Very good points. However, the problem comes when you start hooking stuff up to a public network.
Com, Dcom, ActiveX, and lets not forget DDE, provided a powerful platform to extend the functionality of provided functionality to provide for specific needs. This has several side benefits, you don't *have* to invent everything, and it provides both an economy around the platform, and provides platform lock-in.
What scared the hell out of Microsoft was that they were going to lose the platform war, and that windows would become unnecessary (IE lose their platform lock).
Turned out they were probably wrong. The Internet was going to *add* to the desktop, not supplant the desktop. And that they probably did not need to freak out so much. But, arguably the race for the Internet Platform between NS and IE advanced the state of the art faster than would have otherwise.
But, there was one problem. Hooking stuff to a public network, meant that you all of the sudden exposing the desktop platform to a very unsavory group of folks.
One of the major forms of attacking the windows platform uses that programability to get email directories for sending out viruses.
Many other forms of malware depend on the underlying programability of the platform.
So, we are at a new juncture. How to secure what was a very open system that depended on not being open to idiots with too much time on their hands.
Well, I suspect that this is a very hard problem, and still support the billions invested in the existing platform.
I suspect this is why it is taking a long time...
I suspect this is why the compatiblity warning was passed to the user community (to gauge reaction and permission from the customer set to radical changes in the model to support security).
Microsoft will make it past this, and customers will have a better platform because of it.
Linux is not going to win in the meantime, because linux even free, is not going to overcome the cost of breaking platform lock.
MacOSX will grow somewhat in the meantime for the paranoid yet productivity oriented fringe (probably 2-3 percent, but at anyrate a small percentage of the user base), because they will retain a large qty of corporate functionality.
Microsoft will win, because it is difficult, time consuming, and expensive to do. But Microsoft does have the resources and the impetus to do so.
And in the meantime as a community it is important to bitch, and to provide strong alternatives. We all win, when competition is in the marketplace. Good free programs, spur great pay programs. Great free programs sometimes *win* (apache), but ultimately we *all* get better systems, that are more productive, and TCO gets lower.
The nature of physics, is that the more questions we answer, the more questions we uncover...
The hubble telescope is a unique piece of scientific equipment that allows us to perform experiments that we cannot perform here on earth.
Experiments that lead to greater questions... Experiments we do not know of yet... A greater understanding of physics advances us as a society, and a species in ways more profound than anything else...
If you let it burn up, we will have to replace it, or be forever in the darkness of ignorance, because we no longer have the tools to do those experiments...
This isn't about going to mars... This isn't about killing the Hubble per se...
It is about killing the Shuttle,ISS, and to a large extent the last bastion on big federal science...
The argument is that you can't get to the space station if something happens to the shuttle while servicing Hubble.
The way that you kill the space program, (the shuttle and ISS are the major targets. Hubble is just an unfortunate casualty). Is to change the priorities from existing ones that take real money, to non-existing ones that are so expensive that they can be cancelled later.
Hubble may be what saves the space program, is spite of the best laid plans of those that would like to see it killed.
Once there are significant amounts of short sellers vs the float, the stock price becomes essentially manipulated by the short sellers. IE, the very action chases away buyers, which forces the stock down, which causes the market makers to start selling and lowering the price to attract buyers to the shares that the shorts are selling etc etc, until the stock price is run into the ground...
One way to short circuit that kind of activity, is to create some sort of floor in the price. A company can do this, by becoming a buyer of thier own stock at a given price. By providing buying action, the shorts are not rewarded, they stop selling the stock, and the behavior of the stock normalizes.
There is no gaurantee this will work. Though it generally works most of the time, but it can be a war of attrition. Similar things happen with national banks and the currency market. And sometimes the banks lose after spending BILLIONS attempting to keep it from happening (Argentina, Mexico, Thailand, just to name a few).
The first question, is would the deleted material allowed in court? Since it was a draft of a legal plan, it would seem pretty clear that the content should ordinarally be protected by attorney-client privelidge? Especially if accidentally passed.
The next question, is, now that it has been exposed, are there actions that can be taken against, SCO or thier lawform for either releasing confidential information, or the actual content of the confidential information?
I can already hear lawyers screaming around the world, and this has to be good for Adobe...
Lawyers should not be providing editable documents like word files. Final format documents like PDF, or signed PDF would seem to be a lot better thing to be passing around legal documents.
They did not come out with a windows version fast enough and the market left them behind.
