Harvard- 350 year history, $2 billion endowment, alumni include Senators, supreme court justices, some of the best lawyers in the country.
"$2 billion endowment"?!! What happened to the other 38 billions dollars?
Seriously, Harvard has a nearly $30 billion dollar endowment.
Now, that's not for everyone, Harvard's schools raise their own funds, but still a nice bank account. Though it's not mouldering away, last year the endowment made 23% return.
However, the RIAA probably isn't just daunted by Harvard's school of law, they've several schools who graduate leaders in their fields. So taking on Harvard is taking on a alumni list that, were it mobilized, could casually shut down the cartel the RIAA depends upon.
So while the RIAA is enthusiastic to extort all the money they can they're also well aware their entire raison d'être is dubious in the extreme, and wouldn't hold up to critical inspection. So instead they prey on the easier targets and don't provoke battles they could lose in a truly decisive way.
Or, perhaps someday they will get all coked up, go gung-ho, and we'll see if they last a few rounds of public, judicial, and legislative debate.
In Montreal a generation of Metro subway cars electric motors were tuned to perfect fifths, coincidentally the first three notes of Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man". The tones were even part of a TV ad campaign when the line was opened.
However the Montreal Metro offers another treat to the senses: Smell.
The train brakes are two part, electromagnetic over ~10km/h and birch wood injected with peanut oil slower. Thus when a train comes to a hard stop the station smells faintly of burnt popcorn. If you have to smell your public transit this is about as good as it gets!
Thanks - yours is exactly the sort of viewpoint I was hoping to hear from - real life tool users, not armchair zealots.
So in your opinion an up-to-date JDK is what you require, and could live without OS hooks, native-GUI, etc.?
Do you think the special Java bindings, native-GUI, etc. are worth the effort on Apple's part, or do you believe those would continue to be under-utilized?
Aside from "Kewl - can MRI more things!" (I used to work in museums - we luv being able to see inside stuff without taking it apart) this also stands to help with the helium shortage.
One of the largest uses of helium is in MRI machines, and with the current shortage costs of helium are going up, dramatically. Less helium required, even if spread out amongst more MRI machines, should be good thing.
... are there ANY popular apps for the mac written in Java other than Azureus?
Cyberduck is one I use regularly, a (s)ftp client, and it is indistinguishable from a Cocoa-based application. Indeed Cyberduck is a showcase of MacOS technologies: Spotlight, Bonjour, Keychain, Applescript, iDisk, drag-'n-drop, etc.
I've always assumed there are vertical applications able to operate on the Mac because of Apple's Java support, much like other *nix-based code can be migrated without major (non-GUI) trauma.
Apple rewrote their WebObject platform into Java. They built bindings into MacOS 10.3 making Java apps 'native', heck spent serious resources Aqua-fying Java to look native.
So now there are a coupla Mac apps that are actually Java.
But the bindings have been depreciated. And Apple is getting slower & slower about releasing Java updates. All the while additional toolsets are getting added, receiving support, etc.
Then there's the iPhone, which Apple has made clear they've little interest in adding Java to.
So does Apple perceive Java as moving into the also-ran category? Something that isn't gonna pay off development & support effort as a major player on the desktop? What makes it inappropriate for the iPhone?
Are there any Java-on-Mac developers willing to share their insights? Folks who actually use it, pay attention to it on an ongoing basis, etc.?
That'd scare the heck out of a lot of folks. Apple has bought numerous products & smaller companies for code, patents, or teams before but Adobe (+ the former Macromedia) is a peer on the software side. That'd alienate the huge Windows userbase as well as freak out the many Adobe partners.
And to gain what?
Adobe already sells massively to Apple's customers. Sure their apps may lag, but Adobe has a huge set of codebases that has gone through 68000 -> PPC --> MacOS X --> x86, so if getting things up to speed & certified on each new iteration of MacOS X takes a bit that's not unreasonable.
To Mac-ify the apps? Again, why? Sure Apple is famous for doing really good (if not perfect) UIs but Adobe has some serious credibility too. Indeed it's been pretty clear that Apple & Adobe competing directly in some areas has improved both offerings.
Sorry, but I'm guessing Apple has enough on it's plate now. They'd just be complicating an already good, already mutually profitable situation for little reason or much greater profit.
Indeed look at the list above of companies & products folks think Apple should have bought, and in retrospect consider if they really would have been good investments...
I am SOOOO sick of folks being so sure that Apple should bless MacOS X on generic PCs.
Do you all honestly think that the folks at Apple are entirely congenital idjits?
(I know, it wouldn't be/. if 99% of the posters weren't convinced their 30 seconds gloss on any random topic didn't give them profound insights those investing their professional careers on a subject astonishingly oblivious to...)
Perhaps, just perhaps, Apple has run the numbers.
Indeed, possibly, Apple actually HAS the numbers to run and so, after looking over their numbers, and considering their financial model, and the state of the market, they've managed to determine MacOS-on-* might NOT be in their best interest?
Because going on (and on, and on) about your deepest fanboy wishes on/. & like sites doesn't seem to be impressing the folks at Apple.
So, instead of telling the rest of us this again & again how you think Apple should do things how about putting together a nice presentation for them and see how far you get. Now, to be honest I don't think J. Random Know-It-All is gonna tell them anything they don't already know (probably better then you do) but please, go ahead, stop blathering on about how you're right and they're wrong and try and convince THEM.
