everything you need like Applecare for three year warranty (yes, you MUST get this... they don't even want to talk to you after 90 days of phone support is up even though you have 1 year of hardware support.)
I've never felt the need for AppleCare. It's just another extended warranty which is greatly profitable for the manufacturer, and therefore a loss for you. I've had several Macs fixed under the standard 1 year warranty without any problems, and my experience has been that if a machine works for 1 year, it'll probably keep working for the next 2. Although maybe I've just been lucky.
The cluster has a theoretical peak of 17.6TFlops/s if I did my math right (8GFlops/s per processor)
Yes and no. The only way the G5 can do 4 FP operations per cycle is if each of its 2 FP units executes a fused multiply-add instruction. Obviously no code is going to consist entirely of these, so the actual theoretical peak is less than the theoretical theoretical peak. Or something like that.
Re:Rant: Democracy, Whiskey, Sexy. Deal with it.
on
Human Accomplishment
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· Score: 1
Outstanding rant. The moral relativists have become sickening in their defense of appalling violations of human rights that would have them howling in protest if they occurred in the West. No, mutilating the genitals of your female offspring and stoning rape victims are not honorable cultural traditions, they are mindless acts of barbarity and savagery.
You have two options. You can join civilization or you can be wiped out by an unstoppable wave of cultural imperialism. You have left us with no other means of dealing with you short of genocide.
Right. The problem is, cultural imperialism takes time, which we may not have since the barbarians are figuring out ways they can achieve their goals of mass death and destruction (by using technologies they're incapable of developing themselves). While I hope it doesn't come to this, we may very well have to kill large numbers of them in defense of civilization and our own lives.
This is why the conquest of Iraq was necessary. Even more important than the medium-term threat posed by Saddam Hussein, it is vital to reform radical Islamic fundamentalist culture, and we need a staging area to do so. See Steven Den Beste's excellent analysis.
CPU draining? 1 cell of life takes about 12 operations per iteration. 1600x1200 cells would eat what, 1% of your 2.4GHz of processing power?
As it happens, I've solved the problem of insufficient CPU usage by having the Life board rotate in 3d. If you run OS X, grab these screensavers, and then use this program to run LifeSaver as your desktop background. (Or as a transparent foreground if you're especially insane).
As I understand it, if I create a copyrightable work, I can impose any restrictions on the use of that work.
Nope. You can't remove first sale and fair use rights, for example. (At least in theory; various cartels are doing their best to get rid of those rights). You may be able to restrict use if you don't "sell" copies but only "license" them; this is what EULAs attempt to do.
However, this doesn't affect the GPL at all, because it only grants rights to users that they otherwise wouldn't have; it doesn't remove any.
Ok, and how does the water supply to an apartment fall under "interstate commerce"? Sure, you can come up with contrived logic like "the pipes may have been manufactured outside the state". Once you do that, there is *nothing* that is off limits to government, because every single activity anybody performs anywhere can have some remote tangential connection to some act of interstate commerce. I have a hard time believing this is what the founding fathers intended.
While you eat a cheeseburger for $0.99, hundreds of people that had a hand in that hamburger's production, from farmers to meatpackers to fast food workers all suffer to give you the cheapest possible meal.
Huh? All of those people have jobs that they voluntarily work at, and for which they are paid. Nobody is "suffering"; division of labor and productivity increases allow us to produce more for less.
Abundance is a mirage. You can't make something from nothing.
Sure you can. The economy is not a zero-sum game. Look at the history of CPUs; while their prices (which reflect the amount of resources used to create them) have remained fairly constant, their quality has increased drastically.
Except SCO themselves were distrubuting the Linux kernel long after the suit against IBM was filed. Therefore, SCO were distributing their code under the GPL.
Right. SCO of course claims that they didn't know about the infringing code, and therefore they should be allowed to retroactively rescind the GPL on the software they distributed. But even if they prevail on that point, they're still screwed, because the GPL was the only thing that allowed them to distribute the copyrighted work of thousands of other Linux developers. Hello, countersuits.
Correct. Also note that one of the strengths of the G5 (and G4) is its vector units, which (afaik) can't be used for Linpack, because of the 64-bit precision requirements. For jobs that can use Altivec, the performance should be substantially better.
I remeber reading in some random article that the electricity used to cool and power the computer was extimated around 3,000 midrange homes.
That can't possibly be right. There's no way that the cluster's power requirements are over 1 home's worth per CPU. Maybe they just added a zero and it's supposed to be 300, but even that sounds very high.
There is absolutely no DRM whatsoever within the iTMS downloaded file.
I was pretty sure this was not the case. When the iTMS first came out, I took a.m4p that a friend had bought, and then bought the same track myself. The files were completely different (not just the embedded user ID, the actual music data), indicating that they had been encrypted with different keys.
I took an iTMS purchased track and was able to play it on my Windows laptop LAST MONTH by doing the following
That is very surprising. Are you certain it was a "protected" AAC file and not a normal one?