Contrary to many of the comments made here, which shows misunderstandings of the word processing and os markets back in the good old days of floppies and text displays...
Reveal Codes, is only a useful feature if the product does not behave as expected. Reveal codes helped people force the program to do what it wanted to do, because occasionally the program didn't *do* what it wanted them to do. And in the real world, this problem has largely gone away. With a WYSIWYG display you simply do not have the issues that you had when you had to guess how your document would print.
The reasons that WP were dominant were two-fold. First they had the largest library of printer drivers. You could print on practically any type of printer technology.
Secondly, they could be trusted in how the text would break and that line-numbers could be trusted no matter what device you printed to. This was a vital feature that insured that the largest group of paper generators at the time (lawyers) set the marketplace, and set the market. WordPerfect could not be touched... They were as dominant then as Microsoft is now. But they failed to change when it needed to be changed.
The first feature became moot, as the Operating System provided an imaging model (GDI) and a device driver model to output that model. Wordperfect in their dominance, having them create a driver for your device was critical to your devices success. Windows freed the Printer Manufacturers from the "tyranny" of the of the word-perfect monopoly. Thier products would work as expected with ALL programs that were designed for windows, rather than making drivers for ALL programs, they could focus on a single driver.
Technology would obsolesce almost all character printers for ones based on a bitmapped display (Laser and Inkjet).
True WYSIWYG display of the page, and that the display imaging model and the printing imaging model were the same, then the display could be trusted. And all the problems that required reveal codes went away.
Creating documents that looked like they printed. Were huge driving factors to the rapid adoption by lawyers, and by a huge new group of people that actually wanted to create documents, but couldn't before, office workers.
Word Perfect missed the boat. They were the presumptive champions but they just could not get to market, and by then Microsoft won.
As to the UI... There were several types of users and writers out there. The most computer savvy of them all, were the ones that had been using word processors for years. The *HUGE* market to come, well nearly everybody, didn't know how to futz with computers.
I can make Word a blank piece of paper. With no menus, just me and the page, and I can invite, or disinvite any piece of underlying technology that gets in my way.
I as a company can assume that the type of person who could do this, would be the type of person that would figure out HOW to do it.
The Unwashed masses needed as much help as possible. And it worked, millions, billions(?) of users started making documents they had always wanted to make, even without a bunch of specialized knowledge.
And that describes Words dominance. It was, and arguably is, the most powerful word processor, with fully custimizable UI depending on the needs, skill, and tasks of the user. This generated, possibly, the longest most sustained growth in productivity in human history.
Word Perfect was just too late to the new way of doing things... And the name and history was not enough to comeback against word.
The truth is for the business world that pays their labor, even with a value proposition of *free* for openoffice, there are going to be too many issues and problems added by not being word, that OO is still not ready for primetime. If it happens (It may never happen), it will just take over the market almost imm
Any manufacturer should be able to differentiate their products by providing whatever add-ons and user experience they like on top of the Windows operating system... Meaning they can add or remove whatever programs they like, whether from microsoft or others.
There needs to be pricing protection, (Unusual, and illegal unless you have been found to be a monopoly), for the competitors so there needs to be some fee for the microsoft add-on pack. And there cannot be discounting below some floor, and no tie-ins to any sort of percentage of sales for shared marketing dollars.
The retail pack (upgrade and new) can include whatever microsoft wants to include.
Just removing it is penalizing the customer by insisting he go through extra steps what he needs. And where does it stop? Browser? IM client? FTP client? File Explorer? Notepad? Calculator? GDI???? Direct X?
Let the manufacturers create demand for competitive software, by allowing them to customize the user experience. This will be good for the consumer, and create competition for all parts of the system. Including keeping Microsoft on its toes. Instead of a worse experience for the consumer, create a better one the old fashioned way, competition. Make Dell compete with IBM and HP and Gateway not mearly over distribution and manufacturing, but on the actual experience the user gets. Each trying to outdo the other. Some incredibly simple systems for kids, some business oriented models, the media model, the scientific model, etc... There may be the microsoft branded stuff, a sony suite, The IBM suite, the cow machine... This is what was broken by the microsoft monopoly, it seems this is the way to fix it.
The next refresh is NOT going to be a G5. The basic reason is 64 bit traces. This is *not* trivial to do and meet the other design goals of the Powerbook. Portability and Battery life are two of the most important design goals of the PB and IB lines. Apple does not offer "desktop" replacement laptops (where weight and power requirements are not as important, as they mostly sit at a desk, and are plugged in).
