Reward your shareholders, and invest in new technology in areas your not already a player. Apple has shown it's quite adept at penetrating new markets and it seems that if money is no object, it can afford to push into new areas and expand it's reach in the areas it is already a player.
But if anything giving back some of this money, investing it in R&D and other risky ventures will help Apple "Stay hungry, Stay foolish".
What's the big deal here? Are they rebranding the Science Fiction as Science Fact? Will there be cross-overs between the various publications to obfuscate science from fiction?
Or is it just a publisher recognizing that the influence of Science Fiction can help steer public interest in Science, offer ways of explaining recent discoveries in an easy and entertaining manner to the layman and have a hand in helping steer today's youth to careers in scientific related fields or at least to encourage them to be open minded and accepting of science?
Samsung and the likes can hawk their Smart-3D crap all they want.
When Apple release the SuperJumbo iPad -- err, iTV in the next year, with multi ARM processors, 1TB HDD Storage and the ability to remote control it with your existing iOS devices and run Apps in PIP-mode while watching movies, your run of the mill Flat panel displays will seem like the commodity display units they are.
Seriously though -- how can the likes of Samsung, Sharp or Sony Compete? Apple can deliver it's own streaming Movie and TV content via iTMS, they offer apps via the App Store, they allow any registered developer to make their own Apps and Games, they have iTunes installed on millions of machines, they have AirTunes that allow multi-room audio streaming, they have AirPort Express which helps facilitate AirTunes, they have Front Row which can turn any Apple Laptop or Desktop into a FullScreen media player. Essentially, you can have an iTV which allows you to Watch TV, stream movies, run apps, purchase new media, surf the web, broadcast music and media to other devices in other rooms all from one unit -- who cares about 3D when you have something that can essentially be a Media Hub and the family computer all in one?
The only market player I could see taking them on would be Google, but they don't have the media distribution channels -- they'd likely have to partner with Amazon since they already have the distribution deals and the infrastructure all set up. But, it would be a viable contender if they did come up with an Android based competitor to iTV that streamed and downloaded music and movies from Amazon and featured the App marketplace for both Google and Amazon.
No matter what though, TV is about to go through a pretty dramatic evolutionary period that will likely see the dumb-terminal relegated to a by-gone era. Next stop: get rid of the fixed display completely and move it onto touch screen enabled surfaces like walls and windows.
This just shows what a bunch of clueless morons Anonymous is. They perform a brilliant bit of counter-intel and gained an upper-hand by finding a way to exploit the FBI and eavesdrop on their conversations.
And what do they do with this victory? Do they send the FBI tripping over itself on an internal mole-hunt by going to the media with a tiny bit of this info explained as "information leaked by a source within the FBI?". Do they patiently sit and gather more intel, maybe useful information to help them evade arrest or gather bits of public interest in other cases for later use?
No, they broadcast it to the world with details on how they did it, all but going to the FBI and closing the weakness themselves. These jerkoffs have shown once and for all that they are just a bunch of egotistical little shits who are indeed just in it for the lulz and "street cred". I doubt we'll see anything come of Anonymous aside from more LOIC attacks, credit card thefts and web page vandalism. They've shown all the intelligence and finesse of a group of anarchistic thugs.
What modern Battleships? The US and most Navies hasn't produced a battleship since WWII. They were done in by Aircraft Carriers. The closest we have to a Battleship now is a Guided Missile Cruiser, which is probably what you are referring to as a "modern Battleship". And yes -- the forward mounted machine gun on a Ticonderoga Class has nothing on the massive artillery batteries they had mounted on battleships. But then again, who uses artillery batteries anymore? They are little more than very expensive guided missile targets and don't have nearly the range.
The Executive Branch delegates that to the Attorney General/US DOJ. Also, I see the lack of comment as a good thing, because if they didn't take this matter seriously, they'd have simply stated it had been dismissed out of hand. In this case though, it seems they do take it seriously.
