Jon Schwartz has done an enormous amount of damage to Sun.
You're right- Steve Jobs would have to have another "Great Purge" like he did when he took over Apple (for the second time). I don't imagine the Sun execs liked their job prospects.
Meanwhile Apple's stock price is hovering a little above $85 a share, while Sun's is hanging around $5. Makes you wonder if Steve thought the management at sun did not know what the heck they were doing.
Why is this even news? As an EE, anyone and their dog could rig up such a device. When I first clicked on the link I did not believe it was possible to get a 120W or whatever PSU into the size of 2 AA batteries.
Taco- Sorry, you can't. The thing is merely a crappy switching regulator WITHOUT a transformer. To be a PSU, it is necessary to step down 120V or 240V down to a more managable 5V or 12V. This cannot be done with what is pictured on the site. It is a regulated snap-in connector- nothing more. If he had a 120W PSU the size of two AA batteries, he'd freaking win a Nobel Prize and be bought out by every PSU manufacturer (Delta Group, MeanWell, etc.)... too bad its is quite impossible right now.
CmdrTaco needs to get his articles based on reality rather than from smoking the wacky weed. Maybe it was poor choice of wording, but that is no excuse.
To compare Steve Jobs to Paris Hilton is ridiculous. Jobs has put in a lot of hard work, a lot of money, and run himself ragged on his route to success.. he was no overnight sensation.
And Paris Hilton is some kind of sensation? I'd call her a whore.
I took a PowerMac G5 in for service, and I accidentally left my AirPort and BlueTooth antennas at the Apple Store. They ended up getting lost, but the Apple Store replaced them for free. Not only that, they gave me a $5 credit for the trouble I had to go through to get a new bluetooth antenna. I will definately go to that store again.
Any decent high-level language has equivalent or superior functionality.
And that's just the problem. With a high-level language, there's more assembler code to put together and the routines are thus much slower than with a regular C app.
Name for me a decent high level language that can deliver the power and performance of C. Steve is right in this case- he wants to stress performance of code with ease of development. We could write everything in C, but it would take a long time and it would be more difficult. However, Objective-C takes the middle ground between performance and ease of coding.
I will guarantee you that all the code written for the largest supercomputers is either C, C++, or assembler. Why? Performance.
A lot of compression algorithms, (like JPEG) leave lots of artifacts on the screen. This is usually because the alogorithm used to make a JPEG is based on standard algebra. Where the math doesn't work is where the artifacts appear.
GIF (or LZW algorithm) counts 1's and 0's and uses a type of scientific notation for bits and patterns of bits. The downside to GIF is that your palatte is limited to 256 colors, although the colors you can use are very much of your choosing.
Most MPEG 4 codecs look algebra-based it seems, so artifacts appear more frequently with lower compression settings. It would be really good if you could get an H.264 at the appropriate resolution, as that algorithm is very good at providing high quality at low bit rates, i.e. the iPod.
If OpenOffice and Firefox are signs of the coding skills of most Open Source developers then I am worried.
At great risk to my Karma, I partially agree with that statement. Several years ago I worked for the Fink project (fink.sourceforge.net) porting OSS code to Mac OS X. There are some extremely well written open source applications, and they were a delight to port.
However, the bulk of applications available in OSS are indeed bloated and very difficult to port because the C code they were built on was dependant on too many third party shared libraries. The libraries change and change, and unless you keep an App updated it can break. This is what happened with OpenGL when I ported TuxRacer to Mac OS X. The code for the program was also god aweful and could have used a serious rewrite. The data types, pointers, etc. were crap.
Many projects do not suffer from this code bloat, especially with systems like CVS in place to keep everything in one place. I also worked on a Kazaa client called Neo for Mac OS X and, while functional, I changed so many things the original writer could not understand it anymore. I stopped developing Neo shortly thereafter.
