I just don't understand migrating to x86 when x86-32 only had 6 months of life left in it instead of waiting for x86-64
Because trying to sell G4 laptops against Core Duos for most of 2006 would have been painful. They don't give up much by supporting x86-32, since they have to support 32 and 64-bit PPC regardless.
They use ObjC for lots of apps, but the OS-level code that these sorts of exploits target is almost all C/C++. GP is correct, we really need to stop using C and other unsafe languages except in situations where it's absolutely required for performance or low-level access.
It's not that silly. (Although whether it's an appropriate use of taxpayer resources is another matter). Yes, today computers have neither the hardware nor software for decent AI. But it's virtually certain that the hardware will reach and surpass the raw computational power of the human brain in the next few decades. Human brain: roughly 100 petaflops. Blue Gene: "only" 300 teraflops (0.3 petaflops), but apply Moore's Law and things start to get interesting around 2020. Software is harder, but some recent developments in AI are promising.
It won't happen tomorrow, but I expect it will happen sooner than many people think.
You say recording labels have "more market power," but that's not true.
Yes, it is. If you can't see the difference between a cartel of record labels and a brand new website selling software, you have lost all sense of perspective.
In both cases, small and fairly powerless people are trading their talent in a marketing contract.
Delicous Library, "small and powerless"? Do you know anything at all about the Mac shareware industry?
I made no judgement there, just stating what it is.
Great. And the developers by all accounts are pleased with the arrangements. (Unlike artists and the RIAA in many instances). Perhaps your moral sanctimoniousness and self-righteousness could be better directed toward people ctually in need of help.
People are just pointing out the hypocrisy of going apeshit indignant over the RIAA and then celebrating the far more abusive Mac Heist
Sellers sometimes offer discounts, film at 11. In the specific case of TextMate, the current version is nearing the end of its life cycle and the next major release will be Leopard only. The developer probably figured that most people who would be willing to pay full price already have, and that MacHeist is a good way to get more potential upgraders. Maybe he's wrong, but he's in a better position to judge than you.
It was pricey, but eventually I accepted that the developer really thought it was worth that much. OK, so I paid.
You seem to be under the impression that there is an objective measure of what a product is "worth". There is not. You presumably valued a copy of TextMate more than what you paid for it, so you came out ahead. Most of the MacHeist customers did not value TextMate more than its full retail price, or else they would have bought it already. Neither they nor you are right or wrong.
And the developers who chose not to participate - who think their product is worth more - will be hurt.
How is this different from any other seller of any other product offering a discount?
Mac Heist's flat fee means that not only are developers in an abusive contract
I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. MacHeist has nowhere near the market power of the major recording labels. Nobody's success is made or broken by being included in the bundle or not. MacHeist offered a deal, some developers declined, some accepted. I find it baffling that so many people think they are more qualified to make business decisions than the actual owners of the businesses.
My analogy may not be perfect, but basically you're saying that since current x86 processors are faster, that Apple should have moved to them rather than sticking with PowerPC.
They should have moved because current x86 processors (i.e. Core, not NetBurst) are *significantly* faster in raw performance and even more so in performance per watt, and PPC has nothing on the horizon capable of competing effectively. Cell is cool, but it's not viable for general-purpose computers.
What happens next time the PowerPC architecture pulls ahead?
It probably won't. If it does, Apple can easily support it with universal binaries.
Nonetheless, a short survey of this particular article thread shows pretty readily that people are under the impression that there's "speed limit" lanes and "speeding" lanes. Anything I can do to dispel that myth is probably worthwhile.
There is no "traffic cop impersonation" lane either. The tailgater is being obnoxious and dangerous. You are doing the same and thereby making a bad situation worse, and almost certainly violating the law yourself.
Worse most schemes invented allow for corporations to buy and sell "pollution credit" with other companies. In other words, a tax just furthers the activity. Instead of stopping it you just make it slightly more expensive to maintain.
Well yeah, because "stopping" is not a realistic option unless you want to go back to the caves. Taxes encourage businesses and individuals to reduce pollution. If the rate is set correctly, entities will pollute only when the benefit of doing so is greater than the harm done by the pollution.
No tax. Just set reasonable emission's goals based on the industry involved.
Government micromanagement has a rather poor track record.
