I know that traditionally Apple has held onto it's OS because they are a hardware company, not a software company. In the past, I have understood that... they are not a company that is going head-to-head with MS.
The problem with Apple selling standalone copies of OS X is not that they will be competing with Microsoft, but that their hardware section (a significant source of revenue) will be competing with Dell, et al.
It's not an inability to compete with Microsoft that keep Apple out of "the OS business", but an inability to compete with low-margin PC vendors.
The one thing no one seems to mention is apple has NO activation process, they are one of the few companies on the planet that dont assume their customers are crooks.
No surprise there - neither do most vendors whose software uses a hardware dongle.
Are you kidding? I can't get at anything in the control panel without at least 2 or 3 prompts, and that's if I know where I'm going and don't have to open up a few other things on the way!
Having just tried opening about a dozen control panel applets without a single UAC prompt, I'm calling bullshit.
I see the logic behind Steve's not wanting to offer a prosumer/hobbyist desktop. It would violate his design principles, cannibalize his high-margin iMacs, [...]
It's not cannibalising iMac sales they're worried about, it's _obliterating_ Mac Pro sales.
That completely misses the point. It's not because of the speed limit, it's because those roads are freeways - with very few obstructions, or reasons to stop suddenly, and usually with better markings and maintenance than other roads.
You're missing my point, which is to counteract the various "speed kills" stupidity wherein "faster" always equals "more dangerous".
Apparently you're from Germany. That means you probably don't get exposed to anything like the stupidity with regards to road safety that most of the western world does. That's great for you, but you have to understand that there really are lots of people out there - including in influential government positions - who are _horrified_ (or pretend to be) at the idea of increasing a highway speed limit from 100km/h to 110 (or even worse, 120km/h), or who think (or pretend to think) that relatively small increases in speed (eg: 5km/h) result in massive (eg: twofold) increases in accident probability, or are equivalent to driving with blood-alcohol readings in excess of 0.05 (and that, "logically", similarly small _decreases_ in speed will produce a proportionate improvement in safety).
If you applied that logic to the typical urban grid roads, there would be mass carnage.
There's no logic there to apply, I wasn't making a recommendation or a causal connection. I was merely making an observation that the simplistic "speed kills" logic prevalent throughout most governments' approaches to road safety is _wrong_. Speed and speeding is a minor issue in road safety. If you could magically enforce total compliance with speed limits across the country tomorrow, you still wouldn't see a significant dip in road deaths.
My hearing is fine. I _know_ what 50 km/h or 100 km/h sounds and feels like in a particular car. I still think this argument is pulled out of someone's ass. Human hearing is quite sensitive to differences in pitch.
I'm not questioning your ability to detect speed differentials of 100% (or more), I'm questioning your assertion that you (or anyone else) should be able to detect speed differentials that are most likely to get you booked, which is up to about 15% - 20% over the limit.
Well, in that case, don't confuse the effect of stupid laws/policies/people/cops and the effect of "automated enforcement tools".
I'm not. The principle remains the same. When the bulk of speed enforcement is being done by machinery incapable of assessing context, the burden falls (unreasonably) on the driver to ensure their speed is always below the magic number, regardless of other circumstances. This produces two results - firstly, drivers become so focussed on avoiding a ticket by staying below a certain speed, they forsake normal attentiveness for watching the speedometer. Secondly, it breeds drivers who believe that as long as they aren't exceeding the limit, their speed is appropriate for the road, regardless of conditions.
Here in Germany, they won't bother fining you unless you're at least 11 km/h over the limit - because they take tolerances of the measuring equipment into account, the expenses for actually processing the fine, and all that. If you get nailed by one of these "automated enforcement tools" over here, then it's because you were doing a lot more than allowed.
I really think you fail to grasp just how badly other countries approach road safety. While I am envious of your position, it doesn't really put you in a strong position to make judgements about comments made in the context of those other countries' methods. It's great the Germany uses automated enforcement in a sane fashion (only to catch people who are *really* doing the wrong thing) but that's not how it is used in a lot of other countries and it _does_ result in the situations I am describing (as anyone driving in Victoria for the first time will likely attest to).
In short: Get sensible policies and automated enforcement won't be a problem. The issues you describe can be attributed to stupid people, not to technology.
The high-speed roads aren't really the issue. It's your typical urban roads with intersections and schools, pedestrian traffic, etc. where speeding is the biggest problem.
