I think VoIP is about to hit a tipping point and Google can cash in on it quick by acquiring Skype. Get rid of the stupid name, bring on some Google quality branding and user experience and people will be bidding on eBay for accounts just like Okurit and gMail. The Google brand and marketing power can bring Skype the thing that any network needs to succeed- users.
It would be a very inexpensive acquisition for Google and it would add a sort of voice infastructure into the entire Google range of products.
Not to be harsh, but yes... as far as Apple is concerned in regards to market share, future product offerings and general business risk vis-a-vis the switch to Intel processors, people like you aren't even on the radar screen.
The fact that UNIX guys like you choose Apple hardware is certainly a nice bonus from OS X, but Apple is not a company that goes out of it's way to address the geek market. Yes- they do occasionally throw the geek crowd a bone here and there, but such activities are equivalent to a penny rounding error within Apple's marketing budget.
I think your view, while logical and understandable, is unnecessarily pessimistic.
The market has always viewed the Mac as another computer, one interchangeable with every other computer. While a Mac is (technology wise) a computer, the people who buy them view them very differently and the sheer dynamics of the Mac Economy (the customers, companies and products that hinge on the Mac platform) prove this out.
Take your fear of people figuring out how to run X on beige boxes... Apple doesn't care about these folks. Simply by having not purchased a Mac, this portion of the market has already proven that they are unwilling to have ever paid the Apple premium so, in effect, Apple will virtually never loose a sale to this crowd.
Or think of it this way; the kind of people who are drawn to the Mac platform are drawn to it PRECISELY because they don't want to fuck around with patches, workarounds and general hackery in order to make their computer run. Here is the test: could you imagine telling your mother to run out, buy a beige box, download some boot hack, install it, then install OS X on top of that? Probably not and that's exactly why Apple isn't going to be kept up at night worrying about the people who are going to hack OS X to run on commodity hardware.
If anything, I think this will bolster Mac sales- the kind of people who are willing to jump through the hoops to make OS X run on beige boxes are computer enthusiasts and typically serve as the computer information maven within their circle of friends. I think that if these hardcore Windows guys get OS X (for free) and play with it on their beige (or Tie Fighter) boxes, they are going to be pretty impressed. When it comes to telling people what computer to buy though, they will probably just recommend to their friends that they buy a Mac.
The same logic generally applies to your second point (will software developers still make Mac versions of their stuff). I think that the answer here is again, a big yes because there is a fairly substantial wall between people who will want to run native apps and people who want to run emulated apps. As someone with a Mac, I've proven (by voting with my dollars) that I am someone who will pay a premium to have an elegant computer that "Just Works." Any software developer with half a brain is going to realize that forcing the Mac customer to run clunky Windows emulation (even if it is at native speed) is inherently out of step with what that customer wants.
I think this is the perfect time to start developing Mac software. Porting over PC code is going to be easier then ever. The overall buy rate of Macs is going to be increasing significantly. A major chunk of risk in regards to the stability of the Mac platform has now been removed. Apple will be rocking the computer world within the next 24 months...
That is right... because as we know, Steve Jobs is a complete moron. As he begins to lead his company through it's third fundamental technology transition (the second with him at the helm) I am sure he didn't look AT ALL towards other chip manufacturers.
Have you ever thought that you might not know everything Steve Jobs and the collective executives of Intel and Apple know?
Look, i am not going to hail the divine wisdom of Steve Jobs but the fact of the matter is that this is chess, not checkers. Jobs has a history of making announcements that go from being a big deal and parlaying them over the course of a year or two into massive technology, product and market changing success. He did this with the original Mac, he did this with OS X and he did this with the iPod/iTunes/iTMS... I don't know if you were an Apple watcher way back in the day, but iTunes use to be nothing more then a nice little Mp3 player- nobody ever expected that it would become the core enabler of one of the biggest revolutions in consumer product history.
As far as your opinion about Intel v. AMD in the Power per Watt category; the whole power per watt business is probably just Apple's throw away reason to give to the industry today. Remember, Apple will still be moving G4 and G5 based systems for the next 24 months so they can't exactly out and out trash the PPC platform just yet.
How is it that you people in the UK actually put up with all of the junk I hear about from your government?
- Huge taxation. - Mandatory, expensive and mediocre health care. - Cameras everywhere. - A sensationalistic press that makes Fox look bi-partisan. - Out of control, bureaucratic utilities (like the article states). - Television licenses along with warrant-less searches of homes suspected of running an unlicensed television. - Speed traps everywhere, set to excessively low limits and with giant fines. - Cameras monitoring every meaningful inch of public space.
Call me crazy but I am a very socially liberal/libertarian US citizen and it shocks me what people in the UK put up with. Sure, you could defend every one of the things I noted above as being beneficial to society but my god, your citizenry sure does take it up the bum as far as personal liberty goes.
