Pirates was Johnny Depp being allowed to do whatever he wanted to (==simply brilliant). Cut him out and you get a piece-of-crap typical-disney BS "family" movie. Johnny Depp alone made this film good.
As for H2G2 - do not expect anything. In fact, a good preparation would be to watch all recent Disney films (sans Pixar). Expect Free Willy 2 in space. The problem with Disney is at the very top and as long as that doesn't change, the outcome won't change.
...by far most of the wealth in this world is created by people
This is, unfortunately, a false statement. By far most of the wealth in this world is inherited. You were born (or immigrated to - it doesn't matter) in a rich country, a western country. Others are born in a poor country.
You might argue that this is because our ancestors were so smart. I think it's for more complex historical reasons, neatly summed up in a great book, Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.
The economic climate was designed to be (and lucky enough to be) the most conducive to economic growth
The wealth-generating processes date back thousands and (as is pointed out in the book) tens of thousands of years. Design of economic climate, a rather recent invention, has nothing to do with it.
The basic question is this: Why did Europeans invade America, why was it not the other way around? The answer is complex, but it basically comes down to having natural resources (such as farmland, plants that are suitable for farming, and animals suitable for farming).
Through a combination of available resources (farm animals and farmable crop) and pure neccessity, Europeans became farmers. Farming makes it possible for there to be non-food-gathering professions such as scientists.
"if you want speed, use the 32-bit version of the binaries, because otherwise the computer physically has to move twice as much data around for each operation it does."
if that was true, 16 bit would be even faster than 32. this is not the way electron shuffling works.
i think it's more a question of standardization: the entire PC world has been sworn in on 32 bit, and has optimized the last little bottleneck to perform best on 32 bit data (buses, registers, etc). throughout the entire machine, but probably most notably in memory subsystems...
there are always specialized apps which will benefit from 64/32/16 bit operations, but for the majority of apps, the memory optimizations will be the only factor.
I don't think it would be wise to bet such a multi-ten-billion mission on a whacko like that.
keep in mind that they would get to choose from ~10M whackos who volunteer for that mission. and they would find at least several seriously smart scientists amongst them.
what's disturbing to me is the social aspect. 4 people with no option to go anywhere, and far removed from society. i presume they would have to be 2 couples, but even then: they would all go crazy.
it would be like an endless series of Survivor, where no one can get off, and everybody is on TV all the time.
i think that would go bad very fast. especially if economic hard times hit, and we can't send anybody else up there for the next 20 years.
The article states that "iPhoto takes your pictures and stores them in a proprietary format". This is not true.
iPhoto manages the files in ~/Pictures/iPhoto/... it copies new images there (whether you import them from HD or camera) and arranges them in folders (/year/month/...). similar to iTunes. it doesn't delete anything on import. the images are kept in their original format.
It is an important part of Dell's business strategy to be the Lapdog for both Microsoft and Intel. People should know this by now. It works well for Dell.
The Microsoft statement, on the other hand, is impressively paranoid and Orwellian at the same time. Just another sign that this company is on its way down. I wonder what kind of friend Dell will be when Microsoft is weak.
"Wiretaps for that year cost taxpayers $69.5 million, and approximately 80 per cent were related to drug investigations."
we need to keep in mind that the total cost of the "war on drugs" is way, way higher than that. it goes in the billions of dollars, and that without counting all the $ that goes to the mafia / drug cartels for providing their services.
i would go so far as to call this insanity. we have a lot of drug-related crime on all levels, from petty thieves to small dealers to entire drug cartels. we spend billions fighting drugs on all these levels.
it would be wiser to instead spent on the order of _millions_, e.g. a thousand times less, for drug treatment centers, for education, for how-to-use-it-safely-if-you-must guides, e.g. deal with the societal problems caused by drugs the soft way, and at the same time control the drug trade by monopolizing drug sales (of _all_ kinds). the state monopoly ensures that there is no advertising for drugs, and probably has enough income to pay for treatment centers etc. it is important that this monopoly does not proliferate drugs - it must be set up in a way that there is no business interest in getting more people hooked. therefore, it can only be done by the federal government. it's a big undertaking. but the benefits would be enormous:
- less people in prison (80% or so of imprisoned people are there because of drug related crimes) - NO mafia and drug cartels. these businesses cannot compete with a monopoly on price. - NO petty drug crime as drugs would not be insanely expensive anymore. you want to f*** yourself up with heroin? go for it. but you will get brochures and doctors with that, and eventually a big hospital bill... there is no cheating nature.
there seems to be an implicit fear that as soon as drugs are easy to get the entire nation will turn into stoner-zombies. i think this is completely unwarranted. look no further than places where drugs can be purchased freely today, e.g. Amsterdam. natives there don't even visit the coffeshops.
