If people have less real money now then then, it isn't for stuff getting more expensive
You are very selective in your examples... sure computers have come down, but they are more the exception than the rule.
35 years ago my parents, as newlyweds, were able to get a home in San Jose near the beach and fill it with *real wood* furniture. And they didn't have to go deeply into debt to go to college because of better government support and, more importantly, it just wasn't so expensive. Of the things that were more expensive back then, a lot of them also lasted longer (appliances, funiture, even a lot of electrical equipment... though not cars as you state).
Price reductions in and of themselves are generally pretty rare outside of IT.
Good points but I do think that issue bears comment. The government breakup of AT&T (which according to this story is being reversed) seems to me to have caused massive price cuts in long distance. I don't want to go back to the bad old days of "the" phone company. For one thing I don't want a small number of companies to get too much control over the backbone of the Internet and start scewing it up with their content discrimination crap. It could very well happen.
The degree of substitutable goods and the nature of price competition in cellular markets seems to keep downward pressure on rates.
I think not. I had a cellphone almost 10 years ago, but cancelled because I didn't feel I was getting my money's worth. I've been waiting since then for prices to come down, and they have not.
Cellphone companies are just like phone companies and cable companies: price reductions (for any reason) are simply alien to them.
So, it comes down to a question of who do you trust: college kids who have nothing at stake, or companies that have everything at stake?
1) the point isn't for every user to check the code, just for a few people or companies to do it and distribute the checksums. It's not that the open source world trusts anybody in particular, but it's impossible to keep a secret once several people with different interests know it.
2) You're wrong to state that open source is just about college students and not companies. There are many many companies with an interest in Linux being secure.
3) Why do you assume a company would be trustworthy? Having something to lose makes them vulnerable to government pressure. Look how fast all the search engines caved in to China.
1. Head of an organization brought down. However, since it is a cell based organization and much information indicates his role is no longer chief commander it will do little to help stop terrorism.
2. Umm... yeah, nevermind that's it.
Interesting, so do you think bringing Saddam Hussein to justice was "worth it"?
If I install a FTP server app on my computer at work, set it to allow anonymous and share my whole hard drive, that's my fault when feces meets oscillating blades.
If the ftp port on your computer at work is open to the public Internet, your admins need to be round up and shot. You should be behind a firewall, and it's they're job to make sure. They should also be scanning the internal network and raising questions about your server.
Read carefully, I was speaking only of Sam's heirs. I admire Sam for clawing his way to the top of an already crowded industry (even though I'm not sure the overall impact on society is good).
The majority of the wealth will always be concentrated in the hands of a small group of people. Even in a utopian society(unless pure communism is your idea of a utopia), there will be people who are willing to work very hard to be better off than most.
It's mainly not about hard work. Bill Gates does less work for each dollar than a welfare recipient (seriously; do the math). But he does, at least, work hard... if you look at the list of richest Americans, most are not rags-to-riches (nor even upper-middle-class-to-riches like Gates). Quite a few of the top-ten wealthiest are Wal-Mart heirs who were simply born (or married) into Sam's wealth.
Like the other response said, super-wealth is mainly about the economic dynamics that determine how many worker's productivity can be concentrated upon one recipient.
Now how could you mod that poor functional language advocate "funny"? I'm sure he'd much rather be modded "flamebait"... but you knew that already, didn't you, Mr. Moderator?
Actually I posted that from my kitchen table. It's true that cellphones are strictly forbidden at work (and they're serious about it), whereas WiFi devices can be brought in so long as the WiFi function is turned off while on premises, and the proper paperwork is filled out. I can't fully explain the discrepancy between WiFi and Cellular, but cellphones do transmit much futher for one thing.
Yeah, this stinks. I have the 4700 pocketpc and like it, in fact I'm posting on it now. We're not allowed cellphones in the workplace so a standalone pda is a necessity for me.
With sony out and palm going downhill, where will I get my next PDA?
The flaw in your argument is that the Mac Mini is not a HTPC. A Mac Mini plus several other boxes and wires for video capture, adequate hard drive, AC adapter, and (until the latest model) digital audio out, together, are a HTPC... a rather crude and discombobulated one. If the case were a standard AV component size, it would have room inside for all of these things in a single nice package.
Besides, batteries themselves are pretty heavy. The 9 cell battery for my T40 weights 2.2 pounds. It takes 2 of them to get 8 hours. You do the math... the fuel cell is lighter.
