One problem is some equivocation over the meaning of democracy. Some take it as one person one vote on everything. Others take it as some relationship between the populace and voting for leaders and policy.
As typically used, the American form of republic is a subset of democracy. The parlimentary systems popular in Europe and Canada are an other.
Whenever someone says America isn't a democracy I must admit I cringe more than a little.
Just a note that having information doesn't reduce ones liberties. I suspect most police "know" who the criminals are and probably go after the "usual suspects" in their area for various crimes. I don't see anything wrong with that. The only difference here is a more formal collection in that sense.
However to lose ones liberty they must have evidence and further sufficient evidence of a crimebeyond a reasonable doubt. No offense, but a list of possible aggitators really doesn't affect ones liberty. Hell, when I got a security clearance they pretty much told me that so long as you admit to what you've done it didn't matter what were in the records. My supervisor was a former drug dealer, member of Earth First, and took regular trips to China but worked on nuclear technology.
I know that some don't like this and hate the thought of information held by the government in general. Personally I find this view silly. Information isn't an inhibitation on liberty. I'm much more concerned about keeping laboratories in places like FBI forensics under check. That's where the real problems are. Keeping information unduly limits police. Hell, I saw one report that said investigators are seriously limited on what they can "officially" even access on the net.
While traditionally there has been a wide gap between physics and mathematics in terms of method, quite a few philosophers have argued that this gap has been closing. One big reason for it is the advent of the computer. Many of the most famous mathematical discoveries of the last decade have involved a *lot* of computer work. To such an extent that suggesting that anyone has actually gone through every step of the proof is likely wrong. Further studies in fields like chaos have tended to use computers like a laboratory, utilizing a lot of the methadology of physics.
One good paper on this phenomena of how proof has changed in math is William Thurston's, "On Proof and Progress in Mathematics." A great book that goes through a lot of recent work in philosophy of mathematics is New Directions in the Philosophy of Mathematics
by the Princeton University Press. While I still am primarily a Constructivist, I find that recent anti-foundationalist approaches to mathematics are very interesting. In particular you might find Putnam's assertion that math is becoming quasi-empirical very interesting.
I always find Putnam interesting, even though I often disagree with him. He tends to try to blur the realist - anti-realist distinction in ways that end up being more slight of hand. (IMO)
Anyway, I think that you are adopting a foundational view of mathematics for which there are good reasons to reject. Further we can have a good reason for thinking a theorem correct without necessarily being able to prove it from strict foundations. And indeed the crisis in mathematical foundations at the end of the 19th century was the recognition that math had been proceeding without doing what you suggest. That was partially the impetitus behind such things as Whitehead and Russell's work on mathematical foundations.
You don't *need* to multithread everything. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do something. Certainly to get the benefits of a multiprocessor machine (or virtual machine) you ought to multithread. However you can often figure out what needs multithreaded fairly easily. I think the complexities of multithreading are usually poor software design and not the process itself.
Unfortunately Sun returning to the desktop/workstation is probably too little too late.
Consider that they are going to face competition from two sources. The first is Linux whose desktop offerings, while still weak, are light years ahead of Sun. Even if Sun largely borrows Redhat's playbook and adds a bit more, they still have the hardware problem. They need cheap chips that are fast. They are competing with fast, cheap PC systems that run a desktop environment superior to anything Sun is likely to produce. Right now most desktop Solaris based machines you buy are woefully underpowered for the price. About on part with Apple machines but without the nice environment. (IMO)
Which brings us to Sun's other problem. Apple has lousy hardware at the moment but a rather amazing desktop Unix environment. Further it seems to get only better and better. The next iteration of OSX is due in a couple of months. X11 support is exemplary. Further, unlike the desktops of Linux or Solaris, Apple has most standard productivity applications, an amazing application scripting environment, and has purchased many high end graphic and sound application companies. Right now Apple's achilles heel is hardware that sucks relative to x86 systems. But it is widely expected that when OSX 10.3 is released that 970 systems will at a minimum be announced and demonstrated. That'll put Apple hardware within 10% of x86 hardware - although the price/performance is still up in the air.
