The G3 (and G4, but by that time the P3 was out) was faster at raw computing tasks than the PII by quite a bit. It was often hard to tell, because the Mac OS of the time was so technically awful. Then the G4 came out but its clock speed stagnated for over a year, while the P3 and P4 moved ahead.
100% of taxes levied against businesses are paid by their customers or the company will go out of business.
They can also be paid by employees via lower wages, or stockholders via lower profits. Your central point is correct though: every tax is ultimately paid by a human being, but that's not obvious to most people which is why politicians like to "tax" businesses.
Why you'd need anything other than a-z ( uppercase and lowercase ), 0-9, and possibly "_" to name a file is beyond me.
"Revenue through 6/30 10:00 PM (Revised)". Just because you're used to working around artificial limitations doesn't mean we should be inflicting them on normal users who just want to get their work done.
Why use "My Term Paper That Will Determine If I Pass Or Fail My Fourth Year.doc" when "FourthYearTermPaper.doc" ( or "Fourth_Year_Term_Paper.doc" ) works just as well?
And why not "4YTP.DOC"? Software should adapt to serve humans, not vice versa.
Ok. I'm not familiar with.app bundles (similar to.jars) ?
Pretty much. It's a self contained file (actually a directory that is presented as a single file, but you can drill into it if you want) that contains the executable and all supporting resources and libraries.
But other app bundles make it very difficult for application sharing and greatly increase the size of programs on your computer.
True but mostly irrelevant. Drive space is so cheap that it's easily worth a few megs of redundant libraries per app if it makes things easier for the user. I'll grant that it would be harder on Linux, because you wouldn't have the guarantee of certain libraries always being present like you do on OS X.
Not to mention the complexity of updates.
The update process is usually: download new app version, copy over old version, done.
Linux application install tools allows both the flexibility of an integrated upgrade and removal interface, while still allowing parts of the system to interoperate easily.
Even if that's true, the very fact that you need "application install tools" is a strike against usability. With app bundles, you "install" by copying the single file to your hard drive, and "uninstall" by deleting it. That's always going to be easier than even the best designed package manager.
However, while a free market is supposed to be economic democracy, I think that the actions taken by large commercial entities (MS, RIAA, MPAA, etc) are indicative that they really don't care what we think, or they rely very heavily on the vast majority of people not caring/noticing.
Most abusive actions taken by corporations are only possible due to the cooperation of government. DRM is the classic example; it can be effective only because it's backed up by government guns via the DMCA.
I happen to believe China should be way more open to political opposition, but I don't have a right to force them that way, especially if they censor non-violently. Good luck trying to lable Internet censorship as violent.
Government censorship is violent by definition. It ultimately comes down to "we will use whatever force is necessary to prevent you from saying this".
Because it sucks. Even if it's "necessary" for us to die because of overpopulation concerns (which I reject entirely), the process of our bodies and often minds deteriorating over the course of our lives can and should be minimized.
Where are the powermacs and powerbooks I'd heard were going to be announced?
Power Macs will get a stealth upgrade in a few weeks with DDR2 and PCIe. Steve isn't going to make a big deal out of any pro Macs until the Intel switch.
It was, but times change. PVRs are becoming more and more popular, and when you have one there's no reason to ever watch a commercial again. Direct payment is the future.
They're going to have to come up with new methods of embedding ads, or charge more per download.
I don't see that. How much does a typical episode cost to produce? $5 million or so? That's profitable with 3 million buyers at $2.
Hell... I'd pay 4.99 per episode for the new Doctor Who
Yeah, there are some great opportunities here. Imagine new Firefly episodes as iTunes exclusives. Being able to vote with our wallets instead of our Neilsen boxes can correct the fundamental flaws of existing ratings methods that force nearly everything to the lowest common denominator.
who is going to collect your flat sales tax, the mystical tax fairies?
A smaller and less intrusive IRS. Actually with a flat tax they still need to know all your sources of income, which is one reason I'd prefer a sales tax.
In any case, flat taxes (like sales, gas, vice) are regressive.
Easily corrected with a large standard deduction for a flat tax, or a universal rebate for a sales tax.