Creating a 'Consumer Economy' is relatively simple but I don't think anyone is really trying for it these days. That being said, it all comes down to the following thing:
To illustrate the above, look at an iPod; It is extremely popular (11 Million units sold), it is extensible (with earphones and cases and laser pointers and CF card readers) and not only will the current iPods be in user's hands for a good long time but the basic iPod design is extremely consistent (so the design and tooling investment you put into making a case for the iPod Photo will probably not get thrown completely away when the new version comes out).
Sony looses out because, while they also make Mp3 players, the Sony lineup is excessively broad and changes rapidly. This is also probably part of the reason Sony doesn't get a huge following; the produce line is never around long enough for consumers to really invest in the brand or create meaningful identification with Sony's products.
http://video.pbs.org:8080/ramgen/wnet/nature/octop us/sharkT1.rm?altplay=sharkT1.rm
According to this video, an octopus has little to worry about from a shark...
The drive away protection system used by BMW was one of the earliest examples of these systems and it remains relatively unchanged. The system is part of the Digital Motor Electronics (DME) box that controlls engine function (made first by Bosch and now the BMW boxes are built by Siemmens). Every car is assigned 10 keys, three of those keys being issued with the new vehicle (two main keys and a "Valet" key).
Should an owner request/need a new key, the local dealership needs to send the car's VIN and a photocopy ID of the owner to BMW North America who downloads one of the remaining 7 key codes from BMW in Germany. BMW NA cuts the physical key and only they can program it with the unique key code. If an owner should, say, loose all 10 keys- they would be forced to purchase a whole new DME box from BMW- and they would get a new list of 10 possible key codes (the actual physical locks stay the same).
The reasoning behind all of this is very simple: Have you ever seen the statistics on the sort of trustworthy fellows who work on your car? I spent years working around mechanics and they are some great guys, but a lot of them have criminal histories. You want to talk about a security flaw? Put an entire fleet of cars security inside an auto dealership where the staff has access...
The way BMW does it, a request needs to flow all the way back to Germany and undergoes no less then 3 people, all of who are located in (usually) very different geographical areas.
Yea, I've got to say, Steam makes a lot of sense to me.
I just bought my first PC for work (having been an avid Mac user for 15+ years) and decided, while I was at it, to get some nice games to go with it. The HL franchise never registered with me, having been a Mac user, but I downloaded Steam one night and made a total impulse buy of the Silver HL2 package about a week before HL2 was released.
For me, Steam worked out slicker then dog snot. I paid like $60 and got all sorts of good content at that price; the original HL, CounterStrike, Day of Defeat etc. It all just magically showed up on my box and within a couple of hours, I was playing pretty much the entire Valve catalogue.
Having wetted my appetite, I was eagerly anticipating HL2 and at midnight on it's launch, it took 5 minutes for my pre-downloaded copy to authenticate and I played the hell out of it for the next 20 hours of so and loved every minute of it. HL2 is a mindblowing game...
In my book, the Steam system deserves to be the future of how video games are distributed. Yea, there were some big time bugs- since I am not a dedicated HL fan, I feel really sorry for the guys who pre-ordered boxed copies and waited for years only to have authentication problems while I, an HL noob was playing by 12:05. Publishers are adding less and less value these days while they still take huge chunks of profit off of the work of the actual developers. This needs to end and I think Steam (both better incarnations of Valve's and different versions for different publishers) is the way this industry is gonna cut out the useless middlemen.
The iMac G5 is progressive in price, technology and design. Since I will assume you agree with the first two-
In my book, design is all about making products that are elegant while being used and as minimal as possible when not being used. Based on those two (admittedly highly personal criteria) the iMac G5 is a BIG win.
Say what you will about it somehow being less compact then an eMac (exactly how are you measuring that?) the fact of the matter is that design is a about perception. I think any normal/sane/non-engineer person will look at the iMac G5 and immediately perceive it to be the most compact and elegant solution between previous iMacs and the eMac. Power perceived is power achieved in the world of consumer products, and the latest iMac wins hands down.
Then again, you also advocate that Apple should take a highly expensive, somewhat delicate, complex and oddly shaped device and expect the users of this product (designed to be as simple and elegant as possible) to fill the bottom of the bastard up with water as soon as they got it home so Apple could save a few $$$ on shipping costs...
There will be a wall mount available on the Apple Store for the G5 iMac in October. It complies with the VESA spec and will cost $30.
As to the cable issue, I don't see how it's going to matter that much- cables in the base or cables from the side, your still going to end up with a bunch of wires sticking out the back of your computer any way it goes. For $220, you can upgrade to the Bluetooth mouse+keyboard AND get an AirPort Express which includes a USB port so you can print wirelessly.
In a way though, having the plugs where they are makes perfect sense though- My mom's G4 iMac was tucked back into her desk and it was always a PITA to move everything off the desk to pull it out and get to the ports when necessary. With people plugging and unpluging devices often (which a lot of people do in my experience as the family tech support guru), it makes sense to place accessability over aesthetics.
