It amazes me that, for example, no-one really checks signatures on credit card slips or that you don't need a PIN to buy gas with a card at the pump.
If you tighten up all these processes then just knowing five pieces of data about a person won't let you access their accounts. Why sign your credit card at all when no-one even LOOKS at the signature and YOU are liable for fraudulent use of the card?
This story was covered in somewhat more intelligent detail by NPR's "All Things Considered"
1) The Virus is being reconstructed as best they can. 2) The researchers aren't even using Level 5 isolation because -- guess what -- they expect that we're all pretty much immune to the virus these days. (They'll be the first to go if they're wrong...)
Apple is not a ground braker in that they create markets where none existed. They are a ground breaker in that they launch a product that completely redefines an existing market.
Apple I and II* -- arguably the first personal computers; the Apple II wasn't just the first, it also had features such as self-configuring expansion card slots that allowed expansion cards to be inserted and *just work* (it took IBM and Microsoft to invent driver and interrupt hell) Apple II floppy drive -- cheaper and better than any competing device, and yet Apple was able to make incredible profits on it Lisa/Macintosh -- first mass market computer with usable GUI LaserWriter* -- first Postscript printer, first high resolution printer both affordable and usable by consumers Newton* -- first PDA, first mass-market device with working handwriting recognition QuickTime* -- first software-only digital video, first cross-platform digital video QuickTake* -- first consumer digital camera (if Steve Jobs had been leading Apple then, Apple would probably still be a market leader in digital photography; Apple really dropped the ball here). QuickTime VR* -- first whatever it was (and much imitated) NeXTStep -- innovative in so many ways that it's not funny (and NeXT is part of Apple's DNA), and incidentally the platform on which the Worldwide Web was invented iTunes Music Store -- first whatever it is that iTMS is
Surely the point of electronic publishing is, ultimately, to reduce the need for physical printing and (eventually) eliminate it.
The only objections to electronic publishing now are practical (it's harder to read an electronic book in bed, or whatever, or the screen is hard to look at for extended periods) or basically insane (books smell better than computers).
Eventually, cheap and highly usable electronic books will be available so that, for example, I don't need to lose my place in my O'Reilly reference books to look in their index, or keep multiple spots open with random cards and post-it notes, or carry half a suitcase full of books with me on vacation.
Bug free software is quite possible. It's just prohibitively expensive, because it usually requires that the developers use a mathematical validation system. Thus it's typically confined to projects where system failure would result in Human casualties.
It also requires specifications to be expressed mathematically, which tends to restrict it to programs where the specifications are written by scientists or engineers.
Well, next year's DSLRs will have 12-30MP* which will double or triple the space requirements for RAW photos.
* The higher value will exceed the resolution of positive transparency film in analog camera, as claimed by current "digital cannot beat analog" nuts. Of course their slide scanners will offer higher scanning resolutions by then so they will raise their claimed resolution too.
Sure, most people won't notice the difference in quality, but most people weren't noticing the difference in quality between the current standards and the preceding ones. Besides, it's easier to double the number of megapixels in your camera than -- say -- become a better photographer.
Gotta go, I have to watch repeats of old shows shot on video on my HDTV.
It's exactly the belief that Macs are either secure by design, or not popular enough / too obscure to make them a tempting target for the authors that will make the first major widescale virus attack completely catastrophic for unprotected Mac users.
Let's see, how long have the "Macs are secure" myth (or non-myth) been around. Three years? Four years? If some ambitious virus writer were going to become the first to really hose Mac OS X and get awesome props for it, don't you think one would have tried by now? Two? Maybe a thousand? Isn't the incredibly lame batch script that requires the user to (a) run it, and (b) enter an admin password, just a perfect example of the pathetic attempts script kiddies have resorted to in an effort to do just this?
I'm sure there will be some Mac malware eventually. There certainly used to be back in the OS 6 days.
I can't imagine it being anywhere near as bad as anywhere near as bad as any of several major worms (e.g. BLASTER) on Windows of late.
Even with the free license, it's just plain ugly. It has a UI that isn't worthy of a professional application, both in terms of eye appeal and low level attention to detail.
Do some decent UI design, make it free as in beer, and Opera might be a contender.
