Absolutely. Should be right up there with "don't get involved in a land war in Asia." I've been telling my friends to wait until the second generation. My G5 will last me until the second generation of Intel-powered desktop machines.
The French "fought" the Germans in the same way the RIAA "fought" P2P: make a couple of largely ceremonial gestures, the declare victory (or, in France's case, defeat) and buckle down for the duration. I dare you to find one large-scale engagament before June 6th, 1944 in which French troops caused the Germans serious casualties. France fell in 40 days, most of it spent sitting behind the Maignot line wondering where the Germans were.
Of course the U.S. didn't win WWII by itself: no country did. But claiming that French actions had any significant effect on German troop levels isn't even a good troll. Now, if you'd mentioned the Soviet Union. . .
Yes, everyone agrees. But look at the DoD/Intel budgets, look at the Quadrennial Defense Review and look at the contracts being given out and you will see that, while the DoD and Pentagon is doing a good game talking about the need for restructing to fight asymetrical warfare, the people in charge are still acting as if they're fighting a superpower/nationstate war. What they're really doing is focusing on China twenty years down the road while ignoring the problem here. $2 billion submaries whose primary purpose is to deliver a four man SEAL boat team? SOCOM already has plenty of delivery vehicles: they don't need more submarines.
I agree with you that Rumsfeld, etc., talk a about needing more HUMINT. I disagree with you in that I don't see them actually building any. Goss said one of his priorities was to rebuild HUMINT. Hayden is all about ELINT. Draw your own conclusions.
Was about to say the same thing. Traffic pattern analysis doesn't work at all for sleeper cells, like the people who carried out the 9/11 attacks. Sleeper cells, by definition, tend to be quiet for long periods of time with only intermittent contact between members and any organizing force. To someone looking at traffic pattern analysis, this will look no different from me talking to my cousin in Atlanta or my uncle in DC, which we do once in a long while. Analysis of the 9/11 hijackers would've shown normal, suburban usage.
The trend in terrorism lately is decentralization: the guys who carried out the Madrid train bombings were home-grown, were not known terrorists, and were not previoiusly involved in any high level attacks or meetings. They didn't show up on anyone's radar precisely because they didn't fit any profile, nor would they be found with traffic pattern analysis. Add to this the recent news that the AQ higher ups have ceased using satellite or cel phones and you have the basic problem with asymetrical warfare, one which the White House and DoD refuse to learn: you can't fight a guy wearing a suicide vest with satellites and computers, and you can't find a loosely organized, ad hoc group of people by looking for organized cells. The top down model of terrorism is dead, and it seems to be the only thing we're still looking for.
What we need, and what the White House and DoD are steadfastly refusing to develop, is old-fashioned HUMINT, human intelligence. We need speakers of Arab in all of the various dialects, we need people schooled in Middle Eastern politics, history, religion and socities, and we need to get people with Middle Eastern backgrounds into the intelligence services and up the command chain. One of the reasons the CIA was as efficient as it was in the 60s and 70s was the large number of working agents from countries in which they were working. Gust Avrakotos was such an effective agent in Greece and elsewhere because he spoke the native languages and knew the local customs. He wasn't viewing the space by satellite from DC. He was in the mix.
I'm guessing by your moniker this may be a troll, but there's something wrong with your set up. My G5, with 1.25 Gigs of RAM, is faster than my Athlon at work, running XP with 95% of the eye candy turned off.
Agree that integrated graphics are ass, but saying that OS X runs like a dog with only 512 megs of RAM is borderline trolling. I haven't had hands on with an Intel Mac yet, but the IT guys at work tell me the Intel-powered Macs they have installed are very fast.
We do? Cause 10.4.6 runs just fine on my 6 year old, 500 MHz G3 laptop with 512 megs of RAM. Runs as fast as Ubuntu Linux, dual-booted on the same machine.
Maybe the ROI they're making on those sales isn't worth it. If you use that capital to make even more than $400 mill., then it'd be better to make the money work elsewhere.
