I think they're down by about 50% currently, so if they double by 2010, you may just get your wish. Of course, since tech unemployment continues to race for the basement, a doubling by 2010 may not be enough to bring us back to where we are now.
I hate to wake you up, but you really should check out the Patriot Act, which (apparently - IANAL) does away with Habeus Corpus, and much of the rest of our Bill of Rights (by declaring that anyone designated by the Homeland Defense organization to be a threat to national security is not worthy of the protections afforded the remaining citizens by our laws), and is currently being prepped to be carved in stone by Orin Hatch, well before we see how well it works.
Power Corrupts, and Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely. The downside to being the only superpower nation on the planet.
... that using a proprietary Windows encoding scheme to distribute movies to theatres is only a foreshadowing of taking the same DMR-friendly encoding scheme and distributing DVDs using it. Then the player manufacturers happily (because many of them are also content distributors) ante up to make DVD players that utilize the Windows Media Player software. And in the end, Microsoft winds up having successfully extended its monopoly franchise into the entertainment viewing marketplace, without firing a competitive shot, so to speak.
Hopefully, Apple's efforts to promote its MPEG4 implementation will succeed at least to the point of offering the public a choice.
Either the people involved are doing a series of pilot plants in scaling this up, or somebody's dragging their feet. Or maybe it's just a case parallel developments utilizing similar technology -- but it sure sounds like the same thing.
The prospect of $14/barrel high-quality oil (the cost quoted in Discover) while providing an environmental service should have the capitalists breaking down the doors. It seems like they're taking a leisurely route to large-scale exploitation -- what's going on here?
Shouldn't we have oil companies partnering with ConAgra and building refineries adjacent to slaughterhouses? Or at least set up a pipeline to a refinery?
... a degreed engineer (ME with a minor in EE) who also has a masters in Computer Science.
However, I work as a Code Monkey, in the Code Monkey Zoo in corporate America. It has been my experience that the folks who develop software are almost universally Code Monkeys, in that they are obliged to code whatever damnfool thing the customer wants, whether it does the job or not, and whether it harms the customer or not.
I have also worked as an degreed engineer, and can confirm that while it is possible for an engineer to be browbeaten into doing something stoopid, it is the engineer's fault for having done so. Engineers have the right and responsibility to tell the customer that what they want cannot be done, that the laws of physics and mathematics will not permit it.
99.99% of all Code Monkeys lack the ability to make such a statement. They are unable to make definitive statements about whether a particular piece of software will perform as desired, or whether that software will do what the customer wants, even if it does perform as desired.
If you want to know whether you are a Code Monkey or Software Engineer, ask yourself the following questions:
1) do you have a degree indicating that you know how to do formal proofs, mathematical modelling, statistical analysis, etc -- one that has the word "Engineer" in it?
2) do you code defensively, designing and writing code that works even when it's broken, that always fails gracefully?
3) do you have a large assortment of programming tools (language skills), and are able to select the most appropriate language for the task at hand, or do you always code in the small handful of languages you are familiar with?
4) do you work with any/all computing platforms, or do you only work on a preferred one/two? If someone presents you with an assignment to be done on platform XYZ, do you throw up your hands?
If you can answer YES to all of the above, then you are probably a Software Engineer. Otherwise, you're just another Code Monkey with an overly inflated opinion of him/herself.
I remember in the pre 0.9.x days, when they were still called Milestone X, the releases were multiple months apart. And with the last beta release of it coming out about a month ago, I don't really thing you have anything to complain about.
I remember those days also, but I also recognize that Mozilla is targeting a very broad spectrum of hardware platforms and operating systems, whereas Safari has an exceedingly narrow focus. And the KDE code base Safari uses was supposedly selected because it has an order of magnitude fewer lines of code to deal with. Given the hoopla with with Apple has rolled it out, and dangled their "public beta" in front of me, I expect pretty frequent updates. The last one was 2-18-2003, and "about a month ago" happened at the beginning of the week just ended. It looks as if it will be some weeks/months before we see another one released to the public.
Mozilla has thousands of developers, whereas Safari has what, a couple dozen if that?
I wish (at least, I think I wish -- I'm not sure that having so many developers wouldn't make the whole thing dissolve into unmanageable slop) it were true that Mozilla had thousands of developers. The reality is that there are a handful (probably fewer than Apple commits to Safari, but one cannot know, as that is Apple's business and not the public's) of full-time developers and on the order of hundreds (not thousands) who have contributed on a part-time basis over the years.