AAPL almost always falls after major annoucements. It's just an instance of "buy on the rumor, sell on the news". You can blame me a tiny bit, I sold some at 24.2 yesterday in anticipation of the drop.
No, it doesn't. iTunes gets custom XML from the store (a WebObjects app, of course) and uses it to build a UI. You can run ethereal or another packet sniffer and watch the transactions.
Steve said the way they got iTunes onto Windows was by porting Cocoa wholesale--and called it "Yellow Box."
iTunes on Mac OS X is Carbon, not Cocoa. (Just verified on the new version 4.1). Apple actually does have a partial port of Cocoa to Windows; it's what the Windows developer tools for WebObjects use. A while back Apple was even pushing for developers to use it for cross-platform development (and it was called Yellow Box), but that got killed when Steve decided that OS X would only run on Mac hardware. Too bad, because Cocoa is the best API I've ever used. Fortunately GNUstep is making good progress.
Will Apple eventually become purely a software company, a la Sega leaving the console market?
I doubt it. This isn't the first time Apple has done Windows software; Quicktime has been on Windows forever, and there's even a little-known AppleWorks port that some schools use. I look at this as an attempt both to sell iPods and to combat Microsoft's attempts to "standardize" on WMA.
If there is ever a court case where this becomes an important point, I would expect that such 'copying' that is required for normal usage of the material falls squarely under fair use.
Correct, as per 17 USC 117. This raises the question as to why virtually every EULA in existence isn't invalid due to lack of consideration. You already have the right to run the software; the publisher is attempting to remove other rights in exchange for nothing.
Until I am confident that I have the right to eliminate the DRM and do as I wish with my purchases I will not be using ITMS, on Windows, OS X, or otherwise.
Fair enough. My view is that I do have that right; while the legal issues are not entirely clear, I see nothing immoral about doing so, and realistically the chances of Apple taking action against me are zero. But I fully agree that DRM is inherently dangerous, and I don't take issue with anyone who chooses to avoid it even in seemingly benign forms.
they all generally represent western capitalist values.
I only wish. Both parties are all too eager to pass asinine laws like the DMCA, which are fundamentally anti-capitalist; they are designed to protect favored business interests from competition in the free market.
It is significantly less clear if you are allowed to re-encode the files
Well, "less clear" is a far cry from your earlier claim that it was definitely prohibited. This portion of the TOS seems to indicate that it is in fact permitted:
You shall be entitled to export, burn or copy Products solely for personal, noncommercial use.
Although I suppose it depends on what "export" means.
How do Apple's actions make this clear?
For starters, continuing to ship iMovie with the ability to import protected AACs and export as any unprotected format you want. My take is that Apple has no desire to use DRM and did the absolute minimum necessary to get the labels to cooperate.
any other use of the Products may constitute a copyright infringement
"may", not "will". This is obviously a CYA; doing just about anything "may" be infringing.
The security technology is an inseparable part of the Products.
Considering the "security" technology goes away when you burn CDs, which Apple encourages, it is unclear what if anything this actually means. Apple's actions make it quite clear they don't care if you re-encode, and in my experience the quality loss is imperceptible.
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I've never felt the need for AppleCare. It's just another extended warranty which is greatly profitable for the manufacturer, and therefore a loss for you. I've had several Macs fixed under the standard 1 year warranty without any problems, and my experience has been that if a machine works for 1 year, it'll probably keep working for the next 2. Although maybe I've just been lucky.
Yes and no. The only way the G5 can do 4 FP operations per cycle is if each of its 2 FP units executes a fused multiply-add instruction. Obviously no code is going to consist entirely of these, so the actual theoretical peak is less than the theoretical theoretical peak. Or something like that.
You have two options. You can join civilization or you can be wiped out by an unstoppable wave of cultural imperialism. You have left us with no other means of dealing with you short of genocide.
Right. The problem is, cultural imperialism takes time, which we may not have since the barbarians are figuring out ways they can achieve their goals of mass death and destruction (by using technologies they're incapable of developing themselves). While I hope it doesn't come to this, we may very well have to kill large numbers of them in defense of civilization and our own lives.
This is why the conquest of Iraq was necessary. Even more important than the medium-term threat posed by Saddam Hussein, it is vital to reform radical Islamic fundamentalist culture, and we need a staging area to do so. See Steven Den Beste's excellent analysis.
As it happens, I've solved the problem of insufficient CPU usage by having the Life board rotate in 3d. If you run OS X, grab these screensavers, and then use this program to run LifeSaver as your desktop background. (Or as a transparent foreground if you're especially insane).
Nope. You can't remove first sale and fair use rights, for example. (At least in theory; various cartels are doing their best to get rid of those rights). You may be able to restrict use if you don't "sell" copies but only "license" them; this is what EULAs attempt to do.
However, this doesn't affect the GPL at all, because it only grants rights to users that they otherwise wouldn't have; it doesn't remove any.
