First of all, your argument is ridiculous: just how exactly does Apple lock people into their software and hardware? Once you buy an Apple machine are you somehow bound upon pain of death to only buy Apple's software and hardware for the rest of your life?
Secondly, to be guilty of monopolistic practices you have to have a monopoly. I thought this was obvious to everyone, but clearly it isn't. Congratulations on not being to work that out for yourself.
You seem to think that Apple is somehow duty bound to produce versions of their software that work on all platforms, regardless of how practical or profitable that may or may not be. And if it doesn't do that, you seem to consider that monopolistic. Well, buddy, you don't know what you're talking about. Go look up the definition of monopoly in the dictionary, get a clue then come back with an informed and reasoned opinion.
Lastly, before I go spend my time on something that's not as pointless as this conversation, let me just ask you this: do you intend to hold other software publishers to the high standard of making their software available on every platform? Because if you do, good luck trying to get Adobe, Corel, Macromedia, etc to publish their apps on Linux, BeOS or any other platform that you care to mention. While you're at it, I'd like to see you force Linux-only developers to produce Windows versions of their software too.
IT hardware in India costs about the same as IT hardware anywhere else so anyone who's carrying around a laptop either is capable of paying $0.50 per hr themselves or has an employer that can do so.
If you applied that logic to roads then you'd have to pay a lot more for the priviledge of driving around, because the amount of tax you currently pay in the US on car fuel ("gas" if you must insist on calling any liquid that, even if it is a shortened form of "gasoline") is nowhere near the level that's necessary it to pay for the expenditure necessary to maintain let alone improve the road network.
If you applied that logic to air travel then every major US airline would have gone bust a long time ago. Or have you forgotten how the US government bailed them all out after the drop off in commercial air traffic after the attacks of September 11th?
R.I.P. your ridiculously-easy-to-counter argument.
Uh, Microsoft deliberately made sure that a new version of DOS was incapable of running Lotus 1-2-3. They did the same thing to WordPerfect for Windows when they released Windows 3.1, and to DR-DOS with a Windows release too. They pulled a bait and switch on IBM that basically rendered it impotent vs Windows 3.x in the battle for the desktop GUI arena.
All of which are clear examples of monopolistic, anti-competitive behaviour, as in every case Microsoft abused its market dominance in one area (in OSes) to gain an unfair advantage against its competitors in another (most often, in applications). Apple hasn't done that, but if it had, then it too would have been guilty of monopolistic, anti-competitive behaviour.
No offense, but reading your post again I really think that you need to learn what's meant by "monopolistic, anti-competitive behaviour", because it's clear that you don't know that an "anything as long as it screws the competition" attitude is a major problem as far as the law is concerned.
And I haven't even touched on the undocumented APIs that only Microsoft's own application development teams were told about, allowing them to create apps that were faster than anyone elses, or any of the other shit that they pulled either back then or since that time.
Apple may lock people into hardware and software but the difference between them and Microsoft is that Apple has roughly 10 percent of the market whilst Microsoft has virtually all of it. Hence it's a lot harder for Apple to be guilty of monopolistic practices than it is for Microsoft, simply because Apple doesn't have the market share that Microsoft does.
Seriously, if you think that pointing out the facts makes me some sort of Apple apologist (ironic since I've never owned any Apple hardware in my life) then you really have a reality distortion field to rival that of Steve Jobs himself.
I think you misread my post. The workaround is designed to provide the fully-functional version of Gmail to users whose browsers support it but for whom the "basic HTML view" version of the service is appearing.
As Netscape 3 isn't capable of displaying the fully-functional version of Gmail, it's obvious that the workaround URL that I mentioned isn't going to help you or any other Netscape 3 user to access that version.
God, could you be more pedantic? People talk about Company X stealing market share from Company Y all the time, but that doesn't mean they're talking about literal theft, does it?
Go learn how to read (and write), and learn how not to hide behind AC posting when sniping at someone in a petty manner, then come back with something sensible to say.
Well, it's Utah, so it's basically the Mormons that decide.
So, sites promoting polygamy are OK but sites promoting the drinking of caffeine or alcohol (like those belonging to Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Budweiser, etc) are bad. Oh, and anything else that the Mormon church doesn't like either will be considered "harmful" too.
