St Helens is small, fuzzy, and friendly compared to bigger volcanoes such as the Yellowstone Caldera, which will completely devastate North, and much of South America if it erupts, and make things really bad everyplace else.
There's nothing that internet businesses needs to pay for, which it is not already paying for. The reduced tax revenues are simply the result of the astronomically greater efficiency involved in internet business, relative to B&M businesses, and don't need to be "made up" for. You could make all those arguments about B&M businesses. Similarly, internet businesses aren't necessarily "astronomically" more efficient, nor is that any sort of justification to escape the tax.
Like it or not, sales taxes are a large source of general revenue for state governments, and that money has to come from somewhere. Most industrialized nations institute some form of sales tax or VAT, and goods in the US are still some of the cheapest on the planet, even inclusive of tax.
Rather than advocating "cutting government programs," which almost universally implies education, public works, and other legitimately useful government services, how about advocating increased efficiency and oversight over government contracts?
US conservatives have been gung-ho about cutting taxes for the past 8 years, and still haven't actually worked out a plan to spend less money, trim the fat, or reduce unnecessary expenditures. Instead, they crippled the economy and currency through a series of reckless tax breaks, and spent more money than any other government in the history of the country, turning a surplus into a staggering debt that will burden most of us for the rest of our lives.
The lack of an internet tax was a convenient loophole that's now being closed as money is starting to become tight for state governments. Perhaps the best solution to our tax problems will be some sort of nationally-standardized (but state-controlled) VAT, which would ensure that individual states get their fare share from manufacturing, distribution, and resale, and small businesses wouldn't need to be familiar with 50 dramatically different systems of taxation.
A highly regarded school is a highly regarded school. On top of that, I interview people to work for my tech company and I don't care if you're from MIT or middle of nowhere college, it all depends on what comes out of your mouth during the interview. And I haven't met a company that's any different. I admire you for your nobility, but in my experience, the real world isn't quite so idealistic, especially when judging straight-out-of-college applicants.
Right now, the current generation (and their parents) are being taught to buy into the "big names," regardless of any other factors. The rankings craze is at least partially to blame, and MIT arguably markets itself better than Apple (no small feat!)
In reality, a college education is almost entirely what you make of it. The legacy-admitted grade-inflated Ivy grad might get the better job straight out of school, but the hardworking state-school grad will almost certainly end up being more successful in the long run, once he's had a chance to prove himself.
Selling machines with built-in displays and non-upgradable machines with limited storage is great for Apple's bottomline: it forces people to upgrade when non-replaceable parts break and non-upgradable machines are too slow to handle modern tasks.
How many non-techies do you know of who perform upgrades that entail more than adding extra RAM (which, I might add is dead simple to do on an iMac)?
Upgrading storage can easily be done via external drives. It's not particularly *neat*, but this is quickly becoming the de-facto standard for less technical consumers regardless of whether they use a PC or a Mac. There are precious few devices that require a PCI slot or drive bay these days that don't have USB or Firewire equivalents.
Thanks to the commoditization of PC hardware (mostly Dell's responsibility) along with the consolidation of virtually all system components onto the motherboard, very few people perform significant upgrades these days. Why replace the motherboard when you can purchase a whole new system for not too much more? Labor costs also make extensive upgrades prohibitive for business and education customers.
CPU designs change so frequently that CPU replacement is rarely a cost-effective upgrade route, and I can't think of the last time I heard of a CPU being upgraded without swapping out the motherboard as well. (Coincidentally, the one exception I can think of is the Core Duo Mac Mini, which turned out to be compatible with Core 2 Chips)
I'll grant that graphics are a sore point. Macs aren't gaming platforms, although I do appreciate that graphics hardware changes dramatically on a monthly basis, and that serious gamers should almost certainly stick to PCs. Perhaps when socketed GPUs or integrated CPU/GPUs come to the market, we'll see improvement in this area. This audience probably should stick to building their own PCs (and Apple's never said otherwise).
