As long as they are going to break things here's my wish list for python. Make it possible for a compiler to compile it. Yes I realize that's essentially impossible for a dynamic language that does not enforce types in the function prototypes.
However, it could be done like this. First recognize that nearly all uses of python do not take any advantage of the dynamic typing, and nearly all calls to functions happen with arguments whose type is not varying. Thus why not have a mechanism, an optional one, that could hint at the expected typing for a function and its args. I realize there are ways with "decorators" to add type checking, but that's not the point. I'm talking about type hinting. The reason for this would be to allow a compiler to examine the code, read the hints, and then compile the code or translate it to C++.
The problem with existing python accelerators is that they bend overbackwards to avoid stepping on the dynamic typing. Why not allow the user to forego that if they want to and have static typing if they want to go to the effort of indicating it.
I like Perl. Is there a tool that converts Python scripts to Perl, or compiles them into the opcodes that Perl's interpreter actually executes? That could let Python scripts run on lots of other machines, possibly avoiding all those architecture limitations that the Perl engine has already solved. Isn't that exactly what Parrot was supposed to be about? Even the name was chosen to hint at monty python.
Okay thanks for the coherent reply. You explained how you manage a progressively updated system to maintain a recovery disk with all the accumulated updates. But my question was different. If one is not so pro-active as you are (basically 99% of the planet--and I include myself) then one probably only has the original Install disk that came with the machine. When a system needs a re-install is there a rolled up update one can get from MS? or is it still like the dark days of win98?
You mean the mac updates that I had to install immediately after buying a macbook, that took over four reboots, a dozen update "files", and downloaded almost 20 GB of data? Thank goodness it's nothing like XP out of the box!:) Wow that is a lot. It's very strange they would make you get a new hard drive just to update (I note that 20GB of compressed downloaded files would expand to larger than macbook's installed harddrive.) I can see why you were upset.
So when a user's windows system that was say 5 years old gets corrupted these days and a total re-install is required, how does this play out? I assume it must work like my mac: namely you get your original disk out and you do an "archive-and-install" which puts a fresh copy of the system on the disk and moves all the important bits of the old one into a folder so you can recover stuff like application-keys and special fonts. Then you click "software update" and apple offers a "rolled up" updater that merges all the updates for the last 5 years into one grand update that gets downloaded and installed. (occasionally this actually takes two "update" steps).
Or do you really have to install all those updates serially on windows? I know this used to be the case in windows98--that one had to do the updates serially--and often there were multiple incongruent sets of updates so you had to know which to do. That was why I switched my wife's computer to DamnSmall when the system go crufted to the point of needing a reinstall.
I figure this could not possibly still be the case or basically it would be easier to buy a new computer than try to reinstall from your original disks on a old computer. That would be nuts. Who would put up with that?
The posed question is wrong. The real issue is not preventing visiting inappropriate sites. It's for the parent to be informed about where their children are visiting. This is a perfectly reasonable thing for a parent to want to do. Even if you are the exception to that desire, the fact is that desire is normal and for most parents a good idea.
Now for this task there are two issues to confront 1) gathering the information 2) reducing it to useful things.
The first is probably relatively simple. Just gathering IPs and logging Reboots would contain the info. Namley where they went, and if they are trying to evade the system. (I note that a reboot on a linux or mac is probably a more seldom event than on a Windows, though maybe that's changed with vista).
But that's also too raw an info for the normal parent to parse.
Thus what you need to find is some sort of net nanny like service that will send you log of all the inappropriate sites that were flagged. You don't want to "prevent" them from visiting since that would quickly result in them figuring out which places not to try to visit. And result in them finding sites off the net nanny radar.
add onto that a grep for thing that look like non port 80 traffic and other suspcicious activity.
Ultimately all you need is a good system for detecting WHen you ought to pay more attention.
It's like searching your kids room for drugs. That's not something one should do. It sends a bad message to a good kid. But if your kid is stubling around or you smell weird smells, or a perscription bottle in his pants pocket when you do the wash, then sure go on and search it.
Same principle here. You just need some indicator sites to monitor. If those go off, then you have a talk or move the bedroom computer to the living room.
This is huge news. One of the most popular paper ballot systems, the ES&S model 100 optical scan runs on QNX. this means it is now theoretically possible that ES&S could go open source if they wanted to.
You are indeed right that too lean can damage an engine. But too rich can also. the Oxygen sensors and catalytic converter or, in my old mazda, the thermal reactor, can be fouled by excess unburnt gas.