[disclaimer: i don't use drugs except alcohol and chocolate. my personal benefit from this plan would be limited to less crime and seeing my tax money go somewhere it does more good than just locking people up in jail]
...claiming the existence of such absurd concepts as "alternative scientific truths". What they miss is that science is empirical, and therefore deals with observed characteristics of the real world (i.e., "facts").
don't confuse truth with facts or observation of facts... the truth is in the eye of the observer.
since there are many alternative observers, there are many alternative truths. and that's a fact;)
Then you have not seen my Java apps. Everything i made in the last 12 months or so has been indistinguishable from native interfaces... I have been doing client app programming for the last 6 years. Java has come a long way since then. Sometime in 2002, the Java GUI was not slow anymore.
The factors:
1 - fast-enough machines (response time 1/10 second is not noticable - no one cares if that is 10x slower than native at that point. you can't see it.) 2 - Improvements to Swing. 1.4 is the first version of Swing which has hardware acceleration built-in, thereby putting it on par with native win apps (native apps would be terribly slow without HWaccel, too - just turn it off in your graphics card settings to see how) 3 - and, to a certain extent, enough memory in machines. Java is a memory hog (even a small client app uses 20M...). But that doesn't matter if your machine has 256M.
You can say Swing is still overkill and over-engineered, and the AWT is no beauty, either. All true. Only, at this point, it doesn't matter. The "perceived suggishness"-barrier has been passed and left behind for good.
If your Java GUI is sluggish in 2004, you have only yourself to blame.
"Actually, those countries already have compatible passports which contain most/all of the information that this system captures anyway, so it isn't that big of a deal."
That is a false statement.
1 - There are no fingerprints on record for my passport (Austria). 2 - My picture is not stored in any database, either. The authorities have it on paper but it's not likely that it is going to be scanned in any time soon (would be a direct breach of national privacy laws).
Here is what i think: They make some lame excuses as to why europeans are excempt because they simply cannot say "Dude, those europeans never overstay their visas and they have no muslim extremists either. Besides, we need _some_ kind of ally and don't want to piss them off more than they already are". The diplomatic approach is to lie and say Europeans are already being fingerprinted and scanned at home.
Same with the immigration at the airport: They "randomly" pick people for interviews - namely, ALL arabs and arab-looking people, and some random white/asian people to avoid looking like racists.
The fingerprinting system may or may not prevent terrorist attacks - it's really impossible to say. In a way, it makes sense to get the visa system clean first (or at least try to clean up this horrible mess).
But what has apparently be overlooked by American authorities / officials is the psychological impact. It really pisses people off. Even here in europe.
I have dealt with the US immigrations authorities a lot (i was studying there) and it's hard to describe the feeling when you are at the receiving end of it. Maybe prison is comparable. You talk to people behind bullet-proof glass, watched by marines with M16s, go through security scans like at the airport, the place is filled with posters that show handcuffed people who broke some immigration law (implying: YOU could be one of them), and, what's worst, the immigration officers do not believe a single word you say - regardless of what it is they always suspect some kind of scam. Even the holy pope himsef would wonder if he had done something illegal. And that's in Europe! Other places are probably even worse.
Fingerprinting and taking pictures is not improving this situation.
You reap what you sow. And american immigration sows distrust and suspicion. In order to win peace in the world, the USA must win the hearts and minds of people. As it is, America is doing the opposite, most visibly at its outposts all over the world. The free world, looking like a prison or fortress...
I am not against checks, but there has got to be a way to make this humane, and to remove this aura of complete and utter paranoia. (European newspapers were reporting of "snipers on roofs and marines in attack-helicopters on new year's even in NY... )
I hear this a lot and i though the same thing: Why on earth did they not introduce something for $149? We all want a cheap iPod. Obviously.
