The authors USE of that benchmark is perhaps biased and wrong BUT the benchmark itself is fine. It's only about the preformance of that one product on different platforms for the benefit of the users of that product.
I also have a little problem with those that always complain about Photoshop benchmarks being "unfair". I'll grant you it IS unfair and deceptive to use Photoshop benchmarks to compare overall performance of the two systems. And I'll grant you that this is exactly what Steve Jobs does. BUT, I have often heard that benchmarks in general are unreliable and that the real test is the actual programs you really use, how you really use them. Well, for most pro mac users that real world test is Photoshop performance. It is the one program that taxes their system, it is the most important program that they make their living with. Those trademark races Steve Jobs runs up on the stage at mac world are very representative of exactly what the typical mac user will be doing with his machine.
Opps, I reread it a couple of times but after hitting "submit" realised that I wrote something misleading. The 43,000 linux boxes shipped by Compaq was in a single quarter - NOT the entire year. The way I wrote it was misleading.
I wasn't looking very hard and most press releases where sort of old (aside from Apple's) and about quarterly results. To recap: the numbers are 808,000 MacOS X boxes in the latest quarter this year (down from previous years) and somewhat over 188,000 (servers & workstations combined) shipped by market leader Sun in a single quarter in the year 2000. And 43,000 Linux servers shipped by market leader Compaq in a single quarter in the year 2000.
The article mentioned about 4,000,000 unix boxes per year. That's about right - this last quarter, which was a really crappy quarter for Apple (as it was for most computer manufacturers) they sold 808,000 UNIX boxes.
I couldn't find any recent numbers but in a couple of year 2000 press releases Sun was boasting about being the single largest UNIX distributor with 88,000 servers and 100,000 workstations shipped in that quarter. Compaq that same year was boasting of being #1 in Linux servers with 43,000 units shipped.
I couldn't find any comprehensive breakdown of UNIX/Linux marketshare (both workstations and servers) with number of units shipped. But based on that small sample of press releases from a couple of years ago seems likely that Apple's claim is true (and by a comfortable margin)
No one forced these people to stand for office, they can always resign, if they are not happy.
I'm not saying that they shouldn't do their jobs, & I'm not saying that listening to the concerns of their constituents isn't part of that job. But that is not the same thing as saying it's a congressman's job to spend 16 hours a day reading every letter that comes into their office no matter how incoherant.
If you want to communicate to your congressman (or anybody for that matter) it's YOUR job to at least be coherent if not persuasive. Even if you manage that it's unlikely that the congressman will read your letter (as I said they get a LOT of letters) but at least someone on his staff will & the cumulative effect of all those letters is very persuasive to an elected official.
If your "ignorant crank" happens to be a full time lobbiest they might be taken very seriously. Especially if they throw some money around too.
True, Like I said I don't usually defend congressmen. It's just that failing to read poorly written letters is not the particular crime they should be pilloried for.
I don't usually defend senators but do you have any idea how much correspondence they get? And do you know how much of that is coming from ignorant cranks with only the most delicate grasp on reality? They have to seperate the wheat from the chaff somehow and an evident lack of education and failure to communicate intelligibly seems as fair a system as is possible. Uneducated after all means essentially the same thing as ignorant. And an inability to communicate clearly is indicative of an inability to think clearly. Yes, that's not ALWAYS true, but when you are getting thousands of phone calls, letters and emails per day you have to prioritize. Missing the brilliant insights of the ignorant and incoherant is the unfortunate cost of that prioritization.
I didn't mean that being and artist and being a web designer are mutually exclusive, just that they are orthogonal.
I know, I was just being funny. (well not very funny but I tried).
But let me defend GOOD Graphic designers as artists though. There is an art to good graphic design but that art is not only concerned with how good something looks (I don't think that is EVER the sole criterion of art) but also how effectively it communicates. Your rant is not any where near as venomous as those you will sometimes hear from graphic design professors ripping into a students project during a crit because their beautiful piece failed to effectively communicate the content of it's message.
The two are not mutually exclusive, but I would suggest that they are also not entirely orthogonal. Art is after all a way of communicating. Your rant is less about web designers trying to be artists but of certain web designers being BAD artists.
*Shake 2.5 for Windows is available to existing Shake 2.46 Windows customers only.
Interestingly the IRIX and Linux versions don't have that little bit of fineprint. hmm... Perhaps the linux and IRIX versions will stay around. Looks like Apple would like to push Microsoft right out of that market niche and only compete with SGI and Linux (which it would probably like to confine to the render farm.)
That is a review of the 15" Apple studio display. The bottom of their line not only in size but in quality. The last I checked (admittedly this was some time ago) the Cinema displays and the PowerBook displays were of significantly higher quality, and widely reviewed as being of better quality than what was typically bundled with windoze machines.
Last I checked, Dell, Gateway, HP-Compaq all were of a larger market share than Apple.
True, but aside from Dell, not THAT much smaller. Besides which, overall PC marketshare is not the issue when negotiating with LCD manufacturers. How many LCD's you are buying and selling IS. Since Apple has (mostly) standardised on LCD technology while their larger competitors haven't I would imagine that their LCD "marketshare" is disproportionally larger than their overall marketshare and puts them in a better negotiating position.
So? 30% is a minority, not a majority. The factory has other investosr/s of higher importance, who get what they want first because they own more, and contribute more to the profitability of the factory.
Umm. 30% is an awfully large chunk of a publicly traded company. If that number is correct (I couldn't verify it) I think it's safe to say Apple is probably one of their largest if not THE largest single investor. The other large investors are probably institutional investors (pension funds and the like) who aren't going to be throwing their weight around competing with Apple for production facilities. In any event the investment was made explicitly to ensure that Apple got the kind of special treatment that the original poster referred to, and did go towards new production facilities built specifically to meet Apple's needs. I'm sure it was accompanied by contractual obligations to that effect.
My friend has a G3 Powerbook, and it is nearly unusable, and that is with 1 GB of RAM!
Your friend should have someone look at his computer. Either he hasn't upgraded to 10.1 or there is something wrong. I can see slow but "nearly unusable?" I have a beige G3 233 that was running 10.0 with less memory than the "minimum requirement" (I installed it on a lark). THAT was "nearly unusable";)
As for price, I don't know what the original poster was thinking. Macs are definitley sold at a premium. BUT as I think your comparision points out the premium is NOT as large as is generally thought. You configured an equivalent Dell for the same price. I'll grant you the 80GB vs. 60GB drives, the memory is the same though, any place other than the Apple store will throw in the extra RAM for "free" (since Apple discourages resellers from competing on price they all compete on free bundles, usually memory, printers & the like). So the main difference between the Dell and the Apple is the Apple machine is a lot more nicely integrated & engineered but the PC has a faster CPU and bus. Damn that Mhz gap!
