I don't think I could do better, because it's almost impossible to get into office without influence peddling. The system allows it, and it generates money which is a great advantage in getting elected. Therefore the system selects for candidates who are willing to do it.
This platform shift is a good example of how OSX is not really open - the whole point of a free and open OS is to not get jerked around by whoever owns it. Linus is never going to stand up and announce that everybody has to stop developing for Linux on platform X because he says so. Jobs did.
See, it's pretty easy to fix the bug that destroyed your vehicle last year. What's 1000x harder is to anticipate the bug that will destroy your vehicle this year.
Did you factor battery life into your purchasing decision? There are many, many laptops these days around 4 hours. The really small Sonys are closer to 8, and unlike your 1980's model they have more than 64KB of RAM.
I don't think Transmeta's problem was choosing a bad niche; everybody wants lower power chips. Rather, the problem IMHO was that their innovations didn't provide much advantage over Intel and AMD chips. The Transmeta chips are too slow for general purpose usage when the competitors are so much faster for just a bit more power.
Yes, I suppose you're right. I used to imagine what would happen if somebody discovered the ultimate song or joke that never got old, but of course I realized that's like discovering an ice cream sandwich that can be eaten but is never consumed - nonsensical.
And of course, computers are not currently able to traffic in "meaning," "experience," or "identity" in any way that humans find to be believable. Once they are, they'll start being able to regularly turn out works and performances that will wow us emotionally, but until then for the most part they're limited to being able to wow us intellectually.
Wouldn't the ability to generate artistic masterworks at will destroy the concept?
Until computers can feel gloomy because of gloomy weather, or can be thrilled because the millenium dawns at midnight, five minutes from now, they won't be able to produce performances that truly move us in the same way that human performances do, because that element of unconscious situational communication and solidarity in shared experience is missing.
I guess we'll find out, because I'm sure somebody will do a study to validate this new technology. It shouldn't be too hard to do a Turing-test sort of thing here, with listeners trying to distingish between the human and the inhuman.
Personally I think much of the beauty of art is sociological. In the right mood you can see art in a dog squat, but for the most part we stick to admiring what other people admire. A painting is worthless during an artist's lifetime, later sells for $40M after the artist achieves greatness retrospectively, then debate erupts over whether the painting was actually the work of "poorly skilled" forger. But there's no consensus, because everybody reads the tea leaves differently. In other words, the art itself really has little intrinsic value.
I was afraid replacing the LiIon battery in my little Canon S100 camera would cost an arm and a leg. Turns out you can get the batteries from the aftermarket for $9. In my experience, their claim of greater-than-OEM capacity is true. As for "labor," there is none - you pop open the battery hatch and put in the new battery.
I don't think Apple would ever want to get into the business of trying to support every type of hardware out there, like Windows does, and like Linux aspires to do. That would be horrendously expensive, and wreck the whole "just works" thing.
I do strongly agree that chip makers should invest in gcc to make themselves look better. Doesn't Apple alredy do this? I heard the latest OSX was among the very first products to be developed for GCC 4.
What performance is he measuring? The hardware or the OS?
Since nither the hardware nor the OS can operate without the other, I'd call it sensible to compare configurations that people might considering using in real life. In fact I don't even know what you mean by a "baseline"; OSX won't run on anything else, and linux is of course not exactly the same on different platforms (if it were, it wouldn't run!)
Besides, the conclusion seems clear enough to me:
OSX has some performance problems that preclude it from deployment as a server when high OS performance is important. I don't see any way to explain away that conclusion.
Exactly... this is the "I hope you get killed in a car crash so you learn to wear your seatbelt" school of thought I've noticed quite a bit on slashdot.
Google never has a final release, they just leave everything in beta, forever - see groups.google.com, maps.google.com, gmail.google.com, froogle.google.com, news.google.com, and who knows what else.
For people buying a ready-made vehicle, I'd say the horsepower at the wheel (as measured on a dyno) is the "real" one, since they're buying a complete package that includes the transmission, wheels, and whatever else. (For that matter 0-60 or 1/4mi. times are even better, since they factor in the weight of the vehicle.)
Now if you're looking for an engine to put into a car you're designing or restoring, then yeah, crank HP.
Omitting "with earbuds attached," Apple could test your iPod with no headphones attached, lowering the requirement for them.
Car and motorcycle makers do the equivalent of this all the time by quoting "dry weight" (where the vehicle is inoperable because it has no coolant, oil, or fuel), or measuring horsepower at the crankshaft (before some of it gets sapped by the powertrain).
And then there's the bogus way CRT screen size is measured.
So it's sort of a moot point. The money may travel a circuitous route, but if you force manufacturers to cover the cost of recycling, it will filter into consumer cost one way or another.
