How am I a troll for pointing out that equipping civilian aircraft with military technology makes them a target? Or is it for pointing out that our tax dollars are going to a plan that would not have dont any good had it existed at any point in American history instead of spending it on things that have been major issues?
Yay for Political/.
Is this technology meant to be used on civilian transport aircraft? Making my family vacation to California a military target for whatever theoretical enemy is launching missiles at us sure doesn't make me feel safer, how 'bout you?
Also, as others have pointed out, aren't there more practical ways to use this money? The Fed is already creating an enormous deficit with its overspending- are the sci-fi dreams of a megalomaniac with brain disease really the most effective use they can come up with, given the imminent collapse of Social Security, rocketing tax burden on the middle class, a grossly underfunded education and public service budget, the floundering of oh so many state economies, and countless other fiscal crises?
That's ridiculous. A state like North Dakota, with a tiny number of electoral votes, is still not likely to be very important. If the electoral vote numbers are based on population, it should get the same weight in a direct popular vote.
The question here is not how much weight each state gets in the election- that's more or less fair. The problem is that voters in close states matter more than voters in strong Red/Blue states. No one listens to Southern Democrats, because we've failed lately to carry even a single Southern state. No one listens to Northeastern Republicans, because the Northeast is a Democrat stronghold (New Hampshire notwithstanding).
In order for the election to be fair and voter participation to go up, every vote needs to count. The Electoral College's main flaw is winner-take-all; if every state split the electoral votes, it would be almost the same as a popular vote. The fact that my casting a vote for Kerry makes no difference because I live in Texas means that my vote is a lot less important than that of someone in Ohio. That's wrong.
It's not supposed to be "budget" in our sense of the word- no one is suggesting that an internet-ready machien will ever be cheap enough for a Mexican, Brazillian, or Russian working class family to shrug off the expense. However, $249 is entering the feasible range- it would be like an American working class family buying an iMac. Sure, it's a big expense, but if they really want to it's not totally unreasonable.
The Republicans blocked efforts to redistrict fairly in 2001. They are not doing this to balance the situation. I live in Austin; my city, the CAPITAL OF THE FREAKING STATE, is being carved into several Conservative districts. Funny, the liberal centres around the state are being diced up into slight minorities in Conservative districts all over. Fair's fair, right?
If the Democrats did things like this 12 years ago before Bush took over, we'd still have the state. Obviously, we either didn't do it or did a really piss poor job.
iTunes sales numbers have blown all expectations, and are currently well over one million songs.
iTunes is expected to be released for Windows this year, and there are rumors that it will be bundled with AOL as the default music player- this would mean that every single AOL user would be sent to iTMS by default.
iTunes Music Store has shown quite convincingly that people are willing to pay for music, so long as the cost is reasonable.
immediately after downloading the update, I had a minor startup crash- it just restarted itself, then took a while to boot. It seems to be fine now, but if you have any extremely important data you should back it up just in case (you should always do this before doing anything that touches your system).
I, like virtually every Mac user, was shocked and disappointed to hear that iTools was making the move to.Mac and coming with a nice hefty fee. I figured I'd use it for a year, and in that time start using my alternate email account for everything.
After having used.Mac for this long, I have to say I don't know that I could do without it. Having 100mb of webspace is a nice feature- it's a great fileserver for images and text and the like, although the lack of server-side support for things like PHP makes it somewhat less useful for actual site hosting. iSync is wonderful, and saved me just today when I had to format my System partition due to some strange and unfixable corruption. The email is great as well, giving you plenty of space and access to your email from any computer running a modern OS via webmail. That alone may be worth the $100 a year; however, that fails to account for many other oft-overlooked features of.Mac.
The freebies, while put down frequently by.Mac subscribers and non-subscribers alike, are a nice way of showing that Apple cares- think of them as gifts. You don't expect them, you don't buy.Mac for them, but they come to you anyway, and if even one is useful a single time, you've gained something extra from them. The VT+ subscription is very cool; any Mac user should know that VT is an extremely useful tool even without +/Pro access. Also, the $20 off coupon for resubscribing, while not as nice as the $50 off for iTools members the first year, is certainly nice. If you want The Sims or Everquest for some odd reason, you can get those instead.