Or let me put it to you another way- Apple is an exceedingly anal retentive company when it comes to design. I for one would trust that they explored every option on where to put the ports and they decided that the side was the best solution. That isn't to say they are right, but I am willing to bet money there were more then a few pound-the-table arguments about that issue.
Yup, meet the future look of pretty much every computer...
I should begin by saying that I am an industrial designer and I therefor have a pretty hardcore Apple fetish. That being said, the coolness of the new iMac has nothing to do with design and everything to do with some extremely impressive engineering to shoehorn the G5 into that small a space...
Fact of the matter is, processing speed has gotten to the point where computers are 'Fast Enough' for most people and they would rather have a smaller form factor then a quicker computer. It began hitting a few years ago when the office wonks started lusting after laptops more and more and that trend is going to continue. In 5 years, laptops are going to have enough CUP and GPU horsepower to satisfy even the most dedicated gamer, 3D and motion picture geeks. When that happens, expect even high end desktop workstations to be nothing more then an LCD panel with a "computing module" snapped onto the back.
Unfortunately, I wonder what this is going to do for Apple. Having a huge ID department is great when you have these big products that people want and you can make them look pretty, but once our computers become a thin box with an LCD on the front, is anyone going to care? Sure the devil is in the details (look at how uber sex the lineup of ports on the back of the new iMac is!), but those aren't very hard to get right.
Look at the market for Plasma TVs- nobody cares about style because they are all identical, so people make purchase decisions based on what they can afford first and which unit offers the best performance/$ within that price range. Style is never a consideration. What happens to Apple when the form factor of computers get standardized and simplified to a point where there is simply no room for an industrial designer to work with?
Having been an EMT and having had a couple of family members suffer through various forms of cancer, let me give you a little piece of advice- humor is the glue that keeps people alive.
I have yet to see a single comment that wished Steve harm or anything less then a full recovery. If someone had said something along those lines, it would be crossing the line into "Asshole Land," but surfing at +2 carma, I have seen nothing like that.
Otherwise, lighten up. Cancer jokes are funny and the people that laugh at them the hardest are usually people who have/had it.
Nothing more then rich, liberal, elite, yuppy, eurotrash, scumbags.
Which is exactly why my 2002 325 is getting one as soon as my dealer has them in stock!
The most expensive part of the steering wheel is, by far, the custom connectors.
The steering wheel body is all carbon fiber and all the teams can do composite work like that in their sleep (I have some cool CF toys that a couple of the composite shop guys made for me, they are scary good artists with the stuff).
The buttons are all hardcore off the shelf units from the aerospace industry.
The computing components are all well inside the body work, usually up in the nose or above the driver's legs.
The god damn connector though! It was something like 30 pins and they absolutely need to be hardcore because the wheels get taken on and off the car over and over again. They need to also twist with the wheel and lock up tighter then a bankvault without any extra levers or other things to fiddle with. When I was working with the team, I was shocked at how much effort it took to make those damn things...
The steering wheels are all proprietary items for each team, so I can't tell you exactly what Ferrari's does.
But-
- Behind the wheel are two paddles. Pull one and you get an upshift on the computer controlled sequential gearbox, pull the other for a downshift. The cars have what are essentially normal manual transmissions, but instead of the driver controlling the clutch and shift forks, computer controlled hydraulics do the job and produce perfect shifts. Typically, pulling both paddles will put the car in neutral (allowing drivers to get out of a spin if possible)
- On the upper right and left, the + and - buttons are probably backup shift buttons. For the team I worked with, the paddles behind the wheel could sometimes be problematic, so they had backups in the same place as the wheel in the picture.
- The yellow "N" switch is "Set Neutral." Press it once and the car stays in Neutral even if the steering wheel is removed. Drivers are required to, upon exiting the race due to a mechanical failure or crash, replace the steering wheel (which they need to remove to get out of the car) and place the vehicle in neutral so crews can remove it. If they don't, they are fined an obscene amount of money.
- The red "L" switch is the pit lane speed limiter switch. In F1, the pit lanes have a very rigorously enforced speed limit. Hitting that button causes the computer to limit the car's speed to whatever the track pit speed limit is.
- The LED display can show a whole bunch of data. From moving track maps to onboard telemetry, timing, gear status, Gran Turismo...
I don't know exactly what the rotary switches do on that car, but I have seen them for:
- Brake bias; controls the front and rear split of pressure on the brakes allowing the driver to set the car up based on tyre wear and fuel weight (in F1, fuel is measured by weight, not by volume).
- Engine fuel mapping; drivers can conserve fuel at the expense of raw power or gain raw power at the expense of fuel depending on the tactical situation.
- Oil/Water cooling; they can control how much water and oil is flowing through the coolers. In wet races or if your trapped behind the slipstream of another vehicle, it becomes important to control these things. F1 car engines require heat for all the components to work properly, but too much heat of course, kills them. It is a constant game of keeping these things in balance. Usually, engineers in the pit lane will inform the driver of exactly what changes to make (by the rules, they cannot simply have radio commands control the vehicle).