Maybe. I have no way of knowing what it costs Adobe to make Mac software, but I would imagine it isn't too high: all of Adobe's Mac products are Carbon/Codewarrior: I think Photoshop CS2 is, essentially, Photoshop 7 tarted up with some new features. Certainly 7 was the last version which could be called a must-have upgrade, and there is very little you can do in CS 2 which you can't do in 7. But this is begining to trend into another thread, which is what I see as Adobe's slow and steady quality decline.
Now, considering that the next versions of Adobe's stuff for the Mac has to be seriously reworked, maybe they are looking at their bottom line and thinking if it's worth it. Were I Adobe I'd be careful, though, as I think that both InDesign and Illustrator are targets for someone who would write a proper OS X app using Apple's CoreImage stuff.
You're right: lazy typing by me. The sentiment still stands, tho: Adobe makes a shitload of money off the Mac, and given Apple's entrenchment in desktop publusing/pre-press/design, it's as close to a guaranteed revenue stream as you can get. Steve Jobs may be a pain in the ass, but in the business world you learn to deal with pain in the ass clients and take their money.
That Adobe will just walk away from ~$400 million/yr in software sales. From a quick persual of Adobe's most recent annual report and 10-K filings, I figure that's about how much Adobe makes a year from Mac software. This leads me to a question:
What do call a CEO who makes the decision to chop $400 million off his company's profits?
t I heard (last year) Linux on a laptop isn't likely to sleep or hybernate well, and doesn't necessarily have good hardware support for features typically found in a laptop.
FWIW, I dual boot OS X and Ubuntu on the last generation Powerbook G3, and the thing hibernates and sleeps like a champ under Linux. The Ubuntu installer did a great job a recognizing all the hardware. I know there are some problems with wireless in Linux, but as I don't have wireless on that machine I can't comment. Also, FWIW, Ubuntu isn't noticeably faster than 10.4.6 on this machine.
Now, as to why someone would want to triple boot? Because they can.
You forgot to mention FASTER, but in my experience Linux is AT LEAST as stable and has UI advantages too. My iBook 600 Mhz G3 running Debian Linux is in many respects more responsive than my year-old Powerbook 1.5 Ghz G4 running OS X. I'm sure if I were to run a benchmark measuring raw horsepower the Powerbook would still win, but for day to day web browsing, moving files around, etc, the iBook/Linux is the champ.
For the sake of argument. . .
I have a Pismo. upgraded with a 900 MHz G3 and a 40 gig drive, which dual boots 10.4.6 and Ubuntu Breezy running Gnome. I actually find 10.4.6 to be a little quicker than Ubuntu in some areas (web browsing) and much faster in other areas (Ubuntu's Samba is borked, which limits it to 10BaseT for transfers, while transferring between two OS X systems us much faster). Now, I am by no means a Linux expert, so there may be optimizations of which I am not aware which could increase Ubuntu's performance. However, for stock, off-the-CD installs, I find OS X to be as fast or faster.
Beyond this, there are other issues. When Ubuntu installed, it didn't support direct rendering to the Pismo's graphics card. I had to google around and find out how to enable this, as well as double buffering and Xft. Last night I had to spend half an hour in the Terminal to get DeerPark to work on the machine. I am finding other problems, too: I have yet to find a way to monitor CPU temp in an application like conky, because there doesn't seem to be support for the Key West bus yet. Etc.
My point here is not to bash Linux, because I am enjoying the learning. But to enter into the argument, But what would be the advantage of running Linux vs. the BSD-based MacOS X. .. one answer is that OS X works out of the box in ways Ubuntu doesn't. This obviously isn't a concern of yours, but I think it's what matter to most computer users, who are somewhere between partially and completely clueless. My brother, who gets along in OS X, would be lost in Linux. So, while someone with your needs obviously gains little from running OS X, I think the average computer user gains a lot from OS X.
When my then-new Powerbook was about three months old, Apple discovered a fault in the machines which needed to be replaced. I contacted Apple, who sent me a pre-paid Fed Ex box. I packed up my machine and shipped it. Four days later it was back, good as new. Cost to me? Nothing. My other dealings with Apple, going back to 1989, have been similarly stress- and trouble-free.
p.