'Cause saying it over and over again here is just a waste of electrons.
It is true the NeXT did not make inexpensive computers, but on the other hand, they were making workstations.
But not enough folks wanted them, particularly at their price point. THAT was NeXt's greatest shortcoming, and it's a HUGE one.
I don't mean to be harsh, some of my best friends had NeXTs, I used it professionally, I was excited over NeXT buying Apple for -US$400 million, but that doesn't change it's initial profound failure in the marketplace.
For US$10,0000 a pop, with a limited application suite, initially aimed at academia (who have champagne & caviar dreams but cheap beer & pizza budgets) NeXT blew through cash and cratered.
Even repositioned as a RAD platform for engineering, graphics, & finance it was still too much for too little. What everyone else was selling or not doesn't matter much if they were SELLING & NeXT WASN'T. (That his Steveness spent silly money on logos & Zen HQ & a color-coordinated automated factory only makes it all the more appalling.)
Like GEOS, like BEOS, like OS/2, NeXT wasn't able to successfully compete. Fantabulous or not it failed, and for some good reasons, and hopefully lessons learned.
Now, all these years later, NeXT-derived MacOS X, with the product base inherited from it's grafted-on Mac compatibility layers, now has the inertia to really start to shine. It's been a long road, indeed one that has required backtracking and re-routing, but things finally seem headed in the right direction for NeXT/Apple. But saying it was all-that back-in-the-day ignores that NeXT/Apple wasn't offering what-folks-want/could-afford, and that's lesson that needs to stay learnt.
Just for fun, name a feature in OS X that didn't have an adequate or superior alternative in NeXTstep ?
Value.
Asking US$10,000 wasn't a viable price point for the OS.
Even a US$1,000 premium for an OS was impossible to sustain.
Now at US$100 a pop it's gaining some real traction.
Profitability is the MacOS X feature NeXTstep never had.
'Cept we don't want folks cutting across farmland, industrial sites, or via emergency-services-only ramps.
The problem is there are plenty of controlled-access routes around, and they're not on maps because they're not public roads. I already have a problem with my GPS trying to get me to use an 'official use only' exit off of a toll highway, I don't need it trying to route me through a secured military base.
Even trying to use GPS units (or cellphone triangulation, or whatever) to determine route popularity will be distorted by on-the-road-16-hours-a-day vehicles like long-haul trucks, delivery vans, and, yes, police & like vehicles. That Fedex drives through my neighborhood a half dozen times a day doesn't make their pickup/delivery pattern optimal for general drivers wanting to get from point-A-to-point-B.
/. and Wikipedia are substantially different resources. One is threaded conversations on geek topics, the other is an editable encyclopedia.
Thus I don't hold conversations on/. with those who can't be bothered to create even an a minimal identity and invest in some reputability. They rarely say anything of interest, rarely return to follow up their posts, and rarely have a legitimate reason for wanting anonymity (typically to-post-asshat-things-w/o-accountability).
Are there AC exceptions? Sure, but few, far-between, and not worth my effort to winnow through for. So I use the supplied tools to filter and let folks know not to bother to expect me to read AC postings, including direct replies.
On the other hand from my experience WP is fairly well managed. It's not perfect but good enough, particularly since I know it's limitations. For getting a quick gloss, looking up a half-remembered item, checking a verifiable fact, getting a start on actually researching something, it has proven invaluable.
While there are complaints of WP vandalism and reputability I haven't had any issue. Indeed on the articles I pay attention to the foolishness hasn't been a problem at all. Something inappropriate or irrelevant gets added, or something appropriate removed, it is quickly noted on the Talk page and soon corrected.
(As a test I just reviewed the past few AC responses to/. postings of mine. Nope, nothing worth anything. One I might have pointed out "national code" depends on the nation, and while the response apparently quotes US legal code I wasn't talking about a US install, but it's not worth pointing out their incorrect assumption.) The rest are complete time-wasters.
Really? I just checked the half dozen edits Ive made over the past six months. The 5 trivial ones are all intact, and the extensive one (transportation in the town I live in) was edited & rearranged, for the better.
Archimede's Screw is not a replacement for a rope & bucket. Or at least, not for the sort of deep well seen in many parts of the world where surface water is unavailable or contaminated.
Archimede's Screw requires substantially more run then rise; making it suitable for moving water up and over from a river to a settling pond or canal. Wikipedia has a good explanation of the mathematics; for the casual reader just figure about a 30 degree angle or less.
On the other hand a rope & bucket is all rise and very little run; it just brings water up, on the very close order of 90 degrees.
So they're substantially different sort of devices, and not interchangeable at all. Nor is either particularly new, Archimede's Screw dates back 2,500+ years, the rope and bucket considerably further.
All of that said, I have to note that not knowing about Archimede's Screw is a pretty spectacular gap in a decent education.
The six classes of simple machines - wedge, ramp, screw, lever, wheel & axle, and pulley, are fundamental to how the machanical world works. I'd have hoped this is covered early on in anyone's education, particularly anyone with any sort of interest in 'how the world works'.
If your educational system neglected this material perhaps a note to them detailing this gap, and resulting gaffe, might inspire the current generation of educators to review the curricula and see if that can't fit it in somewhere.
