Perhaps back in the 80's Apple could have switched to licensing their OS and become what Micro$oft did become, but it is too late now. Even back then I doubt such Apple could have survived the radical change from a very large company (in terms of revenue, employees etc.) to very small company such a change in strategy would have resulted in. Even Bill Gates didn't have some grand plan in the 70's and 80's to become the worlds richest man - he stumbled onto his business plan by playing the cards he was dealt and making decisions as they came up*.
Providing only the OS has certain business advantages as Micro$oft's financial success eloquently attests to. But Apples approach of controlling all aspects of the machine - OS, Hardware, and even certain peripherals and applications considered strategically important also has advantages. In the past Apple has not fully exploited those advantages but I think that is exactly what they are trying to do now. OSX is intended to become the reliably stable (as the classic MacOS had ceased to be) foundation of a purposefully designed, integrated system that "just works". Wintel PC's by contrast because they cobble together an OS, applications, CPU and other components that are created by different companies often with different agendas will be at a disadvantage when it comes to things like reliablity, integration and user experience.
This is not to say that Apple has always (or even often) succeeded in those areas or that the Wintel PC's have always failed. But Apple has a structural advangtage and if they exploit it to the full they will be in a very strong competative position.
* Gates even got those decisions wrong a few times: when the Mac first came out Gates thought it would blow the market away so he decided to hitch his company to what he thought would be Apple's rising star. Micro$oft allocated a full half of it's resources to becoming a Mac office productivity application developer while the other half serviced the existing DOS/IBM clone business he thought was doomed. With Microsofts big initial investment the Mac's less than stellar sales the first couple of years was almost a disaster for Gates, fortunately for him he owned the competition. On second thought perhaps he did think it all out - whatever happened to the Mac he was in a position to profit by it but he cut it pretty close by commiting so many resources into the Macintosh application business.
Re:Who owns the moon?
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Lunar Lasers
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Who says the US has the right (or lack thereof) to put anything like this on the moon?
The "lack thereof" in brackets answers the main question. Whoever gets there and does it will have the "right" to go there and do it. I imagine the way we deal with completely unclaimed territory is still found under the "finders keepers losers weepers" clause of international law. I imagine something along the lines of an explorer planting his flag in the dirt and declaring "I claim this bit of rock for $sponsoring_country" which come to think of it the USA has already done on the moon.
What the hell does that have to do with it? The problem is that solar/wind/geothermal/hydro/tidal companies CAN'T make money off of it. If you think they can then build one and prove it.
These means are all non polluting (when compared to fossil fuels)
True but that is not to say that on a scale sufficient to compete with fossil fuels they won't have an environmental impact. Just look at the environmentalist complaints about all the eagles slaughtered by California wind farms and those that want to destroy the hydroelectric dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers.
Until the oil is GONE, you won't see any of these replacing good old reliable burning of fossil fuels.
That is sort of true. The market will use whatever is cheaper. As prices for fossil fuel energy rises due to increasing scarcity and/or alternative energy costs fall due to advancing technology there will be a slow switch as alternative sources start to beat fossil fuels on price. Big caveat - the market will use whichever is cheaper, but in such heavily regulated industries government policy substantially distorts the market. Environmental regulations, subsidies, government sponsored cartels (like OPEC) and even our foreign policy all have a huge effect on the market. Still in the long run even governments can't ignore economic realities - unless they want to go the way of the Soveit Union.
When the oil does run out, the screams of the populace will echo for miles, and they'll have themselves and their companies to blame.
People won't even notice. Oil won't just disappear without the price going up as it becomes more scarce, as it becomes more scarce other energy sources will become economically feasible.
The other people replying have made most of the important points. That the reasons *are* discussed in the books, the reasons given is that they had to use stealth rather than force because of Saurons military superiority. That Hobbits more than any other race are resistant to the temptation posed by the ring. etc.
I have been sort of interested into *why* the hobbits are resistant to the ring. I think it is because they represent virtue, particularly simple, domestic, peasant virtues. They are simple farmers and more interested in seeing their harvest come in or having a party than establishing an empire or constructing grand awe-inspiring memorials. There is very little hubris in them. Even when Sam is tempted he imagines himself as a great gardener - not exactly an ambition the awsome power of the ring seems well suited to exploit for Sam's temptation.
The Elves, the Dwarves and the various men (of Gondor, the Dunedan) by contrast all represent various proud, powerful and declining cultures. The Men and Dwarves would be easily tempted and corrupted by the ring. Seemingly the ancient power and wisdom of the elves would make one of them a likely candidate as ring-bearer. But a quick skim through their history shows that they are in some ways they are even more unsuited to resisting the temptations of the ring than the humans or dwarves. They don't represent virtue in Tolkiens world so much as beauty (and the love of beauty.) They are even more capable of hubris, vanity and overweaning pride than the humans are - perhaps because their high opinion of themselves is better justified by reality. Regardless it is their fatal flaw that through their history led to fratricide and decline.
You explicitly dismiss the fact that this is a civil case without explaining why it is valid to do so.
It is valid to do so because the point of a civil case is often (not always, but often) still to punish someone for illegal and harmful acts, as well as to provide a remedy for the party that was harmed.
Nor do you reconcile your statements with the fact that this is a settlement and that the civil trial never proceeded to a point where "guilt" was assessed.
The settlement itself is an assessment of guilt. The defendant is acknowledging his culpability and offering a proposed remedy. That is fine and perfectly appropriate - but the remedy being proposed (dumping products at a loss to wipe out a competitor) is something that would be an actionable offense under anti-trust laws if it wasn't already the "remedy" of an anti-trust suit.
1. This is a *settlement* in a *civil case*.
Yes, yes, we know. And yet the point of a civil case is still to hold someone accountable (punish) for some harm they did and to make some recompense to the person they did harm to.
3. It's not illegal to "destroy companies" or be a "bad guy." I'd challenge you to separate what is illegal from what is "not nice."
Very true, but right or wrong the court has found that the way that Micro$oft "destroyed companies" was Illegal. Many "not nice" things that are perfectly legal for just any company *become* illegal if done by a monopoly.
4. You assert both that Microsoft has a "stranglehold" and that Apple is doing well in the school market. Which is it? What facts are you relying on?
