"The explanation given for deep sixing cabinit records for five years is that many of them relate to the peace process.
"Yesterday the government proposed to be allowed increase this time to 15 years, given this on the same day we find out the've been snooping us is very disturbing"
Up to now, cabinet records have remained confidential for thirty years. However, under the 1997 Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, individuals are now entitled to seek discovery of records relating to cabinet decisions that are over 5 years old. As the act only came into operation 5 years ago, cabinet records from that time are only now coming under the provisions of the act. As far as I'm aware pre-1997 cabinet records cannot be subject to FOI requests.
So the "deep sixing" of cabinet records for five years is not a new measure brought in to protect sensitive documents relating to the peace process, rather it represents a considerable liberalising of the old system. This is why the government is proposing rolling back on these provisions: they're only now being faced with the practical implications. Whereas previously cabinet members could rely on their deliberations being kept secret until after they retired, now they are faced with the prospect of controversial documents being released while they're still very much in power.
I don't think the peace process is a factor at all: these sort of documents could probably be kept secret under the heading of 'national security' or some such thing.
This is hardly the most important issue, but it occurs to me that the pronunciation of the word 'Eolas' (which is the Irish word for 'knowledge') might not be obvious to non-Irish-speakers. To assist you in participating in heated verbal debate on this topic, I offer the following pronunciation guide:
o:les(- where the 'e' would be upside-down if I knew how to display that symbol)
For those of you who don't speak IPA, this means it almost rhymes with 'toeless', and begins with a sound similar to the English word 'owe'.
I hope this will spare you the embarrassment of using pronunciations such as "Yo-lass" or "Ee-owe-lass".
"1: In proportional representation, there are more likely to be minority parties with elected officials who have extreme/radical viewpoints that are dissimilar to the viewpoints of the "average" voter. Because of the US' election system, no candidate can choose to isolate a significant portion of the population with his views and yet still be elected, to a large "smoothing out" extremist policy."
This is to suggest that non-representation of minority viewpoints is desirable, which I would strongly dispute. In any case, in a system that produces good PR, these viewpoints will be represented in proportion to their appeal to the electorate. In plurality systems such as the USA's and UK's, it is possible for a candidate who represents a minority viewpoint to win all the power. Under PR-STV (also called Instant Runoff), minority candidates need to appeal to supporters of other candidates to some degree in order to get elected.
"2: In proportional representation, the government is generally unitary in nature, meaning that the entire government is controlled by one party. Although there are more parties beyond the controlling party and another party represented, they still have a HUGE capability to control government policy. If the party in charge changes (and they often change), the entire government policy may change as well."
This contention is not borne out by observation of governments elected by good PR systems in the real world. With PR, coalition government becomes more likely. If the most popular party commands 35% of the vote, they will have 35% of the representation. In order to form a government, they will have to look to smaller parties to coalesce with. This party might coalesce with a party which won 18% of the representation to form a government - this means that the government can claim to represent 53% of the electorate.
"Imagine if a country implemented social security, and then cancelled it 12 years later because the Socialists were replaced by Libertarians!"
Surely this is desirable also: if the electorate has changed their mind on the issue in the intervening period, should they not be able to elect representatives who will implement their will?
"But notice even after the chunk of ice ordeal the planet is still around?"
Nobody is seriously arguing that global warming is a threat to the planet (although some of the discourse may be phrased in those terms - "Save the Planet" etc.). However it is argued that it represents a threat to human civilisation, i.e. The World As We Know It. This is what makes it a matter of pressing self-interest for all of us.
"From what I understand, Man produces about 1% of all of the planets cloro-floro carbons (greenhouse gases). If we cut production completely, we would end up with a negligible effect."
Cloroflourocarbons (CFCs) are the stuff which used to be found in aerosol sprays and the like, which were found to be damaging the ozone layer. That is a separate issue to global warming.
"In addition to that, we produce carbon dioxide thru processes like, say, breathing. Carbon dioxide is what plants breathe with. More C02 means more plants! Oh no!!!"
I can only presume you're joking, and that you don't really believe in this facile logic. As humans breathe oxygen, would more oxygen in the atmosphere result in more humans?
"Yup, it sucks, but we're pretty much at the mercy of our planet. Not the other way around."