Except it's not. Most accidents happen at speeds under the posted limit (exposing another deception in the system - the interchangable use of "speeding" to mean either "over the posted limit" or "too fast for the conditions") and most speeding fines are for relatively small amounts over the posted limit.
The oft-used example of some idiot weaving in and out of traffic on a freeway is a statistical irrelevance. Similarly, a child is vastly more likely to get backed into by their own parent's SUV than run over by someone flying through a school zone at twice the speed limit. It's like a plane crash - incredibly motivating in the media and good for scaring people, but in actual fact extremely uncommon.
The other huge problem here is red light running. You don't have any problem with red light cameras, do you? People who run lights really are the worst kind of asshole.
None whatsoever. Unlike speeding, running a red light pretty much always dramatically increases both the probability and severity of an accident. I'm also a fan of eliminating any "acceptable" amount of alcohol - any BAC above zero should be punished (allowing for alcohol-based medications, etc).
However, with that said, it is my understanding that in some jurisdictions - particularly the US - the installation of red light cameras is frequently accompanied by the shortening of the Green -> Orange -> Red progression. This does change the context of people who criticise red light cameras quite a bit (and is clearly aimed at forsaking safety for revenue). (As far as I know this doesn't happen in Australia - I've certainly never seen any evidence of it - and I'd be willing to bet it wouldn't happen in Germany.)
Nor would I. That's why I bought a Mac desktop, where I can replace all the same components I can with a PC desktop...
Let us know how you go swapping out the motherboard in that thing. The video card is also pretty much a token gesture, given you have to search far and wide for one that you can be sure will definitely work with the Mac's legacy-free EFI and then within OS X.
Not to mention the minimum buy-in for an "upgradable" Mac is a US$2500 Mac Pro.
and lets face it, with just about any PC chassis you're going to be almost as limited since motherboard formats change over time.
Yeah, that one change of the mainstream motherboard form factor from AT to ATX over the last ~25 years (with a ~5 year overlap) sure caused problems.
You don't want a Mac for other reasons, that's fine - but lets all stop pretending the upgrade options are so very different.
Please stop pretending the upgrade options for the average Mac are even in the same class as the upgrade options for the average PC. They're just not.
Spotlight has been substantially rewritten in Leopard, and is noticeably more responsive. It does not, however, use FSEvents [the public API]. Instead, it continues to drink from the [undocumented]/dev/fsevents fire hose, grabbing each individual event as it happens. This may seem like a failing of the FSEvents framework, but it's really more of an acknowledgment of the nature of Spotlight as a system-level facility.
Not even close. The volume of "are you SURE you want to do this?" prompts that I get on Vista far, far outweigh the number I get on my Mac. I can get upwards of a dozen per day on Vista (heck, I don't even use it *that* much) and maybe once a week I'll get interrupted on OS X.
What the hell are you doing to trigger so many UAC prompts ?
Basically, only 12% of the fatal accidents in Germany happen on the Autobahn, where in turn most of the kilometers are driven.
To raise another point along these lines, these sorts of numbers are duplicated pretty much everywhere - the safest roads to be on are the ones with the highest speed limits.
Someone's been burning brain cells to come up with that one, right ? Unless you're deaf, you can hear the RPM of your engine. You can also gauge your speed by looking at how fast the rest of the world zips past you. There's really no need to devote much of your attention span to the speedometer to maintain a constant speed. Any driver who thinks otherwise should have their license pulled, because they're not fit to operate a vehicle in regular traffic.
I would quite confidently bet a lot of money that you - along with just about everyone else - can't reliably discern anything smaller than a 10% variance in your speed without looking at the speedometer, even when you're specifically trying to, unless you impose ridiculous conditions like driving around in first or second gear all the time. Throw in a realistic situation with other traffic, normal gear selection (or an auto) and you'd be even less likely to - that window is going to increase to up around the 15% mark.
In Victoria, Australia, you can be booked for as little as 3km/h over the limit. Are you seriously going to try and argue you can tell the difference between cruising at 110km/h and 113km/h without looking at the speedo ? Hell, I'll laugh at you if you try and argue you can tell the difference between 50km/h and 53km/h when you're driving down a suburban street surrounded by other cars.
That's because they are kept in a much better state of maintenance than most other countries keep their highway system in, courtesy mostly of the German taxpayer. The minimum level of maintenance on the cars is also higher than in some other places, thanks to regular mandatory technical checkups.
Road conditions certainly play a significant part in road safety, however, the high-speed roads of most developed countries - on average - are no worse designed and in no worse condition than the Autobahns. There are numerous motorways in Australia and England that are well and truly better than some of the unrestricted Autobahns I drove on a few years ago.
