Nuclear power is the ONLY rational solution, near term.
Are you attributing this statement to Simmons, or is it your personal opinion that you've just happened to put in the same post as mention of him? I didn't read all his papers or speeches, but overall, the vast bulk of his site appears to deal with oil and gas.
While I certainly agree that it would be irrational to, say, immediately shut off all nuclear power plants worldwide without finding replacement sources of energy, proponents of other sources of energy (solar, tidal, maybe wind and geothermal) have also repeatedly pointed out that significantly more power than humanity needs is available from any one of the renewable sources; it's just a matter of building the infrastructure to harness it.
Nuclear's a matter of building infrastructure now too, of course - the plants built 25+ years ago are nearing the end of their planned service lives, and newer / better / safer ones (pebble-bed, oxide stuff, whatever) plants will have to be built.
Lots of infrastructure required either way. Very expensive infrastructure at that. Maybe give us a bunch of nice next-generation nuke plants, along with a committment to ramping up (non-nuclear) renewables to 100% by the time those plants are due for decommissioning?
Outside the US and other "developed" nations, oil is a lot less of a given. Cars are a lot less of a given. Electricity - well, electricity that goes 24 hours without going off at least once - is a lot less of a given. Broadband is... a joke.
I've only been to a few "developing" nations - and those were all former-British-Empire ones that are either fairly industrialized or fairly politically enlightened (India, Kenya, Uganda) - but there's a big difference between what we take for granted and what's out there. Our "alabaster cities" yadda yadda may as well be the Matrix; they're just that far from the reality much of the world sees.
And for all the talk about bringing them up to our standards... if we run out of oil or energy, I think we'll be heading down to (or past) theirs instead.
Interesting paper - thanks! Tighter control isn't really an option, as the photos are being put on a public web site, but I believe our web guy may be implementing something where only members (free) can see the full-res ones. If I'm putting up a 200x200 headshot of someone, I don't Digimarc it, of course... it's the 2000x2000 version that gets the special treatment.:)
Ah well, I'll just note it as one more expensive bureaucratic thing that makes someone up there feel safer, and makes life a little more annoying for those of us on the bottom of the pile.;)
Totally. I'd buy it even if it weren't a phone. Oh, it'll also need a projected "tablet" off to one side of the keyboard (and let the user choose which side, okay?) for mouse-type actions.
Watermarked in Photoshop... by what means? Plugin?
In my spare time, I sometimes take photos for a non-profit. Most of them aren't anything anyone would want to pirate, but there have been times where my camera was the only one in the room for a speech by one VIP or another, and that's a different story. They use the watermarking plugin from Digimarc, which I imagine isn't terribly cheap, but they've got it watching the web for illicit copies of thousands of photos...
Serial number 000006. Someone had donated it to my junior high school, and since they had a bunch of perfectly good Commodore 64's, they were happy to have it taken off their hands. It had a big cabinet containing a small display and a couple 5.25" floppy drives, built-in keyboard on the front. Was a backplane design; mine had 3 memory boards for a total of 48K of RAM. I never did much with it other than play around in BASIC. Within a year or two I wound up using a Commodore 64 instead. (And then a Commodore 128, a 286, 386, 486, then OS X Macs.)
I've never seen anyone else on the web ever mention having used an Outpost...
Oh, that's easy. Apple would take the concept of the space shuttle, which has been around for decades but has never really lived up to people's hopes for it. Jon Ive and his minions would be set loose on it, and a few months later, the iShuttle would be announced. It'd do basically the same stuff as the regular shuttle, and would be missing a few features that people were used to (but probably didn't really need) here and there. But it'd be very easy to control, stylish, and unlike the current one, wouldn't crash. (*rimshot*) Then Apple would have Taiwanese OEMs crank out gazillions of them until every two-bit nation had them, gradually bringing the prices down (but keeping prices up on the non-reusable, proprietary rocket boosters). A few years later, with sales soaring (ha ha), Jobs would buy the moon, not knowing what else to do with all that money, and have terraformers take a notch out of one side and pile it on the pole to form an Apple logo...
Apple have created neither a technology nor a lifestyle, they've popularised a technology and tapped into a lifestyle. The download serice is far less important then you think too - ipods were huge in Australia prior to the itunes launch.
For some value of "huge," I'm sure. Relative to the sales curve since then? Um, no.