The real advantage the Mozilla development methodology brings has little to do with the product being Open Source, Shared Source, or Closed Source -- although I believe that those in the Open Source camp will have a mindset that finds it easier to adopt this style... The Mozilla folks seem to care a whole lot more about the product they produce than those who mindlessly manufacture lines of code for a living. I have only rarely had a software provider respond to a bug report within hours of filing it with suggestions of things to try or requests for additional information -- except for the Mozilla and Camino(Chimera) development teams, who regularly respond within hours.
There's a concept in software engineering called egoless programming.
There have been a lot of programming concepts rolled out over the years. Personally, I think things called pride of craftsmanship or pride of ownership are going to stand the test of time a lot better than egoless programming. Yes, it's true that code has a very short useful lifetime, given the rate of change in the environment it operates in. And a fixation to one's work in such an environment is not a Good Thing. But I don't believe that people who are not somewhat emotionally involved in what they do are very good at it. It's part of a thing called Motivation. I'll take professional pride over egoless programming every time.
Apple would rather release their browser on their terms, and fix the bugs on their terms. I'm content knowing that the engine of it is open source. Why isn't that enough? It's their code after all.
As with Mac OS X itself, Safari uses open source software at its core. For its Web page rendering engine, Safari draws on KHTML and KJS software from the KDE open source project. And of course, being a good open source citizen, Apple
shares its enhancements with the open source community.
Certainly sounds to me like they're trying to convey the notion that Safari is open source. But it's pretty clear that it's a closed development process.
To summarize my feelings on this -- no, a software provider does not have to be responsive to me as a user of their software. But if they do, I like it better. If they roll out a "public beta" of a product that they also advertise as "open source", and then slam the development
Contrast the way Apple has "managed" the Safari development with the way the mozorg folks have done with Camino and Mozilla.
Apple releases a couple of "beta" releases, fires up interest and demand, and then nothing happens (from a public perspective) for a relatively long time. Given that it is beta software, there are a lot of things that need fixing -- the more people liked the initial rollout, the more demand there is for improved releases. But only frustration is available.
OTOH, look at the Mozilla camp. There are milestone builds on a frequency on months wherein an attempt is made to level-set at a certain level of stability, and nightly builds that are expected to be fraught with bugs, but steadily progress towards the next milestone build. This method serves the people who want stability and predictability above all else, the bleeding edge lunatics who want the newest thing out, bugs and all, and the developers, who benefit from having the largest group of testers that is practical.
How many people sent in bugs or suggestions for Safari? How many have seen even one of their personal hot buttons addressed? Virtually zilch, because Apple has been so stingy with new releases. OTOH, I personally have had several bugs looked at in Mozilla/Chimera(Camino), and feel a much stronger involvement with those products as a direct result of this.
I think Apple is missing the point about Open Source software -- it's not just that it's cheap, it also has closer ties to the user community, and as a result, probably better fits the needs of that community. You can take Open Source, develop in behind closed doors with an army of people, and still release it as an open source product -- but it's the dumb way to do it. It's how Microsoft would do Open Source.
I seem to recall that Lou Gerstner left Nabisco to bail out IBM and save it from itself.
Last time I looked, there wasn't a lot of computing knowledge in making and selling Oreos.
It may be that the technology end of things is better left to the people in the trenches. The very notion of senior management having an opinion on technology scares me a bit. I think Apple has plenty of EEs, but they don't really have any business in the board room.
The research described in the New Scientist article is just the tip of the iceberg. Check out the conference notes from this 1999 (!!) NIMH Conference : Toward Replacement Parts for the Brain. The research reported on in the New Scientist article is in there, along with a boatload of other stuff.
It won't be all that much longer before "Intel Inside" has meaning in a more expanded context.
Now, will people with Palladium implants have their minds controlled by corporations?
... until we achieve practical nanotechnology or large-scale robotic assembly (both here and in orbit), that making space travel practical will simply be too expensive.
However, that having been said, making expensive incremental advances is the best we can do until then -- so we must keep plodding along.
But what I want to know is WHY haven't important advances like the linear aerospike engine developed for the X-33 been put to use? I thought NASA's job was to push technology forward, not to bury it. For those unaware of what a linear aerospike engine is, here's one small tidbit that helps explain its value: conventional rocket engines lose effectiveness as the ambient air pressure changes and must use expensive and complex nozzle geometry changes to minimize this. The linear aerospike maintains a near-constant efficiency from surface to orbit.
