This suggests the question, is it necessary to have that level of efficiency?
Yes. It takes a huge amount of energy to divert an asteroid, and launching a huge mass to delivery that energy to the asteroid would cost lots of money and take multiple launches of the biggest rockets we have unless you use nukes.
Unfortunately, it's more the other way around. The justification for having a space program has always been the military benefit....
The US space program started out has a civilian program, run by civilian scientists as part of the international geophysical year. Eisenhower went to great pains to avoid the program as being seen as a military one by the soviets because he didn't want them to claim violations of their airspace when satellites flew overhead.
The Space Act that formed NASA clearly stated that it was to be a civilian agency to pursue peaceful exploration of space with primarily educational and scientific goals. The UN space treaty forbids the weaponization of space. (Although W pulled out of this, so it no longer applies to the US).
By the way, because of this the US has two space programs... one is the civilian program run by NASA, the other is a black space program run by the DOD with as big or bigger budget as NASA's. Some people at the DOD want to do all sorts of scary things from space... but those pinky-and-the-brain-esque schemes are separate form NASA.
I saw a presentation by the group behind this report. Using a nuke to divert an asteroid is not a crazy idea. They basically explode the nuke and cause a debris cloud of dust and gravel from the surface of the asteroid that provides the thrust to divert it.
They did very detailed simulations and it is very doubtful that the asteroid would break up like in the sci-fi shows... The parts that see the explosion break up into itty-bitty pieces and flow around the asteroid like a liquid... the interior of the asteroid remains intact. This is true for many different models of asteroid composition.
Schweickart makes the over-the-top claim that the study report is trying to push some secret nukes in space agenda. This is pure conjecture on his part. If he would have put his giant astronaut ego aside and spoke to the people who did the report he would have found out that it was done by people who had a strong aversion to nukes, and that the panel had initially tried to leave out the nuclear option or marginalize it for political reasons. But they were persuaded by the strength of the science in the nuclear advocates' arguments.
I was convinced... and I am a Pugwasher pacifist... and the people I know on the committee who were persuaded are also of the same ilk. But when you look at the analysis, you see that nukes do work. And in terms of energy imparted to the asteroid compared to launch mass, nothing else comes remotely close to the efficiency of nukes (E=mc^2 and all that.)
Yeah nukes are awful things. But so are ICBMs... and ICBMs are the basis for most of the launch vehicles used for peaceful space exploration. Why not beat swords into plowshares and start developing some asteroid-stopping nukes?
unless you have a way of turning your free time into income, that time is worthless.
Hah! Many of us have so little free time b/c of working long hours. I would pay to have more free time if I could. So I pay for OS X, so I don't have to spend what little free time I get being a sysadmin at home.
Ok, I've been working for the gubberment for a good long time and I'd love to work for a despot like Steve jobs. It is not ethical to keep poor performers around just because they are your friends. Doing this penalizes the hard workers who have to pick up the slack. There is nothing wrong with getting rid of the deadwood. Keeping someone in a job because they are your friend or you feel bad for them or whatever is just another form of nepotism... and *that* is not ethical. And when, as in the case of where I work, this is done by spending tax-payer money to keep people employed in spite of their poor performance, that is getting awfully close to the same kind of corruption that plagues government agencies in the third world.
I am sick and tired of people accusing the likes of Jobs of being ethically challenged for the ease with which he fires people. Better to have someone like that at the helm than to suffer at a place run by the peter principle and where seniority trumps performance.
Phoebe was a leading contender as a source for the material for years (although it has recently been ruled out). And it is in a retrograde orbit.
When a moon is far away from the central body, retrograde orbits are stable, and prograde orbits aren't. Pretty much every gas giant has retrograde moons far out.
These moons likely escape and are captured over long period of times. They are probably the same population as the centaur asteroids near Saturn. To know for sure, we need to figure out the composition of these moons and compare them to the composition of the centaurs.