Given all this it seems like Sun wants to compete with both Linux and Apple. It can't compete with the price/ performance of Linux. It can't compete with the maturity, elegance, and number of applications of OSX. So exactly how does it plan to compete?
You can still recompile most of the Apple utilities that have these patches. Indeed if you are using Apache on a production machine using OSX you are probably better off compiling the code so that you *know* exactly what is going on. For most machines that is less significant.
Put an other way, you're right, but your confusing Apple's software with the code. Most of the services on OSX are open source and to say that "they are slower to release fixes than open source" rather misses the forest for the trees. (Or vice versa) What Apple does is provide a quick, easy update for regular users who don't want to deal with the complexities of compiling their open source programs. As such Apple reacts very timely and does a lot of checking.
So to differentiate Apple's security and open source's security is a false dichotomy.
To avoid cracks all the shareware authors need do is view the standard lists of cracks available on gnutella, direct connect and kazaa. They then update the software at their download site to check for those new numbers without updating the version number. First off most people don't hack software. Lets be honest. Most don't even know how. Secondly shareware software seems updated far more frequently than most commercial software. I also think most people see shareware authors as living far closer to the code and depending upon funds more than larger commercial firms. (Which isn't to say commercial firms don't have low margins and sometimes aren't barely making it - but the perception is that this is more true of shareware projects) Because of this perception I think that for crippled shareware people are less likely to use hacks. (IMO - I'm not sure how one could know what is *really* going on)
I'll never understand this mindset. For all intents and purposes it was a tie. The constitution and other rules told what to do in this case. For every argument about "a few votes here or there" Republicans could make the same argument. Hell, if there was a national recount I suspect the popular vote may even have changed.
The most important thing to realize is that in such a statistical tie, the general populace didn't care who was President. Yes there were zealots on the right and left who did. But by and large they couldn't really convince enough people to get anything other than a tie.
Anyone who says they were robbed (or for Republicans "could have been robbed") misses this fundamental point.
Once someone starts bringing in conspiracy theories we know it is pointless to keep talking. Republicans claimed conspiracies in the Kennedy - Nixon election. And, given events in Chicago, they were probably right. But once again there wasn't an overwhelming decision. So who cares?
Now if someone can point to a 5% difference and vote rigging then I'll listen. Otherwise it is just sour grapes.
Sorry - that was on verbal for Gore (625). Bush got a 566. However that doesn't necessarily mean much. Bill Bradly got a 485 but was widely considered intelligent and was a Rhodes Scholar.
For combined scores Bush got a 1206 (not a 660) and Gore a 1355. Bush was in the 84th percentile. Not fantastic, but not bad. Here's more scores. Of course people with low SATS go on to do great in college and some with high ones do poorly. But ripping on Bush for getting into a good college given his High School performance really applies to Gore as well. (His grades in High School weren't exemplary either) Both got into ivy league schools because they were the sons of famous politicians. No doubt. But it applies equally to both.
Didn't Al Gore get a 660 as well? That's what Wikipedia said. So if Bush got in via his father, didn't Al Gore get in the same way? Further while in college Bush didn't have the low grades Gore did and went on to grad school.
BTW - Bush went to Yale for undergraduate studies and Harvard for graduate.
My point though is that whether he got in "via daddy" or had a bad year, the point is that doesn't necessarily reflect on their intelligence. Both liberals and conservative idealogues seem to harp on this. (i.e. there is no way their opponents can be smart)
To be fair, I should add this rebuttal by Gore to the above page discussing low grades and dropping out at Vanderbilt.
I'm not sure I buy it myself. But certainly he did go on to do quite well. My complaint, as I mentioned, is not that I think Gore an idiot but rather the misleading view that Bush is an idiot. Harvard MBA's aren't quite the same as community college. The point to me is a double standard. But certainly fairness isn't high on the media's hit list.
Note that I don't think Gore an idiot. I disagree with him politically but he seems a smart and pleasant person. I question some of his rhetoric as being rather misleading. (Especially his environment book) However one could easily say the same of most politicians.