The reason why we use Celsius rather than Kelvin is convenience and simplicity. Anyone who's vaguely familiar with the Celsius scale can tell you that 0 deg is freezing, 100 deg is boiling, 5 deg is quite cold, 20 deg is pleasantly warm, 30 deg is hot, etc.
But even a someone with a science background who knows the Kelvin scale and it's relationship to Celsius (K = C + 273) would struggle to quickly apply some of those labels (quite cold, pleasantly warm, hot) if you presented them with the figures 278K, 293K, and 303K.
Why is this? Well, put simply, it's easier for us to interpret the difference between 5, 20 and 30 than it is for us to interpret the difference between 278, 293 and 303. Stop ten people in the street and ask them for the difference between 5 and 30. See how many get it right and in how much time. Now ask those same people for the difference between 278 and 303. See how many fewer get it right and how much longer they all take to come up with an answer.
It all boils down to simplicity (if you pardon the semi-intentional pun). That, my friend, is why we don't use K for everyday measurements of temperature, and also why we don't use metres or seconds to measure all but short distances or small intervals of time (in favour of larger measurements, such as km and hours and minutes instead).
At least the Celsius scale is dependent on the properties of one rather than three things and delivers practical values that don't require too much thought to interpret.
If it's 0 deg C or lower then it's freezing, if it's above that then it's not. Water boils at exactly 100 deg C. Etc, etc. Not to mention that 1 deg of change in C is equal to 1 deg of change in K, the SI unit for temperature, which makes Celsius far more practical a unit of measurement to any scientist than Fahrenheit will ever be.
I grew up with both the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales and, frankly, the former is far easier to use and interpret than the latter.
Having said that, I can understand your resistance to change though: I find it far easier to think about travelling distances (whether by foot, car, boat, train or plane) in miles than kilometres. However, that doesn't mean that I'll be rallying to save the mile for nostalgic reasons when the time comes when metric rather than imperial road distances are adopted here in the UK.
There's a difference between not supporting rival products any more than you have to and actively looking for ways to smash the opposition. Has Apple got a track history of screwing over competitors as Microsoft has done with Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, DR-DOS, OS/2, etc, etc, etc?
Pullying the clones was a sensible move. Rather than expanding the marketshare of Apple's OS by attracting Windows-based users to the MacOS fold, all the clones succeeded in doing was stealing hardware sales from Apple itself, which was harming Apple's income. The clones experiment was too little too late to make any dent in the Windows juggernaut and was hurting Apple more than it was helping it, so it had to end.
Apple not making a deal with BeOS was a decision that was based on several factors. One of which was the price - neither side really wanted to budge from their view of what the OS was worth - and another was the reappearance of Steve Jobs, who clearly favoured an OS based upon NeXT's OS, whether for technical reasons or personal vanity and vindication. Be could have easily cut a deal before Jobs was back on the scene, but they played hardball a little too hard and ended up with nothing.
As for Apple's stores in the UK undercutting UK resellers, well, I've talked to a manager at one of Apple's biggest UK retail resellers (Micro Anvika) and he said business was booming, even with the Apple London Store only a mile or so away from his company's flagship stores in Tottenham Court Road, so it's hardly as if Apple's UK resellers are crying about it. If anything, Apple's new retail presence and elevated brand awareness has reinvigorated the market, and encouraged resellers to improve on their value-add, which is no bad thing from a consumer point of view.
Even so, some of the biggest competition the UK resellers face is the disparity between Apple's UK and US pricing: it's long-established fact that it's considerably cheaper to buy a round-trip ticket to New York and pick up a PowerBook there than it is to buy the same PowerBook in the UK.
Is Apple a wannabe monopolist? Probably, yes. Which company isn't? But nothing it's done so far or anything that you've mentioned in your post is evidence of any monopolistic policy on Apple's part.
Google's latest changes to Gmail include the introduction of a "basic HTML view" for people who's browsers cannot display the default view properly. This includes MSIE 4.0+ (pre 5.5), Netscape 4.07+ (pre 7.1), and Opera 6.03+, which previously couldn't be used to access Gmail.
Unfortunately, the new browser detection code they are now using seems to have been put together in a rather sloppy manner, which means (amongst others) Opera 8.0 users are forced to this "basic HTML view" when the fully-featured default view works perfectly well with that version of Opera. (Indeed, one of the many new features of Opera 8.0 is XMLHttpRequest support, which allows Gmail to work in full.)
