Look. At this level of machine, it's a new game. Make your choice based on what you want. Price is not an issue anymore.
Exactly. It's down into the iPod price range, and will be wildly popular for the same reasons. An "Apple tax" of 20% on a $2000 tower may be prohibitive. For a $300 music player or $500 system, it's not.
The Bush tax cuts and the wars were supposed to generate big budget deficits, and they've succeeded.
Actually most of the current deficit was caused by the 2001 recession, which in turn was caused by the stock market bubble bursting, high-profile corporate fraud, and 9/11. Yes, I'm sure all of those are Bush's fault somehow.
they can use labor cost differentials to make a killing and legally backed technological guards to enforce market separation for consumers
There's the state. I have no problem with HP doing this. I have a huge problem with government declaring it illegal for me not to conform to HP's business model.
I didn't say I like them as they are, but they are necessary, at least in some form.
Again, why? Existing copyright law is sufficient to prevent you from copying and distributing software. Most EULAs go way beyond that and attempt to remove your fair use and first sale rights. I certainly understand why a publisher would want to do that, but it's by no means necessary.
Argh. Look, Summers is not saying that all women are bad at math. Yes, Grace Hopper would have wiped the floor with me and 99.9% of other male programmers. That does not invalidate his hypothesis. We're talking about means and standard deviations here, and the theory that males might on average have greater mathematical ability. Because of how the normal distribution works, even a tiny difference in means will be magnified when you get to the tails.
This means that although there is a statistically significant difference between the means, that difference is so small that it makes little, if any, difference in the grand scheme of things
But it becomes a big difference when you look at the tails of the distribution, which is relevant to this story. If the average math ability of males is half a standard deviation higher than females, that's going to translate into a very large imbalance in PhD students who have to be several standard deviations above the mean.
Say the population of females has a mean "math aptitude" of 100 with a standard deviation of 10, and males have a mean of 105 with the same standard deviation. The difference in means is small enough so that there will be many women who are better at math than most men. But say you need a 130 to get a PhD. From this table, 6.2 out of every 1000 males will qualify, but only 1.4 out of every 1000 females.
The entire point is that there are very few sets of circumstances in which it matters whether a larger number of men than women are good at a particular thing.
Well, then this specific case is one of those few circumstances. If you're trying to determine whether one group is being systematically discriminated against in jobs that require a certain ability, don't you think it's slightly relevant how the distribution of the ability in that group compares to the rest of the population?
as an example, say you have five bucks and are stuck in planet mcdonalds with a friend who is broke, you cna either spend the five bucks for yourself to eat and let your friend go hungry or you can split it, each of you eat something, and both still be somewhat hungry, logic would typically dictate taking care of yourself first
Actually, assuming you're going to be continue to interact with your friend in the future, logic might dictate helping him out, because at some point in the future your situations could be reversed. This is a form of the tit for tat strategy which is often optimal.
think there is a pretty good reason to be very sceptical and cynical of any study which suggests 1 class of people is wholesale inferior to another.
Which is not even close to what anyone is saying. There are studies that indicate that the average abilities of men and women are different in certain areas, but that in no way translates to one being "wholesale inferior" to the other.
they WANT a lock in, but they want it to be apple. they don't want faster machines, they want it to be apple. they don't care if they have to pay over four hundred bucks for gig of ddr333 - because they know it's apple and therefore it is better.
I'm sorry, that's just silly. Nearly all Mac users use Macs because they prefer them to Windows and Linux PCs. That's it. It has nothing to do with worshipping Apple. (Yes, there are the guys that paint Apple logos in their hair. They aren't exactly representative).
as such, no matter how good your open source product and no matter how free it is it can never compete with anything apple.
Panther has some minor tweaks to certain libraries to allow for 64-bit memory addressing, etc., but the majority of the system (almost all of it) is 32-bit. Tiger will be the same way.
Specifically, Panther can recognize more than 4GB of system RAM, but all processes are still limited to a 32-bit (4GB) address space. Tiger will allow 64-bit processes, but they will be very limited in what libraries they can use (basically POSIX and a few others, no UI).
For a company that likes to market to graphic artists, you'd think they'd try to sell an ultra high DPI display.
Which kills your eyes when you try to read normal sized text. That is, until we get a true resolution independent UI (hopefully in Tiger), at which point more DPI becomes indisputably better.
DRM prevented non-released documents (in beta) from being accessed by non-engineers
There's a difference between DRM and access control, which Gates did a good job of obfuscating. Access control means that an external system won't give you data if it determines you're not authorized. Nobody disputes that this is a good thing. DRM means that *your* system will refuse to do what you tell it to, and in order to have any effectiveness it has to be backed up by laws forbidding you to modify your system so that it will obey you.
Why hasn't anybody ran for president on a platform of restoring privacy to the citizenry? I can't believe it hasn't been done already. It's a political slam dunk
Nope. The demagogues on the other side would trot out the terrorists, drug dealers, and child pornographers as reasons why privacy must be curtailed for the Good of Society, and they'd easily win.
