since it's not possible to police thought. Well that doesn't stop corporations and the government from trying.
1984, The Thought Police, seemed to work out pretty well there.
Seriously though, the question that should be asked do determine if a patent is granted and how stictly it will be enforced, is will the industry (and society) benifit more if there is a limited competition or many many competitors? If the industry would bennifit more with many many competitors, then the patent shoud not be granted, and the industry would more closely resemble a purely competative industry (therefore, music is not patentable, food is not patentable). If on the otherhand, the industry would benifit more from limmited competition, then the patent should be granted as patents are used as a barrier to prevent competitors from entering the market. (therefore, patents on new technology is granted, we are better off having 10 or 20 firms selling us computers than 1,000+ firms. Case in point is processors, it is very hard to enter the computer processor market partialy due to patents. But society benifits because that means only so many processors have to be known and supported. The industry benifits because though there is few competitors, competition is tough and requires innovation to stay afloat.)
The whole idea behind perfect competition is that you have a product that is perfectly interchangeable with any competitor's product. So how do you make economic profit? (keep in mind economic profit is money after all your expenses including paying share holders is covered) You do something to differentiate your product, that is what keeps innovation alive. The fact that once you've created a product, everyone else will follow means you have to keep comming up with new ideas. If your product is really a "killer app" it will take to the market like wild fire and by the time your competitors have reverse engineered and made their own version, you've already made the majority of the profit to be made off the product.
As much as this would be really cool, there are lots of things that would make this go haywire. First and formost is the ability of the program to distinguish the end of a word. When you listen to someone talk, your brain automaticaly divides up what it percieves as full words and then reports them to you. But your brain has had many many years of experience with this. A technology like this would be confused by anyone who speaks fast. Even speaking normaly it could be confused. Don't believe me, listen to a person who is fluent in a foriegn language speak. To him (or her) the words are all very distinct and seperate, but to you, it sounds a lot like a string of sounds and you can distinguish maybe 3 or 4 words.
Second, this is all well and good for words or parts of words that are formed by the movement of the mouth, but try mouthing the words this, that, there and the. Most of the word is made up by the tounge and it's postition, and the only difference between there and the is what you do with the inside of your throat at the end of the word.
As much as this would be a great technology to have, we have a hard enough time getting speech recognition programs to work let alone mouth recognitions.
If you want to read the best example and case of this, go to Be's website and read about their lawsuit againts M$. The official complaint is availible in PDF format and though a little long in the legaleese, reads like a story book.
I was under the impression that it was illegal to purposefuly and knowingly disable software on someones computer without express permission. Espesialy true in this case where the spy ware's original intent is not to spy (at least one can reasonably assume no one is purposefuly going to install a program who's sole or primary intent is to spy on them) there fore by installing the Anti Spyware, you are effectively elliminating a secondary purpose or feature, but not rendering the spy-ware useless. But by purposefuly disabling the anti-spy-ware software, you are eliminating the software's sole purpose and effectively rendering the software useless. That's like sabotage.
What software (games excluded, if you want games, go buy a PS 2) do you want that you do not think is availible for mac? If you give me some examples, I should be able to find you a replacement (and how bout we stick to normal aplications, not the AutoPron 2000 Downloader or some other nonsense app)
The problems you're having are uncomon in my experience, but then again, I didn't buy an iMac (I did buy and iBook).
As for the Half Life port, the port did exist, ported by a third party developer (MacPlay I think) it was ready to go I believe about 2 months from going gold when Sierra decided to pull the plug, citing extensive production costs and the belief that it would not make enough money. They did the same thing with the dream cast version.
If the floppy in the mac is not bootable, it skips over it and moves to the HD, if the HD isn't bootable, it checks the CD ROM, if that isn't bootable it checks all other drives availible. There's even a key command to automaticaly bypass the HD (incase you want to boot from an external removable (say a Syquest Drive)
I have a brand spankin new custom built PC, and it hangs on the floppy. Though as someone pointed out, this seems to be a problem with Windows, not nessesarily the BIOS
Unless you count the xerox machine, the mouse was not there first.
I can't say about the CD ROM, but I'm willing to bet they came out at about the same time.