It is safe to assume that this is obvious to Apple, too. The logical conclusion is that there is something about the product that keeps Apple from selling it for cheap. Here are just some things that come to mind:
1) It's not technically possible. Those mini-HDs are brand new, and there was only enough time to test the 4G versions. Mind you this is a consumer product, and must work flawlessly (unlike computers).
2) Apple cannot possibly make enough to satisfy demand anyway - they have had production problems in the past. So make them expensive now and increase profits and cheap later - people love price cuts.
3) It's always possible to intro the 2G / $100 version later on. Unless there is serious competition (e.g. Sony or similar) the price will be closer to $149 though.
Finally, this is a ground breaking product in terms of size / capacity, so to expect it to come for really cheap is unrealistic. In addition, the production process for a completely new product is tricky to pull off at a high quality level. That's not to be underestimated. Apple / iPod has an extremely good reputation so they have basically no room for error - the press would tear them apart immediately.
The key observation is that, in most things in life, the dynamic range between average quality and the best quality is, at most, two-to-one. For example, if you were in New York and compared the best taxi to an average taxi, you might get there 20 percent faster. In terms of computers, the best PC is perhaps 30 percent better than the average PC. There is not that much difference in magnitude. Rarely you find a difference of two-to-one. Pick anything.
But, in the field that I was interested in -- originally, hardware design -- I noticed that the dynamic range between what an average person could accomplish and what the best person could accomplish was 50 or 100 to 1. Given that, you're well advised to go after the cream of the cream. That's what we've done. You can then build a team that pursues the A+ players. A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players. That's what I've tried to do.
We all fall for the scam. We follow. We are lemmings. We cannot question The Standard. It's god-made. No one questions The Standard. We know - we fall for the same pyramid scheme. Over and over again. But we can't help it. Maybe we hope for mercy. They couldn't -possibly- push us out of the business after we build it up. Could they? Could they? Noooo.. That would be too evil. Even for them. No way. No way.
What's the outcome if you use WMA - or any other Microsoft-owned standard?
Two possibilities: - If your business model (heavily dependent on WMA) is a big success, M$ will jump into the game and kick you out by leveraging its control over the standard. Your devices become incompatible. Strange errors creep in. FUD spreads. You are out.
- If you lose money or break even, M$ will stay out of it. Great.
Bottom line: You lose.
Why they do it - i can't comprehend.
You are aware you are at the mercy of one of the most merciless companies ever known? Oh you are, ok.
we want it... we want the shiny thing... yess yess..
1- The Hobbit is not a children's classic. Rather, it is the first part in a great story. It is also a great story in itself. And it is suitable for children. But it is not "children-only".
2- How is "The Hobbit" more about imagination than LOTR? I am not sure it's about "imagination" at all, more or less than any book.
3- How, exactly, do films "sqash" the imagination of kids? That's certainly news to me. The kids i know all have a lot of imagination (actually, that's an understatement: they have heaps and bounds of it). And they watch a lot of movies. I think if it squashes anyones imagination, it would be the imagination of adults.
I can understand that your concern (will it sqash or somehow taint *your* great memories of the hobbit? - no, it won't, don't worry)). But it's a mistake to project this onto others, least of all kids.
You are missing the point: It's not about book vs. film. Why compare the two? Where is the law of nature that says you can have either, or?
If i had to choose between my most favorite book (LOTR) and my most favorite movie (LOTR), i would pick the book. Luckily for me i don't have to.
In addition, the original poster somehow confused the choices the little girl has, so i want to spell them out here. These are her choices:
[] she sees the movie [] she doesn't read the book
These are the choices 99% of children face. If anything, seeing the movie (and getting the DVD) will make it _a whole lot_ more likely she reads the book, too. That's a fact. And LOTR is not a must-read for little kids by any means. 1000 pages of old-english inspired writing does not the perfect kid's book make.
The bottom line is: If you are promoting books, you make a big mistake in discouraging films. You should do anything but.
Of course, IMHO, you should not promote "books" in the first place. The question is always "books as opposed to _what_"? There are a lot of other worhwhile things in life...
There is not a single permanent disposal site world-wide. no one can guarantee the safety. the U.S. government even has a website on _just this problem_. Ready-made dirty bombs are driven in trucks all over the country. GREAT IDEA.