Before the X-33 program was folded amidst cries of bug-ridden technology and cost overruns (ostensibly due to a single fuel tank failure during testing -- remember the early problems with shuttle tiles? the Apollo 100% oxygen atmosphere that resulted in 3 deaths before everything was redesigned to become more flame-retardant? The X-33 fuel tank problems were a stalking horse designed to let the military take it over.), the linear aerospike performed flawlessly. And where is it now? Check the url above to see in what part of Boeing it resides.
And with the inherent weaknesses of the decades-old shuttle fresh in your mind, check out this link (originally from www.milnet.com, but now only available via the google cache) for the advantages the X-33 presented over the shuttle. The VentureStar might not have made as good a truck as the shuttle, but unmanned cargo rockets (like those the Russians do so well) are better vehicles to boost freight into orbit.
Perhaps when we have a Chinese space station passing over the US every ninety minutes the government will figure out that NASA has a role other than a place to take funding from to backfill budgets that cannot be supported on their own merits.
Eventually, when large scale robotic manufacturing and practical nanotechnology drive the cost of making things through the floor (assuming it doesn't bury us in grey goo), we'll be able to grow space elevators and put hotels and shopping centers in orbit (not to mention nanotech development facilities, zero-G hospitals and organ farms). Until that time, access to space will continue to be controlled/blocked by that servant of the people, the gummint.
... there's simply no reason why we should continue using the ancient expensive dangerous shuttle technology, when there's been MUCH better stuff developed.
Check out the milnet page on VentureStar, which is apparently being funded by black-budget ops (speculation -- but something is happening, the Air Force doesn't warehouse dead NASA projects out of the goodness of its heart). Link here
Had to pull the page from the Google cache, as much of the X-33/VentureStar info has disappeared from the web. But there's still plenty of stuff from non-governmental sites.
One of the X-33 design goals was to reduce cost per pound of payload from $20,000 to $2000, but in my mind, the more efficient and reliable engines, lack of strap-on boosters, slower reentry, no ceramic "bricks" for heat protection make good enough reasons to move forward with such a replacement for the shuttle, even if it had zero cost advantage in lifting payload to orbit.
There's no good reason to continue using the obsolete and dangerous shuttle technology forever.
Well, I made a stab at it. While I can't guarantee that I selected the most comparable Dell system or navigated their awkward customized system configurator correctly, here's what I got:
I selected a Dell Dimension 8250 as my starting point
I wasn't able to find a dual-cpu Dell, but estimated that a 2.8GHz P4 was in the ballpark of 2x1.25GHz G4's
couldn't get 2M of L2 cache on the Dell to match the 2M of L3 cache + however much L2 cache comes with the Mac G4's -- had to settle for 512K of Dell L2 cache. Oh, and I'm pretty sure that the G4's L1 cache is larger than the P4 L1 cache as well.
I couldn't find ANY Dell option for Firewire, of any speed.
No onboard Bluetooth for the Dell, either.
10/100 ethernet was the best I could do with the Dell. No gigahertz ethernet.
I couldn't exactly match HD sizes, so I let a 60G Dell HD = an 80G PowerMac HD.
Omitted monitors on the Dell to match the Mac. Also omitted secondary CD and zip drive on Dell to match the Mac.
added the Dell combo drive equivalent
went with the Soundblaster soundcard Dell option
Assumed the Dell 64M GeForce4 MX video card was equivalent to the Mac's 64M ATI 9000 video card.
No onboard 802.11g available for the Dell. Went with an external USB-connected 802.11b unit
selected the basic Musicmatch player, HK-395 speakers, the recommended Picture Studio, Paint Shop Pro option, and the Movie Studio Plus option.
selected the basic Win XP Home Edition OS.
cheapest s/w app bundle.
1-yr warranty.
The Dell came in at at $1747 vs the PowerMac's $1999. I think I gave the Dell more than a fair shot.
For myself, either the integrated Firewire 800, 802.11g and Bluetooth or the combination of OS X and the Apple iLife bundle is worth $200. Getting all of that for $200 over the Dell is a bargain. I don't even need to go into the free OS X Developer's toolkit, which is worth a lot more than $200 all by itself.
Please put together a Wintel PC with these same features at any price, so we can have a legitimate comparison. Then you can complain about Apple's "overpriced" products.