Someone else has already mentioned the 85th percentile. However, even that misses the real point - "speeding", in and of itself, should not be an offense. *Dangerous driving* should be the offense, with speed (along with road conditions, driver training and experience, etc) considered merely contributing factors. The "safe" speed for any chunk of road can vary *dramatically*, depending on any number of factors from weather to driver skill. Reliance on speed limits (especially via government propaganda) breeds bad drivers because they develop the mindset of "well I'm not speeding so I must be safe" and don't make any attempt to assess risks themselves.
You also expose another stupidity in speed enforcement. Fines (ie: supposed metric of danger) based on fixed increments over the limit. By this logic, driving at 60km/h in a 40km/h zone outside a school carries the same risk as driving 130km/h on a multi-lane, divided, restricted access freeway with a posted limit of 110km/h.
Using little increments always ends up with "Going X+2 isn't much more dangerous than going X", but in the end, going 122 really is more dangerous than going 100.
Doubtful (but dependent on specific circumstances).
The line has to be drawn somewhere, and there is a sign by the side of the road telling you exactly where this line is drawn. Most police officers are even kind enough to allow a little buffer over the limit to account for inaccuracies in your speedometer.
Automated speed enforcement tools, however, do not. They also bring up the phenomenon of drivers spending too much of their attention span on the speedometer, and not enough on the road.
Obviously, you are able to demonstrate that current speed limits increase risk, right? I mean, you wouldn't dare say the government put those limits arbitrarily without yourself being able to prove what you claim, right?
Of course not. No Government would be prepared to risk such an experiment because it's a lose/lose situation. However, there are _vast_ amounts of evidence suggesting speed has a negligible effect on road safety (and very little suggesting it is a major contributor). Some relevant examples:
* According to "speed kills" and "people can't choose a safe speed" arguments, the German Autobahns should be the most dangerous places to drive in the (developed) world. They're not. Moreover, they're not even _close_ to being so.
* Some years ago, on a motorway north of Brisbane, the speed limit was raised from 100km/h to 110km/h, amid howls of protest about how many more people would die. Not only was the road toll unaffected, but average speed on that section of road actually decreased (from about 118km/h to about 115km/h, from memory).
* In Australia, road death statistics shown a steady decline until about 1996, where they level off (and have remained level ever since). This is despite highway speed limits remaining unchanged during the decline (indicating speed was not a contributing factor), having been raised since (again, clearly no influence) and urban speed limits across the country being reduced from 60km/h to 50km/h (again, with no change). I believe this pattern (steady decline up until the mid 90s, then nothing) is duplicated across most of the developed world, although it's been some years since I bothered to check.
Tell me, if every single vehicle on the highway travels at the same speed (say 110 km/h), how is that dangerous?
Fatigue, attentiveness and exposure window are the major factors. Fatigue increases the longer you are driving. Attentiveness (and hence reaction time) increases with speed (up to a point). Exposure window should be obvious. The point is that if every vehicle could be doing 120km/h with no increased risk due to the higher speed, overall risk of accident would be lower because drivers would be more alert, react quicker and not be on the road for as long.
How about if you ignore upgrade versions and go for full versions: Vista Home Basic: List Price - $200; Amazon.com: $180 Leopard: List Price - $130; Amazon.com: $110.
All reailt versions of MacOS are priced as upgrades. The only valid comparison is to a Windows upgrade version.
Is that really true? Leopard even runs on old 800 MHz G4s, I think.
If you're happy with Leopard on an 800Mhz G4, you'll be happy with Vista on a similarly aged PC.
Of course, if someone is happy with Leopard on an 800Mhz G4, it's pretty obvious that performance isn't a very high criteria for them, which kinda makes any complaints about performance difficult to take seriously.
But I said above I don't recommend Vista. Why? High hardware requirements, [...]
A ca. 1Ghz CPU, 1GB RAM and ~$30 video card are not in any way, shape or form "high hardware requirements". We're talking 7 year old hardware here (except for the video card).
Your other issues may or may not be relevant, depending on the exact situation, but the suggestion that Vista's hardware requirements are "high" by the standards of hardware less than about 5 years old, is pure FUD.
Kind of right. What they actually do is reduce the tolerance levels. This happened in Victoria (Australian state - probably has some of the most brutally enforced speeding laws *in the world* - unsurprisingly its roads aren't meaningfully safer), where you will be booked for driving as little as 3km/h over the posted limit (how this lines up with speedometers only having to be accurate within 10% hasn't been tested in court yet AFAIK).