We already face problems in that we continue to send manufacturing outside the country. So we stop really producing anything.
Actually US manufacturing output is continuing to increase. Manufacturing *employment* is decreasing mainly due to automation, but that's ultimately a good thing. The majority of Americans were farmers not many generations ago.
If we remove the ability of people to engage in creative development (which a lot of do-it-yourself activity is), then we become unable to create anything.
Absolutely. We're heading toward a future where gadgets like what Jobs and Wozniak built in their garage will be classified as illegal "circumvention devices".
I wrote a journal article related to this a little while back:The Importance of Economics [slashdot.org]. Basically, my thought is that if more people understood basic economics, we'd have more intellegent (or at least less stupid) legislation because they would understand that some thing can't be accomplished.
Very nice. Whenever I hear a politician prattling on about how some proposed government spending is an "investment" that will "create jobs", I want to throw something through a window.
We accept a lot more... "bugginess" in software than we do in any other product (Cars, Banks, Tools, etc.)
In exchage for much more rapid development than other products. Cars today aren't hugely different than they were 20 years ago, when we were using DOS.
In other words, customers prefer cheap to bug-free, and evil software companies aren't interested in selling software for less than it costs to produce. I'm just not feeling the moral outrage here.
Or any particular way to encourage people to put in the work to make those movies/etc?
Dominant assurance contracts are an interesting idea. They would pay IP creators for the fundamentally scarce act of creation rather than imposing artificial scarcity on copies of the finished product.
If we don't need any more manual labor, what jobs will these people do?
Best case, they find other jobs: personal assistants, butlers, etc. Worst case, they get welfare. A post-scarcity society would be spectacularly wealthy compared to today; providing basic necessities for everyone would be a trivial expenditure.
If you have a choice in cell phones and companies, I think it's a little selfish to go with a Sprint phone because it's cheaper (read: subsidized) then lock it and take it elsewhere.
Why? How is that different from taking advantage of any other discount or loss leader?
I think the part that threw him off is that the free market created something that's actually free.
That's exactly right. The free market drives prices down to marginal costs. With software, the marginal cost is zero. This causes some people to see socialist conspiracies in the free software movement, when it's actually capitalism doing what it's supposed to.
Offhand, I and probably the vast majority of Americans think that we went in after the oil.
Don't extrapolate your poor reasoning to the rest of the American public. If we wanted Iraq's oil, we'd have lifted the sanctions and bought it. Or, if the real goal was to enrich Halliburton, we could have set them up with under-the-table deals like the French did.
Re:Nope- no companies hiring that can afford to ca
on
Pay vs. Happiness
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· Score: 1
and BTW- the median personal income is actually $26k. It's gone down since 2000, rather severely.
I wouldn't call this severe. The drop is consistent with other recessions.
Personal debt is NOTHING in comparison to Corporate Debt, which in turn is rather small in comparison to Government debt- and it's all three together that were reported on Air America Radio for the $150 for every $100 earned figure.
I'd still need to see a breakdown of the figures. Statistics like that are easy to fudge; for example the recent reports that the US has a zero percent savings rate are only obtained by ignoring stuff like 401k contributions.
None of which has created a higher standard of living.
The millions of people buying Tivos and iPods presumably believe otherwise.
Yes- as technology marches on what was once luxury becomes necessity- that's a given. In 1700 they didn't have showers, so what's your point?
My point is that we're better off now that we do have showers.
Luxury when talking about standard of living is being able to obtain those items without worrying about paying the basic bills. Sure we have color TVs and internet access- but neither one of those do you any good when that interest-only loan hits the balloon payment
You can always cancel your cable and Internet service to free up cash. Now if you've taken on more debt than you can afford even after getting rid of nonessential spending then you're screwed, but nobody made you sign up for that interest-only loan.
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The G4 was never better than the PII
The G3 (and G4, but by that time the P3 was out) was faster at raw computing tasks than the PII by quite a bit. It was often hard to tell, because the Mac OS of the time was so technically awful. Then the G4 came out but its clock speed stagnated for over a year, while the P3 and P4 moved ahead.
