Re:Digital Vinyl data capacity blows CDs out of wa
on
Return of the Vinyl Album
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· Score: 3, Insightful
so, you could have all this technology in place and filters and so forth to take out the noise in order to get 8 128Kbps tracks... As each side of a record can hold ~25 minutes, that works out to 8*128kbps*25*60 bits of data per side... or about 192MB of data per side. That works to about 384MB that could be stored on a record... Even assuming you could fit 8x more data, that is still only 3GB of data on a record.
Lets compare this with a cd which is much much smaller than a record and can hold 700 MB per side (a two-sided one would hold ~1.4GB). Not quite up to the theoretical maximum that you claim your record could get, however consider the size, or the fact that a DVD, which is the same dimensions as the CD, and uses similar technology as it can hold up to 4.7GB on a single layer disc. This is far more data than the record can hold, and requires less sensitive electronics, and much less processing power to decode.
Actually, part of the reason Apple can get away with it is that as far as I know they don't directly sell OSX. They sell upgrades to OSX from previous versions, or OS9, but I don't know of anyway you can get any other form of OSX. If MS decided that they were only going to sell full versions of windows through OEM channels, they would easily prevent windows from being able to legally run on a mac. However this really isn't a smart move, as mac customers legally running windows are still paying for windows anyhow, so what does it matter?
Actually, don't most states have programs to help low income students? That, or programs to help the best and the brightest students obtain free or greatly reduced costs of education? I know in Florida there were programs that allow students who did well in high school, and managed to keep up their grades in college to goto school for free. Students who couldn't quite maintain that high of grades but still had a fairly decent gpa got something like 75% of their tuition covered. I imagine most states have something like that to help the smartest students.
Also, I know at least most private universities have massive financial aid systems in place that make it extremely cheap for low-income students. When I did my undergrad, the students who were poorer ended up with far less (or no) student loans than those from middle and upper middle class families.
As for the assertion that having everyone go to college would result in higher taxes etc. That is a flat-out lie. The problem is that too many students would go to college and not end up graduating. We already have a high drop out rate at many of our public colleges. The students who drop out of these colleges are a serious drag for the taxpayers. Their education is being subsidized by taxpayers, and they don't end up finishing. While there are some exceptional cases, many are just people who weren't ready for college.
Additionally, not everyone is cut out for college. People have many different interests and intellects. This is not a bad thing. However our society has tried pushing people so that the mechanics of our world are "second class" citizens, and looked down upon. The states would be far better off if they had better programs for vocational training in place than wasting money on free educations for the intellectual elite.
I'm a PhD student, there is no difference between home and work. I do my research mostly because I enjoy it. It sure as hell isn't for the stipend I get each month. Getting a real job would be easy, and I could be making a boatload of money in no time, but is that what I want? I'd rather take less pay and do something I enjoy than get paid a ton for something I'd want to forget about the second I get home.
I imagine the reason people see google as having lots of the "integrators" is that many of their workers are research-oriented. With the number of PhDs working there, it's not really surprising. These are people who are working on their research projects and likely enjoy doing their research and feeling like they make a difference etc. We're not talking about the rest of the world.
If you're building a CPU, then you'd better know physics.
What are you talking about there? Building a CPU may require some knowledge of physics at some level, but again, just like software you have many different levels of abstraction. You have the very high level block diagram designed by the architects, the HDL modules for the high level diagrams that are written by hardware designers for simulation. You have the VLSI guys designing the transistor diagrams below that, and then sizing appropriately etc. Below that you have the process people who determine the parameters the VLSI guys can use. The details go deeper, but that's not really relevant. Of course some knowledge of transistors is useful for the architect is useful, and some knowledge of VLSI etc. But they don't need to know the details of it. Also, I don't really know where physics enters into the equation.
For ASM, it really isn't that relevant for high performance x86 CPUs. The instructions used don't represent what is done by the cpu etc. Some knowledge of the CPU you're writing for can be useful, and a general knowledge of what operations are "easy" on the target platform are important. But for many desktop apps, performance isn't that important. Unless someone is doing high performance code (for a game or something) or designing for an embedded system, knowing the assembly just isn't that relevant. Even there, know the platform, capabilities of the chip, but as for actually working with ASM, it's just kind of annoying, and doesn't have a huge advantage if you're not doing something very specialized such as SIMD programming.
You're missing the grand social experiment known as communism. They attempted to show that capitalism was outmoded etc. What resulted were/are some of the worlds most repressive regimes, combined with starvation, mass graves, and environmental disasters on a scale that the US can't even imagine. This was the result of "research" showing that capitalism was inefficient and not the proper way to move on etc etc. Highly political research too I must add, research that many people found flawed and questioned, and always highly controversial. I'm sure the great great grandchildren of the revolution are quite thankful that it happened.
Now this example is a bit of a stretch as it's comparing a social science to a more "hard" science (with global climate change). However the proposals that have come out to date have been highly politically charged. Few people think that investing in alternative fuels and looking at reducing power consumption are a bad thing. That is not the issue. The issue is draconian proposals such as Kyoto which would have the effect of cutting off a huge chunk of the economy. It would likely result in severe depressions around the globe. This could actually prove counter-productive in the end. While I am not an economist, it is likely that with a major economic collapse, one of the first things to be cut would be research. Companies that can't maintain a profit need to save money somehow, and long term investments become out of the question. This could end up in a situation where a proposal such as Kyoto, which has been admitted to not do enough to save the earth from "global warming", actually ending up doing more HARM to the earths environment than good due to less research being expended in slowing warming etc.
Most proposals for curbing the effects of global warming have been called highly risky as they try and combat it with expensive ideas or ideas that are unproven and tamper with the earths environment directly. However, while some of those proposals may be risky, I doubt it is riskier than drastically cutting off production.
In the fall my MacBook started experiencing random shutdowns. I called up apple. On a Thursday afternoon a prepaid box arrived at my door. I put the apple in shipped it off to apple either thursday or Friday (can't remember offhand). I had to go a whole weekend without my computer, and I almost missed the laptop when it was attempted to be delivered to my house on Monday. However a call to the delivery person and they delivered it to where I worked instead a few hours later (I only work a few miles from my home). All in all, I really can't complain. Sure something went wrong with the computer, but my machine was back in my hands 3 days later, even though it was the weekend! Sure this likely wasn't the response in the past, and it was a hassle to go through, but my machine works great now.