So whereas you use to be able to do 120km/h in a 110 zone without too much to worry about, now you'll get pinged for 114km/h. No-one without an agenda seriously thinks a ~3.6% speed differential has any meaningful impact on road safety.
Police and politicians have to get places by car, too.
Poor examples. Police can (and do) break the speed limit at will with little fear of either detection or punishment. Politicians are typically being driven, for short distances, and only in urban traffic.
Generally I think the speed limits are pretty reasonable. It's just that drivers can't stand any form of restriction, and always want to go faster.
Also untrue. Research has demonstrated that in typical conditions - especially high speed roads like motorways - drivers choose the safest speed for the conditions. People actually interested in road safety know this as the 85th percentile. It's what the posted limit on a road *should* be set at for "maximum safety" (but usually isn't).
For a concrete example, there is a major highway north of Brisbane, Queensland (2 lanes each way, divided, limited access). Some years ago the speed limit was *raised* from 100 to 110km/h (amidst the typical outcries from ignorant fools about how the roads would be awash with blood). Not only does the road remain as safe as it was, but average traffic speed actually *dropped* by about 3km/h.
Seriously, if people can't follow a simple speed limit, why should they be entrusted with more liberty on the road? If people would obey them and drive like sane people, then they could be allowed to drive faster. You have to earn responsibility.
Because following a badly set speed limit - *especially* on higher speed roads like motorways - actually *increases* risk. *DRIVERS* have to earn trust ? What a joke. Maybe if the government was more interested in saving lives than making money - and demonstrated it - we'd be able to trust them with things like speed limits.
Very, *very* few governments have shown any real interest in improving road safety. Why would they ? Doing so would be expensive (both in monetary and political terms) and it's trivial (and cheap) with a good advertising campaign to demonise things like speeding (despite it being a relatively insignificant factor in overall road safety) so they have someone to pin all the "carnage" on.
Sure sometimes radar guns are inaccurate but its also true that people speed and speeding is highly dangerous.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say your definition of "speeding" is "driving faster than the posted limit".
In which case, your comment is bullshit, the parroting of government propaganda which has bred community attitudes that have cost thousands of people their lives.
The fact is if your arrogant enough to decide what speed you should drive at, you'd be in a crash relatively quickly.
Few people would be able to regulate their speed correctly, you really need someone else to set it in stone for you.
Guess that's why Germany's Autobahns are some of the safest roads in the world, right ? Because of the "set in stone" speed limits...
I say that stupidity is expensive. Break the law and you have to deal with the consequences.
The real tragedy is that hundreds of people are dying on Australian roads because the Government is more interested in revenue than road safety.
True. The old 9x BSOD is iconic; the NT one is not.
Which is rather ironic, given a) the term 'BSOD' actually originated with NT before Windows 95 was even released and b) the NT one really is a BSO *death* (equivalent of a kernel panic), whereas the Windows 9x one is frequently non-fatal.
Yes that's true of the 'certified Unix' bit, but I believe everything else still stands.
Well, 10.4 has enough consistency issues and it's certainly not got a "high performance GUI" on anything less than a ridiculously powerful machine.
Play a 720p H.264 in Quicktime, run iTunes with another video going, add several browsers showing web pages with animated Flash bits. Now use Expose to show all these windows at once. My MacBook Pro with el cheapo ATI onboard graphics can handle that, but try the same with Flip 3-D on Vista (which is nothing like as useful or elegant as Expose), even with an uber Quadro card, and you'll see why I say OSX has a high performance GUI.
Yet still has annoying lags in things like menus and window resizing, especially once you have a few windows open (less so on my wife's MBP, but quite apparent on my mum's iMac G5 and frustrating on my 1Ghz iBook). Especially when you run it on more modest hardware without the advantage of dual processors (which, even with OS X's relatively primitive SMP capabilities, lend a significant improvement to responsiveness).
Further, your example isn't really demonstrating a "high performance GUI" because the bulk of it is being handled in hardware by the video card. Thinks like resizing windows, menu delays, switching between windows (without Expose, which serves to mask the lag), etc, are sluggish in OS X compared to XP and - to a lesser extent - Vista.
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I know that traditionally Apple has held onto it's OS because they are a hardware company, not a software company. In the past, I have understood that... they are not a company that is going head-to-head with MS.