I seem to recall some fairly prominent child sex abuse scandals in the news of late... the crimes in question having taken place before web browsers had been invented.
It's not like the new Zelda isn't stylized. It's just differently stylized. Zelda isn't about to look like an animated photograph, it's going to look like an animated illustrated storybook.
There are game designers out there who simply push polygons and pixels in an effort to look realistic for no apparent game benefit, but this doesn't look like the case here.
I disagree with almost everything in TFA (for reasons outlined elsewhere) except the point that Open/Save dialogs and Finder/Explorer should be unified (although the writer does not put it this way).
My version: abolish open/save dialogs and just use Finder/Explorer. If you're currently limited to files of certain types, figure out a way to deal with that inside Finder/Explorer (since this is a common enough requirement even if you're not in an application -- I am only interested in image files, stop showing me stuff that isn't images).
As I recall, virtually every climatologist and atmospheric physicist in the world dismissed it as pseudo-science.
Perhaps the same group who think global warming is just a theory? Or that ozone layer depletion couldn't possibly happen? Maybe the scientists who don't think cigarette smoking has any causal relationship to lung cancer?
The critiques I have seen of "Nuclear Winter" (and there were plenty) were arguments at the margins about the assumptions fed into the climate models or their granularity (and in some cases predict a less severe or general effect).
"These papers have led to a surge of work in many research centers around the world, most of which have thus far confirmed the general thrust of the TTAPS model, and to a strategic reassessment by nuclear planners."
Even if you take the least favorable view of this work, it hardly ranks "Nuclear Winter" next to Piltdown Man (a deliberate fraud) or Cold Fusion (bad science rushed to press before peer review).
Not to mention that if you read the scenarios it was based on, the scenarios were entirely unrealistic vis-a-vis the way a nuclear war would actually be conducted.
1) Nobody who actually planned how a nuclear war was to be fought has actually told us; 2) no nuclear was has ever been fought; and 3) wars never turn out exactly as planned, so I doubt you're in a position to make this assertion.
It was like the oft-stated notion that there are enough nuclear weapons to destroy all life on the planet - yeah, if you space them evenly around the globe, which would never happen in any real war. In a real war, ninety percent of the nukes in the world would be toasted in the first hour.
Aside from being an attempt to attack one theory by likening it to another, unrelated theory... I'm not sure what you mean by "toasted". Even the most optimistic first strike scenario involves the side attacking first firing off many of its weapons before the other side is able to react, so its weapons are likely to explode.
Second, both sides had huge submarine fleets armed with relately inaccurate and seldom-tested weapons whose sole purpose was massive indisciminate retaliation (their missiles were not expected to be very accurate and had multiple warheads).
Now, you may argue that these weapons were only to be used as a "last resort" (e.g. to retaliate for a massive and successful fire strike by the other side) but the whole point of nuclear winter was that such a retaliation might simply kill everyone.
Sagan's group assumed a "5000 megaton scenario" which assumes considerably less than 50% of the combined arsenals of both sides at the time, and if you assume a highly successful first strike followed by submarine retaliation by the other side (which no longer has significant land-based weapons), that's about right.
For perspective:
The US has 18 Trident class SSBNs, each carrying 24 missiles, each with 8 half megaton warheads. So that's 1800 megatons or so just in Trident submarines (which were not going to be stopped by any first strike). The US also had Polaris missile subs, and the Soviets had more than the US did (although their vessels were less reliable).
Actually they changed the project to "BHA" (as per the article). Folks were encouraged to infer that it stood for "butthead astronomer".
The codename was for one of the first power macintosh desktops (the 7100/66).
Given that the other two projects were called Piltdown Man (6100/60) and Cold Fusion (8100/80). Given that one was a deliberate scientific hoax and the other a famously premature and wrong press release, Sagan was actually being quite reasonable. Would you like that company?
It's also worth noting that Sagan was chiefly in the news at the time as the highest profile name on the "Nuclear Winter" paper, which had an enormous political impact at that time and was highly politicized (some people didn't like the idea that a global nuclear war couldn't be fought and won).
Oddly enough, while Apple has a fuzzy liberal reputation, plenty of the folks at Apple are conservative or even ultra-conservative, and I suspect that the name choices were someone's idea of a poke at "Nuclear Winter".
