I would first suspect contamination of test equipment before announcing a "discovery" of protein building blocks on a comet. Think about it. The gas collection equipment was built on earth, taken to space, used to collect some gas from comet's tail and brought back to earth and inspected by scientists in a lab.
I did actually. First of all XBench is a really really poor benchmark. It is not multi-threaded and does not test much. When I run the test on my Mac Pro, none of my 8 cores are used more than 5-8%. Should not a proper test stress the CPUs a bit more? And should not all cores be used to the max for at least for a while when doing the CPU benchmark?
Also, core i7 is a great CPU, but when it comes to massively parallel tasks, 2 Xeons with 8 cores and large caches will do better. Yes, Mac Pro memory (at least previous generation 3.1) has high latency, but then again that is critical only when you want small chunks of data often. Most non-real time apps don't need that.
The reverse would be true if it weren't for Linux, which is open source and readily available to Google to tinker with, and which Microsoft refuses to use to their advantage.
I keep hearing this parroted over and over again. Yes, Apple computers are expensive in the same way Mercedes or BMW is expensive compared to competition in the same class.
You can buy Nissan Altima for $20,000 or BMW 5 series for $50,000. Same size car, V6 engine, Altima might even have more horse power, etc. So where does the difference of $30,000 go toward. Luxury, quality of materials, quality of implementation, durability, refinement of driving experience etc.
If you don't see the value don't buy BMW. If you just want something to haul your family from A to B, get the cheapest thing. If you love driving, and love cars, love luxury, love to be surrounded by impeccably made piece of German engineering get BMW.
The same goes for Apple computers. It's even worse here, because often times equally configured computer from different manufacturer costs the same or even more. The problem is lots of people who just want something to write email don't configure their computers that way. And Apple on the other hand doesn't want to compete for the bottom end of the market segment. They cater to high end users.
No, I imagine Chrome OS with be a tiny Linux kernel with support APIs, enough to run Chrome browser in full screen mode. When you turn on the computer it boots fast and runs the single native application, the browser. Everything else lives on the Google servers. Your entire desktop with your documents, applications etc is downloaded from servers (or parts of it cached on limited local storage). This is how the Chrome OS will run inside any other browser on any other OS.
For an example of this you might want to check out:
The point of Chrome is not for people to switch to Chrome. Nor is it to write killer apps unique for Chrome. The point of Chrome is to make Microsoft start writing web apps, and moving away from desktop. It's like luring the shark out of water to compete in your territory on the land. Google lives on the Internet, and Chrome OS is the Internet OS, that will hopefully move Microsoft to the Internet even more than they have (Office online, Windows Live etc). And more of Microsoft services online, the better it is for Google. Since Google are the king of Internet and in effect are making Microsoft compete with them outside of their core competence (desktop). And having to compete with Google online, takes away resources from desktop.
Why would one refuse to use the most powerful interface with the computer. This is THE reason to use any UNIX OS, because it fully exposes all the power in a most convenient way. If you have not yet realized (or perhaps grown up to that level), then you are really missing out. What is it with clicking on pictures that's so appealing to people. It's like being stuck with those picture story books, with pull out characters made for 2 year olds, for the rest of your life. Instead of reading novels and writing.
I use OS X at home (first of all if it weren't a UNIX with the standard command line I would have never switched to it to begin with), and I use the CLI all the time. I spend 90% of my time there. It's just faster to do things there, and not only that, you can do things there that simply can't be done in the GUI ever.
I see OS X users buying simple $30 apps that do things that every OS X user already has (there is usually a dedicated command in the CLI to do it, or and option on some command). It always saddens me to see that. For example, just yesterday I saw someone talking about an app that lists open connections to the outside world, when lsof -i from the Terminal will do exactly that, and it's already there on every Mac.
I guess all I'm saying is that CLI is something you graduate towards, and not something you should be opposed to outright as if it is something that no one should have to do. The most usable interface is not the simplest one, but the one that allows you to do your job at hand. And CLI scales nicely with the complexity of pretty much all tasks that can be done on a computer.
The problem perhaps is that shells are not only something where you can type commands and see the output, but they are also complex dynamic language interpreters, and using them to the fullest requires some sort of programming knowledge. And that may be a task some users may not be prepared to take.
However, I have seen programmers that are equal inept at using the shell and the CLI and who can't even touch type if their life depended on it, and who could be totally paralyzed if they didn't have an IDE to baby sit them. That's something I can't forgive, unlike the average user ineptitude.