Yes, Intel did develop the USB first, but you know what they did then, they sat on it. And did nothing with it. Infact, if Apple hadn't switched entirely to USB, forcing the industry to start producing USB products, we might still not have it today, PC users are so afraid of new technology if it means eliminating old technology. (Case in point ISA, took forever to be phased out and you can still get new boards with ISA)
Yes, PCs had usable versions of *NIX before macs did, but did they have a powerful, nearly complete, usable by everyday consumer and commercialy as well as open source supported system? Like it or not OS X is revolutionary in terms of *NIX and the Mac OS.
And truly functional laptops, only the Sony laptops come even close.
Apple jacked the prices of the iMacs up $100 because they insist on using the highest end LCD screens they can find (just compare and iMac screen to a standard PC LCD screen). Therefore, the price had to go up. Also, let us go to a basic economics concept of supply and demand. The easiest way to see this is to draw the graph yourself.
Lable the x axis qantity, lable the y axis price put in a down sloping line in ( \ ) and lable it demand (as the price falls, demand rises)
Now add and up sloping line ( / ) and lable it supply (as the price [revenue for each unit] increases, the supply increases)
You should now have a graph that looks like an X
Now, where the lines cross, that is the current market price (before the price increase)
Now, the demand for iMacs is actualy increasing, so shift the demand curve (the whole line) to the right, see what happened to the price it went up. Suprise!
Not a flame, but do you have an example of a PC laptop that runs with better battery life off the shelf than the Apple laptops? The 5 hour life they quote is actualy not that far off. Real World test of my own experience:
MP3 playing (car ride, used in place of a radio) 4 1/2 hours.
Used as a writing machine + MP3 playing 4 hours
Game machine (Escape Velocity and SNES emulators) 2 - 2 1/2 hours
Most PC laptops I've come across top out at about 3 1/2 hours for MP3 playing, forget about games.
Actualy if I remember right, Apple has a policy which states that unless you have signed thier ADC agreements (and I will asume are leagaly bindable to that contract) they do not want you to submit code or designs to them, and that any code or designs you do submit become property of Apple. So technicaly, they can use his code.
When I said mini computer, I should have said all-in-one or compact computers
Re:SerialATA doesn't seem very advanced
on
Serial ATA Coming
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· Score: 1
In terms of technology, espesialy when it comes to addopting new standards, PC's have looked very closely at what Apple has been doing. Notice the influx of USB and Firewire (IEEE 1394) devices recently? How about mini computers? Dual processors? Yes both PC and Mac have had DP systems for a while, but it wasn't until the G4 systems that DPs started to be marketed to the consumer and not just to the geek.
I'm not saying everything Apple does the PC manufacturers take (NuBus and SCSI never really caught on in the PC market, though Sun did quite a bit with SCSI) but Apple does have a decent amount of influence in the tech world, even if they don't have a lot of users
I dunno, I think Apple, many of the Linux distributors, idSoftware and some other companies do a pretty good job maintaining their vision (even if Apple screwed up big time in the 90s)
Re:SerialATA doesn't seem very advanced
on
Serial ATA Coming
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· Score: 1
You are right that FireWire or USB2 might be worth a second look, but at the current rate, no one wants to bother scrapping everything they have based on ATA to pursue such a dream. I would much rather have Serial ATA than our current ATA. Of course, I have to wonder if the industry will even see this move as worth it. Even if from a software perspective it behaves similarly to ATA, I would think the hardware implementers have been holdig back. ATA is seen to meet the demands of home users, and SCSI supplies advanced features to businesses that need it. Hardware vendors have a vested interest in maintaining that dicotomy, since they can charge a huge premium for SCSI without problems coming up in the Desktop market...
Just wait until apple replaces all their ATA stuff with firewire, with no backward compatability built in (see iMacs and USB circa 1998). Then the PC manufacturers will begin including firewire faster than you can say "http:///..org"
Personaly, I'd rather see SCSI drives than a new version of ATA.
Slashdot Mirror
since it's not possible to police thought. Well that doesn't stop corporations and the government from trying.
1984, The Thought Police, seemed to work out pretty well there.