As for older out of warranty macs . . . You're in trouble when parts fail. Also, I have no idea about any enterprise level care, I do know they have special business versions of applecare that cost more. Did you purchase one of those plans?
if you really think payola wasn't a big factor until the consolidation of radio stations occurred, than I have a bridge I want to sell you. Seriously, the music industry has always been a self-serving hit producing machine. It's possible in the past that good artists actually manage to be popular whereas today you don't think so. But today there are still good popular artists. For every great classic rock band, their are a ton that just didn't make the cut.
There's a great interview with Alex Chilton of big star and box tops fan on Big Star's live album. The interviewer asks Alex "you spent some time about 6-7 years ago with a band when you were 16 years old with a band the box tops, what were those days like?" Alex responds "pretty scummy, well actually about as scummy as it is now."
Granted this interview was from the 70's, but it's just amusing to see how people react to such stuff. If anything today might be better for the industry, as it's easier to go it on your own, and the major labels have less control than they had. Sure the biggest artists are usually puppets controlled by the industry, but is it really so different? Considering the volumes of crap that were pushed in the 60s, and the 70s and the 80s and the 90s, and the 00s, I don't really know if today is any different. It's just we look back on the past and only see the artists that stood the test of time.
Driving a stick shift car can be fun, and it can save money on a car purchase. However if you're buying a new car, money isn't your top priority to begin with. If money is that big of an issue, you're probably looking at used cars, and there the price difference is likely to be a lot less than $1000.
Also, as someone else responded, it is not about the one day of learning how to drive stick shift cars. If you live somewhere where you do lots of stop and go traffic, stick shifts can get annoying. Even worse is if you live someplace where there's lots of traffic. I remember a while back when I'd commute 35-40 mins each way, and on one of the interstates the traffic would vary between 5mph and 45mph, sometimes peaking up to high way speeds. Driving a stick shift in this sort of traffic was absolutely miserable. You were constantly changing gears. Also, driving a stick shift gets annoying when you're trying to multitask and eat a hamburger or something. Also if you live somewhere with a lot of hills, it can be quite annoying to drive (parallel parking on a hill sucks).
That said, when you're getting onto an empty road or freeway nothing beats flooring a stick shift. It's just so fun to feel the power and the control you have over your car.
Is this really true? Of course for some tasks the massive parallelism of the human brain works great. The brain can analyze complex images extremely fast, comparing them in parallel to it's own internal database of images, using fuzzy reasoning to detect if something is familiar etc. However you give your brain complex math problems, and it can spend seconds, minutes, or even hours to solve it, sometimes requiring extra scratch memory to solve. This is due to bad programming in the brain that sucks at doing certain computations (except for the rare people who manage to do these problems fast).
This is also true for computers. Big scientific problems can use up 1000's of processor's, just look at some of the problems running on supercomputers. However not all problems scale up to effectively use 1000's or processors. Many desktop applications won't be able to take advantage of the power, however many of these applications don't need to take advantage of that power.
Basically computers will continue to evolve, with custom hardware or cores that can adapt to the problem. If there's enough demand to solve a problem, it can be done, however doing fast software designs will not be cheap, and "hardware" designs (verilog, vhdl, etc) will be even more expensive (even if they don't need to spin silicon for them). However for applications that have sufficient demand, they will be done. They're just highly time-intensive to do. Luckily there will always be outsourcing to help us out.
I really don't know what tour contracts he's talking about, maybe for the biggest of the big artists who are selling out arenas. But, when you see a band go from one shitty bar to another in a tour van, they're doing it to try and squeeze out a living. They're not living off the album sales, because that's not where the money is for them.
If they didn't make money off the merch sales, do you think the band members would sit around after the show trying to sell it to you? Do you think they'd give people special deals for a $15 t-shirt when the person is like "shit, I only have $13 on me, but I really want to get one" if they had to sink the other $2. Plus, even if the label had such a rule in their contract how would they enforce it? No way in hell are they going to send someone along with the band to see to it that they do their accounting properly. Now management, and promoters etc may take a cut in touring profits, but for many bands touring is where they make their living.
Why not spend some of your time in the dark of this winter working on one of the big problems facing humanity?
This has to be one of the dumbest submissions to slashdot that I've seen in a while. Looking over the CS section of the problems (the only category I'm really qualified to review), I see 2 problems related to P=NP. Yes, this is a problem I'm going to solve in my spare time this winter. If the other fields problems look anything remotely like this one, good luck.
In all honesty, I don't think you're going to see real problems listed on a site like this. the problems are just in such niche areas, and more importantly in many field people don't want to share what the problems are. This is because coming up with what the problem is is half of the work. In computer engineering for instance you might have an idea that looks to speedup application XYZ (or a general class of applications), and then you come up with what problems need to be solved to implement your solution. Then of course you actually solve them. If coming up with the problem was easy than so many PhD students wouldn't have such a difficult time coming up with a thesis topic. When students do have an idea in mind, and potential solutions, they tend not to share them until they are ready to publish. Otherwise others may beat them to it.
Finding a good way to come up with what problems need to be solved is a very good problem on it's own. It takes immense knowledge in most fields just to have a good concept of the ideas that are being looked at, and having some idea of the solutions that have been proposed, and what is a reasonable next step. If such problems were easy to solve, we'd like have a lot more PhDs out there.
ah right, I forgot our laws applied to people captured in war. In WWII did the soldiers decide they weren't going to fire at the enemy combatants because "they hadn't been proven guilty in front of a jury of their peers?" No, they shot at them, and if they captured them, they were sent to POW camps, where they were held as guilty until after the war (or they were traded). You don't try people in war like that, it just doesn't make sense, as all of your time would be spent on the obvious.
The people at gitmo are so unlikely to be innocent it's not even a question. These are the prisoners who demand TVs during the world cup, than destroyed them during commercials. These are people who will do anything to kill the western way. I imagine the odds of one of them being innocent is much LESS than the odds that any given person in american prisons is innocent. But all these big hot shot lawyers are clamoring to defend them. It's pure publicity on their part, they don't care about guilt or innocence, in fact, they want guilty parties to go free. if these lawyers cared about justice, they'd donate their time to help cases where people were legitimately screwed by the justice system. Instead, they go after feel good cases for people who would kill them (their own lawyers) if they could because they're part of the "great satan".
So basicaly you say that security through obscurity is a good thing.
I am just curious how many terrorist attacs are done with the help of Google Earth. And even IF it would work as stated, it would only divert the attack to a different place. Just like a good lock on your door will prevent a burgelary in your house, yet is does not prevent the robber going to your neighbours house.
