Interesting, eh? More like 0, Stupid. The broadcasts are done by regime-critical expatriots in the US. Why would the US jam anti-iraninan broadcasts based on its own soil?
Maybe to provide an excuse to invade yet another country?
While I agree that the arguments of any other industry apply to Peter's company, software in general is more interesting than most other goods for one reason: it can be shared and duplicated without cost. This makes it a public good inherently unlike most other goods.
Take a radio station and a car. A radio station can be shared by anyone in a city for a certain fixed cost. Allowing another person in the city to hear it costs nothing (and in fact trying to meter it costs more) so it is a public good and most economists will tell you it is more efficient to have a government pay for public goods. An additional car OTOH does cost more per person and so it is a private good and more efficiently distributed through private enterprise.
Free software is thus a public good. The jury is still out on whether software is better produced free or not, but public funding for free software has compelling economic arguments. There is also the question of what constitutes infrastructure: the government thought the internet was, so how about a kernel (remember Mach) or an OS?
This is especially difficult when Apple is not really sure if it wants to change direction. On one hand it wants to open-source the tech or guts of the OS while at the same time protect its look and feel. It would be easier if Apple was totally sure of what it wanted.
That is exactly what Apple wants. They want to be able to use stable, developed technology to base their products on, and they want to support standards. They do not have to make a black-and-white decision, either completely open source or completely closed.
I like this hybrid open-closed system a lot because it addresses the deficiencies in our patent/copyright laws. Ideas and technology are shared through the open source code, and they get paid for their innovations through the closed. Hopefully, as they develop more technology, they will open less recent code, say opening any code older than 5 years, which is the way I think copyright law used to and should work.
Already Done In Pittsburgh
on
The Wireless City
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Pah! I am sitting in Oakland (home of U Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon) with my iBook on a free Telerama connection. Apart from Telerama (which will turn to a paid service when they have the entire city covered), the City of Pittsburgh has a free net downtown, and Telerama and others cover all major neighborhoods.
When Telerama starts charging, I'll just cancel my ISP and use them everywhere. Free would be nice, but my ISP getting me wireless access everywhere in the city is great too.
Of course, Pitt, CMU and Duquesne have their own wireless points all over for their students/staff. It's already reality in Pittsburgh, buddy.
Behind the car is a huge and powerful car industry. In the US from the 1930s to the 1950s General Motors and other automobile manufactures bought 90% of the tram networks in 45 US cities. These were then dismantled and replaced by busses (which were manufactured by the car companies). In 1991 the auto industry in the USA spent 10 million dollars defeating legislation aimed at tougher fuel efficiency standards. The only solution often being offered is to build more roads, it's a solution that benefits industry not people. More roads into the countryside surrounding cities, leads to the growth of suburbs, which leads to more traffic (and calls for more roads). The solution leads to more problems, and it also leads to great wealth for the developers who build the suburbs and those who own the land they are built on.
I think the G4 mod is very functional. The G4 is already a functional box. I would love to run a CPU meter on the face LCD he added then you could run it headless with useful feedback.
One: under item 2 he states you need to change Login Options once root has been enabled; this is not true--Jaguar automatically provides an "Other" button that allows you to log in as root.
MacCentral is quoting the head of IDG saying that they may consider banning Apple from all expos! Either this is negotiating, or as you said there is a madness that affects marketing/PR people. There are even mayors and senators offering to fly to Cupertino to resolve this for Christ's sake!
I think the point is that Apple has a large existing userbase, 4 million-a-year unit shipments, and the pockets to run New York Times spreads and Superbowl ads.
Unix can now gun for mindshare against MS in the massive consumer space.
Hopefully, Apple will realize how profitable a Windows or Linux version could be.
It can't be very profitable if they give it away for free. They would have to charge for it like Sorenson already does, making the free Mac streaming solution cheaper. Which is exactly the way it is and exactly the way Apple likes it.
The bandwidth myth has been debunked many times on the Altivec list and the SciTech list. The Mac bus is 64-bits wide unlike the 32-bit x86, so bus MHz tells you only half the story (pun intended). Except for a couple of asm instructions, poor Intel memory controllers mean that current G4 towers actually provide better bandwidth than x86, and the gap has only widened with the Xserve.
Remember if you buy on a credit card, the factory warranty is usually doubled. Ask your bank. I always skip the extended warranty and get a second year free on a platinum Mastercard; you can even extend further for less than Apple.