Let's disentangle the issue here. First the screen crack obviously did not have anything to do with the OS. Second is it reasonable for a company to specify in their warantee that the OS shall be the installed OS and no-other than what they designate? I think there is a reasonable case for the latter.
On cars, the computers keep the engines from over reving or running on too rich a mixture, both of which can damage the hardware. If you mod the software in your engine's computers you void the warrantee.
These days CPUs control the heat and power management in a computer. They control many other hardware issues. For example I had a computer one time that would constantly go to sleep and wake up every 30 seconds. The hard disk was spun up and down every 30 seconds, the power supply shut on and off every 30 seconds and it would do this all night long every night. I never noticed that during the day of course cause it was awake. It ate several hard drives, a fan, and a motherboard. It may or may not have been a software problem-- more likely the PMMU--but something like that could be in the software. Likewise the fan speed is software controlled. Sometimes voltages are too.
While Linux is not designed to destroy a computer, one can't expect every manufacturer to be aware of every flavor of linux or to know if it has the proper drivers and regulations. Someone who runs gentoo is exactly the kind of tweaker who might just try to disable thermal performance limiters.
I dont' see why they can't limit the OS of the computer to certain specifications that they will warantee.
Of course this has nothing to do with the specific problem--the screen crack. But stores to stay in bussinesses have to have policies that are simple and clear. If the manager is not authorized to make exceptions--and he's probably not qualified to do so-- then it's your tough luck perhaps. It's what comes of shopping at a discount store I think. Big corporate policies and limiting customers.
One reason I swithched to macs is that there's only one company to deal with. the store, the maker, and software and the service department are the same company. There's no arguments they can make about whose responsible and they don't make you talk to bangalore to get help.
If you are paid 65K per year your company is paying more like 100K/yr in benefits and social security. It's the companies hourly costs that matter not your takehome pay
What happens when this goes wrong? What happens when Vista is running in the Bank of America and it accidentally trips the entire network in to "Black Screen of Darkness" mode? What will happen is that MS will sell a more expensive corporate version that Bof A will buy. It might be enforced by the BSA more too. It too will phone home so they can watch it is not in the wild but they will protect the BofA address block againt the black screen.
BofA inturn will have to pay more for network services to assure they route everything through providers who also buy the corporate version.
BofA will like this. Because it it's a level playing field. Either other banks pay more too, or they offer unreliable service. So BofA can pass this right along to their customers who won't have any alternatives that are cheaper.
So, what is going to happen when M$ screws up and starts blocking products that are 'genuine'? So why are you criticizing M$. it's their business decision to adopt this model. It's their petard to be hoisted upon if it fails. They obviously think it will work and they know more than you. Sure it may fail in cases too, but if the gains are net positive do they care?
Anyhow the real issue here is the externalizes. A lot of those blackscreen cost will be borne by businesses and ISPs and resellers who offer service contracts. So a lot of other people's business models are going to fail. And people who would prefer having freindly relations with their customers because they sell a reliable product are going to have to settle for adversarial business relationships with their angry customers whom they will have to ration support to. That's the real shame.
Still altruism is not a requirement for a company so MS will do what it thinks is best.
It's an interesting contrast to Apple's $100 rebate on the itards who's feelings where hurt by the price cut. Apple uses it's monopoly not so much "for good" but to enable it to manage it's customer's end-to-end experience in a very positive way. That's their business model. It's apparently less successful than MS but is viable in the people for whom time is money and hassles are aggravation. (why people on slashdot, who surely must earn at least $50/hour grouse that Apple is more expensive amaze me. 20 hours of aggravation is $1000 bucks of your time lunkheads.)
Anyone here old enough to remember the Dalkon Shield implants? Sold by the millions, recommend by doctors as ideal and healthful. A.H Robbins is no more.
Let me clarify. When You include a command into the main language you think twice about it. You don't want to include a zillion variations on it since that clutters things up. I.e. bloat. When you compartmentalize things into libraries, the people who write these seem to think that means it carte blanch to have every possible function on that theme under the sun. Import "re" and you get a match function for strings at the beginning and a different one for string matches anywhere. import Strings and you get a left strip, a right strip, and the strip both all as separate commands. And so on. No attempt at parecemony. Sure perhaps there's some optimization advantages and some self documentation advantages. But it also means a shitload of stuff to memorize and you end up with many ways to do the same things. (e.g. want to convert strings to ints? well use localize library or string library or....)