If that's truly the case, then the manufacturers would have no objection to taking on the responsibility for recycling. Yet somehow I doubt they would submit to this without a fight.
Why? I'm not trying to be trite but I see no ethical dilemma here. What you are talking about economists call price discrimination [wikipedia.org] and it is not only not illegal (in most cases) but I would argue it isn't unethical either.
Here's my problem with it: it's bad for consumers.
The reason markets work well for consumers is because the market sets the price. Even though there isn't time for an individual to research every purchase, they don't have to, becasue so long as a certain percentage of consumers do notice, the price will be competitive.
Price discrimination places the burden of researching every decision on individual consumers. The end result is we all waste a lot more time researching every little decision. Even getting a price quote for competitive pricing is more difficult, because nobody will give you a good quote until you give them a blood sample (figurative). And since time is limited, I argue consumers probably end up paying more on average.
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I don't think I could do better, because it's almost impossible to get into office without influence peddling. The system allows it, and it generates money which is a great advantage in getting elected. Therefore the system selects for candidates who are willing to do it.
See, it's pretty easy to fix the bug that destroyed your vehicle last year. What's 1000x harder is to anticipate the bug that will destroy your vehicle this year.
Did you factor battery life into your purchasing decision? There are many, many laptops these days around 4 hours. The really small Sonys are closer to 8, and unlike your 1980's model they have more than 64KB of RAM.
"That's not a fire. this is a fire."
Americans relate to Australia only through Paul Hogan!
Is that about it?
I don't think Transmeta's problem was choosing a bad niche; everybody wants lower power chips. Rather, the problem IMHO was that their innovations didn't provide much advantage over Intel and AMD chips. The Transmeta chips are too slow for general purpose usage when the competitors are so much faster for just a bit more power.
Yes, I suppose you're right. I used to imagine what would happen if somebody discovered the ultimate song or joke that never got old, but of course I realized that's like discovering an ice cream sandwich that can be eaten but is never consumed - nonsensical.
No, I meant, isn't the value of art partly in its scarcity? Would we appeciate it anymore if it were everywhere, all the time?
Personally I think much of the beauty of art is sociological. In the right mood you can see art in a dog squat, but for the most part we stick to admiring what other people admire. A painting is worthless during an artist's lifetime, later sells for $40M after the artist achieves greatness retrospectively, then debate erupts over whether the painting was actually the work of "poorly skilled" forger. But there's no consensus, because everybody reads the tea leaves differently. In other words, the art itself really has little intrinsic value.
Now that is better.
I was afraid replacing the LiIon battery in my little Canon S100 camera would cost an arm and a leg. Turns out you can get the batteries from the aftermarket for $9. In my experience, their claim of greater-than-OEM capacity is true. As for "labor," there is none - you pop open the battery hatch and put in the new battery.
The 05 Honday Odyssey has this feature too. By doing this they boosted the HP *and* fuel economy at the same time.
I don't think Apple would ever want to get into the business of trying to support every type of hardware out there, like Windows does, and like Linux aspires to do. That would be horrendously expensive, and wreck the whole "just works" thing.
Ohmigosh! Next the terrorists will pinpoint the exact location of the White House! That's the President's home address!!
I do strongly agree that chip makers should invest in gcc to make themselves look better. Doesn't Apple alredy do this? I heard the latest OSX was among the very first products to be developed for GCC 4.
Besides, the conclusion seems clear enough to me: OSX has some performance problems that preclude it from deployment as a server when high OS performance is important. I don't see any way to explain away that conclusion.
Exactly... this is the "I hope you get killed in a car crash so you learn to wear your seatbelt" school of thought I've noticed quite a bit on slashdot.
Google never has a final release, they just leave everything in beta, forever - see groups.google.com, maps.google.com, gmail.google.com, froogle.google.com, news.google.com, and who knows what else.
Now if you're looking for an engine to put into a car you're designing or restoring, then yeah, crank HP.
Car and motorcycle makers do the equivalent of this all the time by quoting "dry weight" (where the vehicle is inoperable because it has no coolant, oil, or fuel), or measuring horsepower at the crankshaft (before some of it gets sapped by the powertrain).
And then there's the bogus way CRT screen size is measured.
The reason markets work well for consumers is because the market sets the price. Even though there isn't time for an individual to research every purchase, they don't have to, becasue so long as a certain percentage of consumers do notice, the price will be competitive.
Price discrimination places the burden of researching every decision on individual consumers. The end result is we all waste a lot more time researching every little decision. Even getting a price quote for competitive pricing is more difficult, because nobody will give you a good quote until you give them a blood sample (figurative). And since time is limited, I argue consumers probably end up paying more on average.