.Mac is great, and these new offers make me even more glad I shelled out the $8.33 a month for it.
As far as I know, the problem is limited to a few iMacs/eMacs. I have no problems on the iBook, powerbook g4, or powermac G4 in my house... all on 10.2.8. I would expect Apple to put it back up as soon as they fix the apparent failure, either through a modified 10.2.8 or a patch for the systems affected.
This update is nothing all that exciting, so it's not a mistake that it ever went up.
In other words, don't worry if you have 10.2.8. You'll be fine.
That's not entirely true. For some users, the small delays with a slower machine are not a problem. I, however, find myself getting very frustrated at the iBook for being slow, I'm spoiled byt my desktop (dual G4), but even this thing bogs down with regular tasks occasionally.
Also, the G5 includes many other speedbumps- HDD, memory, FSB, etc. that are more likely to be noticed by the average user than the insanely fast CPU (not that that hurts either).
Also, tasks that are 'resource intensive' are becoming more and more popular. People routinely move huge amounts of data around, compile large chunks of code, play modern games, and other such tasks. My 'real' work (web design / programming) hardly taxes the resources of this system, but my casual hobby uses do quite often.
Finally, consider this: Five years ago, a 233MHz G3 could get by just fine. Nowadays, you can't even run X on it (well, you can, if you don't mind waiting a minute to open a folder). The 'basic' functions most people use their computers for are growing more and more system resource intensive.
Make the ads uncuttable- plant them sublinally in the shows themself! You know, single frame ads, cleverly concealed slogans (yvan eht nioj anyone?)...
Or, if they wanted to go the 'morally acceptable' route, they could always have an ad bar on the screen during the show- nothing obnoxious, just a small banner... to keep them from being blocked, they could put them on the top or bottom randomly and switch every show.
But I really don't see the problem as valid- it's easy to get music without supporting the industry, but the majority of people that buy at least some CDs manage to support the poor underpayed multimillionaire bands...
Despair thought it would be funny to apply for a trademark of the:( smiley. Proving the utter stupidity of the system, it was granted. They had a gag page set up offering to sell one-use licenses for $5 a pop, but they got actual flame mail from *cough* certain high-caliber individuals *cough* who believed it to be true...
The whole purpose behind having so many languages is for different specialized needs. There used to be PASCAL for scientists, FORTRAN for mathematicians, BASIC for hobbyists or new programmers... each server a purpose, and was not made to do anything more.
Nowadays, Perl and PHP are almost identical, Obj C, C, and C++ are very similar, Java bears many similarities to Obj C and C++ as well, and most of the new 'Basic' environments like REALBasic and VisualBasic are near clones as well.
All of today's popular coding environments could be condensed to Java, Objective C, Perl, and some form of BASIC. This point is exemplified nicely by the fact that a bit of code can be done to compile in 4 languages... the syntax is already quite close, having so many minor variants is just messy.
Escape Velocity was perhaps the most amazing shareware title ever developed, and its modular plug-ins gave it near unlimited replay value. Escape Velocity: Override, the sequel, dissapointed many diehard fans such as myself, with only token adjustments to the end experience and a new universe that, while larger and encompassing more races and subplots, lacked the appeal ofthe original. Don't get me wrong, though; Override was still an incredible game.
Finally, we see a new EV, with new races, a new story, a new engine, better everything, and best of all, OSX support. Say goodbye to your social lives, kiddies!
Let's hope Nova returns to its roots and deliver the amazing gameplay us Ambrosia fans (and Mac users!) have come to expect.
In my area (Austin), SWBell has put out of business just about every DSL carrier in the region. Their service has also been subpar lately, so we may have no option but RoadRunner. Honestly, do the Bells need HELP making monopolies?
