I think it's funny that in spite of all the nagging, trickery, and even (in some cases) forced installs of the damned thing, they only got 270m devices to actually do it out of what, billions globally?
Sure but I'm asking about GNU userland on commercial Unixes not Linux on your 386/486 at home:D.
I can answer that with one word: Consistency. The behavior and feature set of a given GNU binary on an AIX box was the same as behavior and feature set that it exhibited on a SunOS box, which in turn gave you the same behavior and feature set on HPUX, BDS, whatever...
You just didn't get that kind of comfy feeling when hopping between OS types and using each vendor's proprietary implementations of a given binary (by function).
I guess the point is that you don't need the kernel or drivers because the Windows kernel can actually provide the necessary services. You might want user-space utilities, obviously. But a way of running Whatever-ix userspace apps on Windows would be rather nice. No more weird/costly ports of UI toolkits?
Unless it's a work machine where I'm 100% stuck with having Windows on the thing? Err, why?
I'd rather have a real UNIX/Linux on the metal... and most of those have had Linux binary compat libs for, like, ever.
You forgot one out of those 10... perhaps #9 makes enough money to live off of, but either has no real growth, or just enough growth to make it viable over sufficiently long periods of time?
Although to be fair, at least the ideas floated in the '90s were at least half-assed plausible (well, most of them).
I always marveled at the ability of VCs to dump metric tons of money into something that usually has no business plan (and no, "get bought by Google!!OMG!!11!!" is not really a practical business plan). I mean, I get that it's gambling in a way, and one out of 1,000 or so might actually turn a profit (or at least get enough hype to cash out the stock and profit from that), but it looks like one hell of a high risk.
Has anyone done any studies as to what percentage of VC-funded startups actually eke out enough money (somehow) to provide a decent ROI to anyone investing in them?
Gotta pitch in additional praise for the MAX at PDX. In spite of its origins (a giant money-sink/boondoggle made to enrich political friends), it operates nicely, and covers most of the metro area quite well. I've used it lots of times on business trips, where the missus drops me off at Hillsboro (the west end of the line), and I take it to PDX no sweat. Drops me off right at the airport.
Now if you take a MAX at 2am, you'll see the occasional meth head or homeless dude looking to warm up, but otherwise it's perfectly safe nearly any time you take it.
By the way, BART also goes right to SFO (wish it went to OAK as well - it would save massive cab/uber/shuttle fare costs that way).
This is cool and all, but for those who don't read TFS (let alone TFA), you may want to look at the requirements (bottom of page), and you'll discover that you will need either Photoshop of some flavor installed (no effing way I'm coughing up money to Adobe for just a hobby), or Aperture for OSX.
Seems like this AI conflicted with Penguinisto's own little belief system and so he needs to ridicule the AI rather than questioning his own beliefs.
Actually, I thought it was hilarious all around, and not due to any ideology you think I may hold.;)
The thing is, Microsoft built an AI that reacted to and incorporated tweets which the public sent to it. So, folks obligingly fed it tweets that made it into a frothing troll. Am I the only one who looked at the Microsoft dev team in question and said quite out loud "...what the hell else did you idiots expect!?" I mean, it's just like turning an innocent kid loose in the worst parts of the city at night, but without the vomit and dirty heroin needles.
I will say this, though: Although Microsoft may have gotten egg on their faces, TFA does teach a valuable lesson about AI and how it reacts and assimilates into human society.
So, what's wrong with fission? Other than some people's overblown and misguided fear of it?
I agree, wholeheartedly. Problem is that when you say "nuclear power" to populations and politicians, they immediately think "Chernobyl" and "Fukushima", and not "hey, that's a working technology we can improve on for efficiency and safety!"
It's a people problem, not a technical one. Problem is, until you overcome the former, the latter will remain stifled and stunted in progress.
1. That climate always changes doesn't mean it changes so radically and so quickly.
This is quite debatable, and highly politicized. It also does not invalidate my point, since you have provided nothing more than a vague allusion from your sentence, and have not disproven what you were replying to as it stands.
