I couldn't figure this out from the article, but I assume that since they were talking about applications such as pacemakers and such we're talking VERY low power output for a long time.
Everyone would love a laptop that can be used 6h a day for 10y without being plugged in (note that you may only be getting 3.5h a day by the 10th year), but this doesn't sound like where they're heading -- more like, say, a clock battery.
What's the killer app for Windows? It's games. Heck, plenty of Mac users own a PC just to play games on. I upgrade my PCs (which are pretty much only used for games) more often than my Mac (which I use for work).
Next, folks who write games for XBox 360 will be learning to optimize code for PowerPC hardware, and it's not exactly obvious how easy it will be to develop for PC and XBox 360 at once... so it will be easier to port games to Macs.
Next, whether XBox 360 or PS3 wins, the PowerPC market is going to expand hugely, making volumes bigger, performance better, and unit prices lower.
So Macs get cheaper and fast, people have less reason to buy or upgrade PCs, and game developers will be learning to code for the PowerPC.
[code]If Sun were to suddenly make Java pay-to-use, the programs could, for the most part, be rewritten in C++ with minimal effort (most of the work could be done in 15 minutes by a Lisp program.)[/code]
Of course, this hypothetical Lisp program does not exist, and writing it will be approximately as hard as, say, rewriting the Java APIs in C++ from scratch.
Is it such a great investment? Redhat's history matches a lot of other relatively successful bubble stocks (i.e. its value sucks compared to pre-bubble-burst, and looks pretty good compared to post-bubble-burst but it hasn't done much lately (except jump up a buck following the Dell announcement).
The idea that this is anything other than a message to Microsoft is pretty far-fetched.
On the flipside... I used Newtons from the first through to my MP2000 and never lost any data due to battery failure or crashes. (I lost data on one Newton owing to dropping it and smashing its screen.)
One can only assume that it will use bluetooth and other wireless technologies to hook up to anything external. At most there appears to be one connection, which appears to be for an AC adapter.
I thoroughly recommend reading the linked articles. Some fascinating stuff (e.g. on why elliptic curve crypography is current considered secure and why this may not last).
Copyright is more than about money. It also dictates whether, for example, someone is allowed to make a movie based on your novel. Consequently, arguing for rights to be reduced to 5y is pretty nasty, since that would mean open season of movie adaptations (indeed, given the lead time for many movies, you could start pre-production on a movie adaptation as soon as the book was in print, knowing that it wouldn't hit theatres until the book was out of copyright).
Similarly, many books aren't immediately successful. It seems rather unfair to penalise writers of sleeper hits.
The life of the author. The old 50y rule (or was it "author's life + 50y"?) seemed fairly reasonable for books. The problem with movies is that their "authors" (companies) never die and all kinds of loopholes and extensions have basically allowed certain examples of IP to be protected in perpetuity. E.g. Disney can digitally remaster "Snow White" and then reset the copyright clock. It's all well and good that copyright of the original "Snow White" has expired, but no-one has a copy of the print which they can duplicate.
Mighty Morphin' Licenses It particularly irks me that copyright is used to convert "ownership" of a good into "license" to use it in a way that is always to the disadvantage of the consumer. E.g. if I buy a CD, I do not "own" it in the sense of "it's mine so I can do anything I like with it including make copies of it or broadcast it over the airwaves", but a "license to listen to it" along with a physical object. Suppose, however, my CD is broken or scratched, but my license is still valid -- surely I am entitled to a free or cheap replacement copy! Nope. In fact, ideally the music company wants to sell me a higher quality version of it (DVD-audio, or CD+) if it can.
This kind of behavior has become particularly nasty with respect to movies. You see a movie at the theater. You can't take away a "copy for personal use" (and soon in the US you may be imprisoned for 3y for trying to). You like the movie so you buy it on VHS. Later, a director's cut VHS comes out so you buy that. Then it is released on DVD. You buy that. Then it comes out in letterbox with special features. Each time you're burned as a licensee when it suits the vendor, or burned as an owner when it suits the vendor.
In my view, having paid for a personal copy of something you should be entitled to obtain at cost replacements or make backups or obtain duplicates to replace it for your own personal use. Any improved versions (e.g. higher resolution) should be provided as upgrades and if not you should be allowed to obtain copies. Then at least it's a real license.
I fail to see how Half-Life 2 exemplifies changes to games since the first person shooter.
I think we can all agree that Dvorak is wrong about the industry imploding, but Half-Life 2 (note: a seqel!) is hardly evidence that he's wrong about a lack of creativity.
Has a far better and more detailed review (warts and all).
In particular, it looks at UI issues with Spotlight, the implementation of file metadata (think: Copland's any number of forks in a file concept is now working), vast architectural and performance improvements to Quartz 2D, even running in software, etc.