This is not quite the same as the Athlon 64 or Opteron notebooks. They are Mainly used in LARGE, HEAVY laptops. And the Athlon 64 and Opteron are generally not currently purchased because they are 64 bits, it is because they are kick-ass I86-32 processors, that also do 64 bits.
So... This is what I would expect...
Current PB parts moved down to the IB line, with less l2 cache. Artificially slower machines, but much faster than currently. They are going to be forced to bump the ibooks more, because of GarageBand. It just barely runs and there is too much lantency on an Ibookg4 800. The Low-end Ibook owner and a typical garage band user are going to intersect too much to not serve them better on this box.
I would also expect the Ibook to support a SuperDrive. Prices have fallen significantly enough to provide this and still maintain a good profit margin.
I would expect the ports and graphic parts to remain the same (but maybe a bump in the graphics part, but probably not).
The PB to get ~ 20 to 30% speed bump across the line. Remaining g4 (see reason above).
Same ports. Top of the line ATI mobility chips. To speed up Quartz Extreme, and provide better game playabilty.
These are two compelling upgrades, that should see significant performance improvement across the lines. Maintain profit and Price points. The Lightscribe enhancment gives a decent and exciting marketing message...
And then you can wait about 6 more monthes for the engineering challenges of making a true apple powerbook g5.
There were two significant points to this. First is that he was charged and convicted with the crime of essentially NOT showing his papers.
The second point, is that in the particular situation, namely there was no visible immediate danger to anyone, nor has the police officer explained why they are there, "Investigating an investigation", may not be sufficient justification or explanation to create the *CRIME* of not showing papers.
So, regardless of the reason that they were there (though this may have serious 4th amendment consequences), has the crime on not showing papers been commited.
From the tape I don't think that there was enough procedure established to create the *crime* of not showing papers.
The officer could have stated "I am detaining you as a material witness to a reported crime in progress." And then asked. "In order to help determine whether or not a crime has been commited and what if any connection you have to this crime, I would ask you for your identification." and if denied " Sir, I am going to inform you, that if you do not provide identification at this time, it is likely that you will be detained for a longer period of time, and importantly, if it is determined that failing to provide identification is material in an criminal investigation you may be charged with the crime of delaying a criminal investigation"
Granted this may make for a specific form of miranda, and in all practicality, moot (the criminal charges thrown out as a matter of course for this particular criminal case for NOT providing enough procedure to *cause the crime* to hoppen, is probably a pretty small public safety issue).
From the scenario, it was impossible to know why the police had showed up. And it was impossible to distinguish it from a case where the police cannot create the crime of not showing identification. And that there was no immediate danger to anyone. Then this crime that he has been convicted of should be overturned or else no one can tell the difference between legally not showing ID or illegally not showing ID.
This case is very important for this reason. If it is allowed to pass the Constitutional Test, then it is essentially illegal to not show ID to the police on demand....
Re:features==!simple
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· Score: 2, Informative
Just to add some clarification... Yes I have successfully popped popcorn by reading the instructions... And I could do it in 1 gesture on the old microwave, based on my experience with the brand of popcorn and the miserable strength of the old microwave... But that is not the point. There are over a dozen buttons on my new microwave. Including an add minute button, which is great for when I want to cook a garden burger or something...
But this isn't the point.
The point is that there are two buttons that reheat food and pop popcorn. It doesn't do it by simply using a fixed time and a fixed strength... It does it by detecting when the leftovers are warm, and when the bag of popcorn has expanded.
That is a non-trivial amount of instrumentation and programming compared to just a mechanical dial.
And the result of these features, is a microwave that is *easier* to use for the major if not sole use of the device.
features==!simple
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· Score: 5, Insightful
The first point is that product manufacturers are the ultimate democratic institution. They make what the consumers want.
But more to the point.
For years I would only purchase the cheapest possible microwave. Why? Because they had a knob, and NO temp control.
Microwaving turns out to be pretty non-exact science. I want my left overs heated, I want my popcorn popped.
In order to do this in a "good" microwave, it could take a half a dozen to a dozen gestures setting the time to the second (A totally useless time measure when cooking) and the tempreture to a specific setting (which has no human meaning whatsoever).
In a cheap microwave, it only took a single gesture. Turn the knob to about the right amount of time, and it turns on, cooks for the right amount of time, and shuts itself off.