Usually when Apple announces something like this in a special event they get tons of free press describing their new product becuase their events are interesting enough to be news. Just look at the recent iMac announcement and the articles on cnn.com and other places. But now what made the news was this price drop that was uncharacteristic for Apple and how the drop made the early adopters mad and how it must be a sign that their not selling enough iPods. All this and barely a mention of the iPod touch outside of the tech websites like ars....
But C'mon the iPod touch is freakin' cool, and way more newsworthy than the iMac. The Steve really f*cked up by announcing the price drop at the same time as the iPod touch. This $100 rebate is his effort to try an recover from this and hopefully get some positive press.
Yeah, the rebate is good customer relations and preserves the brand... but I think the main benefit is in squashing the 'disgruntaled iPhone people' meme before it got out of control.
I'm not saying this to be critical of his motives, but to admire him for doing a good job protecting shareholder value. As a little-guy shareholder I am really greatful that he works so hard to protect my investment's value even though most of his personal wealth comes from his other business (Disney/Pixar). This rebate is really good (and timely) damage control. Next step: he has to give Pouge and Mossburg free iPod touches:)
if you read the EULA when you activate the phone it mentions that it uses LGPL code and gives the LGPL licence. I think this is for WebKit but it may be for other things too... I just skimmed the EULA because I was ansy to get a chance to play with my new toy. Anyway, I expect Apple to release an ARM version of Webkit shortly (they may have already) and any other LGPL stuff they have ported to the iPhne as well. I doubt there's and straight-out GPL code on the iPhone as Apple seems to avoid distributing GPL code other than by seperate installers. (I'm pretty sure all of OS-X's GPL stuff is in seperate install packages from the proprietary stuff if you look at the DVD). I assume they do that to out of respect and fear for the various GPL purity requirements that make it best to keep proprietary code partitioned from the free-as-in-freedom code.
Apple clearly spent a lot on development of the device and on the software especially... not to mention all of the prime-time ads. I bet it will take a while before those costs are covered and they start raking in the big bucks with the $380 'mark-up'.
I don't have to be within bluetooth range. I can be anywhere with cell coverage and everything stays synchronized. It's the same case with a blackberry or any Windows Mobile device. The iPhone simply lacks this feature. This may change but I doubt it considering RIM had to make their own server platform to allow it work with varying mail environments.
I'm not very big on proprietary systems.... IMAP is nice for keeping mail synced, and Leopard will implement an open standard to sync calendar data over the net. Both will work on the iPhone.
Wifi is a great feature to have but it is no replacement for an SD card. An SD card can be removed from the phone and plugged into a computer when you get to where you are going where the files can be transferred. Relying on Internet access is never a good idea although it is more and more reliable these days on phones. If you're close enough to plug in an SD card, you're close enough for a bluetooth or wifi connection to the computer. You don't need internet for this.
I'm sorry you think that OS X Server is remotely as capable as a SUSE ES deployment or a Windows environment. You're simply wrong. Xen on SUSE is incredibly powerful and allows you to remotely customize the user experience not per computer, but per user. SMS on Windows is the same way. Both offer remote application deployment, compliance monitoring, patch management, custom application management, and are platform agnostic. SMS can manage Linux,Unix, and Windows, no OS X in there for probably obvious reasons. SUSE with Xen will operate under the same platform restrictions because Apple has never had an interest in the advanced management and monitoring capabilities that truly enterprise class environments offer. your post didn't say what you thought OS X was lacking... you just threw in an OS X canard on the end of an iphone post. And, no, OS X doesn't run windows. But OS X server _can_ manage multiple types of systems remotely... and os x systems can be managed from linux remotely. Anyway I'm asking about what business users need on a phone, not what a sysadmin would need on a phone to adminiser machines remotely
I'm sorry you think someone saying Apple is lacking is trolling. The trolling was to throw in an off-topic dig on OS X that could touch off a flamewar and derail the discussion.
