I think you've got a point here.... you look like you're willing to pay for a nice, well-made phone that's stylish, well-made and has features you want in an easy-to-use manner, like what the Mac is to computers (arguably, but go along with me on this one) or what the iPod is to MP3 players.
Some other people have pointed out that when people have gotten 'cool' phones in the past with popular features - say, bluetooth synchronization with computers - cell networks lock them out.
I think Steve Jobs realizes how much money could be made in a phone that syncs with bluetooth the way its made to be done, as is evidenced by iSync, etc.
And I think that Apple may be the only company in the position to get people to do what cell phone companies can only dream of - PAY for a consumer phone. Even if the phone is $500, there's a chance - a decent one - that Apple, if it is Apple-branded, could make it sell, just the way that Apple sold the original iPods so well, despite their price and that they were Mac-only for so long.
AND reliability. And I think that's what you're risking here, based on the above posts. Some games run fine, I'm sure most do, but you might get some random artifacts here and there, and I wouldn't want to do something that really, really worked the GPU for hours on end if I expected no problems.
Ok, so in 1996, NT4 came out on x86, which was the first step that Microsoft really took into making Windows a real OS.
It ran on PPC, Intel, Alpha and MIPS. That's a lot of architectures. Now, think about it: One of the things about Microsoft is, generally speaking, they have no soul. If they make money selling a product, they'll sell it. Now, that's not to say they won't STOP selling any product that's not making money (*cough*XBOX*cough*) just to drag their competition to the ground, but they also won't turn down cash for ideological reasons.
The fact that when Windows 2000 came out reflects that no one really used NT 4 on anything other than Intel hardware. Now, this might be because the hardware developers never really were 100% behind MS, or it might be because someone that was shelling out cash for an Alpha or a MIPS workstation (but I do remember there being a drop-in MIPS chip that would work in a socket.... 5? Pentium board?) wanted a better OS, or any other reason.
The fact is, you can say that PPC might be a faster processor platform today, with a higher bus speed and better performance per clock, but its close. Very close. I don't think MS would be able to polish a PPC version of Windows as much as they have the Intel version, meaning you might take a relative performance penalty... and there isn't a price advantage in PPC over x86.
So yeah, the previous failure, combined with the pitfalls of a new version listed above make a pretty strong case for "no."
I think its interesting to point out that Rutan & co. have made it into space, sure, just space, not orbit (but seriously, when did we start getting so picky? It is _still_ rocket science, and getting to space is still a technical achievement that took over 10 millennia of human technological progression), three times while NASA is still trying to cobble together a way of making their space shuttle (launch cost: about what every slashdotter COMBINED will ever make) safe enough to fly again.
So basically, the ONLY way that the US can send anyone into space right now is with SpaceShip One - making it one of 3 vehicles, including Russia's Soyuz and China's Soyuz-esque rocket, that can go into space with people in it.
Its also significant that I think this is the only completely reusable vehicle to ever go into space, as being able to do a one-week turnaround shows, having this capability has some pretty big benefits.
While you're definately right, the fact is, there ISN'T a good technological way to prevent pirating. The current method, trying to slap DRM on anything you buy, has proven ineffective and is starting to piss off a fair number of consumers, so is pretty pointless.
Increasing the file size will definately allow pirating sooner or later, but also, it won't make paying consumers feel like they're criminals for wanting to see a movie. It also gives the possibility to have, say, very high resolution movies, or possibly smaller, cheaper video players because they wouldn't need the processing power to use a complicated codec.
The point is, the only way to stop most - not all, but most - piracy is to make it impractical. The trick is to make it feel impractical to pirate without making it impractical for 'normal' use.
For example, if DVD had been made as a consumer-device only item, and a separate disc had been used as the successor to the CD-ROM drive, none of us would have started watching movies on laptops or PCs, and I'll bet anything that the vast majority of piracy out there is people ripping DVDs using their PCs. The thing is, now you can't switch back to a non-PC compatible format, because it WOULD seem impractical ("Why would I spend $1000 on a portable movie player when I used to be able to use my laptop?").
So, in short, Cuban realizes that ripping will always be possible, and compression will always be possible, but by increasing file size, you can at least make it difficult and impractical for most piracy. No one wants to tie up their PC for 2 weeks compressing a 200GB disc down to 2GB, and those that do probably won't want to do it just to gain infamy amongst Kazaa users.
I know a lot of people who swear by Google Zeitgeist but really, as a statistical tool, it can be limited. I'm not saying Gartner's numbers are perfect, but at the same time, consider the following:
Google only uses cookies, as far as I know, to store my preferences. While that's good for security and privacy reasons, its bad for Zeitgeist.
Its not unreasonable to think that 'power' web surfers probably use Google more than most computer users, on the whole. Who are power users? Are they Mac users? Linux users? Windows XP? I'm not sure, but I'll bet that 'power users' tend to use some platforms above others.
Mac users may, for example, be inflated because of all the kids using Macs at school for school projects (as a random example).
Computers running Windows 95 are probably less likely to connect to the Internet through a fast connection, therefore, users are less likely to google 50 sites a day and instead probably just stick to say, email and their bank's website.
I think Linux is hampered on Zeitgeist because many Linux desktops are probably ONLY on corporate LANs or the like, where they don't have direct internet access. Which is why Garnter can be useful, it will count those of Zeitgeist never will.
So while Zeitgeist is by far the best tool to use when deciding what to design a popular, general purpose website for (as it shows whose likely to get to it, esp. through Google), it doesn't necessarily show you what EVERYONE is using EVERYWHERE, even in the dekstop world.
Actually, the thing is, as much as I'd like that to be the case in some ways, that's not true.
that's really only true of pay-as-you-go plans, which probably make a relatively small %age of the total plans for most carriers. However, on my plan, the cost is the same whether the network is up or down in my area - I pay a flat monthly fee and usually don't exceed my monthly minutes.
Now, its true that having a network that goes down does cost the carrier money in the long run because if they happen multiple times, people will start switching their providers, but that's more of an indirect thing.
The point is, that networks have an incentive to provide service of a generally high quality, but at the same time, loosing a tower for a short period of time doesn't cost a lot - and therefore, it may cost less to let the occaisonal tower go down for a relatively short amount of time than to make sure everything is always working.
Sometimes, all too often, you're right. But there are some issues I have with your post.
For one thing, the Patriot Act, in a way, shows democracy in action. The American people wanted a swift and comprehensive law to fight terrorism, and they got it. The fact that it takes away people's liberties is a side effect. Now, IMHO, I think that the real danger to America isn't people blowing up buildings - we can rebuild those, but rather the threat to free speech and a nation where people of different backgrounds and beliefs - policitical, social, whatever, I think that its the threat to free speech as presented by the Patriot Act that most threatens America.
Still, despite stories circulating for years about all the scary powers of the Patriot Act, there are still many people in the general populas who support the law. You can argue - and correctly - that they only support it because they don't fully understand its consequences, but that misses the point. In a democracy, its not right and wrong that matter, but what people BELIEVE is right or wrong.