Ok, and how does the water supply to an apartment fall under "interstate commerce"? Sure, you can come up with contrived logic like "the pipes may have been manufactured outside the state". Once you do that, there is *nothing* that is off limits to government, because every single activity anybody performs anywhere can have some remote tangential connection to some act of interstate commerce. I have a hard time believing this is what the founding fathers intended.
No. In 1997 MS bought $150 million in non-voting Apple stock, but they later sold it (and made a decent profit).
I don't support either, but this is just wrong. "Forcing" freedom on a nation is unlikely to involve concentration camps and gulags.
Um, so you're claiming that humanity is *less* wealthy than we were 100, 500, or 5000 years ago?
Every major economy is driven at least in part by the destruction of pre-existing, irreplacable resources.
Perhaps, but:
- There are also continuous influxes of new resources; for an example, go outside on a clear day and look up.
- As I said above, it's possible to improve production methods so that you can get more stuff using fewer resources.
Economic growth is real. Really.
Huh? All of those people have jobs that they voluntarily work at, and for which they are paid. Nobody is "suffering"; division of labor and productivity increases allow us to produce more for less.
Abundance is a mirage. You can't make something from nothing.
Sure you can. The economy is not a zero-sum game. Look at the history of CPUs; while their prices (which reflect the amount of resources used to create them) have remained fairly constant, their quality has increased drastically.
Right. SCO of course claims that they didn't know about the infringing code, and therefore they should be allowed to retroactively rescind the GPL on the software they distributed. But even if they prevail on that point, they're still screwed, because the GPL was the only thing that allowed them to distribute the copyrighted work of thousands of other Linux developers. Hello, countersuits.
You don't need a license to run a program, according to 17 USC 117.
Correct. Also note that one of the strengths of the G5 (and G4) is its vector units, which (afaik) can't be used for Linpack, because of the 64-bit precision requirements. For jobs that can use Altivec, the performance should be substantially better.
That can't possibly be right. There's no way that the cluster's power requirements are over 1 home's worth per CPU. Maybe they just added a zero and it's supposed to be 300, but even that sounds very high.
I was pretty sure this was not the case. When the iTMS first came out, I took a
I took an iTMS purchased track and was able to play it on my Windows laptop LAST MONTH by doing the following
That is very surprising. Are you certain it was a "protected" AAC file and not a normal one?
AAPL almost always falls after major annoucements. It's just an instance of "buy on the rumor, sell on the news". You can blame me a tiny bit, I sold some at 24.2 yesterday in anticipation of the drop.
No, it doesn't. iTunes gets custom XML from the store (a WebObjects app, of course) and uses it to build a UI. You can run ethereal or another packet sniffer and watch the transactions.
iTunes on Mac OS X is Carbon, not Cocoa. (Just verified on the new version 4.1). Apple actually does have a partial port of Cocoa to Windows; it's what the Windows developer tools for WebObjects use. A while back Apple was even pushing for developers to use it for cross-platform development (and it was called Yellow Box), but that got killed when Steve decided that OS X would only run on Mac hardware. Too bad, because Cocoa is the best API I've ever used. Fortunately GNUstep is making good progress.
I doubt it. This isn't the first time Apple has done Windows software; Quicktime has been on Windows forever, and there's even a little-known AppleWorks port that some schools use. I look at this as an attempt both to sell iPods and to combat Microsoft's attempts to "standardize" on WMA.
Side channels. There's no way to tell if the poker hand I describe in an email is real or if it's part of a encrypted message.
Correct, as per 17 USC 117. This raises the question as to why virtually every EULA in existence isn't invalid due to lack of consideration. You already have the right to run the software; the publisher is attempting to remove other rights in exchange for nothing.
Fair enough. My view is that I do have that right; while the legal issues are not entirely clear, I see nothing immoral about doing so, and realistically the chances of Apple taking action against me are zero. But I fully agree that DRM is inherently dangerous, and I don't take issue with anyone who chooses to avoid it even in seemingly benign forms.
I only wish. Both parties are all too eager to pass asinine laws like the DMCA, which are fundamentally anti-capitalist; they are designed to protect favored business interests from competition in the free market.
Well, "less clear" is a far cry from your earlier claim that it was definitely prohibited. This portion of the TOS seems to indicate that it is in fact permitted:
Although I suppose it depends on what "export" means.
How do Apple's actions make this clear?
For starters, continuing to ship iMovie with the ability to import protected AACs and export as any unprotected format you want. My take is that Apple has no desire to use DRM and did the absolute minimum necessary to get the labels to cooperate.
"may", not "will". This is obviously a CYA; doing just about anything "may" be infringing.
The security technology is an inseparable part of the Products.
Considering the "security" technology goes away when you burn CDs, which Apple encourages, it is unclear what if anything this actually means. Apple's actions make it quite clear they don't care if you re-encode, and in my experience the quality loss is imperceptible.