File server, print server, dual tape loaders, UPS, all setting on shelves, mounted above the level a suspended ceiling, with a mirrored fail-over setup at the opposite side of the building, also above ceiling-level.
It was a medical office and they were floor-space constrained so 'going up' seemed the logical solution (there was an absurd amount of space up there.) They'd had the electrician in to put outlets up there, the shelves were reinforced and had a lip added so nothing accidentally slid off (there was even a strap with a buckle to make sure nothing ever dropped down.) The hardest part was lifting the hardware up into place.
It was a complete "you've got to be kidding!" scenario when I first saw it, but I had to admit for a crazy location it was a sweet setup and worked great for their needs.
Anyone remember Dodgeball.com? Google bought 'em when they were hot, everyone expected great things, check out their founder's resignation letter.
Google is competitive, outside and inside. If a product doesn't have a strong voice, strong support, it'll get starved. There are lots of examples of this, where Google (or Yahoo or any other company) buys a smaller company and it's products just kinda evaporate.
Sometimes it is truly a mismatch in cultures. Other times the folks coming in get sucked into 'more interesting' projects and their original ones languish. Once in a while the goal of buying the company was to shut it down, or at least to deny it's benefits to a competitor.
Whatever the case whenever a buyout happens smart folks immediately put together transition plans, if only contingency ones.
In my career I've had CA buy and rape/pillage/burn (not always in that order!) any number of products we've depended upon. Yahoo! also has a record of ingesting, partially digesting, then eventually burping up a barely recognizable (and rarely for the better) version of the original service. Same for Amazon - anyone else recall Firefly, PlanetAll, A9 with street-views, etc.?
Urchin is just one more example of why committing to a product or service that isn't it's owner's primary interest is a risky gamble. Never assume the status quo; companies & priorities change and that's how inattentive customers get caught out.
Your argument confounds itself: How can nanotech simultaneously be "...already regulated (nanotechnology is just potentially much more dangerous)" and "... this is more a power grab than anything else."
You're claiming the FDA doing a power-grab from... themselves?.
Either the FDA Has the mandate to regulate nanottech already or it doesn't.
Not to point out the obvious (though apparently it needs to be) but the point of the FDA process in question, the reports and all, is the FDA saying the FDA doesn't have a clear mandate and would like such.
You can try and debate if they should have such a mandate (just look to China for how lax oversight of food & medicine safety & efficacy works out!) but it's a little awkward to debate from the outside that the FDA is unaware of what their mandates are.
Though, perhaps, some folks posting to/. are capable of believing as many as six impossible things before breakfast, and that is your point?
The thing is, nanotech enters our biosphere, and our bodies, in novel ways.
Skin doesn't really block it. And once inside us it can even pass the blood/brain barrier. That's not saying all nanotech materials are gonna do that, but I want some assurances that the nifty new coating on my paper towels isn't soaking into me.
Unless the FDA acts and gets this put within their purview then it won't be. Frankly an entire category of new materials, of a scale theyre inherently biologically interactive, being widely distributed into the market, is cause for concern for their impact. To me that justifies a little judicious oversight.
Grey goo isn't so much a fear as industrial poisoning. I'd hate to find out in 2012 that the nano-paint on the 2010 Honda nano-flakes off and then does awful things to lung tissue resulting in asbestos-like problems. Or the nano-polish in my stovetop cleaner aerosolizes (does that apply at this scale?) and polishes corneas - from the inside.
Clearly "Bad things nobody wants to happen".
But, again, without mandates the FDA won't be able to research, perhaps regulate, or eventually react. Even though I think the FDA is a severely compromised agency, often too close to the industries they regulate and constrained by political pressure from the administration ("Coal tar? Good for the sinuses! I sniff some from the great state of _insert_ ev'ry day!") I prefer it over nothing.
Guys (and it's usually guys), we luff ya, but get over it.
It's wicked kewl thyat you can take a spare PC, install some clever software on it, find a source for TV listings, and make it do amazing tricks. Really. Wow. Awesome. Yay you!
But many of the rest of us aren't interested in doing that ourselves. For us, an appliance, like a TiVo, is the way to go. A black box, paying for a service contract, IT JUST WORKS.
I diddle with enough technology, I don't want to with my DVR. I just want it to have a great interface and a steady supply of programming that engages me. Everything else is gravy (and yes, the Tivo has some gravy too.)
So please, whenever you hear the name "TiVo" don't go into a pavlovian MythTV-MythTV-MythTV chant.
We get it. We got it. We're getting annoyed over it. We're getting to the point you're not getting invited to the fun parties because you can't restrain yourselves. Soon you'll be in pushed into the holy roller corner with the Operalytes (poor souls).
Some folks can't understand why anyone would watch TV. Some can't understand why anyone would pay for it. Some can't see a need for a DVR. Some can't see the need for paying a bit more for a TiVo DVR. Some can't understand whyeveryone doesn't just whittle their own DVR out of pine. Please, live and let live and let us hold a discussion without your pulling your homebrew out and wagging at us. It's big, that's nice, now let us talk about the conumer product we're interested in.
Penelope is the Thundora name. It's got a Talk page, mostly full of wishlists.