2. There are no lack of other sources of energy. Hydrocarbons are hardly the only solution.
I have already said that. See the part where I specifically wrote "...for providing the majority of humanity's energy..." Therefore my statement is still true.
I'll help you out: Nuclear is still treated like some sort of venereal disease, solar and wind only work under limited conditions (and require hydrocarbons in their construction), and the more outlandish ideas (tidal/wave energy, biofuels, etc) are non-viable or far too costly to produce at this point in time. Fusion (which I also mentioned) is a good hope for a solution, but still just a hope at this point, since it has yet to be conclusively proven to work on a commercial basis.
3. There are other ways to produce plastics and similar materials.
I have already said that, and then mentioned the failings inherent in those "other ways". So your point was... what?
posting patently false things
No, I have not, and you have had to quite literally make things up about what I posted in order to make such an assertion.
In the future, if you're going to debate, please be at least somewhat honest about the task.
I get the whole Greenwashing that happened there, but seriously - no matter the {whatever} you hold concerning AGW, three things are constant:
1) Barring thermonuclear warfare or a wayward asteroid, global climate will change no matter what we do (or don't do), and will continue on its current trend.
2) Barring the invention of commercially viable electrical generation from fusion (or some similar massive source of energy), hydrocarbons are pretty much it for providing the majority of humanity's energy, so unless someone at Rockefeller has information that the rest of us do not have...
3) Plastics (made from petroleum) are the backbone of technology and civilization at this time - no viable replacement has yet arisen that doesn't require even more damage to the ecosystems, or can last nearly as long when the requirements call for longevity/durability. (e.g. yeah you can make plastic from corn, but it'll be much shorter-lived and will require massive up-scaling in agriculture, which presents problems of its own.)
On the plus side, this is a decision made by a private company, and they're risking their own money to do so... at least government isn't pushing these decisions upon an unwilling populace....and yes dear pro-AGW crowd, please feel free to mod the post down in a massive knee-jerk reaction, but how about instead of lashing out, you do us a favor and show us all where the alternatives are. If you're reading this, you are most definitely a beneficiary of petroleum, so...
Panels are usually rated in Wp (peak wattage), which is an instantaneous reading taken under optimal conditions (of both light and temperature).
Typical top-end panels pump out about 240-260 Wp - call it 250Wp. This means you'd need four top-end monocrystal solar panels to get 1 kWp, 4,000 of them to get 1 MWp, etc.
Mind the "peak" portion though - typical daylight production is averaged to something like 50-60% of peak (to account for stuff like clouds, the sun not being perfectly perpendicular to the usually-fixed panel, high temperature degradations, etc.) This means that you usually have to overbuild by at least 40-50%...
TL;DR - that's a real big frigload of panels that they're looking to build and install.
That's kind of funny... because I bought my MBP nearly 3 years ago, and it has outlasted every wintel laptop I have ever owned in both longevity and staying power. It still runs plenty fast, even with newer and (way the hell more bloated) CG suites and especially render engines (Iray, I'm looking at you!)
The thing is built like a tank, doesn't flex, hasn't burned out the CPU thermals (had a Samsung do that), doesn't sprout dead pixels, and instead of spending $1000-$1100 each 12-18 months, I actually saved about $1000 so far on comparative TCO.
But you know - status über alles and all that...;)
Wow... you can upgrade a desktop with a new high-end electron-eating graphics card, and it would outperform a laptop whose baked-in gfx chip is built for power efficiency!?
Tune in next week, when we compare cell phones to walkie-talkies!
...and Docker is the new Solaris Zones. Err, okay?
The point isn't that node.js sucks (personal opinion - it kinda does when mishandled, just like PHP), it's that like any tool, you have to use it correctly and try not to make it do shit that it wasn't designed to do.
We see this shit in Puppet-land, where so-called DevOps people rely on external github (not puppetforge, but random github) modules to run their servers. They never pull a local copy, but instead use something like Librarian to pull it in dynamically... never realizing that if the guy maintaining $randomModule says 'fuck it' and pulls his project (or even just breaks his module), suddenly you're stuck with a broken model and a potential outage.