For those of you too young to remember all this, "Nuclear Winter" was a catchy name for a very solid piece of science (and despite the title, it basically argued that a major nuclear war would have catastrophic climate impacts, not necessarily making the world cold, but definitely horrible), and dismissing it as pseudo-science is about as intelligent as dismissing "global warming" or evolution.
A) Precompiled kernels are there if you want 'em. And you can compile your own if you want to. Much simpler, friendlier answer.
B) Mac OS X's and Windows's search functions get closer to doing this search than most folks could easily get using the command line, so this is a pretty stupid example. Meanwhile, I think you might point out that having to edit the registry is no improvement over having to edit text files, both of which are about as necessary in the respective OSs.
C) I actually think man pages are a step up from Windows's now absent DOS docs.
Yes but how many UNIX mail clients feature embedded scripting languages (default = ON) and yet refuse to allow you to save attachments containing zipped executables?
Considering that 90%+ of their processors will still go into Windows-based systems that won't run OS-X
Yes but which ones will be appearing in feature films? Which ones will be casually used by the stars of top-rating TV shows? Which ones will be on the desks of famous people being interviewed on TV? Apple doesn't even *pay* for a lot of this exposure.
And of course you're assuming Apple doesn't gain marketshare.
the first Apple+Intel systems are still a year away if not more
The first Apple+Intel systems are in developer hands today. I believe early 2006 is somewhat less than a year away.
Slashdot Mirror
It amazes me that, for example, no-one really checks signatures on credit card slips or that you don't need a PIN to buy gas with a card at the pump.
If you tighten up all these processes then just knowing five pieces of data about a person won't let you access their accounts. Why sign your credit card at all when no-one even LOOKS at the signature and YOU are liable for fraudulent use of the card?
This story was covered in somewhat more intelligent detail by NPR's "All Things Considered"
1) The Virus is being reconstructed as best they can.
2) The researchers aren't even using Level 5 isolation because -- guess what -- they expect that we're all pretty much immune to the virus these days. (They'll be the first to go if they're wrong...)
Apple is not a ground braker in that they create markets where none existed. They are a ground breaker in that they launch a product that completely redefines an existing market.
Apple I and II* -- arguably the first personal computers; the Apple II wasn't just the first, it also had features such as self-configuring expansion card slots that allowed expansion cards to be inserted and *just work* (it took IBM and Microsoft to invent driver and interrupt hell)
Apple II floppy drive -- cheaper and better than any competing device, and yet Apple was able to make incredible profits on it
Lisa/Macintosh -- first mass market computer with usable GUI
LaserWriter* -- first Postscript printer, first high resolution printer both affordable and usable by consumers
Newton* -- first PDA, first mass-market device with working handwriting recognition
QuickTime* -- first software-only digital video, first cross-platform digital video
QuickTake* -- first consumer digital camera (if Steve Jobs had been leading Apple then, Apple would probably still be a market leader in digital photography; Apple really dropped the ball here).
QuickTime VR* -- first whatever it was (and much imitated)
NeXTStep -- innovative in so many ways that it's not funny (and NeXT is part of Apple's DNA), and incidentally the platform on which the Worldwide Web was invented
iTunes Music Store -- first whatever it is that iTMS is
* Created/Defined a new market.
Do I get to pick which MS-XP compatible application?
Surely the point of electronic publishing is, ultimately, to reduce the need for physical printing and (eventually) eliminate it.
The only objections to electronic publishing now are practical (it's harder to read an electronic book in bed, or whatever, or the screen is hard to look at for extended periods) or basically insane (books smell better than computers).
Eventually, cheap and highly usable electronic books will be available so that, for example, I don't need to lose my place in my O'Reilly reference books to look in their index, or keep multiple spots open with random cards and post-it notes, or carry half a suitcase full of books with me on vacation.
Bug free software is quite possible. It's just prohibitively expensive, because it usually requires that the developers use a mathematical validation system. Thus it's typically confined to projects where system failure would result in Human casualties.
It also requires specifications to be expressed mathematically, which tends to restrict it to programs where the specifications are written by scientists or engineers.
Well, next year's DSLRs will have 12-30MP* which will double or triple the space requirements for RAW photos.