Okay, the statement you just made makes absolutely no sense. A good lock on your door is security through obscurity. People know how to pick locks, or bump them etc. Professionals can get through one of those locks in no time. It works as a deterrent only because it first makes the criminal spend more time to get into the house, and also not all criminals know that locks are so easy to break, or know how to do it.
Security through obscurity is one of the only ways to protect things in the real world. Making things extremely difficult to do is how many things are protected. It's why military installations have guards posted at the gates. Sure someone might be able to sneak over a fence somewhere and break into the installation, but it's much more difficult, and they know there's hell to pay if they're caught.
The question of whether blocking such images is an effective method of deterrence is another question. Such things as blurring google maps doesn't stop someone who's determined to get the information from getting it, however it does stop many people, and make things much more difficult. Our spys might notice if a terrorist is buying satellite photos of a few specific locations, however they likely won't know if they found the same photos on google maps. Also the time it takes to get the data elsewhere can be an issue. If you want to examine a couple hundred locations to see which ones might be the best target, google maps is definitely your friend. It makes it quick and easy. Something that we may not want it to be.
actually, that would appear to be an anti-sco website titled litigious bastards. That really isn't a google bomb. If people are searching for litigious bastards, they're likely looking for that site entitled such, and that happens to be about the SCO case. That's almost like saying a search for slashdot returning "slashdot.org" is a google bomb. Google bombs generally involve a search phrase returning a page that isn't related to the phrase. i.e. "miserable failure" returning bush's biography. Bush's biography does not likely say he's a miserable failure etc. The changes seem to do what they were aiming for, sites related to a topic can still get returned, but not as many of the "random" sites that are linked to words that aren't used on the site.
If a link goes to a page, part of the ranking is likely given based on what percent of the page uses that phrase. I imagine it's a bit more complex then this, as often people link to pages that have no actual text on them (all images and/or flash for the intro), but the page should be indexed accordingly. Additionally they may take into account what percent of links say the same thing. Using clustering algorithms you could likely tell that for george w. bush's biography you have a bunch of link terms related to him, his life, presidents, policies, iraq, etc, and then you have the term miserable failure which is on the complete other side, and unrelated to the other terms. While I'm not expert on text mining algorithms, I know such algorithms exist, and they are likely used to stop some of the google abuse.
This still doesn't explain about the zombification process. First of all, most file sharing is read only unless you have a password used, most home users don't really do much filesharing, but generally it's a read only thing, but second of all even if you have your entire folders mounted as read/write, how exactly does that allow this machine to turn you into a zombie? Last I heard writing files to your my documents folder (it's really difficult to share other folders than this) can not actually execute code.
I guess if your entire hard drive was shared, there is a possibility that they could write the file to a startup directory on it that automatically launches it on your next reboot . . .
This article really read as a lot of FUD to me. Possibly unpatched machines are affected, but they give a solution of disconnecting from the net. I just don't get it, the solution, it appears to me would be to oh, I don't know, patch your computer and use sane practices (like not sharing your whole hard drive as read/write/execute (apparently) with anonymous access).
Now the problem of them being able to steal credit card numbers and such is an issue. This is an issue that effects all OSes, so everyone should think bout it. however, if you check that the ssl keys you accept are valid for the site in question, then you should be alright. While they can perform a man-in-the-middle attack, that does require changing what keys a website uses (or possibly disabling encryption). As far as aim passwords and such go, well if you don't use it for important stuff, what are they going to do with it?
I read this entire article and really just want to read something from someone who knows anything about security, and not some idiot who read about something like this and proposes an even more idiotic solution. There is truth that you must be careful connecting to any wireless network that you don't know, also your machine needs to be patched etc. a little common sense goes a long way in this matter.
At least in this country, I find these numbers extremely hard to believe. Mostly because the vast majority of machines sold come with windows preinstalled on them. How do people then pirate it? I guess some people illegally upgrade their version to a newer one, but most people who have computers don't seem to know enough to be capable of doing this. There are the friends who might do this for them, but that doesn't seem too likely, as most people are content with their computer. . . As long as everything still works.
There's the key I guess. Most people don't care for their computer, and it shows, over time the install goes to hell, getting viruses spyware, etc. Then they may get a friend to come over and help them, and the friend may install a pirated version of windows, maybe a fancier one, maybe the same type (but not the same copy), or maybe even the same copy.
This is illegal . . . technically, but hard to really say it is, as the people do have the right to use windows on their computer, and that's often the only way they can.
With windows XP at least, I wouldn't doubt if more copies of it have been sold than their are copies currently in use! It seems like a crazy statement, but considering how many companies buy machines with windows preinstalled, and then install their site licensed copy on the machine. Plus how many people have had machines get outdated, or crippled, or break on them, and bought a new computer to replace it. How many copies of windows were thrown out because of that?
I can't speak for other countries, as I'm sure there are places where piracy runs rampant, and you can easily buy computers without windows preinstalled, or with an illegitimate copy installed, but in the US this generally isn't the case. Maybe MS should take these figures into account and say something like "-30% of windows copies in the US are pirated", after taking into account the anti-pirated cases of double licenses etc. Of course, things don't really work that way.
Now other software I imagine the number is much higher. What percentage of copies of office are less than legitimate? I imagine those are much higher, and a 20-30% install base being illegal wouldn't be too far off. of course, even here with so many copies sold to businesses, it dillutes the home market that's far more likely to pirate software than corporate ones (people can get in far less trouble generally).
I've been using macs for a couple years now, and will complain about the cd eject button on the keyboard. While it might be acceptable on a desktop to have it there, on a laptop it can be extremely irritating. I don't know how many times I go to press the delete key and accidently hit the eject button. It just isn't in a good location, and unlike accidently hitting buttons to control screen brightness and sound it can't be instantly fixed. Perhaps a modifier so you had to hit fn->eject would work better.
There's a slight difference though, in that most people who store gasoline store 1-2 gallons in a can next to their lawn mower. Most propane tanks are for gas grills and are also fairly small. Sure they might be highly explosive, but with so little of it the risk of explosion isn't as great.
Now, with a Hydrogen tank big enough to store energy to last you through the winter.. . . i'm just guessing this is slightly bigger than your average propane tank. Way way way more than enough to make up for the difference in how explosive hydrogen is.