I agree LUA is very cool. I first discovered it using DLS linux. Very cool. That said. perl gains a lot for each command it adds and it adds a lot less than things that use libraries do. Library organization tend to allow library writers to include every kitchen sink idea in the library rather than paring it down to the basics and putting it in the main language.
Perl is my favorite unbloated language. I know you laugh but hear me out. Pick up the O-reily quick reference for almost any major language. with the exception of fortran (:-) the perl one is not just a little bit thinner, it's more than half as thick as most and that includes c++.
Basically I find it really annoying that to get even a fraction of the functionality of stock perl one has to import some library. Why do I have to import Regular expression or Strings in python? or for that matter, just to get the command line args I have to import a freakin library? And then why does it take a zillion pages in the quickref to explain it when it has less fearutes than stock perl.
I don't want to rag on python here and this is not a flame to say perl is better than python. (python is in very many ways superior to perl for organized project programming. It also used to be easier to read since there was only one way to do something but that zen is gone now.)
Once you learn perl you don't need a big set of reference books to explain every obscure library. Just the manpages or a quick reference will do. I hate language bloat.
I don't think that has anything to do with the article
1) those variables can be perl-ties to disk files
2) There are profound simmilarities.
Namely when storing variables by column they are (generally) the same type, allowing much greater access speed, serial processing speed, and compression.
Object oriented programming usualy has problems with speed when one must iterate over some deeply nested attribute value in an large collection of objects (for example to sort on a number). Column oriented storage already has those attributes collected in a single place.
So this has everything to do with the original article
Traditionally perl-objects are hashes with one blessed hash per instance. The hash contains all the instance variable values using their names as keys.
instead one can use blessed scalars holding a single integer value for instances and let the class variable contain all the instance data in arrays indexed by the instances scalar value.
This technique was originally promoted as an indirection to protect object data from direct manipution that bypassed get/set methods. But it also allows the object to be either row or column oriented internally. that is the class could store all the instance hashes in an array indexed by the scalar. or it could store each instance variable in a separate array that is indexed by the scalar value.
Thus the perl class can, on-the-fly, switch itself from column-oriented to row-oriented as needed while maintaining the same external interface.
Of course this is not a perl-exclusive feature and it can implemented in other languages. It just happens to be particularly easy and natural to do in perl.
Oh and the other biggy on a mac is the meu bar is a the top of the screen and the ability to use a one button mouse. Both of those are a LOT better for your old folks. It has the handicapped access modes too (locking shift keys, high contrast views, zoomable)
Run Mac OSX. set it to the simple finder mode. There you can lock out all applicatons you don't want them to have. They cannot edit the icons in the dock so what they see is what they get (and they can't accidentally delete them either). And finally if ALL you really want is Browser, you can put it in kiosk mode and even have it boot that way. SO all it is is a browser, up and running when you snap on the machine.
Now if you are budget minded you could do the same with Linux. Use a Live CD, configure it to boot to a browser. Remove all the other icons and don't give them permission to the apps. One of the very easiest ones to configure this way is DSL linux which has the benefit of booting very very very fast from CD and running on old, memory starved hardware, and being parcimonous about screen realestate. However, for you i'd recomend DSL-N (not DSL) as that is more modern.
If you are not budget minded, it would be smarter to go with the mac. several reasons 1) lots of plugins will be easier to use. likepdf support in the browser itself, (flash quicktime silverlight....)
2) some folks there might want a real computer too. The liveCD linux boot will be constraining. Macs, have faster user switching so you can corral the people who need the simple finder but let other use it in advanced mode.
3) Eventually they may want to add a few more apps. maybe they want for example to have podcasts. google earth. Watch DVDs
4) you can keep a mac secure without going crazy. You can even firmware lock it to keep the wiseguys at bay.
5) it's easier to attach portable disks, second or external screens, cameras, etc... to the mac. No sys admin needed.
6) If you need support you can call apple and so can they if you are not around.
7) For desktops there are no cables and they are easy to adjust to viewing angles (like for a wheel chair)
8) easier to use applications, should they want them.
I think that effect would not create a preferred single axis but instead would mean the axes tended to (appear) to be perpendicular to the radial direction from earth. Those would not be parallel axes for the galaxies.
In the end the price difference for me is trivial compared to the hassle of a shitty OS. That's my bias. But don't get me wrong. I put linux in the server room because there the price difference does matter. But for personal computers, like laptops, that run productivity apps, and require more TLC per computer than a server, well it's about productivity and mac OS has lower effort to maintain and use. They last longer too.
