You're assuming he wants to change because of money, it sounds like. But I am also surprised to hear he might want to change from medicine to CS. Big downside to CS IMHO is the lack of people-interaction you presumably get in medicine. If switching were easy, I'd personally consider going the other way.
As I have commented elsewhere, TiVo has been frozen in time ever since I first bought it a few years ago. I have not noticed any new features in terms of user tools or interface improvements ever. I love TiVo but I wish I had more control over it, as an "advanced user" mode or something. Somebody's going to come along and do something better. Competitors haven't yet figured out though that most people need a way to drive their cable and satellite boxes. Anybody know of a unix driver for something like the infrared "blaster" that comes with a TiVo?
"surpasses TiVo and ReplyTV in every way"? Nope! It will not do the most important thing of all: change channels on a cable or directTV box. So for anybody using cable or DirecTV, this is nearly useless!
I agree TiVo has limited features, and they never add new ones (or haven't for litereally years now), but until one of these other competitors figure out how to drive the infrared ports on cable and satellite receivers, I'm stuck with TiVo!
The article misleads the reader into thinking that the computer will be able to predict hurricanes. If you read closely, you will see that the scientist say it will be able to predict whether hurricanes will increase in frequency in the future. And it doesn't even do that, yet! More hype...
From reading the ruling, I believe this case only has applicability in Washington state, since the court cited the Washington constitution as the reason for its ruling. Washington state is more liberal and its constitution is thus more respectful of certain individual liberties, but this doesn't mean Texas can't do things differently... or can it?
Well, to clarify: we like having the command line as an option, but this is not the same as saying we *prefer* the command line. A GUI gives you a better feel and a quicker learning curve for any given highly abstract tool. A command line gets you down 'n' dirty with custom jobs better. Mac seems to currently have the best GUI, even with OS X's shortcomings, and now it has among the best command line, in BSD Unix, a common, open-sourced-based, powerful toolset. Windows has inferior versions of each type of interface, in DOS and Windows. But it has terrific marketing and market share led by the Master Capitalist, Darth Gates!:-)
None. But as a longtime TiVo subscriber, I'm perturbed more by the total absence of anything new for years now. TiVo Series 2? they can cram it. I can think of dozens of new features I'd like to see in terms of search and playback, which they could implement in their Series 1 and 2 receivers. What the hell? This product seems dead in the water.
This is NOT an article about metadata!
on
A Better Finder?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I just wanted to point out that the article is not about metadata. The author carefully separates that as a separate issue. The article is about the concept of a "Spatial Finder" and the current lack of emphasis by Apple on the Finder vs. their old metaphor that the Finder IS the computer. Read the article! Very interesting.
Apple has released a Software Update that my machine picked up:
The Security Update addresses a security issue in sendmail where a remote individual could gain access and control of the system. Although sendmail is off by default in Mac OS, it is recommended that all users install this Security Update. This update also includes a newer version of OpenSSL that provides improved data confidentiality by addressing a recently-discovered security issue.
Nice post Sean!
The moral of the story is one I learned the hard way quite some time ago: never put anything into print you wouldn't want your boss, your mother, and the whole world to read. You never know.
To my knowledge, and someone WILL correct me I'm sure, OS X 10.2 did not include any improvements in I/O, networking, or virtual memory, which were the major issues raised by the original article. So it probably wouldn't have made much difference to the article which version he used.
I say, Apple, get off your ass. You want to be taken seriously as a server? Make this kind of issue a priority.
Apple has strong political ties to Hollywood, as evidenced by the pervasiveness of Macs in movies, not to mention that Steve Jobs' other company is Pixar. I see cause to fear that Apple will take the side of the anti-consumer corporate tyrants in Hollywood...
This stupid laser is an idiotic idea meant to fatten some stupid colonel's budget. A much cheaper solution has been designed by Dr. Bill Wattenburg and can be seen by going to this page. The army doesn't care about its soldiers, only its budget.
I think that you have it backwards if you're trying to show that today's first class mail delivery is expensive now.
I'm not making any claims of fact. I'm just pointing out that your examples are not showing what you are claiming.
feel free to look up information on adjusting for inflation and you will see that mail delivery is probably less than 20% as expensive (adjusted for inflation) as it used to be.
