One reason is may be for the stylish looks of the Imac, another is the option of knowing that the hardware doesn't change constantly, unlike some in the PC world.
Granted, this second argument might not pan out -- now that Apple is on the intel bandwagon, They may speed up the upgrade cycle for different models. Since it's not very different from any of the millions of other intel based systems out there, It will be easier to port new hardware to the new machine. The Physical hardware is/nearly is identical with the exception of how the form factor might be when the non-imac models come out, and the software drivers will be easier to port since the underligning hardware calls to the CPU and system buses are going to be the same/nearly the same.
No, the real problem that the article is trying to point out is that thousands of new medical discoveries are made every year. However, just a fraction of those are deemed to be worth the money to spend massive dollars getting from the point of being a Lab breakthrough to being a developed drug or technique. Getting a drug approved, even in todays "rushed FDA certification" you speak of still takes millions of dollars and years of time. Most of the truely revolutionary drugs are marketted and sold overseas long before being available here for this very reason.
I'm sure the patent flurry isn't helping much either, since the delay in publishing something to make sure that companies (and in today's world, university foundations) can set things up so that they can maximize profits of any derivitives of their work. This process takes much more time than it used to.
I think the interesting part of this is the fact that groups that are actively sponsoring specific diseases are starting to fund these studies from start to finish. I'd love to see more of this. there are hundreds of illnesses and diseases that do not have a large enough number of people who are stricken to justify the cost of developing a drug worth it. by allowing researchers to share data quicker, and better, foundations that are supporting research may just have the power to do everything short of manufacturing the drug. They can't afford to pay for broad testing, however, so they need to rely on more access to other's research so that they can focus on the most promising paths of their own.
certain aspects of Itanium research were incorporated inside the current architectures, so it's not all wasted money. The amount of money needed to upgrade the speeds and lower the power consumption is certainly worth the press on having the fastest supercomputers out there. At some point down the road, they may even be able to merge the cores back together - for 64 bit apps, it really does perform well. If 95% of programs out there are optimized for 64 bit, then software emulation of the other 5 won't really matter. Then he development that they have continued to do will really pay off.
It's good that Intel has fallen on its face, unless you are an investor. This will only intensify the push to real innovation. I get the impression that intel is focusing on 2-3 years down the road with the processor changes they have implemented in the road maps. We might be talking about the "great chipmaker's" comeback at that point.
I think this may be a "what the hell, let's give it a try" attempt at getting a eventual pay-per-byte system in place. If they come out making this sort of proposal now, and it gets shot down in a wave of debates, they can go to the state PUC's and say "well, we tried to get money in other ways, without asking for rate increases." This way they've justified themselves.
If one phone company starts doing this and makes money off of the end user, then all of the others ones will start. Pretty soon, you have a bandwidth throttle that makes you money in the same way cable companies make money. If all the end users have slow connections unless they go to (companythathasthemoneytopay) then pretty sure most people go to that new walmartoftheinternet to shop.
There's always someone who wouldn't even notice good sarcasm if the man on the moon came up and pushed his face into the green cheese all over the ground.
Even accounting for the fact that things are way more expensive then 15 years ago, I know I couldn't have afforded the price, nor could I have travelled cross country as a teenager to go.
Doesn't mean I wouldn't have been playing the game at 13 though.
Dark Fiber isn't going to do squat in getting around this problem. When he's talking about pipes, he's mostly talking about the point from the demarc on the side of your house to the local exchange (The so called "last mile"). Now, there are other technologies that are-a-comin but we don't know if and when. The dark fiber that companies are buying connect the local exchanges to other places. If google is able to roll out some sort of metro wireless, then they will be able to put up a good fight. My guess however is that they want to have a direct fiber connection to the ISP's so that large amounts of new bandwidth heavy multicast and unicast type services don't go over the internet, but directly from google to the ISP that the customer is on. Unfortunetly, this sort of connectivity is what the SBC wants to get paid for.
