. ..to provide a screenplay that is true to the original text.
Let's hope it's not too true to the original because, Dune aside, that means hours of characters standing around with hundreds of pages of exposition and half-baked "deep" debates on politics, religion and humanity. I'm still a fan of the series, but Herbert really shot his wad after the first two or three books. After that he was just milking a franchise.
However, if they finally let H.R. Giger do the art direction, I will definitely go see it.
There are large areas of the USA that are simply not densely populated enough to justify the expense of rolling out cutting-edge networks there. It isn't a matter of the US simply being behind the technological curve, as some like to assume.
This isn't true anymore. About 83% of the U.S. population lives in cities. We just aren't a rural country anymore. The simpler answer is that we have a de facto telecommunications monopoly in this country, and we all know how much monpolies love innovation.
Here's my theory: power users are few and far between.
Absolutely. Real power users--the people who know their machines and OSes inside and out--are extremely rare. There are other users who may know one aspect of a system or OS very, very well, but not have as tight a grasp on the entire thing. They're rare, too. They're actually rare even on Slashdot.
Apple doesn't sell to power users, any more than than Dell or HP. The fact that some power users use Apples and Dells doesn't mean much to either company. The other issue is that Slashdot is, supposedly, a power user site, which is to say that Apple doesn't really sell to Slashdotters. The fact that some Slashdotters use Macs and OS X doesn't change that fact. Apple sells largely to people for whom Slashdot culture loves to look down on as stupid or uninformed. And that fact that those kinds of people make up 99% of the computer-buying population just means that Slashdot is the true minority voice.
The US has not come all that far since the 60s in terms of nuclear weapon design.
Not to take away from your point, which is that any nuclear weapons-related tech can be dangerous, the U.S. has come very far since the 1960s in weapons designs, especially in miniaturization. In the 1960s it took a multi-megaton weapon to guarantee an ICBM kill. Now we're down to weapons of 450 kilotons. Additionally, the are signs that the U.S. has made some remarkable advances in the design of the actual fission and fusion devices, including things like using an oblate primary which only requires two detonation locations, rather than the 96 different detonators needed in older weapons.
I read the article in Rolling Stone last night. If I remember correctly, the pie graph showing the breakdown of music sales showed WalMart as the single largest seller of music with 16% of sales and the iTMS at number two with 14% of sales. How long until the iTMS is the biggest single record "store" in the country?
Cel phone CEO predicts competing technology "a thing of the past"! Promises free mobile internet access and hovercraft for all!
In tomorrow's breaking news, Steve Ballmer says OS X and Linux are doomed, Linus disses any operating system he did not write, and Steve Jobs says OS X is the best OS in the world!
Your first line is pretty well put, but I do think there are two issues here. One is that the U.S. force structure is set up to fight big wars against big foes. Although the Army and Marines have been adapting (with the Marines doing the better job) the mindset that non-state conflicts aren't real wars is still an entrenched one. And, unfortunately, it seems the lessons of Vietnam have been almost completely forgotten, and we've had to relearn them.
The real serious immediate threat facing America is the possibility of a terrorist group smuggling in a low grade weapon, nuclear, biological or chemical into the country and detonating it.
Actually, the chance of any of those happening is slight because of the technology required to create them. Nuclear and biological weapons, in particular, require a technological infrastructure which terrorists groups--especially the modern, non-state, distributed groups--don't have and, frankly, don't want. The insurgents in Iraq are doing fine with nothing more complicated than explosives, detonators, cel phones and RPGs. Even 9/11 was a decidedly low tech attack: hot building with big, flammable thing. Modern terrorism is about sascading system failures, and you don't need a nuke to do that. Look at the steadily declining amount of electricity available to the residents of Bagdhad to see how you can paralyze an entire city with nothing more than simple explosives and carefully chosen targets.
The real issue here is the Air Force's refusal to acknowledge that its force structure is out of step with the threats we're facing now. The Air Force wants more and more F-22s, even though the F-22 hasn't been near Iraq and Afghanistan and it won't go near them, as it's payload and loiter time are too small for close air support, which is all our pilots and aviators are doing over there. Air Force brass also continues to give short shrift to the A-10, even though it's uniquely suited to the present, and potential future, conflicts.
Take a look at the Air Force budget request for the next budget and you'll see it's stuffed full of shit we don't need. Meanwhile things we do need, like more airlift capacity, more tankers, etc., are being ignored because they don't go Mach 2. All of the services are having to adapt to the current realities. The Air Force is doing the worst job.