Of course, the rest of the buttons are for the radio, drinking water pump, the fuel filler flap, rear caution light and those sorts of gizmos.
A few of the buttons are also like the water/oil cooler controls in that they only exist for the driver to press when the engineers tell him to.
All of that for around US$30K per steering wheel...
If you brand spanking new email service is in beta, and you have a limited number of testers who are all connected enough to have received a gMail invite, what better way to test how well the system handles a massive load over a given period of time then by upping the storage limit on a few key accounts to 1TB?
As the news hits the field, I am sure everyone with a gMail acount logged on ASAP to see if the reports were true (I know I did).
is a fiber obtic network capable of delivering the same bandwidth as a 747 chock full of data DVDs crashing into our homes every few seconds and we can all be Hero.
I think this is the wrong question investors need to be asking about Google before they IPO. Sure, it makes for some great geek gab; the fetishistic wonderment of just how many servers Google is running, how many hits they get and how exactly they manage to, well, manage that many servers. In the end though, answering those questions doesn't tell us anything about what Google is actually selling.
The more and more I look at it, the more and more I fear Google is just nothing more then a very well calculated shill game; the Enron of technology IPOs...
Pretty much everyone who uses the internet loves Google and we do so for a combination of three compelling reasons; First off, Google offers up what is basically the best search engine on the internet. It isn't perfect, it doesn't work all the time but it is the best thing out there right now. Second, they offer this high-quality search service without all the excess bullshit that got tacked onto all of the other search engines on the market in the.com heyday. While Yahoo was busy playing in Hollywood and becoming a "Portal" and Alta Vista was going down the tubes, Google's simple, whimsical, easy to use front page didn't get gaudy by trying to make us sign up for accounts or any of the other marketing department crap. Finally, Google has a high Willy Wonka factor, sort of like Apple. We don't hear much from the company in the way of press releases or other information, but every so often, they open the doors and it turns out the PhD Umpa Lumpas there developed something totally cool. Local search, Froogle, gMail and Okurit are examples of this...
The thing that gives me the heeby geebies about Google is how they make all of this look so effortless. Okurit just sort of popped out of the open one day. gMail appeared on April 1 with such an "effortless" air about it all that Google didn't even bother to take the press release seriously. We keep hearing these cryptic references from the company about some overwhelmingly massive amount of computing power they have and how their kabul of PhDs has it humming along with levels of efficiency that are a world beyond most everything else out there.
All of this has made for a very pumped up environment for an IPO, but we still have yet to get an answer to the question "What is Google's business model?" I "google" words all day. I have an Okurit account that I use. I even use Google as a quick and dirty calculator. When it opens up, I will have a couple of gMail accounts. The problem is, I've never paid these people a single penny for ANY of this. How the hell are they going to make money?
Sure, we can say that Google has integrated advertising within the search results, but the advertising model has always proven to be of dubious effectiveness at best. Google has an enterprise search division, but the cost of their Google Appliance is a pittance compared to the sort of money big time enterprise software companies like Oracle and SAP are making, how can they survive on that revenue stream and pay the bandwidth bills for all of the free services they offer to the public?
We always tend to answer these questions with an "I don't know, but Google must be doing something right." Google works very hard to continue to fuel the fire that they are doing something paradigm shifting with all of those PhDs they have on the payroll, and how many servers they have, and how they can just sort of effortlessly announce 1gb free email accounts. We keep drawing up the impression that these guys must have something HUGE up their sleeves, and they have us salivating for the IPO so we too can be part of it.
Very soon, Google executives are going to pile onto a Gulfstream V and do a roadshow for big time investment houses and institutional investors and they are going to be trying to convince these guys to buy Google IPO. They are going to be asked exactly what sort of business model Google is going to be pushing and one of two things is going to happen:
Well, I think this is not a matter of Apple supporting the product, it is a mater of Apple not willing to accept a return of the product.
Personally, I think Apple offers 'custom configurations' because some customers want it and it sort of looks stupid not to offer it. Apple goes out of it's way to insure that their prices on RAM and extra hard drives (about the only two items you can 'configure' your system with) are way out of line with what's available on the open market. The fact of the matter is that Apple's margins on these components are extremely low and the resources required to pull a machine off the shelf at the warehouse, have an employee put the components in, repackage the whole thing and ship it are not worth it for Apple.
I think Apple really wishes customers would simply go out (or online) and procure a bigger hard drive or more RAM themselves. They go out of their way to provide instructions for installing these components and it really isn't that hard to do. Besides, it's far less expensive for the customer in the end, and you don't need to wait an extra week for the computer to be shipped by Apple...
Slashdot Mirror
Hahaha,
Yea, that is a good point you've got there... Orkut is about the worst branded name ever. I can never remember it.
Buddy...
You are confusing Google.com with GoldenPalace.com.
Skype.