Backward compatibility is somewhat different issue than plain support for the most current version of development toolkit (available on every other platform) on your most current OS version.
Backward compatibility is a double edged sword. If you stick with it for too long, you will end up with a lot of crud and junk in your APIs and you will progress slower.
I don't have a problem with not supporting older OS versions say 2-3 releases back. I would not want to use something that old anyway.
Apple has decided that they would write the JVM for OS X, citing better integration into OS X and making OS premium Java development platform at one point. Of course they back tracked on it and now Java on OS X is lagging behind 2-3 years behind major releases and versions on other OSes for which Sun and others are writing JVMs.
Yes, I'm a computer professional:D. Why go into all the trouble flashing ROM and keyboards, when a simple small, unobtrusive USB keyboard logger is so much easier, more convenient and it has larger memory and some of them are no thicker than the keyboard cable. Also, if you have access to the machine, there are other better ways to do what you want.
I think many people here are underestimating the problem. If we have strong AI, within a very short time this civilization will become their civilization, and not only will they have no use for dumb people (the ones we find useless now), but they won't find any use for any people. In their mind we will be relegated to zoos, if the hard AI finds even that remotely amusing.
Remember if the law of accelerating returns is a law, the difference in intelligence between strong AI and us will become so huge in a relatively short time that it will be more than difference between us and ants. Now think about how many of us need ants around, and how many of us would work hard to preserve the lives of ants.
None, since that is "the programming". Any specification that unambiguously specifies something is a program whether it's written in natural human language or computer language.
That's what programming is all about. Iteratively providing more and more unambiguous specification of the original requirement (which in the end may or may not resemble the original request). Original requirement might be very ambiguous plain English, and the end product might be completely unambiguous peace of code written in Java, which is a very limited subset of the English language.
If the problem were only unique to him. It's not, it's a much much wider and larger social problem. Almost everyone in a capitalist society (and no country is more capitalist than USA) is brought up to value people through money alone. Richer people are seen as more intelligent, attractive, social, successful (even if they inherited the cache and don't know what to do with it), and even some abstract things like beauty are measured through money as well.
Personally I grew up in a society that put too much weight on education, so educated people and intellectuals were valued more, and uneducated masses were frowned upon. This is not really any different when you think about it.
Do you think Bell and Rogers should invest some of the money into increasing bandwidth that they oversold thousand times over, instead of giving hundreds of millions in executive bonuses and lobbing politicians?
I don't need to use the mouse ever. Spotlight and expose allow you to never leave the keyboard when you need to launch the app, switch the app, or go to a different window of an app.
I also edit my stuff in Vim in terminal. And nothing is faster to edit text than VIM. Even in Eclipse I have (somewhat limited) vi plugin, and Netbeans has proper vim plugin implementation in nbjvi.
Seriously, you should avoid the mouse as much as you can if editing text (which is what programmers do 99% of the time) efficiently is your goal.
Your business strategy, customer information (which you are most times legally bound to keep private), etc are not the same as your money (earnings) which is you are a public company is public information anyway.
OS X is not free BSD with better GUI, not even close. And MobileMe is not based on ActiveSync in any way either. As part of MobileMe apple has licensed ActiveSync so that its devices could sync with Exchange server (because reverse engineering proprietary Microsoft protocols is not reliable or legal probably). You really need to research things a bit before posting.
Is that such a bad thing? If you are looking for a laptop, the Apple macbooks have relatively high resolution screens for the sizes. Their 17'' screen is 1920x1200.
to make itself remotely relevant among geeks. But it's too late. I certainly never be using any Microsoft technology or God forbid a language invented by them. Thanks MS, but no thanks. You betrayed all the trust you ever had. Have a long and painful death, bye.
What is Java doing in there? Java's spec is not open in the true sense, I'll give you that, but there is open source (reference) implementation of the spec.
Slashdot Mirror
So, unknown "others" are still major contributors.
I would first suspect contamination of test equipment before announcing a "discovery" of protein building blocks on a comet. Think about it. The gas collection equipment was built on earth, taken to space, used to collect some gas from comet's tail and brought back to earth and inspected by scientists in a lab.