That's rather interesting. Notice how each person give a rather different area of expertise. We have J. Crew who can help in sales. Genentech who can help in the science area. (Clustered XServe probably owns something to him) We have the catalog sales and distributer help with Jerry York at Microwarehouse aka Mac Warehouse. Campbell helps with Quickbooks / Quicken. With Gore we might see more of a focus on government contracts and the public service.
I'm not Gore fan and actually find it funny how the media portrayed him as brilliant and Bush as an idiot. (Gore was the one who flunked out of college while Bush was the one with an MBA from Harvard) Still I think this is a plus for Apple.
BTW - to the endless debate about who invented the internet. Even if Gore meant the funding/promotion of ARPANET he phrased it in a misleading way. The average person parsing that sentence would take it the way most did take it. Further he never corrected himself. So all these apologetics sort of miss the issue of presentation.
But that begs my question. What current PPC non-Apple laptops are available? I'm not aware of any. Old Apple laptops are great candidates, of course.
As for embedded systems - surely they aren't going to be running full Linux are they? I could see some subset - but not a full Yellow Dog distro. Certainly one can compile for PPC chips using a PPC system with a full distro. But in that case I once again miss the point of running Yellow Dog instead of OSX. (Except for utilizing legacy equipment)
What are the reasons why current PPC hardware is preferable to x86 hardware. All the non-Apple PPC machines I've seen are even more overpriced and underperforming than Apple's. If you have old machines around I can certainly understand running Linux. However I don't understand it for new hardware. As the parent post said, X11 gives you pretty much everything Linux does plus you can, if necessary, run Aqua or Classic applications.
Given the relatively low number of cases in a congested city like Hong Kong, the initial reports of how easy it could spread seemed questionable. I mean if it spreads as easy as the flu, has been around for a couple of weeks, but there are only a hundred or so cases. Well, it doesn't quite sound like a pandemnic. More like the media was oversensationalizing things again.
This is a good point. Right now programmers who need extra processing speed are going to be turned off by the relatively slow nature of the G4 and the slow FSB. Probably Apple is positioning these servers to prepare for something similar using the 970 and as a "stop gap" for those Mac users who need this but who can't wait for faster processors.
For those writing custom software though, x86 clusters are probably more economical, if only because dual Xeons or dual Athalons are so much faster. Still it is nice to know Apple is trying to be price/performance competitive with the relative nature of the G4. I think that tells us what to expect from 970 systems. (Assuming sufficient volumes)
That's what worries me. If she has done a set of history texts I suspect her background is the humanities and not the sciences. While I can't say for sure, I wouldn't be surprised to find that many of the errors in science texts is because of folks from the humanities being in charge.
Don't get me wrong. It is important to be able to teach some semblance to science to those not naturally inclined towards the sciences. Yet there is a fundamentally different way of thinking in the sciences from most of the humanities - especially history!
Re:did this author start nothing.net?
on
Imagining Numbers
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· Score: 1
Part of the confusion is the misleading misnomer of "imaginary numbers." One of those bad choices in the history of science. Had they instead made a more obvious connection with vectors the issue wouldn't have been so confusing.
I ran into this all the time trying to tutor lower division physics students. When they got to A/C circuits and the little bit of complex mathematics they required the students became rather hopelessly confused. Once you get the whole abstraction of "imaginary number" and the problem of mind and what common language means by imaginary the problem goes away. Well. ..not entirely I guess. But teaching them as a kind of vector that holds phase information for waves really does help, as do many, many practical examples. (My favorite example was a roll of toilet paper they'd pull on with an ink line on the side of the roll to represent phase)
My humble opinion on this (and the somewhat related thread on Junior High Science texts) is that keeping mathematics and physics so separated is a bit of a mistake. I think that teaching them in tandem is not wise. Physics is still very abstract, but is a great way to get a handle on mathematics. Typically you learn them about the same time. (i.e. you learn calculus to do simple physics - even when it is applied in other fields it is typically related to physics or physics problems) Trying to teach physics without enough "quantification" is difficult. Trying to teach mathematics without enough "practical examples" is a mistake.
I hope she does a good job. I can't speak having never seen her texts. The one big problem most science and math textbooks have is that they tend to teach subtly wrong things. The so called "New Math" movement from when I was a kid was a great example. The analogies and examples were often misleading and arose out of a misunderstanding of set theory or how scientists actually utilize mathematics.