I think VoIP is about to hit a tipping point and Google can cash in on it quick by acquiring Skype. Get rid of the stupid name, bring on some Google quality branding and user experience and people will be bidding on eBay for accounts just like Okurit and gMail. The Google brand and marketing power can bring Skype the thing that any network needs to succeed- users.
It would be a very inexpensive acquisition for Google and it would add a sort of voice infastructure into the entire Google range of products.
Cecil,
Not to be harsh, but yes... as far as Apple is concerned in regards to market share, future product offerings and general business risk vis-a-vis the switch to Intel processors, people like you aren't even on the radar screen.
The fact that UNIX guys like you choose Apple hardware is certainly a nice bonus from OS X, but Apple is not a company that goes out of it's way to address the geek market. Yes- they do occasionally throw the geek crowd a bone here and there, but such activities are equivalent to a penny rounding error within Apple's marketing budget.
I think your view, while logical and understandable, is unnecessarily pessimistic.
The market has always viewed the Mac as another computer, one interchangeable with every other computer. While a Mac is (technology wise) a computer, the people who buy them view them very differently and the sheer dynamics of the Mac Economy (the customers, companies and products that hinge on the Mac platform) prove this out.
Take your fear of people figuring out how to run X on beige boxes... Apple doesn't care about these folks. Simply by having not purchased a Mac, this portion of the market has already proven that they are unwilling to have ever paid the Apple premium so, in effect, Apple will virtually never loose a sale to this crowd.
Or think of it this way; the kind of people who are drawn to the Mac platform are drawn to it PRECISELY because they don't want to fuck around with patches, workarounds and general hackery in order to make their computer run. Here is the test: could you imagine telling your mother to run out, buy a beige box, download some boot hack, install it, then install OS X on top of that? Probably not and that's exactly why Apple isn't going to be kept up at night worrying about the people who are going to hack OS X to run on commodity hardware.
If anything, I think this will bolster Mac sales- the kind of people who are willing to jump through the hoops to make OS X run on beige boxes are computer enthusiasts and typically serve as the computer information maven within their circle of friends. I think that if these hardcore Windows guys get OS X (for free) and play with it on their beige (or Tie Fighter) boxes, they are going to be pretty impressed. When it comes to telling people what computer to buy though, they will probably just recommend to their friends that they buy a Mac.
The same logic generally applies to your second point (will software developers still make Mac versions of their stuff). I think that the answer here is again, a big yes because there is a fairly substantial wall between people who will want to run native apps and people who want to run emulated apps. As someone with a Mac, I've proven (by voting with my dollars) that I am someone who will pay a premium to have an elegant computer that "Just Works." Any software developer with half a brain is going to realize that forcing the Mac customer to run clunky Windows emulation (even if it is at native speed) is inherently out of step with what that customer wants.
I think this is the perfect time to start developing Mac software. Porting over PC code is going to be easier then ever. The overall buy rate of Macs is going to be increasing significantly. A major chunk of risk in regards to the stability of the Mac platform has now been removed. Apple will be rocking the computer world within the next 24 months...
That is right... because as we know, Steve Jobs is a complete moron. As he begins to lead his company through it's third fundamental technology transition (the second with him at the helm) I am sure he didn't look AT ALL towards other chip manufacturers.
Have you ever thought that you might not know everything Steve Jobs and the collective executives of Intel and Apple know?
Look, i am not going to hail the divine wisdom of Steve Jobs but the fact of the matter is that this is chess, not checkers. Jobs has a history of making announcements that go from being a big deal and parlaying them over the course of a year or two into massive technology, product and market changing success. He did this with the original Mac, he did this with OS X and he did this with the iPod/iTunes/iTMS... I don't know if you were an Apple watcher way back in the day, but iTunes use to be nothing more then a nice little Mp3 player- nobody ever expected that it would become the core enabler of one of the biggest revolutions in consumer product history.
As far as your opinion about Intel v. AMD in the Power per Watt category; the whole power per watt business is probably just Apple's throw away reason to give to the industry today. Remember, Apple will still be moving G4 and G5 based systems for the next 24 months so they can't exactly out and out trash the PPC platform just yet.
How is it that you people in the UK actually put up with all of the junk I hear about from your government?
- Huge taxation.
- Mandatory, expensive and mediocre health care.
- Cameras everywhere.
- A sensationalistic press that makes Fox look bi-partisan.
- Out of control, bureaucratic utilities (like the article states).
- Television licenses along with warrant-less searches of homes suspected of running an unlicensed television.
- Speed traps everywhere, set to excessively low limits and with giant fines.
- Cameras monitoring every meaningful inch of public space.
Call me crazy but I am a very socially liberal/libertarian US citizen and it shocks me what people in the UK put up with. Sure, you could defend every one of the things I noted above as being beneficial to society but my god, your citizenry sure does take it up the bum as far as personal liberty goes.
