonably well connected to technology, are aware of current legal issues as well as political ones and finally, this is a rather inexpensive manner to get out the message Deans is trying to extend to the voting public.
Hmmmm, perhaps Lessig trusts him? Or perhaps this is an effort at getting exposure to a portion of the voting public they find valuable to their cause? Given that Lessig has recognition in this crowd (this did get posted on
Given the position the Democratic party is in right now with reasonable candidates, Dean has got my attention. While Dean is not an academic per se, he did go to Yale and then received his MD from Albert Einsten College of Medicine, so one would surmise he can think to some degree, unfortunately missing in certain administrations. Additionally, this guy actually worked for a living as does his wife as physicians so there is a certain intimate knowledge of how screwed up our health care system has become, particularly under HMO's.
All in all, I would say this strategy (if indeed this is strategy) has worked so far. They got my attention, and judging from the almost 400 posts as I write this, they got a few others attention as well.
I would be interested to see what in the way of technical writing and documentation goes into this sort of thing. It would force many technical writers to also focus on interface much more than they do now with standard Robohelp systems or other standard documentation.
You'd have to be crazy to waste that much time on a woefully obsolete machine instead of using the modern one you've already got for the same purpose.
Except the beautiful thing about the Apple ]['s were the learning one could get out of them. My Apple ][+ at least shipped with full schematics to the computer including all wiring and chip ID's. It was a fantastic opportunity for a then 11 year old back in 1981 or so, and some would argue that even modern adults can learn quite a bit from such an old architecture that is extensible enough to still function with much more modern technologies.
The other thing to consider is that this machine (Apple ][+) was essentially designed from scratch by one person. Steve Wozniak. Thank you Steve.
Unfortunately you're right.
We need a revolution in usability.
Hmmm. Like OS X?
Ducks
I should have also said that a number of contracts that one might expect would be internal government projects have more and more been bid out to private contractors. For instance, you might be surprised to find that a number of very sensitive database projects, military police actions and military interventions in the Balkans and Central America are being handled by companies such as Dyncorp.
Given the recent push to commercialize various aspects of government, this is one of the potential pitfalls. Businesses will subcontract work to the lowest bidder and eliminate one of the internal controls that many government software projects have had in the past.
Terrorists are certainly angry, and may well feel disenfranchised, but they are not, as a rule, uneducated, poor or underprivileged.
One should make a distinction between the organizers and the individuals who martyr themselves. I am making no judgement on any group other than to say that I believe terrorism in any form is wrong, but on the whole, like any organization with agendas, the folks who carry out the actions are less well off, less educated, and at a distinct financial disadvantage. Thus the psychology of advantage and recruitment that brings martyrs into such action.
Not to pick on you personally, but it amazes me how all the information we receive about terrorism doesn't make the slightest dent in that comforting notion that they're just unhappy because they're poor.
No offense taken. I completely agree with you here in that I hold no such misconceptions about folks being unhappy just because they are poor. Rather they have strong feelings based upon belief and are reacting to what actions they see being perpetrated upon them and their beliefs. In many cases these feelings are perfectly justified based upon actions our government has taken and is taking. What many Americans have a problem with is that not everyone in the world wants to be like us and we need to respect that.
The twin tower attack was a one-time thing; neither it nor anything like it will ever work again, especially after all the media attention and tactical commentary the attack received.
Actually, there is nothing preventing a dedicated individual or group from doing just this thing. If one owns their own large aircraft, (lots and lots of individuals own large commercial type aircraft) there is nothing to prevent crazed people from doing just this sort of thing on innumerable targets. The problem with terrorism is that it is almost impossible to prevent all possible events without a complete lockdown on society. The best possible solution is to prevent folks from feeling disenfranchised, uneducated and angry.
The problem with any society is that there is always going to be some low life that does not want to work for what they have. Rather they want to take it without appreciation for the investment in time and effort that any thing worth while takes to either manufacture or compensate the creator of that item for. Technology will always facillitate this and will open new pathways for old crimes.