Aha, you seem to have changed your tune. First you claimed that first class postage is underpriced and subsidized by BBM. Now you are merely showing that its price has declined relative to its old value, which I continue to claim may well have been just way expensive because it was a brand new thing at the time. You would expect its (inflation adjusted) price to drop over time as they figured out how to do it better. E.g., if we were still using horses, it would still be at least as expensive to deliver letters, right?
But any private company can deliver printed advertising to your home.
Thanks, Uncle Sam, for making it possible for bulk mail to reach my residence cheaply by using a monopoly infrastructure required by law to be supplied by homebuilders: the mail box.:-) Actually, this shows that in a way, 1rst class is subsidizing BBM in a very important way, by providing legally protected mailboxes to stuff full of their crap, which nobody but the BBM people wants to have go anywhere.
If you let private carriers suck off all of the profitable, high-volume routes, the USPS will be left with a tiny fraction of the mail volume and it will solely be for delivery to extremely rural areas. Then there are only two choices:
1. Direct subsidize with tax dollars to keep postage affordable for those people.
2. $10 first class mail stamps.
This reminds me of the argument against school vouchers. (Don't even go there, self!:-)
Anyhow, Of course 1) is the path to Hell itself. What's wrong with #2? (It would never get to $10 per letter, sorry. UPS could deliver for a buck, I'm sure. They've proven that.) You know, if you want to live in the country, perhaps you should get a PO box instead of expecting everyone else to "amortizedly" (ie socialistically) support your fat ass from having to drive down and pick up your God-given right to a letter at some central location. You're not going to die if you don't get your letters every freaking day of the week.
When the USPS introduced their overnight delivery service (Express Mail), their rates were cheaper than FedEx. FedEx immediately called foul and complained that the lower rates from the USPS were unfair competition from the government. Result? The USPS was forced to raise its rates for Express Mail so as to not undercut FedEx and other overnight carriers.
Interesting example. I agree the wrong solution was reached. If the USPS can legitimately charge less for the same service, then so be it, FedEx et al cannot complain. But if tax money is going to undercut private business, then it was a foul. That just shows another weakness of government "services": they are highly politicized and do screwy things.
Making a profit means that you are charged more than the cost to provide the service. That surely does not make for lower rates.
Ridiculous! Your comment flies in the face of experience and common sense. If your statement is correct, then the government should provide ALL service, and we should buy our groceries from the Salvation Army. The thing which guarantees lower rates when profit is involved is competition, of course. If profit margins become too high, competitors come in for a piece of the action. It's simple. Also, profit has the side effect of encouraging innovation, something the government is a bit weak at, IMHO, but that's another subject.
What possible relevance does the price of milk delivered in 1847 have to the price of a letter delivered today?
It shows the effect of inflation and that letter delivery costs have dropped dramatically in real dollars.
Only relative to milk delivery. Perhaps this shows only that mail delivery was originally very expensive.
Since BBM is not first class mail, if there was a way to deliver it cheaper, then why is no one doing it?
Isn't it illegal for anyone else to do it? That is what I meant by a "true monopoly." The original meaning of the word 'monopoly' was a business that by government edict operated alone without competition.
If the government is going to mandate that the USPS deliver to every home and business in the U.S., they can't very well let FedEx, UPS, and DHL cherry-pick all of the lucrative markets away.
Why not? The government is not a good business operator and is not in business to make a profit. My private concern is not whether we're being fair to the poor old Post Office, but whether privatizing would be able to guarantee continuous, reliable service. I'm not sure it could. Even as a Libertarian, I can't see privatizing the Post Office directly. Can't think of how to make it work.
Your point is not persuasive to me. What possible relevance does the price of milk delivered in 1847 have to the price of a letter delivered today? The only thing that BBM people are subsidizing is the infrastructure to send BBM around, from your description. Anyhow, as long as the Post Office is a monopoly in the original, true sense of the word (a government-mandated single source of first class mail service), I will know that both BBM and first class mail are more expensive than they need to be. Thank God for the Internet, because I can't think of a good way to privatize first-class mail any other way than the Internet has.
Well, there's always spamcop, right? It's not what you describe, but the premise seems similar. People report spammers, and subscribers to the service get spam filtered for them automatically.
Slashdot Mirror
You're assuming he wants to change because of money, it sounds like. But I am also surprised to hear he might want to change from medicine to CS. Big downside to CS IMHO is the lack of people-interaction you presumably get in medicine. If switching were easy, I'd personally consider going the other way.
You can author PDF's in OS X by simply choosing "Save As PDF" from the Print dialog.