And yes, most recent Presidents HAVE been multi millionaires. On the other hand, I think you could argue that we want our Presidents to be proven successful, capable people, and that in the US today, realistically, most people that we'd consider to be 'successful' are millionaires.
The important thing to note is that they didn't start out that way - Clinton started out every bit the Southern country boy, for example.
If you think that over the course of him bing a Rhodes scholar, Attorney General for Arkansas, Governer for Arkansas and later President of the United States, that he didn't deserve to accumulate a fair bit of wealth (a lot of it has been since his Presidency ended, where he can make $50k speaking or several million for an advance on a book), then you don't understand how most of America characterizes (for better or for worse) 'success'.
As I recall, Apple has given some stuff back, in terms of the rendering engine used in Safari which is based on the one in Konquerer, amongst many other cases.
But in terms of why we should care, well, remember back in the late 1990's, when everyone was trying to get people to get their bosses to use open source? The rationale was simple: open code makes better software which makes for better IT which makes for better business.
What this means is that an Apple computer, by virtue of being based on OSS, should run faster/better/with greater stability than one that isn't based on open source software.
While I do see your point about community involvement, you've got to realize that that isn't the whole deal to a lot of people.
And, if you're wondering, yes, I'm writing this on a PowerBook, and yes, I like Apple, no, I don't think they're from God, and yes, I like the fact that my laptop just works without any trouble.
You've got to remember that AMD might look at their profit margins on these 'embedded' processors and their normal laptop ones and decide for the simple reason of wanting a profit, that it makes more sense to push a 2.5GHz laptop power-hungry processor than their cheaper, power-sipping ones. And if a market grows quickly for small, power-sensitive processors in laptops (say, Transmetta or VIA start making major headway), then *wow* AMD's got a processor that can compete as soon as they can change their marketing material...
But the real issue is where power goes in laptops. You've got HDDs, screens which need to be "big and bright" these days (even say, 5-6" screen with a good backlight is power hungry), graphics processors, optical drives, etc.
I know someone will say "well, I don't need an optical drive or a graphics processor..." but, well, lots of people do for a laptop, and although you might not need a graphics processor that's powerhungry... remember when you compare a 1.4GHz embedded processor without a graphics processor, don't expect it to come close in performance to a PC in the similar speed range on *any* real applications.
But yeah, i think that AMD not seeing the market might be because of voluntary blindness because seeing this market means eating into other markets.
That's also really inefficient. You know how much energy we use by the time we've got ground prepared for crops, made tractors, used tractors, sprayed crops, etc.? And even then, plants are probably 20-30% efficient, then you're converting plant energy to oil - a process that's probably 10-30% efficient. That's not ESPECIALLY bad, but there's energy use there, too.
But there's a basic fact that we're missing here: we don't have that kind of land space. How much land is there suitable for growing crops in the US that's not being used to grow crops? We're really lucky - we just walk into a supermarket and buy whatever the hell we want, and it makes it easy to forget that there aren't these giant tracts of unused land. Even if there were, there are significant ecological factors to consider when you say, clear cut a forest, kill its inhabitants, and mark any native fauna and flora 'pests' to your crop and kill them when they try to come back.
The fact is, we've got enough land to make food. We've got enough land to export food, but we don't have enough land to make food and power energy. Plant oil will be a good way to get small amounts of chemical energy, and also, I think, in the long run, after we've run out of oil, the primary source for new feed for making plastics, but there just isn't enough space to make it into a major source of oil for energy.
You're right about a lot of your points... all of it, in fact, but the question is always, not where does it begin, but, where does it end?
I used to live in Beijing, eons ago by Beijing's standards, in the late 80's and early 90's. Beijing's growth might have very well outpaced the Internet's. But when I was there, we had a lot of white furnature, and a housekeeper to keep it clean... one day she was sick following her weekend... the white furnature was BLACK with soot. I honestly don't know if things have gotten better or worse, but I'd suspect that they've gotten worse. China's economy is still coal powered.
The interesting question is who's buying these bikes, why, and what cultural impact they'll have. As pointed out before, its probalby people that are jsut starting to see wage growth, meaning that they're getting e-bikes to replace the human-powered variety, and that these require more electricity, which requires more coal, etc.
But bikes had long been part of Chinese culture. More than just being a mode of cheap, fast transportation, they were handy. They're easy to secure, they can fit in small places to store. it means that building planners didn't need to accommodate big garages and parking spaces, useful when you've got such density as there is along the coastal regions of China and inland to Beijing, where most economic growth is taking place (and therefore, where people are more likely to have money for e-bikes).
in this context, the shift from bikes to e-bikes is a small one, as they meet all of the conveniences of bikes without any major new hastles. (Most consumers, anywhere, have yet to make the 'big picture' association of energy usage == pollution == hastle for everyone, including me.) Now, this means that it postpones the growth of large numbers of cars for a while as people get these instead, perhaps delaying any shift to (as many) big garages, parking lots, etc.
That way, it could be a good thing. RIGHT NOW, its true that it looks like these e-bikes are just a stepping stone to bigger cars... but what if the 'e-bike' phase lasts 20-30 years, as it very well might? By this time, perhaps cars won't seem as desirable, or at the very least, will be less polluting. Additionally, coal plants can be MUCH less polluting with proper design/retrofitting than you'd expect. There was SOME evidence, of which there has been a partial refutation, that its possible to reduce CO2 emissions to almost nothing with a highly efficient deisgn and a method (using some sort of ceramic device??? can anyone inform?). In this way, perhaps China could be one of the first nations to benefit from economic growth without all of the eventual environmenal hastle. If China were to pollute at say, North America's levels, the planet'd get baked like a garage band on a lazy Saturday night, and that'd hurt the Chinese economy both directly and indirectly. I'd say that within the next 10-15 years, China will start retrofitting existing plants to pollute less. This is especially true as they start to get a skilled labour force that hates pollution and is costly to replace when they die young from inhaling half a kilo of coal dust every day. Not that the massive growth of Chinese cigarette sales is helping that any.
This *might* turn out to be an indicental step that prevents it, by postponing the onset of cars and keeping the 'bicycle culture', even if its currently powered by polluting coal plants.
Sometimes, we get lucky, unintended breaks. This could be one.
In that case, it means that the music industry's decision to charge more for downloading *is* a money thing, because it means that they're making quite the pretty penny (acutually, more like 100's of pennies) on every album. (Costs of duplication are quite low, especially now, transportation costs of CDs which way very little and which are relatively durable are low, and, as has been famously stated several times, its not like the artists get a 50% cut.)
Then it makes even more sense: they want to make the same amount per song, whether its downloaded or off a CD. (Note that they want to make a LOT MORE per song if they catch you trying to download it illegally.... kinda ironic. In some ways, you'd think that they should give you the option of 'mending your ways' by having you pay for every song in your collection legally, but obviously, there are some good reasons, and some bad ones, that the system doen'st work that way.) In a way, however, it makes sense that that a record label would want the same amount per song regardless of how it was packaged - it is a form of intellectual property, and, while there are certainly bonuses for buying a CD (physical media, ability to back up/rip at will for 'real' CDs, liner notes, etc.), I think taht there can be a reasonable argument that that's not what you're paying for.