I'd also hate to see governments, corporations, or anyone else making decisions based on computing philosophy instead of technical need and justification. (Some might argue that the first is the second, of course.)
any technological decision is based on everything else in this world, including politics, sociology, and (computing or not) philosophy.
simplest example in the china-linux case: how likely is it that M$ will eventually screw over the chinese government? how does this likelihood rise with the degree of dependence on M$ products?
is that a technical question? it should be since the total cost of ownership is directly affected. the computing "philosophy" open source directly affects total cost of ownership.
i am pretty sure they know that. i am also pretty sure M$ would offer china the same $50 / seat deal if asked. i just don't think they were asked.
china will not make the mistake to be dependent on M$... and then keep paying and paying...
difference between china and other governments? long term vision. china thinks in decades, others in 4-year terms.
if you take the total cost of software over 2 years, M$ may be cheaper. in fact, M$ _can_ always be cheaper, depending on how low they will go with the per seat license.
but if you take the total cost over 10 or 20 years, M$ cannot and will not be cheaper. in that time frame, china can train an army of linux admins which can take over all support in the country or even continue development on the platform. at chinese prices. under chinese control.
in fact, i would not be surprised if they planned just that.
Symbian is not independent - it's just "supported" by a range of mobile companies. This would be good, except that Nokia and SonyEricsson are the only ones in this alliance who openly oppose M$'s plans to take over the phone OS market.
A takeover of Symbian wouldn't really help Nokia in this regard. Since they know that, the only good reason would be to grab the shares from uninterested Psion, and then open it up for all to use.
The sooner the phone OS market goes to open source, the safer for the anti-M$ forces in the industry - be that an opened-up Symbian or embedded linux... if there was a stable linux based phone OS there would be no stopping it.
As it is, the industry is held back - and might eventually just give up all control to M$ - by infighting, jealousy, and distrust.
instead of ranting on and on about how stupid it is to own an SUV, would it not be much SMARTER to instead ask why people DO buy them? it's not so hard, come on.
- you are higher up, so you see more and you are safer for that. a LOT safer. and don't come to me crying "but if everybody had one blablabla...". everybody doesn't have one. i think this is the main, prime, reason for everyone to buy a SUV. - you can visit your aunt in the mountains. you might never do it, but you _can_. there is value in that. - you can drive through the snow AND the traffic cops in the sierras don't make you put on chains in freezing cold weather. that alone is super-convenient. (i don't get ppl who buy 2WD SUVs either:) ) - if you bang into something, there is no big damage to the car. for some reason, other cars tend to be built to collapse as much as possible even on small impacts - so repair costs are high.
and there is some other reasons i don't subscribe to but there you go: - status and fashion. that's what the entire car industry is all about. beauty, here, is in the eye of the beholder. fashion is part of that. - gas is F****** cheap in the US so gasoline cost is not a factor.
and, hey, despite all that i don't have an SUV.
uh, and i am a big fan of minivans, too. in fact, the utility of other cars simply cannot match the "box on wheels". but for some reason, it's hard to get ruggedized and 4WD versions of these.
I agree, i have seen people build in the valley of fire near Los Angeles (where wild fires hit basically every couple of years, even before the homes were built) and on muddy slopes in the santa cruz mountains... then they are surprised they are get swept away with the next heavy rains.
On fire control, i have seen a primitive yet incredibly effective way of doing that: farmers in the mountains of northern thailand burn down the mountain pretty much constantly during the dry season.
There are fires on the mountain sides every night, so i asked some locals: isn't that dangerous? they told me they _never_ have fires there. fires destroying property, that is. They don't even have a fire station. Not needed.
All the underbrush (and there is plenty in this climate) gets burned away, the big trees survive (even the smaller ones, actually). And they NEVER have a fire problem.
Now, these are farmers from remote regions of thailand.. not rocket scientists, for chrissake.
I am now convinced that the best way to go for our forest services would be to go there, to be humble, to look at that, and to improve this with modern technology. to _build_ on it.
I know there are controlled fires in california.. But for one reason or another they don't work so well. just to look at how people deal with that in another country (and have been for hundreds of years) would be advisable.
They also have an interesting way of putting out fires: Instead of, say, pouring a bucket of water on the fire, they take a handful and sprinkle it over the flames. repeatedly. I have seen them put out 6 foot flames in _seconds_. Pretty amazing.