A little too cute - Microsoft has a stranglehold on the overall market. Apple survives in a few small niches, the largest of which is the school market.
5. Microsoft already dominates the education market, and has been gaining share since 1996. Apple's share is currently 23% according to this story
If a competitor had a 23% share in the PC market overall MS wouldn't have been found to be a monopoly. So the remedy for Microsofts abuse of monopoly powers everywhere else is to have it dump $1 billion of product into the one niche where it doesn't (yet) enjoy those monopoly powers?
6. Is pouring money into low-income areas really the best way for Microsoft to "tighten their stranglehold"? If they wanted to make an investment in the education market to increase their share, they would probably target "high-value" segments with students who are likely to be tech savvy or affluent in the future. That is clearly not the case here.
Yes, emphatically yes, it is if that is the one segment that where they still encounter competition. Selling computers to schools is not just about the future purchasing decisions of the students - it is about selling those computers and making a profit. Some companies do a very nice little business in that market.
I have to admire Micro$ofts ability (and the balls it takes) to so completely turn around something that is supposed to punish MS and help their competitors into something that will do the exact opposite. Microsoft has been found by the courts to be a monopoly that has illegally abused it's monopoly power to maintain said monopoly. The "remedy" that Microsoft has come up with is to dump it's products in the one market where it still had some competition - something that would probably *initiate* an anti-trust lawsuit if it wasn't already the proposed "remedy" of one.
Really humity (sic) doesn't rate... really then 1 Sumatran Tiger is worth more than 250m Americans etc.
Why are those 4 things "important"? Why is any species or all species collectively "important"? Why are reproducing complex organic chemical compounds "important"?
Nature certainly doesn't "care." It has no "moral" qualms about destroying a particular variation of life or of destroying all life everywhere. There have been plenty of so called "disasters" resulting in massive extinctions of vast numbers of species before the "disaster" of mankind. Comet strikes, climactic changes, new species, etc. have resulted in mass extinctions long before mankind. Mass extinction and the eventual extinction of all life on earth is inevitable. The variables that make earth habitable by life are not constants. The atmosphere will change as the core cools and there is less and less volcanic and plate tectonic activity. As the sun ages the "habitable zone" where there can be liquid water will change. Eventually the earth will outside that zone. If those changes fail to cleans the earth of it's contamination by reproducing complex organic chemical compounds the sun going nova will certainly do it.
The only reason to attach any importance to the continued survival of Sumatran Tigers or of any species is human morality. While human morality creates the concept of "value" which it then applies to Sumatran Tigers it is also (except by you) universally recognized to apply that concept of value even more generously to humans. So no, 250m Americans (or Arabs, or Germans, or Chinese) is of far greater value than that Sumatran Tiger.
The really interesting question is: does that morality have any objective reality independant from human thought? If it does, and the lives of Sumatran Tigers and of humans are in fact important for some reason other than we decided that they are - Who is it important to?
You make some excellent points on why you believe you are less important and are threatening to the survival of Sumatran Tigers. I humbly suggest you follow through on your convictions and feed yourself to one right away.
Especially after the first paragraph. After all, this is politically-motivated junk science.
Are you suggesting that all the science showing a medieval warm and a little ice age and all the periods of global warming and cooling prior to them is "junk science"? Are you suggesting that the Maunder Minimum is politically motivated junk science? What political motivation did Sporer in 1887 and Maunder in 1890 have? OK, I'll admit I perhaps went too far in suggesting that the corelation between solar radiance levels and global climactic change is proven to have a causal relationship. But that is not so far into the realm of "politically motivated junk science" as those that suggest with far less data that fossil fuel emmissions have a causal realationship to the most recent period of global warming. It certainly doesn't descend to the level of "junk science" as political interest groups posing as scientists that only show charts of global climate change showing the warming from 1850 til now without showing the previous centuries of cyclical change and our point well below the peak highs.
"drasticaly diminish the size of the global economy" == "commit economic sucide" == "spend the rest of your short life meanly scrabbling after food".
No, in the first world we have the capital to transition to cleaner technologies and are already far less dependant on the industrial use of fossil fuels, our economy may grow at a slower pace than it otherwise would but not so drastically that we would notice all that much. It is in places where people are already "spending their short lives meanly scrambling after food" that will be hard hit by prohibitively expensive methods of refrigeration and industrial production. Cutting the lower rungs of the ladder of industrial revolution and economic growth in the third world while keeping them in environmentaly sound poverty may even be good for some people in the first world economies that won't have to as much competition.
The earth is warmer now than it was 100 years ago.
And significantly cooler than it was 900 years ago which was warmer than 100 years before that. etc. etc. ad nauseum.
What it does not, cannot, tell us is wether this is a cyclical or progressive change.
You are right - observing such a change on Mars tells us very little about whether the current global warming on earth is part of a cyclical or progressive change. Fortunately we have much more data on temperatures on earth and KNOW that there are cyclical changes and that over the most recent centuries the cycle has gone from temperatures significantly higher than today (the medieval warm) to temperatures significantly cooler than today (the little ice age).
I would agree it is worthwile studying the most recent upswing in temperatures because it is possible that human activity *could* be contributing to the most recent cycle of global warming. It seems though looking at the cycle of global climate change over the past millenium that our contribution is insignificant if it is present at all. We are neither at historically high temperatures nor experiencing changes that are particularly rapid.
I'm a 'don't piss in the bath' person myself.
Funny, that is how I think of those that would 'piss in the bath' of the global economy, wetting themselves in fear over what all the data suggests is a natural and cyclical change.
Which impact will this discovery have on the recently overhyped global warming debate ?
I don't think it's fair to say "over hyped" it is an important issue one way or the other.
As for your question: it may go a long way in proving that global warming is (at least mostly) caused by changes in levels of solar radiance. We know that solar radiance levels go through cycles and we have observed that periods of global warming and cooling roughly coincide with these changes. For instance the "little ice age" from 1400-1850* coincided with a period of decreased solar activity and radiance that hit bottom with the Maunder Minimum from 1645 to 1715. Incresed solar radiance since this minimum has again coincided with the current period of global warming. Seeing the same coincidence on another planet which obviously isn't afected by the same climactic variables as our own planet (human activity, volcanoes etc.) seems pretty suggestive.