Any Opera 8.0 user who logs into Gmail as usual will no longer be able to do some basic things, including create filters, amend their settings, check spelling, access keyboard shortcuts and autocomplete addresses. Fortunately, there is a workaround, which is to use the URL http://gmail.google.com/gmail?nocheckbrowser, which solves the issue.
This issue doesn't only affect Opera 8.0 users: users of MSIE 6.x, Camino and other browsers have reported the same problem on the relevant Google group. I don't use any of those browsers but I'm fairly sure that the same workaround will work for them too.
Again, I don't doubt it for a second. Want me to say that the article practically reads like an Intel press release? Sure, I'll say it.
But I'll also say what I've said at least twice now: to see who's got the best 64-bit architecture and processors and whose processors will be faster we're going to have to wait and see. Blanket assumptions such as "I wonder how long consumer will pay a premium for slower Intel CPUs", which was the point that I was originally addressing, are foolish because none of us know for sure who's got the better product.
How many more people are there out there who find my position of wanting more information rather than jumping to conclusions so offensive?
I wholly agree with you that the examples used are poor, but have you never wanted or needed to get something done whilst something else processor-intensive was happening in the background?
Like playing a game or watching an AVI, MPG or DVD whilst compiling, ripping a audio CD or burning a data CD-R in the background?
Hey, perhaps it is and perhaps it isn't. But I'm not the one jumping to conclusions about who's 64-bit desktop processors are going to be faster, am I? That accolade belongs to the person to whom I originally replied.
I'm the one who's saying don't count your chickens before they're hatched. And, I thought it went without saying (but I guess it doesn't nowadays), that you should canvas a range of opinions, benchmarks and analyses before making your own conclusions, too.
Bottom line (again): only time will tell whose 64-bit CPUs will be better.
While I agree with you that Intel is playing catch-up in the desktop 64-bit arena, if you had RTFA then you would have found that it concludes with a performance summary that suggests that Intel's 64-bit CPUs more than hold their own:
As far as performance is concerned, the 3.6GHz Pentium 4 660 can hold its own against its main competitor, the Athlon 64 4000+. The Intel chip performs particularly well if several tasks are running at the same time; under these circumstances, the Pentium 4 can outpace its AMD rival even if the latter is quicker at performing the tasks on their own. Thanks to HyperThreading (HT), the Pentium 4 distributes processing tasks across two virtual cores, resulting in more efficient utilisation of CPU resources. Such scenarios are found ever more frequently in the real world. For example, no-one should venture onto the Internet without firewall, antivirus and anti-spyware protection. These services are constantly active and need appropriate resources. Likewise, operations such as data encryption or hard disk defragmentation can load the processor, while the user compresses streaming video or audio data. Under such usage patterns, the advantage of HT is particularly apparent.
With the 6xx-series Pentium 4, Intel has ensured that important functionality such as protection from memory overflow, power management and 64-bit support on the desktop is no longer an AMD domain. And with HT support and SSE3 instructions, the new Intel processors offer additional benefits. One change will annoy Intel, however: on the installation CD for Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, the most important operating system files are no longer in the 'i386' folder; Intel systems must load the installation files now from the 'AMD64' folder. Although that might hurt the industry leader, Intel may draw comfort from the fact that it has already sold more 64-bit chips than the inventor of the x86-64 architecture, AMD.
Now, I have no doubt that Intel's 64-bit offerings will fall behind their AMD equivalents when it comes to bang-per-buck but that conclusion seems to suggest that Intel's chips will still have plenty of bang, as much as if not more than AMD's chips.
Remember, Intel's chips are just getting to market, whereas AMD's have been out there for at least 12 months. Who's to know who'll be lording it over who in a year or two when the 64-bit market is finally more than a tiny subset of the market as a whole? It might be AMD, it might be Intel, or it might be neither.
And before the accusations start, no, I'm not an Intel fanboy or shill who's interested only in running down AMD: this post is being typed on a AMD Athlon-based PC, my last PC had an AMD CPU, and my next one almost definitely will too. What I am interested in is a fair and accurate comparisons of the processors of the future, regardless of who they are made by.
Plus nobody's going to pay for Opera and they certainly won't put up with having ads in their browser.
Just because you won't pay for what many consider to be the best browser out there, or live with the inobtrusive text-based Google ads in the ad-supported version, that doesn't mean that "nobody" will.