Slashdot Mirror
Pirates was Johnny Depp being allowed to do whatever he wanted to (==simply brilliant). Cut him out and you get a piece-of-crap typical-disney BS "family" movie. Johnny Depp alone made this film good.
As for H2G2 - do not expect anything. In fact, a good preparation would be to watch all recent Disney films (sans Pixar). Expect Free Willy 2 in space. The problem with Disney is at the very top and as long as that doesn't change, the outcome won't change.
ACK. the first thing i do is touch the clothes to see if they feel nice. no chance a computer can do that.
...by far most of the wealth in this world is created by people
This is, unfortunately, a false statement. By far most of the wealth in this world is inherited. You were born (or immigrated to - it doesn't matter) in a rich country, a western country. Others are born in a poor country.
You might argue that this is because our ancestors were so smart. I think it's for more complex historical reasons, neatly summed up in a great book, Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.
The economic climate was designed to be (and lucky enough to be) the most conducive to economic growth
The wealth-generating processes date back thousands and (as is pointed out in the book) tens of thousands of years. Design of economic climate, a rather recent invention, has nothing to do with it.
The basic question is this: Why did Europeans invade America, why was it not the other way around? The answer is complex, but it basically comes down to having natural resources (such as farmland, plants that are suitable for farming, and animals suitable for farming).
Through a combination of available resources (farm animals and farmable crop) and pure neccessity, Europeans became farmers. Farming makes it possible for there to be non-food-gathering professions such as scientists.
Read the book. It will open your mind.
"if you want speed, use the 32-bit version of the binaries, because otherwise the computer physically has to move twice as much data around for each operation it does."
if that was true, 16 bit would be even faster than 32. this is not the way electron shuffling works.
i think it's more a question of standardization: the entire PC world has been sworn in on 32 bit, and has optimized the last little bottleneck to perform best on 32 bit data (buses, registers, etc). throughout the entire machine, but probably most notably in memory subsystems...
there are always specialized apps which will benefit from 64/32/16 bit operations, but for the majority of apps, the memory optimizations will be the only factor.
I don't think it would be wise to bet such a multi-ten-billion mission on a whacko like that.
keep in mind that they would get to choose from ~10M whackos who volunteer for that mission. and they would find at least several seriously smart scientists amongst them.
what's disturbing to me is the social aspect. 4 people with no option to go anywhere, and far removed from society. i presume they would have to be 2 couples, but even then: they would all go crazy.
it would be like an endless series of Survivor, where no one can get off, and everybody is on TV all the time.
i think that would go bad very fast. especially if economic hard times hit, and we can't send anybody else up there for the next 20 years.
The article states that "iPhoto takes your pictures and stores them in a proprietary format". This is not true.
/year/month/...). similar to iTunes. it doesn't delete anything on import. the images are kept in their original format.
iPhoto manages the files in ~/Pictures/iPhoto/... it copies new images there (whether you import them from HD or camera) and arranges them in folders (
It is an important part of Dell's business strategy to be the Lapdog for both Microsoft and Intel. People should know this by now. It works well for Dell.
The Microsoft statement, on the other hand, is impressively paranoid and Orwellian at the same time. Just another sign that this company is on its way down. I wonder what kind of friend Dell will be when Microsoft is weak.
"Wiretaps for that year cost taxpayers $69.5 million, and approximately 80 per cent were related to drug investigations."
we need to keep in mind that the total cost of the "war on drugs" is way, way higher than that. it goes in the billions of dollars, and that without counting all the $ that goes to the mafia / drug cartels for providing their services.
i would go so far as to call this insanity. we have a lot of drug-related crime on all levels, from petty thieves to small dealers to entire drug cartels. we spend billions fighting drugs on all these levels.
it would be wiser to instead spent on the order of _millions_, e.g. a thousand times less, for drug treatment centers, for education, for how-to-use-it-safely-if-you-must guides, e.g. deal with the societal problems caused by drugs the soft way, and at the same time control the drug trade by monopolizing drug sales (of _all_ kinds). the state monopoly ensures that there is no advertising for drugs, and probably has enough income to pay for treatment centers etc. it is important that this monopoly does not proliferate drugs - it must be set up in a way that there is no business interest in getting more people hooked. therefore, it can only be done by the federal government. it's a big undertaking. but the benefits would be enormous:
- less people in prison (80% or so of imprisoned people are there because of drug related crimes)
- NO mafia and drug cartels. these businesses cannot compete with a monopoly on price.
