A Windows that can't run Windows apps? Were you not paying attention when OSX came out? You just hook up an emulator and seamlessly integrate an older ("classic") version of the OS with the new one. That way you can still run older apps, but with reduced performance (or, about as fast as they used to run on old hardware).
Also, MS bought VirtualPC, and has been giving it away for free. Integration of the OS with VirtualPC would be pretty easy for MS to do. I've been waiting for it for a long time.
Customers win because they now have an OS that's not crap. Developers win because they just re-code the UI and sell a new version. And hopefully they have better UI libraries to do it with. MS wins because Windows7 isn't a joke.
Let's just hope that this doesn't get the same treatment that WinFS did. I'd rather they not under-promise and over-deliver, but that doesn't seem to be the microsoft way.
I wish you had posted this earlier, as I think this is the most insightful response I've heard about the MBA.
Personally, I wasn't really the target market. But my wife like her 12" powerbook because it fits nicely on her lap. I was thinking that when it dies, the MBA will be a great replacement.
It makes sense that the target demographic would be women as much as students, road warriors and others mentioned in the thread.
One of the main reasons that games are so much better than other commercial software is that the developers actually use them, and are often in the target market. When was the last time that a developer of a city-planning app was also a city planner in his spare time? Stayed up late some nights city planning? You don't really know the pain points until you experience them first hand.
CDs do have high quality audio. Not that this is especially relevant, but it is very possible to outstrip the quality of CDs with compressed audio. Just increase the sampling rate, increase the bit depth, compress with high bitrate.
Granted, that would be much more than the average consumer would need. But hey, even the current quality on iTunes is better than I can tell.
Digg has spent most of its time creating a system for users to moderate links.
Slashdot has spent most of its time creating a system for users to moderate discussions.
For links I go to Digg.
For discussions I go to Slashdot.
Typically, I use the '10 hot comments' sidebar thing to read slashdot. That's how I found your comment..:)
Seriously, that's a huge problem. All of a sudden your code stops working, and when you check it out, it's all missing.
"Sorry, I needed it somewhere else."
Amen to this. People used to ask me for advice about buying computers. The only advice I used to give them was to never, ever, ever buy a packard bell. Or take one offered for free.
I was pretty generous with helping people fix things on their computers, but I likewise had a personal policy of never working on a packard bell.
Seriously, that's one brand that's not worth resurrecting. It's like creating a titanic-branded cruise line.
So, like some of the other posters mentioned, the confusing part is security through obscurity vs. using secrets.
It can be shown that if two people know a secret, they can exchange information over a common channel, and eavesdroppers can't decrypt the message without trying every possible secret. This is somewhat like sending a safe through the mail - anyone intercepting packages at the post office would have to try every possible combination to get it open. Even if they knew the design of the safe. Even if they had helped design the safe.
A real-world example of this is the design of the ATM: The author used public-key encryption so that even if he were trying to break the encryption, he wouldn't be able to. While he made the design, he doesn't know the secret key.
The reason such strong encryption can't be used on DRM is because they have to give you the secret. It's like giving you a safe, giving you the code, and then telling you that you should only open it in certain circumstances.
I think the value of this feature will be in how it's implemented. For example, when you hit the button, sort the players by the number of bans that they have gotten in the current round, and then by who has been the loudest over the last minute, or something like that.
Exactly.. the form factor is one of the biggest selling points of the iMac. My mother in law is looking at an iMac, because they are looking at putting the computer in a room that they also use for entertaining, and don't want to be messy.
Also, if you use the bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and wifi for internet, there's exactly one cable going to your machine.
So, one interesting thing about DRM is that it enables a particular business model that is completely unfeasible without DRM. Here's a hint: it's not the iTMS model.
The Zune store, and any other subscription business model requires DRM. You can buy DRM-free tracks. It's impossible to rent them.
Perhaps this is why iTMS hasn't offered a subscription option.
The real problem is that procedural languages are fugly for working in on this stuff.
And the other side of that coin is that functional languages are fugly for looking at, or manipulating data. It's not just that most people aren't used to them, it's that they have ugly syntax and notation (Lisp, I'm looking at you))))))))))))). Not to mention that figuring out how to do many common things is a little puzzle.