YMMV, etc.
It's obvious: MS will then release a security tool which patches the holes in the security tool so that you can download the update to patch the security hole in the OS. Once the OS is updated, you can download the patch for the Security Tool Security Tool Security Hole which will allow you to securely patch the security holes in the OS.
For me the big killer is the price. It's $10.75 a ticket here (NYC) and I'm pretty sure it will be $11 before long. For me that completely obliterates the "theater experience" argument. Being able to see a movie when it first comes out just isn't that important when it will cost my girlfriend and I a minimum of $21.50 to see the thing, excluding costs for transportation, food, etc.
The theatres/studios have the same problem as the RIAA: they are blinded by their own greed and simply can't understand when people start voting with their feet and pocketbooks. They are the last to understand what new technolgies mean, and no amount of complaining will put the genie back in the bottle.
Like I said, could be the hardware. It's a Pismo, so it has an ATI Rage 128 Mobility with AGP 2x. According to a friend who's much more Linux savvy than am I, Linux direct rendering support sucks for this card, whereas 10.4.5 has no problems with it. Safari flies under Tiger, but Firefox is a bit slow under Ubuntu.
I am somewhat surprised that you say the ipod's 'enormous improvement' is to combine existing mp3 player features - yet that was not an incremental improvement?
No one had combined those features before. No one has done it as well since and, together, they were an enormous improvement.
Aaah, the real reason for your comment - a random slashdot bash.
Bash? Please point out where I said Slashdot's technofetishism was a bad thing. I am desacribing a mechanism, not passing judgment. Perhaps you didn't understand what I said.
To the gp who claims that ogg vorbis is pointless because nobody outside of a few geeks care: you're missing the point. I personally gain a lot from vorbis support, because with only 4GB of storage for flash players, sound quality at low bitrates suddenly becomes important, and ogg vorbis aoTuV beats any other format in terms of sound quality at low bitrates (yes, even AAC). If I have the option of using vorbis and benefitting from it, then I'll use it. I don't really care what everyone else uses. It's not like I trade music with other people (which is illegal anyway), so why should I care what file formats everyone else uses, or vice versa.
I didn't say it was pointless. I said using the inclusion of ogg vorbis as a criteria for either predicting or explaining the success of the iPod is useless because the market place has resolved that ogg vorbis support is not an issue. The issue isn't ogg vorbis; the issue is whether ogg vorbis support factors into the purchasing decisions which have driven the iPod to such success. Quite obviously, it hasn't. I have no opinion about ogg vorbis.
our argument seems to boil down to, "It's popular, so it must be better.
That's not what I said at all. I said, and I mean, that the criteria one can see here for evaluating the iPod, and other devices, are not criteria which can be used to judge whether or not a given product will succeed (an iPod "killer", for instance) because the criteria stem from a pedantic viewpoint one sees on Slashdot and other tech sites which does not at all reflect a wider or more generalized view. Nowhere have I passed judgement on either set of criteria: I am not saying one is better than the other. I am merely identifying mechanisms, noting their differences and extrapolating what those differences mean in a larger sense. There is nothing wrong with a technologically pedantic viewpoint, so long as one realizes that such a viewpoint is not shared by the larger mass of consumers which resolve marketplace success and failure.
Slashdot is "out of touch", as you term it, only in the sense that Slashdot's judgments as a whole are not very useful when wondering why the iPod is a success and other mp3 players are not. This is not limited to Slashdot: I wouldn't go to Macnn in order to discover why the iPod was a success either.
Slashdot Mirror
Which is why I'm glad my 1.8 G5 is air cooled. If the air leaks I will just open the window and let it out.
Absolutely. Should be right up there with "don't get involved in a land war in Asia." I've been telling my friends to wait until the second generation. My G5 will last me until the second generation of Intel-powered desktop machines.
a lawyer-off with Apple. Like bloody meat to hungry pit bulls. . .
Of course the U.S. didn't win WWII by itself: no country did. But claiming that French actions had any significant effect on German troop levels isn't even a good troll. Now, if you'd mentioned the Soviet Union. . .