I have to agree with that - we're probably a long way off the time where our normal activities present any real threat to the continuance of life on earth. However, this does not mean that these activities will not trigger environmental catastrophes which might otherwise have been avoided. These won't bother the earth much, but they will have a significant effect on human civilisation as we know it.
The earth probably won't mind if the eastern seaboard of the United States slips into the sea (for example), but it's no exaggeration to describe the consequences for humanity as catastrophic.
"Is it just me, or does anyone else think it's ludicrous to have to leave ones computer turned on just to charge the battery of a portable device?"
Very many Mac users keep their computers turned on all the time, as fanless iMacs and iBooks run silently in sleep mode. In fact, the "power" button on my iMac drops it into sleep mode by default, rather than shutting it down. So if the machine is going to be on anyway, why not use it to recharge an external device? It saves socket space, at least.
"I think they were either corner-cutting to avoid the cost of including a $2 power lump, or just thought they were so dang smart that they failed to see the obvious drawback of charge-via-firewire."
A power adaptor is included, so you can't accuse them of cutting corners. So if you don't like leaving your computer on, you can simply plug your iPod into the wall.
Nobody has mentioned the fact that the iPod recharges its battery via FireWire when you plug it into your computer. Is this even possible with USB? I know that USB delivers power, but is it sufficient to recharge this device's 10-hour battery within a reasonable time?
The iPod does come with a power adaptor, but you only need to worry about it if you're travelling, and don't have access to a FireWire-equipped PC.
Punt has not been pegged to Sterling since 1979
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The Irish Pound (also called the Punt), was pegged to the Pound Sterling on its introduction in 1928, and remained so until 1979. This was because the vast majority of the country's trade in that period was with the UK. Entry into the EEC in 1973 began to change this however, and by 1979 it was no longer desirable for the two currencies to remain linked. At that point Ireland joined the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), one of the fore-runners of the Single Currency project.
In the period between 1979 and 1999, the Irish Pound floated freely against other currencies, until the euro exchange rates were irrevocably fixed on January 1st 1999. For the past three years, 1 Irish Pound has equalled about 1.27 euro.
One other interesting point to note is that during the period of British domination, Ireland had its own currency from 1783 to 1826. This was worth slightly less than the Pound Sterling, and fluctuated according to economic conditions on the island, but was abolished in 1826.
It would not be fair to say, however, that Ireland did not have monetary independence from Britain until 1979, or indeed until 1999. Ireland had full control over its monetary policy, and could have ended the link with Sterling at any time. However, we were not yet economically independent from Britain, so it would not have been prudent to do so.
"2. Jackson's take on what happens to the wearer when the ring is on is... a little out of place with what Bilbo goes through in The Hobbit"
You can't blame Jackson for that - Tolkien's description of the effect of the Ring on its wearer is not consistent between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. In The Hobbit, Bilbo doesn't even notice that anything has changed when he has slipped on the ring, until he realises he is invisible. When Frodo wears the ring in LotR however, the change in his perception of the world is vividly described.
You can come up with all sorts of rationalisations for this inconsistency based on the lore of Middle Earth, but to my mind the simplest explanation serves the best: when Tolkien wrote The Hobbit it was as a standalone story, and he didn't see the need to foreshadow every detail of the later work, even if he had already begun to develop it in his head.
Re:At least *someone* is immune to all the hype...
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"The other day, on hearing from a friend of mine that his local IMAX would be showing Fellowship on opening night, I called the one near me (the Branson IMAX) to see if they were doing the same. "
As far as I'm aware, IMAX theatres can only show films which are shot specifically for their unusual aspect ratio. The Fellowship of the Ring would probably look pretty funny shown in letterbox format on an enormous IMAX screen.
IMAX theatres tend to show nature or special effects spectaculars, often documentaries.
"It's only the 30 Meg movie that's on the dial-up iMac."
I can't comment on the bandwidth available to them, but that's no iMac. Netcraft say:
The site squeeze.sorenson.com is running
Apache/1.3.20 (Unix) mod_throttle/3.1.2 on Solaris.
Having said that, they could probably achieve similar results with an iMac running OS X, or indeed a 386 running Windows 3.1, serving a "Server Unavailable" page.
You wish - as much as you may hate it, it wasn't mainstream until M$ caught on.
Given that Microsoft represents such a large share of the market, it's true to say that USB couldn't be described as "mainstream" until Windows supported it. However, neither could it become mainstream without a large pool of useful hardware being developed for it. This latter category was very visibly driven by Apple, and specifically the iMac.