* For the sake of fairness some climatologists say the "little ice age" started around the year 1200 when a period of global cooling began after the period of global warming known as the "medieval warm" reached it's peak. Whatever the case we would still have a bit of global warming to go before we see tempuratures as high as they were in 1200 when Greenland really had some "green" and England had viable wine vinyards 300 miles north of the current limit. We are a little more than half way back to the highs of the 1100's from the lows of the 1200's.
Or maybe the long cycles of warming and cooling that closely corelate with changes in solar radiance affects mars as well. We still have a bit of global warming to go to see temperatures back up to the point prior to the most recent Maunder Minimum (period of reduced solar activity & radiance). During the peak of the last global warming cycle the coast of "greenland" really was green and the norse settlers even had vinyards.
But it is too important to bother studying before taking drastic action. It is important to drasticaly diminish the size of the global economy *right now* on the off chance that the natural phenomenon we know has been happening for millenia is happening *this time* because of human activity. It might just be coincidence that current warming continues the same close correlation with the changes in solar radiance that past periods of global warming and cooling have had. These past periods by the way were often more severe: we had much higher temperatures during the "medieval warm" and the current warming trend was much more rapid in the 50 years between 1750 and 1800 than it has been since then.
when others who run their own weblogs saw the item, they decided to have a little fun with KPMG. They linked to KPMG's site -- just like this -- to see what the company could do about it. Within a day of Raettig's posting, several dozen sites were linking to KPMG's front page
So all I have to do to get people to link to my site and generate tons of traffic is forbid people from linking to my site?
It seems to me that if three out of four of your enemies mortars or short range missles (which only have one warhead) were being wasted firing decoys you would have accomplished 3/4's of your defensive goals. As for why your enemy would be dumb enough to fire decoy mortar shells rather than just fire more of the real thing is another question.
4) Foliage
Seems a pretty easy problem to fix when positioning the laser.
5) Line of sight
Since mortar shells and short range missles fly through the sky rather than sneek around hills this isn't a big problem. I suppose using cruise missles would defeat this system but since Hezbullah and Hamas don't have any (very few nations do) it still achieves it's goal.
6) Rain
7) Fog
8) Snow
Perhaps a real problem (I don't know.) In it's use as a defense against mortars and short range tactical missles your enemy can now only attack you when he can't see to aim at you which is a pretty good defense against such weapons. In any event I suppose the Isreali's would be happy to limiting the sometimes daily rocket attacks to just rainy or snowy days given how rare such days are in Isreal.
Re:are artillery shells that delicate?
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Battlefield Lasers
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· Score: 1
This reminds me of an exchange between a senator and one of the engineers working on SDI. (from rather fuzzy memory) The senator asked: woulnd't simply spinning the missle be a good defense against the laser. The engineer replied that it would be just as good a defense as being a spinning ballerina was against a machine gun.
granted the frontline is a deadly place to be, but i'm shocked by how many of our own soldiers we're killing.
What is amazing since the Gulf War isn't how many of our own soldiers are killed by "friendly" fire but how few are killed by hostile fire. We have become so militarily superior to our enemies that we are in more danger of being accidentally hit by our own weapons than being intentionally targetted by our enemies weapons.
The current situation is a little misleading though since we have very few troops on the ground. I would imagine that among our Afghan allies there have been a very, very high number friendly fire casualties because of the difficulty of coordinating over a quickly moving battlefield with an essentially feudal, decentralised and undisciplined army without uniforms and the propensity of local warlords to switch sides.
Imagine looking at the reconasaince photos: how hard must it be to discern whether that column of turbaned men carrying AK-47's is a Northern Alliance force, A Pashtoon Anti-Taliban force, a Taliban force, Al Queada force, the forces of a local commander who hasn't made up his mind yet, who has made up his mind but hasn't told anyone, who's going to the battle and will make up his mind when he gets there, Or just a bunch of typically well-armed farmers on their way to the fields for the days work? And after the dust settles will the local warlord be honest about which side he was on the moment his men were bombed? Probably not.
There are lots of people who work with video for a living and make technical decisions about what to deploy. If you like to reserve the term "professional" in this case to people who fiddle with video in interactive applications on their desktop machines for a living, fine.
Fine, I guess I'm just biased and when I think of the guys responsible for the servers, storage and web distribution I think of them as IT professionals and those responsible for broadcasting as broadcast engineers rather than as video professionals, most of them seem to make those same distinctions. In any event I will grant that there are professionals that do things other than create and edit video. Still taking the entire professional digital video industry (production, editing, compositing, archiving, distributing, etc.) quicktime is the dominant format for most of those steps.
Sure it does. The Quicktime approach enables a profusion of variants that is undesirable in an archival format
It seems it would be part of the point of a container format to be flexible and allow choices regarding the things contained. While allowing choices does admit the possibility of poor choices I don't see that out of necessity it is a barrier to making good choices. I think you have a legitimate complaint about the wide use of the Sorensen codec for distribution and archiving but that is really where your complaint lies, not with the open container format that happens to be wrapped around the offensive closed Sorensen video. As a professional video archivist you can use the open codec you prefer or even get rid of the added complexity of a container format (unless it had multiple tracks in which case when someone wants the original back they'll be pissed that they have to hunt down the now separated audio, video, sprites etc.)
Society demands we work these long hours so we can provide the clothes and things our families need
I can heartily agree with everything in your post but this one point. There is much complaining about how both parents "have" to work (because of incresed taxes if you're a Republican or becasue of falling wages if you're a Democrat). I'm sorry in most cases I don't buy it - we have a problem of defining things we want as things we "need". We are significantly wealthier than our parents generation and fabulously more wealthy than our grandparents generation and yet they managed to be there for their kids. We have bigger houses, more and more varied food, more and nicer cars, more and bigger TV's (in color even) plus forms of entertainment (computers, video game consoles etc.) that those generations didn't have and yet our kids are so screwed up they have to be monitored by the cold eye of government because parents are too busy paying for an inflated "standard of living" they believe they "need" more than their kids need them.
As for "owning" the "professional market", Quicktime "owns" a particular market segment of a particular kind of desktop users.