100% of taxes levied against businesses are paid by their customers or the company will go out of business.
They can also be paid by employees via lower wages, or stockholders via lower profits. Your central point is correct though: every tax is ultimately paid by a human being, but that's not obvious to most people which is why politicians like to "tax" businesses.
Why you'd need anything other than a-z ( uppercase and lowercase ), 0-9, and possibly "_" to name a file is beyond me.
"Revenue through 6/30 10:00 PM (Revised)". Just because you're used to working around artificial limitations doesn't mean we should be inflicting them on normal users who just want to get their work done.
Why use "My Term Paper That Will Determine If I Pass Or Fail My Fourth Year.doc" when "FourthYearTermPaper.doc" ( or "Fourth_Year_Term_Paper.doc" ) works just as well?
And why not "4YTP.DOC"? Software should adapt to serve humans, not vice versa.
Ok. I'm not familiar with .app bundles (similar to .jars) ?
Pretty much. It's a self contained file (actually a directory that is presented as a single file, but you can drill into it if you want) that contains the executable and all supporting resources and libraries.
But other app bundles make it very difficult for application sharing and greatly increase the size of programs on your computer.
True but mostly irrelevant. Drive space is so cheap that it's easily worth a few megs of redundant libraries per app if it makes things easier for the user. I'll grant that it would be harder on Linux, because you wouldn't have the guarantee of certain libraries always being present like you do on OS X.
Not to mention the complexity of updates.
The update process is usually: download new app version, copy over old version, done.
Linux application install tools allows both the flexibility of an integrated upgrade and removal interface, while still allowing parts of the system to interoperate easily.
Even if that's true, the very fact that you need "application install tools" is a strike against usability. With app bundles, you "install" by copying the single file to your hard drive, and "uninstall" by deleting it. That's always going to be easier than even the best designed package manager.
However, while a free market is supposed to be economic democracy, I think that the actions taken by large commercial entities (MS, RIAA, MPAA, etc) are indicative that they really don't care what we think, or they rely very heavily on the vast majority of people not caring/noticing.
Most abusive actions taken by corporations are only possible due to the cooperation of government. DRM is the classic example; it can be effective only because it's backed up by government guns via the DMCA.
I happen to believe China should be way more open to political opposition, but I don't have a right to force them that way, especially if they censor non-violently. Good luck trying to lable Internet censorship as violent.
Government censorship is violent by definition. It ultimately comes down to "we will use whatever force is necessary to prevent you from saying this".
Why in the world would you want to fight aging?
Because it sucks. Even if it's "necessary" for us to die because of overpopulation concerns (which I reject entirely), the process of our bodies and often minds deteriorating over the course of our lives can and should be minimized.
Where are the powermacs and powerbooks I'd heard were going to be announced?
Power Macs will get a stealth upgrade in a few weeks with DDR2 and PCIe. Steve isn't going to make a big deal out of any pro Macs until the Intel switch.
And the backbone of TV is advertising.
It was, but times change. PVRs are becoming more and more popular, and when you have one there's no reason to ever watch a commercial again. Direct payment is the future.
They're going to have to come up with new methods of embedding ads, or charge more per download.
I don't see that. How much does a typical episode cost to produce? $5 million or so? That's profitable with 3 million buyers at $2.
Hell... I'd pay 4.99 per episode for the new Doctor Who
Yeah, there are some great opportunities here. Imagine new Firefly episodes as iTunes exclusives. Being able to vote with our wallets instead of our Neilsen boxes can correct the fundamental flaws of existing ratings methods that force nearly everything to the lowest common denominator.
who is going to collect your flat sales tax, the mystical tax fairies?
A smaller and less intrusive IRS. Actually with a flat tax they still need to know all your sources of income, which is one reason I'd prefer a sales tax.
In any case, flat taxes (like sales, gas, vice) are regressive.
Easily corrected with a large standard deduction for a flat tax, or a universal rebate for a sales tax.
We already face problems in that we continue to send manufacturing outside the country. So we stop really producing anything.