Keep in mind that no Police Investigation aside from those run by the Keystone Cops starts with a public announcement saying they will investigate. They say they are investigating *after* news outlets like CNN and FOX have reported that a bunch of FBI Agents raided offices and took away records and computers from those offices. Why give Dodd any more opportunity to hide, destroy evidence?
And 2015 shall be 1995 for Apple all over again as iPhones and iPads become an afterthought in a market glutted and dominated by Android appliances. Apple can exist peddling multi thousand dollar laptops and desktops that will be required to develop apps for the it's dying line of handheld devices.
The are presently reviewing a Space Defense System that consists of a miles long series of defensive shields protecting a rail-mounted missile platform with gaps between the shields creating launch apertures. The missile platform can be operated remotely, much in the same way as current UAV drones. However, there is no missile guidance control and the display is very pixelated with only 1-bit color depth. if you ask me, they'll need to vastly improve the graphics if they want to see this proposal get accepted.
I'm writing this from my iTab with Retinal Display which has no local storage aside from protein based RAM, since bandwidth is instantaneous and cheap with Data Teleportation so everyone stores their data on Facebook's Quantum Cloud Units, known as FQCU. In fact quantum computing combined with data teleportation is so fast that we found that time travel is indeed possible, for our data communications at least, which is what I'm doing right now.
America is NOT a democracy, it's a Representative Republic -- the "representation" being concerned with helping the Corporate Persons keep the population of serfs in check.
And this is why I thank god I just up AND DID Web Development and didn't shit my money down the toilet on a CS degree. So yes -- Why are you paying for college?
For most Software Development, the "University of Google" is a far more cost and time effective education.
Of course Edison would have loved modern lightbulbs -- what's not too like? Cleaner more aesthetically pleasing light drawing lower power. Of course they last longer, and don't break as easy so people buy less, but hey -- can't have everything right?
But -- if these lightbulbs had been invented by a competitor such as Tesla -- well, many household pets would have to lay down their lives to fight off this infernal contraption that is a peril and danger to us all.
Frankly, Edison was an asshole. Brilliant -- but an asshole nonetheless.
I dont think there's been a single other player out there who can stand to compete against Microsoft in it's ability to generate huge amounts of press and fanfare in unreleased products that ultimately become unparalleled market failures.
Frankly, Microsoft would do well to take a note from Apple's playbook and SHUT THE FUCK UP about the product until it's release instead of blathering like a spastic child about it's vaporware, leaking feature after feature and allowing the competition to catch up or even surpass it's abilities before the product is even launched.
You seriously don't think this would be a daily affair do you? $38k for a "johnny on the spot" maintenance and upgrades guy is a pretty good pay scale for P/T work. However, this guy's time is valuable and I highly doubt you'll be afforded any private time to converse and pick his brain on the few occasions you do get around him Especially since he wont be able to converse while you do your work since his means of talking is what you'll be repairing.
These can't be TV's -- more likely a new cycle of Cinema Display that has TV-like component inputs for better media integration. Really, why would Apple start selling TVs that are just TVs when brands like Sony can't turn a profit and why at such pathetic form factors as 32" and 37" when you can get a Sony Bravia 40" 3D LCD with built-in internet for $2 less than a 27" Apple Thunderbolt Display? So no -- I highly doubt this "Apple TV-set" is what they think it will be and will more than likely be nothing but a next-gen Thunderbolt/Cinema Display that allows you to jack in your PVR and other set-tup boxes to offer media convergence to your desktop and allow Apple to maintain their price-point on their Desktop Displays, which is presently looking quite overpriced.
I've never understood the thinking of those who assume that planets and life etc must be rare or non-existant elsewhere. I've always subscribed to the Fullerist philosophy that the smaller something natural is, the more common it is in nature. As such, there should be more stars than galaxies, more planets than stars, more rocks than planets, more grains of sand than rocks and so on. It only goes that microbes and advanced like should exist elsewhere -- I don't think the lack of evidence precludes that. In fact, I think anyone who woud say the lack of evidence means that extra-terrestrial life is unlikely is just being foolish. Just as foolish as the kid who start crying when his mom leaves the room because she suddenly ceased to exist.
