If done properly, I agree. I think what Apple is worried about is making sure they don't hand Real a weapon that can be turned on them somewhere down the road.
IIRC that's Apple's cut of the 99 cents. Out of that 30 cents comes all the cost of running the store -everything from paying salaries to bandwidth costs in addition to the costs you mentioned.
We'll still be able to get all of the same information as the manned voayge
Problem is, I don't buy that premise.
IMO a single geologist could gather much more, and more relavent information in a much shorter period of time. I also believe that geologist would gather much different information than a probe. That geologist could "scope out" more territory in a few minutes than a rover (at least today's rovers) can in their lifetime. The human geologist could cover a vast amount of territory is a short time period and put together a much bigger picture of "the lay of the land".
The bottom line is a human is the most advanced and versatile scientific instrument we know of. Problem is its also more fragile in some ways and less expendable than "mechanical" instruments.
This is not meant in a negative way, but your point was made like a pure computer geek/astrophysicist/rocket scientist -not a word said about the "human" factor.
In your net energy calculation did you factor in the weight of a year's worth of food vs. a month's?
Then there's the safety factor. In case of emergency the moon is a matter of days for a return trip, mars is several months.
Then we can move into the more esoteric areas like the fact that we really don't know what effects a long, isolated trip like that will have on a crew either physically or psychologically.
So from an engineering perspective, you're right. It makes more sense to go to Mars. From a human perspective I think we need to work out the kinks first from the relative "safety" of the moon.
Keep in mind (as I stated above) we couldn't even get a "self-sustained colony" (Bioshpere) to work here on earth. What makes us think we can get it to work on Mars or the moon?
The one factor I think is being ignored is safety. Let me add another observation to that, we've never done anything like what it takes to send a manned mission to Mars.
From the jpl web site, MER-A "Spirit" launched June 10, 2003 and landed on Mars January 4, 2004. That's almost 7 months, so I'm assuming we're talking a round trip time of ~ 1 year (I'm not even going to try to figure out what kind of a time window there is before Mars is on the opposite side of the sun or how all that is timed).
IMO, despite what's been learned from the ISS, we cannot be assured of our ability to place living humans in space for over a year with essentially no possibility of emergency retrieval. Not to mention the shear mass of supplies required just to feed a crew for that long. Again, IMO we are simply not prepared for such an undertaking and there's no way to verity we are prepared without a test like a moon base that can sustain itself for that period of time. IIRC we couldn't even do it here on earth with the Bioshpere project.
So i guess you can put me in the one-step-at-a-time camp unless someone can explain how these things are not a problem.
Just keep in mind that that roadmap is ~2.5 years old (Date Last Modified 11/30/01), made while Motorola was still supplying the CPUs for Apple. The G5 in the graphic is not the G5 we have today (though the description is pretty accurate).
Something like that, only optical IIRC. Just like a trackball is essentially an upside down mechanical mouse, this works like an optical mouse. So turn your mouse over (assuming its optical) and give it a try (OK that doesn't work all that well...).
The "new" mouse would have the "normal" optical mouse features with an optical "trackpad" also included on top. Hopefully it will be much better than current trackpads.
the cursor on screen is controled not by one of our hands, but by our eyes.
Don't know if I want the cursor covering what I'm trying to look at;-)
Actually, one of my professors from way back was working on a system like this primarily for use by handicapped people. In its rudimentary form its used by advertising agencies and the like to determine what part of the ad people actually look at (believe it or not, its the half-naked woman, not can of cola).
It was recently noted that Apple has filed a patent for what is sounds like an optical scroll wheel -no moving parts, you just slide your finger up or down over the "window". There's no reason it couldn't be made two-dimensional, essentially a mini trackpad on the top of the mouse used for scrolling.
That's what has me shaking my head. I wonder if people realize how much radioactivity is around them every day -and its not because of nuclear weapons or power.
Whatever you do, stay away from that clay pot your kid made in kindergarten!
Makes you wonder what all those people did with their iPods before the iTMS went online.