For their target market the Mac is probably still the better deal. Most home users are not taxing their systems very hard and probably wouldn't even notice if their CPU was twice as fast (it's just a matter of how many more processor cycles get wasted waiting for the next keystroke) For those things that consumers do that DO tax the processor (Audio & video encoding & such) Altivec makes the PowerPC much more competetive than it's raw processer speed would suggest.
Very original. Let's base all policy decisions on a single simpleminded historical metaphor.
Being asked to confirm you identity before boarding a flight is not the second coming of Auswitch. Nor is it equivalent to an "internal passport." Is it "one step closer"? I suppose theoretically yes. Is it a "slippery slope"? No, I'm sorry I just don't think so. I don't see an easy way for this to metastasize beyond increased security on airplanes to tracking & restricting citizens travel without a whole lot of politically imposible interveneing steps. There are other more serious threats to our civil liberties to waste time, effort and credibility tilting at this particular windmill. As a security measure it is not unreasonable, nor is it "useless". I would be happier if the security personel were private employees of the airlines (as they used to be) which would reduce Mr. Gilmore's constitutional crisis to a private dispute.But, I would rather have fought to keep airport security out of federal hands in the first place. That fight that is already lost, Bush caved to Democrats less concerned with security than with picking up the votes of a few thousand more voters from the American Federation of Government Employees. It doesn't help now (and could hurt) to fight to make airports less secure now that they ARE in federal hands. You have to pick your battles, it's important to pick the ones that really count.
Indeed, restriction and tracking of citizens' internal travel is a hallmark of two forms of government: feudalism, in which the common man is a serf "tied to the land"; and totalitarianism of the Nazi or Soviet breed, with "internal passports" and "Do you haff your papers?"
Oh please... Sometimes the paranoia is not only self defeating but becomes self-parody. You are NOT being searched and asked for your ID because you are crossing state borders. You are being asked for your ID because you are getting on a Plane. You are not a serf being tied to the land. Despite the tendency of political debate in this country to routinely devolve to each side calling the other side Nazi's (or more rarely commies) we are not a totalitarian dictatorship, nor anything like one - to suggest otherwise is to trivialise the real horrors of such systems. John Gilmore is not an heroic dissident couragiously braving the wrath of jackbooted nazi's (though I'm sure this is exactly how he sees himself). Your fears and your percieved threats to your liberty (in this case) are entirely theoretical and unrealistic. They are based on a "slippery slope" argument so exacting that it could be (and is) used to argue against ANY change in policy, of ANY kind, EVER.
Yes, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. But I'm sorry I just can't find it in me to get worked up over this particular "threat". There are other more significant and more fundamental threats to our liberties for us to worry about. If the argument against ID checks in airports was merely that it was useless, a waste of time, and an unnecessary inconvenience I would be more sympathetic. When you add the argument that it is a return to land-tied feudal serfs, or equivalent to "internal passports" and totalitarian dictatorship you lose any credibility your argument may have had. Sort of a Godwins law of policy debate.
The only reason Mac stuff isn't pirated as much is becuase there aren't as many people using it.
Therefore it's harder to find, there's less sources for it, less crackers for it...
I'm certain there is some truth to this. But I also suspect it has something to do with the nature of the markets Apple is successful with. Home users who are afraid of computers. Educational users and Graphics professionals.
Home Users: The particular home users that Apple attracts probably don't have the tech savy to pirate software or even find pirated software. Also, since they have the disposable income for a Mac in the first place they can afford the stuff they want.
Educational Users: The school itself isn't going to be getting warez. I'm sure there would be a lot of pirating of software on the part of students, except their home machines are all PC's so there isn't.
Graphics Professionals: There is definetely a fair amount of pirating here. But when you are billing your hours using the software, paying for it isn't a big deal and is more than fair. If you started out with a "borrowed" copy you pay for it after a couple of paying jobs - unless it's only a "borrowed" copy of Pagemaker that only gets used when the occasional idiot sends you a pagemaker file;)
Fonts on the other hand just seem to collect on your drive since everyone sends them along with every project as it goes from designer to publication to pre-press service bureau, etc. You still buy a lot of fonts though because designers are willing to spend (their clients) money to get the font that looks right for the piece but you don't have yet.
With a one button mouse, you have to control-click to get the popup menu. With two buttons, you just click... Not only is the right-click easier on the wrists...
What exactly are you doing with your other hand that makes the control button so inconvenient? Is it related to your concern about wrist problems?
If the goal is to cast a segment of the population as "suspect" or as second-class citizens on the basis of some datum which can be divulged by an ID check, it does not.
Actually, this IS what checking ID's is all about. While many members of terrorist groups are not known, at least some of them ARE known. They are your "suspect" segment of the population - and that suspicion is entirely appropriate.
I'm not saying that the current security process is any good (much of it truly is useless, or at least far less effective and at the same time more intrusive than it could be), just that checking peoples ID's isn't the part that is bad. Knowing who someone is seems to be a logical first step in deciding whether they are a threat or not (you do have a password on your computer don't you? If so why? Could it be to confirm you are who you say you are.) Yes, that one barrier is a relatively minor one to overcome (use unknown members of your group, use a fake ID) but all the minor barriers taken together afford that many more places for a potential attack to be foiled.
Remember the millenium plot was foiled by just this kind of asinine "useless" "easily-foiled", security check. The boder check from Canada into the US (a heck of a lot easier to foil than airline security). A border guard noticed a middle-eastern man acting very nervous and sweating profusely (In December on the Canadian border) waiting in line to cross at the check point. The politically incorrect border guard (who was certainly indulging in some racial profiling) found this suspicious (the bigot!) and searched the van. Lo and behold it was stuffed with explosives intended for an Al Queada sponsored millenium celebration fireworks show at LAX.
In the graphics market "apple once dominated" we are all using Wacom tablets. Photoshop (and most other graphics programs) without a pressure sensitive tablet is almost unusable (If you've gotten used to it without a tablet you just don't realise you're missing some basic functionality).
On the occasions we use a mouse the one that comes with the tablet has two buttons & a scroll wheel.