The great news is it looks like the entire Qualcomm team went with Eudora, so it's skilled coders well familiar with the territory. How they interact with the Tbird team is hard to tell from a cursory lookover.
Frankly I'm betting their value is as a team of experienced email developers, and any code they can reuse from Eudora is just gravy compared to their skillsets and understanding of the problem space.
Tho, they do seem awfully quiet. From a quick glance it looks like they're busy figuring out bridges, compatibilities, etc. Hopefully they don't get stuck in a Chandler quagmire.
Qualcomm, the publisher of the Eudora E-mail client, announced that future Eudora versions would be based on Thunderbird.
Which was preferable to saying "We've got this odd legacy product we don't want to publicly kill but aren't interested in it and the minimal revenue stream we see from it." So the solution was to gift it to the Mozilla Foundation and let them be responsible for it's sinking or swimming.
Since that magnanimous gesture (and I'm being overly cynical, it probably was the best thing thing for everyone concerned, certainly better then selling Eudora off for a pittance to some bottom-feeding software house who'd have flogged it for what they could squeeze from the committed customers) I've not heard much.
My suspicion is that not a lot of Eudora is directly applicable to Thunderbird. Sure it might be a great example of working code to compare & contrast from but I doubt it'd be very easy, possibly even worthwhile, to pull code from one into the other. They've little heritage in common, indeed are entirely different generations of technology.
I could be wrong, there may be a Thundora gestating somewhere, but it it seems unlikely. Short of there being an active list somewhere of developers humming away I'd not be counting on much going forward.
I think Ken was right, from a business case viewpoint.
(The famous home computer quote is right also, when considered in it's context.)
We'd call it TCO now, and per-seat minis with terminals made far more sense then PCs.
DEC All-In-One and like products supplied integrated word processing, email, scheduling, file access, and other services. They did all that dedicated word processors did (then a significant competitor in the office) and much more at only slightly greater cost. It took years for similar quality products to appear on PCs, and it wasn't until the office suite wars they could integrate to any significant degree. And with centralized systems administration was a magnitude easier, an issue we still wrestle with today.
Rather it was the commitment required to purchase a mini that killed them.
A PC with the works cost $10k then, a fraction of what a mini did. It was affordable by departments out of their own budgets; indeed determined individuals could justify their purchase as office tools. It was about the same cost as a dedicated word processor, but much more versatile (plus didn't require a contract signed off on by Legal & Accounting, who'd have blocked 'em.) Thus they trickled in the back door to companies, one pioneer at a time, often into Legal or Accounting.
By contrast a mini or a word processing system was a corporate decision. Particularly a mini, which required dedicated facilities and staff. Senior (older) management was dubious of their benefit and resistant to the significant commitment required to change their business processes.
Thus PCs won out and minis died. Not on the basis of technology or value but corporate sociology.
With shorter purchasing cycles and less professional administration the resulting PC software market was far more vibrant then the mini market ever was. Products quickly rose and fell, new categories appeared almost overnight, dozens of products flourished in immature markets. Professional systems administrators, 'till then used to endless meetings and air-conditioned quarters, were appalled at the Wild West atmosphere, short-sightedness, and cumulative "overbuying" in the PC market. Some retreated to the safety of what they knew, other figured when it's raining soup to get out a bucket and embraced the new paradigm.
Could Digital have competed?
Sure. The PC market wasn't inevitable. It was still closely controlled by IBM, who weren't positioned to capitalize on the tiger they had by the tail. It was a fragmented space with numerous small incompatible competitors without the breadth & depth of Digital's offerings nor their extensive support systems. (If the IBM BIOS hadn't been successfully clean-room reverse-engineered then widely licensed the PC market would have remained severely stunted.)
However to compete DEC would have had to compete, to educate their potential customers about their advantages, and Ken Olsen & crew refused to do so. Instead they considered the superiority of their technology to be evident to anyone who did their research. And it might have been. But the market wasn't full of people and companies with committees & consultants doing comprehensive research; it was secretaries and accountants and progressive mid-level managers who wanted this new tool and were able to, again, buy PCs without too much oversight.
So Ken Olsen was, IMHO, right about the value of his products. Just disastrously wrong about the market and his need to sell to it.
(My first "real" PC was a close call between a DEC Rainbow and an IBM XT. I went with the IBM because I could also get a "Baby Blue II" card to put in it running CP/M on it's own Z80, just in case IBM DOS didn't pan out. Also the very cool IBM "Color Card" and a Hercules graphics card for mono. It was a very shu-weet machine, IBM XT serial # 384. I later became a manager at The Computer Museum, formerly The Digital Computer Museum, where I had the pleasure of meeting & chatting with Ken Olsen several times.)
I intend to try the sea salt/olive oil ice cream (Id already visited the annoying flash site and put the address in my reminders for next time Im out that way.) As someone interested in food flavoring & texture its a compelling combination.
I was just pointing out the ice cream of any sort, including the referenced vanilla, is already an improbable concoction that most wouldnt believe others enjoy if they hadnt grown up with it themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
"$2 billion endowment"?!! What happened to the other 38 billions dollars?
Seriously, Harvard has a nearly $30 billion dollar endowment.
Now, that's not for everyone, Harvard's schools raise their own funds, but still a nice bank account. Though it's not mouldering away, last year the endowment made 23% return.