Intel will tell you that the introduction of the iMac led to an explosion in the demand for and development of USB devices, from hubs to floppy drives, CD burners etc. USB usage on the the PC took off more slowly, but it would have taken off a lot more slowly had it not been for an existing pool of useful hardware. Intel hadn't been having much luck promoting the technology on their own, and although I'm sure they could have pushed it into the mainstream with Microsoft's help, USB was given a serious shot in the arm by Apple.
Apple may have a tiny market share compared to Microsoft, but they still sell machines in enough volume to spearhead new technologies like this.
No encyrption = No annnoying formats for DVD/Audio. The people who are going to fight stuff like this the hardest are not scientists but recond and movie componies.
I think you may have misunderstood the point of this article. This is not about restricting encryption, but restricting the circumvention of encryption. So this particular issue is one which exists at the behest of record/movie companies and other copyright holders. They want encryption, but they don't want to have to spend money keeping up with people creating workarounds for their (often rudimentary) encryption methods.
You may be thinking of another live issue which is being discussed at the moment, which is the call for encryption "backdoors" to be mandatory. That is almost the exact opposite of this debate, but backdoors are not going to get the content companies too worked up. They don't care if the government can break the encryption on a DVD or eBook, as long as Joe Public doesn't have a convenient way of doing so.
We just don't know. Global temperature change is an inevitable result of modern civilization. It's entirely possible that we're headed for huge disasters as a result of the dominance of man, and there's nothing "wrong" about that.
Well, if you could find a disinterested party, they would probably agree that there's nothing intrinsically "wrong" about what we call catastrophic global climate change. Coastlines will be re-arranged as you mention, and islands will be submerged, but life will go on.
Our society, however, will bear little resemblence to what we know today. The islands you refer to will include the British Isles, the coastlines affected will include California and the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. The death, hunger and displacement of people will be on a catastrophic scale. Of course, eventually humanity will re-arrange itself around those new fertile areas you mention, but we can only guess at the character of the civilisation which will emerge.
In short, while Global Warming might not be an Extinction Level Event, it would be, for all intents and purposes, the end of the world as we know it.
Not only are all 14 tracks from the album going to be animated, but they're going to release each track as a single. Not all of them are going to be full releases, though. For example, Aerodynamic (2nd track), and Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger (4th track) were only released on vinyl.
In the interview, they mention that all the animation is "done", so now we have to wait while they drip-feed us new episodes of this masterpiece. I imagine one day we'll be able to buy a DVD with the whole thing.
Apple did Unix a favour [...] They have brought Unix to the MASSES!
"I'd just ask you to sit back for a moment and examine this statement. In what way has Unix been 'brought' to the masses? Normal OSX users are using a GUI which is abstracted far, far away from the Darwin core. Since they're not using any bits of the system that really make it Unix, why should anyone care?"
Um, I think you're the one who needs to take a long hard look at what you're saying. It's a circular argument: "Apple hasn't brought Unix to the masses, because they haven't forced the masses to become the elite".
"They're not using a network-transparent GUI, nor a system which runs useful daemons, nor are they using the componentisation, string manipulation tools, plaintext configuration tools nor any of the rest of it."
All of those things are available to OS X users who chose to work that way. "The masses" can even run useful daemons, like httpd, ftpd, ssh etc. with GUI front-ends. Everything else is available through the CLI.
"Sure, you might get the ability to run some
Unix programs. Cygwin will give you that."
You really seem to have misunderstood what OS X is. It is Unix, and potentially any Unix program can be made run on it. My web development Mac can now not only run Photoshop, Dreamweaver etc., but Apache, PHP, MySQL, Perl etc. etc. This is really very significant for me, and for thousands of others.
"Apple is posturing themselves as a good-guy open source company. They are not. There are several things they could be doing which would greatly help the open-source community, such as releasing the code to Quicktime or their True-Type font technology."
The point the article missed is that Apple are playing the Open Source game, when it comes to those projects with an OSS heritage. As mentioned in many previous posts, Apple has contributed a slew of code, bug fixes, tweaks etc. during the development of Darwin/OS X, and more is likely to come. For the author of the article, however, this is not good enough. In order to play the OSS game by his rules, Apple not only have to contribute to those projects from which it has benefited, it has to be willing to open all of its projects to the OSS world.