I mean, a car exploding that has maybe 20 gallons of gas in it will likely blow up your garage, but a hydrogen tank the size of your garage exploding will take out more than just your house. The quantities of fuel that some of these tanks can hold is massive. Don't go telling me that keeping a winter's supply of hydrogen is safer than keeping a gas can in your garage.
You act like the distinction is cut and dry, and that it's obvious who's paying for research. What if you are a professor at a major university doing a study. You have one student who is funded from grants by private industry, and others by NSF grants. The one on the NSF grant builds a new research infrastructure the other student later uses for his research. Should that other student than have all his work publicly available? Also you act like the students won't be helping each other out etc.
Basically it's almost impossible to find private research today that ISN'T in part funded by the government. In fact even projects that have all private money indirectly are getting government funding. Who do you think paid to train the scientists working on those projects? It isn't cheap to create scientists. Generally it takes 4-10 years of graduate studies, each year costing tens of thousands of dollars etc etc.
Additionally what about the person who comes up with an outside idea while being funded by a government source. If they can't stay on and work on it (and gain from it) they might just leave their government source and work independently now. Is this really what we want?
Also not all work that is done is publishable. Much of it isn't, such as many studies that find "negative results" such as "doing XYZ didn't solve problem ABC". This results in much of this work being repeated by multiple groups.
Then there's the question of who cares? for the vast majority of research, the public just doesn't care about. Unless you're directly doing that research as well it doesn't effect you.
obvious if the US shuts down production immediately and ceases to produce any more green house gases, we could stop the trend too, right?
The problem isn't whether we're the cause, the question is . . . WHAT IS THE SOLUTION? While I don't know the models, and am not a climatologists, do any models suggest that if every country in the world immediately stopped production of excess greenhouse gases that we'd stop global warming? In a still unrealistic model, what if every country reduces ourselves to producing half the green house gases? Does this actually accomplish anything, other than move the time when problems start back a couple years?
Unfortunately, the ramifications of an immediate drop in green house gas production on the worlds economy would be huge. Energy production (as we know it currently) is directly tied to green house gas production. If we drop it, we drop production, at least initially. There are no if ands or buts about it. Also the only way to force such cutbacks is through authortarian rules, so maybe a kyoto dictatorship. That sounds like fun. And where does that leave us? Now, not only is global warming still going to occur (just a few years later if we're lucky), but we don't have the production and economic capabilities to stop it.
While Kyoto proposed a direct drop of green house gases (essentially it was a bunch of countries trying to punish the US for being more prosperous than them), that would just result in degrading the world economy. What if instead of cutting production we put money into researching methods to combat global warming? With the funds saved by not going onto a Kyoto-like agreement such research is not out of the question.
Of course a manmade solution wouldn't be natural, and so forth. Well, honestly, I don't care. My concern is whether or not my house is in the middle of the atlantic ocean in 50 years. I imagine the odds of finding a solution to global warming is far far far cheaper than the solutions that environmentalists provide, and would likely be far more effective!
hmm funny, I have a G3 300 MHz 384MB RAM powermac running OSX 10.4 and it runs alright. Granted I don't expect to watch movies on that thing, and really don't use it for much besides iTunes and light web browsing (it's near the kitchen so it's great for looking up recipes and things like that). It's a little slow, but the speed is more of a factor of not having enough RAM.
Now granted if I tried running safari with 10 tabs, mail, itunes, iterm, adium etc all at once this machine would screech to a hault. Those applications all tend to suck up ram, and if you want to run them all simultaneously you need lots of it. Try running windows with ie7 and 10 tabs, outlook express, windows media player, aim, all the spyware it has installed, etc all open at once on a machine with only 512MB of RAM. It too will choke.
That said, OSX 10.4 tends to suck up RAM, but that's more of the applications for it, rather than the OS itself. For the desktop market they aren't too concerned with eating lots of RAM. The iphone will likely cure these problems, and there's no reason it won't run on a machine with far less RAM. Remember we were all once happy running linux (maybe not the same kernel we run now, but close enough) on machines with only 64MB of RAM (going back further, I know people who used it with less). Try running todays default linux distributions on a machine of that class, and it too will suck, but this does not mean that Linux will not run (and run fine) on that generation of hardware.
I guess the ipod will miss out on all those great free games out there. All those original new ideas that haven't been done... Oh wait, they don't exist. While their are a few fun open source games (not counting commercial games later open sourced), many of them are just clones of an original game. Think freeciv, pingus, etc.
Open source has its place, and it's yet to show its strength in the gaming world. I don't know if that is possible, as games are so expensive to think up design graphics for, etc etc. While things like OSs are used, there is an obvious link in people having a reason to help better it if they use it. Games... well those are pure entertainment.
The number one advantage that this model gives to apple is that it virtually eliminates piracy of software on the device. All software is installed by them, sure someone may have a hack that lets them install stuff, but it'll be so hard to use, and so obscure it won't really matter. Plus it protects peoples devices.
Now I hope apple has a program allowing some common open source apps such as ssh to run on the device, but if it doesn't, it really only effects the small minority of geeks who would want it.:hil
I say good sir, we should break our eggs on the big end. And I say we should break them on the little end.
I think we've all had this argument before. It's stupid and pointless, and the english measurement system is quite entrenched in our culture. I don't know how far 10 km is without converting it to miles, likewise, someone who's used the metric system all their life won't know how far 10 miles is without converting it to kilometers. It's silly to argue what is better for measurement. It's just arbitrary numbers.
For science the metric makes more sense. The conversions are much simpler. Powers of 10 are easy. Even for cooking metrics would be nice, but I haven't grown up knowing what an ounce really is in the same way I know what a mile is. However trying to make people convert just doesn't make much sense. It's expensive to change all the signs, and more expensive to try and change peoples minds. Plus we'd end up with the situation where all these products in the US that are standard sizes would no longer be reasonable. Who wants to buy 3.785 liters of milk? Thinks like this don't change overnight, and it's messy.
Besides, I think the europeans need us to stick to the english measurement system so they still have something that they can point to and say "see us europeans are so much better than you americans..."
When did jobs say users couldn't install software on the iPhone? If you people RTFA, jobs said that they will not allow users to install random software on the phone, however I see no reason they won't have it open to developers, and after extensive testing of the device, allow users to buy the software on iTunes or something. It would seem perfectly natural to me. Jobs point of not allowing all software to run on it is to avoid the issues that plague computers and such when users install a ton of crap on their machines and wonder why things aren't working right. Limiting what can run on a device that has real time constraints and primary functionality that MUST always work is a perfectly logical idea. Especially considering the thought of iPhone viruses that could spread through bluetooth or something if it was allowed.