Yeah, I agree, they don't look real, they look like they've been bought and paid for. And they sound like the more stupid specimen of our species. Most of them have to think about what their names and titles are for gods sake!
I'd like to see an ad with the programmer dude showing us on his screen why he likes programming on OS X better; I'd like to see the DJ chick show us how she uses her Mac for DJing. Not just a bunch of paid people saying "Hey they're great, trust me, and they're pretty, get them!".
When companies can lobby to change stats in their favour, what stats am I supposed to believe? Very interesting coming on the heels of "Macs Now Found To Be Cheaper Than PCs".
In a world where it is a struggle to get the average user to use Mac OS because they are so used to Windows and confused by the smallest differences in user experience, I think pitching Linux to the average user is a Bad Thing. The average user will try it and hate it for eternity.
Remember the Newton? It became a killer PDA, but it could never live down the first rev's handwriting recognition reputation.
Until Linux has a polished user experience (user interface and hardware/software compatibility) this should not be attempted. I know someone who got an iBook, got a scanner without checking compatibility, and then found there wasn't an OS X driver really hated it.
Before you babble nonsense, why don't you try Quicktime. Download Quicktime 6, click on WGBH Boston's Mango Blue link, and tell me with a straight face that Network TV should not be very afraid. Not to mention QTSS, Broadcaster, VR, etc.
Do you even know the history of Quicktime and how instrumental it was to multimedia?
It is controvesial because of the cost. The cost of the Chunnel was justifiable because it connects countries. It is less clear if $4.5 billion is justifiable to connect a small island to Italy.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting, eh? More like 0, Stupid. The broadcasts are done by regime-critical expatriots in the US. Why would the US jam anti-iraninan broadcasts based on its own soil?
Maybe to provide an excuse to invade yet another country?
While I agree that the arguments of any other industry apply to Peter's company, software in general is more interesting than most other goods for one reason: it can be shared and duplicated without cost. This makes it a public good inherently unlike most other goods.
Take a radio station and a car. A radio station can be shared by anyone in a city for a certain fixed cost. Allowing another person in the city to hear it costs nothing (and in fact trying to meter it costs more) so it is a public good and most economists will tell you it is more efficient to have a government pay for public goods. An additional car OTOH does cost more per person and so it is a private good and more efficiently distributed through private enterprise.
Free software is thus a public good. The jury is still out on whether software is better produced free or not, but public funding for free software has compelling economic arguments. There is also the question of what constitutes infrastructure: the government thought the internet was, so how about a kernel (remember Mach) or an OS?
This is especially difficult when Apple is not really sure if it wants to change direction. On one hand it wants to open-source the tech or guts of the OS while at the same time protect its look and feel. It would be easier if Apple was totally sure of what it wanted.
That is exactly what Apple wants. They want to be able to use stable, developed technology to base their products on, and they want to support standards. They do not have to make a black-and-white decision, either completely open source or completely closed.
I like this hybrid open-closed system a lot because it addresses the deficiencies in our patent/copyright laws. Ideas and technology are shared through the open source code, and they get paid for their innovations through the closed. Hopefully, as they develop more technology, they will open less recent code, say opening any code older than 5 years, which is the way I think copyright law used to and should work.
Pah! I am sitting in Oakland (home of U Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon) with my iBook on a free Telerama connection. Apart from Telerama (which will turn to a paid service when they have the entire city covered), the City of Pittsburgh has a free net downtown, and Telerama and others cover all major neighborhoods.
When Telerama starts charging, I'll just cancel my ISP and use them everywhere. Free would be nice, but my ISP getting me wireless access everywhere in the city is great too.
Of course, Pitt, CMU and Duquesne have their own wireless points all over for their students/staff. It's already reality in Pittsburgh, buddy.
Aren't these the iWalk guys?
Puh-leeze.
Sorry buddy, Mac OS 9.2 /is/ supported, along with all versions of OS X (except Beta, which was never supported).
Your point is still somewhat valid. Though if you can buy a 10 year contract for the product, it will be supported for the length of the contract.
The best suggestion I have seen is to bid for a contract on the tech mailing list. I have seen it done with very good results.
My CS prof didn't own a car because he felt the US auto industry had a history of sabotaging public transport.