* The higher value will exceed the resolution of positive transparency film in analog camera, as claimed by current "digital cannot beat analog" nuts. Of course their slide scanners will offer higher scanning resolutions by then so they will raise their claimed resolution too.
Sure, most people won't notice the difference in quality, but most people weren't noticing the difference in quality between the current standards and the preceding ones. Besides, it's easier to double the number of megapixels in your camera than -- say -- become a better photographer.
Gotta go, I have to watch repeats of old shows shot on video on my HDTV.
What they should consentrate on is making it scratch proof, I can't stand so many scratches.
The real trick is to design stuff so ugly it looks better once it's been scratched up. I think Samsung and Dell have that covered.
Let me guess ... they're recruiting consultants.
It's exactly the belief that Macs are either secure by design, or not popular enough / too obscure to make them a tempting target for the authors that will make the first major widescale virus attack completely catastrophic for unprotected Mac users.
Let's see, how long have the "Macs are secure" myth (or non-myth) been around. Three years? Four years? If some ambitious virus writer were going to become the first to really hose Mac OS X and get awesome props for it, don't you think one would have tried by now? Two? Maybe a thousand? Isn't the incredibly lame batch script that requires the user to (a) run it, and (b) enter an admin password, just a perfect example of the pathetic attempts script kiddies have resorted to in an effort to do just this?
I'm sure there will be some Mac malware eventually. There certainly used to be back in the OS 6 days.
I can't imagine it being anywhere near as bad as anywhere near as bad as any of several major worms (e.g. BLASTER) on Windows of late.
The Wintel world is just a huge petri dish.
Even with the free license, it's just plain ugly. It has a UI that isn't worthy of a professional application, both in terms of eye appeal and low level attention to detail.
Do some decent UI design, make it free as in beer, and Opera might be a contender.
They will need people with the following skillset:
"Nuclear - power generation, propulsion blah"
You raise a good point.
... the crimes in question having taken place before web browsers had been invented.
I seem to recall some fairly prominent child sex abuse scandals in the news of late
It's not like the new Zelda isn't stylized. It's just differently stylized. Zelda isn't about to look like an animated photograph, it's going to look like an animated illustrated storybook.
There are game designers out there who simply push polygons and pixels in an effort to look realistic for no apparent game benefit, but this doesn't look like the case here.
I disagree with almost everything in TFA (for reasons outlined elsewhere) except the point that Open/Save dialogs and Finder/Explorer should be unified (although the writer does not put it this way).
My version: abolish open/save dialogs and just use Finder/Explorer. If you're currently limited to files of certain types, figure out a way to deal with that inside Finder/Explorer (since this is a common enough requirement even if you're not in an application -- I am only interested in image files, stop showing me stuff that isn't images).
As I recall, virtually every climatologist and atmospheric physicist in the world dismissed it as pseudo-science.
Perhaps the same group who think global warming is just a theory? Or that ozone layer depletion couldn't possibly happen? Maybe the scientists who don't think cigarette smoking has any causal relationship to lung cancer?
The critiques I have seen of "Nuclear Winter" (and there were plenty) were arguments at the margins about the assumptions fed into the climate models or their granularity (and in some cases predict a less severe or general effect).
Take a look here:
http://www.the-spa.com/jon.roland/vri/nwaos.htm
"These papers have led to a surge of work in many research centers around the world, most of which have thus far confirmed the general thrust of the TTAPS model, and to a strategic reassessment by nuclear planners."
Even if you take the least favorable view of this work, it hardly ranks "Nuclear Winter" next to Piltdown Man (a deliberate fraud) or Cold Fusion (bad science rushed to press before peer review).
Not to mention that if you read the scenarios it was based on, the scenarios were entirely unrealistic vis-a-vis the way a nuclear war would actually be conducted.
1) Nobody who actually planned how a nuclear war was to be fought has actually told us; 2) no nuclear was has ever been fought; and 3) wars never turn out exactly as planned, so I doubt you're in a position to make this assertion.
It was like the oft-stated notion that there are enough nuclear weapons to destroy all life on the planet - yeah, if you space them evenly around the globe, which would never happen in any real war. In a real war, ninety percent of the nukes in the world would be toasted in the first hour.