As for "maybe it will reign again" I think it's still dominating that market. Granted the it's not been strong in 3D. But in just about every other creative niche it either dominates (photography, art, design, advertising, pre-press) or has a very respectable presence (film/video, music and increasingly 3D)
I think you may be thinking about the old "look & feel" copyright lawsuit, way back in the days of windows 3.x. Yes, Microsoft won that one. The lawsuit I am talking about was a patent dispute not a copyright dispute. It was rumored to be much more favorable to Apple. (we'll never really know, since it didn't actually get played out in court). In any event, Gil Amelio (Apple's CEO before Jobs came back) was holding out for a big victory in court. Damages and a bit of licensing money from M$ for every copy of windows sold would have been quite a shot in the arm for Apple. But it wasn't a sure thing and it guaranteed M$'s enmity. Jobs made the decision to settle, get some guaranteed money and the PR victory (targetted at institutions and investors) of having M$ publicly profess it's support for Apple.
I suggest that you may be taking the position you do out of the same ignorance of which you accuse others.
As I said before IANAL and I've freely admitted my ignorance (though I did at least look at the text of the bill).
My scenario was inept. My larger point was that a this law deserves a closer analysis than "House OK's life sentances for hackers" there MIGHT be areas of the existing law that it clarifies. I don't know that this is the case and in fact SAID that I suspect that this law is NOT necessary, simply that it was worth debating rather than knee-jerk hysterical opposition because it mentions computers being used for a crime (which we all know is the same as making it illegal to run linux;)
After looking over this thread I realise that I owe you an apology. Throughout, your opposition to the bill has been based on a rational position & not the idiocy elswhere on slashdot. I have been unfairly using you as a foil to address attitudes and positions that aren't really yours. If you'll indulge me to do it one last time. If the argument against this bill is that it is unnecessary because it is *redundant* then obviously it can't also be the argument against the bill that it is taking away rights you previously enjoyed.
I honestly don't know if it is totally unnecessary or not. I can concieve of the possiblity that it could clarify situations that are currently unclear. Or if the existing law is clear to lawyers the proposed law performs something like an educational/cultural role making it explicit to the general population. I'm sure vehicular homicid laws are also totally redundant from a legal standpoint but they serve a function by making it clear to the stupid that a car (or a computer) can be a weapon, so don't be fooled by the illusion that your crime is only "and accident" (or "virtual"). While there may be no grey areas in the application of the existing laws to computers I am convinced that many malicious "hackers" are laboring under the false sense that much of what they do somehow doesn't count/isn't real. Even if the laws only effect is the underscore that it IS real that is some benefit.
Then again, even as I make that argument I am not convinced that such marginal benefits are worth adding more lines to our already bloated law books.
Good points. The rare earth hypothesis only suggests that complex life AS WE KNOW IT will be rare. It says little or nothing about hypothetical OTHER systems of organizing life. The debate is between those that think life as we know it is common and those who think it is rare. The rare earth hypothesis makes a compelling argument that it would be quite rare. They freely aknowledge that some other as yet unknown system of "life" could exist and that their hypothesis is only valid for the system of life we know about.
That being said. Do we have any reason to think that there are physical or chemical laws that predispose the universe to create the kind of spectacularly complex systems we call "life"? Anything we would identify as life has to be incredibly complex and highly organised. Molecular structures seem to be the only system in nature we know of capable of generating that kind of complexity and organization. And if you settle for molecularly based life you pretty much get stuck with carbon molecules and that gets you stuck with the rare earth hypothesis & the habitable zones you find so distasteful.
We could hypothesize about some other ways of attaining the necessary complexity. How about a system based on mechanic principles (rather than chemical) A machine that stores information, harnesses power, reproduces (imperfectly) & evolves into ever more complex systems. We could imagine such a system working but It's hard to imagine such a system arising. The scifi standard "beings of pure energy" seems pretty far fetched. We know of no way for "pure energy" to be organized in the ways necessary to be anything complex enough to call "life". Perhaps something larger, the gravitational interactions between bodies in an individual star system don't seem to have the requisite complexity, how about entire galaxies? That's seems a little more concievable, all the complex interreactions between all of the component gravity wells seems a better candidate for playing host to the kind of complex organization we could call life. Still pretty far fetched, even all that gravitational complexity doesn't seem as fertile a field as molecular dynamics. Gravity only seems to work one way after all, it always attracts, molecules attract or repel & interact in lots of interesting ways that gravity wells don't. All those interreactions in compounds make all that information storage in DNA possible. We don't seem to be observing anything quite so complicated when looking at large masses. I'm sure there are other possiblities for the spontaneous arising of complex organizations we could call life but the fact that with what we know about physics and chemistry we can't even concieve of those possiblities suggests that they are also unlikely are thus as rare as we believe the kind of life we DO know about is.
Of course, of course, granted. But imagine these two different ways of using a computer as a weapon.
Scenario 1: Pick up computere -> Bludgeon victim with computer.
In this scenario I see no legal wiggle room for the perpetrator beyond those ususally associated with our screwed up legal system.
Scenario 2: Hack into traffic system -> Cause all traffic lights to be green in both directions around the city -> Family of five never before seen by perpetrator is rammed by an 18 wheeler.
In this scenario it just seems that there are more places for the perpetrator to manipulate the legal system. Despite the maliciousness of his intentions his crime has an element of indirect causation that bludgeoning the same family with a monitor wouldn't have. There many more "responsible" parties (the truckdriver, the city traffic department, whoever was responsible for the systems security) to be drawn into the case to muddy the water. You already see people all over slashdot blaming every malicious hack on the sap who was responsible for security. And that is perfectly fair, BUT at the same time they seem to give a pass to the actual perpetrator, "the door wasn't locked It's not my clients fault that he stole suff. -?!?!"
It's not that I think this law is a good idea. I suspect that it is NOT. But I am irritated by the lack of good faith debate, the alarmism, the conspiracy theories, the paranioa, the ignorance, all things slashdotters typically accuse congressmen of but seems to be more appropriately attributed to slashdot.
Granted, slashdot is not a very important forum compared to the US house & senate, but wouldn't intelligent conversation and debate be nice & more helpful in analysing the REAL pros and cons of this piece of legislation? Isn't it something we could expect from a presumably intelligent and educated & MODERATED group. (some of the most ignorant posts from people who obviously haven't the faintest clue about what the bill is actually about are +5 insightful because they hit the right hot-button buzz words)
Good point, I guess we are more in a situation where we are not sure if we have one sample or two or three.