In my view, this is extremely unhelpful to the Open Source movement. Why should a company like Apple get involved in the OSS community, if their only reward is to be derided for still maintaining some closed-source projects? Quicktime and True-Type were never open-source projects, and they bear no relation to the code Apple is using under the BSD license. There is no legal or even moral requirement for Apple as a company to become an entirely open-source house just because they make use of community projects.
There are other issues around this which could be the subject of valid debate, such as Apple's use of their own source license, but these are ignored by this article, in favour of this misleading attempt to shame Apple into opening up other projects.
As to Apple "posturing as a good-guy open source company", they have certainly trumpeting the fact that OS X is based on the "open source" Darwin core. However, I don't believe they have ever suggested that they are now an open source company. You won't see the term "open source" bandied about in relation to Final Cut Pro, AppleWorks, DVD Studio Pro, or any of the dozens of closed-source software projects Apple maintain.
"avi tevanian: hey steve, look! some guys are doing kaleidoscope for os X!"
You paint a convincing scene, but I should point out that the Mac Themes project has nothing to do with OS X: it's about theming OS 8.5 and its descendents through the Appearance Manager. Here's what they say about OS X support on their web site:
This document is not currently ready for publication. At a later date, we will be posting all of the information we know about using
themes in Mac OS X, as well as updates about our development tools. Please check back at a later date, expecially once OS X final is
released, information will be posted here frequently.
I think it's pretty clear that he means there are not many USB 2.0 devices. Everybody knows there are piles of USB 1.0 devices.
iMacs these days are based around USB 1 and Firewire (although I believe the cheapest model lacks Firewire). It's quite a nice paradigm: both interfaces are very simple to use, USB provides enough speed for keyboards/mice/scanners etc, and Firewire is great for DV cameras, and even does a creditable job of running external hard drives, CD burners and so on. This means that Joe Consumer can use a practically unlimited range of devices without ever getting involved in jumper switches, terminators, or sacrificing young goats to the SCSI gods. The maximum level of competence required is being able to distinguish between a long flat connector (USB) and a small square connector (Firewire).
Check out his bibliography for some reading material. In addition to this stuff, there are some great books which give (often contradictory) accounts of the software projects you mention, as well as some unconfirmed "skunkworks" projects which never saw the light of day. The most interesting of these is "Star Trek", an effort to port Mac OS 7 to Intel hardware, cosponsored by Intel and Novell. The team developed a proof of concept, were given a holiday as a reward, and came back to discover the project had been killed.
The books I've read and can recommend are Jim Carlton's Apple, John Sculley's Odyssey and Gil Amelio's In The Firing Line. The last two are insider's accounts, which doesn't make them any more trustworthy. However, coupled with some independent background material, they make fascinating reading. All available at Amazon.
"...it's not a particularly rigorous piece of historical documementation or even good basic journalism."
Actually, this site is one of the best places to point people if you want to explode the myths surrounding the development of the GUI. Buried deep within the site is this page, which reprints a discussion between Bruce Horn and Jeff Raskin, two of the Mac's many parents, as to the ins and outs of the GUI development. They don't agree with each other on many issues, but one thing which comes across clearly is that the "urban legend" surrounding these events is just too simplistic to be true.
One thing these discussions reveal is that the story of Apple swiping the concept wholesale from Xerox is simply an impossibility. Like the Internet, many of these concepts had been floating around since the 1960s, when neither Apple nor
Xerox PARC existed. What's more, further key concepts were dreamt up entirely by Apple, such as "drag and drop", and others seem to have been arrived at independently at several sites.
Here are some quotes from Raskin taken from this discussion:
As I said in my history of the Mac Project... the Mac was by no means the work of one person, but the combined efforts of thousands in hundreds of companies large and small. It was not, as many accounts anachronistically relate, stolen from PARC by Steve Jobs after he saw the Alto running SmallTalk on a visit.
..it is perhaps understandable that people would find it necessary to invent a history that derives the Mac's genesis from the nearest similar work. The honest intellectual debt the Mac owes to the work at PARC was not a case of highway robbery.
The Lisa's name has nothing to do with either of the Steves. It is a popular myth that Jobs named the computer after his daughter, but at the time it was being developed Jobs didn't acknowledge that he had a daughter called Lisa. He only later accepted paternity.