If you want Apple to drop the combo drive, integrated Bluetooth, 802.11g and 800 Mbps Firewire and sell that for $899 -- that's another matter. But you specifically listed these features, so you must want them, just not bad enough to pay a modest premium for them. Don't forget that iLife (iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto) comes bundled with it, along with OS X and a "standard" gigahertz ethernet port. But you probably want to buy a machine stripped of all bundled software & hardware in order to keep the price down.
Too bad. I'd like to pay $899 for a trip to the space station, but the Russians have this silly notion that I'll have to pay them $20M for the trip. I'd say that was overpriced, but I see no better deals available anywhere.
Low interest loans are available everywhere. Put your $899 to work and borrow the rest. You'll recoup it as the machine stays useful for 5-6 years. I still use a PowerMac 7500 from 1996 -- admittedly, it's no longer the same machine, as it now sports a midrange G3, Firewire, USB and OS X, but my overall cost has been fairly small compared to the 3 systems my Wintel peers have gone through during the same interval.
... 64-bit addressing before thinking this through. I couldn't see the significant advantage for more than a very tiny fraction of apps in being able to address more than a few gigabytes.
Now I can't wait for OS X to have 64-bit support for the IBM 970 processors (I do realize that it will take several releases before default 64-bit operation is practical).
When compared to clustered 32-bit filesystems, I would think that a "pure" 64-bit filesystem would have a number of very practical advantages.
I could easily see the journalled filesystem becoming one of the first 64-bit subsystems in OS X, right after VM.
... to prosecute those owners of systems that become infected -- at least when the infection is due to their negligence in not applying known fixes.
If this were done, the internet would become a MUCH more secure place very quickly. And a lot more attention would be given to software that has been demonstrated to be more secure.
It's a lot like holding the owner of a motor vehicle liable for damages incurred during its use.
... I wonder if evil-doers might be mining the Microsoft patch libraries, looking for exploits that already have fixes, but depending upon the cluelessness of Microsoft site admins to fail to implement them...
Why go to all the trouble to invent a problem, when there is a large population of targets and a database of vulnerabilities?
Sounds plenty attractive to me. Consider that flash memory for digital cameras is running around $80 for 128M. You just have to select the application that makes the most sense, cost-wise. Surely these will knock the prices of iPods down a notch or two.
The pricing for DVD media is starting to fall pretty rapidly, so these may not make much of a dent in the DVD arena.
Others, I generally require a brief inspection before purchasing. I NEVER buy SciFi solely on a reviewer's recommendation, there are simply too many degrees of freedom in personal preferences for that to be reliable. But a short list of authors that will make me pause at the bookstore is: Bruce Sterling Vernor Vinge Charles Sheffield (sadly, now deceased) Steven Barnes Walter Mosley Nancy Kress David Brin
And I must confess to being a sucker for Michael Crichton's stuff -- the science is generally pretty rough, but the concepts and writing are always first-rate.
I've been certainly willing to give Safari a shot, but have ended up returning to Chimera and Mozilla for the following reasons: 1) No tabbed windows in Safari. I love 'em. 2) Safari download speeds are currently about 70% of Chimera's. It certainly renders pages quickly, but it also takes its sweet time getting the data. 3) I find that when a manufacturer proclaims that software is "beta", it is really (IMHO) a rough beta, and more typically alpha quality code. The initial problems of Safari's deleting files point towards alpha code, IMHO. Also, there's a significant chunk of the web that it does not yet render well -- things like XHTML.
Except for the tabbed windows, all my other complaints with Safari merely reflect the fact that it isn't done yet. I expect the Gecko folks to be looking closely at Safari, and learning from the competition's failures as welll as their successes.
I continue to play with Safari, as it does have some spiffy features (that I hope the clever Chimera folks pick up on) like Rendezvous support, and the SnapBack feature. But my bread & butter browser on OS X remains Chimera. I use Mozilla for mail (I'm not quite ready to trust the OS X Mail app, however it's possible that I'm overly cautious in this) and as a decent page composer before hand-finishing the generated code. Safari is going to have to grow considerably before it displaces those. IE, however, has less utility for me every day.
In the end, Safari does have the advantage in the marketplace of being the default browser shipped with OS X, and having a profit-making company backing it. If Apple is aggressive about fixing the deficiencies (and that means adding tabbed windows, for me), then in the fullness of time Chimera may dwindle into insignificance, as they are not cross-platform. But Mozilla should not be impacted at all, even if it is bloated and slow.