The "rare earth" people that Drake is debating actually assume that such bacterial life is very common, but that multicellular life is very rare, so it's presense on primordial earth prior to mass extinction events does nothing to dispute their claims. (indeed, it is one of their explicitly stated expectations)
It should be pointed out though that if we are talking about complex life we DO have a larger sample than 1 right now. Both Venus and Mars are "earth-like" in astronomical terms. They are about the right size and about the right distance from the sun. But they are not *quite* right. Mars has frozen and Venus is gripped with runaway greenhouse gases, they are each a "little too close" and "a little too far". Though if they had gotten the atmospheric chemistry right I think their distance from the sun could have been compensated for - imagine if their positions were reversed, if Mars had the thick atmosphere with a lot of greenhouse activity and Venus had the thin atmosphere - who knows? As it is they are fairly good examples of what happens if just a few variables on your "earth-like" planet are wrong by just a little (in astronomical terms). Even Mercury with no atmosphere is an example of not only being too close to the sun (and thus too hot) but of being caught in tidal lock (so despite the intense heat on one side the atmoshpere freezes out on the other) This would presumably happen to any planet so close in, even if the star were smaller and a mercury type planet was only getting as much solar energy as earth is getting further away from a larger star.
It is not unlikely that if we could start visiting other systems we would find a *lot* of planets that were candidates to become truly earth-like but failed because they got just a few variables wrong by just a little bit. Even a nearly identical planet to Earth - exactly the same size, exactly the same distance from exactly the same sized star, with exactly the same chemical composition would have a high probablity of succumbing to either runaway greenhouse gases or having it's atmosphere freeze out if it's atmospheric composition was not regulated by the action of plate tektonics & continental weathering or if it's tilt was not regulated by an oversized moon or if it just had the bad luck of being hit with a really big comet (a very likely occurance without a "jupiter" nearby sucking up or pushing out all the debris).
Yes, this bill has a life sentance for "hacking" if your "hack" is used to MURDER or ATTEMPT MURDER.
That would sensibly be covered by existing murder and man-slaughter laws. The internet and computers are not some how "special" and "different"
IANAL or a legislator so I really don't know (and most likely neither do you) whether this bill is necessary or not. I can imagine situations where using a computer as your weapon may also hand you all sorts of defense options at your trial. Using a computer hack to commit a crime you would otherwise might need a few tons of dynamite for (i.e causing a dam to malfunction rather than blowing it up) may very well be a situation that current law doesn't address clearly. The guy sitting in front of a computer typing away certainly doesn't *seem* as violent or as dangerous as the guy with the truck full of TNT. The *reality* is he may have just as great a chance, he may be just as serious and just as dangerous to the rest of us.
You may be right, the current law may be sufficient. The proposed law may be open to abuses. But it seems to me it is certainly worth debate and that reasonable people may disagree about this laws propriety. The alramist posts and ignorant fear-mongering you find on most of these slashdot posts ("the day when you could get LIFE in PRISON for using a computer." modified as "insightful") is certainly just as bad as the alleged alarmism & fear mongering slashdotters are (perhaps unfairly) accusing congress of.
The rare earth people aren't arguing that it doesn't exist, only that it is, well... rare. (thus the name of the hypothesis) Sagan and Drake hypothesisized that not only was life common & that advanced life was fairly common but that there were MILLIONS of advanced civilizations in our galaxy. The rare earth hypothesis doesn't say there are NO other advanced civilisations but cuts down the estimated number by a few orders of magnitude.
Those are the assumptions of the Drake Equation. That all you need is a sun-like star and an earth-like planet and POOF life. And on all those life-bearing planets theres bound to be quite a few that evolve complex animals and eventually intelligent life.
The Rare Earth Hypothesis that they are arguing about looks at those assumptions a bit more critically. It does not assume that there is no other life like ours out there but that it is VERY rare. That the life-friendly atmosphere and climate our planet enjoys is the result of a fairly large number of low-probablity chances.
The authors contend that on our planet at least life is dependent on being a certain distance from the center of the galaxy (too much radiation) but not on the outer edge (too little metal for a planet the right size to form). That cuts down significantly on the number of stars in our galaxy that can support life. We also need an unusually large moon (to stabilise tilt, create tides). We need plate tectonics (for a host of reasons) which also means the planet has to be a certain size and have a particular make-up and peculiar history.
After meeting all these conditions your potential planet with it's evolving life must avoid having that life wiped out by a mass extinction event. It helps to have a Jupiter sized planet to "clean up" all those comets, asteroids, planetoids etc. that would otherwise bombard your planet from time to time, periodically vaporising the oceans. But if that Jupiter is too close, or in an eliptical orbit (as all the extrasolar "jupiters" we have so far found orbiting other stars) it's gravitational effect will either drive your earthlike planet into the star (not healthful for life) or knock it right out of the star system (also not healthful for life).
Now your very rare earth like planet must simply avoid some bad luck, nearby magnetars, supernovas etc., getting hit by the chance comet that your friendly jupiter didn't clean up for you. etc.
Certainly starting with a large enough sample even these very stringent, and unlikely requirements will be met from time to time. But they will be rare and spaced far apart. Out of the billions of stars in our galaxy only a handful (hundreds, maybe only dozens) will meet those conditions, not the millions of advanced civilisations originally suggested by Sagan and Drake.
Yes, but we don't know whether there was life then to sterilise or not. If we could observe the conditions on Earth over it's entire history and test for the presense of life THEN we would have a sample size greater than 1. BUT, all we know about life on earth before theoretical sterilization events is conjectural. Just like all we know about life on other planets is conjecture. And all that conjecture is still based on a sample size of 1.
Especially considering MS poured the money in for purely (mostly, whatever) selfish reasons - we can assume the DOJ trial would look much different today had MS not participated in the 'wonton act of goodwill
It wasn't really about the trial either. It was part of an out-of-court settlement of a patent dispute. In fact the publicly announced $150 million was rumored to be just the public tip of a larger behind the scenes patent cross licensing agreement that let MS off the hook for patent infringment in Windows95 (that rumor was confirmed by Steve Jobs' soto voice comments on some business shows hinting that there was a lot more money coming Apple's way than just the $150 Million - though that might have been spin)
Slashdot Mirror
The authors USE of that benchmark is perhaps biased and wrong BUT the benchmark itself is fine. It's only about the preformance of that one product on different platforms for the benefit of the users of that product.