Lisa was the name of the daughter of one of the hardware designers on the project, whose name escapes me. Remember that at this time Apple was already a massive company, although many people seem to retain the vision of Woz designing every motherboard, and Steve drawing up every marketing campaign.
Read any of the excellent books on the era for background (Jim Carlton's Apple, for example).
Slashdot Mirror
"The explanation given for deep sixing cabinit records for five years is that many of them relate to the peace process.
"Yesterday the government proposed to be allowed increase this time to 15 years, given this on the same day we find out the've been snooping us is very disturbing"
Up to now, cabinet records have remained confidential for thirty years. However, under the 1997 Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, individuals are now entitled to seek discovery of records relating to cabinet decisions that are over 5 years old. As the act only came into operation 5 years ago, cabinet records from that time are only now coming under the provisions of the act. As far as I'm aware pre-1997 cabinet records cannot be subject to FOI requests.
So the "deep sixing" of cabinet records for five years is not a new measure brought in to protect sensitive documents relating to the peace process, rather it represents a considerable liberalising of the old system. This is why the government is proposing rolling back on these provisions: they're only now being faced with the practical implications. Whereas previously cabinet members could rely on their deliberations being kept secret until after they retired, now they are faced with the prospect of controversial documents being released while they're still very much in power.
I don't think the peace process is a factor at all: these sort of documents could probably be kept secret under the heading of 'national security' or some such thing.
Personally, I assumed it was some sort of reference to the old Beach Boys song "Surfin' Safari". You know, web surfing -> Surfin' Safari ->Safari.
We're probably both right.
This is hardly the most important issue, but it occurs to me that the pronunciation of the word 'Eolas' (which is the Irish word for 'knowledge') might not be obvious to non-Irish-speakers. To assist you in participating in heated verbal debate on this topic, I offer the following pronunciation guide:
For those of you who don't speak IPA, this means it almost rhymes with 'toeless', and begins with a sound similar to the English word 'owe'.
I hope this will spare you the embarrassment of using pronunciations such as "Yo-lass" or "Ee-owe-lass".
"1: In proportional representation, there are more likely to be minority parties with elected officials who have extreme/radical viewpoints that are dissimilar to the viewpoints of the "average" voter. Because of the US' election system, no candidate can choose to isolate a significant portion of the population with his views and yet still be elected, to a large "smoothing out" extremist policy."
This is to suggest that non-representation of minority viewpoints is desirable, which I would strongly dispute. In any case, in a system that produces good PR, these viewpoints will be represented in proportion to their appeal to the electorate. In plurality systems such as the USA's and UK's, it is possible for a candidate who represents a minority viewpoint to win all the power. Under PR-STV (also called Instant Runoff), minority candidates need to appeal to supporters of other candidates to some degree in order to get elected.
"2: In proportional representation, the government is generally unitary in nature, meaning that the entire government is controlled by one party. Although there are more parties beyond the controlling party and another party represented, they still have a HUGE capability to control government policy. If the party in charge changes (and they often change), the entire government policy may change as well."
This contention is not borne out by observation of governments elected by good PR systems in the real world. With PR, coalition government becomes more likely. If the most popular party commands 35% of the vote, they will have 35% of the representation. In order to form a government, they will have to look to smaller parties to coalesce with. This party might coalesce with a party which won 18% of the representation to form a government - this means that the government can claim to represent 53% of the electorate.
"Imagine if a country implemented social security, and then cancelled it 12 years later because the Socialists were replaced by Libertarians!"
Surely this is desirable also: if the electorate has changed their mind on the issue in the intervening period, should they not be able to elect representatives who will implement their will?
"But notice even after the chunk of ice ordeal the planet is still around?"
Nobody is seriously arguing that global warming is a threat to the planet (although some of the discourse may be phrased in those terms - "Save the Planet" etc.). However it is argued that it represents a threat to human civilisation, i.e. The World As We Know It. This is what makes it a matter of pressing self-interest for all of us.
"From what I understand, Man produces about 1% of all of the planets cloro-floro carbons (greenhouse gases). If we cut production completely, we would end up with a negligible effect."
Cloroflourocarbons (CFCs) are the stuff which used to be found in aerosol sprays and the like, which were found to be damaging the ozone layer. That is a separate issue to global warming.
"In addition to that, we produce carbon dioxide thru processes like, say, breathing. Carbon dioxide is what plants breathe with. More C02 means more plants! Oh no!!!"