LCD screens are commodity items these days. The iMac may be a bit pricey, although I don't particularly buy the argument that the screen is a major contributor to the cost. The iMac's single-unit design and small footprint are very often the primary selling point of the machine. For many users (who are fully aware of the drawbacks), it's still perfectly worth the loss of upgradability or reusability of the screen. LCD screens hardly ever fail these days, and the iMac's thick glass shell should keep it protected against accidental damage (schools love this).
Jobs might not be the most technical person out there, but he's got an incredibly good feel for the market, and has proven to have an exceptionally good judgement to compromise between form and function. He also correctly determined that the market for a mid-range "upgradable" machine isn't all that big. There's no conspiracy here.
Mind you, it's not all a bed of roses, and Apple could easily make a few concessions to the "hobbyist" crowd to win us back. Adding E-SATA, an extra memory slot, and some sort of internal expansion bus to the Mini and iMac would be much appreciated. Similarly, I'd very much like for them to stop using 2.5" hard drives in desktop machines... They're small, slow, and expensive.
If you *do* crave expandability, and are comfortable building your own machine, there's absolutely nothing wrong with staying on the PC. There's also the Mac Pro, which, though expensive, is a damn good machine, and not terribly overpriced considering its specifications. I've still got a 450mhz G4 (from the 90s!) packed with RAM and storage, running a recent release of OS X in my basement. Top-end macs have always been a tad expensive, although for many, the investment is well worth it.
The fanboys and RDF may be obnoxious, but I seriously doubt that there's any sort of conspiracy to force consumers to upgrade every few years that doesn't also exist within every other PC manufacturer on the planet.
He made many contributions, but was also reputed to be a bit of an ass. I don't say this to flame..... I'm curious how people view him in retrospect...
They come out with the Mac Mini, which many said was the same thing, but it uses laptop memory and harddrives, which are more expensive per MB/GB
Actually, RAM prices have just about evened out to the point where the price difference is almost negligible.
The primary difference is that desktop memory modules generally come in somewhat larger capacities, and desktops can have more slots than the typical 2 offered by a machine that takes SO-DIMMs (although you typically won't find this on low-cost machines).
The hard drive comment still does apply, however. Small form factor hard drives are still pricey, small, and slow compared to their desktop counterparts. An E-SATA port on the Mac Mini would do a lot to resolve this complaint for "power users"
That all said, the Mac Mini is not a mid-range workstation. It's meant to be a cheapie low-budget computer. Considering the price, features, and unique form factor, it serves that role decently well compared to competing machines.
I somewhat doubt that Apple will introduce a "headless" machine that fits between the Mini and Pro, as such a machine would be extremely difficult to market to consumers, especially when the current generation iMac seems to be enjoying a fairly large degree of success.
Yes, but you can't guarantee reliability. Solar *is* a big piece of the puzzle, but it's absolutely and profoundly useless in places like Europe, where it's not terribly uncommon for the entire continent to be covered in clouds by a storm system. It's not hard to see how this would never ever work.
Solar's great for aleviating peak loads in the summertime in places where there's lots of cheap, open land. Do you see how this is a niche market? Yes, you could theoretically transmit the power over extremely long distances, although this adds even further to the cost.
Hydroelectric pumped storage plants have been dealing with the same (but opposite) peak-load issue for quite a while to a high degree of success. However, once again, this adds considerable cost, and only works in a handful of situations.
Solar cannot replace Coal. It's completely unsuitable for supplying base-load power because it only works half the time (at best).
Right now, nuclear is the only viable alternative to coal that we have. Based upon the proposals for new plants to be constructed, it looks like Nuclear is quickly becoming the preferred source for new construction. It won't happen overnight, but I'm confident that we're moving in the right direction.
The fact that his supporters tend to be raging trolls certainly didn't help either. I walked right into this one....
The 'Ron Paul Report' fiasco didn't help him all that much, because even though it's been fairly well established that he didn't write it, he did indeed know about it and did nothing to stop it. What sort of politician allows that sort of thing to be published under his own name?
However, it was the inability to compromise that killed it for me. Ron Paul has voted against damned near every single bill that's passed across his desk. Although I admire the fact that he sticks to his principles, and agree that it's probably inevitable for the senate to have one or two of these types, applying those practices as president would be disastrous.