It's even funnier than that. The recycle bin is *lit* from the left and shadows to the left (so the person who designed the icon didn't put the shadow in? Or has a short attention span?
The odd thing to my mind is that MS has been dropping shadows to the bottom right for a long time (it's in XP, it's in 3.0) -- a nice faithful copy of Mac OS 1.0. So... have they been thrashing that particular decision with Longhorn? Wow, productive use of time.
Nikon is used by maybe 80% of pro photographers with Cannon at about 15%. There is a reason for this. Brutaly strong pro level cameras 'that just work';) and the best and most affordable lens system there is.
Wine all you want about the proprietary format, the pros don't care they just want the best tool for the job.
I don't know where you get your figures. Based on what I can see, Canon and Nikon have been duking it out for dominance in the pro market for over a decade, and are running neck and neck. (Canon also has a presence in the video market; Nikon does not.)
There's an enormous amount of inertia in this market because a pro's lens collection represents the vast majority of his/her capital investment. A pro might prefer the other company's latest body, but prefer to wait a couple of years for a new body that works with his/her existing glass.
Canon's USM lenses represent a huge advantage of Nikon's older autofocus lenses (the newer Nikon lenses use similar technology, but the range is restricted and they're pricey), and you'll find many Nikon users bemoaning the fact that they can't afford to switch to Canon just for that reason.
I believe that a typical Windows seat is out of action for about 5-10 working days per year (a recent study suggested the latter). This doesn't necessarily mean that your system is down so much as whatever it is you need to do your work isn't working (e.g. our Exchange servers fall over, slow down, or lock up on a daily basis). Linux installs would still have downtime, but I'm guessing less of it.
That's say $1000-2000 per typical educated worker per annum TCO just to continue running Windows, forget about upgrading.
Another issue is forced migration. Windows tends to force you into big bang switches for marketing reasons (e.g. new version of Windows = new version of Office = learn a ton of new stuff for no good reason). Linux tends not to, because there isn't someone revving it to drive hardware sales and vice versa.
The Register tries to maintain the tone of a tabloid newspaper. It deliberately creates inflammatory headlines and uses colorful language to make the "dull" world of IT seem more interesting.
If you're unfamiliar with British tabloids, think of Hard Copy or Fox News or something.
I believe that's a component of the Symantec Utilities for Macintosh (that became part of Norton's after Symantec bought Norton's).
You're right of course (and Finder had a built-in Find by System 6, but it was terrible).
ON Location was actually able to do pretty much the same kinds of thing Spotlight and BeOS's file queries do though, at comparable speeds, on much older hardware.
Well, let's take the cost of the War in Iraq, and... oh... half the cost of post 911 security measures, and pay for that with a Gas tax, since that's why we're bearing those costs.
Then folks can pay for the gas in their Hummers and feel righteous.
(Someone else has mentioned Lotus Magellan, which may well have been a related product, since I believe Mitch Kapor owned On Technology when it produced On Location.)
It's not a perfect analog of Spotlight... but then Spotlight isn't a perfect analog of it either;)
It allowed you to search files by their location, name, and content (obtained via Claris XTND, which probably supported more file formats than Spotlight will out of the gates). The response to search terms was instantaneous (matches listing as you typed your query)... on a 25MHz IIci.
I'd say On Location was the first serious tool of this type. Find Pro was a freeware/shareware search tool which eventually was licensed by Apple and became Sherlock.
...is to create a series set in the Star Trek Universe that covers new ground rather than going over old ground and screwing it up.
There are many unanswered questions about the Star Trek universe...
1) How do you buy a donut? 2) How is the president elected? Is the president elected? 3) What do the 95% (say) of the people who aren't in Star Fleet do with their time?
So, you might, for example, make a series that isn't set on a Starship (or a Space Station -- DS9 was basically just Star Trek does Babylon 5).
Oh wait, how about we do Federation Away Teams going through stargates...
Or no, the last survivors of a war against robots of their own creation trying to get back to Earth...
No, wait, a small Federation team establishes a base in another galaxy and has to fight space-faring vampires...
I've got it, a Federation Away Team led by an eccentric... Q... finds a time-traveling London Police Box and travels back in time to destroy the Cardassians before they got started.
Slashdot Mirror
I couldn't figure this out from the article, but I assume that since they were talking about applications such as pacemakers and such we're talking VERY low power output for a long time.
Everyone would love a laptop that can be used 6h a day for 10y without being plugged in (note that you may only be getting 3.5h a day by the 10th year), but this doesn't sound like where they're heading -- more like, say, a clock battery.
What's the killer app for Windows? It's games. Heck, plenty of Mac users own a PC just to play games on. I upgrade my PCs (which are pretty much only used for games) more often than my Mac (which I use for work).
... so it will be easier to port games to Macs.