Mozilla is the gold standard for cross-platform compatibility, and so long as that is true, there will be a place for it in the world.
Slashdot Mirror
I think they're down by about 50% currently, so if they double by 2010, you may just get your wish. Of course, since tech unemployment continues to race for the basement, a doubling by 2010 may not be enough to bring us back to where we are now.
How low can IT employment go?
I hate to wake you up, but you really should check out the Patriot Act, which (apparently - IANAL) does away with Habeus Corpus, and much of the rest of our Bill of Rights (by declaring that anyone designated by the Homeland Defense organization to be a threat to national security is not worthy of the protections afforded the remaining citizens by our laws), and is currently being prepped to be carved in stone by Orin Hatch, well before we see how well it works.
Power Corrupts, and Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely.
The downside to being the only superpower nation on the planet.
... that using a proprietary Windows encoding scheme to distribute movies to theatres is only a foreshadowing of taking the same DMR-friendly encoding scheme and distributing DVDs using it. Then the player manufacturers happily (because many of them are also content distributors) ante up to make DVD players that utilize the Windows Media Player software. And in the end, Microsoft winds up having successfully extended its monopoly franchise into the entertainment viewing marketplace, without firing a competitive shot, so to speak.
Hopefully, Apple's efforts to promote its MPEG4 implementation will succeed at least to the point of offering the public a choice.
... if you do the following google: "(waste OR trash) into oil"
you will find similar articles, mostly from the summer of 2001 ?!!?. (Google cached story from Kansas City Tribune)
Either the people involved are doing a series of pilot plants in scaling this up, or somebody's dragging their feet. Or maybe it's just a case parallel developments utilizing similar technology -- but it sure sounds like the same thing.
The prospect of $14/barrel high-quality oil (the cost quoted in Discover) while providing an environmental service should have the capitalists breaking down the doors. It seems like they're taking a leisurely route to large-scale exploitation -- what's going on here?
Shouldn't we have oil companies partnering with ConAgra and building refineries adjacent to slaughterhouses? Or at least set up a pipeline to a refinery?
... a degreed engineer (ME with a minor in EE) who also has a masters in Computer Science.
However, I work as a Code Monkey, in the Code Monkey Zoo in corporate America. It has been my experience that the folks who develop software are almost universally Code Monkeys, in that they are obliged to code whatever damnfool thing the customer wants, whether it does the job or not, and whether it harms the customer or not.
I have also worked as an degreed engineer, and can confirm that while it is possible for an engineer to be browbeaten into doing something stoopid, it is the engineer's fault for having done so. Engineers have the right and responsibility to tell the customer that what they want cannot be done, that the laws of physics and mathematics will not permit it.
99.99% of all Code Monkeys lack the ability to make such a statement. They are unable to make definitive statements about whether a particular piece of software will perform as desired, or whether that software will do what the customer wants, even if it does perform as desired.
If you want to know whether you are a Code Monkey or Software Engineer, ask yourself the following questions:
1) do you have a degree indicating that you know how to do formal proofs, mathematical modelling, statistical analysis, etc -- one that has the word "Engineer" in it?
2) do you code defensively, designing and writing code that works even when it's broken, that always fails gracefully?
3) do you have a large assortment of programming tools (language skills), and are able to select the most appropriate language for the task at hand, or do you always code in the small handful of languages you are familiar with?
4) do you work with any/all computing platforms, or do you only work on a preferred one/two? If someone presents you with an assignment to be done on platform XYZ, do you throw up your hands?
If you can answer YES to all of the above, then you are probably a Software Engineer. Otherwise, you're just another Code Monkey with an overly inflated opinion of him/herself.
Absolutely.
The workplace scenes are eerily remniscent of my own reality.
I remember those days also, but I also recognize that Mozilla is targeting a very broad spectrum of hardware platforms and operating systems, whereas Safari has an exceedingly narrow focus. And the KDE code base Safari uses was supposedly selected because it has an order of magnitude fewer lines of code to deal with. Given the hoopla with with Apple has rolled it out, and dangled their "public beta" in front of me, I expect pretty frequent updates. The last one was 2-18-2003, and "about a month ago" happened at the beginning of the week just ended. It looks as if it will be some weeks/months before we see another one released to the public.
Mozilla has thousands of developers, whereas Safari has what, a couple dozen if that?