Creating a 'Consumer Economy' is relatively simple but I don't think anyone is really trying for it these days. That being said, it all comes down to the following thing:
Popularity + Extensibility + Longevity = Consumer Economy
To illustrate the above, look at an iPod; It is extremely popular (11 Million units sold), it is extensible (with earphones and cases and laser pointers and CF card readers) and not only will the current iPods be in user's hands for a good long time but the basic iPod design is extremely consistent (so the design and tooling investment you put into making a case for the iPod Photo will probably not get thrown completely away when the new version comes out).
Sony looses out because, while they also make Mp3 players, the Sony lineup is excessively broad and changes rapidly. This is also probably part of the reason Sony doesn't get a huge following; the produce line is never around long enough for consumers to really invest in the brand or create meaningful identification with Sony's products.
http://video.pbs.org:8080/ramgen/wnet/nature/octop us/sharkT1.rm?altplay=sharkT1.rm
According to this video, an octopus has little to worry about from a shark...
http://www.octopets.com/
Interesting...
The drive away protection system used by BMW was one of the earliest examples of these systems and it remains relatively unchanged. The system is part of the Digital Motor Electronics (DME) box that controlls engine function (made first by Bosch and now the BMW boxes are built by Siemmens). Every car is assigned 10 keys, three of those keys being issued with the new vehicle (two main keys and a "Valet" key).
Should an owner request/need a new key, the local dealership needs to send the car's VIN and a photocopy ID of the owner to BMW North America who downloads one of the remaining 7 key codes from BMW in Germany. BMW NA cuts the physical key and only they can program it with the unique key code. If an owner should, say, loose all 10 keys- they would be forced to purchase a whole new DME box from BMW- and they would get a new list of 10 possible key codes (the actual physical locks stay the same).
The reasoning behind all of this is very simple: Have you ever seen the statistics on the sort of trustworthy fellows who work on your car? I spent years working around mechanics and they are some great guys, but a lot of them have criminal histories. You want to talk about a security flaw? Put an entire fleet of cars security inside an auto dealership where the staff has access...
The way BMW does it, a request needs to flow all the way back to Germany and undergoes no less then 3 people, all of who are located in (usually) very different geographical areas.
Ohh, well... that makes it terribly important then!
Yea, I've got to say, Steam makes a lot of sense to me.
I just bought my first PC for work (having been an avid Mac user for 15+ years) and decided, while I was at it, to get some nice games to go with it. The HL franchise never registered with me, having been a Mac user, but I downloaded Steam one night and made a total impulse buy of the Silver HL2 package about a week before HL2 was released.
For me, Steam worked out slicker then dog snot. I paid like $60 and got all sorts of good content at that price; the original HL, CounterStrike, Day of Defeat etc. It all just magically showed up on my box and within a couple of hours, I was playing pretty much the entire Valve catalogue.
Having wetted my appetite, I was eagerly anticipating HL2 and at midnight on it's launch, it took 5 minutes for my pre-downloaded copy to authenticate and I played the hell out of it for the next 20 hours of so and loved every minute of it. HL2 is a mindblowing game...
In my book, the Steam system deserves to be the future of how video games are distributed. Yea, there were some big time bugs- since I am not a dedicated HL fan, I feel really sorry for the guys who pre-ordered boxed copies and waited for years only to have authentication problems while I, an HL noob was playing by 12:05. Publishers are adding less and less value these days while they still take huge chunks of profit off of the work of the actual developers. This needs to end and I think Steam (both better incarnations of Valve's and different versions for different publishers) is the way this industry is gonna cut out the useless middlemen.
Will it be paved in Cruzeways Inc soft pavement, for type B drivers or Fair Lanes Inc pattented grippy pavement, for type A drivers?
I am a type A driver with rabies...
God, the more I grow up, the more the world is looking like a Stephenson novel.
Move that 'za!
I call BS.
The iMac G5 is progressive in price, technology and design. Since I will assume you agree with the first two-
In my book, design is all about making products that are elegant while being used and as minimal as possible when not being used. Based on those two (admittedly highly personal criteria) the iMac G5 is a BIG win.
Say what you will about it somehow being less compact then an eMac (exactly how are you measuring that?) the fact of the matter is that design is a about perception. I think any normal/sane/non-engineer person will look at the iMac G5 and immediately perceive it to be the most compact and elegant solution between previous iMacs and the eMac. Power perceived is power achieved in the world of consumer products, and the latest iMac wins hands down.
Then again, you also advocate that Apple should take a highly expensive, somewhat delicate, complex and oddly shaped device and expect the users of this product (designed to be as simple and elegant as possible) to fill the bottom of the bastard up with water as soon as they got it home so Apple could save a few $$$ on shipping costs...
There will be a wall mount available on the Apple Store for the G5 iMac in October. It complies with the VESA spec and will cost $30.
As to the cable issue, I don't see how it's going to matter that much- cables in the base or cables from the side, your still going to end up with a bunch of wires sticking out the back of your computer any way it goes. For $220, you can upgrade to the Bluetooth mouse+keyboard AND get an AirPort Express which includes a USB port so you can print wirelessly.