He also seems to suffer from a common misperception. iTunes is an application on a computer that plays/organizes music. The iTunes Music Store (iTMS) is where you can buy music.
Maybe I'm just splitting hairs, but it does get confusing when you read things like "iTunes only works with AAC", when I know darn well iTunes works with AAC, MP3, Ogg Vorbis (with plugin), wav, aiff...
I fail to see what Apple stands to gain from a ubiquity for the AAC format. 1 cent royalties are all well and good but won't mean anything if no one's buying from the mom&pop iTune shops of the internet.
Not sure I'm following what you're saying, but if I am there is one other factor to consider (other than AFAIK Apple doesn't get any royalties for AAC). If AAC is not at least a big player, soon WMA could become uqiquitous. Then Apple is in the position of having no control over what happens. They may also end up payiing MS 1 cent/song.
There's no way Apple wants to end up in a position where Microsoft has total control over legitimate online music and can dictate terms to them. Of course that's exactly what MS wants.
reason is apple has a cult following that will buy any stupid product they put out
Huh?
Witness the Cube.
Just because someone doesn't understand why somebody with different priorities and needs might buy something different, doesn't mean they had to be brainwashed into buying it.
At least on a Mac, it also has many other uses. Everything from being an external hard drive some basic PDA functions. For those who travel, you can also plug in a card reader to download images taken with your digital camera while you're still on the road.
So yes, its great for listening to music, but it can do more!
Should note I'm talking about the iPod, not iPod mini -don't know how it stacks up feature-wise.
One other factor to consider is the uproar their would be in the scientific community if all this data was kept under wraps for a year while it was "properly" analyzed, reviewed, reworked, then published.
Say you have no more potential to benefit from a given work, but others can benefit from it. If that work does not pass into the public domain, I'd say copyright has failed -has it not? Those are the works we're talking about. No commercial value but significant social/cultural value.
Keep in mind that money does not have to change hands in order for there to be a "benefit".
Well $500 billion over 30 years, which includes "decades" of financing a working moon base and several manned and unmanned missions to Mars does sound a lot better than $1 trillion for a single manned Mars mission.
Actually, I tend to take the results more seiously when the tester demonstrates they understand the limitations of the tests used and lays it on the line.
I'm not very familiar with the tests used, but it seems the only time 64 bit mode was significantly faster was in the Offenc tests. I'm still trying to understand why that is the case. The author states its because "there are twice as many general-purpose registers available", which I'll check into when I get a chance.
The other results show 32 bit mode to be either on par or significantly faster than 64 bit mode. For now I'm ignoring the "Synthetic Benchmarks" since the author states "Stream measures...although I don't trust it" and it sounds like the Ubench tests couldn't even be run to completion.
Maybe I'm missing the point, but how would 64 bit apps help the Athlon 64? How is a 64 bit app any different? A 32 bit operation (add, mult...) doesn't take any more clock cycles the the equivalent 64 bit operation.
It also seems that if data structures are unnecessarily made 64 bits wide (using 64 bit integers when 32 or less would suffice), its going to slow down a 64 bit processor -takes more bandwidth to move around 64 bit numbers vs. 32 bit, plus not as many will fit in processor caches.
Not to pick on the parent, but I see a lot of posts that at least imply 64 bit apps will be faster, but I don't know that that's true unless the data being manipulated actually needs to be 64 bits wide (or can use >8 GB RAM).
I think what apple was trying to say is that theirs is the first 64 bit personal computer.
That is what Apple said. It just makes for more "fun" when people leave out the word "personal".
IMO though, its just marketing. Everybody uses qualifiers in order to say their's is the best, fastest, cheapest... Marketers take advantage of the fact that some people will miss those qualifiers.
Slashdot Mirror
If done properly, I agree. I think what Apple is worried about is making sure they don't hand Real a weapon that can be turned on them somewhere down the road.
Define "make about 30 cents a song".
IIRC that's Apple's cut of the 99 cents. Out of that 30 cents comes all the cost of running the store -everything from paying salaries to bandwidth costs in addition to the costs you mentioned.
We'll still be able to get all of the same information as the manned voayge
Problem is, I don't buy that premise.