*Everything* is inherently unreliable to some degree (including wired telephones)... that really doesn't address the issue of whether intentionally doing something is OK. For instance, roads can sometimes be slippery for a variety of reasons, but if you were to dump teflon dry-lube all over a road in order to cause an accident, my guess is you would be liable.
My feeling about this technology is that it's very crude. It simply blocks RF. (Contrary to what's implied by the summary, the nanotube paint isn't at all selective... they just block everything, and may one day use a repeater to pipe in stuff they want). As "connectedness" gets more and more ingrained, my guess is this will have unintended consequences, having nothing to do with cell phones. For one thing it precludes all future RF devices which might not be so intrustive, like... who knows what? Maybe a pacemaker with a GPS receiver that phones the hospital when somebody's heart stops. Who knows what the future will bring.
Finally, I think the FCC controls the RF spectrum, even on or in private property. If I want to set up a WiFi network across from a big hotel to sell net access to the lodgers, I think I should be able to do so.
The sales numbers of the computers that you design vs. the ones that Apple designs tells me that they might be on to something here.
Is the mini a big seller? I'm under the impression Apple is making most of its money from iPods these days.
I'm sure you know your own needs, but yes I'm surprised you would choose Mac Minis for software development. What's the appeal for that application? Wouldn't almost anything else be faster?
China is a manufacturer, and an exporter. Insulating themselves from the global buyers hurts them, not us. We'll just have to get our paper drink umbrellas (and other cheaply made consumable crap) from someplace else.
It is true that a buyer with a wad of cash wields a lot of power.
However, the US has come to resemble a shopaholic with a huge credit card balance. That kind of consumer doesn't have so much power... especially not when the debts are called in.
Strikes me that what they're trying to do is even further cut themselves off from undesired Western influences.
How will it cut them off? I think this headline of "alternate Internet" is extremely misleading. It's still the same network, connected to "the" internet, with global IP address space, and incorporating all the old domain names along with the new ones. Mcdonalds.com will still work. I don't see how creating a new pool of domain names, in itself, cuts them off from anything. (They have the Great Firewall and kowtowing Western business partners for that).
Don't you know you can get a machine from Dell with similar specs for about $100 less!
Well, it's a fair question. The Duo machine is $800, not $600. $800 is getting up there for a box with no peripherals in today's ultra-cheap market. Still it's the cheapest Duo machine I've noticed, however I haven't looked very hard.
Which independent benchmarks confirming that the Intel Core Duo really is about 4x the speed of the G4, I'd say the Mini just got a whole lot more viable. At $800 the price is a significant step up, but I guess you gotta pay to play, and it's still the cheapest Duo system I've noticed.
Everybody prefers a simpler programming model, there's no doubt about that. But with the recent lack of progress in unicore speeds, something has to give, and apparently that "something" is programming complexity. While the PC world moves from 1 to 2 cores, the PS3 is jumping straight to 8. But going from 1 to 2 threads is a bigger conceptual jump than from 2 to 8 anyways.
Fortunately for IBM and Sony, games are one place where hand-optimizing certain algorithms is still practical. I doubt they will place all their eggs in the octopiler basket. I can't imagine a compiler will find that much paralellism in code that isn't explicitly written to be parallel. Personally, I think they should instead focus on explicitly parallel libraries for common game algorithms like collision detection.
But what the IT industry really needs is another Syquest or Iomega to come along and define a storage-centric format -- without all the bullshit politics surrounding Hollywood and video game consoles, and the enormous license royalties involved.
I would love for that to happen, especially since writable DVDs themselves have turned out to be a disappointment with their compatibility issues. But most of Blu-Ray's troubles seem technical in nature. They can't get them function cheaply and reliably. If squeezing 25 GB on a removal optical disc were easy, Blu Ray would be a shoe-in. What chance does a smaller upstart have to overcome those hurdles? Is there some technology poised to offer a solution?
It seems the ancient winchester magnetic hard drive is putting everything else to shame and continuing its incredible run. Maybe network-based distribution and magnetic storage (legal or not) will beat these optical media to the punch?
The stupid thing of it is that the bandwidth donated by P2P servers is pure waste anyways. A packet sent from a leaf node of the Internet to another leaf node makes TWO trips - one up to the backbone, and one back down. A packet served from a data center right on the backbone only has to make the trip down. So P2P just wastes bandwidth. As for server horsepower, I'm not worried about it at all. Serving up static content (like a movie, which isn't tailored to each recipient) is super easy.
How exactly is this different than any other format? If I have a 128 mp3, converting it is likely a "losing" proposition.