To be honest, for 99 percent of users, Opera is a far better browser than FireFox. But because FireFox is F/OSS and Opera isn't, and because this is a F/OSS-focused website, FireFox is put on an altar whilst Opera is constantly bashed.
Please don't confuse the Slashdot "editors" with journalists. The two are mutually exclusive: journalists (on the whole) actually care about the accuracy of what they write.
Oh, and journalists (or at least their editors) actually care about things like spelling, punctuation, and grammar, not to mention whether or not they're duplicating the already-published work of a colleague.
Also, since you have no real open land in the entire country, it all looks like one large, connected city.
Making a "mistake" like saying a city is near another is very easy to make.
Quot Erat Demonstrandum
You carry on being ignorant, OK? "No real open land"? LMAO. What we have might not be on the same scale as the great swathes of untouched country that you'll come across in parts of North America but it's beautiful enough and nowhere near to the mental picture you seem to be painting of a landscape that's concreted over entirely.
Saying that Sellafield is anywhere near London isn't a small mistake, it's a huge one. In fact, in this case the story headine is extremely misleading as it gives the immediate impression that the nuclear plant is in London, which isn't just false but is rather stupid too (given that we're talking about a nuclear facility). It's like suggesting a nuclear plant somewhere in southern California is actually in Los Angeles, which is just plain dumb.
Sorry but at best you come across as foolish and at worst you come across as downright ignorant. Stick your poor QEDs and half-thought out arguments somewhere where they aren't likely to be ripped apart by simple argument. Next time, think first and type later.
If the scientists at NASA, ESA, JSA, or wherever else are relying on information gleaned from Slashdot to get their facts and figures right then we're screwed already.
Come on, admit you were being a little bit pedantic: after all, how many scientists do you know who've heard of the SI unit Kelvin who don't know that 0K (absolute zero) is not the same as 0 deg C (freezing point of water)?
That's your opinion and you're entitled to it. I guess it makes you feel superior to those on the other side of the debate by defining a pregnancy, even one in its embryonic stage as equal to a fully-formed and developed baby regardless of whether or not that pregnancy has developed to the stage where it has a viable chance of life outside the womb.
I find it funny that the same people who are so adamant that abortion is murder are almost always the same people that are opposed to the dissemination of methods of birth control as well as the same people who are quick to make single mothers the scapegoats for all of society's ills.
And what right do you have to tell a pregnant woman, regardless of how her child was conceived, just what exactly she is allowed to do with her own body?
Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm British. It just amuses me to see people talk about one of their nation's closest allies (the US and Japan have several mutual defence treaties) in terms indicative of emnity rather than friendship.
Wow, it says so much that you think of one of your nation's biggest trading partners (if not the biggest) as "the one-time enemy Japan". Do you also think of Mexico and Britain in those terms?
Slashdot Mirror
First of all, your argument is ridiculous: just how exactly does Apple lock people into their software and hardware? Once you buy an Apple machine are you somehow bound upon pain of death to only buy Apple's software and hardware for the rest of your life?
Secondly, to be guilty of monopolistic practices you have to have a monopoly. I thought this was obvious to everyone, but clearly it isn't. Congratulations on not being to work that out for yourself.
You seem to think that Apple is somehow duty bound to produce versions of their software that work on all platforms, regardless of how practical or profitable that may or may not be. And if it doesn't do that, you seem to consider that monopolistic. Well, buddy, you don't know what you're talking about. Go look up the definition of monopoly in the dictionary, get a clue then come back with an informed and reasoned opinion.
Lastly, before I go spend my time on something that's not as pointless as this conversation, let me just ask you this: do you intend to hold other software publishers to the high standard of making their software available on every platform? Because if you do, good luck trying to get Adobe, Corel, Macromedia, etc to publish their apps on Linux, BeOS or any other platform that you care to mention. While you're at it, I'd like to see you force Linux-only developers to produce Windows versions of their software too.
The "average guy" isn't toting a laptop, is he?
IT hardware in India costs about the same as IT hardware anywhere else so anyone who's carrying around a laptop either is capable of paying $0.50 per hr themselves or has an employer that can do so.
If you applied that logic to roads then you'd have to pay a lot more for the priviledge of driving around, because the amount of tax you currently pay in the US on car fuel ("gas" if you must insist on calling any liquid that, even if it is a shortened form of "gasoline") is nowhere near the level that's necessary it to pay for the expenditure necessary to maintain let alone improve the road network.