It's been pointed out to Microsoft so many times now, maybe they're just leaving security loopholes in their code so you have to pay them to upgrade? I mean, c'mon, they can't garuantee new ideas and innovations for the next version, they can't risk making one perfect! Security flaws are a marketing strategy!
Note- if you aren't interested in hearing my response to our friendly Anonymous Coward, you probably don't care about what I have to say, but feel free to read anyways if you want...
SO I'm the troll? I may be new to SlashDot, but in the communities I'm used to, it is generally accepted that in order to contradict another's statements, one must supply evidence.
If you want to pull apart my posts piece by piece, at the very least do it correctly!
"> I know the module is supposed to simulate programming a quantum computer, but it is not trying to simulate a quantum computer
That's a gem. "
Read the part of my message you quoted again... There is, in fact, a difference between software and hardware. Unless you are in the habit of burning your Quantum Perl code on ROMs or whatnot, my statement remains perfectly valid.
"Well that does it, you really don't know what you're talking about at all."
What I don't know is what you're talking about... if my statements are inaccurate, let us poor ignorant fools know how, if it won't waste too much of your valuable time... thanks.
and on the off chance you actually know what you're talking about, I admit that my statements were vastly simplified, such as the infinitely greater processing power or more efficient resource management points, but they remain fundamentally valid.
In theory, the limit to conventional computers is the limit of resources- the speed of electric currents (or, if/when we develop optic processors, lightwaves), the matter available for physical resources, etc.
A quantum computer would, again in theory, be able to use resources in all of their infinite states and positions in the multiverse. Depending on your views on advanced quantum physics beyond that which has been sufficiently evidenced to be widey accepted, matter is either infinite or finite to a larger extent than our perception, but I believe the former. If you want to hear my theories on the multiverse, email me (solistus@mac.com). Otherwise, stay at the level you're willing to discuss.
By the way, if you are arguing that the purpose of quantum computers is, in fact, to have multiple values for a single variable, and this can be done fairly effectively using Perl on a personal computer, you utterly fail to grasp the magnitude of the potential creation of a quantum computer.
Discover magazine, Sept. 2001 issue, volume 22, #9 has an interesting article on a similar theory to mine on quantum physics as it applies to the multiverse as a whole.
I know the module is supposed to simulate programming a quantum computer, but it is not trying to simulate a quantum computer, there is a fundamental difference.
Also, I sincerely doubt that quantum computers will function this way, it is not the purpose of quantum computers to store multiple values for a single variable; it is to use physical resources more effectively
The article does not mention quantum computers, devices which do not exist and may not for quite a while. It simply applies the idea of multiple coexistant states, only one of which being observable at a time, to Perl. You'll note that it runs on a conventional computer; mathematically, a quantum computer would have infinite times the processing power of our current supercomputers, as it could use system resources infinite times at once, assuming each state existed seperately.
This does not relate in any way to the hypothesized "Quantum Computers" of the not-so-near future; rather, it is an interesting new operation in Perl which could make anything using random numbers more powerful and easier to code. Imagine the possiblities for games... a very easy way to weight values without using tons of variables... yummy.
I don't recall stating that there was a problem here, but if you want to start that debate, Apple got the basic ideas for the original MacOS from Xerox. OSX is far beyond these roots all modern GUIs trace back to. The distinction between Apple and Microsoft is that since Xerox, Apple has come up with new ideas much more commonly than Microsoft.
If you feel the need to continue this argument further, ICQ me at 98545687. I doubt anyone else cares.
I know it is based on BSD. In case the;) didn't give it away, that was not an entirely serious comment.
However, there is more than just a BSD kernel to MacOS X; it has plenty of its own code for Microsoft to play with
Microsoft has a long, proud history of "borrowing" MacOS code and ideas. Note the rubber duck being a multiple user icon in Windows, straight from OS9. Not exactly the most likely coincidence, is it?
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How am I a troll for pointing out that equipping civilian aircraft with military technology makes them a target? Or is it for pointing out that our tax dollars are going to a plan that would not have dont any good had it existed at any point in American history instead of spending it on things that have been major issues? Yay for Political /.