I followed the link you listed. the HP there had a teaser price of 549 inculding a rebate. But this was for a celeron not a core duo, it had the shitty 6 cell battery, no the 12 cell, it lacked blue tooth, and a pile of other things. Once you gave it a core duo, a blue tooth, and the HP reccomended battery, it was $950. There wasa 100 dollar rebate so that would be $850. And you still are not getting things like mag safe, or the Apple Apps, or Mac OS. So feature wise it does not match the $1000 macbook, though it it does come close.
The difference is there is no $549 macbook. So you don't have the option of accepting fewer features for less cash.
Slashdot Mirror
As long as they are going to break things here's my wish list for python. Make it possible for a compiler to compile it. Yes I realize that's essentially impossible for a dynamic language that does not enforce types in the function prototypes.
However, it could be done like this. First recognize that nearly all uses of python do not take any advantage of the dynamic typing, and nearly all calls to functions happen with arguments whose type is not varying. Thus why not have a mechanism, an optional one, that could hint at the expected typing for a function and its args. I realize there are ways with "decorators" to add type checking, but that's not the point. I'm talking about type hinting. The reason for this would be to allow a compiler to examine the code, read the hints, and then compile the code or translate it to C++.
The problem with existing python accelerators is that they bend overbackwards to avoid stepping on the dynamic typing. Why not allow the user to forego that if they want to and have static typing if they want to go to the effort of indicating it.
Okay thanks for the coherent reply. You explained how you manage a progressively updated system to maintain a recovery disk with all the accumulated updates. But my question was different. If one is not so pro-active as you are (basically 99% of the planet--and I include myself) then one probably only has the original Install disk that came with the machine. When a system needs a re-install is there a rolled up update one can get from MS? or is it still like the dark days of win98?
So when a user's windows system that was say 5 years old gets corrupted these days and a total re-install is required, how does this play out? I assume it must work like my mac: namely you get your original disk out and you do an "archive-and-install" which puts a fresh copy of the system on the disk and moves all the important bits of the old one into a folder so you can recover stuff like application-keys and special fonts. Then you click "software update" and apple offers a "rolled up" updater that merges all the updates for the last 5 years into one grand update that gets downloaded and installed. (occasionally this actually takes two "update" steps).
Or do you really have to install all those updates serially on windows? I know this used to be the case in windows98--that one had to do the updates serially--and often there were multiple incongruent sets of updates so you had to know which to do. That was why I switched my wife's computer to DamnSmall when the system go crufted to the point of needing a reinstall.
I figure this could not possibly still be the case or basically it would be easier to buy a new computer than try to reinstall from your original disks on a old computer. That would be nuts. Who would put up with that?
You obviously lack children :-)
The posed question is wrong. The real issue is not preventing visiting inappropriate sites. It's for the parent to be informed about where their children are visiting. This is a perfectly reasonable thing for a parent to want to do. Even if you are the exception to that desire, the fact is that desire is normal and for most parents a good idea.
Now for this task there are two issues to confront
1) gathering the information
2) reducing it to useful things.
The first is probably relatively simple. Just gathering IPs and logging Reboots would contain the info. Namley where they went, and if they are trying to evade the system. (I note that a reboot on a linux or mac is probably a more seldom event than on a Windows, though maybe that's changed with vista).
But that's also too raw an info for the normal parent to parse.
Thus what you need to find is some sort of net nanny like service that will send you log of all the inappropriate sites that were flagged. You don't want to "prevent" them from visiting since that would quickly result in them figuring out which places not to try to visit. And result in them finding sites off the net nanny radar.
add onto that a grep for thing that look like non port 80 traffic and other suspcicious activity.
Ultimately all you need is a good system for detecting WHen you ought to pay more attention.
It's like searching your kids room for drugs. That's not something one should do. It sends a bad message to a good kid. But if your kid is stubling around or you smell weird smells, or a perscription bottle in his pants pocket when you do the wash, then sure go on and search it.
Same principle here. You just need some indicator sites to monitor. If those go off, then you have a talk or move the bedroom computer to the living room.
Ah thank you for reminding me why I stopped programming in C.
This is huge news. One of the most popular paper ballot systems, the ES&S model 100 optical scan runs on QNX. this means it is now theoretically possible that ES&S could go open source if they wanted to.
You are indeed right that too lean can damage an engine. But too rich can also. the Oxygen sensors and catalytic converter or, in my old mazda, the thermal reactor, can be fouled by excess unburnt gas.