Actually US manufacturing output is continuing to increase. Manufacturing *employment* is decreasing mainly due to automation, but that's ultimately a good thing. The majority of Americans were farmers not many generations ago.
If we remove the ability of people to engage in creative development (which a lot of do-it-yourself activity is), then we become unable to create anything.
Absolutely. We're heading toward a future where gadgets like what Jobs and Wozniak built in their garage will be classified as illegal "circumvention devices".
I wrote a journal article related to this a little while back:The Importance of Economics [slashdot.org]. Basically, my thought is that if more people understood basic economics, we'd have more intellegent (or at least less stupid) legislation because they would understand that some thing can't be accomplished.
Very nice. Whenever I hear a politician prattling on about how some proposed government spending is an "investment" that will "create jobs", I want to throw something through a window.
We accept a lot more ... "bugginess" in software than we do in any other product (Cars, Banks, Tools, etc.)
In exchage for much more rapid development than other products. Cars today aren't hugely different than they were 20 years ago, when we were using DOS.
It's all down to economics and greed.
In other words, customers prefer cheap to bug-free, and evil software companies aren't interested in selling software for less than it costs to produce. I'm just not feeling the moral outrage here.
Because the market is ill-informed.
I can believe that in many cases, but I have difficulty with the theory that government is better informed.
There are definitely things that Java doesn't have that it's the weaker for. I miss closures and other features of dynamic languages constantly.
Me too. Check out Groovy.
They should make a law saying that NO format can be protected from basic fair use rights
Actually they should just get rid of the anti-circumvention portions of the DMCA, and the market will take care of DRM-crippled products.
DRM isn't and can't be for regular products. You aren't reproducing your lipstick, car, lawnmower, or flashlight.
Give nanotech 20 years or so...
Or any particular way to encourage people to put in the work to make those movies/etc?
Dominant assurance contracts are an interesting idea. They would pay IP creators for the fundamentally scarce act of creation rather than imposing artificial scarcity on copies of the finished product.
If we don't need any more manual labor, what jobs will these people do?
Best case, they find other jobs: personal assistants, butlers, etc. Worst case, they get welfare. A post-scarcity society would be spectacularly wealthy compared to today; providing basic necessities for everyone would be a trivial expenditure.
If you have a choice in cell phones and companies, I think it's a little selfish to go with a Sprint phone because it's cheaper (read: subsidized) then lock it and take it elsewhere.
Why? How is that different from taking advantage of any other discount or loss leader?
I think the part that threw him off is that the free market created something that's actually free.
That's exactly right. The free market drives prices down to marginal costs. With software, the marginal cost is zero. This causes some people to see socialist conspiracies in the free software movement, when it's actually capitalism doing what it's supposed to.
Offhand, I and probably the vast majority of Americans think that we went in after the oil.
Don't extrapolate your poor reasoning to the rest of the American public. If we wanted Iraq's oil, we'd have lifted the sanctions and bought it. Or, if the real goal was to enrich Halliburton, we could have set them up with under-the-table deals like the French did.
and BTW- the median personal income is actually $26k. It's gone down since 2000, rather severely.
I wouldn't call this severe. The drop is consistent with other recessions.
Personal debt is NOTHING in comparison to Corporate Debt, which in turn is rather small in comparison to Government debt- and it's all three together that were reported on Air America Radio for the $150 for every $100 earned figure.
I'd still need to see a breakdown of the figures. Statistics like that are easy to fudge; for example the recent reports that the US has a zero percent savings rate are only obtained by ignoring stuff like 401k contributions.
None of which has created a higher standard of living.
The millions of people buying Tivos and iPods presumably believe otherwise.
Yes- as technology marches on what was once luxury becomes necessity- that's a given. In 1700 they didn't have showers, so what's your point?
My point is that we're better off now that we do have showers.
Luxury when talking about standard of living is being able to obtain those items without worrying about paying the basic bills. Sure we have color TVs and internet access- but neither one of those do you any good when that interest-only loan hits the balloon payment
You can always cancel your cable and Internet service to free up cash. Now if you've taken on more debt than you can afford even after getting rid of nonessential spending then you're screwed, but nobody made you sign up for that interest-only loan.