Is this technology meant to be used on civilian transport aircraft? Making my family vacation to California a military target for whatever theoretical enemy is launching missiles at us sure doesn't make me feel safer, how 'bout you? Also, as others have pointed out, aren't there more practical ways to use this money? The Fed is already creating an enormous deficit with its overspending- are the sci-fi dreams of a megalomaniac with brain disease really the most effective use they can come up with, given the imminent collapse of Social Security, rocketing tax burden on the middle class, a grossly underfunded education and public service budget, the floundering of oh so many state economies, and countless other fiscal crises?
That's ridiculous. A state like North Dakota, with a tiny number of electoral votes, is still not likely to be very important. If the electoral vote numbers are based on population, it should get the same weight in a direct popular vote. The question here is not how much weight each state gets in the election- that's more or less fair. The problem is that voters in close states matter more than voters in strong Red/Blue states. No one listens to Southern Democrats, because we've failed lately to carry even a single Southern state. No one listens to Northeastern Republicans, because the Northeast is a Democrat stronghold (New Hampshire notwithstanding). In order for the election to be fair and voter participation to go up, every vote needs to count. The Electoral College's main flaw is winner-take-all; if every state split the electoral votes, it would be almost the same as a popular vote. The fact that my casting a vote for Kerry makes no difference because I live in Texas means that my vote is a lot less important than that of someone in Ohio. That's wrong.
It's not supposed to be "budget" in our sense of the word- no one is suggesting that an internet-ready machien will ever be cheap enough for a Mexican, Brazillian, or Russian working class family to shrug off the expense. However, $249 is entering the feasible range- it would be like an American working class family buying an iMac. Sure, it's a big expense, but if they really want to it's not totally unreasonable.
The Republicans blocked efforts to redistrict fairly in 2001. They are not doing this to balance the situation. I live in Austin; my city, the CAPITAL OF THE FREAKING STATE, is being carved into several Conservative districts. Funny, the liberal centres around the state are being diced up into slight minorities in Conservative districts all over. Fair's fair, right?
If the Democrats did things like this 12 years ago before Bush took over, we'd still have the state. Obviously, we either didn't do it or did a really piss poor job.
iTunes sales numbers have blown all expectations, and are currently well over one million songs.
iTunes is expected to be released for Windows this year, and there are rumors that it will be bundled with AOL as the default music player- this would mean that every single AOL user would be sent to iTMS by default.
iTunes Music Store has shown quite convincingly that people are willing to pay for music, so long as the cost is reasonable.
immediately after downloading the update, I had a minor startup crash- it just restarted itself, then took a while to boot. It seems to be fine now, but if you have any extremely important data you should back it up just in case (you should always do this before doing anything that touches your system).
No, I agree. $100 a year requires more than just webspace.... but you get more, as I said.
...To just install Windows on them? I guarantee you wouldn't get much more uptime.
I, like virtually every Mac user, was shocked and disappointed to hear that iTools was making the move to .Mac and coming with a nice hefty fee. I figured I'd use it for a year, and in that time start using my alternate email account for everything.
After having used .Mac for this long, I have to say I don't know that I could do without it. Having 100mb of webspace is a nice feature- it's a great fileserver for images and text and the like, although the lack of server-side support for things like PHP makes it somewhat less useful for actual site hosting. iSync is wonderful, and saved me just today when I had to format my System partition due to some strange and unfixable corruption. The email is great as well, giving you plenty of space and access to your email from any computer running a modern OS via webmail. That alone may be worth the $100 a year; however, that fails to account for many other oft-overlooked features of .Mac.
The freebies, while put down frequently by .Mac subscribers and non-subscribers alike, are a nice way of showing that Apple cares- think of them as gifts. You don't expect them, you don't buy .Mac for them, but they come to you anyway, and if even one is useful a single time, you've gained something extra from them. The VT+ subscription is very cool; any Mac user should know that VT is an extremely useful tool even without +/Pro access. Also, the $20 off coupon for resubscribing, while not as nice as the $50 off for iTools members the first year, is certainly nice. If you want The Sims or Everquest for some odd reason, you can get those instead.