The other side of the issue is that the procurement system is completely broken, but that's a whole 'nother thread.
Regan talked about welfare queens.
And he was telling a lie and continued to tell even when called on it. If you want to do some research you will find that, before Welfare "Reform", the average stay on welfare was 1.9 years. Only about 5% of welfare recipients were on welfare for more than 5 years. It was actually one of the most efficient and effective social programs this country has ever undertaken.
That said, I do agree with you that the broken procurement system has enabled corporate welfare of the worst kind.
The target market is in fact fashion conscious users, and students, and others whose requirements are a sexy form factor.
Ah, the usual Slashdot litany. No Apple thread is complete without one. In fact, from reading Slashdot I have learned that every Apple user is "fashion conscious" and values looks over performance. What I didn't know was that there were so many million of them out there. What has really astounded me is that are 100,000,000 of them out there willing to buy iPods.
What's really happening is that the MBA doesn't meet the needs of some Slashdot users, who are doing the usual Slashdot Solipsism Dance by then assuming their particular needs must--MUST--then represent the needs of all users. I would think the iPod Lesson would've driven this point home, but apparently this thinking still exists. Long may it resign.
I already know a few people, who travel a lot for business, who are going to buy this thing. One of them travels from NYC to Paris a couple of times a year, and this is exactly the machine she needs. From this, I make two predictions:
1) Apple will sell squillions of this thing; and
2) Rather than admit they're wrong, some Slashdot users will reach the conclusion that the people who buy the thing are stupid and "fashion conscious", as no truly intelligent person would make such a purchase.
You are very mistaken, this incident does prove that Apple's security policies and responses are indeed lacking. Don't get fixated on the deletion of a post, consider that they did not respond by adding a logout option to a *web* interface.
How? What is the causal connection? Unless you have specific information about Apple's internal organization, and the relationship between the people who admin their forums and the people who work on OS security, the only connection is the one in your mind. Apple is not a monolithic entity with the ever-vigilant head of Steve Jobs on constant watch. It's a large corporation with multiple divisions, each of which has their regions of control and expertise. The decision to nuke posts about a security flaw, while stupid and short-sighted, does not immediately mean that Apple's OS security people are lax or lazy. They may be working on a fix already. They may not. They may roll it out in a week. They may not. And an article may appear tomorrow which proves that this security "flaw" was vastly overrated and is not that serious.
If you wanted to critique Apple's security prowess you could compile a list of known security flaws, with their severity and a list of how long it took Apple to patch them. That would be a logically constructed argument. However, this is Slashdot, so I won't hold my breath. This is the same lax "logic" which leads to a lot of the Microsoft bashing around here, and it looks stupid no matter which way it's pointed.
You would think that, during this time, Apple would have used the opportunity to develop and internal culture, policies and procedures, as well as infrastructure for dealing effectively with security issues. However, the complete opposite appears to be the case. Apple has failed miserably to publicly and actively address such issues. It also fails to respond in anything that could be called a rapid manner to reports of exploitable security holes.
I see no proof of this. Apple responds relatively quickly to security holes and releases regular patches and updates.
Apple makes decent hardware. Leopard is very nice to use, though far from perfect. The whole ecosystem and vertical integration is nice. However, the whole thing could come crashing down because of a serious security flaw. If people think Microsoft is susceptible to such a scenario, the Apple empire is even more so.
Huh? You seem to have conflated their corporate policy, which is sometimes very stupid, with their security policy, which is generally good. The two have nothing to do with each other. Apple's overzealous moderation of their own forums is well known, and unfortunate. But it has nothing to do with how well they manage their OS security and how well they respond to exploits.
I'm not interested in winning. I'm interested in the false dichotomy Dvorak has set up. There's no reason we can't give these people both food aid AND the OPLC program. Now, obviously, food aid should come first, because unless the OPLC is made from food, it ain't edible. But there's no reason we can't do both.
Call me crazy, but I sense a whiff of racism in this one: "Those poor, starving Africans don't need a complicated computer! They need simple things, like food!" How about they can use both, and more shit besides. I think Dvorak has no readily available Apple troll, so he had to fill his column with something.
Adobe is probably already pissed off there won't be a 64-bit version of Carbon, which requires them to rewrite the entire UI of Photoshop in Cocoa to be able to release a 64-bit version of it.