It's important to stick to the constitution. Bush has forgotten that. However, many of the battles Ron Paul is trying to fight were settled in the 1700s after the Articles of Confederation failed, the Federalist party came to power whose ideals, were reaffirmed by the Democrat-Republicans when they preserved many of Alexander Hamilton's policies once the Federalists fell from power. Ron Paul's politics completely clash with the manner in which the US government has been run for the past 210 years.
Perhaps we've never 100% faithfully obeyed the constitution. However, Ron Paul's interpretation of it is blatantly ignorant of history, and is almost fanatical in nature.
It's pretty rare to hear an American say "Gee. I wish the New Jersey State government had more power." Perhaps we might need to rethink some aspects of separation of power, but the general consensus seems to be that there's not all that much wrong with the current state of affairs.
(Full disclosure: I wish Taiwan had nukes, to make sure China stays polite and on its side of the Strait.) No you don't.
Even with nukes there is no remotely plausible way for Taiwan to win any sort of conflict against China. Taiwan can only strike a very small area of China, even with a massive arsenal. China can erase Taiwan from the map with a relatively small arsenal.
Taiwan would be insane to even consider such a proposition. There would be no possible favorable outcome.
Although the internet was instrumental in giving Ron Paul some exposure at first, he turned out to be nothing more than a wolf in sheep's clothing. While his small-government policies were a breath of fresh air, digging a bit deeper showed that he was nothing more than a religious states-rights activist who was unwilling to compromise on event the smallest of issues.
The sort of person most likely to have been a Ron Paul supporter would likely also have been scrutinous enough to eventually pick up on the darker bits of his past. The problem with Ron Paul was simply that most of his supporters stopped liking him as a candidate. McCain, on the other hand, appealed to many of the things that Paul's supporters were looking for in a candidate.
Seriously, this is quite a cool concept, although I (like many others here) remain a tad skeptical, especially with regard to the lack of a keyboard.
On the other hand, if they used the "blank space" currently occupied by the wrist wrests as a visual multitouch interface, a few interesting possibilities open up. New technologies and cost reductions are going to allow us to considerably modify UI metaphors into something quite a bit more abstract. Whether or not this actually happens, of course, remains to be seen.
No, because in every industry except entertainment its suicide to ever sue your own customers. Who would want to do business with anyone like that? There are a lot of lawyers who never receive payment for their services who also never sue their customers. Once the word gets out that youre doing that then its time to close shop. Violation of a written contract and non-payment are perhaps two of the only legitimate reasons to sue your customers. Although I'd agree that there are certainly cases where it's better to let that sort of thing slide, Sonic.net have a reasonably solid case here that shouldn't scare off future customers/investors. Also, if they're not paying, they're not customers!
There are many, many, many abuses of the American legal system. This is not one of them.
Also, to respond to one of the other posters, I'd doubt that Sonic.net would be asked to prove that Wi-Fi is 100% safe, unless the judge is an absolute loony (in which case, they'd likely be able to appeal). The FCC has very explicit guidelines for "safe" levels of RF exposure, and Sebastopol would need to take on the FCC directly in order to challenge this.
They'd probably be able to get away with simply demonstrating that public access points don't significantly increase public exposure to 2.4GHz RF given the number of private transmitters around. Similarly, the town will have a very difficult time defending themselves, considering that they have not banned the use of private access points. (Nor do they have the ability to do so, as that lies under the jurisdiction of the FCC)
Imagine you're 80+ years old, and given the option of living 2 years on chemo, or one without.
Would you be willing to live in pain, and as a major burden to society and your family in exchange for an extra year, especially at such an advanced age?
I'm not one of those odd folk who refuse all sorts of medical treatment, although once a certain point is reached, you're only (barely) prolonging the inevitable.
And the ICE in Germany. And Eurostar/Thalys. And the AVE in Spain. And the TAV in Italy. Depending upon your definition of "high speed", you could also count the HST in the UK.
The US has...... the Acela, which runs at its top speed for all of 18 miles. Amtrak Cascades also operates a few trains that are capable of 124mph, but are restricted to 79mph while in service.