My guess that the next round of battles will be landlines can't compete with the "leeches" on the internet, so, please pretty please mr regulators can we allow filtering of ip voice and tv services, and charge more to those customers for allowing that data to go across our pipe, for providing a service that we are not earning a "fair markup" on? This of course will be reinforced with promises to put in more bandwidth, just like they've promised to regulators for the past 5 years.
Remember kids, 90% of the money the telephone companies (and other utilities) make is directly tied to the what the politicians you elect allow. What google and any other competitor want is some sort of technology that lets them leap over that last mile, or the local goverment to decide it's in their best interest to provide fiber as a local water-type utility.
The more interesting processor to do this with would be this: http://www.ageia.com/technology.html
Graphics card do certain types of mathematical equations very well. The physics PPU specializes in more complex processing.
Well, more to the point, UPN and the WB did not exist then. Unless you are in a very very very large market, that takes care of all the stations a local area can possibly even HAVE. Most areas of the country have enough cities within 50-60 miles of them that they can only have about 6-7 channels, which means ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, UPN, WB, and PBS. Heck, here in Madison, WI there is a UPN affiliate that doesn't actually broadcast over the air -- it's a cable only channel actually owned by the local NBC affiliate's parent company.
...as far as possible from the dangers of firing engines and falling debris, which were responsible for the accidents that destroyed the shuttle Challenger in 1986 and the Columbia in 2003.
The point is, that with the crew section ABOVE the engines, and with an escape system built into the capsule/attached to the capsule, there is a much better chance of avoiding crew death in case of failure.
The problem with the O ring may have caused a aborted launch, not the main fuel tank exploding feet away from the crew cabin. The issue with the heat shield system being damaged would also not be as much of an issue, because they would not have to have to worry about having to cover a very large area with the lightest heatshield they can find. They can use a more damage resitive material on a small area.
What I'd be most interested in is to see how much this would actually save in both time and money towards development of an entirely new platform. The solid rocket boosters were never designed to be launched on their own were they? Are they even steerable themselves (I always thought that the main engines were the only steering device during liftoff)
Australian radio, in contrast to US radio, is vibrant, brilliant and is a good industrial subsidy for the Australian music industry (ever wonder where INXS, Midnight Oil and many others got their start?).
Oh, so we have someone to blame now for Men at Work?
This is why some of our founders wanted to avoid a "bill of rights" altogether... the idea that rights that were not enumerated would be seen as less valuable, or unprotected, simply because they weren't mentioned. The fear was that the Constitution would morph from what it was--a document outlining the VERY limited powers of a federal government--into a document that listed a VERY limited number of rights of the people. Sadly, this is what it has become.
Whenever I see people make this assertion, a little cold chill runs up my spine. If this had not been spelled out as a right in the constitution, then these rights would be decided on the state level. Can you imagine the hodgepodge of laws that we would have had without having a freedom of speech and freedom of religion clauses written into the constitution? Local states and municipalities would have been free to do just that, unchecked. (Granted, many did anyhow, but over time the worst of them were abolished because of rulings from the courts)
They are not "A few clicks apart" -- They are touching. There's no great-basin like section of ohio where water doesn't flow into either system. (Ok, there may be a pond or two) Water either rolls downhill towards the lakes, or towards Ohio/Missippi rivers.
Now, there are changes they've had to do to make sure water doesn't start flowing down the Illinois Canal into the Mississippi, but those issues have mostly been there from the start. But unless there is something major that causes thousands of square miles to suddenly sink hundreds of feet in the boundary areas, I don't think it's that large of an issue (now, letting some of the creatures in each system into the other, that's another story.
95% of everything does, and MS is in a position where at least half of the programs that didn't make the leap had the companies that designed them come out with updates that allowed them to work with it.
Unfortunetly, the computer is a mass produced commodity now, and the standard that won is the VHS system, not the betamax or any of the better formats that came afterwords.