Adobe is pissed because it can't figure out how to squeeze more money out of a saturated market. Even though the design/print/pre-press market is large, it's finite and it's not growing much. Adobe has already sold everyone who wants or needs one a copy of Photoshop, and so they've been forced into release-constant-upgrades cycle to try and generate more revenue. So, I think Adobe's pissed they can't dump the print and pre-press market altogether and just move full scale into Flash, PDF and whatever other web technologies they can think of. And I think they're doubly pissed that, last I checked their annual report, about half the revenue from their print/design/pre-press sales come from the Apple world. So, instead of dumping that business, or spinning it off, they have to expend the time, money and effort to support two platforms. Adobe isn't pissed because of anything Apple's done. Adobe's pissed they can't dump their "legacy" apps and follow whatever will make them the most short-term profit, overall corporate health be damned.
Adobe hasn't been the same since Warnock and Company sold out and the bean counters took over. They're now a marketing company which happens to release some software from time to time. Their days as a company which produced technology which got you excited are long over.
Webkit isn't "from KDE". Apple started with KHTML and went from there, but saying "WebKit from KDE" sounds like they just copied it, which isn't at all true.
PDF as the basis for their display from Adob
Quartz and its related technologies aren't based on PDF: they're original Apple technologies from the ground up. Some of Quartz correlates pretty closely to PDF, but they are not at all the same tech.
I agree with this. Additionally, I find that people are very specific with their drawing needs. I know some people who won't use anything but tablets, and some who are agnostic. The best Photoshop guy I've ever met--a jaw-droppingly good artist--couldn't stand tablets and did all his stuff with a mouse.
If it meant Warnock would return to running day-to-day operations and making decisions about which features to work on I'd be all for it. Then maybe we could get rid of the marketing drones running the place whose only focus seems to be perfecting a filter which will automatically put LOLcats titles on your pet pics.
For anything. I will go out and get 10.5 this weekend and raise a glass to all those who had it installed six minutes after it released. Thank you, my unpaid beta testers, for making my weekend easier!
You use a lot of CMYK in your high-end photo work, then?
Yes, because the work I do is all printed work, so it's offset presses, either four color or more. Can't print a book or magazine with an additive color model.
Before I upgrade. I've had Unsanity's Application Enhancer do some weird things to my machine, like making it so it won't sleep, and the only reason I'm using it now is because Transparent Dock doesn't work with the Dock installed with the Safari Beta. All that said, I've never trusted haxies that much.
Re:Ask artists, not geeks
on
GIMP 2.4 Released
·
· Score: 2, Informative
In case you did not read it, GIMP 2.4 does support ICC profiles and allows you to convert images to the appropriate color spaces. You can also identify the areas using colors that are outside your printable gamut, etc. It looks like GIMP is able to do more than you think.
I said "printable" color space and "full support" for ICC profiles. Given that GIMP doesn't support CMYK, how do you intend to print the files? And I have read about the GIMP's ICC support. It doesn't match Photoshop's.
Slashdot Mirror
Why? Because this is freakin' cool. Plus, I've always wanted a Harkonnen Chair.
Let's hope it's not too true to the original because, Dune aside, that means hours of characters standing around with hundreds of pages of exposition and half-baked "deep" debates on politics, religion and humanity. I'm still a fan of the series, but Herbert really shot his wad after the first two or three books. After that he was just milking a franchise.
However, if they finally let H.R. Giger do the art direction, I will definitely go see it.
This isn't true anymore. About 83% of the U.S. population lives in cities. We just aren't a rural country anymore. The simpler answer is that we have a de facto telecommunications monopoly in this country, and we all know how much monpolies love innovation.
Absolutely. Real power users--the people who know their machines and OSes inside and out--are extremely rare. There are other users who may know one aspect of a system or OS very, very well, but not have as tight a grasp on the entire thing. They're rare, too. They're actually rare even on Slashdot.
Apple doesn't sell to power users, any more than than Dell or HP. The fact that some power users use Apples and Dells doesn't mean much to either company. The other issue is that Slashdot is, supposedly, a power user site, which is to say that Apple doesn't really sell to Slashdotters. The fact that some Slashdotters use Macs and OS X doesn't change that fact. Apple sells largely to people for whom Slashdot culture loves to look down on as stupid or uninformed. And that fact that those kinds of people make up 99% of the computer-buying population just means that Slashdot is the true minority voice.