Next, folks who write games for XBox 360 will be learning to optimize code for PowerPC hardware, and it's not exactly obvious how easy it will be to develop for PC and XBox 360 at once
Next, whether XBox 360 or PS3 wins, the PowerPC market is going to expand hugely, making volumes bigger, performance better, and unit prices lower.
So Macs get cheaper and fast, people have less reason to buy or upgrade PCs, and game developers will be learning to code for the PowerPC.
[code]If Sun were to suddenly make Java pay-to-use, the programs could, for the most part, be rewritten in C++ with minimal effort (most of the work could be done in 15 minutes by a Lisp program.)[/code]
Of course, this hypothetical Lisp program does not exist, and writing it will be approximately as hard as, say, rewriting the Java APIs in C++ from scratch.
Is it such a great investment? Redhat's history matches a lot of other relatively successful bubble stocks (i.e. its value sucks compared to pre-bubble-burst, and looks pretty good compared to post-bubble-burst but it hasn't done much lately (except jump up a buck following the Dell announcement).
The idea that this is anything other than a message to Microsoft is pretty far-fetched.
To get a person onto the bus you need to match orbits... so what are you getting? Hotel accommodations, I guess.
On the flipside ... I used Newtons from the first through to my MP2000 and never lost any data due to battery failure or crashes. (I lost data on one Newton owing to dropping it and smashing its screen.)
You can't say that of Palm, etc.
One can only assume that it will use bluetooth and other wireless technologies to hook up to anything external. At most there appears to be one connection, which appears to be for an AC adapter.
I thoroughly recommend reading the linked articles. Some fascinating stuff (e.g. on why elliptic curve crypography is current considered secure and why this may not last).
Copyright is more than about money. It also dictates whether, for example, someone is allowed to make a movie based on your novel. Consequently, arguing for rights to be reduced to 5y is pretty nasty, since that would mean open season of movie adaptations (indeed, given the lead time for many movies, you could start pre-production on a movie adaptation as soon as the book was in print, knowing that it wouldn't hit theatres until the book was out of copyright).
Similarly, many books aren't immediately successful. It seems rather unfair to penalise writers of sleeper hits.
The life of the author. The old 50y rule (or was it "author's life + 50y"?) seemed fairly reasonable for books. The problem with movies is that their "authors" (companies) never die and all kinds of loopholes and extensions have basically allowed certain examples of IP to be protected in perpetuity. E.g. Disney can digitally remaster "Snow White" and then reset the copyright clock. It's all well and good that copyright of the original "Snow White" has expired, but no-one has a copy of the print which they can duplicate.
Mighty Morphin' Licenses It particularly irks me that copyright is used to convert "ownership" of a good into "license" to use it in a way that is always to the disadvantage of the consumer. E.g. if I buy a CD, I do not "own" it in the sense of "it's mine so I can do anything I like with it including make copies of it or broadcast it over the airwaves", but a "license to listen to it" along with a physical object. Suppose, however, my CD is broken or scratched, but my license is still valid -- surely I am entitled to a free or cheap replacement copy! Nope. In fact, ideally the music company wants to sell me a higher quality version of it (DVD-audio, or CD+) if it can.
This kind of behavior has become particularly nasty with respect to movies. You see a movie at the theater. You can't take away a "copy for personal use" (and soon in the US you may be imprisoned for 3y for trying to). You like the movie so you buy it on VHS. Later, a director's cut VHS comes out so you buy that. Then it is released on DVD. You buy that. Then it comes out in letterbox with special features. Each time you're burned as a licensee when it suits the vendor, or burned as an owner when it suits the vendor.
In my view, having paid for a personal copy of something you should be entitled to obtain at cost replacements or make backups or obtain duplicates to replace it for your own personal use. Any improved versions (e.g. higher resolution) should be provided as upgrades and if not you should be allowed to obtain copies. Then at least it's a real license.
This is like saying "if they stick books in public libraries I should be allowed to copy them".
Technological convenience != Right. It's quite technically convenient to shoot people who annoy you.
I fail to see how Half-Life 2 exemplifies changes to games since the first person shooter.
I think we can all agree that Dvorak is wrong about the industry imploding, but Half-Life 2 (note: a seqel!) is hardly evidence that he's wrong about a lack of creativity.
Has a far better and more detailed review (warts and all).
In particular, it looks at UI issues with Spotlight, the implementation of file metadata (think: Copland's any number of forks in a file concept is now working), vast architectural and performance improvements to Quartz 2D, even running in software, etc.
But where do they wipe Ben Kenobi's mind?
1) So that he forgets you can test for The Force using a midichlorian home-testing kit.
2) So that he forgets travelling with C3P0 and R2D2.
It definitely sounds better than the first two movies -- lowering expectations is a wonderful thing.
It's even funnier than that. The recycle bin is *lit* from the left and shadows to the left (so the person who designed the icon didn't put the shadow in? Or has a short attention span?
