Cadillac had this in the late '70s or early '80s. They called it the "V8-6-4" engine. At highway cruising, it would shut down four cylinders to save fuel, then turn them back on again as necessary for more power (at least that was what it was supposed to do). Turned out to be a complete disaster. Maybe it was just an idea ahead of its time - simply beyond the engineering of the day (although GM engineering wasn't a real bright spot for them at the time). I believe you are correct that Mercedes is working on a newer version of this.
IIRC, a couple hundred million bucks worth of non-voting stock (out of Apple's market cap of many billions) and a promise to continue development of Office for Mac.
It was really a gesture of support. If they "saved Apple's ass", it was purely in a symbolic way.
Instead of teaching their operatives to fly planes, al Qaeda teaches them to write code. A few get jobs as contract workers for MS. They then insert a nifty little Trojan Horse into a Windows update, which gets promptly uploaded to millions of PCs worldwide.
And on a target date, the hard drives of every Windows computer in the world get wiped simultaneously.
Not all that farfetched, really - so how much DO you trust MicroSoft, anyway?
This would certainly be possible with many other vendors, as well. Windows Update, however, gives the chance to bypass anitvirus software and many other protections, as well as automatic distribution to millions of computers that otherwise would be unreachable. And like 9/11, no one would suspect a thing until it was all over.
That's just plain ignorant. A computer is a tool. Whatever schools think will help their kids
learn
the subject matter is the appropriate system. The purpose is not to teach them how to use an OS, it's to teach them math, science, english, etc.
Once you know how to use one OS, switching to another is really no big deal. If the Maine schools thought a Dell laptop would be the better tool, they would have bought them. Deal with it.
The Mighty Gord's comments appear to be those of a 16-18 year old gamer - maybe 20, tops. He's into the games that kids his age like. Those types of games rarely come out for the Nintendo platforms.
The perspective of a 42-year-old father of two (aged 10 and 12):
My kids are gonzo for Pokemon. They will play anything with Mario/Luigi/Toad/Peach/Bowser. My daughter (12) set up the VCR to record and old Mario and Luigi cartoon that was on at 12:30 AM. My son has a Zelda-style ocarina. They each own a Gameboy, my son a GBA also (for which they each saved their allowance money for months). In other words, Nintendo owns them, lock, stock, and barrel.
I suggested a PS2 for them last Christmas. All I got from them was a "are you out of your mind?" look from them. All of their friends are the same way. Nintendo has a huge "mindshare" out there. The GameCube will do very well.
I bought a GC on Nov. 18 at our local Toys R Us. They had plenty, so I asked how sales were going. He replied:
"We had 15 X-Boxes on Thursday [Nov. 15]. They sold out by noon. We got 52 GameCubes, and you're the 29th we've sold so far [it was then 1:45 PM; the store opened at 12:00]. The Distribution Center has over 90,000 GameCubes - more than any other console launch ever. We don't know when we're going to get any more X-Boxes."
All I have heard in the last 2 weeks seems to be in line with this.
My conclusions: MS has big production problems, and is going to miss their Christmas sales projections by miles. There is good demand for the X-Boxes, but nowhere near enough supply. Nintendo, on the other hand, seems to have an excellent supply - and huge demand. Additionally, TRU appears to be banking big time on the success of the GameCube.
The X-Box may succeed long term, but it's getting hammered right now, as far as I can see.
Slashdot Mirror
Cadillac had this in the late '70s or early '80s. They called it the "V8-6-4" engine. At highway cruising, it would shut down four cylinders to save fuel, then turn them back on again as necessary for more power (at least that was what it was supposed to do). Turned out to be a complete disaster. Maybe it was just an idea ahead of its time - simply beyond the engineering of the day (although GM engineering wasn't a real bright spot for them at the time). I believe you are correct that Mercedes is working on a newer version of this.
IIRC, a couple hundred million bucks worth of non-voting stock (out of Apple's market cap of many billions) and a promise to continue development of Office for Mac.
It was really a gesture of support. If they "saved Apple's ass", it was purely in a symbolic way.
How about this scenario:
Instead of teaching their operatives to fly planes, al Qaeda teaches them to write code. A few get jobs as contract workers for MS. They then insert a nifty little Trojan Horse into a Windows update, which gets promptly uploaded to millions of PCs worldwide.
And on a target date, the hard drives of every Windows computer in the world get wiped simultaneously.
Not all that farfetched, really - so how much DO you trust MicroSoft, anyway? This would certainly be possible with many other vendors, as well. Windows Update, however, gives the chance to bypass anitvirus software and many other protections, as well as automatic distribution to millions of computers that otherwise would be unreachable. And like 9/11, no one would suspect a thing until it was all over.
- learn
the subject matter is the appropriate system. The purpose is not to teach them how to use an OS, it's to teach them math, science, english, etc.Once you know how to use one OS, switching to another is really no big deal. If the Maine schools thought a Dell laptop would be the better tool, they would have bought them. Deal with it.
The perspective of a 42-year-old father of two (aged 10 and 12):
My kids are gonzo for Pokemon. They will play anything with Mario/Luigi/Toad/Peach/Bowser. My daughter (12) set up the VCR to record and old Mario and Luigi cartoon that was on at 12:30 AM. My son has a Zelda-style ocarina. They each own a Gameboy, my son a GBA also (for which they each saved their allowance money for months). In other words, Nintendo owns them, lock, stock, and barrel.
I suggested a PS2 for them last Christmas. All I got from them was a "are you out of your mind?" look from them. All of their friends are the same way. Nintendo has a huge "mindshare" out there. The GameCube will do very well.
I bought a GC on Nov. 18 at our local Toys R Us. They had plenty, so I asked how sales were going. He replied:
"We had 15 X-Boxes on Thursday [Nov. 15]. They sold out by noon. We got 52 GameCubes, and you're the 29th we've sold so far [it was then 1:45 PM; the store opened at 12:00]. The Distribution Center has over 90,000 GameCubes - more than any other console launch ever. We don't know when we're going to get any more X-Boxes."
All I have heard in the last 2 weeks seems to be in line with this.
My conclusions: MS has big production problems, and is going to miss their Christmas sales projections by miles. There is good demand for the X-Boxes, but nowhere near enough supply. Nintendo, on the other hand, seems to have an excellent supply - and huge demand. Additionally, TRU appears to be banking big time on the success of the GameCube.
The X-Box may succeed long term, but it's getting hammered right now, as far as I can see.