I did actually. First of all XBench is a really really poor benchmark. It is not multi-threaded and does not test much. When I run the test on my Mac Pro, none of my 8 cores are used more than 5-8%. Should not a proper test stress the CPUs a bit more? And should not all cores be used to the max for at least for a while when doing the CPU benchmark?
Also, core i7 is a great CPU, but when it comes to massively parallel tasks, 2 Xeons with 8 cores and large caches will do better. Yes, Mac Pro memory (at least previous generation 3.1) has high latency, but then again that is critical only when you want small chunks of data often. Most non-real time apps don't need that.
The reverse would be true if it weren't for Linux, which is open source and readily available to Google to tinker with, and which Microsoft refuses to use to their advantage.
Right because we all know that Xeons themselves run more than $1000. But sure, go on and believe that you have the same spec'd computer as Mac Pro.
I keep hearing this parroted over and over again. Yes, Apple computers are expensive in the same way Mercedes or BMW is expensive compared to competition in the same class.
You can buy Nissan Altima for $20,000 or BMW 5 series for $50,000. Same size car, V6 engine, Altima might even have more horse power, etc. So where does the difference of $30,000 go toward. Luxury, quality of materials, quality of implementation, durability, refinement of driving experience etc.
If you don't see the value don't buy BMW. If you just want something to haul your family from A to B, get the cheapest thing. If you love driving, and love cars, love luxury, love to be surrounded by impeccably made piece of German engineering get BMW.
The same goes for Apple computers. It's even worse here, because often times equally configured computer from different manufacturer costs the same or even more. The problem is lots of people who just want something to write email don't configure their computers that way. And Apple on the other hand doesn't want to compete for the bottom end of the market segment. They cater to high end users.
No, I imagine Chrome OS with be a tiny Linux kernel with support APIs, enough to run Chrome browser in full screen mode. When you turn on the computer it boots fast and runs the single native application, the browser. Everything else lives on the Google servers. Your entire desktop with your documents, applications etc is downloaded from servers (or parts of it cached on limited local storage). This is how the Chrome OS will run inside any other browser on any other OS.
For an example of this you might want to check out:
http://www.startforce.com/os/?mode=guest
Of course I could be wrong about this, but I sure got the impression from what little known info we got at this point.
The point of Chrome is not for people to switch to Chrome. Nor is it to write killer apps unique for Chrome. The point of Chrome is to make Microsoft start writing web apps, and moving away from desktop. It's like luring the shark out of water to compete in your territory on the land. Google lives on the Internet, and Chrome OS is the Internet OS, that will hopefully move Microsoft to the Internet even more than they have (Office online, Windows Live etc). And more of Microsoft services online, the better it is for Google. Since Google are the king of Internet and in effect are making Microsoft compete with them outside of their core competence (desktop). And having to compete with Google online, takes away resources from desktop.
Why would one refuse to use the most powerful interface with the computer. This is THE reason to use any UNIX OS, because it fully exposes all the power in a most convenient way. If you have not yet realized (or perhaps grown up to that level), then you are really missing out. What is it with clicking on pictures that's so appealing to people. It's like being stuck with those picture story books, with pull out characters made for 2 year olds, for the rest of your life. Instead of reading novels and writing.
I use OS X at home (first of all if it weren't a UNIX with the standard command line I would have never switched to it to begin with), and I use the CLI all the time. I spend 90% of my time there. It's just faster to do things there, and not only that, you can do things there that simply can't be done in the GUI ever.
I see OS X users buying simple $30 apps that do things that every OS X user already has (there is usually a dedicated command in the CLI to do it, or and option on some command). It always saddens me to see that. For example, just yesterday I saw someone talking about an app that lists open connections to the outside world, when lsof -i from the Terminal will do exactly that, and it's already there on every Mac.
I guess all I'm saying is that CLI is something you graduate towards, and not something you should be opposed to outright as if it is something that no one should have to do. The most usable interface is not the simplest one, but the one that allows you to do your job at hand. And CLI scales nicely with the complexity of pretty much all tasks that can be done on a computer.
The problem perhaps is that shells are not only something where you can type commands and see the output, but they are also complex dynamic language interpreters, and using them to the fullest requires some sort of programming knowledge. And that may be a task some users may not be prepared to take.
However, I have seen programmers that are equal inept at using the shell and the CLI and who can't even touch type if their life depended on it, and who could be totally paralyzed if they didn't have an IDE to baby sit them. That's something I can't forgive, unlike the average user ineptitude.