A quick Google search revealed this:
Behind the car is a huge and powerful car industry. In the US from the 1930s to the 1950s General Motors and other automobile manufactures bought 90% of the tram networks in 45 US cities. These were then dismantled and replaced by busses (which were manufactured by the car companies). In 1991 the auto industry in the USA spent 10 million dollars defeating legislation aimed at tougher fuel efficiency standards. The only solution often being offered is to build more roads, it's a solution that benefits industry not people. More roads into the countryside surrounding cities, leads to the growth of suburbs, which leads to more traffic (and calls for more roads). The solution leads to more problems, and it also leads to great wealth for the developers who build the suburbs and those who own the land they are built on.
I think the G4 mod is very functional. The G4 is already a functional box. I would love to run a CPU meter on the face LCD he added then you could run it headless with useful feedback.
Actually, I would recommend you enable root using Netinfo. :)
One: under item 2 he states you need to change Login Options once root has been enabled; this is not true--Jaguar automatically provides an "Other" button that allows you to log in as root.
Two: people really should learn to use NetInfo.
MacCentral is quoting the head of IDG saying that they may consider banning Apple from all expos! Either this is negotiating, or as you said there is a madness that affects marketing/PR people. There are even mayors and senators offering to fly to Cupertino to resolve this for Christ's sake!
I think the point is that Apple has a large existing userbase, 4 million-a-year unit shipments, and the pockets to run New York Times spreads and Superbowl ads.
Unix can now gun for mindshare against MS in the massive consumer space.
Hopefully, Apple will realize how profitable a Windows or Linux version could be.
It can't be very profitable if they give it away for free. They would have to charge for it like Sorenson already does, making the free Mac streaming solution cheaper. Which is exactly the way it is and exactly the way Apple likes it.
The bandwidth myth has been debunked many times on the Altivec list and the SciTech list. The Mac bus is 64-bits wide unlike the 32-bit x86, so bus MHz tells you only half the story (pun intended). Except for a couple of asm instructions, poor Intel memory controllers mean that current G4 towers actually provide better bandwidth than x86, and the gap has only widened with the Xserve.
Remember if you buy on a credit card, the factory warranty is usually doubled. Ask your bank. I always skip the extended warranty and get a second year free on a platinum Mastercard; you can even extend further for less than Apple.
Yeah, I agree, they don't look real, they look like they've been bought and paid for. And they sound like the more stupid specimen of our species. Most of them have to think about what their names and titles are for gods sake!
I'd like to see an ad with the programmer dude showing us on his screen why he likes programming on OS X better; I'd like to see the DJ chick show us how she uses her Mac for DJing. Not just a bunch of paid people saying "Hey they're great, trust me, and they're pretty, get them!".
WebBench runs 60% faster on an Xserve than on a comparable IBM eServer running Linux. BLAST runs up to 19 times faster than on a comparable Sun Fire. Disk I/O is 50% faster than on a comparable Dell PowerEdge.
I know it is kewl to doubt everything on /. but perhaps you can show
benchmarks that dispute these numbers?
"Dude, you're getting a Mac!"
It's $299 in the clearance section of their online store. If you're an Apple customer, you've got their $25 Macworld's-coming coupon, so it's $274.
Not too shabby for what's widely regarded as the best mp3 player.
When companies can lobby to change stats in their favour, what stats am I supposed to believe? Very interesting coming on the heels of "Macs Now Found To Be Cheaper Than PCs".
In a world where it is a struggle to get the average user to use Mac OS because they are so used to Windows and confused by the smallest differences in user experience, I think pitching Linux to the average user is a Bad Thing. The average user will try it and hate it for eternity.
Remember the Newton? It became a killer PDA, but it could never live down the first rev's handwriting recognition reputation.
Until Linux has a polished user experience (user interface and hardware/software compatibility) this should not be attempted. I know someone who got an iBook, got a scanner without checking compatibility, and then found there wasn't an OS X driver really hated it.
Before you babble nonsense, why don't you try Quicktime. Download Quicktime 6, click on WGBH Boston's Mango Blue link, and tell me with a straight face that Network TV should not be very afraid. Not to mention QTSS, Broadcaster, VR, etc.
Do you even know the history of Quicktime and how instrumental it was to multimedia?
Sorry, 4.9 million is small, especially compared to a country. Heck, many cities have populations greater than that.
It is controvesial because of the cost. The cost of the Chunnel was justifiable because it connects countries. It is less clear if $4.5 billion is justifiable to connect a small island to Italy.
*Sigh* Never seen a photo from a fish eye lens? That effect actually makes the bridge even more impressive.