We should all ask ourselves: The internet was not designed for this, wouldn't it be better to use something that was?
The Internet was not designed, period.
The Internet grew into what it is now from a large variety of smaller networks. The protocols that make the Internet as we know it work were designed, to be sure, but most of them weren't even designed together. DNS, for example, is an essential factor in today's Internet, but it was designed independant of TCP/IP. The same can be said of SMTP, FTP, HTTP, etc. These things came about to fill needs as they arose.
And the Internet will continue to grow and evolve. Even IP, the net's fundamental building block, will change as IPv6 is implemented.
The Internet is a fantastic example of the power of bottom-up design. Implicit in your comment is the notion that we'd be better off usign a top-down design, where we sit around and think up all the things we want the net to do, and then try to design a big system that has facilities for all those different things. I think that if we did that, we'd either fail miserably, or we'd end up with something that looks very much like today's Internet.
You never watch television? Or flip on the radio? Or pick up a newspaper? Or read a book or magazine? Or notice a billboard? Or go out to a movie? Or use a FRS radio on the ski slopes? Or print out a report/design/specification? Or read someone's body language?
We communicate in lots of different ways. Whether you realize it or not, I expect you don't do all your communication over the internet and telephone.
Killing 3-4 birds per day doesn't seem too bad. It's a shame that larger, rarer birds are getting killed, but... How many birds would die from the acid rain that a coal power plant would cause?
I think you're missing an important point here, which is that there's room for improvement.
Three or four birds being killed each day very probably is better than the daily environmental damage done by a coal plant, or an oil plant, or any of several other power generation facilities I can think of. But it's still three or four birds, some of them rare, that don't need to die, and it's reasonable and responsible for people to say "Hey, let's try to make this system better." It's no reason to shut wind power plants down, since the alternatives are probably worse. But it's a plenty good reason to look for ways to get that three or four birds per day down to one bird per week or month or year.
Sure, and those are cool, but you get only one picture, and you have no control over where the camera is pointed. The nifty think about kite aerial photography is that the photographer can aim the camera, and pictures are normally taken from relatively low altitude. With practice and some luck, you get great photos taken from a very different perspective from what you're used to.
Your eyes (and mine) "suck" at blue for two very clear physiological reasons:
1. Very few blue-sensing cones. Your retinas have two kinds of light receptors. There are "black and white" light intensity sensors called rods, and color-sensitive sensors called cones. Of the cones, only a few (something like 1% or 2%, I don't recall exactly) are sensitive to blue light, while the rest are sensitive to either red or yellow-green.
2. Blue-sensing cones are outside the fovea. The part of the retina that we depend on for sharp detail is called the fovea, and it's densely packed with red and green cones. The blue cones are outside the fovea, and therefore not so good for viewing sharp detail.
Interestingly, your eyes also suck at red under some circumstances. The aforementioned rods don't provide color information, but they are nevertheless more sensitive to some wavelengths than they are to others. Rods happen to be incredibly sensitive to short (blue) wavelengths, but they're not at all sensitive to longer (red) wavelenths. (Now that I think of it, many black and white photograhic fims also have this characteristic.) That's why astronomers and other people who need to maintain their night vision light their work area with red light. That's also why you can see faint blue and white stars on a dark night, but you have a hard time seeing relatively brighter red stars. And finally, that's why stagehands use red lasers to target spotlights -- the audience just doesn't notice the red dot that appears a second or two before the spotlight flicks on.
Two of the great things (among many fantastic features) of Timbuk2 bags are:
1) they don't look like laptop computer bags, and
2) you can pick your own colors, so your bag is easily recognizable as yours.
Both of the above are a big help at airport security checks, conferences, subways, hotels, and any other place where someone might be tempted to snag your bag.
Timbuk2 didn't offer a laptop version when I was in the market, so I sent them a long e-mail detailing the many reasons they should. They sent back a thoughtful response explaining that I wasn't the only one that thought so, that they were working on it, and that developing a solid product takes time. I bought one of their bags anyway (my second) and simply added an Eagle Creek padded laptop cell. Both the bag and the cell work really well.
Since I don't own one, I can't speak directly about their laptop bags, but we have four of their regular bags in various sizes. They're well thought out, easy to use and carry, and indestructible. I can't say enough good things about Timbuk2 bags.
Actually, it's Macintosh, with a lower case 'i' and an 'a' between the 'M' and the 'c'. After 20 years, I'm surprised to see people still get the name consistantly wrong.