If you applied that logic to air travel then every major US airline would have gone bust a long time ago. Or have you forgotten how the US government bailed them all out after the drop off in commercial air traffic after the attacks of September 11th?
R.I.P. your ridiculously-easy-to-counter argument.
Uh, Microsoft deliberately made sure that a new version of DOS was incapable of running Lotus 1-2-3. They did the same thing to WordPerfect for Windows when they released Windows 3.1, and to DR-DOS with a Windows release too. They pulled a bait and switch on IBM that basically rendered it impotent vs Windows 3.x in the battle for the desktop GUI arena.
All of which are clear examples of monopolistic, anti-competitive behaviour, as in every case Microsoft abused its market dominance in one area (in OSes) to gain an unfair advantage against its competitors in another (most often, in applications). Apple hasn't done that, but if it had, then it too would have been guilty of monopolistic, anti-competitive behaviour.
No offense, but reading your post again I really think that you need to learn what's meant by "monopolistic, anti-competitive behaviour", because it's clear that you don't know that an "anything as long as it screws the competition" attitude is a major problem as far as the law is concerned.
And I haven't even touched on the undocumented APIs that only Microsoft's own application development teams were told about, allowing them to create apps that were faster than anyone elses, or any of the other shit that they pulled either back then or since that time.
Apple may lock people into hardware and software but the difference between them and Microsoft is that Apple has roughly 10 percent of the market whilst Microsoft has virtually all of it. Hence it's a lot harder for Apple to be guilty of monopolistic practices than it is for Microsoft, simply because Apple doesn't have the market share that Microsoft does.
Seriously, if you think that pointing out the facts makes me some sort of Apple apologist (ironic since I've never owned any Apple hardware in my life) then you really have a reality distortion field to rival that of Steve Jobs himself.
I think you misread my post. The workaround is designed to provide the fully-functional version of Gmail to users whose browsers support it but for whom the "basic HTML view" version of the service is appearing.
As Netscape 3 isn't capable of displaying the fully-functional version of Gmail, it's obvious that the workaround URL that I mentioned isn't going to help you or any other Netscape 3 user to access that version.
God, could you be more pedantic? People talk about Company X stealing market share from Company Y all the time, but that doesn't mean they're talking about literal theft, does it?
Go learn how to read (and write), and learn how not to hide behind AC posting when sniping at someone in a petty manner, then come back with something sensible to say.
They may not openly and overtly support polygamy but they support it nevertheless.
Well, it's Utah, so it's basically the Mormons that decide.
So, sites promoting polygamy are OK but sites promoting the drinking of caffeine or alcohol (like those belonging to Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Budweiser, etc) are bad. Oh, and anything else that the Mormon church doesn't like either will be considered "harmful" too.
The reason why we use Celsius rather than Kelvin is convenience and simplicity. Anyone who's vaguely familiar with the Celsius scale can tell you that 0 deg is freezing, 100 deg is boiling, 5 deg is quite cold, 20 deg is pleasantly warm, 30 deg is hot, etc.
But even a someone with a science background who knows the Kelvin scale and it's relationship to Celsius (K = C + 273) would struggle to quickly apply some of those labels (quite cold, pleasantly warm, hot) if you presented them with the figures 278K, 293K, and 303K.
Why is this? Well, put simply, it's easier for us to interpret the difference between 5, 20 and 30 than it is for us to interpret the difference between 278, 293 and 303. Stop ten people in the street and ask them for the difference between 5 and 30. See how many get it right and in how much time. Now ask those same people for the difference between 278 and 303. See how many fewer get it right and how much longer they all take to come up with an answer.
It all boils down to simplicity (if you pardon the semi-intentional pun). That, my friend, is why we don't use K for everyday measurements of temperature, and also why we don't use metres or seconds to measure all but short distances or small intervals of time (in favour of larger measurements, such as km and hours and minutes instead).
Furthermore, with integer degrees, Fahrenheit gives more precision. Put that in your pedantic pipe and smoke it.
Like you can tell the difference between 45 and 46 deg Fahrenheit when you leave your house in the morning? Yeah, right.
Put that in your pedantic pipe and smoke it, right back atcha, buddy.
At least the Celsius scale is dependent on the properties of one rather than three things and delivers practical values that don't require too much thought to interpret.