A few years ago not even cheap microwaves came with knobs. There are a couple of Restraunt grade ones that do (They appreciate the minimum number of steps in a restraunt), but they are hard to locate and very expensive. But I was resigned to my purchase.
I moved into a new home, and it had a built in microwave. A really nice Sharp, with a TON of buttons. With horror I began schemeing how to get rid of the beast.
But the story has a happy ending. I still do exactly the same things I do with the microwave, heat leftovers, and pop popcorn. And the sharp has two buttons that do precisely that. It has a heat leftovers button. And it has a pop popcorn button. 1 Gesture, and now I don't even have to know "how long". The amount of technology to pull this off, is magnitudes greater than my old microwave, but nonetheless, nearly unbelievably my new microwave is simpler to use than the one with just a knob.
The marketplace has come to solve a problem I didn't even really know I had. To make my microwaving life even easier. As with all technology that I buy and love, it is exactly that power of the marketplace that gets me what I want.
There is one and only one reason that phones are so cheap in the States. (It isn't that they are more expensive in Canada).
Craig McCaw and bro's changed the rules of cellular in the United States. There belief was that it was "the subscriber" uber alles. That all else would just follow. In other words, you have to give away the expensive phones to get the subscriber. A large part of the cellular network has been paid on the backs of investors and lenders in Bankruptcy court, and the McCaws made billions selling out to ATT while the getting was good.
It is going to be more difficult to get new players (capital) to play the same game and risk that kind of capital that would likely be lost in a massive buildup of customers. Canada, just doesn't have a McCaw to rock the boat, and force everyone to play a different game. They do have Canadian Tire money though!
While living in Italy I had come across the following items..
Coffee flavored toothpaste... (and it was tan)... Tobacco Air Freshener... (Yesa can off stuff you sprayed in the room to get the smell of tobacco. Like a fresh can of pipe tobacco) Cannabis Incense Sticks... Which for some reason reminds me of "GNU"
These limited edition blank CDs are specifically designed for users purchasing the Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King soundtrackfrom Apple's iTunes Music Store.
What I am going to do is wait until they provide "pre-burned" CDR's like RedHat does... That would be cool.
I am making the big prediction. Along with the Pepsi giveaway, music downloads are going to be paid for in large majority with things other than cash. You will get them with boxtops, bottle caps, affinity points (frequent flyer miles, credit card points, gas receipts, time share points, disney products etc....), rewards for school fundraisers, anything you can think of will become a replacement for direct cash payment. They will become the ultimate giveaway item. This will become important, because anything to overcome the friction of the credit card purchase on a sub-dollar item will be a major driver for the distribution sites.
This will have the side affect of creating an even larger hit based marketplace. Hits will generate the vast majority of downloads, and the most amount of money for the artists. The return of the single as the product of choice. For most artists and most songs this will generate very little money.
It will be very hard on the CD distribution system as more people get most of their music online. This will also have the side affect of making the used CD industry more difficult as there will be less content available. Which will probably be good for the music industry in the long run.
Legal music, free for the consumer, is going to be the most disruptive force in the industry.
With atm's you have 3 forms of Paper Trail that are not available with the electronic machines as stated...
1. You have your money... 2. You have your receipt... 3. Later you get your statement.
Electronic voting provides NONE of these protections, which is precisely the problem. An ATM provides simple user level auditing of the transaction, which for the most part works well. With "Electronic" voting, there is no paper trail, no audit method... Votes can appear and disappear, and change without anyones knowledge.
The answer is obvious, Electronic voting should result in human readible paper that is placed in the ballot box to be counted. It can be counted on the fly, like they currently are in Washington State. But more importantly the results can be audited and hand counted. The very fact that they can, massively lowers the possibility of fraud, or conversly the fact that you can't massively increases the possibility of fraud.
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Very good points. However, the problem comes when you start hooking stuff up to a public network.
Com, Dcom, ActiveX, and lets not forget DDE, provided a powerful platform to extend the functionality of provided functionality to provide for specific needs. This has several side benefits, you don't *have* to invent everything, and it provides both an economy around the platform, and provides platform lock-in.
What scared the hell out of Microsoft was that they were going to lose the platform war, and that windows would become unnecessary (IE lose their platform lock).