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so, you could have all this technology in place and filters and so forth to take out the noise in order to get 8 128Kbps tracks... As each side of a record can hold ~25 minutes, that works out to 8*128kbps*25*60 bits of data per side... or about 192MB of data per side. That works to about 384MB that could be stored on a record... Even assuming you could fit 8x more data, that is still only 3GB of data on a record.
Lets compare this with a cd which is much much smaller than a record and can hold 700 MB per side (a two-sided one would hold ~1.4GB). Not quite up to the theoretical maximum that you claim your record could get, however consider the size, or the fact that a DVD, which is the same dimensions as the CD, and uses similar technology as it can hold up to 4.7GB on a single layer disc. This is far more data than the record can hold, and requires less sensitive electronics, and much less processing power to decode.
Looks like my "CD" beats your record after all.
Actually, part of the reason Apple can get away with it is that as far as I know they don't directly sell OSX. They sell upgrades to OSX from previous versions, or OS9, but I don't know of anyway you can get any other form of OSX. If MS decided that they were only going to sell full versions of windows through OEM channels, they would easily prevent windows from being able to legally run on a mac. However this really isn't a smart move, as mac customers legally running windows are still paying for windows anyhow, so what does it matter?
Phil
Actually, don't most states have programs to help low income students? That, or programs to help the best and the brightest students obtain free or greatly reduced costs of education? I know in Florida there were programs that allow students who did well in high school, and managed to keep up their grades in college to goto school for free. Students who couldn't quite maintain that high of grades but still had a fairly decent gpa got something like 75% of their tuition covered. I imagine most states have something like that to help the smartest students.
Also, I know at least most private universities have massive financial aid systems in place that make it extremely cheap for low-income students. When I did my undergrad, the students who were poorer ended up with far less (or no) student loans than those from middle and upper middle class families.
As for the assertion that having everyone go to college would result in higher taxes etc. That is a flat-out lie. The problem is that too many students would go to college and not end up graduating. We already have a high drop out rate at many of our public colleges. The students who drop out of these colleges are a serious drag for the taxpayers. Their education is being subsidized by taxpayers, and they don't end up finishing. While there are some exceptional cases, many are just people who weren't ready for college.
Additionally, not everyone is cut out for college. People have many different interests and intellects. This is not a bad thing. However our society has tried pushing people so that the mechanics of our world are "second class" citizens, and looked down upon. The states would be far better off if they had better programs for vocational training in place than wasting money on free educations for the intellectual elite.
Phil
I'm a PhD student, there is no difference between home and work. I do my research mostly because I enjoy it. It sure as hell isn't for the stipend I get each month. Getting a real job would be easy, and I could be making a boatload of money in no time, but is that what I want? I'd rather take less pay and do something I enjoy than get paid a ton for something I'd want to forget about the second I get home.
I imagine the reason people see google as having lots of the "integrators" is that many of their workers are research-oriented. With the number of PhDs working there, it's not really surprising. These are people who are working on their research projects and likely enjoy doing their research and feeling like they make a difference etc. We're not talking about the rest of the world.
Phil
What are you talking about there? Building a CPU may require some knowledge of physics at some level, but again, just like software you have many different levels of abstraction. You have the very high level block diagram designed by the architects, the HDL modules for the high level diagrams that are written by hardware designers for simulation. You have the VLSI guys designing the transistor diagrams below that, and then sizing appropriately etc. Below that you have the process people who determine the parameters the VLSI guys can use. The details go deeper, but that's not really relevant. Of course some knowledge of transistors is useful for the architect is useful, and some knowledge of VLSI etc. But they don't need to know the details of it. Also, I don't really know where physics enters into the equation.
For ASM, it really isn't that relevant for high performance x86 CPUs. The instructions used don't represent what is done by the cpu etc. Some knowledge of the CPU you're writing for can be useful, and a general knowledge of what operations are "easy" on the target platform are important. But for many desktop apps, performance isn't that important. Unless someone is doing high performance code (for a game or something) or designing for an embedded system, knowing the assembly just isn't that relevant. Even there, know the platform, capabilities of the chip, but as for actually working with ASM, it's just kind of annoying, and doesn't have a huge advantage if you're not doing something very specialized such as SIMD programming.
Phil
You're missing the grand social experiment known as communism. They attempted to show that capitalism was outmoded etc. What resulted were/are some of the worlds most repressive regimes, combined with starvation, mass graves, and environmental disasters on a scale that the US can't even imagine. This was the result of "research" showing that capitalism was inefficient and not the proper way to move on etc etc. Highly political research too I must add, research that many people found flawed and questioned, and always highly controversial. I'm sure the great great grandchildren of the revolution are quite thankful that it happened.
Now this example is a bit of a stretch as it's comparing a social science to a more "hard" science (with global climate change). However the proposals that have come out to date have been highly politically charged. Few people think that investing in alternative fuels and looking at reducing power consumption are a bad thing. That is not the issue. The issue is draconian proposals such as Kyoto which would have the effect of cutting off a huge chunk of the economy. It would likely result in severe depressions around the globe. This could actually prove counter-productive in the end. While I am not an economist, it is likely that with a major economic collapse, one of the first things to be cut would be research. Companies that can't maintain a profit need to save money somehow, and long term investments become out of the question. This could end up in a situation where a proposal such as Kyoto, which has been admitted to not do enough to save the earth from "global warming", actually ending up doing more HARM to the earths environment than good due to less research being expended in slowing warming etc.
Most proposals for curbing the effects of global warming have been called highly risky as they try and combat it with expensive ideas or ideas that are unproven and tamper with the earths environment directly. However, while some of those proposals may be risky, I doubt it is riskier than drastically cutting off production.
Phil
In the fall my MacBook started experiencing random shutdowns. I called up apple. On a Thursday afternoon a prepaid box arrived at my door. I put the apple in shipped it off to apple either thursday or Friday (can't remember offhand). I had to go a whole weekend without my computer, and I almost missed the laptop when it was attempted to be delivered to my house on Monday. However a call to the delivery person and they delivered it to where I worked instead a few hours later (I only work a few miles from my home). All in all, I really can't complain. Sure something went wrong with the computer, but my machine was back in my hands 3 days later, even though it was the weekend! Sure this likely wasn't the response in the past, and it was a hassle to go through, but my machine works great now.