If it's 0 deg C or lower then it's freezing, if it's above that then it's not. Water boils at exactly 100 deg C. Etc, etc. Not to mention that 1 deg of change in C is equal to 1 deg of change in K, the SI unit for temperature, which makes Celsius far more practical a unit of measurement to any scientist than Fahrenheit will ever be.
I grew up with both the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales and, frankly, the former is far easier to use and interpret than the latter.
Having said that, I can understand your resistance to change though: I find it far easier to think about travelling distances (whether by foot, car, boat, train or plane) in miles than kilometres. However, that doesn't mean that I'll be rallying to save the mile for nostalgic reasons when the time comes when metric rather than imperial road distances are adopted here in the UK.
There's a difference between not supporting rival products any more than you have to and actively looking for ways to smash the opposition. Has Apple got a track history of screwing over competitors as Microsoft has done with Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, DR-DOS, OS/2, etc, etc, etc?
Pullying the clones was a sensible move. Rather than expanding the marketshare of Apple's OS by attracting Windows-based users to the MacOS fold, all the clones succeeded in doing was stealing hardware sales from Apple itself, which was harming Apple's income. The clones experiment was too little too late to make any dent in the Windows juggernaut and was hurting Apple more than it was helping it, so it had to end.
Apple not making a deal with BeOS was a decision that was based on several factors. One of which was the price - neither side really wanted to budge from their view of what the OS was worth - and another was the reappearance of Steve Jobs, who clearly favoured an OS based upon NeXT's OS, whether for technical reasons or personal vanity and vindication. Be could have easily cut a deal before Jobs was back on the scene, but they played hardball a little too hard and ended up with nothing.
As for Apple's stores in the UK undercutting UK resellers, well, I've talked to a manager at one of Apple's biggest UK retail resellers (Micro Anvika) and he said business was booming, even with the Apple London Store only a mile or so away from his company's flagship stores in Tottenham Court Road, so it's hardly as if Apple's UK resellers are crying about it. If anything, Apple's new retail presence and elevated brand awareness has reinvigorated the market, and encouraged resellers to improve on their value-add, which is no bad thing from a consumer point of view.
Even so, some of the biggest competition the UK resellers face is the disparity between Apple's UK and US pricing: it's long-established fact that it's considerably cheaper to buy a round-trip ticket to New York and pick up a PowerBook there than it is to buy the same PowerBook in the UK.
Is Apple a wannabe monopolist? Probably, yes. Which company isn't? But nothing it's done so far or anything that you've mentioned in your post is evidence of any monopolistic policy on Apple's part.
Google's latest changes to Gmail include the introduction of a "basic HTML view" for people who's browsers cannot display the default view properly. This includes MSIE 4.0+ (pre 5.5), Netscape 4.07+ (pre 7.1), and Opera 6.03+, which previously couldn't be used to access Gmail.
Unfortunately, the new browser detection code they are now using seems to have been put together in a rather sloppy manner, which means (amongst others) Opera 8.0 users are forced to this "basic HTML view" when the fully-featured default view works perfectly well with that version of Opera. (Indeed, one of the many new features of Opera 8.0 is XMLHttpRequest support, which allows Gmail to work in full.)
Any Opera 8.0 user who logs into Gmail as usual will no longer be able to do some basic things, including create filters, amend their settings, check spelling, access keyboard shortcuts and autocomplete addresses. Fortunately, there is a workaround, which is to use the URL http://gmail.google.com/gmail?nocheckbrowser, which solves the issue.
This issue doesn't only affect Opera 8.0 users: users of MSIE 6.x, Camino and other browsers have reported the same problem on the relevant Google group. I don't use any of those browsers but I'm fairly sure that the same workaround will work for them too.
Again, I don't doubt it for a second. Want me to say that the article practically reads like an Intel press release? Sure, I'll say it.
But I'll also say what I've said at least twice now: to see who's got the best 64-bit architecture and processors and whose processors will be faster we're going to have to wait and see. Blanket assumptions such as "I wonder how long consumer will pay a premium for slower Intel CPUs", which was the point that I was originally addressing, are foolish because none of us know for sure who's got the better product.
How many more people are there out there who find my position of wanting more information rather than jumping to conclusions so offensive?
I wholly agree with you that the examples used are poor, but have you never wanted or needed to get something done whilst something else processor-intensive was happening in the background?
Like playing a game or watching an AVI, MPG or DVD whilst compiling, ripping a audio CD or burning a data CD-R in the background?