The problem with Apple selling standalone copies of OS X is not that they will be competing with Microsoft, but that their hardware section (a significant source of revenue) will be competing with Dell, et al.
It's not an inability to compete with Microsoft that keep Apple out of "the OS business", but an inability to compete with low-margin PC vendors.
The one thing no one seems to mention is apple has NO activation process, they are one of the few companies on the planet that dont assume their customers are crooks.
No surprise there - neither do most vendors whose software uses a hardware dongle.
Are you kidding? I can't get at anything in the control panel without at least 2 or 3 prompts, and that's if I know where I'm going and don't have to open up a few other things on the way!
Having just tried opening about a dozen control panel applets without a single UAC prompt, I'm calling bullshit.
I see the logic behind Steve's not wanting to offer a prosumer/hobbyist desktop. It would violate his design principles, cannibalize his high-margin iMacs, [...]
It's not cannibalising iMac sales they're worried about, it's _obliterating_ Mac Pro sales.
That completely misses the point. It's not because of the speed limit, it's because those roads are freeways - with very few obstructions, or reasons to stop suddenly, and usually with better markings and maintenance than other roads.
You're missing my point, which is to counteract the various "speed kills" stupidity wherein "faster" always equals "more dangerous".
Apparently you're from Germany. That means you probably don't get exposed to anything like the stupidity with regards to road safety that most of the western world does. That's great for you, but you have to understand that there really are lots of people out there - including in influential government positions - who are _horrified_ (or pretend to be) at the idea of increasing a highway speed limit from 100km/h to 110 (or even worse, 120km/h), or who think (or pretend to think) that relatively small increases in speed (eg: 5km/h) result in massive (eg: twofold) increases in accident probability, or are equivalent to driving with blood-alcohol readings in excess of 0.05 (and that, "logically", similarly small _decreases_ in speed will produce a proportionate improvement in safety).
If you applied that logic to the typical urban grid roads, there would be mass carnage.
There's no logic there to apply, I wasn't making a recommendation or a causal connection. I was merely making an observation that the simplistic "speed kills" logic prevalent throughout most governments' approaches to road safety is _wrong_. Speed and speeding is a minor issue in road safety. If you could magically enforce total compliance with speed limits across the country tomorrow, you still wouldn't see a significant dip in road deaths.
My hearing is fine. I _know_ what 50 km/h or 100 km/h sounds and feels like in a particular car. I still think this argument is pulled out of someone's ass. Human hearing is quite sensitive to differences in pitch.
I'm not questioning your ability to detect speed differentials of 100% (or more), I'm questioning your assertion that you (or anyone else) should be able to detect speed differentials that are most likely to get you booked, which is up to about 15% - 20% over the limit.
Well, in that case, don't confuse the effect of stupid laws/policies/people/cops and the effect of "automated enforcement tools".
I'm not. The principle remains the same. When the bulk of speed enforcement is being done by machinery incapable of assessing context, the burden falls (unreasonably) on the driver to ensure their speed is always below the magic number, regardless of other circumstances. This produces two results - firstly, drivers become so focussed on avoiding a ticket by staying below a certain speed, they forsake normal attentiveness for watching the speedometer. Secondly, it breeds drivers who believe that as long as they aren't exceeding the limit, their speed is appropriate for the road, regardless of conditions.
Here in Germany, they won't bother fining you unless you're at least 11 km/h over the limit - because they take tolerances of the measuring equipment into account, the expenses for actually processing the fine, and all that. If you get nailed by one of these "automated enforcement tools" over here, then it's because you were doing a lot more than allowed.
I really think you fail to grasp just how badly other countries approach road safety. While I am envious of your position, it doesn't really put you in a strong position to make judgements about comments made in the context of those other countries' methods. It's great the Germany uses automated enforcement in a sane fashion (only to catch people who are *really* doing the wrong thing) but that's not how it is used in a lot of other countries and it _does_ result in the situations I am describing (as anyone driving in Victoria for the first time will likely attest to).
In short: Get sensible policies and automated enforcement won't be a problem. The issues you describe can be attributed to stupid people, not to technology.
Pretty much my attitude to a T.
The high-speed roads aren't really the issue. It's your typical urban roads with intersections and schools, pedestrian traffic, etc. where speeding is the biggest problem.
Except it's not. Most accidents happen at speeds under the posted limit (exposing another deception in the system - the interchangable use of "speeding" to mean either "over the posted limit" or "too fast for the conditions") and most speeding fines are for relatively small amounts over the posted limit.