Also, I did not say that OS X had binary compatibility with Windows. In fact, I said specifically the opposite adding that if Apple did add it then it would be a force to be reckoned with. I didn't know what you were saying. Anyway, if youre saying you don't like OS X because it doesnt run Windows apps... fine. I don't see the big deal there, or what that has to do with the iphone.
This are lots of free and open-source tools out there that can fill in the gaps but they are no in one or even ten packages so they will not be widely deployed. That has always been the resistence to Linux in the business world because people are afraid of having to go and look for tools which invariably will have problems until they find the one tool that does what they need. Well I work for a place that has been running Unix systems for as long as there's been Unix, and our Sysadmins have no desire to convert to Windows... and have been quite content in a recent conversion from Suns to Linux boxen.
I'm not saying it's impossible to use it for business. Just that it's not very well suited for it. For a year I used my Samsung A900 phone for business, it worked, but my Treo works a hell of a lot better because it was actually designed with business in mind. I'll grant you that the Iphone isn't a good choice for windows sysadmins... what about the rest of the business world? What about people who aren't sysadmins and who don't pick a phone based on what is easiest for their sysadmin? It seems like MS Office is the only thing the iphone is lacking for those people... and I don't think it will ever get MS Office. That was the thought I was trying to either have verified or refuted with my original question.
Could you please explain to me why a business user would use an expensive phone which doesn't include the applications which most businesses are using? I'm trying to figure out what those apps would be. I don't think it would be Excel or Word.... who want's to run those to edit documents or spreadsheets on a teeny screen, I have enough pain doing that on my laptop's screen. Powerpoint I could see... but not really to edit, but to display and take notes on the slides.
In that sense the new venture that has been set up to compete will likely have more success. I wish I could recall off the top of my head who exactly was doing it, but iirc it involved MS and a few other companies. But it will have proper office applications for integrating into a normal corporate environment. If your concept of proper application is MS apps then you've pretty much already made up your mind to only use smartphones running windows. For the engineers I work with the killler apps are: calendar, email, wiki, and ssh. An Os X or Linuc smartphone could do those thing well.
If the iPhone is a hit, it is unlikely to be so with corporate users. It just doesn't yet have the applications to integrate into the standard work environment. If Apple announces some means of dealing with that, then they may yet gain access to business customers, but right now it is unlikely. I guess I'm trying to understand if "standard work environment" is just code for "MS Office"
Last I checked the thing had no mechanism for ActiveSync, so no real-time synchronization with email, calendars, contacts. In my phone I don't have Outlook contacts and regular contacts. you've been able to check one?:) iSync already synchronizes my contacts on my Razr, I see no reason why it wouldn't work with an iPhone, IMAP will take care of email sync. Calendaring is the only thing left... but with the iCal icon in all of the iphone pictures, I gotta think they have something for that too.
I have one place, if I add it to my contacts in Outlook it will appear on my phone almost instantly depending on the time of the day. Alternatively if I add a contact while I'm out in the field it will automatically be in Outlook where it is safely backed up. iSync does this if you just bring your phone into bluetooth range.
Storage on the smart-phones is simple as well, a simple SD card and you can have a good chunk of music, or lots of reference material, or in my case, a password database. SD cards are nice... but Apple could have a different solution for this with wifi.
Emailing while out in the field has become a big app too, from what I'm seeing the iPhone won't hold up real well to texting. Besides the fact that the screen would get dirty I don't know how it would stand up to regular cell phone abuse. How many times have I dropped my Treo? Many, and it's still fine, the phone isn't as pretty as it once was but it's still fully functional. this should be an issue for consumers more than business... most business people aren't out in the field, just in meeting all day. The iphone interface should work fine in a meeting... and be less conspicuous than a laptop.
Lastly, and the biggest reason why the iPhone is not for business. As systems administrator I can't remotely manage and secure the phones for my organization. If a Treo is lost and there are important sensitive documents on the phone I can simply erase everything on it so that any person they may find it on a park bench somewhere will not see that sensitive information. I can do this all wireless and in real-time.