- NO petty drug crime as drugs would not be insanely expensive anymore. you want to f*** yourself up with heroin? go for it. but you will get brochures and doctors with that, and eventually a big hospital bill... there is no cheating nature.
there seems to be an implicit fear that as soon as drugs are easy to get the entire nation will turn into stoner-zombies. i think this is completely unwarranted. look no further than places where drugs can be purchased freely today, e.g. Amsterdam. natives there don't even visit the coffeshops.
[disclaimer: i don't use drugs except alcohol and chocolate. my personal benefit from this plan would be limited to less crime and seeing my tax money go somewhere it does more good than just locking people up in jail]
...claiming the existence of such absurd concepts as "alternative scientific truths". What they miss is that science is empirical, and therefore deals with observed characteristics of the real world (i.e., "facts").
;)
don't confuse truth with facts or observation of facts... the truth is in the eye of the observer.
since there are many alternative observers, there are many alternative truths. and that's a fact
Then you have not seen my Java apps. Everything i made in the last 12 months or so has been indistinguishable from native interfaces... I have been doing client app programming for the last 6 years. Java has come a long way since then. Sometime in 2002, the Java GUI was not slow anymore.
The factors:
1 - fast-enough machines (response time 1/10 second is not noticable - no one cares if that is 10x slower than native at that point. you can't see it.)
2 - Improvements to Swing. 1.4 is the first version of Swing which has hardware acceleration built-in, thereby putting it on par with native win apps (native apps would be terribly slow without HWaccel, too - just turn it off in your graphics card settings to see how)
3 - and, to a certain extent, enough memory in machines. Java is a memory hog (even a small client app uses 20M...). But that doesn't matter if your machine has 256M.
You can say Swing is still overkill and over-engineered, and the AWT is no beauty, either. All true. Only, at this point, it doesn't matter. The "perceived suggishness"-barrier has been passed and left behind for good.
If your Java GUI is sluggish in 2004, you have only yourself to blame.
"Actually, those countries already have compatible passports which contain most/all of the information that this system captures anyway, so it isn't that big of a deal."
That is a false statement.
1 - There are no fingerprints on record for my passport (Austria).
2 - My picture is not stored in any database, either. The authorities have it on paper but it's not likely that it is going to be scanned in any time soon (would be a direct breach of national privacy laws).
Here is what i think: They make some lame excuses as to why europeans are excempt because they simply cannot say "Dude, those europeans never overstay their visas and they have no muslim extremists either. Besides, we need _some_ kind of ally and don't want to piss them off more than they already are". The diplomatic approach is to lie and say Europeans are already being fingerprinted and scanned at home.
Same with the immigration at the airport: They "randomly" pick people for interviews - namely, ALL arabs and arab-looking people, and some random white/asian people to avoid looking like racists.
The fingerprinting system may or may not prevent terrorist attacks - it's really impossible to say. In a way, it makes sense to get the visa system clean first (or at least try to clean up this horrible mess).
But what has apparently be overlooked by American authorities / officials is the psychological impact. It really pisses people off. Even here in europe.
I have dealt with the US immigrations authorities a lot (i was studying there) and it's hard to describe the feeling when you are at the receiving end of it. Maybe prison is comparable. You talk to people behind bullet-proof glass, watched by marines with M16s, go through security scans like at the airport, the place is filled with posters that show handcuffed people who broke some immigration law (implying: YOU could be one of them), and, what's worst, the immigration officers do not believe a single word you say - regardless of what it is they always suspect some kind of scam. Even the holy pope himsef would wonder if he had done something illegal.
And that's in Europe! Other places are probably even worse.
Fingerprinting and taking pictures is not improving this situation.
You reap what you sow. And american immigration sows distrust and suspicion. In order to win peace in the world, the USA must win the hearts and minds of people. As it is, America is doing the opposite, most visibly at its outposts all over the world. The free world, looking like a prison or fortress...