I can only presume you're joking, and that you don't really believe in this facile logic. As humans breathe oxygen, would more oxygen in the atmosphere result in more humans?
"Yup, it sucks, but we're pretty much at the mercy of our planet. Not the other way around."
I have to agree with that - we're probably a long way off the time where our normal activities present any real threat to the continuance of life on earth. However, this does not mean that these activities will not trigger environmental catastrophes which might otherwise have been avoided. These won't bother the earth much, but they will have a significant effect on human civilisation as we know it.
The earth probably won't mind if the eastern seaboard of the United States slips into the sea (for example), but it's no exaggeration to describe the consequences for humanity as catastrophic.
If all of the articles published on this topic were stacked one on top of the other, they would reach the moon and back 3.42 times.
Or should that be 3.46?
"Is it just me, or does anyone else think it's ludicrous to have to leave ones computer turned on just to charge the battery of a portable device?"
Very many Mac users keep their computers turned on all the time, as fanless iMacs and iBooks run silently in sleep mode. In fact, the "power" button on my iMac drops it into sleep mode by default, rather than shutting it down. So if the machine is going to be on anyway, why not use it to recharge an external device? It saves socket space, at least.
"I think they were either corner-cutting to avoid the cost of including a $2 power lump, or just thought they were so dang smart that they failed to see the obvious drawback of charge-via-firewire."
A power adaptor is included, so you can't accuse them of cutting corners. So if you don't like leaving your computer on, you can simply plug your iPod into the wall.
Nobody has mentioned the fact that the iPod recharges its battery via FireWire when you plug it into your computer. Is this even possible with USB? I know that USB delivers power, but is it sufficient to recharge this device's 10-hour battery within a reasonable time?
The iPod does come with a power adaptor, but you only need to worry about it if you're travelling, and don't have access to a FireWire-equipped PC.
The Irish Pound (also called the Punt), was pegged to the Pound Sterling on its introduction in 1928, and remained so until 1979. This was because the vast majority of the country's trade in that period was with the UK. Entry into the EEC in 1973 began to change this however, and by 1979 it was no longer desirable for the two currencies to remain linked. At that point Ireland joined the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), one of the fore-runners of the Single Currency project.
In the period between 1979 and 1999, the Irish Pound floated freely against other currencies, until the euro exchange rates were irrevocably fixed on January 1st 1999. For the past three years, 1 Irish Pound has equalled about 1.27 euro.
One other interesting point to note is that during the period of British domination, Ireland had its own currency from 1783 to 1826. This was worth slightly less than the Pound Sterling, and fluctuated according to economic conditions on the island, but was abolished in 1826.
It would not be fair to say, however, that Ireland did not have monetary independence from Britain until 1979, or indeed until 1999. Ireland had full control over its monetary policy, and could have ended the link with Sterling at any time. However, we were not yet economically independent from Britain, so it would not have been prudent to do so.
"2. Jackson's take on what happens to the wearer when the ring is on is... a little out of place with what Bilbo goes through in The Hobbit"
You can't blame Jackson for that - Tolkien's description of the effect of the Ring on its wearer is not consistent between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. In The Hobbit, Bilbo doesn't even notice that anything has changed when he has slipped on the ring, until he realises he is invisible. When Frodo wears the ring in LotR however, the change in his perception of the world is vividly described.
You can come up with all sorts of rationalisations for this inconsistency based on the lore of Middle Earth, but to my mind the simplest explanation serves the best: when Tolkien wrote The Hobbit it was as a standalone story, and he didn't see the need to foreshadow every detail of the later work, even if he had already begun to develop it in his head.
"The other day, on hearing from a friend of mine that his local IMAX would be showing Fellowship on opening night, I called the one near me (the Branson IMAX) to see if they were doing the same. "
As far as I'm aware, IMAX theatres can only show films which are shot specifically for their unusual aspect ratio. The Fellowship of the Ring would probably look pretty funny shown in letterbox format on an enormous IMAX screen.
IMAX theatres tend to show nature or special effects spectaculars, often documentaries.
"It's only the 30 Meg movie that's on the dial-up iMac."
I can't comment on the bandwidth available to them, but that's no iMac. Netcraft say:
Having said that, they could probably achieve similar results with an iMac running OS X, or indeed a 386 running Windows 3.1, serving a "Server Unavailable" page.