No plans are currently funded to expand or substantially improve the US intercity rail network. PROGRESS! (That said, both "real" 2008 candidates have promised massive $1bn+ infrastructure investments)
The other bits of the computer are also kind of important as well:-P
It's not exactly like I can just throw a Core Duo and a new card into my 4-year-old computer that is still perfectly adequate for every task apart from gaming.
Slashdot Mirror
St Helens is small, fuzzy, and friendly compared to bigger volcanoes such as the Yellowstone Caldera, which will completely devastate North, and much of South America if it erupts, and make things really bad everyplace else.
Like it or not, sales taxes are a large source of general revenue for state governments, and that money has to come from somewhere. Most industrialized nations institute some form of sales tax or VAT, and goods in the US are still some of the cheapest on the planet, even inclusive of tax.
Rather than advocating "cutting government programs," which almost universally implies education, public works, and other legitimately useful government services, how about advocating increased efficiency and oversight over government contracts?
US conservatives have been gung-ho about cutting taxes for the past 8 years, and still haven't actually worked out a plan to spend less money, trim the fat, or reduce unnecessary expenditures. Instead, they crippled the economy and currency through a series of reckless tax breaks, and spent more money than any other government in the history of the country, turning a surplus into a staggering debt that will burden most of us for the rest of our lives.
The lack of an internet tax was a convenient loophole that's now being closed as money is starting to become tight for state governments. Perhaps the best solution to our tax problems will be some sort of nationally-standardized (but state-controlled) VAT, which would ensure that individual states get their fare share from manufacturing, distribution, and resale, and small businesses wouldn't need to be familiar with 50 dramatically different systems of taxation.
Right now, the current generation (and their parents) are being taught to buy into the "big names," regardless of any other factors. The rankings craze is at least partially to blame, and MIT arguably markets itself better than Apple (no small feat!)
In reality, a college education is almost entirely what you make of it. The legacy-admitted grade-inflated Ivy grad might get the better job straight out of school, but the hardworking state-school grad will almost certainly end up being more successful in the long run, once he's had a chance to prove himself.
How many non-techies do you know of who perform upgrades that entail more than adding extra RAM (which, I might add is dead simple to do on an iMac)?
Upgrading storage can easily be done via external drives. It's not particularly *neat*, but this is quickly becoming the de-facto standard for less technical consumers regardless of whether they use a PC or a Mac. There are precious few devices that require a PCI slot or drive bay these days that don't have USB or Firewire equivalents.
Thanks to the commoditization of PC hardware (mostly Dell's responsibility) along with the consolidation of virtually all system components onto the motherboard, very few people perform significant upgrades these days. Why replace the motherboard when you can purchase a whole new system for not too much more? Labor costs also make extensive upgrades prohibitive for business and education customers.
CPU designs change so frequently that CPU replacement is rarely a cost-effective upgrade route, and I can't think of the last time I heard of a CPU being upgraded without swapping out the motherboard as well. (Coincidentally, the one exception I can think of is the Core Duo Mac Mini, which turned out to be compatible with Core 2 Chips)
I'll grant that graphics are a sore point. Macs aren't gaming platforms, although I do appreciate that graphics hardware changes dramatically on a monthly basis, and that serious gamers should almost certainly stick to PCs. Perhaps when socketed GPUs or integrated CPU/GPUs come to the market, we'll see improvement in this area. This audience probably should stick to building their own PCs (and Apple's never said otherwise).
LCD screens are commodity items these days. The iMac may be a bit pricey, although I don't particularly buy the argument that the screen is a major contributor to the cost. The iMac's single-unit design and small footprint are very often the primary selling point of the machine. For many users (who are fully aware of the drawbacks), it's still perfectly worth the loss of upgradability or reusability of the screen. LCD screens hardly ever fail these days, and the iMac's thick glass shell should keep it protected against accidental damage (schools love this).
Jobs might not be the most technical person out there, but he's got an incredibly good feel for the market, and has proven to have an exceptionally good judgement to compromise between form and function. He also correctly determined that the market for a mid-range "upgradable" machine isn't all that big. There's no conspiracy here.