However, the RIAA probably isn't just daunted by Harvard's school of law, they've several schools who graduate leaders in their fields. So taking on Harvard is taking on a alumni list that, were it mobilized, could casually shut down the cartel the RIAA depends upon.
So while the RIAA is enthusiastic to extort all the money they can they're also well aware their entire raison d'être is dubious in the extreme, and wouldn't hold up to critical inspection. So instead they prey on the easier targets and don't provoke battles they could lose in a truly decisive way.
Or, perhaps someday they will get all coked up, go gung-ho, and we'll see if they last a few rounds of public, judicial, and legislative debate.
In Montreal a generation of Metro subway cars electric motors were tuned to perfect fifths, coincidentally the first three notes of Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man". The tones were even part of a TV ad campaign when the line was opened.
Technical Explanation PDF (in French.)
However the Montreal Metro offers another treat to the senses: Smell.
The train brakes are two part, electromagnetic over ~10km/h and birch wood injected with peanut oil slower. Thus when a train comes to a hard stop the station smells faintly of burnt popcorn. If you have to smell your public transit this is about as good as it gets!Thanks - yours is exactly the sort of viewpoint I was hoping to hear from - real life tool users, not armchair zealots.
So in your opinion an up-to-date JDK is what you require, and could live without OS hooks, native-GUI, etc.?
Do you think the special Java bindings, native-GUI, etc. are worth the effort on Apple's part, or do you believe those would continue to be under-utilized?
Aside from "Kewl - can MRI more things!" (I used to work in museums - we luv being able to see inside stuff without taking it apart) this also stands to help with the helium shortage.
One of the largest uses of helium is in MRI machines, and with the current shortage costs of helium are going up, dramatically. Less helium required, even if spread out amongst more MRI machines, should be good thing.
Cyberduck is one I use regularly, a (s)ftp client, and it is indistinguishable from a Cocoa-based application. Indeed Cyberduck is a showcase of MacOS technologies: Spotlight, Bonjour, Keychain, Applescript, iDisk, drag-'n-drop, etc.
I've always assumed there are vertical applications able to operate on the Mac because of Apple's Java support, much like other *nix-based code can be migrated without major (non-GUI) trauma.
A few years ago Apple was all over Java.
Apple rewrote their WebObject platform into Java. They built bindings into MacOS 10.3 making Java apps 'native', heck spent serious resources Aqua-fying Java to look native.
So now there are a coupla Mac apps that are actually Java.
But the bindings have been depreciated. And Apple is getting slower & slower about releasing Java updates. All the while additional toolsets are getting added, receiving support, etc.
Then there's the iPhone, which Apple has made clear they've little interest in adding Java to.
So does Apple perceive Java as moving into the also-ran category? Something that isn't gonna pay off development & support effort as a major player on the desktop? What makes it inappropriate for the iPhone?
Are there any Java-on-Mac developers willing to share their insights? Folks who actually use it, pay attention to it on an ongoing basis, etc.?
Apple should buy Sony. Apple should buy Sun. Apple should buy SGI. Apple should buy Alias Research. Apple should buy Nintendo. Apple should buy AMD. Apple should buy PortalPlayer. Apple should buy Pixo. Apple should buy Palm. Apple should buy into the 700 MHz spectrum. Apple should buy Pixar. Apple should buy Disney. Apple should buy Universal. Apple should buy TiVo. Apple should buy YouTube.
Apple has bought 2 years of flash memory, 50 more acres of land in Cupertino, Next, Coverflow, CUPS, Emagic, Nothing Real, Soundjam MP, plus goodness knows what else (feel free to add to this list.)
But Apple buying Adobe?
That'd scare the heck out of a lot of folks. Apple has bought numerous products & smaller companies for code, patents, or teams before but Adobe (+ the former Macromedia) is a peer on the software side. That'd alienate the huge Windows userbase as well as freak out the many Adobe partners.
And to gain what?
Adobe already sells massively to Apple's customers. Sure their apps may lag, but Adobe has a huge set of codebases that has gone through 68000 -> PPC --> MacOS X --> x86, so if getting things up to speed & certified on each new iteration of MacOS X takes a bit that's not unreasonable.
To Mac-ify the apps? Again, why? Sure Apple is famous for doing really good (if not perfect) UIs but Adobe has some serious credibility too. Indeed it's been pretty clear that Apple & Adobe competing directly in some areas has improved both offerings.
Sorry, but I'm guessing Apple has enough on it's plate now. They'd just be complicating an already good, already mutually profitable situation for little reason or much greater profit.
Indeed look at the list above of companies & products folks think Apple should have bought, and in retrospect consider if they really would have been good investments...
I am SOOOO sick of folks being so sure that Apple should bless MacOS X on generic PCs.
Do you all honestly think that the folks at Apple are entirely congenital idjits?
(I know, it wouldn't be /. if 99% of the posters weren't convinced their 30 seconds gloss on any random topic didn't give them profound insights those investing their professional careers on a subject astonishingly oblivious to...)
Perhaps, just perhaps, Apple has run the numbers.
Indeed, possibly, Apple actually HAS the numbers to run and so, after looking over their numbers, and considering their financial model, and the state of the market, they've managed to determine MacOS-on-* might NOT be in their best interest?