Because there's no reason to convert an mp3 to another lossy format. Unlike AAC, there's no DRM to restrict you to a single brand of players, so no reason to convert.
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35 years ago my parents, as newlyweds, were able to get a home in San Jose near the beach and fill it with *real wood* furniture. And they didn't have to go deeply into debt to go to college because of better government support and, more importantly, it just wasn't so expensive. Of the things that were more expensive back then, a lot of them also lasted longer (appliances, funiture, even a lot of electrical equipment... though not cars as you state).
Cellphone companies are just like phone companies and cable companies: price reductions (for any reason) are simply alien to them.
2) You're wrong to state that open source is just about college students and not companies. There are many many companies with an interest in Linux being secure.
3) Why do you assume a company would be trustworthy? Having something to lose makes them vulnerable to government pressure. Look how fast all the search engines caved in to China.
Read carefully, I was speaking only of Sam's heirs. I admire Sam for clawing his way to the top of an already crowded industry (even though I'm not sure the overall impact on society is good).
Like the other response said, super-wealth is mainly about the economic dynamics that determine how many worker's productivity can be concentrated upon one recipient.
Now how could you mod that poor functional language advocate "funny"? I'm sure he'd much rather be modded "flamebait"... but you knew that already, didn't you, Mr. Moderator?
Actually I posted that from my kitchen table. It's true that cellphones are strictly forbidden at work (and they're serious about it), whereas WiFi devices can be brought in so long as the WiFi function is turned off while on premises, and the proper paperwork is filled out. I can't fully explain the discrepancy between WiFi and Cellular, but cellphones do transmit much futher for one thing.
With sony out and palm going downhill, where will I get my next PDA?
The flaw in your argument is that the Mac Mini is not a HTPC. A Mac Mini plus several other boxes and wires for video capture, adequate hard drive, AC adapter, and (until the latest model) digital audio out, together, are a HTPC... a rather crude and discombobulated one. If the case were a standard AV component size, it would have room inside for all of these things in a single nice package.
Besides, batteries themselves are pretty heavy. The 9 cell battery for my T40 weights 2.2 pounds. It takes 2 of them to get 8 hours. You do the math... the fuel cell is lighter.
My feeling about this technology is that it's very crude. It simply blocks RF. (Contrary to what's implied by the summary, the nanotube paint isn't at all selective... they just block everything, and may one day use a repeater to pipe in stuff they want). As "connectedness" gets more and more ingrained, my guess is this will have unintended consequences, having nothing to do with cell phones. For one thing it precludes all future RF devices which might not be so intrustive, like... who knows what? Maybe a pacemaker with a GPS receiver that phones the hospital when somebody's heart stops. Who knows what the future will bring.
Finally, I think the FCC controls the RF spectrum, even on or in private property. If I want to set up a WiFi network across from a big hotel to sell net access to the lodgers, I think I should be able to do so.
The sales numbers of the computers that you design vs. the ones that Apple designs tells me that they might be on to something here. Is the mini a big seller? I'm under the impression Apple is making most of its money from iPods these days.
I'm sure you know your own needs, but yes I'm surprised you would choose Mac Minis for software development. What's the appeal for that application? Wouldn't almost anything else be faster?
However, the US has come to resemble a shopaholic with a huge credit card balance. That kind of consumer doesn't have so much power... especially not when the debts are called in.
Are there any real competitors in the same niche?
Which independent benchmarks confirming that the Intel Core Duo really is about 4x the speed of the G4, I'd say the Mini just got a whole lot more viable. At $800 the price is a significant step up, but I guess you gotta pay to play, and it's still the cheapest Duo system I've noticed.
Fortunately for IBM and Sony, games are one place where hand-optimizing certain algorithms is still practical. I doubt they will place all their eggs in the octopiler basket. I can't imagine a compiler will find that much paralellism in code that isn't explicitly written to be parallel. Personally, I think they should instead focus on explicitly parallel libraries for common game algorithms like collision detection.
It seems the ancient winchester magnetic hard drive is putting everything else to shame and continuing its incredible run. Maybe network-based distribution and magnetic storage (legal or not) will beat these optical media to the punch?
The stupid thing of it is that the bandwidth donated by P2P servers is pure waste anyways. A packet sent from a leaf node of the Internet to another leaf node makes TWO trips - one up to the backbone, and one back down. A packet served from a data center right on the backbone only has to make the trip down. So P2P just wastes bandwidth. As for server horsepower, I'm not worried about it at all. Serving up static content (like a movie, which isn't tailored to each recipient) is super easy.