Mind you, it's not all a bed of roses, and Apple could easily make a few concessions to the "hobbyist" crowd to win us back. Adding E-SATA, an extra memory slot, and some sort of internal expansion bus to the Mini and iMac would be much appreciated. Similarly, I'd very much like for them to stop using 2.5" hard drives in desktop machines... They're small, slow, and expensive.
If you *do* crave expandability, and are comfortable building your own machine, there's absolutely nothing wrong with staying on the PC. There's also the Mac Pro, which, though expensive, is a damn good machine, and not terribly overpriced considering its specifications. I've still got a 450mhz G4 (from the 90s!) packed with RAM and storage, running a recent release of OS X in my basement. Top-end macs have always been a tad expensive, although for many, the investment is well worth it.
The fanboys and RDF may be obnoxious, but I seriously doubt that there's any sort of conspiracy to force consumers to upgrade every few years that doesn't also exist within every other PC manufacturer on the planet.
So where does that put Feynman?
He made many contributions, but was also reputed to be a bit of an ass. I don't say this to flame..... I'm curious how people view him in retrospect...
Actually, RAM prices have just about evened out to the point where the price difference is almost negligible.
The primary difference is that desktop memory modules generally come in somewhat larger capacities, and desktops can have more slots than the typical 2 offered by a machine that takes SO-DIMMs (although you typically won't find this on low-cost machines).
The hard drive comment still does apply, however. Small form factor hard drives are still pricey, small, and slow compared to their desktop counterparts. An E-SATA port on the Mac Mini would do a lot to resolve this complaint for "power users"
That all said, the Mac Mini is not a mid-range workstation. It's meant to be a cheapie low-budget computer. Considering the price, features, and unique form factor, it serves that role decently well compared to competing machines.
I somewhat doubt that Apple will introduce a "headless" machine that fits between the Mini and Pro, as such a machine would be extremely difficult to market to consumers, especially when the current generation iMac seems to be enjoying a fairly large degree of success.
There's also , which offers a more versatile solution for storing surplus nighttime energy for later use (as long as you have a nice mountaintop reservoir nearby).
Yes, but you can't guarantee reliability. Solar *is* a big piece of the puzzle, but it's absolutely and profoundly useless in places like Europe, where it's not terribly uncommon for the entire continent to be covered in clouds by a storm system. It's not hard to see how this would never ever work.
Solar's great for aleviating peak loads in the summertime in places where there's lots of cheap, open land. Do you see how this is a niche market? Yes, you could theoretically transmit the power over extremely long distances, although this adds even further to the cost.
Hydroelectric pumped storage plants have been dealing with the same (but opposite) peak-load issue for quite a while to a high degree of success. However, once again, this adds considerable cost, and only works in a handful of situations.
Solar cannot replace Coal. It's completely unsuitable for supplying base-load power because it only works half the time (at best).
Right now, nuclear is the only viable alternative to coal that we have. Based upon the proposals for new plants to be constructed, it looks like Nuclear is quickly becoming the preferred source for new construction. It won't happen overnight, but I'm confident that we're moving in the right direction.
Rule 34 certainly is a cruel fucker.
Alright. Let's find the names of the politicians responsible, and make sure that their names are widely circulated.
Then put them on trial.
Then put the company on trial.
From a technological/computational perspective, recording census data might possibly be one of the simplest tasks imaginable.
No remotely sane company on the planet would hire an external contractor, and then take an inexplicable 3-fold cost increase in stride.
The fact that his supporters tend to be raging trolls certainly didn't help either. I walked right into this one....
The 'Ron Paul Report' fiasco didn't help him all that much, because even though it's been fairly well established that he didn't write it, he did indeed know about it and did nothing to stop it. What sort of politician allows that sort of thing to be published under his own name?
However, it was the inability to compromise that killed it for me. Ron Paul has voted against damned near every single bill that's passed across his desk. Although I admire the fact that he sticks to his principles, and agree that it's probably inevitable for the senate to have one or two of these types, applying those practices as president would be disastrous.
It's important to stick to the constitution. Bush has forgotten that. However, many of the battles Ron Paul is trying to fight were settled in the 1700s after the Articles of Confederation failed, the Federalist party came to power whose ideals, were reaffirmed by the Democrat-Republicans when they preserved many of Alexander Hamilton's policies once the Federalists fell from power. Ron Paul's politics completely clash with the manner in which the US government has been run for the past 210 years.