I am not against checks, but there has got to be a way to make this humane, and to remove this aura of complete and utter paranoia. (European newspapers were reporting of "snipers on roofs and marines in attack-helicopters on new year's even in NY... )
I hear this a lot and i though the same thing: Why on earth did they not introduce something for $149? We all want a cheap iPod. Obviously.
It is safe to assume that this is obvious to Apple, too. The logical conclusion is that there is something about the product that keeps Apple from selling it for cheap. Here are just some things that come to mind:
1) It's not technically possible. Those mini-HDs are brand new, and there was only enough time to test the 4G versions. Mind you this is a consumer product, and must work flawlessly (unlike computers).
2) Apple cannot possibly make enough to satisfy demand anyway - they have had production problems in the past. So make them expensive now and increase profits and cheap later - people love price cuts.
3) It's always possible to intro the 2G / $100 version later on. Unless there is serious competition (e.g. Sony or similar) the price will be closer to $149 though.
Finally, this is a ground breaking product in terms of size / capacity, so to expect it to come for really cheap is unrealistic. In addition, the production process for a completely new product is tricky to pull off at a high quality level. That's not to be underestimated. Apple / iPod has an extremely good reputation so they have basically no room for error - the press would tear them apart immediately.
click on the test button on this page.... it's quite scary.
;)
Of course, you have to use Internet Explorer to see it.
Internet Explorer is usually found under C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer
Do you see M$ or Apple outosurcing to India/China? Hmm...
We all fall for the scam. We follow. We are lemmings. We cannot question The Standard. It's god-made. No one questions The Standard. We know - we fall for the same pyramid scheme. Over and over again. But we can't help it. Maybe we hope for mercy. They couldn't -possibly- push us out of the business after we build it up. Could they? Could they? Noooo.. That would be too evil. Even for them. No way. No way.
What's the outcome if you use WMA - or any other Microsoft-owned standard?
Two possibilities:
- If your business model (heavily dependent on WMA) is a big success, M$ will jump into the game and kick you out by leveraging its control over the standard. Your devices become incompatible. Strange errors creep in. FUD spreads. You are out.
- If you lose money or break even, M$ will stay out of it. Great.
Bottom line: You lose.
Why they do it - i can't comprehend.
You are aware you are at the mercy of one of the most merciless companies ever known? Oh you are, ok.
we want it... we want the shiny thing... yess yess..
I have several problems with this comment:
1- The Hobbit is not a children's classic. Rather, it is the first part in a great story. It is also a great story in itself. And it is suitable for children. But it is not "children-only".
2- How is "The Hobbit" more about imagination than LOTR? I am not sure it's about "imagination" at all, more or less than any book.
3- How, exactly, do films "sqash" the imagination of kids? That's certainly news to me. The kids i know all have a lot of imagination (actually, that's an understatement: they have heaps and bounds of it). And they watch a lot of movies. I think if it squashes anyones imagination, it would be the imagination of adults.
I can understand that your concern (will it sqash or somehow taint *your* great memories of the hobbit? - no, it won't, don't worry)). But it's a mistake to project this onto others, least of all kids.
You are missing the point: It's not about book vs. film. Why compare the two? Where is the law of nature that says you can have either, or?
If i had to choose between my most favorite book (LOTR) and my most favorite movie (LOTR), i would pick the book. Luckily for me i don't have to.
In addition, the original poster somehow confused the choices the little girl has, so i want to spell them out here. These are her choices:
[] she sees the movie
[] she doesn't read the book
These are the choices 99% of children face. If anything, seeing the movie (and getting the DVD) will make it _a whole lot_ more likely she reads the book, too. That's a fact. And LOTR is not a must-read for little kids by any means. 1000 pages of old-english inspired writing does not the perfect kid's book make.
The bottom line is: If you are promoting books, you make a big mistake in discouraging films. You should do anything but.
Of course, IMHO, you should not promote "books" in the first place. The question is always "books as opposed to _what_"? There are a lot of other worhwhile things in life...
"generates no pollution..."
Two words: Nuclear waste.