You wish - as much as you may hate it, it wasn't mainstream until M$ caught on.
Given that Microsoft represents such a large share of the market, it's true to say that USB couldn't be described as "mainstream" until Windows supported it. However, neither could it become mainstream without a large pool of useful hardware being developed for it. This latter category was very visibly driven by Apple, and specifically the iMac.
Intel will tell you that the introduction of the iMac led to an explosion in the demand for and development of USB devices, from hubs to floppy drives, CD burners etc. USB usage on the the PC took off more slowly, but it would have taken off a lot more slowly had it not been for an existing pool of useful hardware. Intel hadn't been having much luck promoting the technology on their own, and although I'm sure they could have pushed it into the mainstream with Microsoft's help, USB was given a serious shot in the arm by Apple.
Apple may have a tiny market share compared to Microsoft, but they still sell machines in enough volume to spearhead new technologies like this.
But there is a good side to all of this:
No encyrption = No annnoying formats for DVD/Audio. The people who are going to fight stuff like this the hardest are not scientists but recond and movie componies.
I think you may have misunderstood the point of this article. This is not about restricting encryption, but restricting the circumvention of encryption. So this particular issue is one which exists at the behest of record/movie companies and other copyright holders. They want encryption, but they don't want to have to spend money keeping up with people creating workarounds for their (often rudimentary) encryption methods.
You may be thinking of another live issue which is being discussed at the moment, which is the call for encryption "backdoors" to be mandatory. That is almost the exact opposite of this debate, but backdoors are not going to get the content companies too worked up. They don't care if the government can break the encryption on a DVD or eBook, as long as Joe Public doesn't have a convenient way of doing so.
We just don't know. Global temperature change is an inevitable result of modern civilization. It's entirely possible that we're headed for huge disasters as a result of the dominance of man, and there's nothing "wrong" about that.
Well, if you could find a disinterested party, they would probably agree that there's nothing intrinsically "wrong" about what we call catastrophic global climate change. Coastlines will be re-arranged as you mention, and islands will be submerged, but life will go on.
Our society, however, will bear little resemblence to what we know today. The islands you refer to will include the British Isles, the coastlines affected will include California and the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. The death, hunger and displacement of people will be on a catastrophic scale. Of course, eventually humanity will re-arrange itself around those new fertile areas you mention, but we can only guess at the character of the civilisation which will emerge.
In short, while Global Warming might not be an Extinction Level Event, it would be, for all intents and purposes, the end of the world as we know it.
Not only are all 14 tracks from the album going to be animated, but they're going to release each track as a single. Not all of them are going to be full releases, though. For example, Aerodynamic (2nd track), and Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger (4th track) were only released on vinyl.
In the interview, they mention that all the animation is "done", so now we have to wait while they drip-feed us new episodes of this masterpiece. I imagine one day we'll be able to buy a DVD with the whole thing.
gigabit ethernet has been standard on all desktop macs for over a year now.
Just to qualify that a little: it's standard on all PowerMac G4 models, and it was an option for the G4 cube. It has never been available on the iMac
http://store.apple.com/
"I'd just ask you to sit back for a moment and examine this statement. In what way has Unix been 'brought' to the masses? Normal OSX users are using a GUI which is abstracted far, far away from the Darwin core. Since they're not using any bits of the system that really make it Unix, why should anyone care?"
Um, I think you're the one who needs to take a long hard look at what you're saying. It's a circular argument: "Apple hasn't brought Unix to the masses, because they haven't forced the masses to become the elite".
"They're not using a network-transparent GUI, nor a system which runs useful daemons, nor are they using the componentisation, string manipulation tools, plaintext configuration tools nor any of the rest of it."
All of those things are available to OS X users who chose to work that way. "The masses" can even run useful daemons, like httpd, ftpd, ssh etc. with GUI front-ends. Everything else is available through the CLI.
"Sure, you might get the ability to run some Unix programs. Cygwin will give you that."
You really seem to have misunderstood what OS X is. It is Unix, and potentially any Unix program can be made run on it. My web development Mac can now not only run Photoshop, Dreamweaver etc., but Apache, PHP, MySQL, Perl etc. etc. This is really very significant for me, and for thousands of others.
"Apple is posturing themselves as a good-guy open source company. They are not. There are several things they could be doing which would greatly help the open-source community, such as releasing the code to Quicktime or their True-Type font technology."