I agree with you that Rumsfeld, etc., talk a about needing more HUMINT. I disagree with you in that I don't see them actually building any. Goss said one of his priorities was to rebuild HUMINT. Hayden is all about ELINT. Draw your own conclusions.
Don't have time to read that at work right now, but I will take a look at it later.
The trend in terrorism lately is decentralization: the guys who carried out the Madrid train bombings were home-grown, were not known terrorists, and were not previoiusly involved in any high level attacks or meetings. They didn't show up on anyone's radar precisely because they didn't fit any profile, nor would they be found with traffic pattern analysis. Add to this the recent news that the AQ higher ups have ceased using satellite or cel phones and you have the basic problem with asymetrical warfare, one which the White House and DoD refuse to learn: you can't fight a guy wearing a suicide vest with satellites and computers, and you can't find a loosely organized, ad hoc group of people by looking for organized cells. The top down model of terrorism is dead, and it seems to be the only thing we're still looking for.
What we need, and what the White House and DoD are steadfastly refusing to develop, is old-fashioned HUMINT, human intelligence. We need speakers of Arab in all of the various dialects, we need people schooled in Middle Eastern politics, history, religion and socities, and we need to get people with Middle Eastern backgrounds into the intelligence services and up the command chain. One of the reasons the CIA was as efficient as it was in the 60s and 70s was the large number of working agents from countries in which they were working. Gust Avrakotos was such an effective agent in Greece and elsewhere because he spoke the native languages and knew the local customs. He wasn't viewing the space by satellite from DC. He was in the mix.
Here endeth the rant.
I'm guessing by your moniker this may be a troll, but there's something wrong with your set up. My G5, with 1.25 Gigs of RAM, is faster than my Athlon at work, running XP with 95% of the eye candy turned off.
Agree that integrated graphics are ass, but saying that OS X runs like a dog with only 512 megs of RAM is borderline trolling. I haven't had hands on with an Intel Mac yet, but the IT guys at work tell me the Intel-powered Macs they have installed are very fast.
We do? Cause 10.4.6 runs just fine on my 6 year old, 500 MHz G3 laptop with 512 megs of RAM. Runs as fast as Ubuntu Linux, dual-booted on the same machine.
Maybe. I have no way of knowing what it costs Adobe to make Mac software, but I would imagine it isn't too high: all of Adobe's Mac products are Carbon/Codewarrior: I think Photoshop CS2 is, essentially, Photoshop 7 tarted up with some new features. Certainly 7 was the last version which could be called a must-have upgrade, and there is very little you can do in CS 2 which you can't do in 7. But this is begining to trend into another thread, which is what I see as Adobe's slow and steady quality decline.
Now, considering that the next versions of Adobe's stuff for the Mac has to be seriously reworked, maybe they are looking at their bottom line and thinking if it's worth it. Were I Adobe I'd be careful, though, as I think that both InDesign and Illustrator are targets for someone who would write a proper OS X app using Apple's CoreImage stuff.
You're right: lazy typing by me. The sentiment still stands, tho: Adobe makes a shitload of money off the Mac, and given Apple's entrenchment in desktop publusing/pre-press/design, it's as close to a guaranteed revenue stream as you can get. Steve Jobs may be a pain in the ass, but in the business world you learn to deal with pain in the ass clients and take their money.
What do call a CEO who makes the decision to chop $400 million off his company's profits?
Unemployed.
FWIW, I dual boot OS X and Ubuntu on the last generation Powerbook G3, and the thing hibernates and sleeps like a champ under Linux. The Ubuntu installer did a great job a recognizing all the hardware. I know there are some problems with wireless in Linux, but as I don't have wireless on that machine I can't comment. Also, FWIW, Ubuntu isn't noticeably faster than 10.4.6 on this machine.
Now, as to why someone would want to triple boot? Because they can.
For the sake of argument. . .