They will portray and financial loss to a corporation as the cost of doing business while convienently ignoring the fact that any "penalty tax" paid by the corporation is ultimately paid by anyone buying their product or engaged in businees with someone using their product (the old idea of - no business pays taxes, they merely collect them for the government)
I agree on the tax incidence point, but that's where competition comes into play. If company A doesn't reduce pollution and passes the increased costs on to its customers, it will lose to company B that does reduce pollution and can thus charge less.
Environmentalists hate the only real solution (nuclear power in case you're doubting that) even more.
I distinguish between "environmentalists" and "communitarian utopians". The former are coming around to supporting nuclear power as much more environmentally friendly than fossil fuels. The latter will always oppose it, as they would any abundant energy source, because it would allow us to continue our decadent materialistic lifestyles rather than change to how they think we should live.
True, and that's a reason why voters should demand that IF any carbon tax is passed, it is strictly tied to a reduction in other taxes.
Agreed. When you tax something, you get less of it, so we should clearly prefer to tax pollution rather than labor, income, and savings.
On a semi-related matter, I don't support the idea of "tax gas/carbon to reduce road congestion". You should tax pollution for polluting and congestion for congesting.
I'm actually not sold on the idea of "congestion" taxes at all. Unlike carbon emissions, there doesn't seem to be an externality problem; everybody on the road contributing to the congestion is also suffering from it, so they already have an incentive to not drive during peak hours if possible.
What are some of those dangerous ideas, that sound good but actually aren't?
I'd argue CAFE standards qualify. They attack the problem indirectly by focusing on miles per gallon, when what we really care about is total gallons. A 50 mile commute in a Prius is more harmful than a 5 mile commute in a Hummer. They also encourage car manufacturers and buyers to find loopholes in the regulations; thus the rise of SUVs. Directly taxing energy use is much more efficient.
The difference between HD and SD isn't nearly as large as the HD industry, which you are a part of, would have us believe.
It really is. At my previoius apartment I could get about 15 over the air HD channels, and they were terrific. I had to move and now can't pick up any of them, and as a result am fully aware of how much NTSC sucks. (For the record, I'm not part of the "HD industry").
The fact that HDTV conversion has been so slow, and sales of HD channels lethargic so far is indicitive that there's little to no demand.
Well, demand is a function of price. Sure, not many people are going to pay $5000 for an HD set, but a lot more will for $1000. Like all new technology, it takes a while for prices to fall to where ordinary people can afford it. The discounts and sellouts of HDTVs on black Friday suggest that we're entering the mainstream part of the adoption curve.
I'm sure you're seeing a ramp in sales of HD equipment, now, but it's not because of some sort of spontaneous demand. It's the fact that government is banning analog.
I don't see that as much of an issue. IIRC the analog cutoff won't affect cable, and not many people are using rabbit ears exclusively.
And as a capitalist, it's disturbing. It's command economy meets the oligarchy.
I share your concern here. But like the net neutrality issue, government already has its tentacles in so deep that there really is no viable "free market" solution.
What did Blizzard do? It renamed the normal state to rested, and the tired state to normal. It also said that the rested state would gain twice as much experience as as the normal state. In essence, they changed two words in their system.
The big question on my mind is: If you don't believe in this, why do you care? They're not funding it with taxpayer dollars, they're funding it on donations. If people want to spend their money on something, why is it anyone's business but their own?
Certainly they should be free to spout idiotic lies, but rational individuals have an equal right inform the public that they are spouting idiotic lies.
And anyone who finds themselves being angry at these people (which is the general tone of this entire discussion) for spending their money in this way needs to take a step back and examine where their hate comes from, because such attitudes are bigotry, even if (especially if) you don't agree with it.
No, it really isn't. I'm not annoyed with them because they're promoting their religion; I'm annoyed with them because they are deliberately spreading falsehoods. I dislike them for the same reasons I dislike Michael Moore and Ann Coulter, but I don't want any of them censored.
If you mention "opportunity cost" to the average credit card user out there, you're going to get a look of ignorance that's almost bovine in its nescience.
Despite having to look up "nescience", this is the best sentence I've read all week.
Or is it simply that better people play with real money then the ones using free credits on the tournement.