I wish (at least, I think I wish -- I'm not sure that having so many developers wouldn't make the whole thing dissolve into unmanageable slop) it were true that Mozilla had thousands of developers. The reality is that there are a handful (probably fewer than Apple commits to Safari, but one cannot know, as that is Apple's business and not the public's) of full-time developers and on the order of hundreds (not thousands) who have contributed on a part-time basis over the years.
The real advantage the Mozilla development methodology brings has little to do with the product being Open Source, Shared Source, or Closed Source -- although I believe that those in the Open Source camp will have a mindset that finds it easier to adopt this style... The Mozilla folks seem to care a whole lot more about the product they produce than those who mindlessly manufacture lines of code for a living. I have only rarely had a software provider respond to a bug report within hours of filing it with suggestions of things to try or requests for additional information -- except for the Mozilla and Camino(Chimera) development teams, who regularly respond within hours.
There's a concept in software engineering called egoless programming.
There have been a lot of programming concepts rolled out over the years. Personally, I think things called pride of craftsmanship or pride of ownership are going to stand the test of time a lot better than egoless programming. Yes, it's true that code has a very short useful lifetime, given the rate of change in the environment it operates in. And a fixation to one's work in such an environment is not a Good Thing. But I don't believe that people who are not somewhat emotionally involved in what they do are very good at it. It's part of a thing called Motivation. I'll take professional pride over egoless programming every time.
Apple would rather release their browser on their terms, and fix the bugs on their terms. I'm content knowing that the engine of it is open source. Why isn't that enough? It's their code after all.
This is from the Apple Safari page:
Certainly sounds to me like they're trying to convey the notion that Safari is open source. But it's pretty clear that it's a closed development process.
To summarize my feelings on this -- no, a software provider does not have to be responsive to me as a user of their software. But if they do, I like it better. If they roll out a "public beta" of a product that they also advertise as "open source", and then slam the development
Contrast the way Apple has "managed" the Safari development with the way the mozorg folks have done with Camino and Mozilla.
Apple releases a couple of "beta" releases, fires up interest and demand, and then nothing happens (from a public perspective) for a relatively long time. Given that it is beta software, there are a lot of things that need fixing -- the more people liked the initial rollout, the more demand there is for improved releases. But only frustration is available.
OTOH, look at the Mozilla camp. There are milestone builds on a frequency on months wherein an attempt is made to level-set at a certain level of stability, and nightly builds that are expected to be fraught with bugs, but steadily progress towards the next milestone build. This method serves the people who want stability and predictability above all else, the bleeding edge lunatics who want the newest thing out, bugs and all, and the developers, who benefit from having the largest group of testers that is practical.
How many people sent in bugs or suggestions for Safari? How many have seen even one of their personal hot buttons addressed? Virtually zilch, because Apple has been so stingy with new releases. OTOH, I personally have had several bugs looked at in Mozilla/Chimera(Camino), and feel a much stronger involvement with those products as a direct result of this.
I think Apple is missing the point about Open Source software -- it's not just that it's cheap, it also has closer ties to the user community, and as a result, probably better fits the needs of that community. You can take Open Source, develop in behind closed doors with an army of people, and still release it as an open source product -- but it's the dumb way to do it. It's how Microsoft would do Open Source.
easier to understand? (and how do you evaluate this)
more compact code? (i.e., fewer LOC)
more evidence of encapsulation and data hiding?
more comments (to better explain what the code is doing)
fewer comments (the code stands on its own)
rigorously standardized naming conventions?
choice of language?
All too often, one man's notion of quality is another's nightmare.
Is he, or is he not, a Switcher.
I seem to recall that Lou Gerstner left Nabisco to bail out IBM and save it from itself.
Last time I looked, there wasn't a lot of computing knowledge in making and selling Oreos.
It may be that the technology end of things is better left to the people in the trenches. The very notion of senior management having an opinion on technology scares me a bit. I think Apple has plenty of EEs, but they don't really have any business in the board room.
Could you imagine an influenza strain that spreads through the air and causes chronic lung damage (and lots of deaths)?
We don't have to imagine it -- it's already happened. Check out the Influenza Pandemic of 1918.
One quote from the link:
"The effect of the influenza epidemic was so severe that the average life span in the US was depressed by 10 years."
The research described in the New Scientist article is just the tip of the iceberg.
Check out the conference notes from this 1999 (!!) NIMH Conference : Toward Replacement Parts for the Brain. The research reported on in the New Scientist article is in there, along with a boatload of other stuff.