It seems strange that Microsoft is trying to "help" other companies produce online music stores, rather than starting its own. They've never really been afraid to compete, particularly when they have a strong hand to play. So what's the up side of this for Microsoft? Does it help them mitigate their risk in a new market? Is it that they figure that lots of music stores are going to pop up one way or another, and they want a piece of all of 'em? Are they trying to keep a low profile to avoid more antitrust litigation?
In short, why has Microsoft decided to share this pie rather than take the whole thing?
many first time buyers are really put off with thought of purchasing a computer that overly limits their options, even if they never would do anything to it.
What's your source for that lovely bit of wisdom?
It's my experience that most first time buyers don't know or care what AGP or PCI slots are, or why one might ever want or need to change the processor (whatever that is). Indeed, an essential part of the appeal of all-in-one machines like the iMac and the eMac are that, well, they're all-in-one. You don't have to make a lot of decisions about what to buy, and you don't have to worry about whether all the parts will work together. (That's one reason that Gateway and Dell tend to sell their low-end machines as bundles.)
I recognize that you could add some expansion slots and just not make a big fuss about it so as not to confuse the non-technical customers. But why increase the costs of development and manufacturing to add features that you're specifically planning not to advertise? Small, cheap, expandable: pick two.
My dad just bought an iMac. I suppose that technically he's not a first time buyer, since he bought my first two Macs back in '85 and '87. But this is the first computer he's bought for himself, and it's a perfect choice specifically because he doesn't have to know or worry about anything on the inside. He'll use e-mail, surf, and do research with it, and he'll probably be happy with it for several years to come.
My co-worker also just bought an iMac. Last night, in fact. He's anything but a first time buyer, but he thinks it's a great computer too. He got home from the store late last night and was looking forward to going to bed, but his wife wanted him to set it up. So he essentially took it out of the box and plugged it in, and he was about done. He had to create a user account for her, and plug it into his home network. But that's it. There's an awful lot to be said for that sort of convenience.
Apple would hit a home run if they came out with something simular to this as the next iMac.
Perhaps. But the cube doesn't have much in the way of expansion possibilities either, so I don't think it's really what you're wishing for.
Also, despite great engineering, fantastic presentation, and early raves from the press, the cube was rather a flop for Apple. I'd be surprised to see them do anything close to the cube in the near future.
I should have mentioned that the work described above seems to be that of Dr. Seth Powsner along with Dr. Tufte. I presume that Powsner was one of Tufte's students. In any case, there's much more information about the graphical chart in Powsner and Tufte's paper, including a picture of the same chart I was looking at above.
Powsner and Tufte have another paper with a chart design that's tailored for psychiatric patients. There's less space devoted to graphs, and more space for background, notes, and other textual data.
I attended one of Tufte's seminars, and I've still got a handout that shows a patient "chart" that Tufte helped design. The patient's name, location, admission date, and the current date are printed clearly at the top of the page, followed by a very brief synopsis. The right 1/3 of the page is a list of notes followed clearly by the initials of the person who entered the note, their role, the time, and the date of the note.
The most striking thing about this chart is the left 2/3 of the page, which is a 4 x 6 cluster of small pictures. Most of the pictures are graphs, each graph representing measurements of one thing (Na, K, Ca, Lithium, Mood, Psychosis, Temerature, Respirations, etc.). A few of the pictures are small representations of chest x-rays because in this case, the patient had pneumonia. The result is clear information about 24 different items plus clear notes all on a single sheet of paper.
The same information presented in tabular form would be much more difficult to read. Indeed, most of the numbers on a page full of tables wouldn't even be useful... a doc doesn't care what your precise glucose measurements over the last week have been; she wants mainly to know whether they've been high, normal, or low. Tufte's graphs are each labelled at the top with the most recent measurement, but the y-axis is labelled only with ++, +, (normal), -, --.
So the important difference between this chart and a list of tables is that the tables present a lot of data but hides some important information, while the graphical chart presents a lot of information, but hides a lot of unimportant data.
Wouldn't it be cool if you could just stick one of these on your dashboard or hold it out the window so that you can drive through a tollbooth and pay without even having to stop?
Oh, wait. We already have that. And nobody seems too concerned about fraud in that case.
how are you finding the noise level? Do you find that the fans ramp up very often, and if they do, do you notice a big difference in volume?