OK, so you could lug around a TEN pound Toshiba or a 6.8 pound Apple. When I am travelling on business and need a portable workstation, I know which one I want. Three lbs is a huge difference when it comes to cross country flights.
The thing I don't see any of these articles discussing is the technology that has been hiding in the wide open for this project for years. The aerospike technology of the X-33 has been an engine test-bed for this bomber for years now. Darpa funding has simply allowed a direct competition from manufacturers for the project now that a major technological hurdle has been passed. Come to think of it, this is kinda how stealth technology came about. Only when proof of concept was demonstrated with that program, everything went black.
It should make us wonder if this sort of rapid response is always a good thing to have? Perhaps having more than two hours to decide to blow someone up is a good thing given some folks apparent rash decisions.
You are a Mac Zealot troll.
I will be an advocate for those tools that I find to be the best with which to accomplish my work. Apple has historically provided the most innovative products in the PC industry and I have been able to take advantage of those innovations in my work. That's all.
You just can't say enough about your platform of choice.
Advocacy is a way to ensure that tools of choice remain and the companies that produce those tools can compete in the face of significant competition from larger companies with more market share.
Consider: Linux on AMD
I absolutely have considered and used a couple of Linux distros. However, my research typically consists of about a week at the bench in the "wet-lab" and three weeks behind a computer screen for about 14-15 hours/day analyzing data and writing. This time cannot be spent configuring drivers or screwing around getting things to work. The plug and play nature of the Macintosh ensures that this is a tool that simply works when I ask it to. Furthermore, the text handling of OS X makes hours in front of the display much easier on the eyes.
As far as your price comparison, a $500 Linux system does not remotely equate to a $3000 loaded dual CPU OS X system. Actually take the time to look at what you are getting with each of those systems and you will see what I mean. Superdrive, SATA drives, completely parallel bus architectures for memory, storage, CPU, and IO. Firewire 400 and 800, USB 2.0, expandable to 8GB of RAM etc...etc...etc... When I config a Linux workstation remotely comparable, I am within a couple hundred $$'s which is easily eaten up by the time required to support the Linux system vs the OS X box.
At the low end, when I configure a Linux system comparable to a $1100 iMac, I come up with around an $800 system without the software bundle or OS X which is easily worth the money, especially in terms of support costs.
I am not saying that Linux boxes have no place. Quite the contrary. I absolutely believe that there is a right place for them for many from the rank and file to the dedicated workstations, but in terms of a desktop system that can do it all, there is no substitute for an OS X based system. Try it with an open mind and you will understand.
They just plain don't write this stuff for Macs. And they never will.
Actually, there have been a number of companies bringing their high end specialized *NIX code to the Mac including apps for molecular modeling, bioinformatics, GIS etc....
I think a lot of non-open source, non-in-house developed UNIX applications probably won't ever be ported to Mac OS X because it's not taken seriously by folks who write these kinds of apps as a viable platform.
Funny, I have had just the opposite experience.
But the guys who run UNIX at the high-end of the spectrum don't see it as a UNIX, it's a Mac, and it's nice for graphic designers and desktop publishers, and maybe even has some room for people doing surface modeling for design purpose,
I use OS X at the "high-end" of the spectrum to perform computational molecular phenotyping, manuscript preparation, creation of presentations, porting code, surfing the web, experimenting with performing reconstruction using yes, CAD software etc...etc...etc.... and....
and it's certainly no server.
Hosting several web_sites.
IT buyers are continuing a trend of cutting costs, favoring utility over cutting-edge effect.
This is the reason we are investing in OS X. In general to be productive, you use the tools that best help you to accomplish the job at hand. Yes, Linux and other open source solutions are often a part of this, but when one desktop system can replace several others including Wintel and traditional UNIX workstations such as SGI and Sun, all while running the same *NIX apps as before right along with productivity applications such as Photoshop and Office, it saves money and increases productivity, making it an easy decision.