Of course. Nobody takes free money games seriously. Anybody who tries to play vaguely correctly can "win" easily.
The problem is that we have no way of knowing for sure. In real life, You can see everything going on and analyze it later. On the internet, you see what your supposed to see and that it.
In some ways the opposite is true. If you play poker online, you can save every hand you're dealt into a database and analyze them however you want. Any cheating by the casino will eventually show up as statistical anomolies outisde the bounds of random chance.
Homeless people gained temporary employment. The people who want a PS3 the most got one. Entrepreneurs who figured out how to make the two previous statements occur earn a tidy profit. WHERE IS THE HARM???
Exactly. This is what happens when people are free to make their own decisions about what their time and money is worth. But economic liberals have the same kind of moral sanctimoniousness in these situations that social conservatives have with sexual practices between consenting adults that they don't approve of.
Setting the correct price, from an economics point of view, would be best done by auction.
True if the objective is just maximizing profits from the initial sales, but then they lose the free publicity of news stories reporting on the fans standing in line for hours, which has to be worth quite a bit.
You can fight against economics but you can't win.
The only difference between Wal-Mart and a Soviet store is that the Soviet store was run much less efficiently.
Why do you think that is? Even granting the dubious assertion that Walmart has an effective monopoly, they still have to be efficient and keep prices down because competitors would emerge if they didn't. Monopolies aren't necessarily harmful; barriers to entry are, and many government regulations have the effect of raising those barriers rather than lowering them. Large companies have armies of lawyers and accountants to deal with regulations; small companies don't.
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I just don't understand migrating to x86 when x86-32 only had 6 months of life left in it instead of waiting for x86-64
Because trying to sell G4 laptops against Core Duos for most of 2006 would have been painful. They don't give up much by supporting x86-32, since they have to support 32 and 64-bit PPC regardless.
Apple generally uses Objective-C
They use ObjC for lots of apps, but the OS-level code that these sorts of exploits target is almost all C/C++. GP is correct, we really need to stop using C and other unsafe languages except in situations where it's absolutely required for performance or low-level access.
It's not that silly. (Although whether it's an appropriate use of taxpayer resources is another matter). Yes, today computers have neither the hardware nor software for decent AI. But it's virtually certain that the hardware will reach and surpass the raw computational power of the human brain in the next few decades. Human brain: roughly 100 petaflops. Blue Gene: "only" 300 teraflops (0.3 petaflops), but apply Moore's Law and things start to get interesting around 2020. Software is harder, but some recent developments in AI are promising.
It won't happen tomorrow, but I expect it will happen sooner than many people think.
You say recording labels have "more market power," but that's not true.
Yes, it is. If you can't see the difference between a cartel of record labels and a brand new website selling software, you have lost all sense of perspective.
In both cases, small and fairly powerless people are trading their talent in a marketing contract.
Delicous Library, "small and powerless"? Do you know anything at all about the Mac shareware industry?
I made no judgement there, just stating what it is.
Great. And the developers by all accounts are pleased with the arrangements. (Unlike artists and the RIAA in many instances). Perhaps your moral sanctimoniousness and self-righteousness could be better directed toward people ctually in need of help.
People are just pointing out the hypocrisy of going apeshit indignant over the RIAA and then celebrating the far more abusive Mac Heist
Right, no judgement there whatsoever.
Sellers sometimes offer discounts, film at 11. In the specific case of TextMate, the current version is nearing the end of its life cycle and the next major release will be Leopard only. The developer probably figured that most people who would be willing to pay full price already have, and that MacHeist is a good way to get more potential upgraders. Maybe he's wrong, but he's in a better position to judge than you.
It was pricey, but eventually I accepted that the developer really thought it was worth that much. OK, so I paid.
You seem to be under the impression that there is an objective measure of what a product is "worth". There is not. You presumably valued a copy of TextMate more than what you paid for it, so you came out ahead. Most of the MacHeist customers did not value TextMate more than its full retail price, or else they would have bought it already. Neither they nor you are right or wrong.
And the developers who chose not to participate - who think their product is worth more - will be hurt.
How is this different from any other seller of any other product offering a discount?