The G5 is dramatically less noisy than the G4 (mirrored doors). The fans on my single-processor 1.8GHz model almost never run fast enough to notice, or even hear, during use. When the machine wakes from sleep, the fans do spin up for a moment to the point that they sound like, well, fans. But then they slow down again and get plenty quiet. And the fans also run quite a lot when the machine is in FireWire disk mode (for those that don't know, most Macs can start up in a mode where they function as external FireWire disk drives). In disk mode, the fans start off fairly quiet and eventually increase to what must be their maximum speed (and noise level). Other than waking from sleep and disk mode, though, I hardly hear the G5. Same goes for my buddy's dual processor 2.0GHz G5.
Are we likely to see the "multiple zone" principle copied into cheap Wintel enclosures?
The three zone cooling system seems to work really well. As described above, the fans don't seem to need to spin very fast to move enough air through the machine to cool the processor(s) withouth making much noise. I'd guess that the G5 processor produces less heat than a Pentium, as I've always understood that the Pentium is a significantly larger chip than any of the PPC chips. But I could be wrong. Take a look at the power consumption figures for each to get a better idea.
As for whether you'll see this sort of cooling system in Wintel machines, I'd say it's a definite maybe. As soon as you pop the side panel off a G5, you realize that machine is one very carefully designed unit. The entire front and rear panels serve as air intake and exhaust panels, respectively, and the processors and their very large heat sinks are placed at the constriction in the middle, so that air flows quickly over them. To make this work, a manufacturer has to be able to control the case design, placement of components, heat sink design, fans, etc. You can't just design a case with mesh front and back panels and slap in any motherboard. I don't think most Wintel buyers are willing to pay for that much design. A few desktop makers like maybe Sony could probably pull it off. More likely, I think you might see this sort of design appear in higher end machines like servers.
There's a lot more about the G5 design that's elegant than just the case. For example, the top hard disk drive mounts up inside the case in a position where it can't slide straight out. It looks at first like it could be a problem to get that drive out, but in fact the guide rails that hold the drive just drop the drive down, and it pops out with no problem. You can remove most of the components without tools. The side panel makes an incredibly satisfying 'click' when you press it into place. The case can be locked closed with a padlock, but the hasp for the lock folds down under the latch when you're not using it, so that it doesn't spoil the clean, flat look of the back. The power button is significantly improved over the G4.
In short, the G5 is probably the best designed machine Apple has produced in years, maybe ever. I wish Apple would get the G5 design team to build a car!
Limiting oneself to a short roll of film is the best way to hone one's ability to compose a shot, not shooting hundreds of digital throw-a-ways.
Says who?
It's my experience that the best way to learn to do something well is to do it, to do it often, and to do it without having to worry about screwing up.
When someone is learning to draw, you don't give them twelve sheets of expensive paper and say "Use these wisely." Instead, you give them a thick pad of newsprint and say "Go outside and draw everything you see." When someone is learning to throw pots, you don't give them a pound of clay and ask them to make the best pot they can from it. Instead, you point them at a large pile of clay and tell them to make a dozen pots. Same goes for programming, woodworking, golf, rock climbing, wine tasting...
Oh, I hear what you're saying. And I'd agree that it's important to get students to think about what they're doing, and to look at each thing that they do (photo, drawing, program, whatever) and consider where they went wrong and what they could do better. The concern is that with no cost associated with each shot, students will just take dozens or even hundreds of shots without thinking about each one in the hope that a few of them will turn out well.
But a student that doesn't understand what makes a good photo won't be able to pick the few random good ones out of the many random lousy ones. A student that does understand and who wants to improve her own work will quickly grow bored with trying to get lucky and will instead start to think about how to make each shot better. What's more, an occasional lucky shot is part of the joy of photography, and perhaps the most important thing to learn about taking good pictures is to let luck happen when it does, but not to rely on it.
There are all kinds of ways you can teach someone to look at their own photos more critically, and to teach them how to master various skills. Limiting someone to a dozen or two dozen exposures is not necessarily the best way to do this. It's just the way that it has been done in the past, because it was the only practical way. Digital photography eliminates this restriction, and it opens up a whole new world not just for experienced photographers, but for beginning photographers too.
First, I should say that I have no specific knowledge of any of this. I can only take educated guesses based on having watched Apple pretty closely for a long time.