I never liked the GPL and have always used the MIT or BSD Licenses. Anything that tells me how my code HAS to be shared and distributed is a control mechanism that takes choice away from me the creator. And besides -- the GPL is a bad joke. Those provisions are practically unenforceable. If someone takes your GPLd code and doesn't comply with what Herr Stallman says they must do, what then? Will Herr Stallman strike them down with his mighty beard?
No - it's up to you, the offended coder to enforce Herr Stallman's will upon these "scofflaws" at your own expense. So, unless you are a large company that wants and can afford to enforce the GPL at your own expense, it makes more sense to go with MIT, Apache or BSD.
So, I don't think it has as much to do withe the arcane politics behind the drafting of GPL3 as much as the rise of GitHub and other social sharing services and the fact that GPL is inherently ANTI-SOCIAL and goes against the provisions of social coding with no strings attached which has become the new norm.
In the end, it's social networking and sharing applied to coding that will bring the death of the GPL, a product from the days of obfuscated and highly guarded code drafted in the secured labs of big name corporations who would often take what was shared without even a thought of giving back -- but those days are gone.
When they spend this kind of money and go through this sort of effort to essentially go Nuclear then it is quite clear that iOS/iPhone/iPad is on the way out -- or at least is so severely threatened and Apple has no clue as to what to do for a competitive recourse.
Seem to me that this money could have ben much better spent on R&D in increasing their product line and innovating -- but maybe the innovation at Apple died with the Steveness.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, burn through some of that pork!
Reward your shareholders, and invest in new technology in areas your not already a player. Apple has shown it's quite adept at penetrating new markets and it seems that if money is no object, it can afford to push into new areas and expand it's reach in the areas it is already a player.
But if anything giving back some of this money, investing it in R&D and other risky ventures will help Apple "Stay hungry, Stay foolish".
What's the big deal here? Are they rebranding the Science Fiction as Science Fact?
Will there be cross-overs between the various publications to obfuscate science from fiction?
Or is it just a publisher recognizing that the influence of Science Fiction can help steer public interest in Science, offer ways of explaining recent discoveries in an easy and entertaining manner to the layman and have a hand in helping steer today's youth to careers in scientific related fields or at least to encourage them to be open minded and accepting of science?
To be fair, $7 Million is about one eye drop's worth of money to the US Government.
Samsung and the likes can hawk their Smart-3D crap all they want.
When Apple release the SuperJumbo iPad -- err, iTV in the next year, with multi ARM processors, 1TB HDD Storage and the ability to remote control it with your existing iOS devices and run Apps in PIP-mode while watching movies, your run of the mill Flat panel displays will seem like the commodity display units they are.
Seriously though -- how can the likes of Samsung, Sharp or Sony Compete? Apple can deliver it's own streaming Movie and TV content via iTMS, they offer apps via the App Store, they allow any registered developer to make their own Apps and Games, they have iTunes installed on millions of machines, they have AirTunes that allow multi-room audio streaming, they have AirPort Express which helps facilitate AirTunes, they have Front Row which can turn any Apple Laptop or Desktop into a FullScreen media player. Essentially, you can have an iTV which allows you to Watch TV, stream movies, run apps, purchase new media, surf the web, broadcast music and media to other devices in other rooms all from one unit -- who cares about 3D when you have something that can essentially be a Media Hub and the family computer all in one?
The only market player I could see taking them on would be Google, but they don't have the media distribution channels -- they'd likely have to partner with Amazon since they already have the distribution deals and the infrastructure all set up. But, it would be a viable contender if they did come up with an Android based competitor to iTV that streamed and downloaded music and movies from Amazon and featured the App marketplace for both Google and Amazon.
No matter what though, TV is about to go through a pretty dramatic evolutionary period that will likely see the dumb-terminal relegated to a by-gone era.