Because going on (and on, and on) about your deepest fanboy wishes on /. & like sites doesn't seem to be impressing the folks at Apple.
So, instead of telling the rest of us this again & again how you think Apple should do things how about putting together a nice presentation for them and see how far you get. Now, to be honest I don't think J. Random Know-It-All is gonna tell them anything they don't already know (probably better then you do) but please, go ahead, stop blathering on about how you're right and they're wrong and try and convince THEM.
'Cause saying it over and over again here is just a waste of electrons.
But not enough folks wanted them, particularly at their price point. THAT was NeXt's greatest shortcoming, and it's a HUGE one.
I don't mean to be harsh, some of my best friends had NeXTs, I used it professionally, I was excited over NeXT buying Apple for -US$400 million, but that doesn't change it's initial profound failure in the marketplace.
For US$10,0000 a pop, with a limited application suite, initially aimed at academia (who have champagne & caviar dreams but cheap beer & pizza budgets) NeXT blew through cash and cratered.
Even repositioned as a RAD platform for engineering, graphics, & finance it was still too much for too little. What everyone else was selling or not doesn't matter much if they were SELLING & NeXT WASN'T. (That his Steveness spent silly money on logos & Zen HQ & a color-coordinated automated factory only makes it all the more appalling.)
Like GEOS, like BEOS, like OS/2, NeXT wasn't able to successfully compete. Fantabulous or not it failed, and for some good reasons, and hopefully lessons learned.
Now, all these years later, NeXT-derived MacOS X, with the product base inherited from it's grafted-on Mac compatibility layers, now has the inertia to really start to shine. It's been a long road, indeed one that has required backtracking and re-routing, but things finally seem headed in the right direction for NeXT/Apple. But saying it was all-that back-in-the-day ignores that NeXT/Apple wasn't offering what-folks-want/could-afford, and that's lesson that needs to stay learnt.
Value.
Asking US$10,000 wasn't a viable price point for the OS.
Even a US$1,000 premium for an OS was impossible to sustain.
Now at US$100 a pop it's gaining some real traction.
Profitability is the MacOS X feature NeXTstep never had.
Yeah, they shoulda released it around 1989, before Windows 3.0 shipped...
Think of all the misery they'd have saved everyone!
'Cept we don't want folks cutting across farmland, industrial sites, or via emergency-services-only ramps.
The problem is there are plenty of controlled-access routes around, and they're not on maps because they're not public roads. I already have a problem with my GPS trying to get me to use an 'official use only' exit off of a toll highway, I don't need it trying to route me through a secured military base.
Even trying to use GPS units (or cellphone triangulation, or whatever) to determine route popularity will be distorted by on-the-road-16-hours-a-day vehicles like long-haul trucks, delivery vans, and, yes, police & like vehicles. That Fedex drives through my neighborhood a half dozen times a day doesn't make their pickup/delivery pattern optimal for general drivers wanting to get from point-A-to-point-B.
/. and Wikipedia are substantially different resources. One is threaded conversations on geek topics, the other is an editable encyclopedia.
Thus I don't hold conversations on /. with those who can't be bothered to create even an a minimal identity and invest in some reputability. They rarely say anything of interest, rarely return to follow up their posts, and rarely have a legitimate reason for wanting anonymity (typically to-post-asshat-things-w/o-accountability).
Are there AC exceptions? Sure, but few, far-between, and not worth my effort to winnow through for. So I use the supplied tools to filter and let folks know not to bother to expect me to read AC postings, including direct replies.
On the other hand from my experience WP is fairly well managed. It's not perfect but good enough, particularly since I know it's limitations. For getting a quick gloss, looking up a half-remembered item, checking a verifiable fact, getting a start on actually researching something, it has proven invaluable.
While there are complaints of WP vandalism and reputability I haven't had any issue. Indeed on the articles I pay attention to the foolishness hasn't been a problem at all. Something inappropriate or irrelevant gets added, or something appropriate removed, it is quickly noted on the Talk page and soon corrected.
(As a test I just reviewed the past few AC responses to /. postings of mine. Nope, nothing worth anything. One I might have pointed out "national code" depends on the nation, and while the response apparently quotes US legal code I wasn't talking about a US install, but it's not worth pointing out their incorrect assumption.) The rest are complete time-wasters.
Really? I just checked the half dozen edits Ive made over the past six months. The 5 trivial ones are all intact, and the extensive one (transportation in the town I live in) was edited & rearranged, for the better.
Perhaps the quality of the edits is important.
Thank you, you're right, I don't know what I was thinking: Archimedes.
I can only claim lack of sleep (and hope readers also forgive the spelling errors.)
Um, no.
Archimede's Screw is not a replacement for a rope & bucket. Or at least, not for the sort of deep well seen in many parts of the world where surface water is unavailable or contaminated.
Archimede's Screw requires substantially more run then rise; making it suitable for moving water up and over from a river to a settling pond or canal. Wikipedia has a good explanation of the mathematics; for the casual reader just figure about a 30 degree angle or less.
On the other hand a rope & bucket is all rise and very little run; it just brings water up, on the very close order of 90 degrees.
So they're substantially different sort of devices, and not interchangeable at all. Nor is either particularly new, Archimede's Screw dates back 2,500+ years, the rope and bucket considerably further.
All of that said, I have to note that not knowing about Archimede's Screw is a pretty spectacular gap in a decent education.