It seems like every couple of years we get a new set of "reforms." Every time I check out the textbooks they are almost uniformly horrible. The biggest error (other than teaching incorrect notions) is that they push too general an idea rather than trying to give kids the skills and critical thinking. I guess its time for an other round. . .
The only problem is that PCs are typically 2 - 3x the clock speed of Macintoshes. Further the PCs are typically cheaper. Compare the price of a 1 GHz G4 based PowerMac to that of a 3 GHz P4 based Dell, for instance.
Cocoa and Obj-C are very nice. There are some flaws, but I'll not go into them. The bigger limitation is that Visual Studio is considerably superior to the Project Builder / Interface Builder combo that Apple offers. C# does RAD considerably better. Debugging logic is easier in Visual Studio. Some argue that Obj-C is better than either Java/C# or even C++. In some ways yes. In other ways no. For some things I really love C++. Further for the type of programs I do, I need the portability (and readibility by other employees) that C++ offers over Obj-C.
It isn't just clock speed. Afterall even if the G4 could in theory work fantastic there is also the FSB speed. CPUs are but one part of the overall system. Further OSX does things with Quark Extreme that utilizes graphics cards to do some coprocessing. Thus your graphics card will affect system performance as well.
As for those claiming this huge speed increase over Intel chips at similar clock speeds. Well a lot of that is Apple FUD to deal with Motorola falling down on the job. Unfortunately it came back and bit them in the butt due to some aspects of OSX. Certainly it is slower in some aspects of the OS - that's why you can notice a large difference between Sys9 and OSX. Some of that is due to "perception" because OSX actually multitasks well. In Sys9 one process could "hog" the CPU giving the perception of greater speed. Some of it is due to aqua doing more than Sys9 does. Some of it is due to the difficulty of accelerating all those 3D graphics as opposed to the 2D widgets in XP and Sys9. So there certainly are some valid points.
However in an XP vs. OSX comparison you often are comparing XP systems that have systems that have SPEC scores about double that of the Macintosh system. (Or worse) Apple tried to deal with this using dual CPUs. I love dual CPUs, but it really doesn't accelerating individual tasks that well. You see them come into their own when you have lots of background tasks.
So to me, except perhaps on the laptop, OSX will only truly come into its own with the new 970 systems this fall. Don't get me wrong. I have a dual 867 system and love it. I find that for most of the tasks I actually *do* it is as fast as my 800 MHz P4 system. And for most tasks I actually do I don't see a huge different between a 800 MHz P4 system and my dual Athalon 2400+. For some tasks (games, graphics) the Athalon thoroughly trounces OSX. Further there are some aspects of OSX where the additional speed would be most welcome.
I don't think that fair. First off all computer manufacturers sell "wholes." If I buy a low end system from CompUSA with a crappy keyboard then I know I want to buy a new keyboard. Apple is hardly alone in that. It is true that many people buy components and then assemble them. So it doesn't apply in that case. However if you are able to do that, then surely complaining about having to pay an extra $25 for a mouse or so forth isn't a big deal.
The underlying issue, however, is really what are you analyzing. Are you analyzing operating systems to decide which to purchase? Then yes, you ought to compare whole systems. Further you have to compare whole systems as oriented towards a specific tastk. Most OS comparisons are not doing that. If you are just looking at how operating systems do things to see the pluses and minuses of each then I think hardware is fairly beside the point.
So I agree with you, but would simply say that what you want then is not an OS comparison but a system comparison. In which case you really ought to compare a Macintosh system with something like a Dell system.
I did some more checking. Apparently Toast will write an autorun CD that runs under classic. (The mode that lets OSX run legacy software) The classic autorun will actually let you run OSX software. The problem is that if classic isn't running it won't work. (And for most people classic typically isn't running) That may be what you saw. Autorunning CDs was possible in System 9 but is not part of OSX. (Justifiably so given the security concerns)
Slashdot Mirror
As typically used, the American form of republic is a subset of democracy. The parlimentary systems popular in Europe and Canada are an other.