.Mac is great, and these new offers make me even more glad I shelled out the $8.33 a month for it.
As far as I know, the problem is limited to a few iMacs/eMacs. I have no problems on the iBook, powerbook g4, or powermac G4 in my house... all on 10.2.8. I would expect Apple to put it back up as soon as they fix the apparent failure, either through a modified 10.2.8 or a patch for the systems affected. This update is nothing all that exciting, so it's not a mistake that it ever went up. In other words, don't worry if you have 10.2.8. You'll be fine.
That's not entirely true. For some users, the small delays with a slower machine are not a problem. I, however, find myself getting very frustrated at the iBook for being slow, I'm spoiled byt my desktop (dual G4), but even this thing bogs down with regular tasks occasionally. Also, the G5 includes many other speedbumps- HDD, memory, FSB, etc. that are more likely to be noticed by the average user than the insanely fast CPU (not that that hurts either). Also, tasks that are 'resource intensive' are becoming more and more popular. People routinely move huge amounts of data around, compile large chunks of code, play modern games, and other such tasks. My 'real' work (web design / programming) hardly taxes the resources of this system, but my casual hobby uses do quite often. Finally, consider this: Five years ago, a 233MHz G3 could get by just fine. Nowadays, you can't even run X on it (well, you can, if you don't mind waiting a minute to open a folder). The 'basic' functions most people use their computers for are growing more and more system resource intensive.
Make the ads uncuttable- plant them sublinally in the shows themself! You know, single frame ads, cleverly concealed slogans (yvan eht nioj anyone?)...
Or, if they wanted to go the 'morally acceptable' route, they could always have an ad bar on the screen during the show- nothing obnoxious, just a small banner... to keep them from being blocked, they could put them on the top or bottom randomly and switch every show.
But I really don't see the problem as valid- it's easy to get music without supporting the industry, but the majority of people that buy at least some CDs manage to support the poor underpayed multimillionaire bands...
Despair thought it would be funny to apply for a trademark of the :( smiley. Proving the utter stupidity of the system, it was granted. They had a gag page set up offering to sell one-use licenses for $5 a pop, but they got actual flame mail from *cough* certain high-caliber individuals *cough* who believed it to be true...
The whole purpose behind having so many languages is for different specialized needs. There used to be PASCAL for scientists, FORTRAN for mathematicians, BASIC for hobbyists or new programmers... each server a purpose, and was not made to do anything more.
Nowadays, Perl and PHP are almost identical, Obj C, C, and C++ are very similar, Java bears many similarities to Obj C and C++ as well, and most of the new 'Basic' environments like REALBasic and VisualBasic are near clones as well.
All of today's popular coding environments could be condensed to Java, Objective C, Perl, and some form of BASIC. This point is exemplified nicely by the fact that a bit of code can be done to compile in 4 languages... the syntax is already quite close, having so many minor variants is just messy.
Escape Velocity was perhaps the most amazing shareware title ever developed, and its modular plug-ins gave it near unlimited replay value. Escape Velocity: Override, the sequel, dissapointed many diehard fans such as myself, with only token adjustments to the end experience and a new universe that, while larger and encompassing more races and subplots, lacked the appeal ofthe original. Don't get me wrong, though; Override was still an incredible game. Finally, we see a new EV, with new races, a new story, a new engine, better everything, and best of all, OSX support. Say goodbye to your social lives, kiddies! Let's hope Nova returns to its roots and deliver the amazing gameplay us Ambrosia fans (and Mac users!) have come to expect.
Is it just me, or is -2 for me and -1 for the other guy a bit harsh? Someone with mod points, please give us our karma back!
So THAT'S where Africa is? Thank God for modern science, that was a real eye opener.
