this is exactly why Linux won't make it bigtime,- there's no money in it.
Sorry, your argument doesn't hold up. There is less profit made selling a tube of toothpaste than a copy of Linux, but billions of tubes of toothpaste have been sold.
While a computer company will make less money per Linux sale than per Windoze sale, the lower price means there would be a lot more customer demand for Linux than for Windoze. There would, if Linux had as many Joe-Sixpack-friendly apps, and if the OS itself was as friendly to Joe Sixpack. There, my friend, is exactly why Linux won't make it bigtime.
Why would including dev tools (which are a free download anyway) on the OS X CDs, cause developers to make available source code but not executables?
If the developers want a wide audience to actually use their apps, they'll make executables available, because the number of Mac OS users who are willing and able to compile source code is darn small. Talk about niches.
Connectix sells a version of VPC that comes with PC-DOS. No Microsoft tax involved. They could also throw in x86 Linux at no charge. Why run x86 Linux in emulation when PPC-native Linux is available? I can think of two reasons: the ability to download compiled binaries for x86 Linux; and the ability to have your Mac running Mac OS and x86 Linux simultaneously.
I can agree with you, that VPC on every Mac would reduce the incentive to develop Mac OS-native versions of apps.
But I don't follow your reasoning for why developer tools aren't preinstalled in OS X. Seems to me it the number of Mac OS apps would get a big boost if everyone had access to good dev tools.
But the PPC emulator to be introduced at Macworld Tokyo will change all that. To MacOS, it will be indistinguishable from a real iMac. A cheap software-only version will be made available, but it won't run all the newest stuff; the jewel in the crown will be the hardware-assisted version, which will have a real, fast G3 processor and RAM on a PCI card.
Well if it has a G3 processor, the hardware version is not really an emulator, is it?
What are people doing more than anything with their computers? Web browsing. And web pages are designed with a vertically-oriented aspect ratio. And it you don't hide your Dock (which is the default), another stretch of precious vertical space is wasted.
Vertical for web browsing (and word processing), horizontal for watching DVDs. Pivoting is a sorely needed feature.
1. The lunar radio telescope could be operated, and perhaps even constructed, remotely. No need for a staff of humans to reside there.
2. I'm a Republican, and I'm not a warmonger, and I don't have anything to do with the oil business, and I'm a pro-space activist. Please spare us your hack political comments.
And, it can be used during the daytime. The optical wavelengths given off by the sun don't interfere with radio astronomy. The sun does give off RF interference, but you have to point the telescope almost directly at the sun to encounter a problem.
You wouldn't have to launch billions of tons from Earth. Techniques for processing lunar materials into structural building components have been tested for decades.
First of all, when you are talking about a material's ability to support its own weight, the property that is important is not tensile strength, but rather specific tensile strength (the amount of tensile strength per unit mass).
And you are correct, when I did the thesis 10 years ago, no known material was strong enough. The best specific tensile strength belonged to Kevlar/Spectra-type polymers, and they fell short by a factor of about 500. Nowadays, carbon nanotubes might fit the bill.
You could conceiveably built a tower (many km tall) at the earth's north or south pole, attach one end of the cable to the top of the tower, and attach the other end to the surface of the moon. The attachment to the top of the tower would have to be a pivot, so the earth can rotate under the cable. The tension in the cable would be enormous, and I did not study what effect that constant tension at one pole would have on the earth's rotation. I imagine it might induce nutation over a period of years. The tension might also affect the moon's orbit non-negligibly.
The article says the sperm/egg reproduction mechanism first appeared in this algae. It seems unlikely that the same system would have evolved again independently. Ergo, are humans (and all animals, for that matter) descended from this algae?
The earth emits something on the order of 1 watt of gravitational radiation as it orbits the sun. Jupiter emits something like 30 watts. (Don't ask me for a source on those numbers- I think I read them on the Internet somewhere.) But any laboratory source won't emit anything that can be measured.
A similar statement could have been made about radio waves before humans learned how to transmit them. But now, missile-warning radars are the brightest objects in the universe at certain radio frequencies.
In the future, artificial transmitters might become the "brightest" objects in the universe at certain frequencies of gravity waves.
All other factors being equal (such as the quality of the lens and the focusing mechanism), how many million pixels does it take before we can say that digital images capture more detail than 35 mm film? Is there a definitive answer on this?
I remember something called the "Buckingham Pi theorem" but never fully understood it : )
Supposedly it can be used to fully characterize the solution space without having to try all those billions of combinations of different alloys and thicknesses.
Would it apply in this situation? Does anyone have a link that explains how it works?
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe you would know: how does the sharpness of a DTV compare to a typical VGA monitor? Do they release dot-pitch specs for DTVs?
this is exactly why Linux won't make it bigtime,- there's no money in it.
Sorry, your argument doesn't hold up. There is less profit made selling a tube of toothpaste than a copy of Linux, but billions of tubes of toothpaste have been sold.
While a computer company will make less money per Linux sale than per Windoze sale, the lower price means there would be a lot more customer demand for Linux than for Windoze. There would, if Linux had as many Joe-Sixpack-friendly apps, and if the OS itself was as friendly to Joe Sixpack. There, my friend, is exactly why Linux won't make it bigtime.
we should be working on moving more and more kernel functionality into modules, which are loadable and configurable at run-time.