Whenever someone says America isn't a democracy I must admit I cringe more than a little.
However to lose ones liberty they must have evidence and further sufficient evidence of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. No offense, but a list of possible aggitators really doesn't affect ones liberty. Hell, when I got a security clearance they pretty much told me that so long as you admit to what you've done it didn't matter what were in the records. My supervisor was a former drug dealer, member of Earth First, and took regular trips to China but worked on nuclear technology.
I know that some don't like this and hate the thought of information held by the government in general. Personally I find this view silly. Information isn't an inhibitation on liberty. I'm much more concerned about keeping laboratories in places like FBI forensics under check. That's where the real problems are. Keeping information unduly limits police. Hell, I saw one report that said investigators are seriously limited on what they can "officially" even access on the net.
One good paper on this phenomena of how proof has changed in math is William Thurston's, "On Proof and Progress in Mathematics." A great book that goes through a lot of recent work in philosophy of mathematics is New Directions in the Philosophy of Mathematics
by the Princeton University Press. While I still am primarily a Constructivist, I find that recent anti-foundationalist approaches to mathematics are very interesting. In particular you might find Putnam's assertion that math is becoming quasi-empirical very interesting.I always find Putnam interesting, even though I often disagree with him. He tends to try to blur the realist - anti-realist distinction in ways that end up being more slight of hand. (IMO)
Anyway, I think that you are adopting a foundational view of mathematics for which there are good reasons to reject. Further we can have a good reason for thinking a theorem correct without necessarily being able to prove it from strict foundations. And indeed the crisis in mathematical foundations at the end of the 19th century was the recognition that math had been proceeding without doing what you suggest. That was partially the impetitus behind such things as Whitehead and Russell's work on mathematical foundations.
You don't *need* to multithread everything. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do something. Certainly to get the benefits of a multiprocessor machine (or virtual machine) you ought to multithread. However you can often figure out what needs multithreaded fairly easily. I think the complexities of multithreading are usually poor software design and not the process itself.
Consider that they are going to face competition from two sources. The first is Linux whose desktop offerings, while still weak, are light years ahead of Sun. Even if Sun largely borrows Redhat's playbook and adds a bit more, they still have the hardware problem. They need cheap chips that are fast. They are competing with fast, cheap PC systems that run a desktop environment superior to anything Sun is likely to produce. Right now most desktop Solaris based machines you buy are woefully underpowered for the price. About on part with Apple machines but without the nice environment. (IMO)
Which brings us to Sun's other problem. Apple has lousy hardware at the moment but a rather amazing desktop Unix environment. Further it seems to get only better and better. The next iteration of OSX is due in a couple of months. X11 support is exemplary. Further, unlike the desktops of Linux or Solaris, Apple has most standard productivity applications, an amazing application scripting environment, and has purchased many high end graphic and sound application companies. Right now Apple's achilles heel is hardware that sucks relative to x86 systems. But it is widely expected that when OSX 10.3 is released that 970 systems will at a minimum be announced and demonstrated. That'll put Apple hardware within 10% of x86 hardware - although the price/performance is still up in the air.
Given all this it seems like Sun wants to compete with both Linux and Apple. It can't compete with the price/ performance of Linux. It can't compete with the maturity, elegance, and number of applications of OSX. So exactly how does it plan to compete?
Put an other way, you're right, but your confusing Apple's software with the code. Most of the services on OSX are open source and to say that "they are slower to release fixes than open source" rather misses the forest for the trees. (Or vice versa) What Apple does is provide a quick, easy update for regular users who don't want to deal with the complexities of compiling their open source programs. As such Apple reacts very timely and does a lot of checking.
So to differentiate Apple's security and open source's security is a false dichotomy.
To avoid cracks all the shareware authors need do is view the standard lists of cracks available on gnutella, direct connect and kazaa. They then update the software at their download site to check for those new numbers without updating the version number. First off most people don't hack software. Lets be honest. Most don't even know how. Secondly shareware software seems updated far more frequently than most commercial software. I also think most people see shareware authors as living far closer to the code and depending upon funds more than larger commercial firms. (Which isn't to say commercial firms don't have low margins and sometimes aren't barely making it - but the perception is that this is more true of shareware projects) Because of this perception I think that for crippled shareware people are less likely to use hacks. (IMO - I'm not sure how one could know what is *really* going on)
The most important thing to realize is that in such a statistical tie, the general populace didn't care who was President. Yes there were zealots on the right and left who did. But by and large they couldn't really convince enough people to get anything other than a tie.