The six classes of simple machines - wedge, ramp, screw, lever, wheel & axle, and pulley, are fundamental to how the machanical world works. I'd have hoped this is covered early on in anyone's education, particularly anyone with any sort of interest in 'how the world works'.
If your educational system neglected this material perhaps a note to them detailing this gap, and resulting gaffe, might inspire the current generation of educators to review the curricula and see if that can't fit it in somewhere.
File server, print server, dual tape loaders, UPS, all setting on shelves, mounted above the level a suspended ceiling, with a mirrored fail-over setup at the opposite side of the building, also above ceiling-level.
It was a medical office and they were floor-space constrained so 'going up' seemed the logical solution (there was an absurd amount of space up there.) They'd had the electrician in to put outlets up there, the shelves were reinforced and had a lip added so nothing accidentally slid off (there was even a strap with a buckle to make sure nothing ever dropped down.) The hardest part was lifting the hardware up into place.
It was a complete "you've got to be kidding!" scenario when I first saw it, but I had to admit for a crazy location it was a sweet setup and worked great for their needs.
Anyone remember Dodgeball.com? Google bought 'em when they were hot, everyone expected great things, check out their founder's resignation letter.
Google is competitive, outside and inside. If a product doesn't have a strong voice, strong support, it'll get starved. There are lots of examples of this, where Google (or Yahoo or any other company) buys a smaller company and it's products just kinda evaporate.
Sometimes it is truly a mismatch in cultures. Other times the folks coming in get sucked into 'more interesting' projects and their original ones languish. Once in a while the goal of buying the company was to shut it down, or at least to deny it's benefits to a competitor.
Whatever the case whenever a buyout happens smart folks immediately put together transition plans, if only contingency ones.
In my career I've had CA buy and rape/pillage/burn (not always in that order!) any number of products we've depended upon. Yahoo! also has a record of ingesting, partially digesting, then eventually burping up a barely recognizable (and rarely for the better) version of the original service. Same for Amazon - anyone else recall Firefly, PlanetAll, A9 with street-views, etc.?
Urchin is just one more example of why committing to a product or service that isn't it's owner's primary interest is a risky gamble. Never assume the status quo; companies & priorities change and that's how inattentive customers get caught out.
Your argument confounds itself: How can nanotech simultaneously be "...already regulated (nanotechnology is just potentially much more dangerous)" and "... this is more a power grab than anything else."
You're claiming the FDA doing a power-grab from... themselves?.
Either the FDA Has the mandate to regulate nanottech already or it doesn't.
Not to point out the obvious (though apparently it needs to be) but the point of the FDA process in question, the reports and all, is the FDA saying the FDA doesn't have a clear mandate and would like such.
You can try and debate if they should have such a mandate (just look to China for how lax oversight of food & medicine safety & efficacy works out!) but it's a little awkward to debate from the outside that the FDA is unaware of what their mandates are.
Though, perhaps, some folks posting to /. are capable of believing as many as six impossible things before breakfast, and that is your point?
The thing is, nanotech enters our biosphere, and our bodies, in novel ways.
Skin doesn't really block it. And once inside us it can even pass the blood/brain barrier. That's not saying all nanotech materials are gonna do that, but I want some assurances that the nifty new coating on my paper towels isn't soaking into me.
Unless the FDA acts and gets this put within their purview then it won't be. Frankly an entire category of new materials, of a scale theyre inherently biologically interactive, being widely distributed into the market, is cause for concern for their impact. To me that justifies a little judicious oversight.
Grey goo isn't so much a fear as industrial poisoning. I'd hate to find out in 2012 that the nano-paint on the 2010 Honda nano-flakes off and then does awful things to lung tissue resulting in asbestos-like problems. Or the nano-polish in my stovetop cleaner aerosolizes (does that apply at this scale?) and polishes corneas - from the inside.
Clearly "Bad things nobody wants to happen".
But, again, without mandates the FDA won't be able to research, perhaps regulate, or eventually react. Even though I think the FDA is a severely compromised agency, often too close to the industries they regulate and constrained by political pressure from the administration ("Coal tar? Good for the sinuses! I sniff some from the great state of _insert_ ev'ry day!") I prefer it over nothing.
Guys (and it's usually guys), we luff ya, but get over it.
It's wicked kewl thyat you can take a spare PC, install some clever software on it, find a source for TV listings, and make it do amazing tricks. Really. Wow. Awesome. Yay you!
But many of the rest of us aren't interested in doing that ourselves. For us, an appliance, like a TiVo, is the way to go. A black box, paying for a service contract, IT JUST WORKS.
I diddle with enough technology, I don't want to with my DVR. I just want it to have a great interface and a steady supply of programming that engages me. Everything else is gravy (and yes, the Tivo has some gravy too.)
So please, whenever you hear the name "TiVo" don't go into a pavlovian MythTV-MythTV-MythTV chant.
We get it. We got it. We're getting annoyed over it. We're getting to the point you're not getting invited to the fun parties because you can't restrain yourselves. Soon you'll be in pushed into the holy roller corner with the Operalytes (poor souls).