Turned out they were probably wrong. The Internet was going to *add* to the desktop, not supplant the desktop. And that they probably did not need to freak out so much. But, arguably the race for the Internet Platform between NS and IE advanced the state of the art faster than would have otherwise.
But, there was one problem. Hooking stuff to a public network, meant that you all of the sudden exposing the desktop platform to a very unsavory group of folks.
One of the major forms of attacking the windows platform uses that programability to get email directories for sending out viruses.
Many other forms of malware depend on the underlying programability of the platform.
So, we are at a new juncture. How to secure what was a very open system that depended on not being open to idiots with too much time on their hands.
Well, I suspect that this is a very hard problem, and still support the billions invested in the existing platform.
I suspect this is why it is taking a long time...
I suspect this is why the compatiblity warning was passed to the user community (to gauge reaction and permission from the customer set to radical changes in the model to support security).
Microsoft will make it past this, and customers will have a better platform because of it.
Linux is not going to win in the meantime, because linux even free, is not going to overcome the cost of breaking platform lock.
MacOSX will grow somewhat in the meantime for the paranoid yet productivity oriented fringe (probably 2-3 percent, but at anyrate a small percentage of the user base), because they will retain a large qty of corporate functionality.
Microsoft will win, because it is difficult, time consuming, and expensive to do. But Microsoft does have the resources and the impetus to do so.
And in the meantime as a community it is important to bitch, and to provide strong alternatives. We all win, when competition is in the marketplace. Good free programs, spur great pay programs. Great free programs sometimes *win* (apache), but ultimately we *all* get better systems, that are more productive, and TCO gets lower.
The nature of physics, is that the more questions we answer, the more questions we uncover...
The hubble telescope is a unique piece of scientific equipment that allows us to perform experiments that we cannot perform here on earth.
Experiments that lead to greater questions...
Experiments we do not know of yet...
A greater understanding of physics advances us as a society, and a species in ways more profound than anything else...
If you let it burn up, we will have to replace it, or be forever in the darkness of ignorance, because we no longer have the tools to do those experiments...
This isn't about going to mars... This isn't about killing the Hubble per se...
It is about killing the Shuttle,ISS, and to a large extent the last bastion on big federal science...
The argument is that you can't get to the space station if something happens to the shuttle while servicing Hubble.
The way that you kill the space program, (the shuttle and ISS are the major targets. Hubble is just an unfortunate casualty). Is to change the priorities from existing ones that take real money, to non-existing ones that are so expensive that they can be cancelled later.
Hubble may be what saves the space program, is spite of the best laid plans of those that would like to see it killed.
Why the stock buyback...
Once there are significant amounts of short sellers vs the float, the stock price becomes essentially manipulated by the short sellers. IE, the very action chases away buyers, which forces the stock down, which causes the market makers to start selling and lowering the price to attract buyers to the shares that the shorts are selling etc etc, until the stock price is run into the ground...
One way to short circuit that kind of activity, is to create some sort of floor in the price. A company can do this, by becoming a buyer of thier own stock at a given price. By providing buying action, the shorts are not rewarded, they stop selling the stock, and the behavior of the stock normalizes.
There is no gaurantee this will work. Though it generally works most of the time, but it can be a war of attrition. Similar things happen with national banks and the currency market. And sometimes the banks lose after spending BILLIONS attempting to keep it from happening (Argentina, Mexico, Thailand, just to name a few).
Have you seen the size of strawberries since chernobyl? Seriously, they are HUGE!
And they say that there is no such thing as a good nuclear meltdown...
Scewz me, I have some shortbread to eat...
____________________________
Say YES! to abstinence!! No Bush! No Dick! Vote Dems 2004!
IALOS...
I think there are a couple of interesting items.
The first question, is would the deleted material allowed in court? Since it was a draft of a legal plan, it would seem pretty clear that the content should ordinarally be protected by attorney-client privelidge? Especially if accidentally passed.
The next question, is, now that it has been exposed, are there actions that can be taken against, SCO or thier lawform for either releasing confidential information, or the actual content of the confidential information?
I can already hear lawyers screaming around the world, and this has to be good for Adobe...
Lawyers should not be providing editable documents like word files. Final format documents like PDF, or signed PDF would seem to be a lot better thing to be passing around legal documents.
They did not come out with a windows version fast enough and the market left them behind.
Contrary to many of the comments made here, which shows misunderstandings of the word processing and os markets back in the good old days of floppies and text displays...