Anyone who says they were robbed (or for Republicans "could have been robbed") misses this fundamental point.
Once someone starts bringing in conspiracy theories we know it is pointless to keep talking. Republicans claimed conspiracies in the Kennedy - Nixon election. And, given events in Chicago, they were probably right. But once again there wasn't an overwhelming decision. So who cares?
Now if someone can point to a 5% difference and vote rigging then I'll listen. Otherwise it is just sour grapes.
For combined scores Bush got a 1206 (not a 660) and Gore a 1355. Bush was in the 84th percentile. Not fantastic, but not bad. Here's more scores. Of course people with low SATS go on to do great in college and some with high ones do poorly. But ripping on Bush for getting into a good college given his High School performance really applies to Gore as well. (His grades in High School weren't exemplary either) Both got into ivy league schools because they were the sons of famous politicians. No doubt. But it applies equally to both.
BTW - Bush went to Yale for undergraduate studies and Harvard for graduate.
My point though is that whether he got in "via daddy" or had a bad year, the point is that doesn't necessarily reflect on their intelligence. Both liberals and conservative idealogues seem to harp on this. (i.e. there is no way their opponents can be smart)
I'm not sure I buy it myself. But certainly he did go on to do quite well. My complaint, as I mentioned, is not that I think Gore an idiot but rather the misleading view that Bush is an idiot. Harvard MBA's aren't quite the same as community college. The point to me is a double standard. But certainly fairness isn't high on the media's hit list.
Gore's Dubious School Record
Note that I don't think Gore an idiot. I disagree with him politically but he seems a smart and pleasant person. I question some of his rhetoric as being rather misleading. (Especially his environment book) However one could easily say the same of most politicians.
I'm not Gore fan and actually find it funny how the media portrayed him as brilliant and Bush as an idiot. (Gore was the one who flunked out of college while Bush was the one with an MBA from Harvard) Still I think this is a plus for Apple.
BTW - to the endless debate about who invented the internet. Even if Gore meant the funding/promotion of ARPANET he phrased it in a misleading way. The average person parsing that sentence would take it the way most did take it. Further he never corrected himself. So all these apologetics sort of miss the issue of presentation.
But that begs my question. What current PPC non-Apple laptops are available? I'm not aware of any. Old Apple laptops are great candidates, of course. As for embedded systems - surely they aren't going to be running full Linux are they? I could see some subset - but not a full Yellow Dog distro. Certainly one can compile for PPC chips using a PPC system with a full distro. But in that case I once again miss the point of running Yellow Dog instead of OSX. (Except for utilizing legacy equipment)
What are the reasons why current PPC hardware is preferable to x86 hardware. All the non-Apple PPC machines I've seen are even more overpriced and underperforming than Apple's. If you have old machines around I can certainly understand running Linux. However I don't understand it for new hardware. As the parent post said, X11 gives you pretty much everything Linux does plus you can, if necessary, run Aqua or Classic applications.
Given the relatively low number of cases in a congested city like Hong Kong, the initial reports of how easy it could spread seemed questionable. I mean if it spreads as easy as the flu, has been around for a couple of weeks, but there are only a hundred or so cases. Well, it doesn't quite sound like a pandemnic. More like the media was oversensationalizing things again.
For those writing custom software though, x86 clusters are probably more economical, if only because dual Xeons or dual Athalons are so much faster. Still it is nice to know Apple is trying to be price/performance competitive with the relative nature of the G4. I think that tells us what to expect from 970 systems. (Assuming sufficient volumes)
Don't get me wrong. It is important to be able to teach some semblance to science to those not naturally inclined towards the sciences. Yet there is a fundamentally different way of thinking in the sciences from most of the humanities - especially history!