It'd be an interesting debate, whether a reasonably hi-fi (and I know AAC isn't as good of quality as a CD, but most users can't tell) format deserves the same price as another, for the benefit of both the user and the producer.
I'm not disagreeing with you at all. If it was the same price, I doubt I'd download as much music.... having a CD or something physical just 'feels' good.
At first, I was a huge supporter of downloading music, but until they start digitizing the *entire* liner notes and maybe giving us hi-res album covers, you're at a disadvantage by downloading, and so now I only download some music from iTMS, and other things I buy in-store.
Having said that, I wasn't saying that it was a 'problem' from the users point of view, i'm saying that its a 'problem' if you happen to be a record company - it gives EVERYONE incentive to buy music online, not just a select category.
I think that's exactly what the music companies are hoping for. The argument that probably ''sold" the RIAA and its members on allowing companies like Apple to give legal downloads of music probably was that sales of the music companies' entire libraries would increase. This lies on the belief that there were some people that would pay for a song/an album, but currently didn't do so, probably for lack of convenience. As an example, I listen to a song on the radio that I like, and I think "hmm, I want it," but I'm not in/near a record store, so I just forget about it and don't buy anything, but if I could have just sat down and paid for it and downloaded it, I would've given the record company some money.
The problem is that it is currently cheaper to download music than to buy it in a store - $9.99 per album for most albums online, compared with what, say $15-$20+ for most albums in a store? So what happens is some people (although, at this point, probably not a lot) figure, 'ok, so I'll just buy it for $10 on iTMS, spend $0.30 on a CD-R, and burn the album.'
What's intereisting is that I'll bet that with retail mark up, the record companies don't see a helluva lot more money by selling albums in a bricks-and-mortar store. (I figure there's at least a 40% retail mark up, and a few pennies here and there for the physical media, including jewel case + transportation etc., compared with about $0.70 per song that the record companies currently get from iTMS). The record companies are betting that a FEW people will pay the SAME amont for online downloads as a actual purchase (those "hmm, this sounds good, I'll buy it now convenience purchasors), and the rest will go for a actual physical CD purchase.
I don't think this is for the moeny, however, I think its because the record companies inhearantly distrust digital music on the Internet, thinking its 'dangerous'. They have more control over bricks and mortar in a number of ways, the most significant of which is that, on iTMS, its just as easy for me to download songs from an indie band as from a big record label, but, good luck finding much independent music in MegaMonolithic Music Store.
The problem is that the chemicals involved in any chemical reaction aren't infinately reusable. As one of the posters above noted, green tea works because it's an anti-oxidant, meaning it removes oxygen (oxides) from the hard drives. The industrial chemicals would also undergo reaction, and after so many uses, become unusable (assuming that 'so many uses' doens't mean once). While it's true that some industrial chemicals can undergo a reverse reaction relaviely easily, and therefore be 'regenerated' and reused, many cannot, and many that can are so cheap that they're disposed of anyways.
While it's true that bio-degradABLE doesn't mean that they're bio-degradED, it does open the door. Also, its probably more environmentally friendly to PRODUCE green tea than it is for other industrial chemicals, which may produce waste products that end up in the water supply, require high temperatures and therefore require lots of energy, etc.
So yeah, you're right that there is NEVER a magic-bullet. But if green tea is easier to produce, easier to refine, and can be broken down with a little simple composting, etc., then its a step in the right direction.
I'm always kind of irked by the "protecting culture and heritage" argument. You could argue that hertiage is heritage, good, bad or ugly, and nothing in the future can change that, but the more important word is "culture."
I don't think that most people really think of what any given culture is and has been historically. Culture has ALWAYS spread, mingled, and intermixed, more or less to the extent that any given era's technology allows it to. How else is the Spanish word for money - "dinero", so similar to "dinar," a common name for currency in the Middle East?
Take another example. What could be a more solidly cultural experience than food? Then ever wonder why Italian food has generous portions of noodles, an idea they got from China, and tomatoes, native only to the Americas?
Sure, the Italians CHANGED the way they're prepared, and they mixed the two in a way that only they, at the time, could think of. But that proves my point.... a more recent example is Japan. Japan's economy and culture have undergone EXTREME westernization in the past 100 years, and 50 years especially. Now in Japan they have western style dress, and music, etc., but they've also put a Japanese "spin" on it.
Cultures aren't these unique little things that exist in isolation - cultures are made to mix, spread, mingle, and combine in the way that the people in the cultures see fit. And don't forget that cultural values help determine what cultures "see fit" to mix.
Actually, there _is_ a minimum Canadian content. You might not notice it because the line between Canadian and American content is sometimes intentionally blurred. I can't speak with great authory on the TV side, because I have no experience, but I do know something of the Canadian Content laws for radio, as I've helped a friend organize songs for a show on a local university radio station here (Carleton University's CKCU). 30% of all music played, by song, on a radio station must be Canadian - meaning, Canadian artist. I _believe_ that Canadian TV laws require principle Canadian actors, or writers, or producers, but I'm not 100% sure on that.
The idea is that because the Canadian music industry is smaller, and its harder for Canadian artists to tour, etc. and reach the same fame as foreign (read: US) ones, they need to be protected, because if Canadians artists aren't supported in Canada, they're less likely to be supported anywhere.
The result, however, is that lots of Canadian "filler" artists end up popping up - they're pop music that sounds like all other pop music, but it's CANADIAN filler. Other times, artists that make it in the US are WAAAY overplayed here (think, Avirl Lavigne, ALL THE TIME.) And, on occaison, there is a good Canadian artist/group that for some reason, can't seem to get a international record deal but does well in Canada.
Personally, I think that if Canada really wants to support its artists, they should do it willingly - that is, there'll be a demand for Canadian music. Perhaps TV/radio stations should make a voluntary industry pact, where stations can agree to Canadian content terms, and if they do, they can display a logo or something on their ads. If Canadians really care, they'll support the stations that have the logo; if not, then Canadian arists will have to prove themselves on the same terms as ones everywhere else, even if there is a bit of discrimination.
I think that the "Mercedes or BMW of IT" label is thrown around a little bit too fast with Apple. Steve Jobs has even spread it around some, I can remember an interview where the interviewer asked him about Apple's marketshare, commenting on how small it was, and he replied by naming some luxury auto brands that had a market share smaller than Apple's.
Now, if you're a home user, yes, its harder to rationalize spending the money for a decent Apple computer, but even then, there are exceptions, like how an eMac is now $749 for univeristy students with the discount.
However, for business users, its been noted many times that computers are just a 'means to an end'. For years, many companies would buy engineers, etc. a new $10,000 Sun box because the added productivity easily covered the cost of the computer.