There's no way to know about this until after the iphone is out... and with running OS X, Apple could concievably allow you to ssh into an iPhone or maybe even run remote desktop.... though I doubt they've had time to get such features ready for launch. But I see no reason why they couldn't in a year or so. I also bet the iphone can lock its data from the casual snoop like an ipod can already.
Considering OS X for the desktop still lacks these advanced management, monitoring, and security tools I don't think the phone is going to get it anytime soon. I will admit, the day that Apple does close this whole I imagine their market share will rise much faster. Combine that with binary compatibility with Windows and Apple would have all it needs to become dominant. I don't see it happening though, Apple has always seemed content to be a smaller player in the field of business.
Did you write the above just to troll? OS X Server has had this sort of stuff for years... plus you can easily get ports of most of the Linux utilities as well. I thought this sort of stuff would be common knowledge by now. OS X is a Unix... the shared libraries are weird, but you can still port all of the wonderful FOSS stuff over.
And "Apple" and Windows are not binary compatible, you can just dual boot Windows and OS X on a mac now.
p.s. I'm not a fanboi, just trying to understand the "iPhone bad for business" meme, 'cuz everyone I work with wants to get one for business... but we're kinda unique in not using MS Office much and using mostly Linux stuff instead.
1) No synching with Outlook. 2) No synching with enterprise email services. isn't IMAP enough for this? I've never used an outlook mail server so I don't know what other stuff it does... If you're talking about calendaring stuff I think that is in the works with leopard's iCal in terms of syncing with meeting maker at least.
Do all of the 'bad for business' arguments really boil down to issues with MS proprietary stuff?
I don't understand why business users won't use it... Technical business people at least will want it. Since it runs OS X, it's only a matter of time until we get to run ssh on it... heck maybe even X Windows. And it already runs the web which lets you use wikis and other web-based goodies. The only thing it doesn't have is office... but it does have everything that google generation puts out or will put out just by having a web-browser. And it wouldn't suprise me if it gets iWork shortly too.
Watch the beginning of the video on this link. Mossberg asks him if the debate on frivolous software patents is anywhere on his radar and McCain says "No" in a manner that is very dissmissive of Mossberg's nerd question. I was a McCain supporter before, but after watching this interview he comes off as totally clueless about technology. You'd think he'd get someone to at least brief him before going to this event.
When I was at Purdue, an engineering club was given an office with a big yellow button on the wall. Late one night... figuring it couldn't be connected to anything... and slap-happy from studying late... someone hit the button and took down the whole engineering computing network:)
Have you actually done the math on this or do you simply enjoy being contrarian? Trees don't just cut, transport and process themselves, you need to burn fuel to that end. In addition, you'll be adding to the consumption of the precious carbon-binding fauna so that in the end you'll probably be creating a net efficiency loss instead of saving the environment.
Erring on the side of caution, rather than convenience, strikes me as the more rational choice here.
When trees build themselves out of carbon... where do you think that carbon comes from? The air is the most logical place for most of it... I haven't heard much concern over carbon depleted soil, and I would be very sceptical of someone claiming trees didn't take a lot of carbon out of the atmosphere. When you recycle paper you are reusing paper with carbon that would otherwise end up in a landfill in most cases (and not in the atmosphere) and recycling uses energy that very likely required releasing carbon into the atmophere to make. And it uses more energy to recycle than to process new trees... otherwise recycling would be cheaper than geting raw trees (you pay a lot of money for raw trees, you don't pay much if anything for paper trash) and wouldn't require government subsidies.
It seems to me like the rational choice on the side of caution is not to recycle, put the paper into a landfill and conserve energy. If everyone stopped recycling, they'd have to plant more forests... which would pull even more carbon out of the atmosphere.
Live green... recycle only things that save energy: Aluminum and Glass. Conserve energy and water. Write your government and lobby for more nuclear power....oh, and for once think for yourself and don't let some self-important hippie-wanna-be intice you with their slogan-based feel-good rhetoric. Even if she is really hot.
Greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, and water) are more serious than being able to feel morally superior
The problem is not that there is no-one who finds it interesting enough to write.. the problem is that there isn't enough people who find it interesting - and the result is useful to people who are not interested in writing it. So the people who find this crazy interesting jump at the chance to write it and tell everyone they know what they are doing (who just look at them like they're talking about stamp collecting) and then someone comes along and says "hey, ya know, we can sell this." I'd love to write something like mathematica and give it away for free... I just can't afford the time needed to write it because I got a mortgage to pay (I owe 1.3 gazzillion dollars on shack on a postage stamp sized lot) and I've got kids to feed (about 67 at last count). My boss makes me work every waking hour to get my paycheck... and the lawyers say if I worke on open sourcem they'd own the IP anyway.
So yeah, I know how to write something that would blow the doors off mathematica and kick matlab's ass... but how can I get two years to work on it without a paycheck??
And I'm not alone... that's why there's no FOSS alternative... ok well there's SciPy and it rocks... those people must be independantly wealthy or all live in communes where they grow their own food or something.
Seriously, SciPy rocks. I think it may already be better than matlab... and mathematica is in it's sights.
Damn your eyes!! I wish I could work with the SciPy people:(
The problems with the new Kaiser software are obvious to anyone who's been to Kaiser recently or spoken to a doctor or nurses who work there. Test results disappear, appointments disappear.... sometimes the people on the phone can't schedule appointments at all and tell people to call back later.
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This suggests the question, is it necessary to have that level of efficiency?
Yes. It takes a huge amount of energy to divert an asteroid, and launching a huge mass to delivery that energy to the asteroid would cost lots of money and take multiple launches of the biggest rockets we have unless you use nukes.
Unfortunately, it's more the other way around. The justification for having a space program has always been the military benefit....
The US space program started out has a civilian program, run by civilian scientists as part of the international geophysical year. Eisenhower went to great pains to avoid the program as being seen as a military one by the soviets because he didn't want them to claim violations of their airspace when satellites flew overhead.
The Space Act that formed NASA clearly stated that it was to be a civilian agency to pursue peaceful exploration of space with primarily educational and scientific goals. The UN space treaty forbids the weaponization of space. (Although W pulled out of this, so it no longer applies to the US).
By the way, because of this the US has two space programs... one is the civilian program run by NASA, the other is a black space program run by the DOD with as big or bigger budget as NASA's. Some people at the DOD want to do all sorts of scary things from space... but those pinky-and-the-brain-esque schemes are separate form NASA.
I saw a presentation by the group behind this report. Using a nuke to divert an asteroid is not a crazy idea. They basically explode the nuke and cause a debris cloud of dust and gravel from the surface of the asteroid that provides the thrust to divert it.
They did very detailed simulations and it is very doubtful that the asteroid would break up like in the sci-fi shows... The parts that see the explosion break up into itty-bitty pieces and flow around the asteroid like a liquid... the interior of the asteroid remains intact. This is true for many different models of asteroid composition.
Schweickart makes the over-the-top claim that the study report is trying to push some secret nukes in space agenda. This is pure conjecture on his part. If he would have put his giant astronaut ego aside and spoke to the people who did the report he would have found out that it was done by people who had a strong aversion to nukes, and that the panel had initially tried to leave out the nuclear option or marginalize it for political reasons. But they were persuaded by the strength of the science in the nuclear advocates' arguments.
I was convinced... and I am a Pugwasher pacifist... and the people I know on the committee who were persuaded are also of the same ilk. But when you look at the analysis, you see that nukes do work. And in terms of energy imparted to the asteroid compared to launch mass, nothing else comes remotely close to the efficiency of nukes (E=mc^2 and all that.)
Yeah nukes are awful things. But so are ICBMs... and ICBMs are the basis for most of the launch vehicles used for peaceful space exploration. Why not beat swords into plowshares and start developing some asteroid-stopping nukes?
unless you have a way of turning your free time into income, that time is worthless.