The point the article missed is that Apple are playing the Open Source game, when it comes to those projects with an OSS heritage. As mentioned in many previous posts, Apple has contributed a slew of code, bug fixes, tweaks etc. during the development of Darwin/OS X, and more is likely to come. For the author of the article, however, this is not good enough. In order to play the OSS game by his rules, Apple not only have to contribute to those projects from which it has benefited, it has to be willing to open all of its projects to the OSS world.
In my view, this is extremely unhelpful to the Open Source movement. Why should a company like Apple get involved in the OSS community, if their only reward is to be derided for still maintaining some closed-source projects? Quicktime and True-Type were never open-source projects, and they bear no relation to the code Apple is using under the BSD license. There is no legal or even moral requirement for Apple as a company to become an entirely open-source house just because they make use of community projects.
There are other issues around this which could be the subject of valid debate, such as Apple's use of their own source license, but these are ignored by this article, in favour of this misleading attempt to shame Apple into opening up other projects.
As to Apple "posturing as a good-guy open source company", they have certainly trumpeting the fact that OS X is based on the "open source" Darwin core. However, I don't believe they have ever suggested that they are now an open source company. You won't see the term "open source" bandied about in relation to Final Cut Pro, AppleWorks, DVD Studio Pro, or any of the dozens of closed-source software projects Apple maintain.
"avi tevanian: hey steve, look! some guys are doing kaleidoscope for os X!"
You paint a convincing scene, but I should point out that the Mac Themes project has nothing to do with OS X: it's about theming OS 8.5 and its descendents through the Appearance Manager. Here's what they say about OS X support on their web site:
I think it's pretty clear that he means there are not many USB 2.0 devices. Everybody knows there are piles of USB 1.0 devices.
iMacs these days are based around USB 1 and Firewire (although I believe the cheapest model lacks Firewire). It's quite a nice paradigm: both interfaces are very simple to use, USB provides enough speed for keyboards/mice/scanners etc, and Firewire is great for DV cameras, and even does a creditable job of running external hard drives, CD burners and so on. This means that Joe Consumer can use a practically unlimited range of devices without ever getting involved in jumper switches, terminators, or sacrificing young goats to the SCSI gods. The maximum level of competence required is being able to distinguish between a long flat connector (USB) and a small square connector (Firewire).
Check out his bibliography for some reading material. In addition to this stuff, there are some great books which give (often contradictory) accounts of the software projects you mention, as well as some unconfirmed "skunkworks" projects which never saw the light of day. The most interesting of these is "Star Trek", an effort to port Mac OS 7 to Intel hardware, cosponsored by Intel and Novell. The team developed a proof of concept, were given a holiday as a reward, and came back to discover the project had been killed.
The books I've read and can recommend are Jim Carlton's Apple, John Sculley's Odyssey and Gil Amelio's In The Firing Line. The last two are insider's accounts, which doesn't make them any more trustworthy. However, coupled with some independent background material, they make fascinating reading. All available at Amazon.
"...it's not a particularly rigorous piece of historical documementation or even good basic journalism."
Actually, this site is one of the best places to point people if you want to explode the myths surrounding the development of the GUI. Buried deep within the site is this page, which reprints a discussion between Bruce Horn and Jeff Raskin, two of the Mac's many parents, as to the ins and outs of the GUI development. They don't agree with each other on many issues, but one thing which comes across clearly is that the "urban legend" surrounding these events is just too simplistic to be true.
One thing these discussions reveal is that the story of Apple swiping the concept wholesale from Xerox is simply an impossibility. Like the Internet, many of these concepts had been floating around since the 1960s, when neither Apple nor Xerox PARC existed. What's more, further key concepts were dreamt up entirely by Apple, such as "drag and drop", and others seem to have been arrived at independently at several sites.
Here are some quotes from Raskin taken from this discussion:
The Lisa's name has nothing to do with either of the Steves. It is a popular myth that Jobs named the computer after his daughter, but at the time it was being developed Jobs didn't acknowledge that he had a daughter called Lisa. He only later accepted paternity.
Lisa was the name of the daughter of one of the hardware designers on the project, whose name escapes me. Remember that at this time Apple was already a massive company, although many people seem to retain the vision of Woz designing every motherboard, and Steve drawing up every marketing campaign.
Read any of the excellent books on the era for background (Jim Carlton's Apple, for example).