Which Um... just happens to be the particular kind of desktop users called: "the professional market"
As for cross-platform, archival issues you may recall the whole point of the original poster was that Quicktime and MPEG-4 are container formats and you can use almost any open (MPEG, MPEG-2 etc. ad naseum) or closed (Sorensen, Indeo, etc. ad naseum) format you like as the thing contained. You argue convincingly that users should archive their Quicktime movies using open standard codecs but that doesn't really have anything to do with using quicktime or MPEG-4 as a container.
You see, MIcrosoft requires that Apple not make QuickTime for Linux; otherwise they will pull Explorer and Office for the Mac.
I'm sure that Microsoft uses Apples dependence on those products to pressure Apple in all sorts of ways, perhaps even in the way you suggest. But, Microsoft also feels that it NEEDS to sell those products on the Mac. Apple and Microsoft enjoy a sort of detante: Apple needs Microsoft products to stay relevant and Microsoft needs to sell those products to maintain their proprietary defacto standards and to keep their competitors starved for cash. In Microsofts mind every dollar Microsoft makes on the Mac side isn't just added to their bottom line but is also a dollar denied to competitors that might use them to challenge Microsofts dominance. Every copy of their products used on the Mac side is one more user you yourself will need microsoft products as opposed to their competitor's products to effectively interoperate with. Microsoft would have to suffer a pretty severe provocation from Apple to take the risk of giving it's competitors any room to breathe. At the same time Apple will only antagonise Microsoft when they really feel it is worth it, as indeed they did with Quicktime which Microsoft put them under enormous pressure to kill. Microsoft even made the kind of threats you refer to. In the end though Apple thought Quicktime was even more important to them than Office and Microsoft didn't think it was important enough to risk leaving the entire Mac market to WordPerfect.
If Apple's desktop marketshare ever fell too low to sustain a potential competitor Microsoft would leave, if an office productivity app on linux ever has real commercial success Microsoft will start selling Linux:Office not because they wouldn't still rather have a monopoly Operating System but because they don't want to allow their competitors any niche big enough to support them.
Excel is not a standard. By definition, a standard includes human-readable documentation of what meets or does not meet the standard.
It's important to make a distinction between two perfectly valid definitions of the word standard ("it's a floor wax and a desert topping.") One definition is that a standard is "An acknowledged measure of comparison... a critereon" the other is "Something... that is widely recognized or employed" which is clearly what the original poster meant by calling it a de facto standard. It would be a happy world if all standards fit both definitions but sadly that is not the case.
802.11 and the other products of "standards bodies" are standards in the first sense, Excel and most other Micro$oft products are standards in the second sense. To be a *successful* standard in the first sense (a critereon) MPEG-4 must also be a standard in the second sense (widely used).
I have it on good authority that this rumor will still be going around in the year 2525.
In all seriousness I understand that they have been working on this for a long time (the source of the periodic rumours) and have just been waiting for the price of the displays to come down to a point that makes sense (the reason it stays a rumour). Hopefully this time it will "come true". Apple needs periodic "blockbuster" products and changing the color of the iMac again just won't cut it anymore.
It seams like they haven't been doing much lately (as much as other manufacturers),
I don't what you mean by "lately" I guess if you mean the past couple of months all they have done is open more of their own retail stores, speed bump their hardware, come out with a new MP3 player, update their OS, multimedia and MP3 software - which i guess is "not much" when we are talking about apple. But I don't know of any other manufacturer that does as much as Apple even on a "slow" day - the PC manufacturers are mostly just assembling and reselling new products from Intel and Microsoft whereas Apple does more of it's own hardware engineering even contributing (a little) to the PowerPC chip design and makes it's own OS (a Unix "for the rest of us"), a whole host of multimedia software and every year or two takes enormous risks coming out with inovative hardware which is either a spectacular success (iMac, Titanium PowerBook) or a spectacular (but cool) failure (the Cube)
But back to your original question: Is apple actually going to attempt a huge come back?
Yes, everything they do is designed to attempt a huge comeback. They started their own retail stores with the stated goal of significantly increasing market share. They take risks with such strange hardware and their own excellent software because they aren't looking for a product that is "good enough" but are hoping for a blockbuster. They have had some spectacular successes with this strategy (Most notably the iMac which singlehandedly broght them back from the grave) and some spectacular failures (the Cube - which was a failure but was still "cool")
i never liked the big bang theory. it stinks of creationism. it seems out of line with the trend of what humanity has been learning from science over the last thousand years:
Ironically your comments reflect exactly the same kind of reasoning which makes the creationists so maligned. You have a theological presupposition and are willing to disregard scientific analysis when that analysis suggests that your theology may be wrong. The only difference appears to be the content of your theology: you, an atheist, don't "like" the big bang theory and they, theists, don't "like" the theory of evolution. Meanwhile the universe (and perhaps God) goes on as it will whether you want it to be that way or not.
It seems out of line with the trend of what humanity has been learning from science over the last thousand years: that the universe is random, trivial, makes little sense, and we are not anywhere near the center of it.
I can agree with the "not anywhere near the center of it" comment about what science has taught us in the last thousand years. But that the universe is random or that it makes little sense is the exact opposite of what scientific progress has taught us. Ancient man lived in a world that was truly random and made little sense - the world and elements around him where not governed by discoverable and predictable laws of physics but by unpredictable gods and spirits. Science is built on the alternative belief that the universe is orderly - NOT random but governed by predictable rules that can be discovered and that when tested will give the same results every time. If science taught that the universe is "random" and "makes little sense" there would be no point in scientific experiments and peer review since the results would be different every time. That fundamental belief in predictable order in the universe has been vindicated by scientific progress. An electrical storm that looked to ancient man like the chaotic temper tantrum of a petulant Thor is revealed to be obeying laws of physics that we can understand. We certainly don't understand them all and probably never will - and those things we still don't understand still looks like random chaos just like an electical storm did to our ancestors - but the whole point of science and what these physicists will eventually discover with their duelling theories is truth (or at least a theory that comes closer to the truth) and predictable order in the physical universe.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps back in the 80's Apple could have switched to licensing their OS and become what Micro$oft did become, but it is too late now. Even back then I doubt such Apple could have survived the radical change from a very large company (in terms of revenue, employees etc.) to very small company such a change in strategy would have resulted in. Even Bill Gates didn't have some grand plan in the 70's and 80's to become the worlds richest man - he stumbled onto his business plan by playing the cards he was dealt and making decisions as they came up*.