I think you misunderstood what I was saying, or at least trying to say. I don't disagree that Apple is probably the entity that's requiring retailers to keep prices of various Apple products, iPod included, at set levels. The reason for this, according to me, is that Apple doesn't want retailers to compete with each other on price. If the big retailers start competing on price with respect to Apple products, all retailers will have to follow suit and match whoever offers the lowest price. Retail profit margins would quickly drop, and nobody will want to carry Apple's stuff anymore. In order to avoid this unhappy situation, Apple very likely makes resellers agree not to sell under a given price. In this way, Apple protects its own distribution network by protecting retail profit margins for all resellers.
Let's also not forget that Apple itself is currently in the retail market with the Apple Store. Given that, Apple is protecting not only its distribution network, but also its own retail outlets, when it (allegedly) imposes pricing restrictions.
Consider that film photography requires dumping a significant quantity of somewhat nasty chemicals down your drain. I think there's value in learning film photography at some point, but it may make more sense for that point to come after you've honed your ability to compose a shot, understand lighting, etc. Go with a semi-cheap 3 megapixel digital for now and introduce film later on.
Watching friends and relatives buy electronic stuff, I notice that when someone learns of a device for sale at pretty good price $X, that suddenly becomes the top price they're willing to pay. It's not an unreasonable strategy... prices for computer hardware do tend to drop over time, and people think to themselves: "Hmm. I'd really like one of those nifty widgets, but I saw them on sale for $249 last month, and I'd rather wait a few weeks until I see that price again."
What I'm saying is that if a consumer knows that there's a _chance_ that they might find a better price, they frequently won't buy until they find that price. That is not in Apple's own best interest. Consistant pricing encourages consumers to buy now rather than later.
From what I understand, Apple does essentially dictate the price. But not just because they can... after all, you'd think that if they could make the same dough per unit while consumers paid less, they'd do it, right? But it's more complicated than that, and there are a few reasons that keeping the price of a particular piece of hardware within a few bucks anywhere you go is attractive to Apple, and believe it or not, beneficial in some ways to customers.
First, many Apple products are high margin items for retailers. As long as that's true, plenty of retailers will carry Apple products, and Apple has a decent shot at increasing both market share and mind share. If Apple lets the price float, retailers' profits on Apple hardware suddenly drop close to zero, and few retailers will continue to carry Apple stuff.
Second, those high margins give Apple a lot of leverage with retailers. Apple needs to ensure that the way its products are presented reflect well on the brand. The "store within a store" concept that you see at CompUSA and others is one example of that. That all costs money. The high margins are Apple's carrot, and the threat of losing Apple authorized reseller status is Apple's stick in the effort to enforce its requirements.
Third, consistant pricing lets consumers buy without worrying that they're missing out on some great deal. If you want an iPod, you go out and buy one at whatever place you like the best or is most convenient for you. It doesn't matter (much) whether you buy at the Apple store or from Amazon or from CompUSA or Best Buy or Circuit City.
Fourth, most people perceive price as an indication of quality. A $300 music player must work better and do more than one that costs $130. (And in the case of the iPod, Apple can back this up: iPod is a better music player than the $130 model in every way other than price.)
Fifth, the market that Apple is clearly targetting with iPod is that segment that doesn't mind paying a premium for a device that works well. These are the same people that might next buy an iMac or a PowerBook or a G5. As much as iPod has been a big hit for Apple, I have to believe that its most important effect has been to introduce Apple to new customers.
What it comes down to is that dropping the margins on iPod gets Apple nothing but cheaper customers, less control over retailers, lower customer perception of quality, and less distribution. Why would they do that?
Perhaps the/. editors schedule themselves to provide as much coverage as possible, and michael happens to work on Saturday and Sunday but takes off some other days. I haven't really noticed/paid attention. But really, weekends are completely arbitrary. I often think that I'd prefer to work on Saturday or Sunday and take Monday or Friday off instead. It'd be particularly handy during the holidays so I could do some shopping when the malls aren't packed with people who are off on weekends.
the japanese take on the club sandwich. I bet it's smaller and more efficient.
What? Have you never seen temaki (hand rolls)? Carbs, protein, and great seasoning in a convenient hand-held form. It's like a club sandwich, but smaller and more efficient. Or maybe it's more like a sub/hoagie/hero/grinder. Well, it's like both...but better.
Slashdot Mirror
We should all ask ourselves: The internet was not designed for this, wouldn't it be better to use something that was?
The Internet was not designed, period.
