Avalon is rather more advanced than Quartz in certain respects. Of course, how it'll stack up with the version of Quartz that Apple is shipping in three years, or whenever Longhorn actually shows up, nobody knows. Betting against Apple on this one probably isn't a great idea.
I don't think anyone has complained about Gates donating money to third-world countries. It might not get much attention on Slashdot, but that's probably because Slashdot is a tech news site, not a site for news about the developing world.
When Gates donates large numbers of Windows machines to e.g. school districts which have traditionally be Mac-based, that's quite a different story. It's very obvious that such actions are more of an investment than a real donation -- and they may actually constitute illegal product dumping (not that the government will do anything).
Wake up man, already you are writing off the expected discovery of the Ark as meaningless. A BOAT frozen in the ice at 17,000 feet would be conclusive proof of the flood described in the bible - why else would a boat be up there?
Maybe aliens put it up there. Or maybe Zeus did it. Just because there's no obvious natural explanation doesn't mean that everyone has to accept your particular bronze-age mythology by default.
There's no reason you can't display ads, particularly text ads, within the bodies of articles delivered via RSS. You could even have ads as independent RSS headlines, although that would probably piss people off.
I've been reading a lot of RSS feeds through my Nokia 3650 lately, using Bloggo. This is really nice, but it's only practical for feeds which provide full text, because trying to view real web sites on a cell phone is a major exercise in frustration.
I've noticed that over the last few months, full-text feeds have become more common. Slashdot should really join the fun.
There are easy ways around this. For instance, just put the user ID in the URL. My custom Slashdot RSS feed could be at http://slashdot.org/rss.cgi?user=31198 or something.
From the other side, the idea that exponential growth will begin immediately after an elevator is constructed is probably total nonsense. There simply won't be that much demand. In a world where cheap access to space doesn't exist, nobody invests in things that demand cheap access to space. Once cheap access to space becomes possible, investment in such things will explode (probably to bubble-like proportions), but it will take years of R&D before the new stuff that will be created will actually be ready to load on an elevator. It takes time to build entire new industries up from essentially nothing.
In any case, regardless of the economics, there are several countries which will want to have their own space elevators, simply for reasons of national security or prestige. The US would not be at all happy with the idea that China could cut of its reasonably-priced access to space, for instance. So, don't expect anyone to have an elevator monopoly for long.
The copy protection is working well enough. Think about it. The major intent of the schemes used by the online music services is to prevent the downloaded files from ending up on P2P networks. Nobody will share them on P2P networks if they require user-specific keys to play. You can't just post your key along with the file. The key can be used to uniquely identify you; Napster or Apple or whoever has a copy in their database, right next to your name and address. Your real name and address; you can't give them fake information, because if they can't bill you, you can't download from their services in the first place.
There are certainly good reasons, I just don't think it's going to happen all that much. Major conceptual changes in operating systems come slowly, if at all. There are some research operating systems doing interesting things, but in the market people still talk about "modern" OS features like preemptive multitasking, which must be 40 years old now.
I didn't mean to suggest that PPC could run POWER binaries -- I know there are extra instructions. But POWER can run PPC binaries. Unless they need AltiVec, of course. And supposedly the PPC 970 isn't really a PPC chip. It's single-core variant of the POWER4 made on a different process, with an AltiVec unit added:
The PowerPC 970 design starts by remapping one of the POWER4 processor cores to 0.13-micron technology and increasing its frequency up to 1.8 GHz. Next, one of the L2 cache banks was resized to 512 KB. These POWER4 features were then complemented with a vector-processing engine and a redesigned bus interface to keep the 970 fed with data. (Link)
POWER is supposed to be binary compatible with PPC. Anyway, with the introduction of the PPC 970 (AKA G5) the lines are getting a bit blurry, at least in terms of architecture (the chips are still made on different processes, with reliability being paramount for POWER and performance being paramount for PPC).
It's interesting you say the Mac is a joke for serious number crunching, and then immediately mention bioinformatics. That's actually an area where Apple has had some success. The Mac has always been fairly popular in biology for some reason, and a lot of the requests which convinced Apple to make a rack-mount Mac came from that sector. Apple is now offering pre-built Xserve clusters loaded up with G5-optimized bioinformatics software. See Apple Workgroup Cluster for Bioinformatics.
Linux is open. If anyone has anything new and interesting to do in the future, there's a good chance they'll start with Linux as a base -- they won't go off and write something new from scratch.