Let's disentangle the issue here. First the screen crack obviously did not have anything to do with the OS. Second is it reasonable for a company to specify in their warantee that the OS shall be the installed OS and no-other than what they designate? I think there is a reasonable case for the latter.
On cars, the computers keep the engines from over reving or running on too rich a mixture, both of which can damage the hardware. If you mod the software in your engine's computers you void the warrantee.
These days CPUs control the heat and power management in a computer. They control many other hardware issues. For example I had a computer one time that would constantly go to sleep and wake up every 30 seconds. The hard disk was spun up and down every 30 seconds, the power supply shut on and off every 30 seconds and it would do this all night long every night. I never noticed that during the day of course cause it was awake. It ate several hard drives, a fan, and a motherboard. It may or may not have been a software problem-- more likely the PMMU--but something like that could be in the software. Likewise the fan speed is software controlled. Sometimes voltages are too.
While Linux is not designed to destroy a computer, one can't expect every manufacturer to be aware of every flavor of linux or to know if it has the proper drivers and regulations. Someone who runs gentoo is exactly the kind of tweaker who might just try to disable thermal performance limiters.
I dont' see why they can't limit the OS of the computer to certain specifications that they will warantee.
Of course this has nothing to do with the specific problem--the screen crack. But stores to stay in bussinesses have to have policies that are simple and clear. If the manager is not authorized to make exceptions--and he's probably not qualified to do so-- then it's your tough luck perhaps. It's what comes of shopping at a discount store I think. Big corporate policies and limiting customers.
One reason I swithched to macs is that there's only one company to deal with. the store, the maker, and software and the service department are the same company. There's no arguments they can make about whose responsible and they don't make you talk to bangalore to get help.
If you are paid 65K per year your company is paying more like 100K/yr in benefits and social security. It's the companies hourly costs that matter not your takehome pay
Okay, divide it by 2. $500 is 20 hours of aggravation. And 20 is a gross underestimate of what MS hassles cost folks.
BofA inturn will have to pay more for network services to assure they route everything through providers who also buy the corporate version.
BofA will like this. Because it it's a level playing field. Either other banks pay more too, or they offer unreliable service. So BofA can pass this right along to their customers who won't have any alternatives that are cheaper.
Anyhow the real issue here is the externalizes. A lot of those blackscreen cost will be borne by businesses and ISPs and resellers who offer service contracts. So a lot of other people's business models are going to fail. And people who would prefer having freindly relations with their customers because they sell a reliable product are going to have to settle for adversarial business relationships with their angry customers whom they will have to ration support to. That's the real shame.
Still altruism is not a requirement for a company so MS will do what it thinks is best.
It's an interesting contrast to Apple's $100 rebate on the itards who's feelings where hurt by the price cut. Apple uses it's monopoly not so much "for good" but to enable it to manage it's customer's end-to-end experience in a very positive way. That's their business model. It's apparently less successful than MS but is viable in the people for whom time is money and hassles are aggravation. (why people on slashdot, who surely must earn at least $50/hour grouse that Apple is more expensive amaze me. 20 hours of aggravation is $1000 bucks of your time lunkheads.)
Anyone here old enough to remember the Dalkon Shield implants? Sold by the millions, recommend by doctors as ideal and healthful. A.H Robbins is no more.
Let me clarify. When You include a command into the main language you think twice about it. You don't want to include a zillion variations on it since that clutters things up. I.e. bloat. When you compartmentalize things into libraries, the people who write these seem to think that means it carte blanch to have every possible function on that theme under the sun. Import "re" and you get a match function for strings at the beginning and a different one for string matches anywhere. import Strings and you get a left strip, a right strip, and the strip both all as separate commands. And so on. No attempt at parecemony. Sure perhaps there's some optimization advantages and some self documentation advantages. But it also means a shitload of stuff to memorize and you end up with many ways to do the same things. (e.g. want to convert strings to ints? well use localize library or string library or ....)
This is bloat in a language.
I agree LUA is very cool. I first discovered it using DLS linux. Very cool. That said. perl gains a lot for each command it adds and it adds a lot less than things that use libraries do. Library organization tend to allow library writers to include every kitchen sink idea in the library rather than paring it down to the basics and putting it in the main language.
Perl is my favorite unbloated language. I know you laugh but hear me out. Pick up the O-reily quick reference for almost any major language. with the exception of fortran (:-) the perl one is not just a little bit thinner, it's more than half as thick as most and that includes c++.