As for older out of warranty macs . . . You're in trouble when parts fail. Also, I have no idea about any enterprise level care, I do know they have special business versions of applecare that cost more. Did you purchase one of those plans?
Phil
if you really think payola wasn't a big factor until the consolidation of radio stations occurred, than I have a bridge I want to sell you. Seriously, the music industry has always been a self-serving hit producing machine. It's possible in the past that good artists actually manage to be popular whereas today you don't think so. But today there are still good popular artists. For every great classic rock band, their are a ton that just didn't make the cut.
There's a great interview with Alex Chilton of big star and box tops fan on Big Star's live album. The interviewer asks Alex "you spent some time about 6-7 years ago with a band when you were 16 years old with a band the box tops, what were those days like?" Alex responds "pretty scummy, well actually about as scummy as it is now."
Granted this interview was from the 70's, but it's just amusing to see how people react to such stuff. If anything today might be better for the industry, as it's easier to go it on your own, and the major labels have less control than they had. Sure the biggest artists are usually puppets controlled by the industry, but is it really so different? Considering the volumes of crap that were pushed in the 60s, and the 70s and the 80s and the 90s, and the 00s, I don't really know if today is any different. It's just we look back on the past and only see the artists that stood the test of time.
Phil
Driving a stick shift car can be fun, and it can save money on a car purchase. However if you're buying a new car, money isn't your top priority to begin with. If money is that big of an issue, you're probably looking at used cars, and there the price difference is likely to be a lot less than $1000.
Also, as someone else responded, it is not about the one day of learning how to drive stick shift cars. If you live somewhere where you do lots of stop and go traffic, stick shifts can get annoying. Even worse is if you live someplace where there's lots of traffic. I remember a while back when I'd commute 35-40 mins each way, and on one of the interstates the traffic would vary between 5mph and 45mph, sometimes peaking up to high way speeds. Driving a stick shift in this sort of traffic was absolutely miserable. You were constantly changing gears. Also, driving a stick shift gets annoying when you're trying to multitask and eat a hamburger or something. Also if you live somewhere with a lot of hills, it can be quite annoying to drive (parallel parking on a hill sucks).
That said, when you're getting onto an empty road or freeway nothing beats flooring a stick shift. It's just so fun to feel the power and the control you have over your car.
Phil
Is this really true? Of course for some tasks the massive parallelism of the human brain works great. The brain can analyze complex images extremely fast, comparing them in parallel to it's own internal database of images, using fuzzy reasoning to detect if something is familiar etc. However you give your brain complex math problems, and it can spend seconds, minutes, or even hours to solve it, sometimes requiring extra scratch memory to solve. This is due to bad programming in the brain that sucks at doing certain computations (except for the rare people who manage to do these problems fast).
This is also true for computers. Big scientific problems can use up 1000's of processor's, just look at some of the problems running on supercomputers. However not all problems scale up to effectively use 1000's or processors. Many desktop applications won't be able to take advantage of the power, however many of these applications don't need to take advantage of that power.
Basically computers will continue to evolve, with custom hardware or cores that can adapt to the problem. If there's enough demand to solve a problem, it can be done, however doing fast software designs will not be cheap, and "hardware" designs (verilog, vhdl, etc) will be even more expensive (even if they don't need to spin silicon for them). However for applications that have sufficient demand, they will be done. They're just highly time-intensive to do. Luckily there will always be outsourcing to help us out.
Phil
I really don't know what tour contracts he's talking about, maybe for the biggest of the big artists who are selling out arenas. But, when you see a band go from one shitty bar to another in a tour van, they're doing it to try and squeeze out a living. They're not living off the album sales, because that's not where the money is for them.
If they didn't make money off the merch sales, do you think the band members would sit around after the show trying to sell it to you? Do you think they'd give people special deals for a $15 t-shirt when the person is like "shit, I only have $13 on me, but I really want to get one" if they had to sink the other $2. Plus, even if the label had such a rule in their contract how would they enforce it? No way in hell are they going to send someone along with the band to see to it that they do their accounting properly. Now management, and promoters etc may take a cut in touring profits, but for many bands touring is where they make their living.
Phil
This has to be one of the dumbest submissions to slashdot that I've seen in a while. Looking over the CS section of the problems (the only category I'm really qualified to review), I see 2 problems related to P=NP. Yes, this is a problem I'm going to solve in my spare time this winter. If the other fields problems look anything remotely like this one, good luck.
In all honesty, I don't think you're going to see real problems listed on a site like this. the problems are just in such niche areas, and more importantly in many field people don't want to share what the problems are. This is because coming up with what the problem is is half of the work. In computer engineering for instance you might have an idea that looks to speedup application XYZ (or a general class of applications), and then you come up with what problems need to be solved to implement your solution. Then of course you actually solve them. If coming up with the problem was easy than so many PhD students wouldn't have such a difficult time coming up with a thesis topic. When students do have an idea in mind, and potential solutions, they tend not to share them until they are ready to publish. Otherwise others may beat them to it.
Finding a good way to come up with what problems need to be solved is a very good problem on it's own. It takes immense knowledge in most fields just to have a good concept of the ideas that are being looked at, and having some idea of the solutions that have been proposed, and what is a reasonable next step. If such problems were easy to solve, we'd like have a lot more PhDs out there.
Phil
ah right, I forgot our laws applied to people captured in war. In WWII did the soldiers decide they weren't going to fire at the enemy combatants because "they hadn't been proven guilty in front of a jury of their peers?" No, they shot at them, and if they captured them, they were sent to POW camps, where they were held as guilty until after the war (or they were traded). You don't try people in war like that, it just doesn't make sense, as all of your time would be spent on the obvious.
The people at gitmo are so unlikely to be innocent it's not even a question. These are the prisoners who demand TVs during the world cup, than destroyed them during commercials. These are people who will do anything to kill the western way. I imagine the odds of one of them being innocent is much LESS than the odds that any given person in american prisons is innocent. But all these big hot shot lawyers are clamoring to defend them. It's pure publicity on their part, they don't care about guilt or innocence, in fact, they want guilty parties to go free. if these lawyers cared about justice, they'd donate their time to help cases where people were legitimately screwed by the justice system. Instead, they go after feel good cases for people who would kill them (their own lawyers) if they could because they're part of the "great satan".
Phil
Okay, the statement you just made makes absolutely no sense. A good lock on your door is security through obscurity. People know how to pick locks, or bump them etc. Professionals can get through one of those locks in no time. It works as a deterrent only because it first makes the criminal spend more time to get into the house, and also not all criminals know that locks are so easy to break, or know how to do it.