People have different coding preferences, I am a minimalist and I like sleek, elegant code that gets a lot of work done in a few lines. Other people prefer to write their code out so that is is more readable to them rather than efficient for the computer. Both systems have their place- don't get me wrong -but for production systems code efficiency is the key. The fewer the number of lines of assembler the compiler must interpret the better.
Anyway, that is my 1 + 1 = 3 cents (Which I do not agree with, 1+1 = 2 dammit).
I'm in that yummy 18-24 year-old demographic that companies seem to love so much, and I cannot *freaking* stand the *crap* that is comming out of the recording industry.
Did I buy(Backstreet Boys || nsync || Britney Spears || christina aguilera || j lopez || 50 cent || eminem)? Ok, I bought a single $1.99USD video of Ms. Spears so I could see a little bit of chest undulation.
Most of my purchases have been from artists like Roy Orbison, Stevie Wonder, Carole King, and the like, back at a time when it was all about creating music from the heart rather than from the wallet. We need someone with the talent/vision of Frank Zappa to pull the head of this music industry out of its *butt*.
Apple will probably not take any legal action because Apple is partly owned by microsoft..
Actually, Microsoft sold its shares of Apple long ago (and may I add at a substantial profit). Apple DID sign a contract with MS that they would not pursue some technologies, such as voice recognition, but nothing in the deal included an online music store or anything related to the iPod.
Agreed, Amen, etc. Microsoft has hidden the nice "Properties..." button in so many diffferent places in Win2K and WinXP that I can hardly stand it. I also turn off the cartoon images in XP, making things a little more clear, but still networking, printing, and on and on are put into different places in each windows release.
Microsoft needs to get a clue and stop changing the location of all their control panels (or whatever they call them now). When I have to fix a Windows XP computer, it always takes me a few more minutes of navigating through microsoft's "easy to use/user friendly" menus to change a network setting. On 95 and 98, network, click TCP/IP, click properties. Three steps. Now there are about 7 steps to get where you need to go.
Part of the problem is that MS has tried to make these features more accessable to the user via its crazy wizzard process, but what admins want is ONE place where we can find what we need to change. No MS, you do not offer the advanced features I want to use in your wizzards, I would rather modify them by hand. Please fix it Mr. Bill.
So, what I am lead to believe is that Apple has churned out a product that plays video before the advent of the motion picture? You are a century off my red-pended friend.
I noticed the itunes music store article linked to a story that said it was "not yet compatable with PC's." What?! ITMS has been compatable with Macs and PCs for many months and PC World just forgot about that? PC World needs to more throughly review the products they tout rather than rely on old articles written in the stone age to do so.
It is irresponsible journalism to simply take the hottest trends, put them on the top of the list, and use "album filler" for the rest of the top 100. Give the readers the content they deserve!
As a both a Linear and Switching Power Supply Designer, I can say that if the supply is faulty in any way it will lead to catastrophe. If the supply gets so hot the the feedback loop (the thing that keeps XBox 360 from going nuts) is unstable, there are going to be bad consequences. A power supply also depends mainly on two types of engineers: Electrical and Mechanical. If the EE's did their job, then the ME's messed up when choosing how to place a fan or heatsink. A power supply should be able to work on carpet, bare floor, on top of a building. There is no excuse for having a bad supply on the 360.
Probably what the engineers did was "think" they had a thermally stable supply when in fact the lab bench acted like a big heatsink. The thermal resistance from a lab bench would be much less compared to carpet. Finally, lab supplies are regulated so well that even if you do place them in high heat, they maintain constant power even though they are hot. The process this uses is negative feedback, and given the correct choice of chip material for the power supply controller, should never be an issue. If it is an issue, go back to Asia and yell at your designers for giving you a crappy supply.
I have a 23" Apple Cinema HD display and I would die without my top menubar. (Not literally, of course.) The screen is so large and has such high resolution that "flinging" my mouse to the top is the fastest way to get to a menu. Another poster alluded to the multiple cognative steps of hitting a menu bar in a window, and I have to agree with that. 2-3 mouse adjustments vs. 1 mouse adjustment is much more preferable to me.