Reveal Codes, is only a useful feature if the product does not behave as expected. Reveal codes helped people force the program to do what it wanted to do, because occasionally the program didn't *do* what it wanted them to do. And in the real world, this problem has largely gone away. With a WYSIWYG display you simply do not have the issues that you had when you had to guess how your document would print.
The reasons that WP were dominant were two-fold. First they had the largest library of printer drivers. You could print on practically any type of printer technology.
Secondly, they could be trusted in how the text would break and that line-numbers could be trusted no matter what device you printed to. This was a vital feature that insured that the largest group of paper generators at the time (lawyers) set the marketplace, and set the market. WordPerfect could not be touched... They were as dominant then as Microsoft is now. But they failed to change when it needed to be changed.
The first feature became moot, as the Operating System provided an imaging model (GDI) and a device driver model to output that model. Wordperfect in their dominance, having them create a driver for your device was critical to your devices success. Windows freed the Printer Manufacturers from the "tyranny" of the of the word-perfect monopoly. Thier products would work as expected with ALL programs that were designed for windows, rather than making drivers for ALL programs, they could focus on a single driver.
Technology would obsolesce almost all character printers for ones based on a bitmapped display (Laser and Inkjet).
True WYSIWYG display of the page, and that the display imaging model and the printing imaging model were the same, then the display could be trusted. And all the problems that required reveal codes went away.
Creating documents that looked like they printed. Were huge driving factors to the rapid adoption by lawyers, and by a huge new group of people that actually wanted to create documents, but couldn't before, office workers.
Word Perfect missed the boat. They were the presumptive champions but they just could not get to market, and by then Microsoft won.
As to the UI... There were several types of users and writers out there. The most computer savvy of them all, were the ones that had been using word processors for years. The *HUGE* market to come, well nearly everybody, didn't know how to futz with computers.
I can make Word a blank piece of paper. With no menus, just me and the page, and I can invite, or disinvite any piece of underlying technology that gets in my way.
I as a company can assume that the type of person who could do this, would be the type of person that would figure out HOW to do it.
The Unwashed masses needed as much help as possible. And it worked, millions, billions(?) of users started making documents they had always wanted to make, even without a bunch of specialized knowledge.
And that describes Words dominance. It was, and arguably is, the most powerful word processor, with fully custimizable UI depending on the needs, skill, and tasks of the user. This generated, possibly, the longest most sustained growth in productivity in human history.
Word Perfect was just too late to the new way of doing things... And the name and history was not enough to comeback against word.
The truth is for the business world that pays their labor, even with a value proposition of *free* for openoffice, there are going to be too many issues and problems added by not being word, that OO is still not ready for primetime. If it happens (It may never happen), it will just take over the market almost imm
Nice for them... Now if they can control what thier senator wants to do on a national level then we can talk...
I have digital phone through my cable company... DSL through my phone company, and TV through my satellite.
Seems odd, but in my area, this is how the competition shakes out, and I save about 20-25% over having traditional providers provide the service!
Any manufacturer should be able to differentiate their products by providing whatever add-ons and user experience they like on top of the Windows operating system... Meaning they can add or remove whatever programs they like, whether from microsoft or others.
There needs to be pricing protection, (Unusual, and illegal unless you have been found to be a monopoly), for the competitors so there needs to be some fee for the microsoft add-on pack. And there cannot be discounting below some floor, and no tie-ins to any sort of percentage of sales for shared marketing dollars.
The retail pack (upgrade and new) can include whatever microsoft wants to include.
Just removing it is penalizing the customer by insisting he go through extra steps what he needs. And where does it stop? Browser? IM client? FTP client? File Explorer? Notepad? Calculator? GDI???? Direct X?
Let the manufacturers create demand for competitive software, by allowing them to customize the user experience. This will be good for the consumer, and create competition for all parts of the system. Including keeping Microsoft on its toes. Instead of a worse experience for the consumer, create a better one the old fashioned way, competition. Make Dell compete with IBM and HP and Gateway not mearly over distribution and manufacturing, but on the actual experience the user gets. Each trying to outdo the other. Some incredibly simple systems for kids, some business oriented models, the media model, the scientific model, etc... There may be the microsoft branded stuff, a sony suite, The IBM suite, the cow machine... This is what was broken by the microsoft monopoly, it seems this is the way to fix it.