You mean like Mac OS X kernel extensions?
Is there any task for which you would choose Java over C#?
More to the point -- I'm a newbie when it comes to OO languages, and I'm wondering which I should study first, Java or C#?
Why would including dev tools (which are a free download anyway) on the OS X CDs, cause developers to make available source code but not executables?
If the developers want a wide audience to actually use their apps, they'll make executables available, because the number of Mac OS users who are willing and able to compile source code is darn small. Talk about niches.
We saw him get pushed down a flight of stairs; but Krychek didn't check his pulse afterward to make sure he was dead.
The character returned to the show after surviving a gunshot wound, so another return would not be without precedent.
It may be moot with the series ending, but do you believe this character is definitely dead?
Connectix sells a version of VPC that comes with PC-DOS. No Microsoft tax involved. They could also throw in x86 Linux at no charge. Why run x86 Linux in emulation when PPC-native Linux is available? I can think of two reasons: the ability to download compiled binaries for x86 Linux; and the ability to have your Mac running Mac OS and x86 Linux simultaneously.
I can agree with you, that VPC on every Mac would reduce the incentive to develop Mac OS-native versions of apps.
But I don't follow your reasoning for why developer tools aren't preinstalled in OS X. Seems to me it the number of Mac OS apps would get a big boost if everyone had access to good dev tools.
n/t
But the PPC emulator to be introduced at Macworld Tokyo will change all that. To MacOS, it will be indistinguishable from a real iMac. A cheap software-only version will be made available, but it won't run all the newest stuff; the jewel in the crown will be the hardware-assisted version, which will have a real, fast G3 processor and RAM on a PCI card.
Well if it has a G3 processor, the hardware version is not really an emulator, is it?
What are people doing more than anything with their computers? Web browsing. And web pages are designed with a vertically-oriented aspect ratio. And it you don't hide your Dock (which is the default), another stretch of precious vertical space is wasted.
Vertical for web browsing (and word processing), horizontal for watching DVDs. Pivoting is a sorely needed feature.
How?
1. The lunar radio telescope could be operated, and perhaps even constructed, remotely. No need for a staff of humans to reside there.
2. I'm a Republican, and I'm not a warmonger, and I don't have anything to do with the oil business, and I'm a pro-space activist. Please spare us your hack political comments.
You wouldn't assemble a lunar radio telescope in orbit, and then attempt to land it on the moon. You would assemble it on the lunar surface.
The world's largest steerable radio telescope measures only 110 x 100 meters.
And, it can be used during the daytime. The optical wavelengths given off by the sun don't interfere with radio astronomy. The sun does give off RF interference, but you have to point the telescope almost directly at the sun to encounter a problem.
You wouldn't have to launch billions of tons from Earth. Techniques for processing lunar materials into structural building components have been tested for decades.
First of all, when you are talking about a material's ability to support its own weight, the property that is important is not tensile strength, but rather specific tensile strength (the amount of tensile strength per unit mass).
And you are correct, when I did the thesis 10 years ago, no known material was strong enough. The best specific tensile strength belonged to Kevlar/Spectra-type polymers, and they fell short by a factor of about 500. Nowadays, carbon nanotubes might fit the bill.
You could conceiveably built a tower (many km tall) at the earth's north or south pole, attach one end of the cable to the top of the tower, and attach the other end to the surface of the moon. The attachment to the top of the tower would have to be a pivot, so the earth can rotate under the cable. The tension in the cable would be enormous, and I did not study what effect that constant tension at one pole would have on the earth's rotation. I imagine it might induce nutation over a period of years. The tension might also affect the moon's orbit non-negligibly.
The article says the sperm/egg reproduction mechanism first appeared in this algae. It seems unlikely that the same system would have evolved again independently. Ergo, are humans (and all animals, for that matter) descended from this algae?
A similar statement could have been made about radio waves before humans learned how to transmit them. But now, missile-warning radars are the brightest objects in the universe at certain radio frequencies.
In the future, artificial transmitters might become the "brightest" objects in the universe at certain frequencies of gravity waves.
All other factors being equal (such as the quality of the lens and the focusing mechanism), how many million pixels does it take before we can say that digital images capture more detail than 35 mm film? Is there a definitive answer on this?
Kensington released drivers that make its ADB products work well in OS X.
So it's possible, and not even all that difficult because I/O Kit makes writing X drivers sweet 'n' easy.
It's just a matter of the manufacturer caring enough about support.
As you might expect, the coolest images of 2001 are not as cool as the coolest images of all time. Of these, my favorites are the Eagle nebula and the Hubble Deep Field.
I remember something called the "Buckingham Pi theorem" but never fully understood it : )
Supposedly it can be used to fully characterize the solution space without having to try all those billions of combinations of different alloys and thicknesses.
Would it apply in this situation? Does anyone have a link that explains how it works?
Yes, I interviewed him in 1988. Go read some of his papers, he's brilliant.
If these fans really use 1/150 the electricity of a conventional fan, there should be an effort to scale them up to the size used to cool people.
It would be cool to have one of these sitting om my desk, flapping at me, while drawing very little power.
Thanks, I've always wanted a laptop that runs Sloaris(TM) [sic] !!