Think of it like putting on a gold course- if the hole were 10' wide you could make the put every time, but because the hole is so small, one might have to try three or four strokes to get the ball in the hole. The exception, of course, is a hole in one, but unless you have mastered golf this has probably not been the case.
Just human, like the anonymous rest of us, but we're looking at the guy through a warped magnifying glass, and never forget that many people resent his Ferrari, his Lear Jet, and most of all, the swooning hero-worship he receives from some circles.
To nit-pick a little, Steve actually has a Gulfstream V, not a Lear Jet. To call it a Lear Jet would be to call his Ferarri a Hyundai.
My university uses WebCT extensively, especially for its physics 221 and 222 classes. Most of my instructors use it as a place to post grades and notes rather than using it as a teaching tool, though. I'm not surprised there is consolidation in this area, I do not know about BB, but WebCT is NOT a very good teaching tool. For online Math classes, my school uses yet another system called MapleTA.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right- Steve Jobs would have to have another "Great Purge" like he did when he took over Apple (for the second time). I don't imagine the Sun execs liked their job prospects.
Meanwhile Apple's stock price is hovering a little above $85 a share, while Sun's is hanging around $5. Makes you wonder if Steve thought the management at sun did not know what the heck they were doing.
P.S. Scott McNeally I still love you.
Taco- Sorry, you can't. The thing is merely a crappy switching regulator WITHOUT a transformer. To be a PSU, it is necessary to step down 120V or 240V down to a more managable 5V or 12V. This cannot be done with what is pictured on the site. It is a regulated snap-in connector- nothing more. If he had a 120W PSU the size of two AA batteries, he'd freaking win a Nobel Prize and be bought out by every PSU manufacturer (Delta Group, MeanWell, etc.)... too bad its is quite impossible right now.
CmdrTaco needs to get his articles based on reality rather than from smoking the wacky weed. Maybe it was poor choice of wording, but that is no excuse.
And Paris Hilton is some kind of sensation? I'd call her a whore.
Yay for customer service!
And that's just the problem. With a high-level language, there's more assembler code to put together and the routines are thus much slower than with a regular C app.
Name for me a decent high level language that can deliver the power and performance of C. Steve is right in this case- he wants to stress performance of code with ease of development. We could write everything in C, but it would take a long time and it would be more difficult. However, Objective-C takes the middle ground between performance and ease of coding.
I will guarantee you that all the code written for the largest supercomputers is either C, C++, or assembler. Why? Performance.
GIF (or LZW algorithm) counts 1's and 0's and uses a type of scientific notation for bits and patterns of bits. The downside to GIF is that your palatte is limited to 256 colors, although the colors you can use are very much of your choosing.
Most MPEG 4 codecs look algebra-based it seems, so artifacts appear more frequently with lower compression settings. It would be really good if you could get an H.264 at the appropriate resolution, as that algorithm is very good at providing high quality at low bit rates, i.e. the iPod.
At great risk to my Karma, I partially agree with that statement. Several years ago I worked for the Fink project (fink.sourceforge.net) porting OSS code to Mac OS X. There are some extremely well written open source applications, and they were a delight to port.
However, the bulk of applications available in OSS are indeed bloated and very difficult to port because the C code they were built on was dependant on too many third party shared libraries. The libraries change and change, and unless you keep an App updated it can break. This is what happened with OpenGL when I ported TuxRacer to Mac OS X. The code for the program was also god aweful and could have used a serious rewrite. The data types, pointers, etc. were crap.
Many projects do not suffer from this code bloat, especially with systems like CVS in place to keep everything in one place. I also worked on a Kazaa client called Neo for Mac OS X and, while functional, I changed so many things the original writer could not understand it anymore. I stopped developing Neo shortly thereafter.