It won't be all that much longer before "Intel Inside" has meaning in a more expanded context.
Now, will people with Palladium implants have their minds controlled by corporations?
and I thought we had Slashswatted the flyserver...
... until we achieve practical nanotechnology or large-scale robotic assembly (both here and in orbit), that making space travel practical will simply be too expensive.
However, that having been said, making expensive incremental advances is the best we can do until then -- so we must keep plodding along.
But what I want to know is WHY haven't important advances like the linear aerospike engine developed for the X-33 been put to use? I thought NASA's job was to push technology forward, not to bury it. For those unaware of what a linear aerospike engine is, here's one small tidbit that helps explain its value: conventional rocket engines lose effectiveness as the ambient air pressure changes and must use expensive and complex nozzle geometry changes to minimize this. The linear aerospike maintains a near-constant efficiency from surface to orbit.
Before the X-33 program was folded amidst cries of bug-ridden technology and cost overruns (ostensibly due to a single fuel tank failure during testing -- remember the early problems with shuttle tiles? the Apollo 100% oxygen atmosphere that resulted in 3 deaths before everything was redesigned to become more flame-retardant? The X-33 fuel tank problems were a stalking horse designed to let the military take it over.), the linear aerospike performed flawlessly. And where is it now? Check the url above to see in what part of Boeing it resides.
And with the inherent weaknesses of the decades-old shuttle fresh in your mind, check out this link (originally from www.milnet.com, but now only available via the google cache) for the advantages the X-33 presented over the shuttle. The VentureStar might not have made as good a truck as the shuttle, but unmanned cargo rockets (like those the Russians do so well) are better vehicles to boost freight into orbit.
Perhaps when we have a Chinese space station passing over the US every ninety minutes the government will figure out that NASA has a role other than a place to take funding from to backfill budgets that cannot be supported on their own merits.
Eventually, when large scale robotic manufacturing and practical nanotechnology drive the cost of making things through the floor (assuming it doesn't bury us in grey goo), we'll be able to grow space elevators and put hotels and shopping centers in orbit (not to mention nanotech development facilities, zero-G hospitals and organ farms). Until that time, access to space will continue to be controlled/blocked by that servant of the people, the gummint.
... there's simply no reason why we should continue using the ancient expensive dangerous shuttle technology, when there's been MUCH better stuff developed.
Check out the milnet page on VentureStar, which is apparently being funded by black-budget ops (speculation -- but something is happening, the Air Force doesn't warehouse dead NASA projects out of the goodness of its heart). Link here
Had to pull the page from the Google cache, as much of the X-33/VentureStar info has disappeared from the web. But there's still plenty of stuff from non-governmental sites.
One of the X-33 design goals was to reduce cost per pound of payload from $20,000 to $2000, but in my mind, the more efficient and reliable engines, lack of strap-on boosters, slower reentry, no ceramic "bricks" for heat protection make good enough reasons to move forward with such a replacement for the shuttle, even if it had zero cost advantage in lifting payload to orbit.
There's no good reason to continue using the obsolete and dangerous shuttle technology forever.
The Dell came in at at $1747 vs the PowerMac's $1999. I think I gave the Dell more than a fair shot.
For myself, either the integrated Firewire 800, 802.11g and Bluetooth or the combination of OS X and the Apple iLife bundle is worth $200. Getting all of that for $200 over the Dell is a bargain. I don't even need to go into the free OS X Developer's toolkit, which is worth a lot more than $200 all by itself.
YMMV.
Please put together a Wintel PC with these same features at any price, so we can have a legitimate comparison. Then you can complain about Apple's "overpriced" products.
If you want Apple to drop the combo drive, integrated Bluetooth, 802.11g and 800 Mbps Firewire and sell that for $899 -- that's another matter. But you specifically listed these features, so you must want them, just not bad enough to pay a modest premium for them. Don't forget that iLife (iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto) comes bundled with it, along with OS X and a "standard" gigahertz ethernet port. But you probably want to buy a machine stripped of all bundled software & hardware in order to keep the price down.
Too bad. I'd like to pay $899 for a trip to the space station, but the Russians have this silly notion that I'll have to pay them $20M for the trip. I'd say that was overpriced, but I see no better deals available anywhere.