Not entirely. They are getting significantly less than the $1 per sub they were getting under comcast. This doesn't mean that tivo-as-a-company is dying, but it could mean that tivo-as-a-pvrprovider is dying. The details of the comcast deal remain to be seen -- they are basically just doing the software for it.
Cablecard 1.0 is already out there, this type of card allows you to decode Digital Channels only.
The digital standard that's being pushed back is a technology that specifies that all of the higher order functions, such as interactive menus, ordering PPV, Video-on-demand, etc are controlled by the card. This is what cablecard 2.0 standard encompasses. The shipping card slots now are only 1.0 slots. The 2.0 cards will be backwards compatible, but they keep flip flopping on the how it will work and companies can't even start to implement a 2.0 standard until it's finalized.
The big score for the cable companies on this pushback is that not only is it not implemented for another year, but that the interface will not have to be specified until then too, keeping companies from offering a product that can be upgraded simply by putting in the new card.
Pushing the cablecard back another year means that Microsoft just has to play a waiting game for Tivo to go bankrupt or become irrelevant in this market. Pushing this back another year probably makes it difficult for tivo to survive.
You know, I'm not entirely sure I can wave off Napster's Buisness model as "crappy".
I mean, yeah, you can't burn and give away the music, which some here will argue makes the service crap no matter what. But, how is a 15 a month fee that much different from say, Sirius or XM? It's a reasonable, low fee that allows you to play thousands of songs AND load them on to your MP3 player to take with you (and presumably, a car stereo with the appropriate hardware to let your computer send DRM'd songs to it).
Many people on slashdot and other discussion boards like this have been asking for reasonable pricing models like this for years. Look at it this way: for the cost of one overpriced CD you get a month of access to thousands of CD's, including the latest hits. Sure, you don't get a perm copy of it, but you ARE ONLY PAYING one CD's price.
I for one hope that the ability to simply copy the way the article describes doesn't cause an over reaction that makesthis sort of service to go away. A cheap service like this can only put downward pressure on prices in pay-as-you-go download and store bought CD's. Slashdotters and other's who've been screaming for years about having a reasonable system/pricing structure in place should be dancing for joy that there is someone trying to do just that!
What do you expect them to do? They have 600k accounts, and I'll bet they have at least 1-2% of them a day sending in a request. I don't expect anything other than a canned response unless it's something that is affecting my toon only, or is somehting they haven't heard about.
-C, the realistic one
Slashdot Mirror
Granted, this second argument might not pan out -- now that Apple is on the intel bandwagon, They may speed up the upgrade cycle for different models. Since it's not very different from any of the millions of other intel based systems out there, It will be easier to port new hardware to the new machine. The Physical hardware is/nearly is identical with the exception of how the form factor might be when the non-imac models come out, and the software drivers will be easier to port since the underligning hardware calls to the CPU and system buses are going to be the same/nearly the same.
I'm sure the patent flurry isn't helping much either, since the delay in publishing something to make sure that companies (and in today's world, university foundations) can set things up so that they can maximize profits of any derivitives of their work. This process takes much more time than it used to.
I think the interesting part of this is the fact that groups that are actively sponsoring specific diseases are starting to fund these studies from start to finish. I'd love to see more of this. there are hundreds of illnesses and diseases that do not have a large enough number of people who are stricken to justify the cost of developing a drug worth it. by allowing researchers to share data quicker, and better, foundations that are supporting research may just have the power to do everything short of manufacturing the drug. They can't afford to pay for broad testing, however, so they need to rely on more access to other's research so that they can focus on the most promising paths of their own.
certain aspects of Itanium research were incorporated inside the current architectures, so it's not all wasted money. The amount of money needed to upgrade the speeds and lower the power consumption is certainly worth the press on having the fastest supercomputers out there. At some point down the road, they may even be able to merge the cores back together - for 64 bit apps, it really does perform well. If 95% of programs out there are optimized for 64 bit, then software emulation of the other 5 won't really matter. Then he development that they have continued to do will really pay off.