The Internet grew into what it is now from a large variety of smaller networks. The protocols that make the Internet as we know it work were designed, to be sure, but most of them weren't even designed together. DNS, for example, is an essential factor in today's Internet, but it was designed independant of TCP/IP. The same can be said of SMTP, FTP, HTTP, etc. These things came about to fill needs as they arose.
And the Internet will continue to grow and evolve. Even IP, the net's fundamental building block, will change as IPv6 is implemented.
The Internet is a fantastic example of the power of bottom-up design. Implicit in your comment is the notion that we'd be better off usign a top-down design, where we sit around and think up all the things we want the net to do, and then try to design a big system that has facilities for all those different things. I think that if we did that, we'd either fail miserably, or we'd end up with something that looks very much like today's Internet.
Really?
You never watch television?
Or flip on the radio?
Or pick up a newspaper?
Or read a book or magazine?
Or notice a billboard?
Or go out to a movie?
Or use a FRS radio on the ski slopes?
Or print out a report/design/specification?
Or read someone's body language?
We communicate in lots of different ways. Whether you realize it or not, I expect you don't do all your communication over the internet and telephone.
Killing 3-4 birds per day doesn't seem too bad. It's a shame that larger, rarer birds are getting killed, but... How many birds would die from the acid rain that a coal power plant would cause?
I think you're missing an important point here, which is that there's room for improvement.
Three or four birds being killed each day very probably is better than the daily environmental damage done by a coal plant, or an oil plant, or any of several other power generation facilities I can think of. But it's still three or four birds, some of them rare, that don't need to die, and it's reasonable and responsible for people to say "Hey, let's try to make this system better." It's no reason to shut wind power plants down, since the alternatives are probably worse. But it's a plenty good reason to look for ways to get that three or four birds per day down to one bird per week or month or year.
Sure, and those are cool, but you get only one picture, and you have no control over where the camera is pointed. The nifty think about kite aerial photography is that the photographer can aim the camera, and pictures are normally taken from relatively low altitude. With practice and some luck, you get great photos taken from a very different perspective from what you're used to.
Your eyes (and mine) "suck" at blue for two very clear physiological reasons:
1. Very few blue-sensing cones. Your retinas have two kinds of light receptors. There are "black and white" light intensity sensors called rods, and color-sensitive sensors called cones. Of the cones, only a few (something like 1% or 2%, I don't recall exactly) are sensitive to blue light, while the rest are sensitive to either red or yellow-green.
2. Blue-sensing cones are outside the fovea. The part of the retina that we depend on for sharp detail is called the fovea, and it's densely packed with red and green cones. The blue cones are outside the fovea, and therefore not so good for viewing sharp detail.
Interestingly, your eyes also suck at red under some circumstances. The aforementioned rods don't provide color information, but they are nevertheless more sensitive to some wavelengths than they are to others. Rods happen to be incredibly sensitive to short (blue) wavelengths, but they're not at all sensitive to longer (red) wavelenths. (Now that I think of it, many black and white photograhic fims also have this characteristic.) That's why astronomers and other people who need to maintain their night vision light their work area with red light. That's also why you can see faint blue and white stars on a dark night, but you have a hard time seeing relatively brighter red stars. And finally, that's why stagehands use red lasers to target spotlights -- the audience just doesn't notice the red dot that appears a second or two before the spotlight flicks on.
Two of the great things (among many fantastic features) of Timbuk2 bags are:
1) they don't look like laptop computer bags, and
2) you can pick your own colors, so your bag is easily recognizable as yours.
Both of the above are a big help at airport security checks, conferences, subways, hotels, and any other place where someone might be tempted to snag your bag.
Timbuk2 didn't offer a laptop version when I was in the market, so I sent them a long e-mail detailing the many reasons they should. They sent back a thoughtful response explaining that I wasn't the only one that thought so, that they were working on it, and that developing a solid product takes time. I bought one of their bags anyway (my second) and simply added an Eagle Creek padded laptop cell. Both the bag and the cell work really well.
Since I don't own one, I can't speak directly about their laptop bags, but we have four of their regular bags in various sizes. They're well thought out, easy to use and carry, and indestructible. I can't say enough good things about Timbuk2 bags.
McIntosh - lower case 't'
Actually, it's Macintosh, with a lower case 'i' and an 'a' between the 'M' and the 'c'. After 20 years, I'm surprised to see people still get the name consistantly wrong.