The oft-used example of some idiot weaving in and out of traffic on a freeway is a statistical irrelevance. Similarly, a child is vastly more likely to get backed into by their own parent's SUV than run over by someone flying through a school zone at twice the speed limit. It's like a plane crash - incredibly motivating in the media and good for scaring people, but in actual fact extremely uncommon.
The other huge problem here is red light running. You don't have any problem with red light cameras, do you? People who run lights really are the worst kind of asshole.
None whatsoever. Unlike speeding, running a red light pretty much always dramatically increases both the probability and severity of an accident. I'm also a fan of eliminating any "acceptable" amount of alcohol - any BAC above zero should be punished (allowing for alcohol-based medications, etc).
However, with that said, it is my understanding that in some jurisdictions - particularly the US - the installation of red light cameras is frequently accompanied by the shortening of the Green -> Orange -> Red progression. This does change the context of people who criticise red light cameras quite a bit (and is clearly aimed at forsaking safety for revenue). (As far as I know this doesn't happen in Australia - I've certainly never seen any evidence of it - and I'd be willing to bet it wouldn't happen in Germany.)
Nor would I. That's why I bought a Mac desktop, where I can replace all the same components I can with a PC desktop...
Let us know how you go swapping out the motherboard in that thing. The video card is also pretty much a token gesture, given you have to search far and wide for one that you can be sure will definitely work with the Mac's legacy-free EFI and then within OS X.
Not to mention the minimum buy-in for an "upgradable" Mac is a US$2500 Mac Pro.
and lets face it, with just about any PC chassis you're going to be almost as limited since motherboard formats change over time.
Yeah, that one change of the mainstream motherboard form factor from AT to ATX over the last ~25 years (with a ~5 year overlap) sure caused problems.
You don't want a Mac for other reasons, that's fine - but lets all stop pretending the upgrade options are so very different.
Please stop pretending the upgrade options for the average Mac are even in the same class as the upgrade options for the average PC. They're just not.
From TFA:
Not even close. The volume of "are you SURE you want to do this?" prompts that I get on Vista far, far outweigh the number I get on my Mac. I can get upwards of a dozen per day on Vista (heck, I don't even use it *that* much) and maybe once a week I'll get interrupted on OS X.
What the hell are you doing to trigger so many UAC prompts ?
Basically, only 12% of the fatal accidents in Germany happen on the Autobahn, where in turn most of the kilometers are driven.
To raise another point along these lines, these sorts of numbers are duplicated pretty much everywhere - the safest roads to be on are the ones with the highest speed limits.
Someone's been burning brain cells to come up with that one, right ? Unless you're deaf, you can hear the RPM of your engine. You can also gauge your speed by looking at how fast the rest of the world zips past you. There's really no need to devote much of your attention span to the speedometer to maintain a constant speed. Any driver who thinks otherwise should have their license pulled, because they're not fit to operate a vehicle in regular traffic.
I would quite confidently bet a lot of money that you - along with just about everyone else - can't reliably discern anything smaller than a 10% variance in your speed without looking at the speedometer, even when you're specifically trying to, unless you impose ridiculous conditions like driving around in first or second gear all the time. Throw in a realistic situation with other traffic, normal gear selection (or an auto) and you'd be even less likely to - that window is going to increase to up around the 15% mark.
In Victoria, Australia, you can be booked for as little as 3km/h over the limit. Are you seriously going to try and argue you can tell the difference between cruising at 110km/h and 113km/h without looking at the speedo ? Hell, I'll laugh at you if you try and argue you can tell the difference between 50km/h and 53km/h when you're driving down a suburban street surrounded by other cars.
That's because they are kept in a much better state of maintenance than most other countries keep their highway system in, courtesy mostly of the German taxpayer. The minimum level of maintenance on the cars is also higher than in some other places, thanks to regular mandatory technical checkups.
Road conditions certainly play a significant part in road safety, however, the high-speed roads of most developed countries - on average - are no worse designed and in no worse condition than the Autobahns. There are numerous motorways in Australia and England that are well and truly better than some of the unrestricted Autobahns I drove on a few years ago.
Where should the line be drawn?
Someone else has already mentioned the 85th percentile. However, even that misses the real point - "speeding", in and of itself, should not be an offense. *Dangerous driving* should be the offense, with speed (along with road conditions, driver training and experience, etc) considered merely contributing factors. The "safe" speed for any chunk of road can vary *dramatically*, depending on any number of factors from weather to driver skill. Reliance on speed limits (especially via government propaganda) breeds bad drivers because they develop the mindset of "well I'm not speeding so I must be safe" and don't make any attempt to assess risks themselves.