Not to take away from your point, which is that any nuclear weapons-related tech can be dangerous, the U.S. has come very far since the 1960s in weapons designs, especially in miniaturization. In the 1960s it took a multi-megaton weapon to guarantee an ICBM kill. Now we're down to weapons of 450 kilotons. Additionally, the are signs that the U.S. has made some remarkable advances in the design of the actual fission and fusion devices, including things like using an oblate primary which only requires two detonation locations, rather than the 96 different detonators needed in older weapons.
I read the article in Rolling Stone last night. If I remember correctly, the pie graph showing the breakdown of music sales showed WalMart as the single largest seller of music with 16% of sales and the iTMS at number two with 14% of sales. How long until the iTMS is the biggest single record "store" in the country?
Cel phone CEO predicts competing technology "a thing of the past"! Promises free mobile internet access and hovercraft for all!
In tomorrow's breaking news, Steve Ballmer says OS X and Linux are doomed, Linus disses any operating system he did not write, and Steve Jobs says OS X is the best OS in the world!
Your first line is pretty well put, but I do think there are two issues here. One is that the U.S. force structure is set up to fight big wars against big foes. Although the Army and Marines have been adapting (with the Marines doing the better job) the mindset that non-state conflicts aren't real wars is still an entrenched one. And, unfortunately, it seems the lessons of Vietnam have been almost completely forgotten, and we've had to relearn them.
Actually, the chance of any of those happening is slight because of the technology required to create them. Nuclear and biological weapons, in particular, require a technological infrastructure which terrorists groups--especially the modern, non-state, distributed groups--don't have and, frankly, don't want. The insurgents in Iraq are doing fine with nothing more complicated than explosives, detonators, cel phones and RPGs. Even 9/11 was a decidedly low tech attack: hot building with big, flammable thing. Modern terrorism is about sascading system failures, and you don't need a nuke to do that. Look at the steadily declining amount of electricity available to the residents of Bagdhad to see how you can paralyze an entire city with nothing more than simple explosives and carefully chosen targets.
The real issue here is the Air Force's refusal to acknowledge that its force structure is out of step with the threats we're facing now. The Air Force wants more and more F-22s, even though the F-22 hasn't been near Iraq and Afghanistan and it won't go near them, as it's payload and loiter time are too small for close air support, which is all our pilots and aviators are doing over there. Air Force brass also continues to give short shrift to the A-10, even though it's uniquely suited to the present, and potential future, conflicts.
Take a look at the Air Force budget request for the next budget and you'll see it's stuffed full of shit we don't need. Meanwhile things we do need, like more airlift capacity, more tankers, etc., are being ignored because they don't go Mach 2. All of the services are having to adapt to the current realities. The Air Force is doing the worst job.
The other side of the issue is that the procurement system is completely broken, but that's a whole 'nother thread.
And he was telling a lie and continued to tell even when called on it. If you want to do some research you will find that, before Welfare "Reform", the average stay on welfare was 1.9 years. Only about 5% of welfare recipients were on welfare for more than 5 years. It was actually one of the most efficient and effective social programs this country has ever undertaken.
That said, I do agree with you that the broken procurement system has enabled corporate welfare of the worst kind.
Ah, the usual Slashdot litany. No Apple thread is complete without one. In fact, from reading Slashdot I have learned that every Apple user is "fashion conscious" and values looks over performance. What I didn't know was that there were so many million of them out there. What has really astounded me is that are 100,000,000 of them out there willing to buy iPods.
What's really happening is that the MBA doesn't meet the needs of some Slashdot users, who are doing the usual Slashdot Solipsism Dance by then assuming their particular needs must--MUST--then represent the needs of all users. I would think the iPod Lesson would've driven this point home, but apparently this thinking still exists. Long may it resign.
I already know a few people, who travel a lot for business, who are going to buy this thing. One of them travels from NYC to Paris a couple of times a year, and this is exactly the machine she needs. From this, I make two predictions:
1) Apple will sell squillions of this thing; and
2) Rather than admit they're wrong, some Slashdot users will reach the conclusion that the people who buy the thing are stupid and "fashion conscious", as no truly intelligent person would make such a purchase.