No, the micro-USB port can wear/wallow out over time, depending on the quality of the device maker. I've seen it happen myself multiple times on multiple Android devices (mostly phones), and even the pricier stuff will start doing it after a year or so of use (my LG phone is just barely starting to do it, and it's a year old).
It also depends on the user - someone who consistently tries to jam the plug in backwards (laughably easy to do) will wear it out much, much faster than someone who looks before plugging in.
GP is right - an open-source version of the Lightning connector would rock, since it isn't dependent on orientation, and the female side of the plug is much easier to reinforce without sacrificing as much weight or space in order to do it.
Sure, the line won't grow by too much, but the number of people with a use case for iPads (and similar form factors) is still large enough to keep the iPad line alive just fine: schools, highly-mobile users (pilots, road-warriors, train/bus commuters, etc), industrial/manufacturing users, sales-critters using it to sell stuff like cars, small businesses who use them for POS terminals, and average folks who want to fart around on Facebook/Youtube/email, but don't want a full-blown computer-with-keyboard to do it.
Seriously - who was shorting AAPL when they wrote this story? Or was the author just thinking that 'OMG unless it grows by 500% it's gonna die! Aieeeeee!'.
Most likely explanation IMHO is a demand for attention and relevance on the author's part, methinks.
Yes, they've always targeted the premium market... and that's why they're starting to lose.
Mostly because they dominate the hell out of the premium market - probably to the point of saturation. If you've saturated the high end with your product, and want to see more growth, guess where you gotta go?
The pricing they have was only reasonable when they were the only worthwhile smartphone on the market. This is no longer the case.
Depends. I have and use an unlocked LG phone that I bought last year... now the thing is starting to bork-up on the home key, and screen misalignment is starting to become an issue. Sure, I got the $200 I spent back out of it, but meanwhile my wife's ancient iPhone 4 is *still* chugging along just fine, years after it first showed up. My next phone? *shrug* Not sure yet, but damn I'm leaning towards something that would hold up better over time...
Therein lies the whole reason why most folks buy Apple stuff in the first place: It costs more up-front, but you make up the savings over time.
If they just raised the employee salaries and their competitors don't then their competitors can get an advantage over them.
Actually, if you're paying your employees more, you have a greater advantage, in many aspects:
* you can pick and choose from a larger pool of qualified candidates than your lower-paying competitors * you get greater employee loyalty (or at least a 'golden cage' to keep them in), thus lower turnover * you can poach select employees from your competitors, and be more successful at doing so.
The sword cuts both ways, yanno? Sure you eat a bigger overhead, but the results can potentially gain greater benefit -especially over the long term.
No, the volunteerism would still work. If they want to give extra money, they are more than welcome to do so. The stated outcome (more money going into the Treasury) would still happen even if it increased by $1.00 USD.
It is. Fortunately that is now what they are saying. They are not asking for an opportunity to individually pay ore taxes. They are asking fr[sic] a collective arrangement in which all rich people pay more taxes.
...and why would they make that demand, unless they already know the outcome (the outcome being that they individually won't pay much more than some token sum, while those who are just barely making their way up to that level of income yet cannot yet afford all those tax loopholes and accountants...)
Turns out that it's a great way to make sure you get no new competition, or at least limit the hell out of it.
The right solution is that they are required to pay a higher tax rate.
What makes that the right solution?
You could tax all income over $1m/yr at a rate of 100%, and thanks to blind trusts, offshore accounts, foreign investments, all-too-convenient loan 'defaults', contrived "capital losses", etc...? You still won't get your mitts on nearly as much as you think you will.
Let's just call the hue and cry nothing more than window dressing designed to make these chumps feel better about themselves, and call it good.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's funny that in spite of all the nagging, trickery, and even (in some cases) forced installs of the damned thing, they only got 270m devices to actually do it out of what, billions globally?
You do realize that a lot of that was not only to save memory (back then), but to save keystrokes... something that even today is pretty damned handy.