It seems strange that Microsoft is trying to "help" other companies produce online music stores, rather than starting its own. They've never really been afraid to compete, particularly when they have a strong hand to play. So what's the up side of this for Microsoft? Does it help them mitigate their risk in a new market? Is it that they figure that lots of music stores are going to pop up one way or another, and they want a piece of all of 'em? Are they trying to keep a low profile to avoid more antitrust litigation?
In short, why has Microsoft decided to share this pie rather than take the whole thing?
many first time buyers are really put off with thought of purchasing a computer that overly limits their options, even if they never would do anything to it.
What's your source for that lovely bit of wisdom?
It's my experience that most first time buyers don't know or care what AGP or PCI slots are, or why one might ever want or need to change the processor (whatever that is). Indeed, an essential part of the appeal of all-in-one machines like the iMac and the eMac are that, well, they're all-in-one. You don't have to make a lot of decisions about what to buy, and you don't have to worry about whether all the parts will work together. (That's one reason that Gateway and Dell tend to sell their low-end machines as bundles.)
I recognize that you could add some expansion slots and just not make a big fuss about it so as not to confuse the non-technical customers. But why increase the costs of development and manufacturing to add features that you're specifically planning not to advertise? Small, cheap, expandable: pick two.
My dad just bought an iMac. I suppose that technically he's not a first time buyer, since he bought my first two Macs back in '85 and '87. But this is the first computer he's bought for himself, and it's a perfect choice specifically because he doesn't have to know or worry about anything on the inside. He'll use e-mail, surf, and do research with it, and he'll probably be happy with it for several years to come.
My co-worker also just bought an iMac. Last night, in fact. He's anything but a first time buyer, but he thinks it's a great computer too. He got home from the store late last night and was looking forward to going to bed, but his wife wanted him to set it up. So he essentially took it out of the box and plugged it in, and he was about done. He had to create a user account for her, and plug it into his home network. But that's it. There's an awful lot to be said for that sort of convenience.
Apple would hit a home run if they came out with something simular to this as the next iMac.
Perhaps. But the cube doesn't have much in the way of expansion possibilities either, so I don't think it's really what you're wishing for.
Also, despite great engineering, fantastic presentation, and early raves from the press, the cube was rather a flop for Apple. I'd be surprised to see them do anything close to the cube in the near future.
result in a living creature being put in an environment it wasn't intended for
Intended by whom?
PowerPoint or any proesentations of this form was never intended to substitute normal means of presenting data.
Take a look at what Microsoft says about PowerPoint and then say that with a straight face.
I should have mentioned that the work described above seems to be that of Dr. Seth Powsner along with Dr. Tufte. I presume that Powsner was one of Tufte's students. In any case, there's much more information about the graphical chart in Powsner and Tufte's paper, including a picture of the same chart I was looking at above.
Powsner and Tufte have another paper with a chart design that's tailored for psychiatric patients. There's less space devoted to graphs, and more space for background, notes, and other textual data.
I attended one of Tufte's seminars, and I've still got a handout that shows a patient "chart" that Tufte helped design. The patient's name, location, admission date, and the current date are printed clearly at the top of the page, followed by a very brief synopsis. The right 1/3 of the page is a list of notes followed clearly by the initials of the person who entered the note, their role, the time, and the date of the note.
The most striking thing about this chart is the left 2/3 of the page, which is a 4 x 6 cluster of small pictures. Most of the pictures are graphs, each graph representing measurements of one thing (Na, K, Ca, Lithium, Mood, Psychosis, Temerature, Respirations, etc.). A few of the pictures are small representations of chest x-rays because in this case, the patient had pneumonia. The result is clear information about 24 different items plus clear notes all on a single sheet of paper.
The same information presented in tabular form would be much more difficult to read. Indeed, most of the numbers on a page full of tables wouldn't even be useful... a doc doesn't care what your precise glucose measurements over the last week have been; she wants mainly to know whether they've been high, normal, or low. Tufte's graphs are each labelled at the top with the most recent measurement, but the y-axis is labelled only with ++, +, (normal), -, --.
So the important difference between this chart and a list of tables is that the tables present a lot of data but hides some important information, while the graphical chart presents a lot of information, but hides a lot of unimportant data.
Wouldn't it be cool if you could just stick one of these on your dashboard or hold it out the window so that you can drive through a tollbooth and pay without even having to stop?
Oh, wait. We already have that. And nobody seems too concerned about fraud in that case.
how are you finding the noise level? Do you find that the fans ramp up very often, and if they do, do you notice a big difference in volume?