Backward compatibility is somewhat different issue than plain support for the most current version of development toolkit (available on every other platform) on your most current OS version.
Backward compatibility is a double edged sword. If you stick with it for too long, you will end up with a lot of crud and junk in your APIs and you will progress slower.
I don't have a problem with not supporting older OS versions say 2-3 releases back. I would not want to use something that old anyway.
Apple has decided that they would write the JVM for OS X, citing better integration into OS X and making OS premium Java development platform at one point. Of course they back tracked on it and now Java on OS X is lagging behind 2-3 years behind major releases and versions on other OSes for which Sun and others are writing JVMs.
Yes, I'm a computer professional :D. Why go into all the trouble flashing ROM and keyboards, when a simple small, unobtrusive USB keyboard logger is so much easier, more convenient and it has larger memory and some of them are no thicker than the keyboard cable. Also, if you have access to the machine, there are other better ways to do what you want.
I'm sure every microwave out there is "hackable" in the sense you can replace its firmware and make it burn users popcorn each time. So what?
Unless you discovered a way to hack someone's keyboard remotely without user intervention, this is not even worth mentioning on a geek site.
I think many people here are underestimating the problem. If we have strong AI, within a very short time this civilization will become their civilization, and not only will they have no use for dumb people (the ones we find useless now), but they won't find any use for any people. In their mind we will be relegated to zoos, if the hard AI finds even that remotely amusing.
Remember if the law of accelerating returns is a law, the difference in intelligence between strong AI and us will become so huge in a relatively short time that it will be more than difference between us and ants. Now think about how many of us need ants around, and how many of us would work hard to preserve the lives of ants.
None, since that is "the programming". Any specification that unambiguously specifies something is a program whether it's written in natural human language or computer language.
That's what programming is all about. Iteratively providing more and more unambiguous specification of the original requirement (which in the end may or may not resemble the original request). Original requirement might be very ambiguous plain English, and the end product might be completely unambiguous peace of code written in Java, which is a very limited subset of the English language.
If the problem were only unique to him. It's not, it's a much much wider and larger social problem. Almost everyone in a capitalist society (and no country is more capitalist than USA) is brought up to value people through money alone. Richer people are seen as more intelligent, attractive, social, successful (even if they inherited the cache and don't know what to do with it), and even some abstract things like beauty are measured through money as well.
Personally I grew up in a society that put too much weight on education, so educated people and intellectuals were valued more, and uneducated masses were frowned upon. This is not really any different when you think about it.
Do you think Bell and Rogers should invest some of the money into increasing bandwidth that they oversold thousand times over, instead of giving hundreds of millions in executive bonuses and lobbing politicians?
I don't need to use the mouse ever. Spotlight and expose allow you to never leave the keyboard when you need to launch the app, switch the app, or go to a different window of an app.
I also edit my stuff in Vim in terminal. And nothing is faster to edit text than VIM. Even in Eclipse I have (somewhat limited) vi plugin, and Netbeans has proper vim plugin implementation in nbjvi.
Seriously, you should avoid the mouse as much as you can if editing text (which is what programmers do 99% of the time) efficiently is your goal.
with open DNS you get the same thing, unless you open an account with them, in which case you also share your browsing preferences with them.
Another, important reason is that at least in my case the open DNS query response times are 3 times slower than with my ISP.
And my ISP (Rogers) does have an alternate DNS server (for those who care enough to change it) that does not poison DNS results.
Your business strategy, customer information (which you are most times legally bound to keep private), etc are not the same as your money (earnings) which is you are a public company is public information anyway.
OS X is not free BSD with better GUI, not even close. And MobileMe is not based on ActiveSync in any way either. As part of MobileMe apple has licensed ActiveSync so that its devices could sync with Exchange server (because reverse engineering proprietary Microsoft protocols is not reliable or legal probably). You really need to research things a bit before posting.
How does your company feel about you keeping the presentation data on Google servers?
Is that such a bad thing? If you are looking for a laptop, the Apple macbooks have relatively high resolution screens for the sizes. Their 17'' screen is 1920x1200.
to make itself remotely relevant among geeks. But it's too late. I certainly never be using any Microsoft technology or God forbid a language invented by them. Thanks MS, but no thanks. You betrayed all the trust you ever had. Have a long and painful death, bye.
What is Java doing in there? Java's spec is not open in the true sense, I'll give you that, but there is open source (reference) implementation of the spec.