Hah! Many of us have so little free time b/c of working long hours. I would pay to have more free time if I could. So I pay for OS X, so I don't have to spend what little free time I get being a sysadmin at home.
Ok, I've been working for the gubberment for a good long time and I'd love to work for a despot like Steve jobs. It is not ethical to keep poor performers around just because they are your friends. Doing this penalizes the hard workers who have to pick up the slack. There is nothing wrong with getting rid of the deadwood. Keeping someone in a job because they are your friend or you feel bad for them or whatever is just another form of nepotism... and *that* is not ethical. And when, as in the case of where I work, this is done by spending tax-payer money to keep people employed in spite of their poor performance, that is getting awfully close to the same kind of corruption that plagues government agencies in the third world.
I am sick and tired of people accusing the likes of Jobs of being ethically challenged for the ease with which he fires people. Better to have someone like that at the helm than to suffer at a place run by the peter principle and where seniority trumps performance.
Go Here: http://developer.apple.com/bugreporter/ And File a bug. And They'll fix it.
Phoebe was a leading contender as a source for the material for years (although it has recently been ruled out). And it is in a retrograde orbit.
When a moon is far away from the central body, retrograde orbits are stable, and prograde orbits aren't. Pretty much every gas giant has retrograde moons far out.
These moons likely escape and are captured over long period of times. They are probably the same population as the centaur asteroids near Saturn. To know for sure, we need to figure out the composition of these moons and compare them to the composition of the centaurs.
Usually when Apple announces something like this in a special event they get tons of free press describing their new product becuase their events are interesting enough to be news. Just look at the recent iMac announcement and the articles on cnn.com and other places. But now what made the news was this price drop that was uncharacteristic for Apple and how the drop made the early adopters mad and how it must be a sign that their not selling enough iPods. All this and barely a mention of the iPod touch outside of the tech websites like ars....
:)
But C'mon the iPod touch is freakin' cool, and way more newsworthy than the iMac. The Steve really f*cked up by announcing the price drop at the same time as the iPod touch. This $100 rebate is his effort to try an recover from this and hopefully get some positive press.
Yeah, the rebate is good customer relations and preserves the brand... but I think the main benefit is in squashing the 'disgruntaled iPhone people' meme before it got out of control.
I'm not saying this to be critical of his motives, but to admire him for doing a good job protecting shareholder value. As a little-guy shareholder I am really greatful that he works so hard to protect my investment's value even though most of his personal wealth comes from his other business (Disney/Pixar). This rebate is really good (and timely) damage control. Next step: he has to give Pouge and Mossburg free iPod touches
I bet Apple plans on keeping VOIP on the IPodtouch as a threat to keep ATT in line on the iPhone.
if you read the EULA when you activate the phone it mentions that it uses LGPL code and gives the LGPL licence. I think this is for WebKit but it may be for other things too... I just skimmed the EULA because I was ansy to get a chance to play with my new toy. Anyway, I expect Apple to release an ARM version of Webkit shortly (they may have already) and any other LGPL stuff they have ported to the iPhne as well. I doubt there's and straight-out GPL code on the iPhone as Apple seems to avoid distributing GPL code other than by seperate installers. (I'm pretty sure all of OS-X's GPL stuff is in seperate install packages from the proprietary stuff if you look at the DVD). I assume they do that to out of respect and fear for the various GPL purity requirements that make it best to keep proprietary code partitioned from the free-as-in-freedom code.
Apple clearly spent a lot on development of the device and on the software especially... not to mention all of the prime-time ads. I bet it will take a while before those costs are covered and they start raking in the big bucks with the $380 'mark-up'.
he looks like Eugene Levy
Always quit while you're #1 - from TFA: "Semel ranked No. 1
How much of that was royalties from the American Pie movies?on The Associated Press' survey of 2006 executive compensation
with $71.7 million (U.S.)"