Some folks can't understand why anyone would watch TV. Some can't understand why anyone would pay for it. Some can't see a need for a DVR. Some can't see the need for paying a bit more for a TiVo DVR. Some can't understand whyeveryone doesn't just whittle their own DVR out of pine. Please, live and let live and let us hold a discussion without your pulling your homebrew out and wagging at us. It's big, that's nice, now let us talk about the conumer product we're interested in.
Yeah, replying to myself...
Penelope is the Thundora name. It's got a Talk page, mostly full of wishlists.
The great news is it looks like the entire Qualcomm team went with Eudora, so it's skilled coders well familiar with the territory. How they interact with the Tbird team is hard to tell from a cursory lookover.
Frankly I'm betting their value is as a team of experienced email developers, and any code they can reuse from Eudora is just gravy compared to their skillsets and understanding of the problem space.
Tho, they do seem awfully quiet. From a quick glance it looks like they're busy figuring out bridges, compatibilities, etc. Hopefully they don't get stuck in a Chandler quagmire.
Which was preferable to saying "We've got this odd legacy product we don't want to publicly kill but aren't interested in it and the minimal revenue stream we see from it." So the solution was to gift it to the Mozilla Foundation and let them be responsible for it's sinking or swimming.
Since that magnanimous gesture (and I'm being overly cynical, it probably was the best thing thing for everyone concerned, certainly better then selling Eudora off for a pittance to some bottom-feeding software house who'd have flogged it for what they could squeeze from the committed customers) I've not heard much.
My suspicion is that not a lot of Eudora is directly applicable to Thunderbird. Sure it might be a great example of working code to compare & contrast from but I doubt it'd be very easy, possibly even worthwhile, to pull code from one into the other. They've little heritage in common, indeed are entirely different generations of technology.
I could be wrong, there may be a Thundora gestating somewhere, but it it seems unlikely. Short of there being an active list somewhere of developers humming away I'd not be counting on much going forward.
I think Ken was right, from a business case viewpoint.
(The famous home computer quote is right also, when considered in it's context.)
We'd call it TCO now, and per-seat minis with terminals made far more sense then PCs.
DEC All-In-One and like products supplied integrated word processing, email, scheduling, file access, and other services. They did all that dedicated word processors did (then a significant competitor in the office) and much more at only slightly greater cost. It took years for similar quality products to appear on PCs, and it wasn't until the office suite wars they could integrate to any significant degree. And with centralized systems administration was a magnitude easier, an issue we still wrestle with today.
Rather it was the commitment required to purchase a mini that killed them.
A PC with the works cost $10k then, a fraction of what a mini did. It was affordable by departments out of their own budgets; indeed determined individuals could justify their purchase as office tools. It was about the same cost as a dedicated word processor, but much more versatile (plus didn't require a contract signed off on by Legal & Accounting, who'd have blocked 'em.) Thus they trickled in the back door to companies, one pioneer at a time, often into Legal or Accounting.
By contrast a mini or a word processing system was a corporate decision. Particularly a mini, which required dedicated facilities and staff. Senior (older) management was dubious of their benefit and resistant to the significant commitment required to change their business processes.
Thus PCs won out and minis died. Not on the basis of technology or value but corporate sociology.
With shorter purchasing cycles and less professional administration the resulting PC software market was far more vibrant then the mini market ever was. Products quickly rose and fell, new categories appeared almost overnight, dozens of products flourished in immature markets. Professional systems administrators, 'till then used to endless meetings and air-conditioned quarters, were appalled at the Wild West atmosphere, short-sightedness, and cumulative "overbuying" in the PC market. Some retreated to the safety of what they knew, other figured when it's raining soup to get out a bucket and embraced the new paradigm.
Could Digital have competed?
Sure. The PC market wasn't inevitable. It was still closely controlled by IBM, who weren't positioned to capitalize on the tiger they had by the tail. It was a fragmented space with numerous small incompatible competitors without the breadth & depth of Digital's offerings nor their extensive support systems. (If the IBM BIOS hadn't been successfully clean-room reverse-engineered then widely licensed the PC market would have remained severely stunted.)
However to compete DEC would have had to compete, to educate their potential customers about their advantages, and Ken Olsen & crew refused to do so. Instead they considered the superiority of their technology to be evident to anyone who did their research. And it might have been. But the market wasn't full of people and companies with committees & consultants doing comprehensive research; it was secretaries and accountants and progressive mid-level managers who wanted this new tool and were able to, again, buy PCs without too much oversight.
So Ken Olsen was, IMHO, right about the value of his products. Just disastrously wrong about the market and his need to sell to it.
(My first "real" PC was a close call between a DEC Rainbow and an IBM XT. I went with the IBM because I could also get a "Baby Blue II" card to put in it running CP/M on it's own Z80, just in case IBM DOS didn't pan out. Also the very cool IBM "Color Card" and a Hercules graphics card for mono. It was a very shu-weet machine, IBM XT serial # 384. I later became a manager at The Computer Museum, formerly The Digital Computer Museum, where I had the pleasure of meeting & chatting with Ken Olsen several times.)
I intend to try the sea salt/olive oil ice cream (Id already visited the annoying flash site and put the address in my reminders for next time Im out that way.) As someone interested in food flavoring & texture its a compelling combination.
I was just pointing out the ice cream of any sort, including the referenced vanilla, is already an improbable concoction that most wouldnt believe others enjoy if they hadnt grown up with it themselves.