Providing only the OS has certain business advantages as Micro$oft's financial success eloquently attests to. But Apples approach of controlling all aspects of the machine - OS, Hardware, and even certain peripherals and applications considered strategically important also has advantages. In the past Apple has not fully exploited those advantages but I think that is exactly what they are trying to do now. OSX is intended to become the reliably stable (as the classic MacOS had ceased to be) foundation of a purposefully designed, integrated system that "just works". Wintel PC's by contrast because they cobble together an OS, applications, CPU and other components that are created by different companies often with different agendas will be at a disadvantage when it comes to things like reliablity, integration and user experience.
This is not to say that Apple has always (or even often) succeeded in those areas or that the Wintel PC's have always failed. But Apple has a structural advangtage and if they exploit it to the full they will be in a very strong competative position.
* Gates even got those decisions wrong a few times: when the Mac first came out Gates thought it would blow the market away so he decided to hitch his company to what he thought would be Apple's rising star. Micro$oft allocated a full half of it's resources to becoming a Mac office productivity application developer while the other half serviced the existing DOS/IBM clone business he thought was doomed. With Microsofts big initial investment the Mac's less than stellar sales the first couple of years was almost a disaster for Gates, fortunately for him he owned the competition. On second thought perhaps he did think it all out - whatever happened to the Mac he was in a position to profit by it but he cut it pretty close by commiting so many resources into the Macintosh application business.
Who says the US has the right (or lack thereof) to put anything like this on the moon?
The "lack thereof" in brackets answers the main question. Whoever gets there and does it will have the "right" to go there and do it. I imagine the way we deal with completely unclaimed territory is still found under the "finders keepers losers weepers" clause of international law. I imagine something along the lines of an explorer planting his flag in the dirt and declaring "I claim this bit of rock for $sponsoring_country" which come to think of it the USA has already done on the moon.
Reason: Oil companies can't make money off of it.
What the hell does that have to do with it? The problem is that solar/wind/geothermal/hydro/tidal companies CAN'T make money off of it. If you think they can then build one and prove it.
These means are all non polluting (when compared to fossil fuels)
True but that is not to say that on a scale sufficient to compete with fossil fuels they won't have an environmental impact. Just look at the environmentalist complaints about all the eagles slaughtered by California wind farms and those that want to destroy the hydroelectric dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers.
Until the oil is GONE, you won't see any of these replacing good old reliable burning of fossil fuels.
That is sort of true. The market will use whatever is cheaper. As prices for fossil fuel energy rises due to increasing scarcity and/or alternative energy costs fall due to advancing technology there will be a slow switch as alternative sources start to beat fossil fuels on price. Big caveat - the market will use whichever is cheaper, but in such heavily regulated industries government policy substantially distorts the market. Environmental regulations, subsidies, government sponsored cartels (like OPEC) and even our foreign policy all have a huge effect on the market. Still in the long run even governments can't ignore economic realities - unless they want to go the way of the Soveit Union.
When the oil does run out, the screams of the populace will echo for miles, and they'll have themselves and their companies to blame.
People won't even notice. Oil won't just disappear without the price going up as it becomes more scarce, as it becomes more scarce other energy sources will become economically feasible.
The other people replying have made most of the important points. That the reasons *are* discussed in the books, the reasons given is that they had to use stealth rather than force because of Saurons military superiority. That Hobbits more than any other race are resistant to the temptation posed by the ring. etc.
I have been sort of interested into *why* the hobbits are resistant to the ring. I think it is because they represent virtue, particularly simple, domestic, peasant virtues. They are simple farmers and more interested in seeing their harvest come in or having a party than establishing an empire or constructing grand awe-inspiring memorials. There is very little hubris in them. Even when Sam is tempted he imagines himself as a great gardener - not exactly an ambition the awsome power of the ring seems well suited to exploit for Sam's temptation.
The Elves, the Dwarves and the various men (of Gondor, the Dunedan) by contrast all represent various proud, powerful and declining cultures. The Men and Dwarves would be easily tempted and corrupted by the ring. Seemingly the ancient power and wisdom of the elves would make one of them a likely candidate as ring-bearer. But a quick skim through their history shows that they are in some ways they are even more unsuited to resisting the temptations of the ring than the humans or dwarves. They don't represent virtue in Tolkiens world so much as beauty (and the love of beauty.) They are even more capable of hubris, vanity and overweaning pride than the humans are - perhaps because their high opinion of themselves is better justified by reality. Regardless it is their fatal flaw that through their history led to fratricide and decline.
You explicitly dismiss the fact that this is a civil case without explaining why it is valid to do so.
It is valid to do so because the point of a civil case is often (not always, but often) still to punish someone for illegal and harmful acts, as well as to provide a remedy for the party that was harmed.
Nor do you reconcile your statements with the fact that this is a settlement and that the civil trial never proceeded to a point where "guilt" was assessed.
The settlement itself is an assessment of guilt. The defendant is acknowledging his culpability and offering a proposed remedy. That is fine and perfectly appropriate - but the remedy being proposed (dumping products at a loss to wipe out a competitor) is something that would be an actionable offense under anti-trust laws if it wasn't already the "remedy" of an anti-trust suit.
1. This is a *settlement* in a *civil case*.
Yes, yes, we know. And yet the point of a civil case is still to hold someone accountable (punish) for some harm they did and to make some recompense to the person they did harm to.
3. It's not illegal to "destroy companies" or be a "bad guy." I'd challenge you to separate what is illegal from what is "not nice."
Very true, but right or wrong the court has found that the way that Micro$oft "destroyed companies" was Illegal. Many "not nice" things that are perfectly legal for just any company *become* illegal if done by a monopoly.
4. You assert both that Microsoft has a "stranglehold" and that Apple is doing well in the school market. Which is it? What facts are you relying on?
A little too cute - Microsoft has a stranglehold on the overall market. Apple survives in a few small niches, the largest of which is the school market.