There is not a single permanent disposal site world-wide. no one can guarantee the safety. the U.S. government even has a website on _just this problem_. Ready-made dirty bombs are driven in trucks all over the country. GREAT IDEA.
any technological decision is based on everything else in this world, including politics, sociology, and (computing or not) philosophy.
simplest example in the china-linux case: how likely is it that M$ will eventually screw over the chinese government? how does this likelihood rise with the degree of dependence on M$ products?
is that a technical question? it should be since the total cost of ownership is directly affected. the computing "philosophy" open source directly affects total cost of ownership.
i am pretty sure they know that. i am also pretty sure M$ would offer china the same $50 / seat deal if asked. i just don't think they were asked.
china will not make the mistake to be dependent on M$... and then keep paying and paying...
difference between china and other governments? long term vision. china thinks in decades, others in 4-year terms.
if you take the total cost of software over 2 years, M$ may be cheaper. in fact, M$ _can_ always be cheaper, depending on how low they will go with the per seat license.
but if you take the total cost over 10 or 20 years, M$ cannot and will not be cheaper. in that time frame, china can train an army of linux admins which can take over all support in the country or even continue development on the platform. at chinese prices. under chinese control.
in fact, i would not be surprised if they planned just that.
Symbian is not independent - it's just "supported" by a range of mobile companies. This would be good, except that Nokia and SonyEricsson are the only ones in this alliance who openly oppose M$'s plans to take over the phone OS market.
A takeover of Symbian wouldn't really help Nokia in this regard. Since they know that, the only good reason would be to grab the shares from uninterested Psion, and then open it up for all to use.
The sooner the phone OS market goes to open source, the safer for the anti-M$ forces in the industry - be that an opened-up Symbian or embedded linux... if there was a stable linux based phone OS there would be no stopping it.
As it is, the industry is held back - and might eventually just give up all control to M$ - by infighting, jealousy, and distrust.
that will continue to be the case for as long as apple does not sell POS systems, kiosk type apps, or old x86 hardware.
i think you completely miss the point.
:) )
instead of ranting on and on about how stupid it is to own an SUV, would it not be much SMARTER to instead ask why people DO buy them? it's not so hard, come on.
- you are higher up, so you see more and you are safer for that. a LOT safer. and don't come to me crying "but if everybody had one blablabla...". everybody doesn't have one. i think this is the main, prime, reason for everyone to buy a SUV.
- you can visit your aunt in the mountains. you might never do it, but you _can_. there is value in that.
- you can drive through the snow AND the traffic cops in the sierras don't make you put on chains in freezing cold weather. that alone is super-convenient. (i don't get ppl who buy 2WD SUVs either
- if you bang into something, there is no big damage to the car. for some reason, other cars tend to be built to collapse as much as possible even on small impacts - so repair costs are high.
and there is some other reasons i don't subscribe to but there you go:
- status and fashion. that's what the entire car industry is all about. beauty, here, is in the eye of the beholder. fashion is part of that.
- gas is F****** cheap in the US so gasoline cost is not a factor.
and, hey, despite all that i don't have an SUV.
uh, and i am a big fan of minivans, too. in fact, the utility of other cars simply cannot match the "box on wheels". but for some reason, it's hard to get ruggedized and 4WD versions of these.
I agree, i have seen people build in the valley of fire near Los Angeles (where wild fires hit basically every couple of years, even before the homes were built) and on muddy slopes in the santa cruz mountains... then they are surprised they are get swept away with the next heavy rains.
On fire control, i have seen a primitive yet incredibly effective way of doing that: farmers in the mountains of northern thailand burn down the mountain pretty much constantly during the dry season.
There are fires on the mountain sides every night, so i asked some locals: isn't that dangerous? they told me they _never_ have fires there. fires destroying property, that is. They don't even have a fire station. Not needed.
All the underbrush (and there is plenty in this climate) gets burned away, the big trees survive (even the smaller ones, actually). And they NEVER have a fire problem.
Now, these are farmers from remote regions of thailand.. not rocket scientists, for chrissake.
I am now convinced that the best way to go for our forest services would be to go there, to be humble, to look at that, and to improve this with modern technology. to _build_ on it.
I know there are controlled fires in california.. But for one reason or another they don't work so well. just to look at how people deal with that in another country (and have been for hundreds of years) would be advisable.
They also have an interesting way of putting out fires: Instead of, say, pouring a bucket of water on the fire, they take a handful and sprinkle it over the flames. repeatedly. I have seen them put out 6 foot flames in _seconds_. Pretty amazing.