I also have a little problem with those that always complain about Photoshop benchmarks being "unfair". I'll grant you it IS unfair and deceptive to use Photoshop benchmarks to compare overall performance of the two systems. And I'll grant you that this is exactly what Steve Jobs does. BUT, I have often heard that benchmarks in general are unreliable and that the real test is the actual programs you really use, how you really use them. Well, for most pro mac users that real world test is Photoshop performance. It is the one program that taxes their system, it is the most important program that they make their living with. Those trademark races Steve Jobs runs up on the stage at mac world are very representative of exactly what the typical mac user will be doing with his machine.
Opps, I reread it a couple of times but after hitting "submit" realised that I wrote something misleading. The 43,000 linux boxes shipped by Compaq was in a single quarter - NOT the entire year. The way I wrote it was misleading.
I wasn't looking very hard and most press releases where sort of old (aside from Apple's) and about quarterly results. To recap: the numbers are 808,000 MacOS X boxes in the latest quarter this year (down from previous years) and somewhat over 188,000 (servers & workstations combined) shipped by market leader Sun in a single quarter in the year 2000. And 43,000 Linux servers shipped by market leader Compaq in a single quarter in the year 2000.
The article mentioned about 4,000,000 unix boxes per year. That's about right - this last quarter, which was a really crappy quarter for Apple (as it was for most computer manufacturers) they sold 808,000 UNIX boxes.
I couldn't find any recent numbers but in a couple of year 2000 press releases Sun was boasting about being the single largest UNIX distributor with 88,000 servers and 100,000 workstations shipped in that quarter. Compaq that same year was boasting of being #1 in Linux servers with 43,000 units shipped.
I couldn't find any comprehensive breakdown of UNIX/Linux marketshare (both workstations and servers) with number of units shipped. But based on that small sample of press releases from a couple of years ago seems likely that Apple's claim is true (and by a comfortable margin)
No one forced these people to stand for office, they can always resign, if they are not happy.
I'm not saying that they shouldn't do their jobs, & I'm not saying that listening to the concerns of their constituents isn't part of that job. But that is not the same thing as saying it's a congressman's job to spend 16 hours a day reading every letter that comes into their office no matter how incoherant.
If you want to communicate to your congressman (or anybody for that matter) it's YOUR job to at least be coherent if not persuasive. Even if you manage that it's unlikely that the congressman will read your letter (as I said they get a LOT of letters) but at least someone on his staff will & the cumulative effect of all those letters is very persuasive to an elected official.
If your "ignorant crank" happens to be a full time lobbiest they might be taken very seriously. Especially if they throw some money around too.
True, Like I said I don't usually defend congressmen. It's just that failing to read poorly written letters is not the particular crime they should be pilloried for.
I don't usually defend senators but do you have any idea how much correspondence they get? And do you know how much of that is coming from ignorant cranks with only the most delicate grasp on reality? They have to seperate the wheat from the chaff somehow and an evident lack of education and failure to communicate intelligibly seems as fair a system as is possible. Uneducated after all means essentially the same thing as ignorant. And an inability to communicate clearly is indicative of an inability to think clearly. Yes, that's not ALWAYS true, but when you are getting thousands of phone calls, letters and emails per day you have to prioritize. Missing the brilliant insights of the ignorant and incoherant is the unfortunate cost of that prioritization.
I didn't mean that being and artist and being a web designer are mutually exclusive, just that they are orthogonal.
I know, I was just being funny. (well not very funny but I tried).
But let me defend GOOD Graphic designers as artists though. There is an art to good graphic design but that art is not only concerned with how good something looks (I don't think that is EVER the sole criterion of art) but also how effectively it communicates. Your rant is not any where near as venomous as those you will sometimes hear from graphic design professors ripping into a students project during a crit because their beautiful piece failed to effectively communicate the content of it's message.
The two are not mutually exclusive, but I would suggest that they are also not entirely orthogonal. Art is after all a way of communicating. Your rant is less about web designers trying to be artists but of certain web designers being BAD artists.
Web Designers: You aren't artists and the media isn't the message. The message is the fucking message.
;)
Yes, I am an artist, I even have an art school diploma that says so
As for the second part, I agree.
*Shake 2.5 for Windows is available to existing Shake 2.46 Windows customers only.
Interestingly the IRIX and Linux versions don't have that little bit of fineprint. hmm... Perhaps the linux and IRIX versions will stay around. Looks like Apple would like to push Microsoft right out of that market niche and only compete with SGI and Linux (which it would probably like to confine to the render farm.)
That is a review of the 15" Apple studio display. The bottom of their line not only in size but in quality. The last I checked (admittedly this was some time ago) the Cinema displays and the PowerBook displays were of significantly higher quality, and widely reviewed as being of better quality than what was typically bundled with windoze machines.
;)
Last I checked, Dell, Gateway, HP-Compaq all were of a larger market share than Apple.
True, but aside from Dell, not THAT much smaller. Besides which, overall PC marketshare is not the issue when negotiating with LCD manufacturers. How many LCD's you are buying and selling IS. Since Apple has (mostly) standardised on LCD technology while their larger competitors haven't I would imagine that their LCD "marketshare" is disproportionally larger than their overall marketshare and puts them in a better negotiating position.
So? 30% is a minority, not a majority. The factory has other investosr/s of higher importance, who get what they want first because they own more, and contribute more to the profitability of the factory.
Umm. 30% is an awfully large chunk of a publicly traded company. If that number is correct (I couldn't verify it) I think it's safe to say Apple is probably one of their largest if not THE largest single investor. The other large investors are probably institutional investors (pension funds and the like) who aren't going to be throwing their weight around competing with Apple for production facilities. In any event the investment was made explicitly to ensure that Apple got the kind of special treatment that the original poster referred to, and did go towards new production facilities built specifically to meet Apple's needs. I'm sure it was accompanied by contractual obligations to that effect.
My friend has a G3 Powerbook, and it is nearly unusable, and that is with 1 GB of RAM!