That should be enough for the trouble of taking it off their hands. And I'll sign all sorts of agreements promising to never share it with anyone, too. Gladly.
Yes, things are certainly more optimized now. In the case of Dodge and Chrysler, I think it helps somewhat that there are only two really obvious equivalent vehicles between the two - the Stratus/Sebring mid-sized sedans and the Caravan/Town & Country minivans. Oh, and Chrysler's new Aspen looks kinda like the Durango. But a substantial portion of Dodge's model line-up is either too sporty or too much of a truck to have a Chrysler equivalent.
Of course. "Badge-engineered" differentiation just makes sense! After all, look at the continued successes of auto brands like Geo, Plymouth, and Oldsmobile!
Same components, same form factor, available now, cheaper, faster processor, double the ram, more hard drive space compared to the MacBook... I give a slight nod to Apple for putting it in a slightly thinner and lighter enclosure then the Acer Travelmate... Acer has a PC notebook with the EXACT SAME COMPONENTS as the Macbook and nobody is marveling over it. Its because millions will buy the Acer Travelmate and the HP dv1000t and a slew of other Intel Duo Core notebooks without a second thought.
Similar but not identical components. The Travelmate actually has quite a lot more components. The MacBook Pro lacks the Travelmate's 56K modem, dedicated VGA and S-video ports, PC card slot, 5-in-1 card reader, and a couple USB ports, compared to the Travelmate. It's also got less screen resolution. The Travelmate's optical drive is better, and its built-in camera has higher resolution. It's got a bunch of one-touch buttons to launch various things, and so on.
So... what does the MacBook have on its side? I can only think of three things.
One of them is weight - in a 15" form factor, being a whole pound lighter is pretty significant, more than a 15% weight reduction, even if you think it's "slight."
The second is elegance. The MacBook doesn't have ports and buttons all over it like the Travelmate does - and a lot of road warriors (for whom I speak, having taken a laptop the equivalent of about 3 trips around the world in the last year) don't need a modem, dedicated VGA or S-Video ports, or four USB ports.
The third, final, and most important thing is the software. The Travelmate comes with Windows XP and basically nothing else. The MacBook comes with an OS that's competitive with the as-yet-unavailable Windows Vista, and a broad selection of impressive bundled software (iApps and so forth) that, if one had to buy Windows equivalents, would probably negate any price difference.
Not saying the Travelmate is lame or anything - it looks pretty cool. But throwing "...and the kitchen sink!" into a laptop in an effort to make it appeal to everyone is going to turn off some buyers (like me, for example) who travel extensively, don't have a lot of devices they have plugged in all the time, and don't need a lot of "legacy" support. (Sorry, VGA is legacy.:) I'm also concerned about its durability. Carbon fiber is known for being very light, and having good structural strength... but it's not known for dealing well with impacts.:)
Basically the same functionality as last.fm?
on
iTunes is Malware?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I've had last.fm's AudioScrobbler client (iScrobbler) running on my Mac for ages now. It feeds info on the songs I listen to into their web site, where there's a database and all that. I get recommendations, and so forth. Looks like the new iTunes functionality is basically identical to that, except that now it's integrated with the iTunes store...
Revamping the Power Mac needs to wait for the more powerful Intel chip with 64-bit extensions (Core Duo, aka Yonah, is 32-bit), which is due later this year and called... Merom or something like that. And remember, the top-end Power Macs are dual x dual core already, so probably still faster than an iMac. Power Macs also appeal to people who want things that iMacs can't offer, like multiple internal drives, dual displays, yadda. Totally different market, really.
As far as the MacBook, if Apple had chosen to drop Core - even the single-core version - into an iBook, it would've been as powerful as, or more powerful than, the PowerBook. So they had to upgrade the PowerBook first. Pretty simple, there.
Software, and certain three-dimensional star guides, can compensate for location-based differences in the sky - e.g. Polaris is 45 degrees above the horizon if you're 45 degrees north, but not visible at all if you're 10 degrees south. Two-dimensional things, such as books, have a much harder time of this. Thus Planispheres come in several different versions, for different latitudes. In this e-book, there aren't charts. Although this book does include some good southern objects, there are still entire pages dedicated to things near Polaris, which reflects an inherent bias toward the northern hemisphere.
Happy to be somewhere with a view from 90N to ~70S...
Of course, if Outlook knows who your friends are, and how you're connected through them to their friends then it can do a much better job of spreading trojans and spam to them when your PC becomes infected...