I have a Pismo. upgraded with a 900 MHz G3 and a 40 gig drive, which dual boots 10.4.6 and Ubuntu Breezy running Gnome. I actually find 10.4.6 to be a little quicker than Ubuntu in some areas (web browsing) and much faster in other areas (Ubuntu's Samba is borked, which limits it to 10BaseT for transfers, while transferring between two OS X systems us much faster). Now, I am by no means a Linux expert, so there may be optimizations of which I am not aware which could increase Ubuntu's performance. However, for stock, off-the-CD installs, I find OS X to be as fast or faster.
Beyond this, there are other issues. When Ubuntu installed, it didn't support direct rendering to the Pismo's graphics card. I had to google around and find out how to enable this, as well as double buffering and Xft. Last night I had to spend half an hour in the Terminal to get DeerPark to work on the machine. I am finding other problems, too: I have yet to find a way to monitor CPU temp in an application like conky, because there doesn't seem to be support for the Key West bus yet. Etc.
My point here is not to bash Linux, because I am enjoying the learning. But to enter into the argument, But what would be the advantage of running Linux vs. the BSD-based MacOS X. . . one answer is that OS X works out of the box in ways Ubuntu doesn't. This obviously isn't a concern of yours, but I think it's what matter to most computer users, who are somewhere between partially and completely clueless. My brother, who gets along in OS X, would be lost in Linux. So, while someone with your needs obviously gains little from running OS X, I think the average computer user gains a lot from OS X.
When my then-new Powerbook was about three months old, Apple discovered a fault in the machines which needed to be replaced. I contacted Apple, who sent me a pre-paid Fed Ex box. I packed up my machine and shipped it. Four days later it was back, good as new. Cost to me? Nothing. My other dealings with Apple, going back to 1989, have been similarly stress- and trouble-free. p. YMMV, etc.
Briefly:
1) Release OS
2) Find security hole
3) Release Security Tool
4) Find security hole
5) Release Security tool patch
6) Infinite Recursion
7) Profit!
The theatres/studios have the same problem as the RIAA: they are blinded by their own greed and simply can't understand when people start voting with their feet and pocketbooks. They are the last to understand what new technolgies mean, and no amount of complaining will put the genie back in the bottle.
Stable?
Ah. Any browser suggestions for a Linux n00b?
Like I said, could be the hardware. It's a Pismo, so it has an ATI Rage 128 Mobility with AGP 2x. According to a friend who's much more Linux savvy than am I, Linux direct rendering support sucks for this card, whereas 10.4.5 has no problems with it. Safari flies under Tiger, but Firefox is a bit slow under Ubuntu.
FWIW, Ubunto is slower on my Powerbook than 10.4.5. Could be due to the age of the hardware, tho. It's a six year old laptop.
No one had combined those features before. No one has done it as well since and, together, they were an enormous improvement.
Bash? Please point out where I said Slashdot's technofetishism was a bad thing. I am desacribing a mechanism, not passing judgment. Perhaps you didn't understand what I said.
I didn't say it was pointless. I said using the inclusion of ogg vorbis as a criteria for either predicting or explaining the success of the iPod is useless because the market place has resolved that ogg vorbis support is not an issue. The issue isn't ogg vorbis; the issue is whether ogg vorbis support factors into the purchasing decisions which have driven the iPod to such success. Quite obviously, it hasn't. I have no opinion about ogg vorbis.
That's not what I said at all. I said, and I mean, that the criteria one can see here for evaluating the iPod, and other devices, are not criteria which can be used to judge whether or not a given product will succeed (an iPod "killer", for instance) because the criteria stem from a pedantic viewpoint one sees on Slashdot and other tech sites which does not at all reflect a wider or more generalized view. Nowhere have I passed judgement on either set of criteria: I am not saying one is better than the other. I am merely identifying mechanisms, noting their differences and extrapolating what those differences mean in a larger sense. There is nothing wrong with a technologically pedantic viewpoint, so long as one realizes that such a viewpoint is not shared by the larger mass of consumers which resolve marketplace success and failure.
Slashdot is "out of touch", as you term it, only in the sense that Slashdot's judgments as a whole are not very useful when wondering why the iPod is a success and other mp3 players are not. This is not limited to Slashdot: I wouldn't go to Macnn in order to discover why the iPod was a success either.