Next stop: get rid of the fixed display completely and move it onto touch screen enabled surfaces like walls and windows.
This just shows what a bunch of clueless morons Anonymous is.
They perform a brilliant bit of counter-intel and gained an upper-hand by finding a way to exploit the FBI and eavesdrop on their conversations.
And what do they do with this victory? Do they send the FBI tripping over itself on an internal mole-hunt by going to the media with a tiny bit of this info explained as "information leaked by a source within the FBI?". Do they patiently sit and gather more intel, maybe useful information to help them evade arrest or gather bits of public interest in other cases for later use?
No, they broadcast it to the world with details on how they did it, all but going to the FBI and closing the weakness themselves.
These jerkoffs have shown once and for all that they are just a bunch of egotistical little shits who are indeed just in it for the lulz and "street cred".
I doubt we'll see anything come of Anonymous aside from more LOIC attacks, credit card thefts and web page vandalism.
They've shown all the intelligence and finesse of a group of anarchistic thugs.
What modern Battleships? The US and most Navies hasn't produced a battleship since WWII. They were done in by Aircraft Carriers.
The closest we have to a Battleship now is a Guided Missile Cruiser, which is probably what you are referring to as a "modern Battleship".
And yes -- the forward mounted machine gun on a Ticonderoga Class has nothing on the massive artillery batteries they had mounted on battleships.
But then again, who uses artillery batteries anymore? They are little more than very expensive guided missile targets and don't have nearly the range.
The Executive Branch delegates that to the Attorney General/US DOJ. Also, I see the lack of comment as a good thing, because if they didn't take this matter seriously, they'd have simply stated it had been dismissed out of hand. In this case though, it seems they do take it seriously.
Keep in mind that no Police Investigation aside from those run by the Keystone Cops starts with a public announcement saying they will investigate.
They say they are investigating *after* news outlets like CNN and FOX have reported that a bunch of FBI Agents raided offices and took away records and computers from those offices. Why give Dodd any more opportunity to hide, destroy evidence?
And 2015 shall be 1995 for Apple all over again as iPhones and iPads become an afterthought in a market glutted and dominated by Android appliances.
Apple can exist peddling multi thousand dollar laptops and desktops that will be required to develop apps for the it's dying line of handheld devices.
The are presently reviewing a Space Defense System that consists of a miles long series of defensive shields protecting a rail-mounted missile platform with gaps between the shields creating launch apertures. The missile platform can be operated remotely, much in the same way as current UAV drones. However, there is no missile guidance control and the display is very pixelated with only 1-bit color depth. if you ask me, they'll need to vastly improve the graphics if they want to see this proposal get accepted.
I'm writing this from my iTab with Retinal Display which has no local storage aside from protein based RAM, since bandwidth is instantaneous and cheap with Data Teleportation so everyone stores their data on Facebook's Quantum Cloud Units, known as FQCU. In fact quantum computing combined with data teleportation is so fast that we found that time travel is indeed possible, for our data communications at least, which is what I'm doing right now.
America is NOT a democracy, it's a Representative Republic -- the "representation" being concerned with helping the Corporate Persons keep the population of serfs in check.
These weren't fakes -- they were iPad shaped dreidels
It's common knowledge that California gives out more tax revenue than it gets back from the Feds. /Glad you're gone, and hope you stay gone
Well, you may think you're hot shit going 4G speed -- but you don't have iPhone 4S speed! ;)
It wasn't the doll as much as the "Nuclear Medicine" Playset complete with "Mr. Chemo" microwave oven that put them off.
And this is why I thank god I just up AND DID Web Development and didn't shit my money down the toilet on a CS degree.
So yes -- Why are you paying for college?
For most Software Development, the "University of Google" is a far more cost and time effective education.
Of course Edison would have loved modern lightbulbs -- what's not too like? Cleaner more aesthetically pleasing light drawing lower power. Of course they last longer, and don't break as easy so people buy less, but hey -- can't have everything right?