I do that on my mail server as well. The problem is, a lot of these worms forge return addresses, so users' mailboxes still end up getting stuffed with useless bounce messages. Those are harder to filter, because there's little consistency between them.
My understanding is that the clean nuclear propulsion systems presently under serious consideration don't provide a high enough thrust/weight ratio to actually lift a spacecraft off the surface of the Earth. Rather, their primary use would be for entirely space-born craft, which would be assembled in orbit and zip around the solar system without actually ever touching down anywhere.
Well, the G5 has optical digital audio ports on the logic board. If you need analog in that's a bit better than what's included by default, the iMic is an affordable option.
Everyone who's complaining about the iPod mini's pricing is missing the point a bit, I think. Apple wants you to buy the more expensive model. Apple wants you to look at the high-end Flash players and realize that you can get an iPod mini with 16 times as much space, a much nicer interface and iTunes compatibility for just $50 more... and then look at the 15 GB iPod and realize that it's an even better deal. Before you know it, you've spent $100 more than you originally intended to.
So, Apple's got three out of the top five. And that's despite the fact that the cheapest iPod costs more than twice as much as the iRiver or Digitalway.
MP3 doesn't provide any sort of DRM, and there's a lot of music which online stores are never going to be allowed to license for distribution without DRM.
There's one thing a picture phone does very well: it lets you take a picture and immediately send it to someone, from anywhere. Right now, to do that with two separate devices, you need a laptop to mediate between them. Hopefully digital camera makers will eventually hit on the idea of adding Bluetooth to their cameras, so they can send pictures directly to phones.
Mac OS X users can select text and choose 'Summarize' from the Services menu in any Cocoa or Services-enabled Carbon application. Summarization is also available to any application programatically through the Find By Content API.
Slashdot Mirror
Uh, it's an open standard, like TCP/IP or HTTP. Some implementations are open source, some are not. I don't see any conspiracy here.
Avalon is rather more advanced than Quartz in certain respects. Of course, how it'll stack up with the version of Quartz that Apple is shipping in three years, or whenever Longhorn actually shows up, nobody knows. Betting against Apple on this one probably isn't a great idea.
I don't think anyone has complained about Gates donating money to third-world countries. It might not get much attention on Slashdot, but that's probably because Slashdot is a tech news site, not a site for news about the developing world.
When Gates donates large numbers of Windows machines to e.g. school districts which have traditionally be Mac-based, that's quite a different story. It's very obvious that such actions are more of an investment than a real donation -- and they may actually constitute illegal product dumping (not that the government will do anything).
Objectively, how is a five year-old 2x500Mhz Mac any better in 2004 than a five year-old 2x500Mhz PC?
Well, for one thing, OS X gets faster with every release, rather than slower. Unlike certain other operating systems.
Wake up man, already you are writing off the expected discovery of the Ark as meaningless. A BOAT frozen in the ice at 17,000 feet would be conclusive proof of the flood described in the bible - why else would a boat be up there?
Maybe aliens put it up there. Or maybe Zeus did it. Just because there's no obvious natural explanation doesn't mean that everyone has to accept your particular bronze-age mythology by default.
Windows and Mac OS both still have the ability to automatically run applications on a CD
Actually, autorun is gone in OS X.
There's no reason you can't display ads, particularly text ads, within the bodies of articles delivered via RSS. You could even have ads as independent RSS headlines, although that would probably piss people off.
I've been reading a lot of RSS feeds through my Nokia 3650 lately, using Bloggo. This is really nice, but it's only practical for feeds which provide full text, because trying to view real web sites on a cell phone is a major exercise in frustration.
I've noticed that over the last few months, full-text feeds have become more common. Slashdot should really join the fun.
There are easy ways around this. For instance, just put the user ID in the URL. My custom Slashdot RSS feed could be at http://slashdot.org/rss.cgi?user=31198 or something.
From the other side, the idea that exponential growth will begin immediately after an elevator is constructed is probably total nonsense. There simply won't be that much demand. In a world where cheap access to space doesn't exist, nobody invests in things that demand cheap access to space. Once cheap access to space becomes possible, investment in such things will explode (probably to bubble-like proportions), but it will take years of R&D before the new stuff that will be created will actually be ready to load on an elevator. It takes time to build entire new industries up from essentially nothing.