Well, at the per-unit price of $500 for the Mac Mini, and $3000 for the Xserve Dual Processor box, that's 6 G4 Processors paired against 2 G5 processors.
Total GHz would be 7.5 for the minis and 4.6 for the Xserves. The G4 is about as efficient as the G5 per cycle but has terrible bandwidth, so assuming the algorithm is hugely parallel, the minis would win if it's CPU-bound and lose if it's memory-bound.
It says he was a privileged rich kid who didn't think the rules applied to him. Which most kids seem to think, rich or not.
Exactly. Nobody really cares about what Bush did or didn't do 30 years ago except liberals who hate him anyway. Pretty much the same situation as Clinton with the parties reversed.
The sales guy explained that "price doesn't matter", and that what does matter is that they can get me (well, my girlfriend, actually) into a new car for a competitive monthly payment. An extra year of them, in fact!
That's just wrong. Nobody should be permitted to graduate high school without being able to explain the concepts of compound interest and net present value. (On the other hand, that would tremendously hurt the credit card companies and probably eliminate my 1% cash back, so perhaps I should reconsider).
So if you have to shell out $35 for a tax package (and $89 for an o/s to run it, and $150 for a harddrive upon which to install that o/s) then as long as you itemise, and keep your receipts, what's the problem?
Couple of problems: 1. If you deduct an expense, it doesn't become free, you just effectively get a discount equal to your marginal tax rate. That $250 in purchases might reduce my taxes by $75 if I deduct them, but that still leaves me with a net cost of $175. 2. If you don't have enough qualifying deductions (mortgages and kids being the major ones) you're better off taking the standard deduction and itemizing doesn't help at all. Probably many/. readers fall into this category.
(IANAA and never have been, so please correct me if any of this is wrong).
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For completeness, you need to add iLife '05 for the Mac.
Already included.
Look. At this level of machine, it's a new game. Make your choice based on what you want. Price is not an issue anymore.
Exactly. It's down into the iPod price range, and will be wildly popular for the same reasons. An "Apple tax" of 20% on a $2000 tower may be prohibitive. For a $300 music player or $500 system, it's not.
The Bush tax cuts and the wars were supposed to generate big budget deficits, and they've succeeded.
Actually most of the current deficit was caused by the 2001 recession, which in turn was caused by the stock market bubble bursting, high-profile corporate fraud, and 9/11. Yes, I'm sure all of those are Bush's fault somehow.
A barrier to trade can only be enacted by a state
Yes, but:
they can use labor cost differentials to make a killing and legally backed technological guards to enforce market separation for consumers
There's the state. I have no problem with HP doing this. I have a huge problem with government declaring it illegal for me not to conform to HP's business model.
I didn't say I like them as they are, but they are necessary, at least in some form.
Again, why? Existing copyright law is sufficient to prevent you from copying and distributing software. Most EULAs go way beyond that and attempt to remove your fair use and first sale rights. I certainly understand why a publisher would want to do that, but it's by no means necessary.
Argh. Look, Summers is not saying that all women are bad at math. Yes, Grace Hopper would have wiped the floor with me and 99.9% of other male programmers. That does not invalidate his hypothesis. We're talking about means and standard deviations here, and the theory that males might on average have greater mathematical ability. Because of how the normal distribution works, even a tiny difference in means will be magnified when you get to the tails.
This means that although there is a statistically significant difference between the means, that difference is so small that it makes little, if any, difference in the grand scheme of things
But it becomes a big difference when you look at the tails of the distribution, which is relevant to this story. If the average math ability of males is half a standard deviation higher than females, that's going to translate into a very large imbalance in PhD students who have to be several standard deviations above the mean.
Say the population of females has a mean "math aptitude" of 100 with a standard deviation of 10, and males have a mean of 105 with the same standard deviation. The difference in means is small enough so that there will be many women who are better at math than most men. But say you need a 130 to get a PhD. From this table, 6.2 out of every 1000 males will qualify, but only 1.4 out of every 1000 females.
It's all in the phrasing of the slur.
Neither you nor I know what his phrasing was ("women are bad at math" is not an actual quote), and calling it a "slur" is begging the question.
The entire point is that there are very few sets of circumstances in which it matters whether a larger number of men than women are good at a particular thing.
Well, then this specific case is one of those few circumstances. If you're trying to determine whether one group is being systematically discriminated against in jobs that require a certain ability, don't you think it's slightly relevant how the distribution of the ability in that group compares to the rest of the population?
as an example, say you have five bucks and are stuck in planet mcdonalds with a friend who is broke, you cna either spend the five bucks for yourself to eat and let your friend go hungry or you can split it, each of you eat something, and both still be somewhat hungry, logic would typically dictate taking care of yourself first
Actually, assuming you're going to be continue to interact with your friend in the future, logic might dictate helping him out, because at some point in the future your situations could be reversed. This is a form of the tit for tat strategy which is often optimal.
think there is a pretty good reason to be very sceptical and cynical of any study which suggests 1 class of people is wholesale inferior to another.