People have different coding preferences, I am a minimalist and I like sleek, elegant code that gets a lot of work done in a few lines. Other people prefer to write their code out so that is is more readable to them rather than efficient for the computer. Both systems have their place- don't get me wrong -but for production systems code efficiency is the key. The fewer the number of lines of assembler the compiler must interpret the better.
Anyway, that is my 1 + 1 = 3 cents (Which I do not agree with, 1+1 = 2 dammit).
Taco, you are lame. iPod lame.
Next we will get a story about a movie involving "gay cowboys"
....
Did I buy(Backstreet Boys || nsync || Britney Spears || christina aguilera || j lopez || 50 cent || eminem)? Ok, I bought a single $1.99USD video of Ms. Spears so I could see a little bit of chest undulation.
Most of my purchases have been from artists like Roy Orbison, Stevie Wonder, Carole King, and the like, back at a time when it was all about creating music from the heart rather than from the wallet. We need someone with the talent/vision of Frank Zappa to pull the head of this music industry out of its *butt*.
Actually, Microsoft sold its shares of Apple long ago (and may I add at a substantial profit). Apple DID sign a contract with MS that they would not pursue some technologies, such as voice recognition, but nothing in the deal included an online music store or anything related to the iPod.
Microsoft needs to get a clue and stop changing the location of all their control panels (or whatever they call them now). When I have to fix a Windows XP computer, it always takes me a few more minutes of navigating through microsoft's "easy to use/user friendly" menus to change a network setting. On 95 and 98, network, click TCP/IP, click properties. Three steps. Now there are about 7 steps to get where you need to go.
Part of the problem is that MS has tried to make these features more accessable to the user via its crazy wizzard process, but what admins want is ONE place where we can find what we need to change. No MS, you do not offer the advanced features I want to use in your wizzards, I would rather modify them by hand. Please fix it Mr. Bill.
</end rant>
21st Century = 2000's
20th Century = 1900's
19th Century = 1800's
So, what I am lead to believe is that Apple has churned out a product that plays video before the advent of the motion picture? You are a century off my red-pended friend.
It is irresponsible journalism to simply take the hottest trends, put them on the top of the list, and use "album filler" for the rest of the top 100. Give the readers the content they deserve!
Probably what the engineers did was "think" they had a thermally stable supply when in fact the lab bench acted like a big heatsink. The thermal resistance from a lab bench would be much less compared to carpet. Finally, lab supplies are regulated so well that even if you do place them in high heat, they maintain constant power even though they are hot. The process this uses is negative feedback, and given the correct choice of chip material for the power supply controller, should never be an issue. If it is an issue, go back to Asia and yell at your designers for giving you a crappy supply.
Think of it like putting on a gold course- if the hole were 10' wide you could make the put every time, but because the hole is so small, one might have to try three or four strokes to get the ball in the hole. The exception, of course, is a hole in one, but unless you have mastered golf this has probably not been the case.
You are living in a slum, have lost all your teeth, and are high on crack if that sl*t with the fat ass turns you on. JLo = ghetto booty
And just what type of friend sends that crappy kind of porn? Honestly.....
I learned from a trusted source that Steve Jobs likes avocado.
I think that evidence speaks for itself.
I'm a college student and I see at least ten iPods every day while walking between classes.
To nit-pick a little, Steve actually has a Gulfstream V, not a Lear Jet. To call it a Lear Jet would be to call his Ferarri a Hyundai.
CmdrTaco will always live to regret those words. i (almost) feel sorry for him.
Apologies to CowboyNeal, we know you are not Taco, it's just that every poll has a "CowboyNeal" option, I get confused.
CowboyNeal will always live to regret those words. I (almost) feel sorry for him.
Nationalism will always get in the way of progress.
Muahhaaahahhaaa!!
My university uses WebCT extensively, especially for its physics 221 and 222 classes. Most of my instructors use it as a place to post grades and notes rather than using it as a teaching tool, though. I'm not surprised there is consolidation in this area, I do not know about BB, but WebCT is NOT a very good teaching tool. For online Math classes, my school uses yet another system called MapleTA.