Mac Heist's flat fee means that not only are developers in an abusive contract
I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. MacHeist has nowhere near the market power of the major recording labels. Nobody's success is made or broken by being included in the bundle or not. MacHeist offered a deal, some developers declined, some accepted. I find it baffling that so many people think they are more qualified to make business decisions than the actual owners of the businesses.
My analogy may not be perfect, but basically you're saying that since current x86 processors are faster, that Apple should have moved to them rather than sticking with PowerPC.
They should have moved because current x86 processors (i.e. Core, not NetBurst) are *significantly* faster in raw performance and even more so in performance per watt, and PPC has nothing on the horizon capable of competing effectively. Cell is cool, but it's not viable for general-purpose computers.
What happens next time the PowerPC architecture pulls ahead?
It probably won't. If it does, Apple can easily support it with universal binaries.
Nonetheless, a short survey of this particular article thread shows pretty readily that people are under the impression that there's "speed limit" lanes and "speeding" lanes. Anything I can do to dispel that myth is probably worthwhile.
There is no "traffic cop impersonation" lane either. The tailgater is being obnoxious and dangerous. You are doing the same and thereby making a bad situation worse, and almost certainly violating the law yourself.
Worse most schemes invented allow for corporations to buy and sell "pollution credit" with other companies. In other words, a tax just furthers the activity. Instead of stopping it you just make it slightly more expensive to maintain.
Well yeah, because "stopping" is not a realistic option unless you want to go back to the caves. Taxes encourage businesses and individuals to reduce pollution. If the rate is set correctly, entities will pollute only when the benefit of doing so is greater than the harm done by the pollution.
No tax. Just set reasonable emission's goals based on the industry involved.
Government micromanagement has a rather poor track record.
They will portray and financial loss to a corporation as the cost of doing business while convienently ignoring the fact that any "penalty tax" paid by the corporation is ultimately paid by anyone buying their product or engaged in businees with someone using their product (the old idea of - no business pays taxes, they merely collect them for the government)
I agree on the tax incidence point, but that's where competition comes into play. If company A doesn't reduce pollution and passes the increased costs on to its customers, it will lose to company B that does reduce pollution and can thus charge less.
Environmentalists hate the only real solution (nuclear power in case you're doubting that) even more.
I distinguish between "environmentalists" and "communitarian utopians". The former are coming around to supporting nuclear power as much more environmentally friendly than fossil fuels. The latter will always oppose it, as they would any abundant energy source, because it would allow us to continue our decadent materialistic lifestyles rather than change to how they think we should live.
True, and that's a reason why voters should demand that IF any carbon tax is passed, it is strictly tied to a reduction in other taxes.
Agreed. When you tax something, you get less of it, so we should clearly prefer to tax pollution rather than labor, income, and savings.
On a semi-related matter, I don't support the idea of "tax gas/carbon to reduce road congestion". You should tax pollution for polluting and congestion for congesting.
I'm actually not sold on the idea of "congestion" taxes at all. Unlike carbon emissions, there doesn't seem to be an externality problem; everybody on the road contributing to the congestion is also suffering from it, so they already have an incentive to not drive during peak hours if possible.
What are some of those dangerous ideas, that sound good but actually aren't?
I'd argue CAFE standards qualify. They attack the problem indirectly by focusing on miles per gallon, when what we really care about is total gallons. A 50 mile commute in a Prius is more harmful than a 5 mile commute in a Hummer. They also encourage car manufacturers and buyers to find loopholes in the regulations; thus the rise of SUVs. Directly taxing energy use is much more efficient.
I have gone back to SD from HD. You barely notice it.
Certainly not true for me; the difference is night and day. (Or sadly day and night in my case).
try taking a sight test at a healthy 2 meter viewing distance with a tv under 40 inches. Can you tell the difference, in a double blind setting?
If you can't, then something is seriously screwed up with the HD set.
The difference between HD and SD isn't nearly as large as the HD industry, which you are a part of, would have us believe.
It really is. At my previoius apartment I could get about 15 over the air HD channels, and they were terrific. I had to move and now can't pick up any of them, and as a result am fully aware of how much NTSC sucks. (For the record, I'm not part of the "HD industry").
The fact that HDTV conversion has been so slow, and sales of HD channels lethargic so far is indicitive that there's little to no demand.