If there was a functional, highly-threaded language that let me do procedural and functional stuff without needing to do a bunch of FoldR and cdrs all over the place, and not making my eyes bleed from the punctuation used, I'd be more interested in using it.
So, I wrote a little app that uses the Accelerate library on OSX. Basically, I use it for running convolutions on images that are coming from a webcam - blur, laplacian, etc.
The task itself is highly parallelizable, so the library actually does create multiple threads and use image tiling to get me better performance when multiple cores are available. On machines where there's just one core, it doesn't using threading. However, they join all the threads before returning from the API call, so my program works identically either way.
Also, I wrote the app on a PPC, but it still ran very nicely on Intel machines through Rosetta, because it was just a call to the underlying library.
IIRC from the original story, or one of them that came out, this isn't really much of a win for the average digital photographer. Where it really shines is when your sensors are extremely expensive - say, actually recording individual photon wavelengths instead of just filtered intensities, or something esoteric like that.
So, if an array of sensors is economically unfeasible, you can instead have an array of mirrors and a single sensor.
As for your question about sampling methods, there are several feature-sensitive sampling methods in use in high-end rendering (Monte Carlo ray tracing, Metropolis light transport, etc). These are pretty computationally expensive and/or complicated for a consumer device. And if you're using an esoteric sensor, you might be doing scientific work, and want an unbiased sample anyway.
Well, I guess what kind of credit you're looking for.
One option would be to use cryptography creatively, so you could authoritatively reveal yourself at any time. However, if you're trying to get a legitimate job from doing something illegal, yeah, that seems like a lost cause.
I guess it depends on the business model of independent security researchers, which is somewhat of a mystery to me.
So, this might not be relevant, but once I reported a cross-site scripting to a website by using a web anonymizer to create a hotmail account, sending exactly one message, and then never using the email account again.
Anonymizer tools have improved since then, especially for combating censorship. Would you be able to use TOR or something similar to report vulnerabilities without exposing your identity?
Slashdot Mirror
Also, MS bought VirtualPC, and has been giving it away for free. Integration of the OS with VirtualPC would be pretty easy for MS to do. I've been waiting for it for a long time.
Customers win because they now have an OS that's not crap. Developers win because they just re-code the UI and sell a new version. And hopefully they have better UI libraries to do it with. MS wins because Windows7 isn't a joke.
Let's just hope that this doesn't get the same treatment that WinFS did. I'd rather they not under-promise and over-deliver, but that doesn't seem to be the microsoft way.
I wish you had posted this earlier, as I think this is the most insightful response I've heard about the MBA.
Personally, I wasn't really the target market. But my wife like her 12" powerbook because it fits nicely on her lap. I was thinking that when it dies, the MBA will be a great replacement.
It makes sense that the target demographic would be women as much as students, road warriors and others mentioned in the thread.
One of the main reasons that games are so much better than other commercial software is that the developers actually use them, and are often in the target market. When was the last time that a developer of a city-planning app was also a city planner in his spare time? Stayed up late some nights city planning? You don't really know the pain points until you experience them first hand.
CDs do have high quality audio. Not that this is especially relevant, but it is very possible to outstrip the quality of CDs with compressed audio. Just increase the sampling rate, increase the bit depth, compress with high bitrate.
Granted, that would be much more than the average consumer would need. But hey, even the current quality on iTunes is better than I can tell.
Digg has spent most of its time creating a system for users to moderate links.
:)
Slashdot has spent most of its time creating a system for users to moderate discussions.
For links I go to Digg.
For discussions I go to Slashdot.
Typically, I use the '10 hot comments' sidebar thing to read slashdot. That's how I found your comment..
So, you're thinking that would stop him, or something? I mean he shot a lawyer in the face, and the lawyer apologized. How awesome is that?
Pfft. Old news.
"Sorry, I needed it somewhere else."
Copy and paste coding is much better.
Amen to this. People used to ask me for advice about buying computers. The only advice I used to give them was to never, ever, ever buy a packard bell. Or take one offered for free.
I was pretty generous with helping people fix things on their computers, but I likewise had a personal policy of never working on a packard bell.
Seriously, that's one brand that's not worth resurrecting. It's like creating a titanic-branded cruise line.
I'm looking forward to the realtime ragdoll physics rumored for EA CEO 2008.