Basically I find it really annoying that to get even a fraction of the functionality of stock perl one has to import some library. Why do I have to import Regular expression or Strings in python? or for that matter, just to get the command line args I have to import a freakin library? And then why does it take a zillion pages in the quickref to explain it when it has less fearutes than stock perl.
I don't want to rag on python here and this is not a flame to say perl is better than python. (python is in very many ways superior to perl for organized project programming. It also used to be easier to read since there was only one way to do something but that zen is gone now.)
Once you learn perl you don't need a big set of reference books to explain every obscure library. Just the manpages or a quick reference will do. I hate language bloat.
1) those variables can be perl-ties to disk files
2) There are profound simmilarities.
Namely when storing variables by column they are (generally) the same type, allowing much greater access speed, serial processing speed, and compression.
Object oriented programming usualy has problems with speed when one must iterate over some deeply nested attribute value in an large collection of objects (for example to sort on a number). Column oriented storage already has those attributes collected in a single place.
So this has everything to do with the original article
Traditionally perl-objects are hashes with one blessed hash per instance. The hash contains all the instance variable values using their names as keys.
instead one can use blessed scalars holding a single integer value for instances and let the class variable contain all the instance data in arrays indexed by the instances scalar value.
This technique was originally promoted as an indirection to protect object data from direct manipution that bypassed get/set methods. But it also allows the object to be either row or column oriented internally. that is the class could store all the instance hashes in an array indexed by the scalar. or it could store each instance variable in a separate array that is indexed by the scalar value.
Thus the perl class can, on-the-fly, switch itself from column-oriented to row-oriented as needed while maintaining the same external interface.
Of course this is not a perl-exclusive feature and it can implemented in other languages. It just happens to be particularly easy and natural to do in perl.
Oh and the other biggy on a mac is the meu bar is a the top of the screen and the ability to use a one button mouse. Both of those are a LOT better for your old folks. It has the handicapped access modes too (locking shift keys, high contrast views, zoomable)
Run Mac OSX. set it to the simple finder mode. There you can lock out all applicatons you don't want them to have. They cannot edit the icons in the dock so what they see is what they get (and they can't accidentally delete them either). And finally if ALL you really want is Browser, you can put it in kiosk mode and even have it boot that way. SO all it is is a browser, up and running when you snap on the machine.
Now if you are budget minded you could do the same with Linux. Use a Live CD, configure it to boot to a browser. Remove all the other icons and don't give them permission to the apps. One of the very easiest ones to configure this way is DSL linux which has the benefit of booting very very very fast from CD and running on old, memory starved hardware, and being parcimonous about screen realestate. However, for you i'd recomend DSL-N (not DSL) as that is more modern.
If you are not budget minded, it would be smarter to go with the mac. several reasons
1) lots of plugins will be easier to use. likepdf support in the browser itself, (flash quicktime silverlight....)
2) some folks there might want a real computer too. The liveCD linux boot will be constraining. Macs, have faster user switching so you can corral the people who need the simple finder but let other use it in advanced mode.
3) Eventually they may want to add a few more apps. maybe they want for example to have podcasts. google earth. Watch DVDs
4) you can keep a mac secure without going crazy. You can even firmware lock it to keep the wiseguys at bay.
5) it's easier to attach portable disks, second or external screens, cameras, etc... to the mac. No sys admin needed.
6) If you need support you can call apple and so can they if you are not around.
7) For desktops there are no cables and they are easy to adjust to viewing angles (like for a wheel chair)
8) easier to use applications, should they want them.
I think that effect would not create a preferred single axis but instead would mean the axes tended to (appear) to be perpendicular to the radial direction from earth. Those would not be parallel axes for the galaxies.
In the end the price difference for me is trivial compared to the hassle of a shitty OS. That's my bias. But don't get me wrong. I put linux in the server room because there the price difference does matter. But for personal computers, like laptops, that run productivity apps, and require more TLC per computer than a server, well it's about productivity and mac OS has lower effort to maintain and use. They last longer too.
I followed the link you listed.
the HP there had a teaser price of 549 inculding a rebate. But this was for a celeron not a core duo, it had the shitty 6 cell battery, no the 12 cell, it lacked blue tooth, and a pile of other things. Once you gave it a core duo, a blue tooth, and the HP reccomended battery, it was $950. There wasa 100 dollar rebate so that would be $850. And you still are not getting things like mag safe, or the Apple Apps, or Mac OS. So feature wise it does not match the $1000 macbook, though it it does come close.
The difference is there is no $549 macbook. So you don't have the option of accepting fewer features for less cash.