Sure but I'm asking about GNU userland on commercial Unixes not Linux on your 386/486 at home :D.
I can answer that with one word: Consistency. The behavior and feature set of a given GNU binary on an AIX box was the same as behavior and feature set that it exhibited on a SunOS box, which in turn gave you the same behavior and feature set on HPUX, BDS, whatever...
You just didn't get that kind of comfy feeling when hopping between OS types and using each vendor's proprietary implementations of a given binary (by function).
I guess the point is that you don't need the kernel or drivers because the Windows kernel can actually provide the necessary services. You might want user-space utilities, obviously. But a way of running Whatever-ix userspace apps on Windows would be rather nice. No more weird/costly ports of UI toolkits?
Unless it's a work machine where I'm 100% stuck with having Windows on the thing? Err, why?
I'd rather have a real UNIX/Linux on the metal... and most of those have had Linux binary compat libs for, like, ever.
You forgot one out of those 10... perhaps #9 makes enough money to live off of, but either has no real growth, or just enough growth to make it viable over sufficiently long periods of time?
Although to be fair, at least the ideas floated in the '90s were at least half-assed plausible (well, most of them).
I always marveled at the ability of VCs to dump metric tons of money into something that usually has no business plan (and no, "get bought by Google!!OMG!!11!!" is not really a practical business plan). I mean, I get that it's gambling in a way, and one out of 1,000 or so might actually turn a profit (or at least get enough hype to cash out the stock and profit from that), but it looks like one hell of a high risk.
Has anyone done any studies as to what percentage of VC-funded startups actually eke out enough money (somehow) to provide a decent ROI to anyone investing in them?
Gotta pitch in additional praise for the MAX at PDX. In spite of its origins (a giant money-sink/boondoggle made to enrich political friends), it operates nicely, and covers most of the metro area quite well. I've used it lots of times on business trips, where the missus drops me off at Hillsboro (the west end of the line), and I take it to PDX no sweat. Drops me off right at the airport.
Now if you take a MAX at 2am, you'll see the occasional meth head or homeless dude looking to warm up, but otherwise it's perfectly safe nearly any time you take it.
By the way, BART also goes right to SFO (wish it went to OAK as well - it would save massive cab/uber/shuttle fare costs that way).
True, but damn it works rather well; it's one of the initial packages I install whenever I find myself with a new Mac.
This is cool and all, but for those who don't read TFS (let alone TFA), you may want to look at the requirements (bottom of page), and you'll discover that you will need either Photoshop of some flavor installed (no effing way I'm coughing up money to Adobe for just a hobby), or Aperture for OSX.
BTW, no love for GIMP? dafuq?
Seems like this AI conflicted with Penguinisto's own little belief system and so he needs to ridicule the AI rather than questioning his own beliefs.
Actually, I thought it was hilarious all around, and not due to any ideology you think I may hold. ;)
The thing is, Microsoft built an AI that reacted to and incorporated tweets which the public sent to it. So, folks obligingly fed it tweets that made it into a frothing troll. Am I the only one who looked at the Microsoft dev team in question and said quite out loud "...what the hell else did you idiots expect!?" I mean, it's just like turning an innocent kid loose in the worst parts of the city at night, but without the vomit and dirty heroin needles.
I will say this, though: Although Microsoft may have gotten egg on their faces, TFA does teach a valuable lesson about AI and how it reacts and assimilates into human society.
So, what's wrong with fission? Other than some people's overblown and misguided fear of it?
I agree, wholeheartedly. Problem is that when you say "nuclear power" to populations and politicians, they immediately think "Chernobyl" and "Fukushima", and not "hey, that's a working technology we can improve on for efficiency and safety!"
It's a people problem, not a technical one. Problem is, until you overcome the former, the latter will remain stifled and stunted in progress.
1. That climate always changes doesn't mean it changes so radically and so quickly.
This is quite debatable, and highly politicized. It also does not invalidate my point, since you have provided nothing more than a vague allusion from your sentence, and have not disproven what you were replying to as it stands.