As I have commented elsewhere, TiVo has been frozen in time ever since I first bought it a few years ago. I have not noticed any new features in terms of user tools or interface improvements ever. I love TiVo but I wish I had more control over it, as an "advanced user" mode or something. Somebody's going to come along and do something better. Competitors haven't yet figured out though that most people need a way to drive their cable and satellite boxes. Anybody know of a unix driver for something like the infrared "blaster" that comes with a TiVo?
What's wrong with just having multiple rows of tabs, each with a small thumbnail? Then you get the best of both worlds.
"surpasses TiVo and ReplyTV in every way"? Nope! It will not do the most important thing of all: change channels on a cable or directTV box. So for anybody using cable or DirecTV, this is nearly useless! I agree TiVo has limited features, and they never add new ones (or haven't for litereally years now), but until one of these other competitors figure out how to drive the infrared ports on cable and satellite receivers, I'm stuck with TiVo!
You are probably correct, as after running fink selfupdate, I now have a directory called 10.2-gcc3.3
The article misleads the reader into thinking that the computer will be able to predict hurricanes. If you read closely, you will see that the scientist say it will be able to predict whether hurricanes will increase in frequency in the future. And it doesn't even do that, yet! More hype...
According to the company's press release, this is all vapor ware. I'll believe the $0.20/watt claim when the cells go on sale at a nearby Home Depot.
From reading the ruling, I believe this case only has applicability in Washington state, since the court cited the Washington constitution as the reason for its ruling. Washington state is more liberal and its constitution is thus more respectful of certain individual liberties, but this doesn't mean Texas can't do things differently... or can it?
Actually, I would say that all Americans are increasingly addicted to government subsidies, and just lump scientists in with the rest of us.
Well, to clarify: we like having the command line as an option, but this is not the same as saying we *prefer* the command line. A GUI gives you a better feel and a quicker learning curve for any given highly abstract tool. A command line gets you down 'n' dirty with custom jobs better. Mac seems to currently have the best GUI, even with OS X's shortcomings, and now it has among the best command line, in BSD Unix, a common, open-sourced-based, powerful toolset. Windows has inferior versions of each type of interface, in DOS and Windows. But it has terrific marketing and market share led by the Master Capitalist, Darth Gates! :-)
That's very nice, the "no further questions" part. I hate having to baby-sit an installer.
You would if it was the only way you could get telecommunications service.
None. But as a longtime TiVo subscriber, I'm perturbed more by the total absence of anything new for years now. TiVo Series 2? they can cram it. I can think of dozens of new features I'd like to see in terms of search and playback, which they could implement in their Series 1 and 2 receivers. What the hell? This product seems dead in the water.
I just wanted to point out that the article is not about metadata. The author carefully separates that as a separate issue. The article is about the concept of a "Spatial Finder" and the current lack of emphasis by Apple on the Finder vs. their old metaphor that the Finder IS the computer. Read the article! Very interesting.
Apple has released a Software Update that my machine picked up: The Security Update addresses a security issue in sendmail where a remote individual could gain access and control of the system. Although sendmail is off by default in Mac OS, it is recommended that all users install this Security Update. This update also includes a newer version of OpenSSL that provides improved data confidentiality by addressing a recently-discovered security issue.
Nice post Sean! The moral of the story is one I learned the hard way quite some time ago: never put anything into print you wouldn't want your boss, your mother, and the whole world to read. You never know.
Just because the network stack in Linux is high quality, does this mean that "open code has fewer bugs?" I don't think so.
To my knowledge, and someone WILL correct me I'm sure, OS X 10.2 did not include any improvements in I/O, networking, or virtual memory, which were the major issues raised by the original article. So it probably wouldn't have made much difference to the article which version he used. I say, Apple, get off your ass. You want to be taken seriously as a server? Make this kind of issue a priority.
Apple has strong political ties to Hollywood, as evidenced by the pervasiveness of Macs in movies, not to mention that Steve Jobs' other company is Pixar. I see cause to fear that Apple will take the side of the anti-consumer corporate tyrants in Hollywood...
This stupid laser is an idiotic idea meant to fatten some stupid colonel's budget. A much cheaper solution has been designed by Dr. Bill Wattenburg and can be seen by going to this page.
The army doesn't care about its soldiers, only its budget.
I think that you have it backwards if you're trying to show that today's first class mail delivery is expensive now.