Hey, perhaps it is and perhaps it isn't. But I'm not the one jumping to conclusions about who's 64-bit desktop processors are going to be faster, am I? That accolade belongs to the person to whom I originally replied.
I'm the one who's saying don't count your chickens before they're hatched. And, I thought it went without saying (but I guess it doesn't nowadays), that you should canvas a range of opinions, benchmarks and analyses before making your own conclusions, too.
Bottom line (again): only time will tell whose 64-bit CPUs will be better.
Now, I have no doubt that Intel's 64-bit offerings will fall behind their AMD equivalents when it comes to bang-per-buck but that conclusion seems to suggest that Intel's chips will still have plenty of bang, as much as if not more than AMD's chips.
Remember, Intel's chips are just getting to market, whereas AMD's have been out there for at least 12 months. Who's to know who'll be lording it over who in a year or two when the 64-bit market is finally more than a tiny subset of the market as a whole? It might be AMD, it might be Intel, or it might be neither.
And before the accusations start, no, I'm not an Intel fanboy or shill who's interested only in running down AMD: this post is being typed on a AMD Athlon-based PC, my last PC had an AMD CPU, and my next one almost definitely will too. What I am interested in is a fair and accurate comparisons of the processors of the future, regardless of who they are made by.
Plus nobody's going to pay for Opera and they certainly won't put up with having ads in their browser.
Just because you won't pay for what many consider to be the best browser out there, or live with the inobtrusive text-based Google ads in the ad-supported version, that doesn't mean that "nobody" will.
To be honest, for 99 percent of users, Opera is a far better browser than FireFox. But because FireFox is F/OSS and Opera isn't, and because this is a F/OSS-focused website, FireFox is put on an altar whilst Opera is constantly bashed.
Please don't confuse the Slashdot "editors" with journalists. The two are mutually exclusive: journalists (on the whole) actually care about the accuracy of what they write.
Oh, and journalists (or at least their editors) actually care about things like spelling, punctuation, and grammar, not to mention whether or not they're duplicating the already-published work of a colleague.
Also, since you have no real open land in the entire country, it all looks like one large, connected city.
Making a "mistake" like saying a city is near another is very easy to make.
Quot Erat Demonstrandum
You carry on being ignorant, OK? "No real open land"? LMAO. What we have might not be on the same scale as the great swathes of untouched country that you'll come across in parts of North America but it's beautiful enough and nowhere near to the mental picture you seem to be painting of a landscape that's concreted over entirely.
Saying that Sellafield is anywhere near London isn't a small mistake, it's a huge one. In fact, in this case the story headine is extremely misleading as it gives the immediate impression that the nuclear plant is in London, which isn't just false but is rather stupid too (given that we're talking about a nuclear facility). It's like suggesting a nuclear plant somewhere in southern California is actually in Los Angeles, which is just plain dumb.
Sorry but at best you come across as foolish and at worst you come across as downright ignorant. Stick your poor QEDs and half-thought out arguments somewhere where they aren't likely to be ripped apart by simple argument. Next time, think first and type later.
If the scientists at NASA, ESA, JSA, or wherever else are relying on information gleaned from Slashdot to get their facts and figures right then we're screwed already.
Come on, admit you were being a little bit pedantic: after all, how many scientists do you know who've heard of the SI unit Kelvin who don't know that 0K (absolute zero) is not the same as 0 deg C (freezing point of water)?
That's your opinion and you're entitled to it. I guess it makes you feel superior to those on the other side of the debate by defining a pregnancy, even one in its embryonic stage as equal to a fully-formed and developed baby regardless of whether or not that pregnancy has developed to the stage where it has a viable chance of life outside the womb.
I find it funny that the same people who are so adamant that abortion is murder are almost always the same people that are opposed to the dissemination of methods of birth control as well as the same people who are quick to make single mothers the scapegoats for all of society's ills.
And what right do you have to tell a pregnant woman, regardless of how her child was conceived, just what exactly she is allowed to do with her own body?
Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm British. It just amuses me to see people talk about one of their nation's closest allies (the US and Japan have several mutual defence treaties) in terms indicative of emnity rather than friendship.
Wow, it says so much that you think of one of your nation's biggest trading partners (if not the biggest) as "the one-time enemy Japan". Do you also think of Mexico and Britain in those terms?
China has not invaded another country for the last 200 years.
Uh, you're so ignorant. China invaded India in 1962. Before you post things in future perhaps you should get your facts straight.