Low interest loans are available everywhere. Put your $899 to work and borrow the rest. You'll recoup it as the machine stays useful for 5-6 years. I still use a PowerMac 7500 from 1996 -- admittedly, it's no longer the same machine, as it now sports a midrange G3, Firewire, USB and OS X, but my overall cost has been fairly small compared to the 3 systems my Wintel peers have gone through during the same interval.
... 64-bit addressing before thinking this through. I couldn't see the significant advantage for more than a very tiny fraction of apps in being able to address more than a few gigabytes.
Now I can't wait for OS X to have 64-bit support for the IBM 970 processors (I do realize that it will take several releases before default 64-bit operation is practical).
When compared to clustered 32-bit filesystems, I would think that a "pure" 64-bit filesystem would have a number of very practical advantages.
I could easily see the journalled filesystem becoming one of the first 64-bit subsystems in OS X, right after VM.
... to prosecute those owners of systems that become infected -- at least when the infection is due to their negligence in not applying known fixes.
If this were done, the internet would become a MUCH more secure place very quickly. And a lot more attention would be given to software that has been demonstrated to be more secure.
It's a lot like holding the owner of a motor vehicle liable for damages incurred during its use.
... I wonder if evil-doers might be mining the Microsoft patch libraries, looking for exploits that already have fixes, but depending upon the cluelessness of Microsoft site admins to fail to implement them...
Why go to all the trouble to invent a problem, when there is a large population of targets and a database of vulnerabilities?
... Steve casually walks in in sneakers, jeans and a black turtleneck, with some bottled water.
One by one, he describes the new policies his administration will institute, with really classy Keynote displays to a huge back-projected screen.
Nobody asks any questions, as they are under the influence of his presidential "Reality Distortion Field".
At the end, he pauses and says "there's just one more thing..."
And the screen behind him changes to show a mushroom cloud over Baghdad (or Redmond -- take your pick).
The crowd goes wild.
Sounds plenty attractive to me. Consider that flash memory for digital cameras is running around $80 for 128M. You just have to select the application that makes the most sense, cost-wise. Surely these will knock the prices of iPods down a notch or two.
The pricing for DVD media is starting to fall pretty rapidly, so these may not make much of a dent in the DVD arena.
... whose works I'll buy sight unseen --
Larry Niven and Connie Willis spring to mind.
Others, I generally require a brief inspection before purchasing. I NEVER buy SciFi solely on a reviewer's recommendation, there are simply too many degrees of freedom in personal preferences for that to be reliable. But a short list of authors that will make me pause at the bookstore is:
Bruce Sterling
Vernor Vinge
Charles Sheffield (sadly, now deceased)
Steven Barnes
Walter Mosley
Nancy Kress
David Brin
And I must confess to being a sucker for Michael Crichton's stuff -- the science is generally pretty rough, but the concepts and writing are always first-rate.
I've been certainly willing to give Safari a shot, but have ended up returning to Chimera and Mozilla for the following reasons:
1) No tabbed windows in Safari. I love 'em.
2) Safari download speeds are currently about 70% of Chimera's. It certainly renders pages quickly, but it also takes its sweet time getting the data.
3) I find that when a manufacturer proclaims that software is "beta", it is really (IMHO) a rough beta, and more typically alpha quality code. The initial problems of Safari's deleting files point towards alpha code, IMHO. Also, there's a significant chunk of the web that it does not yet render well -- things like XHTML.
Except for the tabbed windows, all my other complaints with Safari merely reflect the fact that it isn't done yet. I expect the Gecko folks to be looking closely at Safari, and learning from the competition's failures as welll as their successes.
I continue to play with Safari, as it does have some spiffy features (that I hope the clever Chimera folks pick up on) like Rendezvous support, and the SnapBack feature. But my bread & butter browser on OS X remains Chimera. I use Mozilla for mail (I'm not quite ready to trust the OS X Mail app, however it's possible that I'm overly cautious in this) and as a decent page composer before hand-finishing the generated code. Safari is going to have to grow considerably before it displaces those. IE, however, has less utility for me every day.
In the end, Safari does have the advantage in the marketplace of being the default browser shipped with OS X, and having a profit-making company backing it. If Apple is aggressive about fixing the deficiencies (and that means adding tabbed windows, for me), then in the fullness of time Chimera may dwindle into insignificance, as they are not cross-platform. But Mozilla should not be impacted at all, even if it is bloated and slow.
Mozilla is the gold standard for cross-platform compatibility, and so long as that is true, there will be a place for it in the world.