In any case, regardless of the economics, there are several countries which will want to have their own space elevators, simply for reasons of national security or prestige. The US would not be at all happy with the idea that China could cut of its reasonably-priced access to space, for instance. So, don't expect anyone to have an elevator monopoly for long.
The copy protection is working well enough. Think about it. The major intent of the schemes used by the online music services is to prevent the downloaded files from ending up on P2P networks. Nobody will share them on P2P networks if they require user-specific keys to play. You can't just post your key along with the file. The key can be used to uniquely identify you; Napster or Apple or whoever has a copy in their database, right next to your name and address. Your real name and address; you can't give them fake information, because if they can't bill you, you can't download from their services in the first place.
There are certainly good reasons, I just don't think it's going to happen all that much. Major conceptual changes in operating systems come slowly, if at all. There are some research operating systems doing interesting things, but in the market people still talk about "modern" OS features like preemptive multitasking, which must be 40 years old now.
I didn't mean to suggest that PPC could run POWER binaries -- I know there are extra instructions. But POWER can run PPC binaries. Unless they need AltiVec, of course. And supposedly the PPC 970 isn't really a PPC chip. It's single-core variant of the POWER4 made on a different process, with an AltiVec unit added:
The PowerPC 970 design starts by remapping one of the POWER4 processor cores to 0.13-micron technology and increasing its frequency up to 1.8 GHz. Next, one of the L2 cache banks was resized to 512 KB. These POWER4 features were then complemented with a vector-processing engine and a redesigned bus interface to keep the 970 fed with data. (Link)
POWER is supposed to be binary compatible with PPC. Anyway, with the introduction of the PPC 970 (AKA G5) the lines are getting a bit blurry, at least in terms of architecture (the chips are still made on different processes, with reliability being paramount for POWER and performance being paramount for PPC).
It's interesting you say the Mac is a joke for serious number crunching, and then immediately mention bioinformatics. That's actually an area where Apple has had some success. The Mac has always been fairly popular in biology for some reason, and a lot of the requests which convinced Apple to make a rack-mount Mac came from that sector. Apple is now offering pre-built Xserve clusters loaded up with G5-optimized bioinformatics software. See Apple Workgroup Cluster for Bioinformatics.
Of course, it's IBM's chip at the heart of this.
Linux is open. If anyone has anything new and interesting to do in the future, there's a good chance they'll start with Linux as a base -- they won't go off and write something new from scratch.
I do that on my mail server as well. The problem is, a lot of these worms forge return addresses, so users' mailboxes still end up getting stuffed with useless bounce messages. Those are harder to filter, because there's little consistency between them.
My understanding is that the clean nuclear propulsion systems presently under serious consideration don't provide a high enough thrust/weight ratio to actually lift a spacecraft off the surface of the Earth. Rather, their primary use would be for entirely space-born craft, which would be assembled in orbit and zip around the solar system without actually ever touching down anywhere.
Well, the G5 has optical digital audio ports on the logic board. If you need analog in that's a bit better than what's included by default, the iMic is an affordable option.
Everyone who's complaining about the iPod mini's pricing is missing the point a bit, I think. Apple wants you to buy the more expensive model. Apple wants you to look at the high-end Flash players and realize that you can get an iPod mini with 16 times as much space, a much nicer interface and iTunes compatibility for just $50 more... and then look at the 15 GB iPod and realize that it's an even better deal. Before you know it, you've spent $100 more than you originally intended to.
- 10GB Apple iPod
- 128MB Digitalway
- 20GB Apple iPod
- 128MB iRiver
- 40GB Apple iPod
So, Apple's got three out of the top five. And that's despite the fact that the cheapest iPod costs more than twice as much as the iRiver or Digitalway.MP3 doesn't provide any sort of DRM, and there's a lot of music which online stores are never going to be allowed to license for distribution without DRM.
There's one thing a picture phone does very well: it lets you take a picture and immediately send it to someone, from anywhere. Right now, to do that with two separate devices, you need a laptop to mediate between them. Hopefully digital camera makers will eventually hit on the idea of adding Bluetooth to their cameras, so they can send pictures directly to phones.
Until then, I'll hang on to my Nokia 3650.
It doesn't download updates without user intervention by default; it just checks for them and pops up a window listing what it finds.
Mac OS X users can select text and choose 'Summarize' from the Services menu in any Cocoa or Services-enabled Carbon application. Summarization is also available to any application programatically through the Find By Content API.