The G5 is dramatically less noisy than the G4 (mirrored doors). The fans on my single-processor 1.8GHz model almost never run fast enough to notice, or even hear, during use. When the machine wakes from sleep, the fans do spin up for a moment to the point that they sound like, well, fans. But then they slow down again and get plenty quiet. And the fans also run quite a lot when the machine is in FireWire disk mode (for those that don't know, most Macs can start up in a mode where they function as external FireWire disk drives). In disk mode, the fans start off fairly quiet and eventually increase to what must be their maximum speed (and noise level). Other than waking from sleep and disk mode, though, I hardly hear the G5. Same goes for my buddy's dual processor 2.0GHz G5.
Are we likely to see the "multiple zone" principle copied into cheap Wintel enclosures?
The three zone cooling system seems to work really well. As described above, the fans don't seem to need to spin very fast to move enough air through the machine to cool the processor(s) withouth making much noise. I'd guess that the G5 processor produces less heat than a Pentium, as I've always understood that the Pentium is a significantly larger chip than any of the PPC chips. But I could be wrong. Take a look at the power consumption figures for each to get a better idea.
As for whether you'll see this sort of cooling system in Wintel machines, I'd say it's a definite maybe. As soon as you pop the side panel off a G5, you realize that machine is one very carefully designed unit. The entire front and rear panels serve as air intake and exhaust panels, respectively, and the processors and their very large heat sinks are placed at the constriction in the middle, so that air flows quickly over them. To make this work, a manufacturer has to be able to control the case design, placement of components, heat sink design, fans, etc. You can't just design a case with mesh front and back panels and slap in any motherboard. I don't think most Wintel buyers are willing to pay for that much design. A few desktop makers like maybe Sony could probably pull it off. More likely, I think you might see this sort of design appear in higher end machines like servers.
There's a lot more about the G5 design that's elegant than just the case. For example, the top hard disk drive mounts up inside the case in a position where it can't slide straight out. It looks at first like it could be a problem to get that drive out, but in fact the guide rails that hold the drive just drop the drive down, and it pops out with no problem. You can remove most of the components without tools. The side panel makes an incredibly satisfying 'click' when you press it into place. The case can be locked closed with a padlock, but the hasp for the lock folds down under the latch when you're not using it, so that it doesn't spoil the clean, flat look of the back. The power button is significantly improved over the G4.
In short, the G5 is probably the best designed machine Apple has produced in years, maybe ever. I wish Apple would get the G5 design team to build a car!
who in their right mind merges the public internet server and internal intranet server
Diebold?
No problem. Personally, I often find when I read something a second or third time that someone has gone and switched the words all around! ;-)
Cheers.
Limiting oneself to a short roll of film is the best way to hone one's ability to compose a shot, not shooting hundreds of digital throw-a-ways.
Says who?
It's my experience that the best way to learn to do something well is to do it, to do it often, and to do it without having to worry about screwing up.
When someone is learning to draw, you don't give them twelve sheets of expensive paper and say "Use these wisely." Instead, you give them a thick pad of newsprint and say "Go outside and draw everything you see." When someone is learning to throw pots, you don't give them a pound of clay and ask them to make the best pot they can from it. Instead, you point them at a large pile of clay and tell them to make a dozen pots. Same goes for programming, woodworking, golf, rock climbing, wine tasting...
Oh, I hear what you're saying. And I'd agree that it's important to get students to think about what they're doing, and to look at each thing that they do (photo, drawing, program, whatever) and consider where they went wrong and what they could do better. The concern is that with no cost associated with each shot, students will just take dozens or even hundreds of shots without thinking about each one in the hope that a few of them will turn out well.
But a student that doesn't understand what makes a good photo won't be able to pick the few random good ones out of the many random lousy ones. A student that does understand and who wants to improve her own work will quickly grow bored with trying to get lucky and will instead start to think about how to make each shot better. What's more, an occasional lucky shot is part of the joy of photography, and perhaps the most important thing to learn about taking good pictures is to let luck happen when it does, but not to rely on it.
There are all kinds of ways you can teach someone to look at their own photos more critically, and to teach them how to master various skills. Limiting someone to a dozen or two dozen exposures is not necessarily the best way to do this. It's just the way that it has been done in the past, because it was the only practical way. Digital photography eliminates this restriction, and it opens up a whole new world not just for experienced photographers, but for beginning photographers too.
First, I should say that I have no specific knowledge of any of this. I can only take educated guesses based on having watched Apple pretty closely for a long time.