It's good that Intel has fallen on its face, unless you are an investor. This will only intensify the push to real innovation. I get the impression that intel is focusing on 2-3 years down the road with the processor changes they have implemented in the road maps. We might be talking about the "great chipmaker's" comeback at that point.
I think this may be a "what the hell, let's give it a try" attempt at getting a eventual pay-per-byte system in place. If they come out making this sort of proposal now, and it gets shot down in a wave of debates, they can go to the state PUC's and say "well, we tried to get money in other ways, without asking for rate increases." This way they've justified themselves.
One step at a time.
If one phone company starts doing this and makes money off of the end user, then all of the others ones will start. Pretty soon, you have a bandwidth throttle that makes you money in the same way cable companies make money. If all the end users have slow connections unless they go to (companythathasthemoneytopay) then pretty sure most people go to that new walmartoftheinternet to shop.
There's always someone who wouldn't even notice good sarcasm if the man on the moon came up and pushed his face into the green cheese all over the ground.
Mostly because of the fact that it's a CON.
Even accounting for the fact that things are way more expensive then 15 years ago, I know I couldn't have afforded the price, nor could I have travelled cross country as a teenager to go.
Doesn't mean I wouldn't have been playing the game at 13 though.
Dark Fiber isn't going to do squat in getting around this problem. When he's talking about pipes, he's mostly talking about the point from the demarc on the side of your house to the local exchange (The so called "last mile"). Now, there are other technologies that are-a-comin but we don't know if and when. The dark fiber that companies are buying connect the local exchanges to other places. If google is able to roll out some sort of metro wireless, then they will be able to put up a good fight. My guess however is that they want to have a direct fiber connection to the ISP's so that large amounts of new bandwidth heavy multicast and unicast type services don't go over the internet, but directly from google to the ISP that the customer is on. Unfortunetly, this sort of connectivity is what the SBC wants to get paid for.
My guess that the next round of battles will be landlines can't compete with the "leeches" on the internet, so, please pretty please mr regulators can we allow filtering of ip voice and tv services, and charge more to those customers for allowing that data to go across our pipe, for providing a service that we are not earning a "fair markup" on? This of course will be reinforced with promises to put in more bandwidth, just like they've promised to regulators for the past 5 years.
Remember kids, 90% of the money the telephone companies (and other utilities) make is directly tied to the what the politicians you elect allow. What google and any other competitor want is some sort of technology that lets them leap over that last mile, or the local goverment to decide it's in their best interest to provide fiber as a local water-type utility.
The more interesting processor to do this with would be this:
http://www.ageia.com/technology.html
Graphics card do certain types of mathematical equations very well. The physics PPU specializes in more complex processing.
I will require one non-screwed up patent system as my royalty.
As opposed to the main Dr Who show that 95% of Americans respond "Dr WHO?" when asked...
Well, more to the point, UPN and the WB did not exist then. Unless you are in a very very very large market, that takes care of all the stations a local area can possibly even HAVE. Most areas of the country have enough cities within 50-60 miles of them that they can only have about 6-7 channels, which means ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, UPN, WB, and PBS. Heck, here in Madison, WI there is a UPN affiliate that doesn't actually broadcast over the air -- it's a cable only channel actually owned by the local NBC affiliate's parent company.
-chris
If you can't beat em, buy them!
Mod parent up!!!! Finally, not a lot of info, but better than the submission.
Christians and Lions, that's been done before.
The point is, that with the crew section ABOVE the engines, and with an escape system built into the capsule/attached to the capsule, there is a much better chance of avoiding crew death in case of failure. The problem with the O ring may have caused a aborted launch, not the main fuel tank exploding feet away from the crew cabin. The issue with the heat shield system being damaged would also not be as much of an issue, because they would not have to have to worry about having to cover a very large area with the lightest heatshield they can find. They can use a more damage resitive material on a small area.