You also expose another stupidity in speed enforcement. Fines (ie: supposed metric of danger) based on fixed increments over the limit. By this logic, driving at 60km/h in a 40km/h zone outside a school carries the same risk as driving 130km/h on a multi-lane, divided, restricted access freeway with a posted limit of 110km/h.
Using little increments always ends up with "Going X+2 isn't much more dangerous than going X", but in the end, going 122 really is more dangerous than going 100.
Doubtful (but dependent on specific circumstances).
The line has to be drawn somewhere, and there is a sign by the side of the road telling you exactly where this line is drawn. Most police officers are even kind enough to allow a little buffer over the limit to account for inaccuracies in your speedometer.
Automated speed enforcement tools, however, do not. They also bring up the phenomenon of drivers spending too much of their attention span on the speedometer, and not enough on the road.
Obviously, you are able to demonstrate that current speed limits increase risk, right? I mean, you wouldn't dare say the government put those limits arbitrarily without yourself being able to prove what you claim, right?
Of course not. No Government would be prepared to risk such an experiment because it's a lose/lose situation. However, there are _vast_ amounts of evidence suggesting speed has a negligible effect on road safety (and very little suggesting it is a major contributor). Some relevant examples:
* According to "speed kills" and "people can't choose a safe speed" arguments, the German Autobahns should be the most dangerous places to drive in the (developed) world. They're not. Moreover, they're not even _close_ to being so.
* Some years ago, on a motorway north of Brisbane, the speed limit was raised from 100km/h to 110km/h, amid howls of protest about how many more people would die. Not only was the road toll unaffected, but average speed on that section of road actually decreased (from about 118km/h to about 115km/h, from memory).
* In Australia, road death statistics shown a steady decline until about 1996, where they level off (and have remained level ever since). This is despite highway speed limits remaining unchanged during the decline (indicating speed was not a contributing factor), having been raised since (again, clearly no influence) and urban speed limits across the country being reduced from 60km/h to 50km/h (again, with no change). I believe this pattern (steady decline up until the mid 90s, then nothing) is duplicated across most of the developed world, although it's been some years since I bothered to check.
Tell me, if every single vehicle on the highway travels at the same speed (say 110 km/h), how is that dangerous?
Fatigue, attentiveness and exposure window are the major factors. Fatigue increases the longer you are driving. Attentiveness (and hence reaction time) increases with speed (up to a point). Exposure window should be obvious. The point is that if every vehicle could be doing 120km/h with no increased risk due to the higher speed, overall risk of accident would be lower because drivers would be more alert, react quicker and not be on the road for as long.
You do, however, highlight a sa
How about if you ignore upgrade versions and go for full versions: Vista Home Basic: List Price - $200; Amazon.com: $180 Leopard: List Price - $130; Amazon.com: $110.
All reailt versions of MacOS are priced as upgrades. The only valid comparison is to a Windows upgrade version.
Is that really true? Leopard even runs on old 800 MHz G4s, I think.
If you're happy with Leopard on an 800Mhz G4, you'll be happy with Vista on a similarly aged PC.
Of course, if someone is happy with Leopard on an 800Mhz G4, it's pretty obvious that performance isn't a very high criteria for them, which kinda makes any complaints about performance difficult to take seriously.
Can anyone confirm this?
I can confirm it is wrong. If you aren't using DRM-encumbered media, none of Vista's DRM systems will be active.
But I said above I don't recommend Vista. Why? High hardware requirements, [...]
A ca. 1Ghz CPU, 1GB RAM and ~$30 video card are not in any way, shape or form "high hardware requirements". We're talking 7 year old hardware here (except for the video card).
Your other issues may or may not be relevant, depending on the exact situation, but the suggestion that Vista's hardware requirements are "high" by the standards of hardware less than about 5 years old, is pure FUD.
I do animations semi-professionally. I work with a lot of media clips, do a lot of encoding.
You (like most people, apparently) know nothing about Vista's DRM and should refrain from ignorant commentary about it.
I don't think so.
Kind of right. What they actually do is reduce the tolerance levels. This happened in Victoria (Australian state - probably has some of the most brutally enforced speeding laws *in the world* - unsurprisingly its roads aren't meaningfully safer), where you will be booked for driving as little as 3km/h over the posted limit (how this lines up with speedometers only having to be accurate within 10% hasn't been tested in court yet AFAIK).