I _know_ that my productivity's improved greatly since switching to OS X from Windows. The environment just seems more friendly, it seems snappier to get done what I need to do.
So I think, even for the average desktop, where lots of Office stuff is used, web-surfing, etc., chances are, the improved productivity (combined with lower TCO (maybe) because of fewer viruses, greater reliability, etc.), makes the ~$1,200 investment for an iMac worthwile for many businesses.
The 9600's WERE the developer platform of choice for their next-gen OS. They ran Rhapsody (OS X in its infancy) really well, and they're what Apple used to show off Rhapsody in the "early days". That was in 1997. The 9600 had a 50MHz bus, used 70ns RAM, and, realistically, never ran above 350MHz, or 300MHz (realistically, not ocunting the paper-release of the 350's) at launch.
The 9600 was the preferred way of preparing to do devlopment on Rhapsody for several years after its release (and it had many more expansion slots than the PowerMac G3, which probably made it a better choice for doing driver development on Rhapsody).
OS X wasn't released until 2000, and really, it wasn't till the end of 2001 that any sane person would consider using it. By that point, the 9600 was four years old, TWO processor generations out of the lead, and didn't have hte kind of graphics processor that OS X wanted.
If Apple HAD made OS X work on the 9600, either OS X would have had to have shipped with many fewer features, or it would have CRAWLED to thep oint of a standstill (Remember how slow 10.0 was? Now, imagine that on a computer that had a 50MHz bus). Those who bought a 9600 could use it for about 3 years of software development before it was outdated, and it is still a decent development machine for OS 8.x and 9.x applications.
In short, in 1997, when developers were asking for development machines for Rhapsody, the 9600 was the best Apple could do. The comptuers available by OS X's actual release were SO MUCH faster that you'd be insane to say that the 9600 should have stayed compatible.
In a lot of ways, simplfying the tax code would benefit everyone (except accountants, but on the other hand, I'm not a big believer in dumb policies to feed bean counters and dinosaurs, if we'd historically done that, we'd still pay people to sweep/mop floors instead of using machines.) However, when you look at the actual tax forms, they're confusing because of the WORDING, not because of the contents.
Sure, there are some things that seem relatively confusing, something to the effect of "If you earned less than $12,000 last year and spent over $1,500 on the installation or maintance of environmentally friendly irrigation systems (see p. 46) used for commercial farming purposes (see p. 27), subtract the amount used on such irrigation systems from the total on line 27."
But when you look at lots of the complicated wording, its not there to get people to pay MORE taxes, its there because of tax CREDITS and other things that for some reason, the government has decided are worthwhile - be it programs to encourage people to start their own businesses or to help the environment, etc. The benefit of this is that can possibly save the government and the people money (for example, having fewer polluters saves the government from costly and complicated environmental cleanup), or because they help out people who are in need.
I think that in the end, the tax code takes some time and thinking to work through, but it isn't anything that can't be deciphered by the average tax payer.
There is a debate about the use of tax BREAKS (given before) vs. tax CREDITS (given after), which largely fall by party lines, with Democrats supporting breaks, Republicans credits. Its largely semantics, but lower income Americans are less likely to fill out credits they could legally receive, if only because they are generally less educated. However, a tax credit still helps more than nothing.
I've usually thought that if you couldn't come up with a test to tell the difference between two things, then it didn't really matter which it was... like 1 (life on earth --> mars) and 2 (life on mars--> earth) above.
The more interesting question is: wherever life was formed, what conditions were there on the planet at the time?
I'm guessing, but I think there's a pretty narrow window of conditions when you can have life develop, but not enough atmosphere to prevent a meteor from blasting a chunk of the planet up into space. So we really just would need to figure out how old this life is (use fossil records when we start getting them on Mars, or use Terran ones if the life formed on Earth first), and then use geology to piece together the conditions under which life can form and be transported by natural means to another planet.
That's useful knowledge, because it tells us a lot about how life evolves and how hardy it can evolve.
And this goes for people of any intelligence. Its important to do the things that interest you. Everyone has their passions, and its through them that you really make a contribution. When you look at the great minds of the 20th century, they did what they were interested in. Einstein was a patent clerk who was sorta interested in solving some stuff in physics.
So, what are you interested in? And remember, there are so many kinds of intelligence that its hard to say that one is better than the others. There is "generic/old fashioned" problem solving intelligence. If you think you've got that, then see how you like inventing - as for what, well, see the thing above on what you're interested in.
But also don't be afraid to try new things - see how you like the arts, from theatre to literature to photography to drawing. As for me, I have no drawing ability, but have found that with a good book on photography and some money for equipment, that I can be decent at it - and the sheer possibilities for capturing light around me, and coming up with interesting subjects, can provide hours of amusement... and don't tell me it doesn't work my brain.
I guess that's the trick to using your intelligence - you can't be afraid of dipping your feet into something new. You don't need to start off an expert - in fact, some humility and a few honest, dumb questions can help build friendships and advice to people that will make your life more vibrant.
And, seeing as this is slashdot... yes, the Internet is your friend. the trick is to not go to the same sites over and over again... to think of something random, like I did with photography, or maybe think of say, some form of art or some weird aspect of science that you don't understand, and searching.
At the same time, especially with more difficult (and i believe, more rewarding) topics which can't be described in a few lines of hypertext, like (advanced/interesting?) science/engineering topics, or things like photography, its important to use your library. And your librarians, as well, as they do have a tremendous breath of knowledge, even if they lack depth - they can show you how to get a toehold on almost any topic, and once you've got that, the possibilities are limited almost only by your determination. So don't be afraid, and remember that the world is out there to experience, but you may need to drive yourself to experience it fully.
Tim
You know, I get what you're saying, and to a certian extent, I agree with you. Just making a really big drive doesn't mean that there will be a good use for it. Originally, IIRC, IBM was trying to get people to shove those in PDAs - which would be more storage than most PDA users need(ed), and it'd suddenly make PDAs a lot bigger, a lot heavier, and probably somewhat slower, because its harder to manage a 1GB volume than 64MB of RAM.
Having said that, I don't think it's like the Acer luggable. For one thing, the IBM Microdrive took something that was already successful - smaller (2.5") hard drives, and made them a LOT smaller. For another, it sounds like the infamous (if fake) "640K ought to be enough for anybody" comment. Now, admitadly, flash storage is better than anything with moving parts for a bunch of reasons. But saying that there weren't uses at that time for that much data just isn't true - digital cameras were one emerging market, sub-sublaptops were another, and I tihkn that something LIKE the iPod (basically, using it as an MP3 player, not necessarily as slick as a real iPod) is more of a natural use of the technology than something that incidentally "happened."
It takes a long time from the invention of a technology to the time that it becomes widely used or practical - its a learning curve. That's why there are all sorts of web-based services around now that all the technical foundations were there for in 1998 - because once the tools are available, it takes some time for inventors and idea people to realize it and understand how to best use them.