5. Microsoft already dominates the education market, and has been gaining share since 1996. Apple's share is currently 23% according to this story
If a competitor had a 23% share in the PC market overall MS wouldn't have been found to be a monopoly. So the remedy for Microsofts abuse of monopoly powers everywhere else is to have it dump $1 billion of product into the one niche where it doesn't (yet) enjoy those monopoly powers?
6. Is pouring money into low-income areas really the best way for Microsoft to "tighten their stranglehold"? If they wanted to make an investment in the education market to increase their share, they would probably target "high-value" segments with students who are likely to be tech savvy or affluent in the future. That is clearly not the case here.
Yes, emphatically yes, it is if that is the one segment that where they still encounter competition. Selling computers to schools is not just about the future purchasing decisions of the students - it is about selling those computers and making a profit. Some companies do a very nice little business in that market.
I have to admire Micro$ofts ability (and the balls it takes) to so completely turn around something that is supposed to punish MS and help their competitors into something that will do the exact opposite. Microsoft has been found by the courts to be a monopoly that has illegally abused it's monopoly power to maintain said monopoly. The "remedy" that Microsoft has come up with is to dump it's products in the one market where it still had some competition - something that would probably *initiate* an anti-trust lawsuit if it wasn't already the proposed "remedy" of one.
The 4 most important things on this planet are:-
Air
Water
Topsoil
Biodiversity
Really humity (sic) doesn't rate... really then 1 Sumatran Tiger is worth more than 250m Americans etc.
Why are those 4 things "important"? Why is any species or all species collectively "important"? Why are reproducing complex organic chemical compounds "important"?
Nature certainly doesn't "care." It has no "moral" qualms about destroying a particular variation of life or of destroying all life everywhere. There have been plenty of so called "disasters" resulting in massive extinctions of vast numbers of species before the "disaster" of mankind. Comet strikes, climactic changes, new species, etc. have resulted in mass extinctions long before mankind. Mass extinction and the eventual extinction of all life on earth is inevitable. The variables that make earth habitable by life are not constants. The atmosphere will change as the core cools and there is less and less volcanic and plate tectonic activity. As the sun ages the "habitable zone" where there can be liquid water will change. Eventually the earth will outside that zone. If those changes fail to cleans the earth of it's contamination by reproducing complex organic chemical compounds the sun going nova will certainly do it.
The only reason to attach any importance to the continued survival of Sumatran Tigers or of any species is human morality. While human morality creates the concept of "value" which it then applies to Sumatran Tigers it is also (except by you) universally recognized to apply that concept of value even more generously to humans. So no, 250m Americans (or Arabs, or Germans, or Chinese) is of far greater value than that Sumatran Tiger.
The really interesting question is: does that morality have any objective reality independant from human thought? If it does, and the lives of Sumatran Tigers and of humans are in fact important for some reason other than we decided that they are - Who is it important to?
You make some excellent points on why you believe you are less important and are threatening to the survival of Sumatran Tigers. I humbly suggest you follow through on your convictions and feed yourself to one right away.
This must be sarcasm, right??
Bingo.
Especially after the first paragraph. After all, this is politically-motivated junk science.
Are you suggesting that all the science showing a medieval warm and a little ice age and all the periods of global warming and cooling prior to them is "junk science"? Are you suggesting that the Maunder Minimum is politically motivated junk science? What political motivation did Sporer in 1887 and Maunder in 1890 have? OK, I'll admit I perhaps went too far in suggesting that the corelation between solar radiance levels and global climactic change is proven to have a causal relationship. But that is not so far into the realm of "politically motivated junk science" as those that suggest with far less data that fossil fuel emmissions have a causal realationship to the most recent period of global warming. It certainly doesn't descend to the level of "junk science" as political interest groups posing as scientists that only show charts of global climate change showing the warming from 1850 til now without showing the previous centuries of cyclical change and our point well below the peak highs.
"drasticaly diminish the size of the global economy" == "commit economic sucide" == "spend the rest of your short life meanly scrabbling after food".
No, in the first world we have the capital to transition to cleaner technologies and are already far less dependant on the industrial use of fossil fuels, our economy may grow at a slower pace than it otherwise would but not so drastically that we would notice all that much. It is in places where people are already "spending their short lives meanly scrambling after food" that will be hard hit by prohibitively expensive methods of refrigeration and industrial production. Cutting the lower rungs of the ladder of industrial revolution and economic growth in the third world while keeping them in environmentaly sound poverty may even be good for some people in the first world economies that won't have to as much competition.
The earth is warmer now than it was 100 years ago.
And significantly cooler than it was 900 years ago which was warmer than 100 years before that. etc. etc. ad nauseum.
What it does not, cannot, tell us is wether this is a cyclical or progressive change.
You are right - observing such a change on Mars tells us very little about whether the current global warming on earth is part of a cyclical or progressive change. Fortunately we have much more data on temperatures on earth and KNOW that there are cyclical changes and that over the most recent centuries the cycle has gone from temperatures significantly higher than today (the medieval warm) to temperatures significantly cooler than today (the little ice age).
I would agree it is worthwile studying the most recent upswing in temperatures because it is possible that human activity *could* be contributing to the most recent cycle of global warming. It seems though looking at the cycle of global climate change over the past millenium that our contribution is insignificant if it is present at all. We are neither at historically high temperatures nor experiencing changes that are particularly rapid.
I'm a 'don't piss in the bath' person myself.
Funny, that is how I think of those that would 'piss in the bath' of the global economy, wetting themselves in fear over what all the data suggests is a natural and cyclical change.
Which impact will this discovery have on the recently overhyped global warming debate ?
I don't think it's fair to say "over hyped" it is an important issue one way or the other.
As for your question: it may go a long way in proving that global warming is (at least mostly) caused by changes in levels of solar radiance. We know that solar radiance levels go through cycles and we have observed that periods of global warming and cooling roughly coincide with these changes. For instance the "little ice age" from 1400-1850* coincided with a period of decreased solar activity and radiance that hit bottom with the Maunder Minimum from 1645 to 1715. Incresed solar radiance since this minimum has again coincided with the current period of global warming. Seeing the same coincidence on another planet which obviously isn't afected by the same climactic variables as our own planet (human activity, volcanoes etc.) seems pretty suggestive.