Security through obscurity is one of the only ways to protect things in the real world. Making things extremely difficult to do is how many things are protected. It's why military installations have guards posted at the gates. Sure someone might be able to sneak over a fence somewhere and break into the installation, but it's much more difficult, and they know there's hell to pay if they're caught.
The question of whether blocking such images is an effective method of deterrence is another question. Such things as blurring google maps doesn't stop someone who's determined to get the information from getting it, however it does stop many people, and make things much more difficult. Our spys might notice if a terrorist is buying satellite photos of a few specific locations, however they likely won't know if they found the same photos on google maps. Also the time it takes to get the data elsewhere can be an issue. If you want to examine a couple hundred locations to see which ones might be the best target, google maps is definitely your friend. It makes it quick and easy. Something that we may not want it to be.
Phil
actually, that would appear to be an anti-sco website titled litigious bastards. That really isn't a google bomb. If people are searching for litigious bastards, they're likely looking for that site entitled such, and that happens to be about the SCO case. That's almost like saying a search for slashdot returning "slashdot.org" is a google bomb. Google bombs generally involve a search phrase returning a page that isn't related to the phrase. i.e. "miserable failure" returning bush's biography. Bush's biography does not likely say he's a miserable failure etc. The changes seem to do what they were aiming for, sites related to a topic can still get returned, but not as many of the "random" sites that are linked to words that aren't used on the site.
If a link goes to a page, part of the ranking is likely given based on what percent of the page uses that phrase. I imagine it's a bit more complex then this, as often people link to pages that have no actual text on them (all images and/or flash for the intro), but the page should be indexed accordingly. Additionally they may take into account what percent of links say the same thing. Using clustering algorithms you could likely tell that for george w. bush's biography you have a bunch of link terms related to him, his life, presidents, policies, iraq, etc, and then you have the term miserable failure which is on the complete other side, and unrelated to the other terms. While I'm not expert on text mining algorithms, I know such algorithms exist, and they are likely used to stop some of the google abuse.
Phil
This still doesn't explain about the zombification process. First of all, most file sharing is read only unless you have a password used, most home users don't really do much filesharing, but generally it's a read only thing, but second of all even if you have your entire folders mounted as read/write, how exactly does that allow this machine to turn you into a zombie? Last I heard writing files to your my documents folder (it's really difficult to share other folders than this) can not actually execute code.
I guess if your entire hard drive was shared, there is a possibility that they could write the file to a startup directory on it that automatically launches it on your next reboot . . .
This article really read as a lot of FUD to me. Possibly unpatched machines are affected, but they give a solution of disconnecting from the net. I just don't get it, the solution, it appears to me would be to oh, I don't know, patch your computer and use sane practices (like not sharing your whole hard drive as read/write/execute (apparently) with anonymous access).
Now the problem of them being able to steal credit card numbers and such is an issue. This is an issue that effects all OSes, so everyone should think bout it. however, if you check that the ssl keys you accept are valid for the site in question, then you should be alright. While they can perform a man-in-the-middle attack, that does require changing what keys a website uses (or possibly disabling encryption). As far as aim passwords and such go, well if you don't use it for important stuff, what are they going to do with it?
I read this entire article and really just want to read something from someone who knows anything about security, and not some idiot who read about something like this and proposes an even more idiotic solution. There is truth that you must be careful connecting to any wireless network that you don't know, also your machine needs to be patched etc. a little common sense goes a long way in this matter.
Phil
At least in this country, I find these numbers extremely hard to believe. Mostly because the vast majority of machines sold come with windows preinstalled on them. How do people then pirate it? I guess some people illegally upgrade their version to a newer one, but most people who have computers don't seem to know enough to be capable of doing this. There are the friends who might do this for them, but that doesn't seem too likely, as most people are content with their computer. . . As long as everything still works.
There's the key I guess. Most people don't care for their computer, and it shows, over time the install goes to hell, getting viruses spyware, etc. Then they may get a friend to come over and help them, and the friend may install a pirated version of windows, maybe a fancier one, maybe the same type (but not the same copy), or maybe even the same copy.
This is illegal . . . technically, but hard to really say it is, as the people do have the right to use windows on their computer, and that's often the only way they can.
With windows XP at least, I wouldn't doubt if more copies of it have been sold than their are copies currently in use! It seems like a crazy statement, but considering how many companies buy machines with windows preinstalled, and then install their site licensed copy on the machine. Plus how many people have had machines get outdated, or crippled, or break on them, and bought a new computer to replace it. How many copies of windows were thrown out because of that?
I can't speak for other countries, as I'm sure there are places where piracy runs rampant, and you can easily buy computers without windows preinstalled, or with an illegitimate copy installed, but in the US this generally isn't the case. Maybe MS should take these figures into account and say something like "-30% of windows copies in the US are pirated", after taking into account the anti-pirated cases of double licenses etc. Of course, things don't really work that way.
Now other software I imagine the number is much higher. What percentage of copies of office are less than legitimate? I imagine those are much higher, and a 20-30% install base being illegal wouldn't be too far off. of course, even here with so many copies sold to businesses, it dillutes the home market that's far more likely to pirate software than corporate ones (people can get in far less trouble generally).
Phil
I've been using macs for a couple years now, and will complain about the cd eject button on the keyboard. While it might be acceptable on a desktop to have it there, on a laptop it can be extremely irritating. I don't know how many times I go to press the delete key and accidently hit the eject button. It just isn't in a good location, and unlike accidently hitting buttons to control screen brightness and sound it can't be instantly fixed. Perhaps a modifier so you had to hit fn->eject would work better.
Phil
There's a slight difference though, in that most people who store gasoline store 1-2 gallons in a can next to their lawn mower. Most propane tanks are for gas grills and are also fairly small. Sure they might be highly explosive, but with so little of it the risk of explosion isn't as great.
Now, with a Hydrogen tank big enough to store energy to last you through the winter.. . . i'm just guessing this is slightly bigger than your average propane tank. Way way way more than enough to make up for the difference in how explosive hydrogen is.