Seriously though, the question that should be asked do determine if a patent is granted and how stictly it will be enforced, is will the industry (and society) benifit more if there is a limited competition or many many competitors? If the industry would bennifit more with many many competitors, then the patent shoud not be granted, and the industry would more closely resemble a purely competative industry (therefore, music is not patentable, food is not patentable). If on the otherhand, the industry would benifit more from limmited competition, then the patent should be granted as patents are used as a barrier to prevent competitors from entering the market. (therefore, patents on new technology is granted, we are better off having 10 or 20 firms selling us computers than 1,000+ firms. Case in point is processors, it is very hard to enter the computer processor market partialy due to patents. But society benifits because that means only so many processors have to be known and supported. The industry benifits because though there is few competitors, competition is tough and requires innovation to stay afloat.)
The whole idea behind perfect competition is that you have a product that is perfectly interchangeable with any competitor's product. So how do you make economic profit? (keep in mind economic profit is money after all your expenses including paying share holders is covered) You do something to differentiate your product, that is what keeps innovation alive. The fact that once you've created a product, everyone else will follow means you have to keep comming up with new ideas. If your product is really a "killer app" it will take to the market like wild fire and by the time your competitors have reverse engineered and made their own version, you've already made the majority of the profit to be made off the product.
As much as this would be really cool, there are lots of things that would make this go haywire. First and formost is the ability of the program to distinguish the end of a word. When you listen to someone talk, your brain automaticaly divides up what it percieves as full words and then reports them to you. But your brain has had many many years of experience with this. A technology like this would be confused by anyone who speaks fast. Even speaking normaly it could be confused. Don't believe me, listen to a person who is fluent in a foriegn language speak. To him (or her) the words are all very distinct and seperate, but to you, it sounds a lot like a string of sounds and you can distinguish maybe 3 or 4 words.
Second, this is all well and good for words or parts of words that are formed by the movement of the mouth, but try mouthing the words this, that, there and the. Most of the word is made up by the tounge and it's postition, and the only difference between there and the is what you do with the inside of your throat at the end of the word.
As much as this would be a great technology to have, we have a hard enough time getting speech recognition programs to work let alone mouth recognitions.
If you want to read the best example and case of this, go to Be's website and read about their lawsuit againts M$. The official complaint is availible in PDF format and though a little long in the legaleese, reads like a story book.
I was under the impression that it was illegal to purposefuly and knowingly disable software on someones computer without express permission. Espesialy true in this case where the spy ware's original intent is not to spy (at least one can reasonably assume no one is purposefuly going to install a program who's sole or primary intent is to spy on them) there fore by installing the Anti Spyware, you are effectively elliminating a secondary purpose or feature, but not rendering the spy-ware useless. But by purposefuly disabling the anti-spy-ware software, you are eliminating the software's sole purpose and effectively rendering the software useless. That's like sabotage.
check apple for refurbed iMacs, less than 800 and wil run OS X (though you won't do it justice on that machine)
What software (games excluded, if you want games, go buy a PS 2) do you want that you do not think is availible for mac? If you give me some examples, I should be able to find you a replacement (and how bout we stick to normal aplications, not the AutoPron 2000 Downloader or some other nonsense app)
The problems you're having are uncomon in my experience, but then again, I didn't buy an iMac (I did buy and iBook).
As for the Half Life port, the port did exist, ported by a third party developer (MacPlay I think) it was ready to go I believe about 2 months from going gold when Sierra decided to pull the plug, citing extensive production costs and the belief that it would not make enough money. They did the same thing with the dream cast version.
If you're going to argue, at least try to sound intelligent.
Have you actualy used VPC? IT works pretty damn well for me. Then again, I don't use it for much except proving I can run PC progs.
If the floppy in the mac is not bootable, it skips over it and moves to the HD, if the HD isn't bootable, it checks the CD ROM, if that isn't bootable it checks all other drives availible. There's even a key command to automaticaly bypass the HD (incase you want to boot from an external removable (say a Syquest Drive)
still have to hit the manual eject on the floppy, all the mac floppys automaticaly ejected on reboot.
I have a brand spankin new custom built PC, and it hangs on the floppy. Though as someone pointed out, this seems to be a problem with Windows, not nessesarily the BIOS
Unless you count the xerox machine, the mouse was not there first.