I think you misunderstood what I was saying, or at least trying to say. I don't disagree that Apple is probably the entity that's requiring retailers to keep prices of various Apple products, iPod included, at set levels. The reason for this, according to me, is that Apple doesn't want retailers to compete with each other on price. If the big retailers start competing on price with respect to Apple products, all retailers will have to follow suit and match whoever offers the lowest price. Retail profit margins would quickly drop, and nobody will want to carry Apple's stuff anymore. In order to avoid this unhappy situation, Apple very likely makes resellers agree not to sell under a given price. In this way, Apple protects its own distribution network by protecting retail profit margins for all resellers.
Let's also not forget that Apple itself is currently in the retail market with the Apple Store. Given that, Apple is protecting not only its distribution network, but also its own retail outlets, when it (allegedly) imposes pricing restrictions.
Consider that film photography requires dumping a significant quantity of somewhat nasty chemicals down your drain. I think there's value in learning film photography at some point, but it may make more sense for that point to come after you've honed your ability to compose a shot, understand lighting, etc. Go with a semi-cheap 3 megapixel digital for now and introduce film later on.
Watching friends and relatives buy electronic stuff, I notice that when someone learns of a device for sale at pretty good price $X, that suddenly becomes the top price they're willing to pay. It's not an unreasonable strategy... prices for computer hardware do tend to drop over time, and people think to themselves: "Hmm. I'd really like one of those nifty widgets, but I saw them on sale for $249 last month, and I'd rather wait a few weeks until I see that price again."
What I'm saying is that if a consumer knows that there's a _chance_ that they might find a better price, they frequently won't buy until they find that price. That is not in Apple's own best interest. Consistant pricing encourages consumers to buy now rather than later.
Your quip about marriage is a non-sequitur.
From what I understand, Apple does essentially dictate the price. But not just because they can... after all, you'd think that if they could make the same dough per unit while consumers paid less, they'd do it, right? But it's more complicated than that, and there are a few reasons that keeping the price of a particular piece of hardware within a few bucks anywhere you go is attractive to Apple, and believe it or not, beneficial in some ways to customers.
First, many Apple products are high margin items for retailers. As long as that's true, plenty of retailers will carry Apple products, and Apple has a decent shot at increasing both market share and mind share. If Apple lets the price float, retailers' profits on Apple hardware suddenly drop close to zero, and few retailers will continue to carry Apple stuff.
Second, those high margins give Apple a lot of leverage with retailers. Apple needs to ensure that the way its products are presented reflect well on the brand. The "store within a store" concept that you see at CompUSA and others is one example of that. That all costs money. The high margins are Apple's carrot, and the threat of losing Apple authorized reseller status is Apple's stick in the effort to enforce its requirements.
Third, consistant pricing lets consumers buy without worrying that they're missing out on some great deal. If you want an iPod, you go out and buy one at whatever place you like the best or is most convenient for you. It doesn't matter (much) whether you buy at the Apple store or from Amazon or from CompUSA or Best Buy or Circuit City.
Fourth, most people perceive price as an indication of quality. A $300 music player must work better and do more than one that costs $130. (And in the case of the iPod, Apple can back this up: iPod is a better music player than the $130 model in every way other than price.)
Fifth, the market that Apple is clearly targetting with iPod is that segment that doesn't mind paying a premium for a device that works well. These are the same people that might next buy an iMac or a PowerBook or a G5. As much as iPod has been a big hit for Apple, I have to believe that its most important effect has been to introduce Apple to new customers.
What it comes down to is that dropping the margins on iPod gets Apple nothing but cheaper customers, less control over retailers, lower customer perception of quality, and less distribution. Why would they do that?
Perhaps the /. editors schedule themselves to provide as much coverage as possible, and michael happens to work on Saturday and Sunday but takes off some other days. I haven't really noticed/paid attention. But really, weekends are completely arbitrary. I often think that I'd prefer to work on Saturday or Sunday and take Monday or Friday off instead. It'd be particularly handy during the holidays so I could do some shopping when the malls aren't packed with people who are off on weekends.
I mean, this has got to be the ultimate game mod, right?
the japanese take on the club sandwich. I bet it's smaller and more efficient.
What? Have you never seen temaki (hand rolls)? Carbs, protein, and great seasoning in a convenient hand-held form. It's like a club sandwich, but smaller and more efficient. Or maybe it's more like a sub/hoagie/hero/grinder. Well, it's like both...but better.