I ran into this all the time trying to tutor lower division physics students. When they got to A/C circuits and the little bit of complex mathematics they required the students became rather hopelessly confused. Once you get the whole abstraction of "imaginary number" and the problem of mind and what common language means by imaginary the problem goes away. Well. . .not entirely I guess. But teaching them as a kind of vector that holds phase information for waves really does help, as do many, many practical examples. (My favorite example was a roll of toilet paper they'd pull on with an ink line on the side of the roll to represent phase)
My humble opinion on this (and the somewhat related thread on Junior High Science texts) is that keeping mathematics and physics so separated is a bit of a mistake. I think that teaching them in tandem is not wise. Physics is still very abstract, but is a great way to get a handle on mathematics. Typically you learn them about the same time. (i.e. you learn calculus to do simple physics - even when it is applied in other fields it is typically related to physics or physics problems) Trying to teach physics without enough "quantification" is difficult. Trying to teach mathematics without enough "practical examples" is a mistake.
It seems like every couple of years we get a new set of "reforms." Every time I check out the textbooks they are almost uniformly horrible. The biggest error (other than teaching incorrect notions) is that they push too general an idea rather than trying to give kids the skills and critical thinking. I guess its time for an other round. . .
The only problem is that PCs are typically 2 - 3x the clock speed of Macintoshes. Further the PCs are typically cheaper. Compare the price of a 1 GHz G4 based PowerMac to that of a 3 GHz P4 based Dell, for instance.
Cocoa and Obj-C are very nice. There are some flaws, but I'll not go into them. The bigger limitation is that Visual Studio is considerably superior to the Project Builder / Interface Builder combo that Apple offers. C# does RAD considerably better. Debugging logic is easier in Visual Studio. Some argue that Obj-C is better than either Java/C# or even C++. In some ways yes. In other ways no. For some things I really love C++. Further for the type of programs I do, I need the portability (and readibility by other employees) that C++ offers over Obj-C.
As for those claiming this huge speed increase over Intel chips at similar clock speeds. Well a lot of that is Apple FUD to deal with Motorola falling down on the job. Unfortunately it came back and bit them in the butt due to some aspects of OSX. Certainly it is slower in some aspects of the OS - that's why you can notice a large difference between Sys9 and OSX. Some of that is due to "perception" because OSX actually multitasks well. In Sys9 one process could "hog" the CPU giving the perception of greater speed. Some of it is due to aqua doing more than Sys9 does. Some of it is due to the difficulty of accelerating all those 3D graphics as opposed to the 2D widgets in XP and Sys9. So there certainly are some valid points.
However in an XP vs. OSX comparison you often are comparing XP systems that have systems that have SPEC scores about double that of the Macintosh system. (Or worse) Apple tried to deal with this using dual CPUs. I love dual CPUs, but it really doesn't accelerating individual tasks that well. You see them come into their own when you have lots of background tasks.
So to me, except perhaps on the laptop, OSX will only truly come into its own with the new 970 systems this fall. Don't get me wrong. I have a dual 867 system and love it. I find that for most of the tasks I actually *do* it is as fast as my 800 MHz P4 system. And for most tasks I actually do I don't see a huge different between a 800 MHz P4 system and my dual Athalon 2400+. For some tasks (games, graphics) the Athalon thoroughly trounces OSX. Further there are some aspects of OSX where the additional speed would be most welcome.
The underlying issue, however, is really what are you analyzing. Are you analyzing operating systems to decide which to purchase? Then yes, you ought to compare whole systems. Further you have to compare whole systems as oriented towards a specific tastk. Most OS comparisons are not doing that. If you are just looking at how operating systems do things to see the pluses and minuses of each then I think hardware is fairly beside the point.
So I agree with you, but would simply say that what you want then is not an OS comparison but a system comparison. In which case you really ought to compare a Macintosh system with something like a Dell system.
I did some more checking. Apparently Toast will write an autorun CD that runs under classic. (The mode that lets OSX run legacy software) The classic autorun will actually let you run OSX software. The problem is that if classic isn't running it won't work. (And for most people classic typically isn't running) That may be what you saw. Autorunning CDs was possible in System 9 but is not part of OSX. (Justifiably so given the security concerns)