IMO a single geologist could gather much more, and more relavent information in a much shorter period of time. I also believe that geologist would gather much different information than a probe. That geologist could "scope out" more territory in a few minutes than a rover (at least today's rovers) can in their lifetime. The human geologist could cover a vast amount of territory is a short time period and put together a much bigger picture of "the lay of the land".
The bottom line is a human is the most advanced and versatile scientific instrument we know of. Problem is its also more fragile in some ways and less expendable than "mechanical" instruments.
This is not meant in a negative way, but your point was made like a pure computer geek/astrophysicist/rocket scientist -not a word said about the "human" factor.
In your net energy calculation did you factor in the weight of a year's worth of food vs. a month's?
Then there's the safety factor. In case of emergency the moon is a matter of days for a return trip, mars is several months.
Then we can move into the more esoteric areas like the fact that we really don't know what effects a long, isolated trip like that will have on a crew either physically or psychologically.
So from an engineering perspective, you're right. It makes more sense to go to Mars. From a human perspective I think we need to work out the kinks first from the relative "safety" of the moon.
Keep in mind (as I stated above) we couldn't even get a "self-sustained colony" (Bioshpere) to work here on earth. What makes us think we can get it to work on Mars or the moon?
The one factor I think is being ignored is safety. Let me add another observation to that, we've never done anything like what it takes to send a manned mission to Mars.
From the jpl web site, MER-A "Spirit" launched June 10, 2003 and landed on Mars January 4, 2004. That's almost 7 months, so I'm assuming we're talking a round trip time of ~ 1 year (I'm not even going to try to figure out what kind of a time window there is before Mars is on the opposite side of the sun or how all that is timed).
IMO, despite what's been learned from the ISS, we cannot be assured of our ability to place living humans in space for over a year with essentially no possibility of emergency retrieval. Not to mention the shear mass of supplies required just to feed a crew for that long. Again, IMO we are simply not prepared for such an undertaking and there's no way to verity we are prepared without a test like a moon base that can sustain itself for that period of time. IIRC we couldn't even do it here on earth with the Bioshpere project.
So i guess you can put me in the one-step-at-a-time camp unless someone can explain how these things are not a problem.
Just keep in mind that that roadmap is ~2.5 years old (Date Last Modified 11/30/01), made while Motorola was still supplying the CPUs for Apple. The G5 in the graphic is not the G5 we have today (though the description is pretty accurate).
that square panel you slide your finger over?
;-)
Something like that, only optical IIRC. Just like a trackball is essentially an upside down mechanical mouse, this works like an optical mouse. So turn your mouse over (assuming its optical) and give it a try (OK that doesn't work all that well...).
The "new" mouse would have the "normal" optical mouse features with an optical "trackpad" also included on top. Hopefully it will be much better than current trackpads.
the cursor on screen is controled not by one of our hands, but by our eyes.
Don't know if I want the cursor covering what I'm trying to look at
Actually, one of my professors from way back was working on a system like this primarily for use by handicapped people. In its rudimentary form its used by advertising agencies and the like to determine what part of the ad people actually look at (believe it or not, its the half-naked woman, not can of cola).
Whats next, a "2-wheel mouse"?
It was recently noted that Apple has filed a patent for what is sounds like an optical scroll wheel -no moving parts, you just slide your finger up or down over the "window". There's no reason it couldn't be made two-dimensional, essentially a mini trackpad on the top of the mouse used for scrolling.
How does that sound?
That's what has me shaking my head. I wonder if people realize how much radioactivity is around them every day -and its not because of nuclear weapons or power.
Whatever you do, stay away from that clay pot your kid made in kindergarten!
Makes you wonder what all those people did with their iPods before the iTMS went online.
He also seems to suffer from a common misperception. iTunes is an application on a computer that plays/organizes music. The iTunes Music Store (iTMS) is where you can buy music.
Maybe I'm just splitting hairs, but it does get confusing when you read things like "iTunes only works with AAC", when I know darn well iTunes works with AAC, MP3, Ogg Vorbis (with plugin), wav, aiff...