What I'd be most interested in is to see how much this would actually save in both time and money towards development of an entirely new platform. The solid rocket boosters were never designed to be launched on their own were they? Are they even steerable themselves (I always thought that the main engines were the only steering device during liftoff)
Oh, so we have someone to blame now for Men at Work?
This is why some of our founders wanted to avoid a "bill of rights" altogether... the idea that rights that were not enumerated would be seen as less valuable, or unprotected, simply because they weren't mentioned. The fear was that the Constitution would morph from what it was--a document outlining the VERY limited powers of a federal government--into a document that listed a VERY limited number of rights of the people. Sadly, this is what it has become.
Whenever I see people make this assertion, a little cold chill runs up my spine. If this had not been spelled out as a right in the constitution, then these rights would be decided on the state level. Can you imagine the hodgepodge of laws that we would have had without having a freedom of speech and freedom of religion clauses written into the constitution? Local states and municipalities would have been free to do just that, unchecked. (Granted, many did anyhow, but over time the worst of them were abolished because of rulings from the courts)
They are not "A few clicks apart" -- They are touching. There's no great-basin like section of ohio where water doesn't flow into either system. (Ok, there may be a pond or two) Water either rolls downhill towards the lakes, or towards Ohio/Missippi rivers.
Now, there are changes they've had to do to make sure water doesn't start flowing down the Illinois Canal into the Mississippi, but those issues have mostly been there from the start. But unless there is something major that causes thousands of square miles to suddenly sink hundreds of feet in the boundary areas, I don't think it's that large of an issue (now, letting some of the creatures in each system into the other, that's another story .
Unfortunetly, the computer is a mass produced commodity now, and the standard that won is the VHS system, not the betamax or any of the better formats that came afterwords.
Not entirely. They are getting significantly less than the $1 per sub they were getting under comcast. This doesn't mean that tivo-as-a-company is dying, but it could mean that tivo-as-a-pvrprovider is dying. The details of the comcast deal remain to be seen -- they are basically just doing the software for it.
The digital standard that's being pushed back is a technology that specifies that all of the higher order functions, such as interactive menus, ordering PPV, Video-on-demand, etc are controlled by the card. This is what cablecard 2.0 standard encompasses. The shipping card slots now are only 1.0 slots. The 2.0 cards will be backwards compatible, but they keep flip flopping on the how it will work and companies can't even start to implement a 2.0 standard until it's finalized.
The big score for the cable companies on this pushback is that not only is it not implemented for another year, but that the interface will not have to be specified until then too, keeping companies from offering a product that can be upgraded simply by putting in the new card.
Pushing the cablecard back another year means that Microsoft just has to play a waiting game for Tivo to go bankrupt or become irrelevant in this market. Pushing this back another year probably makes it difficult for tivo to survive.
You know, I'm not entirely sure I can wave off Napster's Buisness model as "crappy".
I mean, yeah, you can't burn and give away the music, which some here will argue makes the service crap no matter what. But, how is a 15 a month fee that much different from say, Sirius or XM? It's a reasonable, low fee that allows you to play thousands of songs AND load them on to your MP3 player to take with you (and presumably, a car stereo with the appropriate hardware to let your computer send DRM'd songs to it).
Many people on slashdot and other discussion boards like this have been asking for reasonable pricing models like this for years. Look at it this way: for the cost of one overpriced CD you get a month of access to thousands of CD's, including the latest hits. Sure, you don't get a perm copy of it, but you ARE ONLY PAYING one CD's price.
I for one hope that the ability to simply copy the way the article describes doesn't cause an over reaction that makesthis sort of service to go away. A cheap service like this can only put downward pressure on prices in pay-as-you-go download and store bought CD's. Slashdotters and other's who've been screaming for years about having a reasonable system/pricing structure in place should be dancing for joy that there is someone trying to do just that!
What do you expect them to do? They have 600k accounts, and I'll bet they have at least 1-2% of them a day sending in a request. I don't expect anything other than a canned response unless it's something that is affecting my toon only, or is somehting they haven't heard about. -C, the realistic one