Perhaps we've never 100% faithfully obeyed the constitution. However, Ron Paul's interpretation of it is blatantly ignorant of history, and is almost fanatical in nature.
It's pretty rare to hear an American say "Gee. I wish the New Jersey State government had more power." Perhaps we might need to rethink some aspects of separation of power, but the general consensus seems to be that there's not all that much wrong with the current state of affairs.
The more pressing question on my mind is why they haven't been sued into oblivion. How can you seriously get away with that?
Even with nukes there is no remotely plausible way for Taiwan to win any sort of conflict against China. Taiwan can only strike a very small area of China, even with a massive arsenal. China can erase Taiwan from the map with a relatively small arsenal.
Taiwan would be insane to even consider such a proposition. There would be no possible favorable outcome.
I imagine that targeting has gotten considerably more accurate.
I would certainly care if the megaton hydrogen bomb detonated above my city was originally intended for a different country!
Although the internet was instrumental in giving Ron Paul some exposure at first, he turned out to be nothing more than a wolf in sheep's clothing. While his small-government policies were a breath of fresh air, digging a bit deeper showed that he was nothing more than a religious states-rights activist who was unwilling to compromise on event the smallest of issues.
The sort of person most likely to have been a Ron Paul supporter would likely also have been scrutinous enough to eventually pick up on the darker bits of his past. The problem with Ron Paul was simply that most of his supporters stopped liking him as a candidate. McCain, on the other hand, appealed to many of the things that Paul's supporters were looking for in a candidate.
The future of computing is the Nintendo DS?
Seriously, this is quite a cool concept, although I (like many others here) remain a tad skeptical, especially with regard to the lack of a keyboard.
On the other hand, if they used the "blank space" currently occupied by the wrist wrests as a visual multitouch interface, a few interesting possibilities open up. New technologies and cost reductions are going to allow us to considerably modify UI metaphors into something quite a bit more abstract. Whether or not this actually happens, of course, remains to be seen.
There are many, many, many abuses of the American legal system. This is not one of them.
Also, to respond to one of the other posters, I'd doubt that Sonic.net would be asked to prove that Wi-Fi is 100% safe, unless the judge is an absolute loony (in which case, they'd likely be able to appeal). The FCC has very explicit guidelines for "safe" levels of RF exposure, and Sebastopol would need to take on the FCC directly in order to challenge this.
They'd probably be able to get away with simply demonstrating that public access points don't significantly increase public exposure to 2.4GHz RF given the number of private transmitters around. Similarly, the town will have a very difficult time defending themselves, considering that they have not banned the use of private access points. (Nor do they have the ability to do so, as that lies under the jurisdiction of the FCC)
I could make the case against it.
Imagine you're 80+ years old, and given the option of living 2 years on chemo, or one without.
Would you be willing to live in pain, and as a major burden to society and your family in exchange for an extra year, especially at such an advanced age?
I'm not one of those odd folk who refuse all sorts of medical treatment, although once a certain point is reached, you're only (barely) prolonging the inevitable.
And the ICE in Germany. And Eurostar/Thalys. And the AVE in Spain. And the TAV in Italy. Depending upon your definition of "high speed", you could also count the HST in the UK.
The US has...... the Acela, which runs at its top speed for all of 18 miles.
Amtrak Cascades also operates a few trains that are capable of 124mph, but are restricted to 79mph while in service.
No plans are currently funded to expand or substantially improve the US intercity rail network. PROGRESS!
(That said, both "real" 2008 candidates have promised massive $1bn+ infrastructure investments)
Well, given that he's publicly provided his email address, we could go ahead and take care of that for him.
Slashdot is a very caring community in that regard.
*(As a sidenote, I want to point out here just how freakishly good GMail's spam filters have become)
Frankly, that sounds like an operating system problem.
Additional CPUs shouldn't help latency all that much as long as the Operating System is multitasking properly.
The other bits of the computer are also kind of important as well :-P
It's not exactly like I can just throw a Core Duo and a new card into my 4-year-old computer that is still perfectly adequate for every task apart from gaming.