I can't say about the CD ROM, but I'm willing to bet they came out at about the same time.
Yes, Intel did develop the USB first, but you know what they did then, they sat on it. And did nothing with it. Infact, if Apple hadn't switched entirely to USB, forcing the industry to start producing USB products, we might still not have it today, PC users are so afraid of new technology if it means eliminating old technology. (Case in point ISA, took forever to be phased out and you can still get new boards with ISA)
Yes, PCs had usable versions of *NIX before macs did, but did they have a powerful, nearly complete, usable by everyday consumer and commercialy as well as open source supported system? Like it or not OS X is revolutionary in terms of *NIX and the Mac OS.
And truly functional laptops, only the Sony laptops come even close.
Apple jacked the prices of the iMacs up $100 because they insist on using the highest end LCD screens they can find (just compare and iMac screen to a standard PC LCD screen). Therefore, the price had to go up. Also, let us go to a basic economics concept of supply and demand. The easiest way to see this is to draw the graph yourself.
Lable the x axis qantity, lable the y axis price
put in a down sloping line in ( \ ) and lable it demand (as the price falls, demand rises)
Now add and up sloping line ( / ) and lable it supply (as the price [revenue for each unit] increases, the supply increases)
You should now have a graph that looks like an X
Now, where the lines cross, that is the current market price (before the price increase)
Now, the demand for iMacs is actualy increasing, so shift the demand curve (the whole line) to the right, see what happened to the price it went up. Suprise!
Dude, not even IBM mainframes can stand up to the Slashdot effect. It's one of the most unstoppable forces in the world
Not a flame, but do you have an example of a PC laptop that runs with better battery life off the shelf than the Apple laptops? The 5 hour life they quote is actualy not that far off. Real World test of my own experience:
MP3 playing (car ride, used in place of a radio)
4 1/2 hours.
Used as a writing machine + MP3 playing 4 hours
Game machine (Escape Velocity and SNES emulators) 2 - 2 1/2 hours
Most PC laptops I've come across top out at about 3 1/2 hours for MP3 playing, forget about games.
PC and Mac HDs are the same things
Actualy if I remember right, Apple has a policy which states that unless you have signed thier ADC agreements (and I will asume are leagaly bindable to that contract) they do not want you to submit code or designs to them, and that any code or designs you do submit become property of Apple. So technicaly, they can use his code.
Intel only says that because both Apple and AMD are promoting the Mhtz Myth
When I said mini computer, I should have said all-in-one or compact computers
In terms of technology, espesialy when it comes to addopting new standards, PC's have looked very closely at what Apple has been doing. Notice the influx of USB and Firewire (IEEE 1394) devices recently? How about mini computers? Dual processors? Yes both PC and Mac have had DP systems for a while, but it wasn't until the G4 systems that DPs started to be marketed to the consumer and not just to the geek.
I'm not saying everything Apple does the PC manufacturers take (NuBus and SCSI never really caught on in the PC market, though Sun did quite a bit with SCSI) but Apple does have a decent amount of influence in the tech world, even if they don't have a lot of users
When you have such a competative market that you have to slash profit margins to 2%.
It will be interesting to see who's left in a few years.
I dunno, I think Apple, many of the Linux distributors, idSoftware and some other companies do a pretty good job maintaining their vision (even if Apple screwed up big time in the 90s)
You are right that FireWire or USB2 might be worth a second look, but at the current rate, no one wants to bother scrapping everything they have based on ATA to pursue such a dream. I would much rather have Serial ATA than our current ATA. Of course, I have to wonder if the industry will even see this move as worth it. Even if from a software perspective it behaves similarly to ATA, I would think the hardware implementers have been holdig back. ATA is seen to meet the demands of home users, and SCSI supplies advanced features to businesses that need it. Hardware vendors have a vested interest in maintaining that dicotomy, since they can charge a huge premium for SCSI without problems coming up in the Desktop market...
Just wait until apple replaces all their ATA stuff with firewire, with no backward compatability built in (see iMacs and USB circa 1998). Then the PC manufacturers will begin including firewire faster than you can say "http:///..org"
Personaly, I'd rather see SCSI drives than a new version of ATA.