Slashdot Mirror
Yup, they sure are. That'd be http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/ for the curious who don't feel like Googling.
Are you attributing this statement to Simmons, or is it your personal opinion that you've just happened to put in the same post as mention of him? I didn't read all his papers or speeches, but overall, the vast bulk of his site appears to deal with oil and gas.
While I certainly agree that it would be irrational to, say, immediately shut off all nuclear power plants worldwide without finding replacement sources of energy, proponents of other sources of energy (solar, tidal, maybe wind and geothermal) have also repeatedly pointed out that significantly more power than humanity needs is available from any one of the renewable sources; it's just a matter of building the infrastructure to harness it.
Nuclear's a matter of building infrastructure now too, of course - the plants built 25+ years ago are nearing the end of their planned service lives, and newer / better / safer ones (pebble-bed, oxide stuff, whatever) plants will have to be built.
Lots of infrastructure required either way. Very expensive infrastructure at that. Maybe give us a bunch of nice next-generation nuke plants, along with a committment to ramping up (non-nuclear) renewables to 100% by the time those plants are due for decommissioning?
Um, two quick questions.
1. Canada has beaches?
2. I thought Exxon usually spilled the oil along the beaches in Alaska, not Canada?
Outside the US and other "developed" nations, oil is a lot less of a given. Cars are a lot less of a given. Electricity - well, electricity that goes 24 hours without going off at least once - is a lot less of a given. Broadband is... a joke.
I've only been to a few "developing" nations - and those were all former-British-Empire ones that are either fairly industrialized or fairly politically enlightened (India, Kenya, Uganda) - but there's a big difference between what we take for granted and what's out there. Our "alabaster cities" yadda yadda may as well be the Matrix; they're just that far from the reality much of the world sees.
And for all the talk about bringing them up to our standards... if we run out of oil or energy, I think we'll be heading down to (or past) theirs instead.
Interesting paper - thanks! Tighter control isn't really an option, as the photos are being put on a public web site, but I believe our web guy may be implementing something where only members (free) can see the full-res ones. If I'm putting up a 200x200 headshot of someone, I don't Digimarc it, of course... it's the 2000x2000 version that gets the special treatment. :)
;)
Ah well, I'll just note it as one more expensive bureaucratic thing that makes someone up there feel safer, and makes life a little more annoying for those of us on the bottom of the pile.
No, no, the people are still ugly... just their avatars aren't. ;)
Totally. I'd buy it even if it weren't a phone. Oh, it'll also need a projected "tablet" off to one side of the keyboard (and let the user choose which side, okay?) for mouse-type actions.
Who? ;)
Oh, wait, is that the new guy?
He needs to get in the news some more so we can all learn to remember (and maybe even pronounce) his name already.
In my spare time, I sometimes take photos for a non-profit. Most of them aren't anything anyone would want to pirate, but there have been times where my camera was the only one in the room for a speech by one VIP or another, and that's a different story. They use the watermarking plugin from Digimarc, which I imagine isn't terribly cheap, but they've got it watching the web for illicit copies of thousands of photos...
Serial number 000006. Someone had donated it to my junior high school, and since they had a bunch of perfectly good Commodore 64's, they were happy to have it taken off their hands. It had a big cabinet containing a small display and a couple 5.25" floppy drives, built-in keyboard on the front. Was a backplane design; mine had 3 memory boards for a total of 48K of RAM. I never did much with it other than play around in BASIC. Within a year or two I wound up using a Commodore 64 instead. (And then a Commodore 128, a 286, 386, 486, then OS X Macs.)
I've never seen anyone else on the web ever mention having used an Outpost...
...on my Treo, while using the bathroom. At work. No one's complained so far.
Of course, if I get my work done for the day, then it's Warcraft time...
No, not on the Treo.
Oh, that's easy. Apple would take the concept of the space shuttle, which has been around for decades but has never really lived up to people's hopes for it. Jon Ive and his minions would be set loose on it, and a few months later, the iShuttle would be announced. It'd do basically the same stuff as the regular shuttle, and would be missing a few features that people were used to (but probably didn't really need) here and there. But it'd be very easy to control, stylish, and unlike the current one, wouldn't crash. (*rimshot*) Then Apple would have Taiwanese OEMs crank out gazillions of them until every two-bit nation had them, gradually bringing the prices down (but keeping prices up on the non-reusable, proprietary rocket boosters). A few years later, with sales soaring (ha ha), Jobs would buy the moon, not knowing what else to do with all that money, and have terraformers take a notch out of one side and pile it on the pole to form an Apple logo...