2. There are no lack of other sources of energy. Hydrocarbons are hardly the only solution.
I have already said that. See the part where I specifically wrote "...for providing the majority of humanity's energy..." Therefore my statement is still true.
I'll help you out: Nuclear is still treated like some sort of venereal disease, solar and wind only work under limited conditions (and require hydrocarbons in their construction), and the more outlandish ideas (tidal/wave energy, biofuels, etc) are non-viable or far too costly to produce at this point in time. Fusion (which I also mentioned) is a good hope for a solution, but still just a hope at this point, since it has yet to be conclusively proven to work on a commercial basis.
3. There are other ways to produce plastics and similar materials.
I have already said that, and then mentioned the failings inherent in those "other ways". So your point was... what?
posting patently false things
No, I have not, and you have had to quite literally make things up about what I posted in order to make such an assertion.
In the future, if you're going to debate, please be at least somewhat honest about the task.
I get the whole Greenwashing that happened there, but seriously - no matter the {whatever} you hold concerning AGW, three things are constant:
1) Barring thermonuclear warfare or a wayward asteroid, global climate will change no matter what we do (or don't do), and will continue on its current trend.
2) Barring the invention of commercially viable electrical generation from fusion (or some similar massive source of energy), hydrocarbons are pretty much it for providing the majority of humanity's energy, so unless someone at Rockefeller has information that the rest of us do not have...
3) Plastics (made from petroleum) are the backbone of technology and civilization at this time - no viable replacement has yet arisen that doesn't require even more damage to the ecosystems, or can last nearly as long when the requirements call for longevity/durability. (e.g. yeah you can make plastic from corn, but it'll be much shorter-lived and will require massive up-scaling in agriculture, which presents problems of its own.)
On the plus side, this is a decision made by a private company, and they're risking their own money to do so... at least government isn't pushing these decisions upon an unwilling populace. ...and yes dear pro-AGW crowd, please feel free to mod the post down in a massive knee-jerk reaction, but how about instead of lashing out, you do us a favor and show us all where the alternatives are. If you're reading this, you are most definitely a beneficiary of petroleum, so...
Panels are usually rated in Wp (peak wattage), which is an instantaneous reading taken under optimal conditions (of both light and temperature).
Typical top-end panels pump out about 240-260 Wp - call it 250Wp. This means you'd need four top-end monocrystal solar panels to get 1 kWp, 4,000 of them to get 1 MWp, etc.
Mind the "peak" portion though - typical daylight production is averaged to something like 50-60% of peak (to account for stuff like clouds, the sun not being perfectly perpendicular to the usually-fixed panel, high temperature degradations, etc.) This means that you usually have to overbuild by at least 40-50%...
TL;DR - that's a real big frigload of panels that they're looking to build and install.
That's kind of funny... because I bought my MBP nearly 3 years ago, and it has outlasted every wintel laptop I have ever owned in both longevity and staying power. It still runs plenty fast, even with newer and (way the hell more bloated) CG suites and especially render engines (Iray, I'm looking at you!)
The thing is built like a tank, doesn't flex, hasn't burned out the CPU thermals (had a Samsung do that), doesn't sprout dead pixels, and instead of spending $1000-$1100 each 12-18 months, I actually saved about $1000 so far on comparative TCO.
But you know - status über alles and all that... ;)
Wow... you can upgrade a desktop with a new high-end electron-eating graphics card, and it would outperform a laptop whose baked-in gfx chip is built for power efficiency!?
Tune in next week, when we compare cell phones to walkie-talkies!
...and Docker is the new Solaris Zones. Err, okay?
The point isn't that node.js sucks (personal opinion - it kinda does when mishandled, just like PHP), it's that like any tool, you have to use it correctly and try not to make it do shit that it wasn't designed to do.
We see this shit in Puppet-land, where so-called DevOps people rely on external github (not puppetforge, but random github) modules to run their servers. They never pull a local copy, but instead use something like Librarian to pull it in dynamically... never realizing that if the guy maintaining $randomModule says 'fuck it' and pulls his project (or even just breaks his module), suddenly you're stuck with a broken model and a potential outage.