I mean, a car exploding that has maybe 20 gallons of gas in it will likely blow up your garage, but a hydrogen tank the size of your garage exploding will take out more than just your house. The quantities of fuel that some of these tanks can hold is massive. Don't go telling me that keeping a winter's supply of hydrogen is safer than keeping a gas can in your garage.
phil
You act like the distinction is cut and dry, and that it's obvious who's paying for research. What if you are a professor at a major university doing a study. You have one student who is funded from grants by private industry, and others by NSF grants. The one on the NSF grant builds a new research infrastructure the other student later uses for his research. Should that other student than have all his work publicly available? Also you act like the students won't be helping each other out etc.
Basically it's almost impossible to find private research today that ISN'T in part funded by the government. In fact even projects that have all private money indirectly are getting government funding. Who do you think paid to train the scientists working on those projects? It isn't cheap to create scientists. Generally it takes 4-10 years of graduate studies, each year costing tens of thousands of dollars etc etc.
Additionally what about the person who comes up with an outside idea while being funded by a government source. If they can't stay on and work on it (and gain from it) they might just leave their government source and work independently now. Is this really what we want?
Also not all work that is done is publishable. Much of it isn't, such as many studies that find "negative results" such as "doing XYZ didn't solve problem ABC". This results in much of this work being repeated by multiple groups.
Then there's the question of who cares? for the vast majority of research, the public just doesn't care about. Unless you're directly doing that research as well it doesn't effect you.
phil
obvious if the US shuts down production immediately and ceases to produce any more green house gases, we could stop the trend too, right?
The problem isn't whether we're the cause, the question is . . . WHAT IS THE SOLUTION? While I don't know the models, and am not a climatologists, do any models suggest that if every country in the world immediately stopped production of excess greenhouse gases that we'd stop global warming? In a still unrealistic model, what if every country reduces ourselves to producing half the green house gases? Does this actually accomplish anything, other than move the time when problems start back a couple years?
Unfortunately, the ramifications of an immediate drop in green house gas production on the worlds economy would be huge. Energy production (as we know it currently) is directly tied to green house gas production. If we drop it, we drop production, at least initially. There are no if ands or buts about it. Also the only way to force such cutbacks is through authortarian rules, so maybe a kyoto dictatorship. That sounds like fun. And where does that leave us? Now, not only is global warming still going to occur (just a few years later if we're lucky), but we don't have the production and economic capabilities to stop it.
While Kyoto proposed a direct drop of green house gases (essentially it was a bunch of countries trying to punish the US for being more prosperous than them), that would just result in degrading the world economy. What if instead of cutting production we put money into researching methods to combat global warming? With the funds saved by not going onto a Kyoto-like agreement such research is not out of the question.
Of course a manmade solution wouldn't be natural, and so forth. Well, honestly, I don't care. My concern is whether or not my house is in the middle of the atlantic ocean in 50 years. I imagine the odds of finding a solution to global warming is far far far cheaper than the solutions that environmentalists provide, and would likely be far more effective!
Phil
hmm funny, I have a G3 300 MHz 384MB RAM powermac running OSX 10.4 and it runs alright. Granted I don't expect to watch movies on that thing, and really don't use it for much besides iTunes and light web browsing (it's near the kitchen so it's great for looking up recipes and things like that). It's a little slow, but the speed is more of a factor of not having enough RAM.
Now granted if I tried running safari with 10 tabs, mail, itunes, iterm, adium etc all at once this machine would screech to a hault. Those applications all tend to suck up ram, and if you want to run them all simultaneously you need lots of it. Try running windows with ie7 and 10 tabs, outlook express, windows media player, aim, all the spyware it has installed, etc all open at once on a machine with only 512MB of RAM. It too will choke.
That said, OSX 10.4 tends to suck up RAM, but that's more of the applications for it, rather than the OS itself. For the desktop market they aren't too concerned with eating lots of RAM. The iphone will likely cure these problems, and there's no reason it won't run on a machine with far less RAM. Remember we were all once happy running linux (maybe not the same kernel we run now, but close enough) on machines with only 64MB of RAM (going back further, I know people who used it with less). Try running todays default linux distributions on a machine of that class, and it too will suck, but this does not mean that Linux will not run (and run fine) on that generation of hardware.
Phil
I guess the ipod will miss out on all those great free games out there. All those original new ideas that haven't been done... Oh wait, they don't exist. While their are a few fun open source games (not counting commercial games later open sourced), many of them are just clones of an original game. Think freeciv, pingus, etc.
:hil
Open source has its place, and it's yet to show its strength in the gaming world. I don't know if that is possible, as games are so expensive to think up design graphics for, etc etc. While things like OSs are used, there is an obvious link in people having a reason to help better it if they use it. Games... well those are pure entertainment.
The number one advantage that this model gives to apple is that it virtually eliminates piracy of software on the device. All software is installed by them, sure someone may have a hack that lets them install stuff, but it'll be so hard to use, and so obscure it won't really matter. Plus it protects peoples devices.
Now I hope apple has a program allowing some common open source apps such as ssh to run on the device, but if it doesn't, it really only effects the small minority of geeks who would want it.
I say good sir, we should break our eggs on the big end. And I say we should break them on the little end.
I think we've all had this argument before. It's stupid and pointless, and the english measurement system is quite entrenched in our culture. I don't know how far 10 km is without converting it to miles, likewise, someone who's used the metric system all their life won't know how far 10 miles is without converting it to kilometers. It's silly to argue what is better for measurement. It's just arbitrary numbers.
For science the metric makes more sense. The conversions are much simpler. Powers of 10 are easy. Even for cooking metrics would be nice, but I haven't grown up knowing what an ounce really is in the same way I know what a mile is. However trying to make people convert just doesn't make much sense. It's expensive to change all the signs, and more expensive to try and change peoples minds. Plus we'd end up with the situation where all these products in the US that are standard sizes would no longer be reasonable. Who wants to buy 3.785 liters of milk? Thinks like this don't change overnight, and it's messy.
Besides, I think the europeans need us to stick to the english measurement system so they still have something that they can point to and say "see us europeans are so much better than you americans..."
Phil
When did jobs say users couldn't install software on the iPhone? If you people RTFA, jobs said that they will not allow users to install random software on the phone, however I see no reason they won't have it open to developers, and after extensive testing of the device, allow users to buy the software on iTunes or something. It would seem perfectly natural to me. Jobs point of not allowing all software to run on it is to avoid the issues that plague computers and such when users install a ton of crap on their machines and wonder why things aren't working right. Limiting what can run on a device that has real time constraints and primary functionality that MUST always work is a perfectly logical idea. Especially considering the thought of iPhone viruses that could spread through bluetooth or something if it was allowed.
Phil