:-) Actually, this shows that in a way, 1rst class is subsidizing BBM in a very important way, by providing legally protected mailboxes to stuff full of their crap, which nobody but the BBM people wants to have go anywhere.
:-)
I'm not making any claims of fact. I'm just pointing out that your examples are not showing what you are claiming.
feel free to look up information on adjusting for inflation and you will see that mail delivery is probably less than 20% as expensive (adjusted for inflation) as it used to be.
Aha, you seem to have changed your tune. First you claimed that first class postage is underpriced and subsidized by BBM. Now you are merely showing that its price has declined relative to its old value, which I continue to claim may well have been just way expensive because it was a brand new thing at the time. You would expect its (inflation adjusted) price to drop over time as they figured out how to do it better. E.g., if we were still using horses, it would still be at least as expensive to deliver letters, right?
But any private company can deliver printed advertising to your home.
Thanks, Uncle Sam, for making it possible for bulk mail to reach my residence cheaply by using a monopoly infrastructure required by law to be supplied by homebuilders: the mail box.
If you let private carriers suck off all of the profitable, high-volume routes, the USPS will be left with a tiny fraction of the mail volume and it will solely be for delivery to extremely rural areas. Then there are only two choices:
1. Direct subsidize with tax dollars to keep postage affordable for those people.
2. $10 first class mail stamps.
This reminds me of the argument against school vouchers. (Don't even go there, self!
Anyhow, Of course 1) is the path to Hell itself. What's wrong with #2? (It would never get to $10 per letter, sorry. UPS could deliver for a buck, I'm sure. They've proven that.) You know, if you want to live in the country, perhaps you should get a PO box instead of expecting everyone else to "amortizedly" (ie socialistically) support your fat ass from having to drive down and pick up your God-given right to a letter at some central location. You're not going to die if you don't get your letters every freaking day of the week.
When the USPS introduced their overnight delivery service (Express Mail), their rates were cheaper than FedEx. FedEx immediately called foul and complained that the lower rates from the USPS were unfair competition from the government. Result? The USPS was forced to raise its rates for Express Mail so as to not undercut FedEx and other overnight carriers.
Interesting example. I agree the wrong solution was reached. If the USPS can legitimately charge less for the same service, then so be it, FedEx et al cannot complain. But if tax money is going to undercut private business, then it was a foul. That just shows another weakness of government "services": they are highly politicized and do screwy things.
Making a profit means that you are charged more than the cost to provide the service. That surely does not make for lower rates.
Ridiculous! Your comment flies in the face of experience and common sense. If your statement is correct, then the government should provide ALL service, and we should buy our groceries from the Salvation Army. The thing which guarantees lower rates when profit is involved is competition, of course. If profit margins become too high, competitors come in for a piece of the action. It's simple. Also, profit has the side effect of encouraging innovation, something the government is a bit weak at, IMHO, but that's another subject.
What possible relevance does the price of milk delivered in 1847 have to the price of a letter delivered today?
It shows the effect of inflation and that letter delivery costs have dropped dramatically in real dollars.
Only relative to milk delivery. Perhaps this shows only that mail delivery was originally very expensive.
Since BBM is not first class mail, if there was a way to deliver it cheaper, then why is no one doing it?
Isn't it illegal for anyone else to do it? That is what I meant by a "true monopoly." The original meaning of the word 'monopoly' was a business that by government edict operated alone without competition.
If the government is going to mandate that the USPS deliver to every home and business in the U.S., they can't very well let FedEx, UPS, and DHL cherry-pick all of the lucrative markets away.
Why not? The government is not a good business operator and is not in business to make a profit.
My private concern is not whether we're being fair to the poor old Post Office, but whether privatizing would be able to guarantee continuous, reliable service. I'm not sure it could. Even as a Libertarian, I can't see privatizing the Post Office directly. Can't think of how to make it work.
Your point is not persuasive to me. What possible relevance does the price of milk delivered in 1847 have to the price of a letter delivered today? The only thing that BBM people are subsidizing is the infrastructure to send BBM around, from your description. Anyhow, as long as the Post Office is a monopoly in the original, true sense of the word (a government-mandated single source of first class mail service), I will know that both BBM and first class mail are more expensive than they need to be. Thank God for the Internet, because I can't think of a good way to privatize first-class mail any other way than the Internet has.
Well, there's always spamcop, right? It's not what you describe, but the premise seems similar. People report spammers, and subscribers to the service get spam filtered for them automatically.