The article didn't have a larger image because then you'd see that the puddles aren't on the crater floor, but actually on a
huge slope
Read more in this forum
I don't have to be within bluetooth range. I can be anywhere with cell coverage and everything stays synchronized. It's the same case with a blackberry or any Windows Mobile device. The iPhone simply lacks this feature. This may change but I doubt it considering RIM had to make their own server platform to allow it work with varying mail environments.
I'm not very big on proprietary systems.... IMAP is nice for keeping mail synced, and Leopard will implement an open standard to sync calendar data over the net. Both will work on the iPhone. Wifi is a great feature to have but it is no replacement for an SD card. An SD card can be removed from the phone and plugged into a computer when you get to where you are going where the files can be transferred. Relying on Internet access is never a good idea although it is more and more reliable these days on phones. If you're close enough to plug in an SD card, you're close enough for a bluetooth or wifi connection to the computer. You don't need internet for this. I'm sorry you think that OS X Server is remotely as capable as a SUSE ES deployment or a Windows environment. You're simply wrong. Xen on SUSE is incredibly powerful and allows you to remotely customize the user experience not per computer, but per user. SMS on Windows is the same way. Both offer remote application deployment, compliance monitoring, patch management, custom application management, and are platform agnostic. SMS can manage Linux,Unix, and Windows, no OS X in there for probably obvious reasons. SUSE with Xen will operate under the same platform restrictions because Apple has never had an interest in the advanced management and monitoring capabilities that truly enterprise class environments offer. your post didn't say what you thought OS X was lacking... you just threw in an OS X canard on the end of an iphone post. And, no, OS X doesn't run windows.But OS X server _can_ manage multiple types of systems remotely... and os x systems can be managed from linux remotely. Anyway I'm asking about what business users need on a phone, not what a sysadmin would need on a phone to adminiser machines remotely I'm sorry you think someone saying Apple is lacking is trolling. The trolling was to throw in an off-topic dig on OS X that could touch off a flamewar and derail the discussion. Also, I did not say that OS X had binary compatibility with Windows. In fact, I said specifically the opposite adding that if Apple did add it then it would be a force to be reckoned with. I didn't know what you were saying. Anyway, if youre saying you don't like OS X because it doesnt run Windows apps... fine. I don't see the big deal there, or what that has to do with the iphone. This are lots of free and open-source tools out there that can fill in the gaps but they are no in one or even ten packages so they will not be widely deployed. That has always been the resistence to Linux in the business world because people are afraid of having to go and look for tools which invariably will have problems until they find the one tool that does what they need. Well I work for a place that has been running Unix systems for as long as there's been Unix, and our Sysadmins have no desire to convert to Windows... and have been quite content in a recent conversion from Suns to Linux boxen. I'm not saying it's impossible to use it for business. Just that it's not very well suited for it. For a year I used my Samsung A900 phone for business, it worked, but my Treo works a hell of a lot better because it was actually designed with business in mind. I'll grant you that the Iphone isn't a good choice for windows sysadmins... what about the rest of the business world? What about people who aren't sysadmins and who don't pick a phone based on what is easiest for their sysadmin? It seems like MS Office is the only thing the iphone is lacking for those people... and I don't think it will ever get MS Office. That was the thought I was trying to either have verified or refuted with my original question.
Lastly, and the biggest reason why the iPhone is not for business. As systems administrator I can't remotely manage and secure the phones for my organization. If a Treo is lost and there are important sensitive documents on the phone I can simply erase everything on it so that any person they may find it on a park bench somewhere will not see that sensitive information. I can do this all wireless and in real-time.
There's no way to know about this until after the iphone is out... and with running OS X, Apple could concievably allow you to ssh into an iPhone or maybe even run remote desktop.... though I doubt they've had time to get such features ready for launch. But I see no reason why they couldn't in a year or so. I also bet the iphone can lock its data from the casual snoop like an ipod can already.Considering OS X for the desktop still lacks these advanced management, monitoring, and security tools I don't think the phone is going to get it anytime soon. I will admit, the day that Apple does close this whole I imagine their market share will rise much faster. Combine that with binary compatibility with Windows and Apple would have all it needs to become dominant. I don't see it happening though, Apple has always seemed content to be a smaller player in the field of business.