* For the sake of fairness some climatologists say the "little ice age" started around the year 1200 when a period of global cooling began after the period of global warming known as the "medieval warm" reached it's peak. Whatever the case we would still have a bit of global warming to go before we see tempuratures as high as they were in 1200 when Greenland really had some "green" and England had viable wine vinyards 300 miles north of the current limit. We are a little more than half way back to the highs of the 1100's from the lows of the 1200's.
Or maybe the long cycles of warming and cooling that closely corelate with changes in solar radiance affects mars as well. We still have a bit of global warming to go to see temperatures back up to the point prior to the most recent Maunder Minimum (period of reduced solar activity & radiance). During the peak of the last global warming cycle the coast of "greenland" really was green and the norse settlers even had vinyards.
But it is too important to bother studying before taking drastic action. It is important to drasticaly diminish the size of the global economy *right now* on the off chance that the natural phenomenon we know has been happening for millenia is happening *this time* because of human activity. It might just be coincidence that current warming continues the same close correlation with the changes in solar radiance that past periods of global warming and cooling have had. These past periods by the way were often more severe: we had much higher temperatures during the "medieval warm" and the current warming trend was much more rapid in the 50 years between 1750 and 1800 than it has been since then.
when others who run their own weblogs saw the item, they decided to have a little fun with KPMG. They linked to KPMG's site -- just like this -- to see what the company could do about it. Within a day of Raettig's posting, several dozen sites were linking to KPMG's front page
So all I have to do to get people to link to my site and generate tons of traffic is forbid people from linking to my site?
1) Decoys
2) More decoys
3) Even more decoys
It seems to me that if three out of four of your enemies mortars or short range missles (which only have one warhead) were being wasted firing decoys you would have accomplished 3/4's of your defensive goals. As for why your enemy would be dumb enough to fire decoy mortar shells rather than just fire more of the real thing is another question.
4) Foliage
Seems a pretty easy problem to fix when positioning the laser.
5) Line of sight
Since mortar shells and short range missles fly through the sky rather than sneek around hills this isn't a big problem. I suppose using cruise missles would defeat this system but since Hezbullah and Hamas don't have any (very few nations do) it still achieves it's goal.
6) Rain
7) Fog
8) Snow
Perhaps a real problem (I don't know.) In it's use as a defense against mortars and short range tactical missles your enemy can now only attack you when he can't see to aim at you which is a pretty good defense against such weapons. In any event I suppose the Isreali's would be happy to limiting the sometimes daily rocket attacks to just rainy or snowy days given how rare such days are in Isreal.
This reminds me of an exchange between a senator and one of the engineers working on SDI. (from rather fuzzy memory) The senator asked: woulnd't simply spinning the missle be a good defense against the laser. The engineer replied that it would be just as good a defense as being a spinning ballerina was against a machine gun.
granted the frontline is a deadly place to be, but i'm shocked by how many of our own soldiers we're killing.
What is amazing since the Gulf War isn't how many of our own soldiers are killed by "friendly" fire but how few are killed by hostile fire. We have become so militarily superior to our enemies that we are in more danger of being accidentally hit by our own weapons than being intentionally targetted by our enemies weapons.
The current situation is a little misleading though since we have very few troops on the ground. I would imagine that among our Afghan allies there have been a very, very high number friendly fire casualties because of the difficulty of coordinating over a quickly moving battlefield with an essentially feudal, decentralised and undisciplined army without uniforms and the propensity of local warlords to switch sides.
Imagine looking at the reconasaince photos: how hard must it be to discern whether that column of turbaned men carrying AK-47's is a Northern Alliance force, A Pashtoon Anti-Taliban force, a Taliban force, Al Queada force, the forces of a local commander who hasn't made up his mind yet, who has made up his mind but hasn't told anyone, who's going to the battle and will make up his mind when he gets there, Or just a bunch of typically well-armed farmers on their way to the fields for the days work? And after the dust settles will the local warlord be honest about which side he was on the moment his men were bombed? Probably not.
There are lots of people who work with video for a living and make technical decisions about what to deploy. If you like to reserve the term "professional" in this case to people who fiddle with video in interactive applications on their desktop machines for a living, fine.
Fine, I guess I'm just biased and when I think of the guys responsible for the servers, storage and web distribution I think of them as IT professionals and those responsible for broadcasting as broadcast engineers rather than as video professionals, most of them seem to make those same distinctions. In any event I will grant that there are professionals that do things other than create and edit video. Still taking the entire professional digital video industry (production, editing, compositing, archiving, distributing, etc.) quicktime is the dominant format for most of those steps.
Sure it does. The Quicktime approach enables a profusion of variants that is undesirable in an archival format
It seems it would be part of the point of a container format to be flexible and allow choices regarding the things contained. While allowing choices does admit the possibility of poor choices I don't see that out of necessity it is a barrier to making good choices. I think you have a legitimate complaint about the wide use of the Sorensen codec for distribution and archiving but that is really where your complaint lies, not with the open container format that happens to be wrapped around the offensive closed Sorensen video. As a professional video archivist you can use the open codec you prefer or even get rid of the added complexity of a container format (unless it had multiple tracks in which case when someone wants the original back they'll be pissed that they have to hunt down the now separated audio, video, sprites etc.)
Society demands we work these long hours so we can provide the clothes and things our families need
I can heartily agree with everything in your post but this one point. There is much complaining about how both parents "have" to work (because of incresed taxes if you're a Republican or becasue of falling wages if you're a Democrat). I'm sorry in most cases I don't buy it - we have a problem of defining things we want as things we "need". We are significantly wealthier than our parents generation and fabulously more wealthy than our grandparents generation and yet they managed to be there for their kids. We have bigger houses, more and more varied food, more and nicer cars, more and bigger TV's (in color even) plus forms of entertainment (computers, video game consoles etc.) that those generations didn't have and yet our kids are so screwed up they have to be monitored by the cold eye of government because parents are too busy paying for an inflated "standard of living" they believe they "need" more than their kids need them.
As for "owning" the "professional market", Quicktime "owns" a particular market segment of a particular kind of desktop users.