This is not quite the same as the Athlon 64 or Opteron notebooks. They are Mainly used in LARGE, HEAVY laptops. And the Athlon 64 and Opteron are generally not currently purchased because they are 64 bits, it is because they are kick-ass I86-32 processors, that also do 64 bits.
So... This is what I would expect... Current PB parts moved down to the IB line, with less l2 cache. Artificially slower machines, but much faster than currently. They are going to be forced to bump the ibooks more, because of GarageBand. It just barely runs and there is too much lantency on an Ibookg4 800. The Low-end Ibook owner and a typical garage band user are going to intersect too much to not serve them better on this box.
I would also expect the Ibook to support a SuperDrive. Prices have fallen significantly enough to provide this and still maintain a good profit margin.
I would expect the ports and graphic parts to remain the same (but maybe a bump in the graphics part, but probably not).
The PB to get ~ 20 to 30% speed bump across the line. Remaining g4 (see reason above).
Same ports. Top of the line ATI mobility chips. To speed up Quartz Extreme, and provide better game playabilty.
Faster Hard Drives.
More Memory (512 and 1 G will be standard models)
Finally, the second shoe of the HP deal will drop, and enabled superdrives. With updated Idvd and Itunes for creating lables for your dvds.
These are two compelling upgrades, that should see significant performance improvement across the lines. Maintain profit and Price points. The Lightscribe enhancment gives a decent and exciting marketing message...
And then you can wait about 6 more monthes for the engineering challenges of making a true apple powerbook g5.
This is "papers please."
There were two significant points to this. First is that he was charged and convicted with the crime of essentially NOT showing his papers.
The second point, is that in the particular situation, namely there was no visible immediate danger to anyone, nor has the police officer explained why they are there, "Investigating an investigation", may not be sufficient justification or explanation to create the *CRIME* of not showing papers.
So, regardless of the reason that they were there (though this may have serious 4th amendment consequences), has the crime on not showing papers been commited.
From the tape I don't think that there was enough procedure established to create the *crime* of not showing papers.
The officer could have stated "I am detaining you as a material witness to a reported crime in progress." And then asked. "In order to help determine whether or not a crime has been commited and what if any connection you have to this crime, I would ask you for your identification." and if denied " Sir, I am going to inform you, that if you do not provide identification at this time, it is likely that you will be detained for a longer period of time, and importantly, if it is determined that failing to provide identification is material in an criminal investigation you may be charged with the crime of delaying a criminal investigation"
Granted this may make for a specific form of miranda, and in all practicality, moot (the criminal charges thrown out as a matter of course for this particular criminal case for NOT providing enough procedure to *cause the crime* to hoppen, is probably a pretty small public safety issue).
From the scenario, it was impossible to know why the police had showed up. And it was impossible to distinguish it from a case where the police cannot create the crime of not showing identification. And that there was no immediate danger to anyone. Then this crime that he has been convicted of should be overturned or else no one can tell the difference between legally not showing ID or illegally not showing ID.
This case is very important for this reason. If it is allowed to pass the Constitutional Test, then it is essentially illegal to not show ID to the police on demand....
This was done, in Kasparov v World.
It was done on the Zone.
http://classic.zone.msn.com/kasparov/Home.asp
Just to add some clarification...
Yes I have successfully popped popcorn by reading the instructions...
And I could do it in 1 gesture on the old microwave, based on my experience with the brand of popcorn and the miserable strength of the old microwave... But that is not the point.
There are over a dozen buttons on my new microwave. Including an add minute button, which is great for when I want to cook a garden burger or something...
But this isn't the point.
The point is that there are two buttons that reheat food and pop popcorn. It doesn't do it by simply using a fixed time and a fixed strength... It does it by detecting when the leftovers are warm, and when the bag of popcorn has expanded.
That is a non-trivial amount of instrumentation and programming compared to just a mechanical dial.
And the result of these features, is a microwave that is *easier* to use for the major if not sole use of the device.
The first point is that product manufacturers are the ultimate democratic institution. They make what the consumers want.
But more to the point.
For years I would only purchase the cheapest possible microwave. Why? Because they had a knob, and NO temp control.
Microwaving turns out to be pretty non-exact science. I want my left overs heated, I want my popcorn popped.
In order to do this in a "good" microwave, it could take a half a dozen to a dozen gestures setting the time to the second (A totally useless time measure when cooking) and the tempreture to a specific setting (which has no human meaning whatsoever).
In a cheap microwave, it only took a single gesture. Turn the knob to about the right amount of time, and it turns on, cooks for the right amount of time, and shuts itself off.