Aside from being an attempt to attack one theory by likening it to another, unrelated theory... I'm not sure what you mean by "toasted". Even the most optimistic first strike scenario involves the side attacking first firing off many of its weapons before the other side is able to react, so its weapons are likely to explode.
Second, both sides had huge submarine fleets armed with relately inaccurate and seldom-tested weapons whose sole purpose was massive indisciminate retaliation (their missiles were not expected to be very accurate and had multiple warheads).
Now, you may argue that these weapons were only to be used as a "last resort" (e.g. to retaliate for a massive and successful fire strike by the other side) but the whole point of nuclear winter was that such a retaliation might simply kill everyone.
Sagan's group assumed a "5000 megaton scenario" which assumes considerably less than 50% of the combined arsenals of both sides at the time, and if you assume a highly successful first strike followed by submarine retaliation by the other side (which no longer has significant land-based weapons), that's about right.
For perspective:
The US has 18 Trident class SSBNs, each carrying 24 missiles, each with 8 half megaton warheads. So that's 1800 megatons or so just in Trident submarines (which were not going to be stopped by any first strike). The US also had Polaris missile subs, and the Soviets had more than the US did (although their vessels were less reliable).
This is depressing news for the penguins living in or near NZ, Australia, Africa, and the Galapagos islands.
Actually they changed the project to "BHA" (as per the article). Folks were encouraged to infer that it stood for "butthead astronomer".
The codename was for one of the first power macintosh desktops (the 7100/66).
Given that the other two projects were called Piltdown Man (6100/60) and Cold Fusion (8100/80). Given that one was a deliberate scientific hoax and the other a famously premature and wrong press release, Sagan was actually being quite reasonable. Would you like that company?
It's also worth noting that Sagan was chiefly in the news at the time as the highest profile name on the "Nuclear Winter" paper, which had an enormous political impact at that time and was highly politicized (some people didn't like the idea that a global nuclear war couldn't be fought and won).
Oddly enough, while Apple has a fuzzy liberal reputation, plenty of the folks at Apple are conservative or even ultra-conservative, and I suspect that the name choices were someone's idea of a poke at "Nuclear Winter".
For those of you too young to remember all this, "Nuclear Winter" was a catchy name for a very solid piece of science (and despite the title, it basically argued that a major nuclear war would have catastrophic climate impacts, not necessarily making the world cold, but definitely horrible), and dismissing it as pseudo-science is about as intelligent as dismissing "global warming" or evolution.
Word processing?
Yup, Wordpad is included. For bonus points it sports a new UI although it hasn't changed since Windows 98.
Financial stuff?
Yup, Calculator.
Photo & image manipulation (Paint prog?)
Yup, MSPaint.
Spreadsheets?
Um, no.
Desktop publishing?
Wordpad.
Multimedia editing / DVD authoring & burning?
OMFG no! You pirate scum. You think we want to allow folks to say, videotape their TV set with a camcorder and then burn the results to DVD?
Webpage authoring / editing?
Notepad.
Actually, I agree with you. Tiger has a few "cute" new features but nothing much that compels me to upgrade my desktop (my laptop is running Tiger).
;)
So the real point is that Panther is ahead of Vista
...than any of its rivals. Simple as that.
Insightful?
A) Precompiled kernels are there if you want 'em. And you can compile your own if you want to. Much simpler, friendlier answer.
B) Mac OS X's and Windows's search functions get closer to doing this search than most folks could easily get using the command line, so this is a pretty stupid example. Meanwhile, I think you might point out that having to edit the registry is no improvement over having to edit text files, both of which are about as necessary in the respective OSs.
C) I actually think man pages are a step up from Windows's now absent DOS docs.
Vyvyan from The Young Ones
Yes but how many UNIX mail clients feature embedded scripting languages (default = ON) and yet refuse to allow you to save attachments containing zipped executables?
Considering that 90%+ of their processors will still go into Windows-based systems that won't run OS-X
Yes but which ones will be appearing in feature films? Which ones will be casually used by the stars of top-rating TV shows? Which ones will be on the desks of famous people being interviewed on TV? Apple doesn't even *pay* for a lot of this exposure.
And of course you're assuming Apple doesn't gain marketshare.
the first Apple+Intel systems are still a year away if not more
The first Apple+Intel systems are in developer hands today. I believe early 2006 is somewhat less than a year away.