Your friend should have someone look at his computer. Either he hasn't upgraded to 10.1 or there is something wrong. I can see slow but "nearly unusable?" I have a beige G3 233 that was running 10.0 with less memory than the "minimum requirement" (I installed it on a lark). THAT was "nearly unusable"
As for price, I don't know what the original poster was thinking. Macs are definitley sold at a premium. BUT as I think your comparision points out the premium is NOT as large as is generally thought. You configured an equivalent Dell for the same price. I'll grant you the 80GB vs. 60GB drives, the memory is the same though, any place other than the Apple store will throw in the extra RAM for "free" (since Apple discourages resellers from competing on price they all compete on free bundles, usually memory, printers & the like). So the main difference between the Dell and the Apple is the Apple machine is a lot more nicely integrated & engineered but the PC has a faster CPU and bus. Damn that Mhz gap!
For their target market the Mac is probably still the better deal. Most home users are not taxing their systems very hard and probably wouldn't even notice if their CPU was twice as fast (it's just a matter of how many more processor cycles get wasted waiting for the next keystroke) For those things that consumers do that DO tax the processor (Audio & video encoding & such) Altivec makes the PowerPC much more competetive than it's raw processer speed would suggest.
Very original. Let's base all policy decisions on a single simpleminded historical metaphor.
Being asked to confirm you identity before boarding a flight is not the second coming of Auswitch. Nor is it equivalent to an "internal passport." Is it "one step closer"? I suppose theoretically yes. Is it a "slippery slope"? No, I'm sorry I just don't think so. I don't see an easy way for this to metastasize beyond increased security on airplanes to tracking & restricting citizens travel without a whole lot of politically imposible interveneing steps. There are other more serious threats to our civil liberties to waste time, effort and credibility tilting at this particular windmill. As a security measure it is not unreasonable, nor is it "useless". I would be happier if the security personel were private employees of the airlines (as they used to be) which would reduce Mr. Gilmore's constitutional crisis to a private dispute.But, I would rather have fought to keep airport security out of federal hands in the first place. That fight that is already lost, Bush caved to Democrats less concerned with security than with picking up the votes of a few thousand more voters from the American Federation of Government Employees. It doesn't help now (and could hurt) to fight to make airports less secure now that they ARE in federal hands. You have to pick your battles, it's important to pick the ones that really count.
Indeed, restriction and tracking of citizens' internal travel is a hallmark of two forms of government: feudalism, in which the common man is a serf "tied to the land"; and totalitarianism of the Nazi or Soviet breed, with "internal passports" and "Do you haff your papers?"
Oh please... Sometimes the paranoia is not only self defeating but becomes self-parody. You are NOT being searched and asked for your ID because you are crossing state borders. You are being asked for your ID because you are getting on a Plane. You are not a serf being tied to the land. Despite the tendency of political debate in this country to routinely devolve to each side calling the other side Nazi's (or more rarely commies) we are not a totalitarian dictatorship, nor anything like one - to suggest otherwise is to trivialise the real horrors of such systems. John Gilmore is not an heroic dissident couragiously braving the wrath of jackbooted nazi's (though I'm sure this is exactly how he sees himself). Your fears and your percieved threats to your liberty (in this case) are entirely theoretical and unrealistic. They are based on a "slippery slope" argument so exacting that it could be (and is) used to argue against ANY change in policy, of ANY kind, EVER.
Yes, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. But I'm sorry I just can't find it in me to get worked up over this particular "threat". There are other more significant and more fundamental threats to our liberties for us to worry about. If the argument against ID checks in airports was merely that it was useless, a waste of time, and an unnecessary inconvenience I would be more sympathetic. When you add the argument that it is a return to land-tied feudal serfs, or equivalent to "internal passports" and totalitarian dictatorship you lose any credibility your argument may have had. Sort of a Godwins law of policy debate.
The only reason Mac stuff isn't pirated as much is becuase there aren't as many people using it. Therefore it's harder to find, there's less sources for it, less crackers for it...
;)
I'm certain there is some truth to this. But I also suspect it has something to do with the nature of the markets Apple is successful with. Home users who are afraid of computers. Educational users and Graphics professionals.
Home Users: The particular home users that Apple attracts probably don't have the tech savy to pirate software or even find pirated software. Also, since they have the disposable income for a Mac in the first place they can afford the stuff they want.
Educational Users: The school itself isn't going to be getting warez. I'm sure there would be a lot of pirating of software on the part of students, except their home machines are all PC's so there isn't.
Graphics Professionals: There is definetely a fair amount of pirating here. But when you are billing your hours using the software, paying for it isn't a big deal and is more than fair. If you started out with a "borrowed" copy you pay for it after a couple of paying jobs - unless it's only a "borrowed" copy of Pagemaker that only gets used when the occasional idiot sends you a pagemaker file
Fonts on the other hand just seem to collect on your drive since everyone sends them along with every project as it goes from designer to publication to pre-press service bureau, etc. You still buy a lot of fonts though because designers are willing to spend (their clients) money to get the font that looks right for the piece but you don't have yet.
With a one button mouse, you have to control-click to get the popup menu. With two buttons, you just click... Not only is the right-click easier on the wrists...
What exactly are you doing with your other hand that makes the control button so inconvenient? Is it related to your concern about wrist problems?
If the goal is to cast a segment of the population as "suspect" or as second-class citizens on the basis of some datum which can be divulged by an ID check, it does not.
Actually, this IS what checking ID's is all about. While many members of terrorist groups are not known, at least some of them ARE known. They are your "suspect" segment of the population - and that suspicion is entirely appropriate.
I'm not saying that the current security process is any good (much of it truly is useless, or at least far less effective and at the same time more intrusive than it could be), just that checking peoples ID's isn't the part that is bad. Knowing who someone is seems to be a logical first step in deciding whether they are a threat or not (you do have a password on your computer don't you? If so why? Could it be to confirm you are who you say you are.) Yes, that one barrier is a relatively minor one to overcome (use unknown members of your group, use a fake ID) but all the minor barriers taken together afford that many more places for a potential attack to be foiled.
Remember the millenium plot was foiled by just this kind of asinine "useless" "easily-foiled", security check. The boder check from Canada into the US (a heck of a lot easier to foil than airline security). A border guard noticed a middle-eastern man acting very nervous and sweating profusely (In December on the Canadian border) waiting in line to cross at the check point. The politically incorrect border guard (who was certainly indulging in some racial profiling) found this suspicious (the bigot!) and searched the van. Lo and behold it was stuffed with explosives intended for an Al Queada sponsored millenium celebration fireworks show at LAX.
In the graphics market "apple once dominated" we are all using Wacom tablets. Photoshop (and most other graphics programs) without a pressure sensitive tablet is almost unusable (If you've gotten used to it without a tablet you just don't realise you're missing some basic functionality).