How? What is the causal connection? Unless you have specific information about Apple's internal organization, and the relationship between the people who admin their forums and the people who work on OS security, the only connection is the one in your mind. Apple is not a monolithic entity with the ever-vigilant head of Steve Jobs on constant watch. It's a large corporation with multiple divisions, each of which has their regions of control and expertise. The decision to nuke posts about a security flaw, while stupid and short-sighted, does not immediately mean that Apple's OS security people are lax or lazy. They may be working on a fix already. They may not. They may roll it out in a week. They may not. And an article may appear tomorrow which proves that this security "flaw" was vastly overrated and is not that serious.
If you wanted to critique Apple's security prowess you could compile a list of known security flaws, with their severity and a list of how long it took Apple to patch them. That would be a logically constructed argument. However, this is Slashdot, so I won't hold my breath. This is the same lax "logic" which leads to a lot of the Microsoft bashing around here, and it looks stupid no matter which way it's pointed.
I see no proof of this. Apple responds relatively quickly to security holes and releases regular patches and updates.
Huh? You seem to have conflated their corporate policy, which is sometimes very stupid, with their security policy, which is generally good. The two have nothing to do with each other. Apple's overzealous moderation of their own forums is well known, and unfortunate. But it has nothing to do with how well they manage their OS security and how well they respond to exploits.
I'm not interested in winning. I'm interested in the false dichotomy Dvorak has set up. There's no reason we can't give these people both food aid AND the OPLC program. Now, obviously, food aid should come first, because unless the OPLC is made from food, it ain't edible. But there's no reason we can't do both.
Call me crazy, but I sense a whiff of racism in this one: "Those poor, starving Africans don't need a complicated computer! They need simple things, like food!" How about they can use both, and more shit besides. I think Dvorak has no readily available Apple troll, so he had to fill his column with something.
Just asking.
By the way, did you know that in some African languages "Dvorak" mean "pompous douchebag"?
Cabal? Really? Are you sure you don't just need to turn off the machine and get outside for a while?
Adobe is pissed because it can't figure out how to squeeze more money out of a saturated market. Even though the design/print/pre-press market is large, it's finite and it's not growing much. Adobe has already sold everyone who wants or needs one a copy of Photoshop, and so they've been forced into release-constant-upgrades cycle to try and generate more revenue. So, I think Adobe's pissed they can't dump the print and pre-press market altogether and just move full scale into Flash, PDF and whatever other web technologies they can think of. And I think they're doubly pissed that, last I checked their annual report, about half the revenue from their print/design/pre-press sales come from the Apple world. So, instead of dumping that business, or spinning it off, they have to expend the time, money and effort to support two platforms. Adobe isn't pissed because of anything Apple's done. Adobe's pissed they can't dump their "legacy" apps and follow whatever will make them the most short-term profit, overall corporate health be damned.
Adobe hasn't been the same since Warnock and Company sold out and the bean counters took over. They're now a marketing company which happens to release some software from time to time. Their days as a company which produced technology which got you excited are long over.
Webkit isn't "from KDE". Apple started with KHTML and went from there, but saying "WebKit from KDE" sounds like they just copied it, which isn't at all true.
Quartz and its related technologies aren't based on PDF: they're original Apple technologies from the ground up. Some of Quartz correlates pretty closely to PDF, but they are not at all the same tech.
Just being pedantic. . .
My glorious metal ass.
Does Intel make a board with Firewire 800 on it? If not, then some of the Apple boards are custom.
I agree with this. Additionally, I find that people are very specific with their drawing needs. I know some people who won't use anything but tablets, and some who are agnostic. The best Photoshop guy I've ever met--a jaw-droppingly good artist--couldn't stand tablets and did all his stuff with a mouse.
If it meant Warnock would return to running day-to-day operations and making decisions about which features to work on I'd be all for it. Then maybe we could get rid of the marketing drones running the place whose only focus seems to be perfecting a filter which will automatically put LOLcats titles on your pet pics.
For anything. I will go out and get 10.5 this weekend and raise a glass to all those who had it installed six minutes after it released. Thank you, my unpaid beta testers, for making my weekend easier!
Yes, because the work I do is all printed work, so it's offset presses, either four color or more. Can't print a book or magazine with an additive color model.
Before I upgrade. I've had Unsanity's Application Enhancer do some weird things to my machine, like making it so it won't sleep, and the only reason I'm using it now is because Transparent Dock doesn't work with the Dock installed with the Safari Beta. All that said, I've never trusted haxies that much.
I said "printable" color space and "full support" for ICC profiles. Given that GIMP doesn't support CMYK, how do you intend to print the files? And I have read about the GIMP's ICC support. It doesn't match Photoshop's.