Which is not even close to what anyone is saying. There are studies that indicate that the average abilities of men and women are different in certain areas, but that in no way translates to one being "wholesale inferior" to the other.
they WANT a lock in, but they want it to be apple. they don't want faster machines, they want it to be apple. they don't care if they have to pay over four hundred bucks for gig of ddr333 - because they know it's apple and therefore it is better.
I'm sorry, that's just silly. Nearly all Mac users use Macs because they prefer them to Windows and Linux PCs. That's it. It has nothing to do with worshipping Apple. (Yes, there are the guys that paint Apple logos in their hair. They aren't exactly representative).
as such, no matter how good your open source product and no matter how free it is it can never compete with anything apple.
Counterexamples: Firefox and Camino.
Panther has some minor tweaks to certain libraries to allow for 64-bit memory addressing, etc., but the majority of the system (almost all of it) is 32-bit. Tiger will be the same way.
Specifically, Panther can recognize more than 4GB of system RAM, but all processes are still limited to a 32-bit (4GB) address space. Tiger will allow 64-bit processes, but they will be very limited in what libraries they can use (basically POSIX and a few others, no UI).
I don't want to run afoul of any of Apple's support policy silliness, I'm waiting for a Powerbook G5.
Huh? Motion and Apple's other pro apps are fully supported on G4s.
For a company that likes to market to graphic artists, you'd think they'd try to sell an ultra high DPI display.
Which kills your eyes when you try to read normal sized text. That is, until we get a true resolution independent UI (hopefully in Tiger), at which point more DPI becomes indisputably better.
DRM prevented non-released documents (in beta) from being accessed by non-engineers
There's a difference between DRM and access control, which Gates did a good job of obfuscating. Access control means that an external system won't give you data if it determines you're not authorized. Nobody disputes that this is a good thing. DRM means that *your* system will refuse to do what you tell it to, and in order to have any effectiveness it has to be backed up by laws forbidding you to modify your system so that it will obey you.
He is (indirectly) compromising Apple's product launch thunder
Exactly the opposite. The xMac speculation almost certainly resulted in increased publicity for Macworld.
I'm not a criminal. I like it when criminals get caught. Why shouldn't I love this?
Please tell me you're not serious. If you are, please tell me you don't vote.
Why hasn't anybody ran for president on a platform of restoring privacy to the citizenry? I can't believe it hasn't been done already. It's a political slam dunk
Nope. The demagogues on the other side would trot out the terrorists, drug dealers, and child pornographers as reasons why privacy must be curtailed for the Good of Society, and they'd easily win.
You could have bought some AAPL
Argh, don't remind me. 35 seemed like a good place to sell at the time...
Jobs stated that Tiger will be out "before Longhorn" ... I don't take that timeline as a good sign (-;
He also specifically said first half of this year.
Well, at the per-unit price of $500 for the Mac Mini, and $3000 for the Xserve Dual Processor box, that's 6 G4 Processors paired against 2 G5 processors.
Total GHz would be 7.5 for the minis and 4.6 for the Xserves. The G4 is about as efficient as the G5 per cycle but has terrible bandwidth, so assuming the algorithm is hugely parallel, the minis would win if it's CPU-bound and lose if it's memory-bound.
Besides do you really buy a stock in a company whose CEO calls you a communist?
Well, I did buy some MSFT, but I used some of my profits to buy a Mac with IBM processors, so it all works out...
It says he was a privileged rich kid who didn't think the rules applied to him. Which most kids seem to think, rich or not.
Exactly. Nobody really cares about what Bush did or didn't do 30 years ago except liberals who hate him anyway. Pretty much the same situation as Clinton with the parties reversed.
The sales guy explained that "price doesn't matter", and that what does matter is that they can get me (well, my girlfriend, actually) into a new car for a competitive monthly payment. An extra year of them, in fact!
That's just wrong. Nobody should be permitted to graduate high school without being able to explain the concepts of compound interest and net present value. (On the other hand, that would tremendously hurt the credit card companies and probably eliminate my 1% cash back, so perhaps I should reconsider).
So if you have to shell out $35 for a tax package (and $89 for an o/s to run it, and $150 for a harddrive upon which to install that o/s) then as long as you itemise, and keep your receipts, what's the problem?
/. readers fall into this category.
Couple of problems:
1. If you deduct an expense, it doesn't become free, you just effectively get a discount equal to your marginal tax rate. That $250 in purchases might reduce my taxes by $75 if I deduct them, but that still leaves me with a net cost of $175.
2. If you don't have enough qualifying deductions (mortgages and kids being the major ones) you're better off taking the standard deduction and itemizing doesn't help at all. Probably many
(IANAA and never have been, so please correct me if any of this is wrong).