In a way though, having the plugs where they are makes perfect sense though- My mom's G4 iMac was tucked back into her desk and it was always a PITA to move everything off the desk to pull it out and get to the ports when necessary. With people plugging and unpluging devices often (which a lot of people do in my experience as the family tech support guru), it makes sense to place accessability over aesthetics.
Or let me put it to you another way- Apple is an exceedingly anal retentive company when it comes to design. I for one would trust that they explored every option on where to put the ports and they decided that the side was the best solution. That isn't to say they are right, but I am willing to bet money there were more then a few pound-the-table arguments about that issue.
Yup, meet the future look of pretty much every computer... I should begin by saying that I am an industrial designer and I therefor have a pretty hardcore Apple fetish. That being said, the coolness of the new iMac has nothing to do with design and everything to do with some extremely impressive engineering to shoehorn the G5 into that small a space... Fact of the matter is, processing speed has gotten to the point where computers are 'Fast Enough' for most people and they would rather have a smaller form factor then a quicker computer. It began hitting a few years ago when the office wonks started lusting after laptops more and more and that trend is going to continue. In 5 years, laptops are going to have enough CUP and GPU horsepower to satisfy even the most dedicated gamer, 3D and motion picture geeks. When that happens, expect even high end desktop workstations to be nothing more then an LCD panel with a "computing module" snapped onto the back. Unfortunately, I wonder what this is going to do for Apple. Having a huge ID department is great when you have these big products that people want and you can make them look pretty, but once our computers become a thin box with an LCD on the front, is anyone going to care? Sure the devil is in the details (look at how uber sex the lineup of ports on the back of the new iMac is!), but those aren't very hard to get right. Look at the market for Plasma TVs- nobody cares about style because they are all identical, so people make purchase decisions based on what they can afford first and which unit offers the best performance/$ within that price range. Style is never a consideration. What happens to Apple when the form factor of computers get standardized and simplified to a point where there is simply no room for an industrial designer to work with?
Having been an EMT and having had a couple of family members suffer through various forms of cancer, let me give you a little piece of advice- humor is the glue that keeps people alive.
I have yet to see a single comment that wished Steve harm or anything less then a full recovery. If someone had said something along those lines, it would be crossing the line into "Asshole Land," but surfing at +2 carma, I have seen nothing like that.
Otherwise, lighten up. Cancer jokes are funny and the people that laugh at them the hardest are usually people who have/had it.
Nothing more then rich, liberal, elite, yuppy, eurotrash, scumbags. Which is exactly why my 2002 325 is getting one as soon as my dealer has them in stock!
The most expensive part of the steering wheel is, by far, the custom connectors.
The steering wheel body is all carbon fiber and all the teams can do composite work like that in their sleep (I have some cool CF toys that a couple of the composite shop guys made for me, they are scary good artists with the stuff).
The buttons are all hardcore off the shelf units from the aerospace industry.
The computing components are all well inside the body work, usually up in the nose or above the driver's legs.
The god damn connector though! It was something like 30 pins and they absolutely need to be hardcore because the wheels get taken on and off the car over and over again. They need to also twist with the wheel and lock up tighter then a bankvault without any extra levers or other things to fiddle with. When I was working with the team, I was shocked at how much effort it took to make those damn things...
The steering wheels are all proprietary items for each team, so I can't tell you exactly what Ferrari's does.
But-
- Behind the wheel are two paddles. Pull one and you get an upshift on the computer controlled sequential gearbox, pull the other for a downshift. The cars have what are essentially normal manual transmissions, but instead of the driver controlling the clutch and shift forks, computer controlled hydraulics do the job and produce perfect shifts. Typically, pulling both paddles will put the car in neutral (allowing drivers to get out of a spin if possible)
- On the upper right and left, the + and - buttons are probably backup shift buttons. For the team I worked with, the paddles behind the wheel could sometimes be problematic, so they had backups in the same place as the wheel in the picture.
- The yellow "N" switch is "Set Neutral." Press it once and the car stays in Neutral even if the steering wheel is removed. Drivers are required to, upon exiting the race due to a mechanical failure or crash, replace the steering wheel (which they need to remove to get out of the car) and place the vehicle in neutral so crews can remove it. If they don't, they are fined an obscene amount of money.
- The red "L" switch is the pit lane speed limiter switch. In F1, the pit lanes have a very rigorously enforced speed limit. Hitting that button causes the computer to limit the car's speed to whatever the track pit speed limit is.
- The LED display can show a whole bunch of data. From moving track maps to onboard telemetry, timing, gear status, Gran Turismo...
I don't know exactly what the rotary switches do on that car, but I have seen them for:
- Brake bias; controls the front and rear split of pressure on the brakes allowing the driver to set the car up based on tyre wear and fuel weight (in F1, fuel is measured by weight, not by volume).
- Engine fuel mapping; drivers can conserve fuel at the expense of raw power or gain raw power at the expense of fuel depending on the tactical situation.