I fail to see what Apple stands to gain from a ubiquity for the AAC format. 1 cent royalties are all well and good but won't mean anything if no one's buying from the mom&pop iTune shops of the internet.
Not sure I'm following what you're saying, but if I am there is one other factor to consider (other than AFAIK Apple doesn't get any royalties for AAC). If AAC is not at least a big player, soon WMA could become uqiquitous. Then Apple is in the position of having no control over what happens. They may also end up payiing MS 1 cent/song.
There's no way Apple wants to end up in a position where Microsoft has total control over legitimate online music and can dictate terms to them. Of course that's exactly what MS wants.
reason is apple has a cult following that will buy any stupid product they put out
Huh?
Witness the Cube.
Just because someone doesn't understand why somebody with different priorities and needs might buy something different, doesn't mean they had to be brainwashed into buying it.
And you can keep going back to the iMac and beyond...
Who would buy a computer with a GUI? Its obviously just a toy for people with too much money!
At least on a Mac, it also has many other uses. Everything from being an external hard drive some basic PDA functions. For those who travel, you can also plug in a card reader to download images taken with your digital camera while you're still on the road.
So yes, its great for listening to music, but it can do more!
Should note I'm talking about the iPod, not iPod mini -don't know how it stacks up feature-wise.
No problem. I just figured it was due to that missing 6-pack you were talking about.
Well if there's enough oxygen to cause the rovers to rust during their relatively short life span, I think that in itself would be a great discovery.
Coming in a day late, but...
One other factor to consider is the uproar their would be in the scientific community if all this data was kept under wraps for a year while it was "properly" analyzed, reviewed, reworked, then published.
Let me turn that last point around a little.
Say you have no more potential to benefit from a given work, but others can benefit from it. If that work does not pass into the public domain, I'd say copyright has failed -has it not? Those are the works we're talking about. No commercial value but significant social/cultural value.
Keep in mind that money does not have to change hands in order for there to be a "benefit".
Well $500 billion over 30 years, which includes "decades" of financing a working moon base and several manned and unmanned missions to Mars does sound a lot better than $1 trillion for a single manned Mars mission.
Unless I'm mistaken, Apple licenses FairPlay from Verisign, thus its not theirs to license to 3rd parties.
Not to mention the fact that AAC is part of the mpeg4 standard -its not an "Apple" codec as some seem to think.
Actually, I tend to take the results more seiously when the tester demonstrates they understand the limitations of the tests used and lays it on the line.
And note that sometimes 32 bit mode is faster.
I'm not very familiar with the tests used, but it seems the only time 64 bit mode was significantly faster was in the Offenc tests. I'm still trying to understand why that is the case. The author states its because "there are twice as many general-purpose registers available", which I'll check into when I get a chance.
The other results show 32 bit mode to be either on par or significantly faster than 64 bit mode. For now I'm ignoring the "Synthetic Benchmarks" since the author states "Stream measures...although I don't trust it" and it sounds like the Ubench tests couldn't even be run to completion.
Maybe I'm missing the point, but how would 64 bit apps help the Athlon 64? How is a 64 bit app any different? A 32 bit operation (add, mult...) doesn't take any more clock cycles the the equivalent 64 bit operation.
It also seems that if data structures are unnecessarily made 64 bits wide (using 64 bit integers when 32 or less would suffice), its going to slow down a 64 bit processor -takes more bandwidth to move around 64 bit numbers vs. 32 bit, plus not as many will fit in processor caches.
Not to pick on the parent, but I see a lot of posts that at least imply 64 bit apps will be faster, but I don't know that that's true unless the data being manipulated actually needs to be 64 bits wide (or can use >8 GB RAM).
So I'll ask again, am I missing something?
I think what apple was trying to say is that theirs is the first 64 bit personal computer.
That is what Apple said. It just makes for more "fun" when people leave out the word "personal".
IMO though, its just marketing. Everybody uses qualifiers in order to say their's is the best, fastest, cheapest... Marketers take advantage of the fact that some people will miss those qualifiers.