So, like some of the other posters mentioned, the confusing part is security through obscurity vs. using secrets.
It can be shown that if two people know a secret, they can exchange information over a common channel, and eavesdroppers can't decrypt the message without trying every possible secret. This is somewhat like sending a safe through the mail - anyone intercepting packages at the post office would have to try every possible combination to get it open. Even if they knew the design of the safe. Even if they had helped design the safe.
A real-world example of this is the design of the ATM: The author used public-key encryption so that even if he were trying to break the encryption, he wouldn't be able to. While he made the design, he doesn't know the secret key.
The reason such strong encryption can't be used on DRM is because they have to give you the secret. It's like giving you a safe, giving you the code, and then telling you that you should only open it in certain circumstances.
I think the value of this feature will be in how it's implemented. For example, when you hit the button, sort the players by the number of bans that they have gotten in the current round, and then by who has been the loudest over the last minute, or something like that.
Exactly.. the form factor is one of the biggest selling points of the iMac. My mother in law is looking at an iMac, because they are looking at putting the computer in a room that they also use for entertaining, and don't want to be messy.
Also, if you use the bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and wifi for internet, there's exactly one cable going to your machine.
So, one interesting thing about DRM is that it enables a particular business model that is completely unfeasible without DRM. Here's a hint: it's not the iTMS model.
The Zune store, and any other subscription business model requires DRM. You can buy DRM-free tracks. It's impossible to rent them.
Perhaps this is why iTMS hasn't offered a subscription option.
My dream job title is CXO: Chief Xtreme Officer
I'll check it out.. :)
And the other side of that coin is that functional languages are fugly for looking at, or manipulating data. It's not just that most people aren't used to them, it's that they have ugly syntax and notation (Lisp, I'm looking at you))))))))))))). Not to mention that figuring out how to do many common things is a little puzzle.
If there was a functional, highly-threaded language that let me do procedural and functional stuff without needing to do a bunch of FoldR and cdrs all over the place, and not making my eyes bleed from the punctuation used, I'd be more interested in using it.
So, I wrote a little app that uses the Accelerate library on OSX. Basically, I use it for running convolutions on images that are coming from a webcam - blur, laplacian, etc.
The task itself is highly parallelizable, so the library actually does create multiple threads and use image tiling to get me better performance when multiple cores are available. On machines where there's just one core, it doesn't using threading. However, they join all the threads before returning from the API call, so my program works identically either way.
Also, I wrote the app on a PPC, but it still ran very nicely on Intel machines through Rosetta, because it was just a call to the underlying library.
You give them the lock.
You give them the key.
You hope that they can't figure out how to put one into the other.
High fives.
I think you mean "achieve high marketability through high clockspeed".
IIRC from the original story, or one of them that came out, this isn't really much of a win for the average digital photographer. Where it really shines is when your sensors are extremely expensive - say, actually recording individual photon wavelengths instead of just filtered intensities, or something esoteric like that.
So, if an array of sensors is economically unfeasible, you can instead have an array of mirrors and a single sensor.
As for your question about sampling methods, there are several feature-sensitive sampling methods in use in high-end rendering (Monte Carlo ray tracing, Metropolis light transport, etc). These are pretty computationally expensive and/or complicated for a consumer device. And if you're using an esoteric sensor, you might be doing scientific work, and want an unbiased sample anyway.
Well, I guess what kind of credit you're looking for.
One option would be to use cryptography creatively, so you could authoritatively reveal yourself at any time. However, if you're trying to get a legitimate job from doing something illegal, yeah, that seems like a lost cause.
I guess it depends on the business model of independent security researchers, which is somewhat of a mystery to me.
So, this might not be relevant, but once I reported a cross-site scripting to a website by using a web anonymizer to create a hotmail account, sending exactly one message, and then never using the email account again.
Anonymizer tools have improved since then, especially for combating censorship. Would you be able to use TOR or something similar to report vulnerabilities without exposing your identity?
What about infogear, teledex, "Generic", and the company "iPhone"?
All of those are first-page results for the searches in the earlier post.
On the other hand, Cisco hasn't been doing too good of a job defending their trademark so far.
Amazon
Google
It looks like there's at least 2-3 other products called 'iPhone' currently on the market. Perhaps more. A few of them are voip products.