I think that if the microdrives can stay bigger (in storage space) than compact flash at a similar price point, which I thikn they will over the next 5 years, you'll start seeing more and more of them.
Hey, it worked for them and the Apple I. Too bad the Apple II came pre-assembled. Maybe they could increase their mindshare by going back to their roots.
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I think you've got a point here.... you look like you're willing to pay for a nice, well-made phone that's stylish, well-made and has features you want in an easy-to-use manner, like what the Mac is to computers (arguably, but go along with me on this one) or what the iPod is to MP3 players.
Some other people have pointed out that when people have gotten 'cool' phones in the past with popular features - say, bluetooth synchronization with computers - cell networks lock them out.
I think Steve Jobs realizes how much money could be made in a phone that syncs with bluetooth the way its made to be done, as is evidenced by iSync, etc.
And I think that Apple may be the only company in the position to get people to do what cell phone companies can only dream of - PAY for a consumer phone. Even if the phone is $500, there's a chance - a decent one - that Apple, if it is Apple-branded, could make it sell, just the way that Apple sold the original iPods so well, despite their price and that they were Mac-only for so long.
Tim
AND reliability. And I think that's what you're risking here, based on the above posts. Some games run fine, I'm sure most do, but you might get some random artifacts here and there, and I wouldn't want to do something that really, really worked the GPU for hours on end if I expected no problems.
Tim
Ok, so in 1996, NT4 came out on x86, which was the first step that Microsoft really took into making Windows a real OS.
It ran on PPC, Intel, Alpha and MIPS. That's a lot of architectures. Now, think about it: One of the things about Microsoft is, generally speaking, they have no soul. If they make money selling a product, they'll sell it. Now, that's not to say they won't STOP selling any product that's not making money (*cough*XBOX*cough*) just to drag their competition to the ground, but they also won't turn down cash for ideological reasons.
The fact that when Windows 2000 came out reflects that no one really used NT 4 on anything other than Intel hardware. Now, this might be because the hardware developers never really were 100% behind MS, or it might be because someone that was shelling out cash for an Alpha or a MIPS workstation (but I do remember there being a drop-in MIPS chip that would work in a socket.... 5? Pentium board?) wanted a better OS, or any other reason.
The fact is, you can say that PPC might be a faster processor platform today, with a higher bus speed and better performance per clock, but its close. Very close. I don't think MS would be able to polish a PPC version of Windows as much as they have the Intel version, meaning you might take a relative performance penalty... and there isn't a price advantage in PPC over x86.
So yeah, the previous failure, combined with the pitfalls of a new version listed above make a pretty strong case for "no."
I think its interesting to point out that Rutan & co. have made it into space, sure, just space, not orbit (but seriously, when did we start getting so picky? It is _still_ rocket science, and getting to space is still a technical achievement that took over 10 millennia of human technological progression), three times while NASA is still trying to cobble together a way of making their space shuttle (launch cost: about what every slashdotter COMBINED will ever make) safe enough to fly again.
So basically, the ONLY way that the US can send anyone into space right now is with SpaceShip One - making it one of 3 vehicles, including Russia's Soyuz and China's Soyuz-esque rocket, that can go into space with people in it.
Its also significant that I think this is the only completely reusable vehicle to ever go into space, as being able to do a one-week turnaround shows, having this capability has some pretty big benefits.
Tim
While you're definately right, the fact is, there ISN'T a good technological way to prevent pirating. The current method, trying to slap DRM on anything you buy, has proven ineffective and is starting to piss off a fair number of consumers, so is pretty pointless.
Increasing the file size will definately allow pirating sooner or later, but also, it won't make paying consumers feel like they're criminals for wanting to see a movie. It also gives the possibility to have, say, very high resolution movies, or possibly smaller, cheaper video players because they wouldn't need the processing power to use a complicated codec.
The point is, the only way to stop most - not all, but most - piracy is to make it impractical. The trick is to make it feel impractical to pirate without making it impractical for 'normal' use.
For example, if DVD had been made as a consumer-device only item, and a separate disc had been used as the successor to the CD-ROM drive, none of us would have started watching movies on laptops or PCs, and I'll bet anything that the vast majority of piracy out there is people ripping DVDs using their PCs. The thing is, now you can't switch back to a non-PC compatible format, because it WOULD seem impractical ("Why would I spend $1000 on a portable movie player when I used to be able to use my laptop?").
So, in short, Cuban realizes that ripping will always be possible, and compression will always be possible, but by increasing file size, you can at least make it difficult and impractical for most piracy. No one wants to tie up their PC for 2 weeks compressing a 200GB disc down to 2GB, and those that do probably won't want to do it just to gain infamy amongst Kazaa users.
Tim
I know a lot of people who swear by Google Zeitgeist but really, as a statistical tool, it can be limited. I'm not saying Gartner's numbers are perfect, but at the same time, consider the following:
Google only uses cookies, as far as I know, to store my preferences. While that's good for security and privacy reasons, its bad for Zeitgeist.
Its not unreasonable to think that 'power' web surfers probably use Google more than most computer users, on the whole. Who are power users? Are they Mac users? Linux users? Windows XP? I'm not sure, but I'll bet that 'power users' tend to use some platforms above others.
Mac users may, for example, be inflated because of all the kids using Macs at school for school projects (as a random example).
Computers running Windows 95 are probably less likely to connect to the Internet through a fast connection, therefore, users are less likely to google 50 sites a day and instead probably just stick to say, email and their bank's website.
I think Linux is hampered on Zeitgeist because many Linux desktops are probably ONLY on corporate LANs or the like, where they don't have direct internet access. Which is why Garnter can be useful, it will count those of Zeitgeist never will.
So while Zeitgeist is by far the best tool to use when deciding what to design a popular, general purpose website for (as it shows whose likely to get to it, esp. through Google), it doesn't necessarily show you what EVERYONE is using EVERYWHERE, even in the dekstop world.
Actually, the thing is, as much as I'd like that to be the case in some ways, that's not true.
that's really only true of pay-as-you-go plans, which probably make a relatively small %age of the total plans for most carriers. However, on my plan, the cost is the same whether the network is up or down in my area - I pay a flat monthly fee and usually don't exceed my monthly minutes.
Now, its true that having a network that goes down does cost the carrier money in the long run because if they happen multiple times, people will start switching their providers, but that's more of an indirect thing.
The point is, that networks have an incentive to provide service of a generally high quality, but at the same time, loosing a tower for a short period of time doesn't cost a lot - and therefore, it may cost less to let the occaisonal tower go down for a relatively short amount of time than to make sure everything is always working.
Tim
Sometimes, all too often, you're right. But there are some issues I have with your post.
For one thing, the Patriot Act, in a way, shows democracy in action. The American people wanted a swift and comprehensive law to fight terrorism, and they got it. The fact that it takes away people's liberties is a side effect. Now, IMHO, I think that the real danger to America isn't people blowing up buildings - we can rebuild those, but rather the threat to free speech and a nation where people of different backgrounds and beliefs - policitical, social, whatever, I think that its the threat to free speech as presented by the Patriot Act that most threatens America.