...Walt Mossberg rates a shaker. :) If Macs had butts, he'd kiss 'em. Pogue at least writes some books and stuff, too.
(And I'm saying this as someone who's bought 6 Macs in the last 5 years...)
That should be enough for the trouble of taking it off their hands. And I'll sign all sorts of agreements promising to never share it with anyone, too. Gladly.
Luxo Jr? He'll survive. But they'll have to alter his image a little bit, so they can make a costume for someone to wear around Disneyworld.
Yes, things are certainly more optimized now. In the case of Dodge and Chrysler, I think it helps somewhat that there are only two really obvious equivalent vehicles between the two - the Stratus/Sebring mid-sized sedans and the Caravan/Town & Country minivans. Oh, and Chrysler's new Aspen looks kinda like the Durango. But a substantial portion of Dodge's model line-up is either too sporty or too much of a truck to have a Chrysler equivalent.
Well... hmm.
;)
AAPL : $76.08 per share, market cap $64.13 billion
SNE: $42.30 per share, market cap $42.13 billion
Yep, it must've already happened or something.
Of course. "Badge-engineered" differentiation just makes sense! After all, look at the continued successes of auto brands like Geo, Plymouth, and Oldsmobile!
So... what does the MacBook have on its side? I can only think of three things.
One of them is weight - in a 15" form factor, being a whole pound lighter is pretty significant, more than a 15% weight reduction, even if you think it's "slight."
The second is elegance. The MacBook doesn't have ports and buttons all over it like the Travelmate does - and a lot of road warriors (for whom I speak, having taken a laptop the equivalent of about 3 trips around the world in the last year) don't need a modem, dedicated VGA or S-Video ports, or four USB ports.
The third, final, and most important thing is the software. The Travelmate comes with Windows XP and basically nothing else. The MacBook comes with an OS that's competitive with the as-yet-unavailable Windows Vista, and a broad selection of impressive bundled software (iApps and so forth) that, if one had to buy Windows equivalents, would probably negate any price difference.
Not saying the Travelmate is lame or anything - it looks pretty cool. But throwing "...and the kitchen sink!" into a laptop in an effort to make it appeal to everyone is going to turn off some buyers (like me, for example) who travel extensively, don't have a lot of devices they have plugged in all the time, and don't need a lot of "legacy" support. (Sorry, VGA is legacy. :) I'm also concerned about its durability. Carbon fiber is known for being very light, and having good structural strength... but it's not known for dealing well with impacts. :)
I've had last.fm's AudioScrobbler client (iScrobbler) running on my Mac for ages now. It feeds info on the songs I listen to into their web site, where there's a database and all that. I get recommendations, and so forth. Looks like the new iTunes functionality is basically identical to that, except that now it's integrated with the iTunes store...
Revamping the Power Mac needs to wait for the more powerful Intel chip with 64-bit extensions (Core Duo, aka Yonah, is 32-bit), which is due later this year and called... Merom or something like that. And remember, the top-end Power Macs are dual x dual core already, so probably still faster than an iMac. Power Macs also appeal to people who want things that iMacs can't offer, like multiple internal drives, dual displays, yadda. Totally different market, really.
As far as the MacBook, if Apple had chosen to drop Core - even the single-core version - into an iBook, it would've been as powerful as, or more powerful than, the PowerBook. So they had to upgrade the PowerBook first. Pretty simple, there.
Yes, it would. You've gotta upgrade the powerbooks either before, or at the same time as, the ibooks.
Software, and certain three-dimensional star guides, can compensate for location-based differences in the sky - e.g. Polaris is 45 degrees above the horizon if you're 45 degrees north, but not visible at all if you're 10 degrees south. Two-dimensional things, such as books, have a much harder time of this. Thus Planispheres come in several different versions, for different latitudes. In this e-book, there aren't charts. Although this book does include some good southern objects, there are still entire pages dedicated to things near Polaris, which reflects an inherent bias toward the northern hemisphere.
Happy to be somewhere with a view from 90N to ~70S...
Of course, if Outlook knows who your friends are, and how you're connected through them to their friends then it can do a much better job of spreading trojans and spam to them when your PC becomes infected...