But -- if these lightbulbs had been invented by a competitor such as Tesla -- well, many household pets would have to lay down their lives to fight off this infernal contraption that is a peril and danger to us all.
Frankly, Edison was an asshole. Brilliant -- but an asshole nonetheless.
I dont think there's been a single other player out there who can stand to compete against Microsoft in it's ability to generate huge amounts of press and fanfare in unreleased products that ultimately become unparalleled market failures.
Frankly, Microsoft would do well to take a note from Apple's playbook and SHUT THE FUCK UP about the product until it's release instead of blathering like a spastic child about it's vaporware, leaking feature after feature and allowing the competition to catch up or even surpass it's abilities before the product is even launched.
Oh c'mon -- reading the comments from the oblivious posters is half the fun!
You seriously don't think this would be a daily affair do you? $38k for a "johnny on the spot" maintenance and upgrades guy is a pretty good pay scale for P/T work.
However, this guy's time is valuable and I highly doubt you'll be afforded any private time to converse and pick his brain on the few occasions you do get around him
Especially since he wont be able to converse while you do your work since his means of talking is what you'll be repairing.
These can't be TV's -- more likely a new cycle of Cinema Display that has TV-like component inputs for better media integration. Really, why would Apple start selling TVs that are just TVs when brands like Sony can't turn a profit and why at such pathetic form factors as 32" and 37" when you can get a Sony Bravia 40" 3D LCD with built-in internet for $2 less than a 27" Apple Thunderbolt Display? So no -- I highly doubt this "Apple TV-set" is what they think it will be and will more than likely be nothing but a next-gen Thunderbolt/Cinema Display that allows you to jack in your PVR and other set-tup boxes to offer media convergence to your desktop and allow Apple to maintain their price-point on their Desktop Displays, which is presently looking quite overpriced.
Buying Senators and paying for legal goon squads to draft legislation for your puppet Politico to pass is hardly arbitrary.
I've never understood the thinking of those who assume that planets and life etc must be rare or non-existant elsewhere.
I've always subscribed to the Fullerist philosophy that the smaller something natural is, the more common it is in nature.
As such, there should be more stars than galaxies, more planets than stars, more rocks than planets, more grains of sand than rocks and so on.
It only goes that microbes and advanced like should exist elsewhere -- I don't think the lack of evidence precludes that. In fact, I think anyone who woud say the lack of evidence means that extra-terrestrial life is unlikely is just being foolish. Just as foolish as the kid who start crying when his mom leaves the room because she suddenly ceased to exist.
I never liked the GPL and have always used the MIT or BSD Licenses. Anything that tells me how my code HAS to be shared and distributed is a control mechanism that takes choice away from me the creator. And besides -- the GPL is a bad joke. Those provisions are practically unenforceable. If someone takes your GPLd code and doesn't comply with what Herr Stallman says they must do, what then? Will Herr Stallman strike them down with his mighty beard?
No - it's up to you, the offended coder to enforce Herr Stallman's will upon these "scofflaws" at your own expense. So, unless you are a large company that wants and can afford to enforce the GPL at your own expense, it makes more sense to go with MIT, Apache or BSD.
So, I don't think it has as much to do withe the arcane politics behind the drafting of GPL3 as much as the rise of GitHub and other social sharing services and the fact that GPL is inherently ANTI-SOCIAL and goes against the provisions of social coding with no strings attached which has become the new norm.
In the end, it's social networking and sharing applied to coding that will bring the death of the GPL, a product from the days of obfuscated and highly guarded code drafted in the secured labs of big name corporations who would often take what was shared without even a thought of giving back -- but those days are gone.
... or at least that's how I read it.
When they spend this kind of money and go through this sort of effort to essentially go Nuclear then it is quite clear that iOS/iPhone/iPad is on the way out -- or at least is so severely threatened and Apple has no clue as to what to do for a competitive recourse.
Seem to me that this money could have ben much better spent on R&D in increasing their product line and innovating -- but maybe the innovation at Apple died with the Steveness.