Did you write the above just to troll? OS X Server has had this sort of stuff for years... plus you can easily get ports of most of the Linux utilities as well. I thought this sort of stuff would be common knowledge by now. OS X is a Unix... the shared libraries are weird, but you can still port all of the wonderful FOSS stuff over.And "Apple" and Windows are not binary compatible, you can just dual boot Windows and OS X on a mac now.
p.s. I'm not a fanboi, just trying to understand the "iPhone bad for business" meme, 'cuz everyone I work with wants to get one for business... but we're kinda unique in not using MS Office much and using mostly Linux stuff instead.
Do all of the 'bad for business' arguments really boil down to issues with MS proprietary stuff?
I don't understand why business users won't use it... Technical business people at least will want it. Since it runs OS X, it's only a matter of time until we get to run ssh on it... heck maybe even X Windows. And it already runs the web which lets you use wikis and other web-based goodies. The only thing it doesn't have is office... but it does have everything that google generation puts out or will put out just by having a web-browser. And it wouldn't suprise me if it gets iWork shortly too.
Watch the beginning of the video on this link. Mossberg asks him if the debate on frivolous software patents is anywhere on his radar and McCain says "No" in a manner that is very dissmissive of Mossberg's nerd question. I was a McCain supporter before, but after watching this interview he comes off as totally clueless about technology. You'd think he'd get someone to at least brief him before going to this event.
When I was at Purdue, an engineering club was given an office with a big yellow button on the wall. Late one night... figuring it couldn't be connected to anything... and slap-happy from studying late... someone hit the button and took down the whole engineering computing network :)
Why assume everyone knows your acronyms. To me RDF means "Reality Distortion Field". Zeesh, 7 billion triples or whatever.
When trees build themselves out of carbon... where do you think that carbon comes from? The air is the most logical place for most of it... I haven't heard much concern over carbon depleted soil, and I would be very sceptical of someone claiming trees didn't take a lot of carbon out of the atmosphere. When you recycle paper you are reusing paper with carbon that would otherwise end up in a landfill in most cases (and not in the atmosphere) and recycling uses energy that very likely required releasing carbon into the atmophere to make. And it uses more energy to recycle than to process new trees... otherwise recycling would be cheaper than geting raw trees (you pay a lot of money for raw trees, you don't pay much if anything for paper trash) and wouldn't require government subsidies.Erring on the side of caution, rather than convenience, strikes me as the more rational choice here.
It seems to me like the rational choice on the side of caution is not to recycle, put the paper into a landfill and conserve energy. If everyone stopped recycling, they'd have to plant more forests... which would pull even more carbon out of the atmosphere.
Live green... recycle only things that save energy: Aluminum and Glass. Conserve energy and water. Write your government and lobby for more nuclear power.
Greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, and water) are more serious than being able to feel morally superior
So yeah, I know how to write something that would blow the doors off mathematica and kick matlab's ass... but how can I get two years to work on it without a paycheck??
And I'm not alone... that's why there's no FOSS alternative... ok well there's SciPy and it rocks... those people must be independantly wealthy or all live in communes where they grow their own food or something.
Seriously, SciPy rocks. I think it may already be better than matlab... and mathematica is in it's sights.
Damn your eyes!! I wish I could work with the SciPy people
The problems with the new Kaiser software are obvious to anyone who's been to Kaiser recently or spoken to a doctor or nurses who work there. Test results disappear, appointments disappear.... sometimes the people on the phone can't schedule appointments at all and tell people to call back later.
The LAPD is already trying to use UAV's in Los Angeles. The only thing holding them up is a squabble with the FAA.
n ded-disciplinary-action-possible/
http://www.engadget.com/2006/06/22/l-a-drone-grou