... have they been thrashing that particular decision with Longhorn? Wow, productive use of time.
The odd thing to my mind is that MS has been dropping shadows to the bottom right for a long time (it's in XP, it's in 3.0) -- a nice faithful copy of Mac OS 1.0. So
Nikon is used by maybe 80% of pro photographers with Cannon at about 15%. There is a reason for this. Brutaly strong pro level cameras 'that just work' ;) and the best and most affordable lens system there is.
Wine all you want about the proprietary format, the pros don't care they just want the best tool for the job.
I don't know where you get your figures. Based on what I can see, Canon and Nikon have been duking it out for dominance in the pro market for over a decade, and are running neck and neck. (Canon also has a presence in the video market; Nikon does not.)
There's an enormous amount of inertia in this market because a pro's lens collection represents the vast majority of his/her capital investment. A pro might prefer the other company's latest body, but prefer to wait a couple of years for a new body that works with his/her existing glass.
Canon's USM lenses represent a huge advantage of Nikon's older autofocus lenses (the newer Nikon lenses use similar technology, but the range is restricted and they're pricey), and you'll find many Nikon users bemoaning the fact that they can't afford to switch to Canon just for that reason.
I don't see it as misleading. You only need to install Linux over one copy of Windows to have switched...
If he said:
"Nearly One-Third of All Small and Medium Sized Businesses Have Already Switched Completely to Linux"
OR
"Nearly One-Third of All Small and Medium Sized Businesses Have Already Dropped Windows In Favor of Linux"
I think you'd be justified.
In any event, he was arguing that this would be an equally misleading title for the article.
I believe that a typical Windows seat is out of action for about 5-10 working days per year (a recent study suggested the latter). This doesn't necessarily mean that your system is down so much as whatever it is you need to do your work isn't working (e.g. our Exchange servers fall over, slow down, or lock up on a daily basis). Linux installs would still have downtime, but I'm guessing less of it.
That's say $1000-2000 per typical educated worker per annum TCO just to continue running Windows, forget about upgrading.
Another issue is forced migration. Windows tends to force you into big bang switches for marketing reasons (e.g. new version of Windows = new version of Office = learn a ton of new stuff for no good reason). Linux tends not to, because there isn't someone revving it to drive hardware sales and vice versa.
The Register tries to maintain the tone of a tabloid newspaper. It deliberately creates inflammatory headlines and uses colorful language to make the "dull" world of IT seem more interesting.
If you're unfamiliar with British tabloids, think of Hard Copy or Fox News or something.
I believe that's a component of the Symantec Utilities for Macintosh (that became part of Norton's after Symantec bought Norton's).
You're right of course (and Finder had a built-in Find by System 6, but it was terrible).
ON Location was actually able to do pretty much the same kinds of thing Spotlight and BeOS's file queries do though, at comparable speeds, on much older hardware.
Well, let's take the cost of the War in Iraq, and ... oh ... half the cost of post 911 security measures, and pay for that with a Gas tax, since that's why we're bearing those costs.
Then folks can pay for the gas in their Hummers and feel righteous.
Go back and look up On Location for Mac OS v6.
;)
(Someone else has mentioned Lotus Magellan, which may well have been a related product, since I believe Mitch Kapor owned On Technology when it produced On Location.)
It's not a perfect analog of Spotlight... but then Spotlight isn't a perfect analog of it either
It allowed you to search files by their location, name, and content (obtained via Claris XTND, which probably supported more file formats than Spotlight will out of the gates). The response to search terms was instantaneous (matches listing as you typed your query)... on a 25MHz IIci.
On Location did this long before Be OS. It was sufficiently common that Apple Developer CDs used to have On Location indexes prebuilt on the CDs.
I'd say On Location was the first serious tool of this type. Find Pro was a freeware/shareware search tool which eventually was licensed by Apple and became Sherlock.
...is to create a series set in the Star Trek Universe that covers new ground rather than going over old ground and screwing it up.
... Q ... finds a time-traveling London Police Box and travels back in time to destroy the Cardassians before they got started.
There are many unanswered questions about the Star Trek universe...
1) How do you buy a donut?
2) How is the president elected? Is the president elected?
3) What do the 95% (say) of the people who aren't in Star Fleet do with their time?
So, you might, for example, make a series that isn't set on a Starship (or a Space Station -- DS9 was basically just Star Trek does Babylon 5).
Oh wait, how about we do Federation Away Teams going through stargates...
Or no, the last survivors of a war against robots of their own creation trying to get back to Earth...
No, wait, a small Federation team establishes a base in another galaxy and has to fight space-faring vampires...
I've got it, a Federation Away Team led by an eccentric
1) Any article even one saying don't use FireFox it's less secure than IE improves awareness of FireFox.
2) My simple response to any of this garbage is:
It's free.
Download it and see for yourself.