No, the micro-USB port can wear/wallow out over time, depending on the quality of the device maker. I've seen it happen myself multiple times on multiple Android devices (mostly phones), and even the pricier stuff will start doing it after a year or so of use (my LG phone is just barely starting to do it, and it's a year old).
It also depends on the user - someone who consistently tries to jam the plug in backwards (laughably easy to do) will wear it out much, much faster than someone who looks before plugging in.
GP is right - an open-source version of the Lightning connector would rock, since it isn't dependent on orientation, and the female side of the plug is much easier to reinforce without sacrificing as much weight or space in order to do it.
Sure, the line won't grow by too much, but the number of people with a use case for iPads (and similar form factors) is still large enough to keep the iPad line alive just fine: schools, highly-mobile users (pilots, road-warriors, train/bus commuters, etc), industrial/manufacturing users, sales-critters using it to sell stuff like cars, small businesses who use them for POS terminals, and average folks who want to fart around on Facebook/Youtube/email, but don't want a full-blown computer-with-keyboard to do it.
Seriously - who was shorting AAPL when they wrote this story? Or was the author just thinking that 'OMG unless it grows by 500% it's gonna die! Aieeeeee!'.
Most likely explanation IMHO is a demand for attention and relevance on the author's part, methinks.
I was thinking the same thing...
(for those who haven't heard: http://arstechnica.com/informa... )
Maybe the board was waiting for him to be safely on The Other Side before doing this?
Yes, they've always targeted the premium market ... and that's why they're starting to lose.
Mostly because they dominate the hell out of the premium market - probably to the point of saturation. If you've saturated the high end with your product, and want to see more growth, guess where you gotta go?
The pricing they have was only reasonable when they were the only worthwhile smartphone on the market. This is no longer the case.
Depends. I have and use an unlocked LG phone that I bought last year... now the thing is starting to bork-up on the home key, and screen misalignment is starting to become an issue. Sure, I got the $200 I spent back out of it, but meanwhile my wife's ancient iPhone 4 is *still* chugging along just fine, years after it first showed up. My next phone? *shrug* Not sure yet, but damn I'm leaning towards something that would hold up better over time...
Therein lies the whole reason why most folks buy Apple stuff in the first place: It costs more up-front, but you make up the savings over time.
If they just raised the employee salaries and their competitors don't then their competitors can get an advantage over them.
Actually, if you're paying your employees more, you have a greater advantage, in many aspects:
* you can pick and choose from a larger pool of qualified candidates than your lower-paying competitors
* you get greater employee loyalty (or at least a 'golden cage' to keep them in), thus lower turnover
* you can poach select employees from your competitors, and be more successful at doing so.
The sword cuts both ways, yanno? Sure you eat a bigger overhead, but the results can potentially gain greater benefit -especially over the long term.
No, the volunteerism would still work. If they want to give extra money, they are more than welcome to do so. The stated outcome (more money going into the Treasury) would still happen even if it increased by $1.00 USD.
It is. Fortunately that is now what they are saying. They are not asking for an opportunity to individually pay ore taxes. They are asking fr[sic] a collective arrangement in which all rich people pay more taxes.
...and why would they make that demand, unless they already know the outcome (the outcome being that they individually won't pay much more than some token sum, while those who are just barely making their way up to that level of income yet cannot yet afford all those tax loopholes and accountants...)
Turns out that it's a great way to make sure you get no new competition, or at least limit the hell out of it.
The right solution is that they are required to pay a higher tax rate.
What makes that the right solution?
You could tax all income over $1m/yr at a rate of 100%, and thanks to blind trusts, offshore accounts, foreign investments, all-too-convenient loan 'defaults', contrived "capital losses", etc...? You still won't get your mitts on nearly as much as you think you will.
Let's just call the hue and cry nothing more than window dressing designed to make these chumps feel better about themselves, and call it good.