Still, despite stories circulating for years about all the scary powers of the Patriot Act, there are still many people in the general populas who support the law. You can argue - and correctly - that they only support it because they don't fully understand its consequences, but that misses the point. In a democracy, its not right and wrong that matter, but what people BELIEVE is right or wrong.
And yes, most recent Presidents HAVE been multi millionaires. On the other hand, I think you could argue that we want our Presidents to be proven successful, capable people, and that in the US today, realistically, most people that we'd consider to be 'successful' are millionaires.
The important thing to note is that they didn't start out that way - Clinton started out every bit the Southern country boy, for example.
If you think that over the course of him bing a Rhodes scholar, Attorney General for Arkansas, Governer for Arkansas and later President of the United States, that he didn't deserve to accumulate a fair bit of wealth (a lot of it has been since his Presidency ended, where he can make $50k speaking or several million for an advance on a book), then you don't understand how most of America characterizes (for better or for worse) 'success'.
Tim
As I recall, Apple has given some stuff back, in terms of the rendering engine used in Safari which is based on the one in Konquerer, amongst many other cases.
But in terms of why we should care, well, remember back in the late 1990's, when everyone was trying to get people to get their bosses to use open source? The rationale was simple: open code makes better software which makes for better IT which makes for better business.
What this means is that an Apple computer, by virtue of being based on OSS, should run faster/better/with greater stability than one that isn't based on open source software.
While I do see your point about community involvement, you've got to realize that that isn't the whole deal to a lot of people.
And, if you're wondering, yes, I'm writing this on a PowerBook, and yes, I like Apple, no, I don't think they're from God, and yes, I like the fact that my laptop just works without any trouble.
Tim
You've got to remember that AMD might look at their profit margins on these 'embedded' processors and their normal laptop ones and decide for the simple reason of wanting a profit, that it makes more sense to push a 2.5GHz laptop power-hungry processor than their cheaper, power-sipping ones. And if a market grows quickly for small, power-sensitive processors in laptops (say, Transmetta or VIA start making major headway), then *wow* AMD's got a processor that can compete as soon as they can change their marketing material...
But the real issue is where power goes in laptops. You've got HDDs, screens which need to be "big and bright" these days (even say, 5-6" screen with a good backlight is power hungry), graphics processors, optical drives, etc.
I know someone will say "well, I don't need an optical drive or a graphics processor..." but, well, lots of people do for a laptop, and although you might not need a graphics processor that's powerhungry... remember when you compare a 1.4GHz embedded processor without a graphics processor, don't expect it to come close in performance to a PC in the similar speed range on *any* real applications.
But yeah, i think that AMD not seeing the market might be because of voluntary blindness because seeing this market means eating into other markets.
Tim
That's also really inefficient. You know how much energy we use by the time we've got ground prepared for crops, made tractors, used tractors, sprayed crops, etc.? And even then, plants are probably 20-30% efficient, then you're converting plant energy to oil - a process that's probably 10-30% efficient. That's not ESPECIALLY bad, but there's energy use there, too.
But there's a basic fact that we're missing here: we don't have that kind of land space. How much land is there suitable for growing crops in the US that's not being used to grow crops? We're really lucky - we just walk into a supermarket and buy whatever the hell we want, and it makes it easy to forget that there aren't these giant tracts of unused land. Even if there were, there are significant ecological factors to consider when you say, clear cut a forest, kill its inhabitants, and mark any native fauna and flora 'pests' to your crop and kill them when they try to come back.
The fact is, we've got enough land to make food. We've got enough land to export food, but we don't have enough land to make food and power energy. Plant oil will be a good way to get small amounts of chemical energy, and also, I think, in the long run, after we've run out of oil, the primary source for new feed for making plastics, but there just isn't enough space to make it into a major source of oil for energy.
Tim
You're right about a lot of your points... all of it, in fact, but the question is always, not where does it begin, but, where does it end?
I used to live in Beijing, eons ago by Beijing's standards, in the late 80's and early 90's. Beijing's growth might have very well outpaced the Internet's. But when I was there, we had a lot of white furnature, and a housekeeper to keep it clean... one day she was sick following her weekend... the white furnature was BLACK with soot. I honestly don't know if things have gotten better or worse, but I'd suspect that they've gotten worse. China's economy is still coal powered.
The interesting question is who's buying these bikes, why, and what cultural impact they'll have. As pointed out before, its probalby people that are jsut starting to see wage growth, meaning that they're getting e-bikes to replace the human-powered variety, and that these require more electricity, which requires more coal, etc.
But bikes had long been part of Chinese culture. More than just being a mode of cheap, fast transportation, they were handy. They're easy to secure, they can fit in small places to store. it means that building planners didn't need to accommodate big garages and parking spaces, useful when you've got such density as there is along the coastal regions of China and inland to Beijing, where most economic growth is taking place (and therefore, where people are more likely to have money for e-bikes).
in this context, the shift from bikes to e-bikes is a small one, as they meet all of the conveniences of bikes without any major new hastles. (Most consumers, anywhere, have yet to make the 'big picture' association of energy usage == pollution == hastle for everyone, including me.) Now, this means that it postpones the growth of large numbers of cars for a while as people get these instead, perhaps delaying any shift to (as many) big garages, parking lots, etc.
That way, it could be a good thing. RIGHT NOW, its true that it looks like these e-bikes are just a stepping stone to bigger cars... but what if the 'e-bike' phase lasts 20-30 years, as it very well might? By this time, perhaps cars won't seem as desirable, or at the very least, will be less polluting. Additionally, coal plants can be MUCH less polluting with proper design/retrofitting than you'd expect. There was SOME evidence, of which there has been a partial refutation, that its possible to reduce CO2 emissions to almost nothing with a highly efficient deisgn and a method (using some sort of ceramic device??? can anyone inform?). In this way, perhaps China could be one of the first nations to benefit from economic growth without all of the eventual environmenal hastle. If China were to pollute at say, North America's levels, the planet'd get baked like a garage band on a lazy Saturday night, and that'd hurt the Chinese economy both directly and indirectly. I'd say that within the next 10-15 years, China will start retrofitting existing plants to pollute less. This is especially true as they start to get a skilled labour force that hates pollution and is costly to replace when they die young from inhaling half a kilo of coal dust every day. Not that the massive growth of Chinese cigarette sales is helping that any.
This *might* turn out to be an indicental step that prevents it, by postponing the onset of cars and keeping the 'bicycle culture', even if its currently powered by polluting coal plants.
Sometimes, we get lucky, unintended breaks. This could be one.
In that case, it means that the music industry's decision to charge more for downloading *is* a money thing, because it means that they're making quite the pretty penny (acutually, more like 100's of pennies) on every album. (Costs of duplication are quite low, especially now, transportation costs of CDs which way very little and which are relatively durable are low, and, as has been famously stated several times, its not like the artists get a 50% cut.)