A few years ago not even cheap microwaves came with knobs. There are a couple of Restraunt grade ones that do (They appreciate the minimum number of steps in a restraunt), but they are hard to locate and very expensive. But I was resigned to my purchase.
I moved into a new home, and it had a built in microwave. A really nice Sharp, with a TON of buttons. With horror I began schemeing how to get rid of the beast.
But the story has a happy ending. I still do exactly the same things I do with the microwave, heat leftovers, and pop popcorn. And the sharp has two buttons that do precisely that. It has a heat leftovers button. And it has a pop popcorn button. 1 Gesture, and now I don't even have to know "how long". The amount of technology to pull this off, is magnitudes greater than my old microwave, but nonetheless, nearly unbelievably my new microwave is simpler to use than the one with just a knob.
The marketplace has come to solve a problem I didn't even really know I had. To make my microwaving life even easier. As with all technology that I buy and love, it is exactly that power of the marketplace that gets me what I want.
There is one and only one reason that phones are so cheap in the States. (It isn't that they are more expensive in Canada).
Craig McCaw and bro's changed the rules of cellular in the United States. There belief was that it was "the subscriber" uber alles. That all else would just follow. In other words, you have to give away the expensive phones to get the subscriber. A large part of the cellular network has been paid on the backs of investors and lenders in Bankruptcy court, and the McCaws made billions selling out to ATT while the getting was good.
It is going to be more difficult to get new players (capital) to play the same game and risk that kind of capital that would likely be lost in a massive buildup of customers. Canada, just doesn't have a McCaw to rock the boat, and force everyone to play a different game. They do have Canadian Tire money though!
This is a "Bill Nye" project.
And even though nobody will read this, going on the record that I beat this story by 5 days...
While living in Italy I had come across the following items..
Coffee flavored toothpaste... (and it was tan)...
Tobacco Air Freshener... (Yesa can off stuff you sprayed in the room to get the smell of tobacco. Like a fresh can of pipe tobacco)
Cannabis Incense Sticks... Which for some reason reminds me of "GNU"
I tried to get this as a story, but it will do as a comment...
The music industry is looking for additional ways to profit off the downloading scene...
As reported by the LA Times, Apple and Time Warner have started offering specially designed Lord of the Rings CD-Rs.
These limited edition blank CDs are specifically designed for users purchasing the Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King soundtrackfrom Apple's iTunes Music Store.
What I am going to do is wait until they provide "pre-burned" CDR's like RedHat does... That would be cool.
I am making the big prediction. Along with the Pepsi giveaway, music downloads are going to be paid for in large majority with things other than cash. You will get them with boxtops, bottle caps, affinity points (frequent flyer miles, credit card points, gas receipts, time share points, disney products etc....), rewards for school fundraisers, anything you can think of will become a replacement for direct cash payment. They will become the ultimate giveaway item. This will become important, because anything to overcome the friction of the credit card purchase on a sub-dollar item will be a major driver for the distribution sites.
This will have the side affect of creating an even larger hit based marketplace. Hits will generate the vast majority of downloads, and the most amount of money for the artists. The return of the single as the product of choice. For most artists and most songs this will generate very little money.
It will be very hard on the CD distribution system as more people get most of their music online. This will also have the side affect of making the used CD industry more difficult as there will be less content available. Which will probably be good for the music industry in the long run.
Legal music, free for the consumer, is going to be the most disruptive force in the industry.
This means we top out at 10000 FPS in Quake. Damn it... I want my silky smooth 128x FSAA 10k^2 images.
Computers just won't be any fun anymore...
With atm's you have 3 forms of Paper Trail that are not available with the electronic machines as stated...
1. You have your money...
2. You have your receipt...
3. Later you get your statement.
Electronic voting provides NONE of these protections, which is precisely the problem. An ATM provides simple user level auditing of the transaction, which for the most part works well. With "Electronic" voting, there is no paper trail, no audit method... Votes can appear and disappear, and change without anyones knowledge.
The answer is obvious, Electronic voting should result in human readible paper that is placed in the ballot box to be counted. It can be counted on the fly, like they currently are in Washington State. But more importantly the results can be audited and hand counted. The very fact that they can, massively lowers the possibility of fraud, or conversly the fact that you can't massively increases the possibility of fraud.
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This is great stuff... I bookmarked it for when I need it later!