In my area (Austin), SWBell has put out of business just about every DSL carrier in the region. Their service has also been subpar lately, so we may have no option but RoadRunner. Honestly, do the Bells need HELP making monopolies?
It's been pointed out to Microsoft so many times now, maybe they're just leaving security loopholes in their code so you have to pay them to upgrade? I mean, c'mon, they can't garuantee new ideas and innovations for the next version, they can't risk making one perfect! Security flaws are a marketing strategy!
Note- if you aren't interested in hearing my response to our friendly Anonymous Coward, you probably don't care about what I have to say, but feel free to read anyways if you want...
SO I'm the troll? I may be new to SlashDot, but in the communities I'm used to, it is generally accepted that in order to contradict another's statements, one must supply evidence.
If you want to pull apart my posts piece by piece, at the very least do it correctly!
"> I know the module is supposed to simulate programming a quantum computer, but it is not trying to simulate a quantum computer
That's a gem. "
Read the part of my message you quoted again... There is, in fact, a difference between software and hardware. Unless you are in the habit of burning your Quantum Perl code on ROMs or whatnot, my statement remains perfectly valid.
"Well that does it, you really don't know what you're talking about at all."
What I don't know is what you're talking about... if my statements are inaccurate, let us poor ignorant fools know how, if it won't waste too much of your valuable time... thanks.
and on the off chance you actually know what you're talking about, I admit that my statements were vastly simplified, such as the infinitely greater processing power or more efficient resource management points, but they remain fundamentally valid. In theory, the limit to conventional computers is the limit of resources- the speed of electric currents (or, if/when we develop optic processors, lightwaves), the matter available for physical resources, etc.
A quantum computer would, again in theory, be able to use resources in all of their infinite states and positions in the multiverse. Depending on your views on advanced quantum physics beyond that which has been sufficiently evidenced to be widey accepted, matter is either infinite or finite to a larger extent than our perception, but I believe the former. If you want to hear my theories on the multiverse, email me (solistus@mac.com). Otherwise, stay at the level you're willing to discuss.
By the way, if you are arguing that the purpose of quantum computers is, in fact, to have multiple values for a single variable, and this can be done fairly effectively using Perl on a personal computer, you utterly fail to grasp the magnitude of the potential creation of a quantum computer.
Discover magazine, Sept. 2001 issue, volume 22, #9 has an interesting article on a similar theory to mine on quantum physics as it applies to the multiverse as a whole.
I know the module is supposed to simulate programming a quantum computer, but it is not trying to simulate a quantum computer, there is a fundamental difference.
Also, I sincerely doubt that quantum computers will function this way, it is not the purpose of quantum computers to store multiple values for a single variable; it is to use physical resources more effectively
The article does not mention quantum computers, devices which do not exist and may not for quite a while. It simply applies the idea of multiple coexistant states, only one of which being observable at a time, to Perl. You'll note that it runs on a conventional computer; mathematically, a quantum computer would have infinite times the processing power of our current supercomputers, as it could use system resources infinite times at once, assuming each state existed seperately. This does not relate in any way to the hypothesized "Quantum Computers" of the not-so-near future; rather, it is an interesting new operation in Perl which could make anything using random numbers more powerful and easier to code. Imagine the possiblities for games... a very easy way to weight values without using tons of variables... yummy.
I don't recall stating that there was a problem here, but if you want to start that debate, Apple got the basic ideas for the original MacOS from Xerox. OSX is far beyond these roots all modern GUIs trace back to. The distinction between Apple and Microsoft is that since Xerox, Apple has come up with new ideas much more commonly than Microsoft.
If you feel the need to continue this argument further, ICQ me at 98545687. I doubt anyone else cares.
I know it is based on BSD. In case the ;) didn't give it away, that was not an entirely serious comment.
However, there is more than just a BSD kernel to MacOS X; it has plenty of its own code for Microsoft to play with
Microsoft has a long, proud history of "borrowing" MacOS code and ideas. Note the rubber duck being a multiple user icon in Windows, straight from OS9. Not exactly the most likely coincidence, is it?