Then it makes even more sense: they want to make the same amount per song, whether its downloaded or off a CD. (Note that they want to make a LOT MORE per song if they catch you trying to download it illegally.... kinda ironic. In some ways, you'd think that they should give you the option of 'mending your ways' by having you pay for every song in your collection legally, but obviously, there are some good reasons, and some bad ones, that the system doen'st work that way.) In a way, however, it makes sense that that a record label would want the same amount per song regardless of how it was packaged - it is a form of intellectual property, and, while there are certainly bonuses for buying a CD (physical media, ability to back up/rip at will for 'real' CDs, liner notes, etc.), I think taht there can be a reasonable argument that that's not what you're paying for.
It'd be an interesting debate, whether a reasonably hi-fi (and I know AAC isn't as good of quality as a CD, but most users can't tell) format deserves the same price as another, for the benefit of both the user and the producer.
Tim
I'm not disagreeing with you at all. If it was the same price, I doubt I'd download as much music.... having a CD or something physical just 'feels' good.
At first, I was a huge supporter of downloading music, but until they start digitizing the *entire* liner notes and maybe giving us hi-res album covers, you're at a disadvantage by downloading, and so now I only download some music from iTMS, and other things I buy in-store.
Having said that, I wasn't saying that it was a 'problem' from the users point of view, i'm saying that its a 'problem' if you happen to be a record company - it gives EVERYONE incentive to buy music online, not just a select category.
Tim
I think that's exactly what the music companies are hoping for. The argument that probably ''sold" the RIAA and its members on allowing companies like Apple to give legal downloads of music probably was that sales of the music companies' entire libraries would increase. This lies on the belief that there were some people that would pay for a song/an album, but currently didn't do so, probably for lack of convenience. As an example, I listen to a song on the radio that I like, and I think "hmm, I want it," but I'm not in/near a record store, so I just forget about it and don't buy anything, but if I could have just sat down and paid for it and downloaded it, I would've given the record company some money.
The problem is that it is currently cheaper to download music than to buy it in a store - $9.99 per album for most albums online, compared with what, say $15-$20+ for most albums in a store? So what happens is some people (although, at this point, probably not a lot) figure, 'ok, so I'll just buy it for $10 on iTMS, spend $0.30 on a CD-R, and burn the album.'
What's intereisting is that I'll bet that with retail mark up, the record companies don't see a helluva lot more money by selling albums in a bricks-and-mortar store. (I figure there's at least a 40% retail mark up, and a few pennies here and there for the physical media, including jewel case + transportation etc., compared with about $0.70 per song that the record companies currently get from iTMS). The record companies are betting that a FEW people will pay the SAME amont for online downloads as a actual purchase (those "hmm, this sounds good, I'll buy it now convenience purchasors), and the rest will go for a actual physical CD purchase.
I don't think this is for the moeny, however, I think its because the record companies inhearantly distrust digital music on the Internet, thinking its 'dangerous'. They have more control over bricks and mortar in a number of ways, the most significant of which is that, on iTMS, its just as easy for me to download songs from an indie band as from a big record label, but, good luck finding much independent music in MegaMonolithic Music Store.
Just my read on things.
Tim
The problem is that the chemicals involved in any chemical reaction aren't infinately reusable. As one of the posters above noted, green tea works because it's an anti-oxidant, meaning it removes oxygen (oxides) from the hard drives. The industrial chemicals would also undergo reaction, and after so many uses, become unusable (assuming that 'so many uses' doens't mean once). While it's true that some industrial chemicals can undergo a reverse reaction relaviely easily, and therefore be 'regenerated' and reused, many cannot, and many that can are so cheap that they're disposed of anyways.
While it's true that bio-degradABLE doesn't mean that they're bio-degradED, it does open the door. Also, its probably more environmentally friendly to PRODUCE green tea than it is for other industrial chemicals, which may produce waste products that end up in the water supply, require high temperatures and therefore require lots of energy, etc.
So yeah, you're right that there is NEVER a magic-bullet. But if green tea is easier to produce, easier to refine, and can be broken down with a little simple composting, etc., then its a step in the right direction.
Tim
I'm always kind of irked by the "protecting culture and heritage" argument. You could argue that hertiage is heritage, good, bad or ugly, and nothing in the future can change that, but the more important word is "culture."
I don't think that most people really think of what any given culture is and has been historically. Culture has ALWAYS spread, mingled, and intermixed, more or less to the extent that any given era's technology allows it to. How else is the Spanish word for money - "dinero", so similar to "dinar," a common name for currency in the Middle East?
Take another example. What could be a more solidly cultural experience than food? Then ever wonder why Italian food has generous portions of noodles, an idea they got from China, and tomatoes, native only to the Americas?
Sure, the Italians CHANGED the way they're prepared, and they mixed the two in a way that only they, at the time, could think of. But that proves my point.... a more recent example is Japan. Japan's economy and culture have undergone EXTREME westernization in the past 100 years, and 50 years especially. Now in Japan they have western style dress, and music, etc., but they've also put a Japanese "spin" on it.
Cultures aren't these unique little things that exist in isolation - cultures are made to mix, spread, mingle, and combine in the way that the people in the cultures see fit. And don't forget that cultural values help determine what cultures "see fit" to mix.
Tim
Actually, there _is_ a minimum Canadian content. You might not notice it because the line between Canadian and American content is sometimes intentionally blurred. I can't speak with great authory on the TV side, because I have no experience, but I do know something of the Canadian Content laws for radio, as I've helped a friend organize songs for a show on a local university radio station here (Carleton University's CKCU). 30% of all music played, by song, on a radio station must be Canadian - meaning, Canadian artist. I _believe_ that Canadian TV laws require principle Canadian actors, or writers, or producers, but I'm not 100% sure on that.
The idea is that because the Canadian music industry is smaller, and its harder for Canadian artists to tour, etc. and reach the same fame as foreign (read: US) ones, they need to be protected, because if Canadians artists aren't supported in Canada, they're less likely to be supported anywhere.
The result, however, is that lots of Canadian "filler" artists end up popping up - they're pop music that sounds like all other pop music, but it's CANADIAN filler. Other times, artists that make it in the US are WAAAY overplayed here (think, Avirl Lavigne, ALL THE TIME.) And, on occaison, there is a good Canadian artist/group that for some reason, can't seem to get a international record deal but does well in Canada.
Personally, I think that if Canada really wants to support its artists, they should do it willingly - that is, there'll be a demand for Canadian music. Perhaps TV/radio stations should make a voluntary industry pact, where stations can agree to Canadian content terms, and if they do, they can display a logo or something on their ads. If Canadians really care, they'll support the stations that have the logo; if not, then Canadian arists will have to prove themselves on the same terms as ones everywhere else, even if there is a bit of discrimination.
Tim
I think that the "Mercedes or BMW of IT" label is thrown around a little bit too fast with Apple. Steve Jobs has even spread it around some, I can remember an interview where the interviewer asked him about Apple's marketshare, commenting on how small it was, and he replied by naming some luxury auto brands that had a market share smaller than Apple's.