Which Um... just happens to be the particular kind of desktop users called: "the professional market"
As for cross-platform, archival issues you may recall the whole point of the original poster was that Quicktime and MPEG-4 are container formats and you can use almost any open (MPEG, MPEG-2 etc. ad naseum) or closed (Sorensen, Indeo, etc. ad naseum) format you like as the thing contained. You argue convincingly that users should archive their Quicktime movies using open standard codecs but that doesn't really have anything to do with using quicktime or MPEG-4 as a container.
You see, MIcrosoft requires that Apple not make QuickTime for Linux; otherwise they will pull Explorer and Office for the Mac.
I'm sure that Microsoft uses Apples dependence on those products to pressure Apple in all sorts of ways, perhaps even in the way you suggest. But, Microsoft also feels that it NEEDS to sell those products on the Mac. Apple and Microsoft enjoy a sort of detante: Apple needs Microsoft products to stay relevant and Microsoft needs to sell those products to maintain their proprietary defacto standards and to keep their competitors starved for cash. In Microsofts mind every dollar Microsoft makes on the Mac side isn't just added to their bottom line but is also a dollar denied to competitors that might use them to challenge Microsofts dominance. Every copy of their products used on the Mac side is one more user you yourself will need microsoft products as opposed to their competitor's products to effectively interoperate with. Microsoft would have to suffer a pretty severe provocation from Apple to take the risk of giving it's competitors any room to breathe. At the same time Apple will only antagonise Microsoft when they really feel it is worth it, as indeed they did with Quicktime which Microsoft put them under enormous pressure to kill. Microsoft even made the kind of threats you refer to. In the end though Apple thought Quicktime was even more important to them than Office and Microsoft didn't think it was important enough to risk leaving the entire Mac market to WordPerfect.
If Apple's desktop marketshare ever fell too low to sustain a potential competitor Microsoft would leave, if an office productivity app on linux ever has real commercial success Microsoft will start selling Linux:Office not because they wouldn't still rather have a monopoly Operating System but because they don't want to allow their competitors any niche big enough to support them.
Excel is not a standard. By definition, a standard includes human-readable documentation of what meets or does not meet the standard.
It's important to make a distinction between two perfectly valid definitions of the word standard ("it's a floor wax and a desert topping.") One definition is that a standard is "An acknowledged measure of comparison... a critereon" the other is "Something... that is widely recognized or employed" which is clearly what the original poster meant by calling it a de facto standard. It would be a happy world if all standards fit both definitions but sadly that is not the case.
802.11 and the other products of "standards bodies" are standards in the first sense, Excel and most other Micro$oft products are standards in the second sense. To be a *successful* standard in the first sense (a critereon) MPEG-4 must also be a standard in the second sense (widely used).
...low-power consumption CPUs, etc. are more expensive (and are also slower)
Right on all the other points, but AFAIK the PowerPC G3 in an iBook is exactly the same as what is in the iMac and G3 PowerMacs.
Also you can get a current iMac for less than $1,200
I have it on good authority that this rumor will still be going around in the year 2525.
In all seriousness I understand that they have been working on this for a long time (the source of the periodic rumours) and have just been waiting for the price of the displays to come down to a point that makes sense (the reason it stays a rumour). Hopefully this time it will "come true". Apple needs periodic "blockbuster" products and changing the color of the iMac again just won't cut it anymore.
It seams like they haven't been doing much lately (as much as other manufacturers),
I don't what you mean by "lately" I guess if you mean the past couple of months all they have done is open more of their own retail stores, speed bump their hardware, come out with a new MP3 player, update their OS, multimedia and MP3 software - which i guess is "not much" when we are talking about apple. But I don't know of any other manufacturer that does as much as Apple even on a "slow" day - the PC manufacturers are mostly just assembling and reselling new products from Intel and Microsoft whereas Apple does more of it's own hardware engineering even contributing (a little) to the PowerPC chip design and makes it's own OS (a Unix "for the rest of us"), a whole host of multimedia software and every year or two takes enormous risks coming out with inovative hardware which is either a spectacular success (iMac, Titanium PowerBook) or a spectacular (but cool) failure (the Cube)
But back to your original question: Is apple actually going to attempt a huge come back?
Yes, everything they do is designed to attempt a huge comeback. They started their own retail stores with the stated goal of significantly increasing market share. They take risks with such strange hardware and their own excellent software because they aren't looking for a product that is "good enough" but are hoping for a blockbuster. They have had some spectacular successes with this strategy (Most notably the iMac which singlehandedly broght them back from the grave) and some spectacular failures (the Cube - which was a failure but was still "cool")
i never liked the big bang theory. it stinks of creationism. it seems out of line with the trend of what humanity has been learning from science over the last thousand years:
Ironically your comments reflect exactly the same kind of reasoning which makes the creationists so maligned. You have a theological presupposition and are willing to disregard scientific analysis when that analysis suggests that your theology may be wrong. The only difference appears to be the content of your theology: you, an atheist, don't "like" the big bang theory and they, theists, don't "like" the theory of evolution. Meanwhile the universe (and perhaps God) goes on as it will whether you want it to be that way or not.
It seems out of line with the trend of what humanity has been learning from science over the last thousand years: that the universe is random, trivial, makes little sense, and we are not anywhere near the center of it.
I can agree with the "not anywhere near the center of it" comment about what science has taught us in the last thousand years. But that the universe is random or that it makes little sense is the exact opposite of what scientific progress has taught us. Ancient man lived in a world that was truly random and made little sense - the world and elements around him where not governed by discoverable and predictable laws of physics but by unpredictable gods and spirits. Science is built on the alternative belief that the universe is orderly - NOT random but governed by predictable rules that can be discovered and that when tested will give the same results every time. If science taught that the universe is "random" and "makes little sense" there would be no point in scientific experiments and peer review since the results would be different every time. That fundamental belief in predictable order in the universe has been vindicated by scientific progress. An electrical storm that looked to ancient man like the chaotic temper tantrum of a petulant Thor is revealed to be obeying laws of physics that we can understand. We certainly don't understand them all and probably never will - and those things we still don't understand still looks like random chaos just like an electical storm did to our ancestors - but the whole point of science and what these physicists will eventually discover with their duelling theories is truth (or at least a theory that comes closer to the truth) and predictable order in the physical universe.