So whereas you use to be able to do 120km/h in a 110 zone without too much to worry about, now you'll get pinged for 114km/h. No-one without an agenda seriously thinks a ~3.6% speed differential has any meaningful impact on road safety.
Police and politicians have to get places by car, too.
Poor examples. Police can (and do) break the speed limit at will with little fear of either detection or punishment. Politicians are typically being driven, for short distances, and only in urban traffic.
Generally I think the speed limits are pretty reasonable. It's just that drivers can't stand any form of restriction, and always want to go faster.
Also untrue. Research has demonstrated that in typical conditions - especially high speed roads like motorways - drivers choose the safest speed for the conditions. People actually interested in road safety know this as the 85th percentile. It's what the posted limit on a road *should* be set at for "maximum safety" (but usually isn't).
For a concrete example, there is a major highway north of Brisbane, Queensland (2 lanes each way, divided, limited access). Some years ago the speed limit was *raised* from 100 to 110km/h (amidst the typical outcries from ignorant fools about how the roads would be awash with blood). Not only does the road remain as safe as it was, but average traffic speed actually *dropped* by about 3km/h.
Seriously, if people can't follow a simple speed limit, why should they be entrusted with more liberty on the road? If people would obey them and drive like sane people, then they could be allowed to drive faster. You have to earn responsibility.
Because following a badly set speed limit - *especially* on higher speed roads like motorways - actually *increases* risk. *DRIVERS* have to earn trust ? What a joke. Maybe if the government was more interested in saving lives than making money - and demonstrated it - we'd be able to trust them with things like speed limits.
Very, *very* few governments have shown any real interest in improving road safety. Why would they ? Doing so would be expensive (both in monetary and political terms) and it's trivial (and cheap) with a good advertising campaign to demonise things like speeding (despite it being a relatively insignificant factor in overall road safety) so they have someone to pin all the "carnage" on.
illegal in EU
I find it exceptionally difficult to believe signing a contract to say you're happy to buy product X with feature Y is illegal in the EU.
Sure sometimes radar guns are inaccurate but its also true that people speed and speeding is highly dangerous.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say your definition of "speeding" is "driving faster than the posted limit".
In which case, your comment is bullshit, the parroting of government propaganda which has bred community attitudes that have cost thousands of people their lives.
The fact is if your arrogant enough to decide what speed you should drive at, you'd be in a crash relatively quickly. Few people would be able to regulate their speed correctly, you really need someone else to set it in stone for you.
Guess that's why Germany's Autobahns are some of the safest roads in the world, right ? Because of the "set in stone" speed limits...
I say that stupidity is expensive. Break the law and you have to deal with the consequences.
The real tragedy is that hundreds of people are dying on Australian roads because the Government is more interested in revenue than road safety.
True. The old 9x BSOD is iconic; the NT one is not.
Which is rather ironic, given a) the term 'BSOD' actually originated with NT before Windows 95 was even released and b) the NT one really is a BSO *death* (equivalent of a kernel panic), whereas the Windows 9x one is frequently non-fatal.
Yes that's true of the 'certified Unix' bit, but I believe everything else still stands.
Well, 10.4 has enough consistency issues and it's certainly not got a "high performance GUI" on anything less than a ridiculously powerful machine.
Play a 720p H.264 in Quicktime, run iTunes with another video going, add several browsers showing web pages with animated Flash bits. Now use Expose to show all these windows at once. My MacBook Pro with el cheapo ATI onboard graphics can handle that, but try the same with Flip 3-D on Vista (which is nothing like as useful or elegant as Expose), even with an uber Quadro card, and you'll see why I say OSX has a high performance GUI.
Yet still has annoying lags in things like menus and window resizing, especially once you have a few windows open (less so on my wife's MBP, but quite apparent on my mum's iMac G5 and frustrating on my 1Ghz iBook). Especially when you run it on more modest hardware without the advantage of dual processors (which, even with OS X's relatively primitive SMP capabilities, lend a significant improvement to responsiveness).
Further, your example isn't really demonstrating a "high performance GUI" because the bulk of it is being handled in hardware by the video card. Thinks like resizing windows, menu delays, switching between windows (without Expose, which serves to mask the lag), etc, are sluggish in OS X compared to XP and - to a lesser extent - Vista.
I find it fascinating how little some people know about Macs :-)
Not nearly as fascinating as how little most people seem to know about Windows, given its ubiquity and their penchant for criticism.