Well, demand is a function of price. Sure, not many people are going to pay $5000 for an HD set, but a lot more will for $1000. Like all new technology, it takes a while for prices to fall to where ordinary people can afford it. The discounts and sellouts of HDTVs on black Friday suggest that we're entering the mainstream part of the adoption curve.
I'm sure you're seeing a ramp in sales of HD equipment, now, but it's not because of some sort of spontaneous demand. It's the fact that government is banning analog.
I don't see that as much of an issue. IIRC the analog cutoff won't affect cable, and not many people are using rabbit ears exclusively.
And as a capitalist, it's disturbing. It's command economy meets the oligarchy.
I share your concern here. But like the net neutrality issue, government already has its tentacles in so deep that there really is no viable "free market" solution.
I completely agree. Right now I'm watching Monday night Football via DirecTV and my 13 year old Zenith 25" TV. It looks good enough for me
I'm not much of a football fan, but it looks *fantastic* in HD. Sports are a category that greatly benefits from increased resolution.
What did Blizzard do? It renamed the normal state to rested, and the tired state to normal. It also said that the rested state would gain twice as much experience as as the normal state. In essence, they changed two words in their system.
That's impressive. Perfect example of a framing effect.
which also goes a long way in explaining why the prisoners of war in Gitmo are called 'Enemy Combatants'.
Most of them aren't prisoners of war as defined by the Geneva Conventions. Not that that makes it ok to torture them.
The big question on my mind is: If you don't believe in this, why do you care? They're not funding it with taxpayer dollars, they're funding it on donations. If people want to spend their money on something, why is it anyone's business but their own?
Certainly they should be free to spout idiotic lies, but rational individuals have an equal right inform the public that they are spouting idiotic lies.
And anyone who finds themselves being angry at these people (which is the general tone of this entire discussion) for spending their money in this way needs to take a step back and examine where their hate comes from, because such attitudes are bigotry, even if (especially if) you don't agree with it.
No, it really isn't. I'm not annoyed with them because they're promoting their religion; I'm annoyed with them because they are deliberately spreading falsehoods. I dislike them for the same reasons I dislike Michael Moore and Ann Coulter, but I don't want any of them censored.
For instance, O'Reilly is invested in a Milton Freidman world
O'Reilly is a social and economic populist who fears change, all of which is diametrically opposed to Friedman.
If you mention "opportunity cost" to the average credit card user out there, you're going to get a look of ignorance that's almost bovine in its nescience.
Despite having to look up "nescience", this is the best sentence I've read all week.
Or is it simply that better people play with real money then the ones using free credits on the tournement.
Of course. Nobody takes free money games seriously. Anybody who tries to play vaguely correctly can "win" easily.
The problem is that we have no way of knowing for sure. In real life, You can see everything going on and analyze it later. On the internet, you see what your supposed to see and that it.
In some ways the opposite is true. If you play poker online, you can save every hand you're dealt into a database and analyze them however you want. Any cheating by the casino will eventually show up as statistical anomolies outisde the bounds of random chance.
Buying on eBay just perpetuates the problem.
Being able to sell your own property to willing buyers is a "problem"? Do you work for the RIAA by any chance?
Homeless people gained temporary employment. The people who want a PS3 the most got one. Entrepreneurs who figured out how to make the two previous statements occur earn a tidy profit. WHERE IS THE HARM???
Exactly. This is what happens when people are free to make their own decisions about what their time and money is worth. But economic liberals have the same kind of moral sanctimoniousness in these situations that social conservatives have with sexual practices between consenting adults that they don't approve of.
Setting the correct price, from an economics point of view, would be best done by auction.
True if the objective is just maximizing profits from the initial sales, but then they lose the free publicity of news stories reporting on the fans standing in line for hours, which has to be worth quite a bit.
You can fight against economics but you can't win.
Well said.
The only difference between Wal-Mart and a Soviet store is that the Soviet store was run much less efficiently.
Why do you think that is? Even granting the dubious assertion that Walmart has an effective monopoly, they still have to be efficient and keep prices down because competitors would emerge if they didn't. Monopolies aren't necessarily harmful; barriers to entry are, and many government regulations have the effect of raising those barriers rather than lowering them. Large companies have armies of lawyers and accountants to deal with regulations; small companies don't.