On the occasions we use a mouse the one that comes with the tablet has two buttons & a scroll wheel.
As for "maybe it will reign again" I think it's still dominating that market. Granted the it's not been strong in 3D. But in just about every other creative niche it either dominates (photography, art, design, advertising, pre-press) or has a very respectable presence (film/video, music and increasingly 3D)
I think you may be thinking about the old "look & feel" copyright lawsuit, way back in the days of windows 3.x. Yes, Microsoft won that one. The lawsuit I am talking about was a patent dispute not a copyright dispute. It was rumored to be much more favorable to Apple. (we'll never really know, since it didn't actually get played out in court). In any event, Gil Amelio (Apple's CEO before Jobs came back) was holding out for a big victory in court. Damages and a bit of licensing money from M$ for every copy of windows sold would have been quite a shot in the arm for Apple. But it wasn't a sure thing and it guaranteed M$'s enmity. Jobs made the decision to settle, get some guaranteed money and the PR victory (targetted at institutions and investors) of having M$ publicly profess it's support for Apple.
I suggest that you may be taking the position you do out of the same ignorance of which you accuse others.
;)
As I said before IANAL and I've freely admitted my ignorance (though I did at least look at the text of the bill).
My scenario was inept. My larger point was that a this law deserves a closer analysis than "House OK's life sentances for hackers" there MIGHT be areas of the existing law that it clarifies. I don't know that this is the case and in fact SAID that I suspect that this law is NOT necessary, simply that it was worth debating rather than knee-jerk hysterical opposition because it mentions computers being used for a crime (which we all know is the same as making it illegal to run linux
After looking over this thread I realise that I owe you an apology. Throughout, your opposition to the bill has been based on a rational position & not the idiocy elswhere on slashdot. I have been unfairly using you as a foil to address attitudes and positions that aren't really yours. If you'll indulge me to do it one last time. If the argument against this bill is that it is unnecessary because it is *redundant* then obviously it can't also be the argument against the bill that it is taking away rights you previously enjoyed.
I honestly don't know if it is totally unnecessary or not. I can concieve of the possiblity that it could clarify situations that are currently unclear. Or if the existing law is clear to lawyers the proposed law performs something like an educational/cultural role making it explicit to the general population. I'm sure vehicular homicid laws are also totally redundant from a legal standpoint but they serve a function by making it clear to the stupid that a car (or a computer) can be a weapon, so don't be fooled by the illusion that your crime is only "and accident" (or "virtual"). While there may be no grey areas in the application of the existing laws to computers I am convinced that many malicious "hackers" are laboring under the false sense that much of what they do somehow doesn't count/isn't real. Even if the laws only effect is the underscore that it IS real that is some benefit.
Then again, even as I make that argument I am not convinced that such marginal benefits are worth adding more lines to our already bloated law books.
Good points. The rare earth hypothesis only suggests that complex life AS WE KNOW IT will be rare. It says little or nothing about hypothetical OTHER systems of organizing life. The debate is between those that think life as we know it is common and those who think it is rare. The rare earth hypothesis makes a compelling argument that it would be quite rare. They freely aknowledge that some other as yet unknown system of "life" could exist and that their hypothesis is only valid for the system of life we know about.
That being said. Do we have any reason to think that there are physical or chemical laws that predispose the universe to create the kind of spectacularly complex systems we call "life"? Anything we would identify as life has to be incredibly complex and highly organised. Molecular structures seem to be the only system in nature we know of capable of generating that kind of complexity and organization. And if you settle for molecularly based life you pretty much get stuck with carbon molecules and that gets you stuck with the rare earth hypothesis & the habitable zones you find so distasteful.
We could hypothesize about some other ways of attaining the necessary complexity. How about a system based on mechanic principles (rather than chemical) A machine that stores information, harnesses power, reproduces (imperfectly) & evolves into ever more complex systems. We could imagine such a system working but It's hard to imagine such a system arising. The scifi standard "beings of pure energy" seems pretty far fetched. We know of no way for "pure energy" to be organized in the ways necessary to be anything complex enough to call "life". Perhaps something larger, the gravitational interactions between bodies in an individual star system don't seem to have the requisite complexity, how about entire galaxies? That's seems a little more concievable, all the complex interreactions between all of the component gravity wells seems a better candidate for playing host to the kind of complex organization we could call life. Still pretty far fetched, even all that gravitational complexity doesn't seem as fertile a field as molecular dynamics. Gravity only seems to work one way after all, it always attracts, molecules attract or repel & interact in lots of interesting ways that gravity wells don't. All those interreactions in compounds make all that information storage in DNA possible. We don't seem to be observing anything quite so complicated when looking at large masses. I'm sure there are other possiblities for the spontaneous arising of complex organizations we could call life but the fact that with what we know about physics and chemistry we can't even concieve of those possiblities suggests that they are also unlikely are thus as rare as we believe the kind of life we DO know about is.
Murder is (legally) murder, whatever the weapon.
Of course, of course, granted. But imagine these two different ways of using a computer as a weapon.
Scenario 1: Pick up computere -> Bludgeon victim with computer.
In this scenario I see no legal wiggle room for the perpetrator beyond those ususally associated with our screwed up legal system.
Scenario 2: Hack into traffic system -> Cause all traffic lights to be green in both directions around the city -> Family of five never before seen by perpetrator is rammed by an 18 wheeler.
In this scenario it just seems that there are more places for the perpetrator to manipulate the legal system. Despite the maliciousness of his intentions his crime has an element of indirect causation that bludgeoning the same family with a monitor wouldn't have. There many more "responsible" parties (the truckdriver, the city traffic department, whoever was responsible for the systems security) to be drawn into the case to muddy the water. You already see people all over slashdot blaming every malicious hack on the sap who was responsible for security. And that is perfectly fair, BUT at the same time they seem to give a pass to the actual perpetrator, "the door wasn't locked It's not my clients fault that he stole suff. -?!?!"
It's not that I think this law is a good idea. I suspect that it is NOT. But I am irritated by the lack of good faith debate, the alarmism, the conspiracy theories, the paranioa, the ignorance, all things slashdotters typically accuse congressmen of but seems to be more appropriately attributed to slashdot.
Granted, slashdot is not a very important forum compared to the US house & senate, but wouldn't intelligent conversation and debate be nice & more helpful in analysing the REAL pros and cons of this piece of legislation? Isn't it something we could expect from a presumably intelligent and educated & MODERATED group. (some of the most ignorant posts from people who obviously haven't the faintest clue about what the bill is actually about are +5 insightful because they hit the right hot-button buzz words)
Good point, I guess we are more in a situation where we are not sure if we have one sample or two or three.