- Oil/Water cooling; they can control how much water and oil is flowing through the coolers. In wet races or if your trapped behind the slipstream of another vehicle, it becomes important to control these things. F1 car engines require heat for all the components to work properly, but too much heat of course, kills them. It is a constant game of keeping these things in balance. Usually, engineers in the pit lane will inform the driver of exactly what changes to make (by the rules, they cannot simply have radio commands control the vehicle).
Of course, the rest of the buttons are for the radio, drinking water pump, the fuel filler flap, rear caution light and those sorts of gizmos.
A few of the buttons are also like the water/oil cooler controls in that they only exist for the driver to press when the engineers tell him to.
All of that for around US$30K per steering wheel...
Humm,
If you brand spanking new email service is in beta, and you have a limited number of testers who are all connected enough to have received a gMail invite, what better way to test how well the system handles a massive load over a given period of time then by upping the storage limit on a few key accounts to 1TB?
As the news hits the field, I am sure everyone with a gMail acount logged on ASAP to see if the reports were true (I know I did).
is a fiber obtic network capable of delivering the same bandwidth as a 747 chock full of data DVDs crashing into our homes every few seconds and we can all be Hero.
I think this is the wrong question investors need to be asking about Google before they IPO. Sure, it makes for some great geek gab; the fetishistic wonderment of just how many servers Google is running, how many hits they get and how exactly they manage to, well, manage that many servers. In the end though, answering those questions doesn't tell us anything about what Google is actually selling.
.com heyday. While Yahoo was busy playing in Hollywood and becoming a "Portal" and Alta Vista was going down the tubes, Google's simple, whimsical, easy to use front page didn't get gaudy by trying to make us sign up for accounts or any of the other marketing department crap. Finally, Google has a high Willy Wonka factor, sort of like Apple. We don't hear much from the company in the way of press releases or other information, but every so often, they open the doors and it turns out the PhD Umpa Lumpas there developed something totally cool. Local search, Froogle, gMail and Okurit are examples of this...
The more and more I look at it, the more and more I fear Google is just nothing more then a very well calculated shill game; the Enron of technology IPOs...
Pretty much everyone who uses the internet loves Google and we do so for a combination of three compelling reasons; First off, Google offers up what is basically the best search engine on the internet. It isn't perfect, it doesn't work all the time but it is the best thing out there right now. Second, they offer this high-quality search service without all the excess bullshit that got tacked onto all of the other search engines on the market in the
The thing that gives me the heeby geebies about Google is how they make all of this look so effortless. Okurit just sort of popped out of the open one day. gMail appeared on April 1 with such an "effortless" air about it all that Google didn't even bother to take the press release seriously. We keep hearing these cryptic references from the company about some overwhelmingly massive amount of computing power they have and how their kabul of PhDs has it humming along with levels of efficiency that are a world beyond most everything else out there.
All of this has made for a very pumped up environment for an IPO, but we still have yet to get an answer to the question "What is Google's business model?" I "google" words all day. I have an Okurit account that I use. I even use Google as a quick and dirty calculator. When it opens up, I will have a couple of gMail accounts. The problem is, I've never paid these people a single penny for ANY of this. How the hell are they going to make money?
Sure, we can say that Google has integrated advertising within the search results, but the advertising model has always proven to be of dubious effectiveness at best. Google has an enterprise search division, but the cost of their Google Appliance is a pittance compared to the sort of money big time enterprise software companies like Oracle and SAP are making, how can they survive on that revenue stream and pay the bandwidth bills for all of the free services they offer to the public?
We always tend to answer these questions with an "I don't know, but Google must be doing something right." Google works very hard to continue to fuel the fire that they are doing something paradigm shifting with all of those PhDs they have on the payroll, and how many servers they have, and how they can just sort of effortlessly announce 1gb free email accounts. We keep drawing up the impression that these guys must have something HUGE up their sleeves, and they have us salivating for the IPO so we too can be part of it.
Very soon, Google executives are going to pile onto a Gulfstream V and do a roadshow for big time investment houses and institutional investors and they are going to be trying to convince these guys to buy Google IPO. They are going to be asked exactly what sort of business model Google is going to be pushing and one of two things is going to happen:
- Google will c
Personally, I think Apple offers 'custom configurations' because some customers want it and it sort of looks stupid not to offer it. Apple goes out of it's way to insure that their prices on RAM and extra hard drives (about the only two items you can 'configure' your system with) are way out of line with what's available on the open market. The fact of the matter is that Apple's margins on these components are extremely low and the resources required to pull a machine off the shelf at the warehouse, have an employee put the components in, repackage the whole thing and ship it are not worth it for Apple.
I think Apple really wishes customers would simply go out (or online) and procure a bigger hard drive or more RAM themselves. They go out of their way to provide instructions for installing these components and it really isn't that hard to do. Besides, it's far less expensive for the customer in the end, and you don't need to wait an extra week for the computer to be shipped by Apple...