Now, if you're a home user, yes, its harder to rationalize spending the money for a decent Apple computer, but even then, there are exceptions, like how an eMac is now $749 for univeristy students with the discount.
However, for business users, its been noted many times that computers are just a 'means to an end'. For years, many companies would buy engineers, etc. a new $10,000 Sun box because the added productivity easily covered the cost of the computer.
I _know_ that my productivity's improved greatly since switching to OS X from Windows. The environment just seems more friendly, it seems snappier to get done what I need to do.
So I think, even for the average desktop, where lots of Office stuff is used, web-surfing, etc., chances are, the improved productivity (combined with lower TCO (maybe) because of fewer viruses, greater reliability, etc.), makes the ~$1,200 investment for an iMac worthwile for many businesses.
The 9600's WERE the developer platform of choice for their next-gen OS. They ran Rhapsody (OS X in its infancy) really well, and they're what Apple used to show off Rhapsody in the "early days". That was in 1997. The 9600 had a 50MHz bus, used 70ns RAM, and, realistically, never ran above 350MHz, or 300MHz (realistically, not ocunting the paper-release of the 350's) at launch.
The 9600 was the preferred way of preparing to do devlopment on Rhapsody for several years after its release (and it had many more expansion slots than the PowerMac G3, which probably made it a better choice for doing driver development on Rhapsody).
OS X wasn't released until 2000, and really, it wasn't till the end of 2001 that any sane person would consider using it. By that point, the 9600 was four years old, TWO processor generations out of the lead, and didn't have hte kind of graphics processor that OS X wanted.
If Apple HAD made OS X work on the 9600, either OS X would have had to have shipped with many fewer features, or it would have CRAWLED to thep oint of a standstill (Remember how slow 10.0 was? Now, imagine that on a computer that had a 50MHz bus). Those who bought a 9600 could use it for about 3 years of software development before it was outdated, and it is still a decent development machine for OS 8.x and 9.x applications.
In short, in 1997, when developers were asking for development machines for Rhapsody, the 9600 was the best Apple could do. The comptuers available by OS X's actual release were SO MUCH faster that you'd be insane to say that the 9600 should have stayed compatible.
In a lot of ways, simplfying the tax code would benefit everyone (except accountants, but on the other hand, I'm not a big believer in dumb policies to feed bean counters and dinosaurs, if we'd historically done that, we'd still pay people to sweep/mop floors instead of using machines.) However, when you look at the actual tax forms, they're confusing because of the WORDING, not because of the contents.
Sure, there are some things that seem relatively confusing, something to the effect of "If you earned less than $12,000 last year and spent over $1,500 on the installation or maintance of environmentally friendly irrigation systems (see p. 46) used for commercial farming purposes (see p. 27), subtract the amount used on such irrigation systems from the total on line 27."
But when you look at lots of the complicated wording, its not there to get people to pay MORE taxes, its there because of tax CREDITS and other things that for some reason, the government has decided are worthwhile - be it programs to encourage people to start their own businesses or to help the environment, etc. The benefit of this is that can possibly save the government and the people money (for example, having fewer polluters saves the government from costly and complicated environmental cleanup), or because they help out people who are in need.
I think that in the end, the tax code takes some time and thinking to work through, but it isn't anything that can't be deciphered by the average tax payer.
There is a debate about the use of tax BREAKS (given before) vs. tax CREDITS (given after), which largely fall by party lines, with Democrats supporting breaks, Republicans credits. Its largely semantics, but lower income Americans are less likely to fill out credits they could legally receive, if only because they are generally less educated. However, a tax credit still helps more than nothing.
I've usually thought that if you couldn't come up with a test to tell the difference between two things, then it didn't really matter which it was... like 1 (life on earth --> mars) and 2 (life on mars--> earth) above.
The more interesting question is: wherever life was formed, what conditions were there on the planet at the time?
I'm guessing, but I think there's a pretty narrow window of conditions when you can have life develop, but not enough atmosphere to prevent a meteor from blasting a chunk of the planet up into space. So we really just would need to figure out how old this life is (use fossil records when we start getting them on Mars, or use Terran ones if the life formed on Earth first), and then use geology to piece together the conditions under which life can form and be transported by natural means to another planet.
That's useful knowledge, because it tells us a lot about how life evolves and how hardy it can evolve.
Tim
So, what are you interested in? And remember, there are so many kinds of intelligence that its hard to say that one is better than the others. There is "generic/old fashioned" problem solving intelligence. If you think you've got that, then see how you like inventing - as for what, well, see the thing above on what you're interested in.
But also don't be afraid to try new things - see how you like the arts, from theatre to literature to photography to drawing. As for me, I have no drawing ability, but have found that with a good book on photography and some money for equipment, that I can be decent at it - and the sheer possibilities for capturing light around me, and coming up with interesting subjects, can provide hours of amusement... and don't tell me it doesn't work my brain.
I guess that's the trick to using your intelligence - you can't be afraid of dipping your feet into something new. You don't need to start off an expert - in fact, some humility and a few honest, dumb questions can help build friendships and advice to people that will make your life more vibrant.
And, seeing as this is slashdot... yes, the Internet is your friend. the trick is to not go to the same sites over and over again... to think of something random, like I did with photography, or maybe think of say, some form of art or some weird aspect of science that you don't understand, and searching.
At the same time, especially with more difficult (and i believe, more rewarding) topics which can't be described in a few lines of hypertext, like (advanced/interesting?) science/engineering topics, or things like photography, its important to use your library. And your librarians, as well, as they do have a tremendous breath of knowledge, even if they lack depth - they can show you how to get a toehold on almost any topic, and once you've got that, the possibilities are limited almost only by your determination. So don't be afraid, and remember that the world is out there to experience, but you may need to drive yourself to experience it fully. Tim
Having said that, I don't think it's like the Acer luggable. For one thing, the IBM Microdrive took something that was already successful - smaller (2.5") hard drives, and made them a LOT smaller. For another, it sounds like the infamous (if fake) "640K ought to be enough for anybody" comment. Now, admitadly, flash storage is better than anything with moving parts for a bunch of reasons. But saying that there weren't uses at that time for that much data just isn't true - digital cameras were one emerging market, sub-sublaptops were another, and I tihkn that something LIKE the iPod (basically, using it as an MP3 player, not necessarily as slick as a real iPod) is more of a natural use of the technology than something that incidentally "happened."
It takes a long time from the invention of a technology to the time that it becomes widely used or practical - its a learning curve. That's why there are all sorts of web-based services around now that all the technical foundations were there for in 1998 - because once the tools are available, it takes some time for inventors and idea people to realize it and understand how to best use them.
I think that if the microdrives can stay bigger (in storage space) than compact flash at a similar price point, which I thikn they will over the next 5 years, you'll start seeing more and more of them.
Hey, it worked for them and the Apple I. Too bad the Apple II came pre-assembled. Maybe they could increase their mindshare by going back to their roots.