The "rare earth" people that Drake is debating actually assume that such bacterial life is very common, but that multicellular life is very rare, so it's presense on primordial earth prior to mass extinction events does nothing to dispute their claims. (indeed, it is one of their explicitly stated expectations)
It should be pointed out though that if we are talking about complex life we DO have a larger sample than 1 right now. Both Venus and Mars are "earth-like" in astronomical terms. They are about the right size and about the right distance from the sun. But they are not *quite* right. Mars has frozen and Venus is gripped with runaway greenhouse gases, they are each a "little too close" and "a little too far". Though if they had gotten the atmospheric chemistry right I think their distance from the sun could have been compensated for - imagine if their positions were reversed, if Mars had the thick atmosphere with a lot of greenhouse activity and Venus had the thin atmosphere - who knows? As it is they are fairly good examples of what happens if just a few variables on your "earth-like" planet are wrong by just a little (in astronomical terms). Even Mercury with no atmosphere is an example of not only being too close to the sun (and thus too hot) but of being caught in tidal lock (so despite the intense heat on one side the atmoshpere freezes out on the other) This would presumably happen to any planet so close in, even if the star were smaller and a mercury type planet was only getting as much solar energy as earth is getting further away from a larger star.
It is not unlikely that if we could start visiting other systems we would find a *lot* of planets that were candidates to become truly earth-like but failed because they got just a few variables wrong by just a little bit. Even a nearly identical planet to Earth - exactly the same size, exactly the same distance from exactly the same sized star, with exactly the same chemical composition would have a high probablity of succumbing to either runaway greenhouse gases or having it's atmosphere freeze out if it's atmospheric composition was not regulated by the action of plate tektonics & continental weathering or if it's tilt was not regulated by an oversized moon or if it just had the bad luck of being hit with a really big comet (a very likely occurance without a "jupiter" nearby sucking up or pushing out all the debris).
A few points
Yes, this bill has a life sentance for "hacking" if your "hack" is used to MURDER or ATTEMPT MURDER.
That would sensibly be covered by existing murder and man-slaughter laws. The internet and computers are not some how "special" and "different"
IANAL or a legislator so I really don't know (and most likely neither do you) whether this bill is necessary or not. I can imagine situations where using a computer as your weapon may also hand you all sorts of defense options at your trial. Using a computer hack to commit a crime you would otherwise might need a few tons of dynamite for (i.e causing a dam to malfunction rather than blowing it up) may very well be a situation that current law doesn't address clearly. The guy sitting in front of a computer typing away certainly doesn't *seem* as violent or as dangerous as the guy with the truck full of TNT. The *reality* is he may have just as great a chance, he may be just as serious and just as dangerous to the rest of us.
You may be right, the current law may be sufficient. The proposed law may be open to abuses. But it seems to me it is certainly worth debate and that reasonable people may disagree about this laws propriety. The alramist posts and ignorant fear-mongering you find on most of these slashdot posts ("the day when you could get LIFE in PRISON for using a computer." modified as "insightful") is certainly just as bad as the alleged alarmism & fear mongering slashdotters are (perhaps unfairly) accusing congress of.
The rare earth people aren't arguing that it doesn't exist, only that it is, well... rare. (thus the name of the hypothesis) Sagan and Drake hypothesisized that not only was life common & that advanced life was fairly common but that there were MILLIONS of advanced civilizations in our galaxy. The rare earth hypothesis doesn't say there are NO other advanced civilisations but cuts down the estimated number by a few orders of magnitude.
Those are the assumptions of the Drake Equation. That all you need is a sun-like star and an earth-like planet and POOF life. And on all those life-bearing planets theres bound to be quite a few that evolve complex animals and eventually intelligent life.
The Rare Earth Hypothesis that they are arguing about looks at those assumptions a bit more critically. It does not assume that there is no other life like ours out there but that it is VERY rare. That the life-friendly atmosphere and climate our planet enjoys is the result of a fairly large number of low-probablity chances.
The authors contend that on our planet at least life is dependent on being a certain distance from the center of the galaxy (too much radiation) but not on the outer edge (too little metal for a planet the right size to form). That cuts down significantly on the number of stars in our galaxy that can support life. We also need an unusually large moon (to stabilise tilt, create tides). We need plate tectonics (for a host of reasons) which also means the planet has to be a certain size and have a particular make-up and peculiar history.
After meeting all these conditions your potential planet with it's evolving life must avoid having that life wiped out by a mass extinction event. It helps to have a Jupiter sized planet to "clean up" all those comets, asteroids, planetoids etc. that would otherwise bombard your planet from time to time, periodically vaporising the oceans. But if that Jupiter is too close, or in an eliptical orbit (as all the extrasolar "jupiters" we have so far found orbiting other stars) it's gravitational effect will either drive your earthlike planet into the star (not healthful for life) or knock it right out of the star system (also not healthful for life).
Now your very rare earth like planet must simply avoid some bad luck, nearby magnetars, supernovas etc., getting hit by the chance comet that your friendly jupiter didn't clean up for you. etc.
Certainly starting with a large enough sample even these very stringent, and unlikely requirements will be met from time to time. But they will be rare and spaced far apart. Out of the billions of stars in our galaxy only a handful (hundreds, maybe only dozens) will meet those conditions, not the millions of advanced civilisations originally suggested by Sagan and Drake.
Yes, but we don't know whether there was life then to sterilise or not. If we could observe the conditions on Earth over it's entire history and test for the presense of life THEN we would have a sample size greater than 1. BUT, all we know about life on earth before theoretical sterilization events is conjectural. Just like all we know about life on other planets is conjecture. And all that conjecture is still based on a sample size of 1.
Especially considering MS poured the money in for purely (mostly, whatever) selfish reasons - we can assume the DOJ trial would look much different today had MS not participated in the 'wonton act of goodwill
It wasn't really about the trial either. It was part of an out-of-court settlement of a patent dispute. In fact the publicly announced $150 million was rumored to be just the public tip of a larger behind the scenes patent cross licensing agreement that let MS off the hook for patent infringment in Windows95 (that rumor was confirmed by Steve Jobs' soto voice comments on some business shows hinting that there was a lot more money coming Apple's way than just the $150 Million - though that might have been spin)