Comes at an expensive cost; paint has weight, and when you're coating that much surface area, the weight adds up. More weight on the tank, less the shuttle can lift as currently formatted.
No, the real thing we need to do is replace the fleet, and go through with the current redesign plans to place the shuttle's body utop the fuel tank. That way anything that falls hits an SRB and not the shuttle's hull.
Personally I think it pedantic and panicky to ground the whole fleet due to some insulation falling, but it was that which harmed Columbia. I mean every launch has had parts fall.
But, I guess I will side with them for now, until we get more information these next few days.
Sorry, but after some investigation, I think you are the troll here. Hell, you tell us to search for your email address in NASA projects and you don't even post your email address, not even in your profile!
As it may be, I happen to have a few friends at NASA as well, as my engineering school tends to send them down on co-op at a frequent rate of about one or two per year (I'm at a small engineering school, University of Louisville's Speed program). So, knowing the same things you know, I can honestly tell you that you're barking up a tree you have absolutely no evidence to support yourself on.
Measuring temperature with thermocouples? Why does it matter? We don't need to know the temperature of the undersurface of the shuttle; we've built materials in our previous studies of re-entry temperatures that are now more than capable of withstanding the temperatures, even while being mild-to-moderately damaged. What we have a problem with now is damage to the very leading surfaces of the wings, the Reenforced Carbon Carbon (RCC sections), and the scientists on the space shuttle right now are working on building a solution to those problems. We honestly can't solve this problem from earth alone; without testing the solution, we have no idea if it will work or not. And for your information, the shuttle tiles come off all the fucking time, no big deal. But to be safe, they shuttle astronauts are also testing a replacement material for the tiles, in case of a catastrophic tile event, which, just for common knowledge, has never happened.
Your temperature gradient information's about that of a college student in thermo, that's great. Thermodynamic prinipals are not that hard to understand; if a temperature gradient exists, it will correct itself at an appropriate rate. If it's too great a gradient, then yes, it could cause damage to the shuttle. But the thing is, this isn't even a question; the shuttle is a mostly depressurized space ship, and any thermal gradient created during re-entry is most likely to be a fatal event. There is nothing that the shuttle pilots can do during re-entry to stop the shuttle, and haul ass back into space and repair it, they can't bail out in an escape pod, they can't repair it while re-entering.
Every person who gets on the space shuttle knows exactly the costs of getting on it, and the payoff. Everyone knows that they can be the next person to die, even the first person to die in space. But they also know that in the history of over a hundred launches, only 2 have ever failed, and neither in space. Not only that, but more eyes are on the space shuttle than ever before, scrutinizing every last bolt, screw, manifold cover and ashtray.. okay screw the ashtray, but you see my point. It's safer than ever before, and it was never that safe to begin with. Still, the deathrate is smaller than that of car accidents in the nation, and not everyone who steps in a car realizes the dangers of the road. We take too much for granted in that way. The risks are definitely worth it though, in my opinion, as I would gladly give my life to find a new medicine to treat AIDS and cancer, to give the world well needed inventions, and to have just, for once, felt utterly weightless as I looked down at the marble of earth below.
If you had any proof at all to back up any of your claims, that'd be great, but until I see any, I can do nothing than give my blessings for the shuttle program getting back into space and bark at trolls who are being alarmist about a few, mostly planned or known about, objects falling from the shuttle. Call me back if they find out the Reenforced Carbon Carbon modules have been punctured or there's a whole the size of a basketball through a wing. Those would be reasons for alarm. But a few scraps of styrofoam-sandlike tile insulation falling from the underbelly of the shuttle doesn't scare me one bit.
And you don't think AMD is capable of hype? The Turion is hardly a competitor with the Pentium M. While it may outperform it in benchmarks (as is AMD's way), it can't outperform it in heat production, and when you're making PCs the size of lunchpails, you can't be pumping out the kind of heat the Turion and company produce.
Apple would have never considered the change if it weren't for the Pentium M. They would have stuck with a company that could produce chips that perform and do it coolly, which, nowadays is paramount; even IBM is losing that uphill battle.
It won't matter if Apple wears an Intel Inside sticker, Mac users don't care about fancy little stickers. If anything, that'd be a reason against wearing the badge. Of course, Intel's been trying to sleep with Apple for years, you think they're going to give it all up because Apple doesn't feel like wearing Intel's shirt.
Everyone in the industry knows what's inside of an Apple, why do they need to wear the badge?
Secondly, Apple does want innovation. That's specifically why they didn't go with AMD. AMD's "innovation" is competing with Intel. Intel's innovation is extremely low heat profile general purpose processors for Apple's next generation of PCs.
Don't think that Apple looked at AMD with a very scruplous eye; they've obviously been planning this move for years now, and they've had more than enough time to decide. Intel probably came with their showboat Pentium M and showed it off, and unlike the AMD64's pumping off 60W or the Intel P4's pumping out 100W, these pump out 20W, and still have the performace of a race car.
People are being so nieve when they say Apple should have went AMD. When AMD gets their Turion's into shape, it'd be a managable proposition, but they're simply in the game to compete with Intel. If they were in the game for the future, they'd realize that their business habits are non-maintainable.
I'm guessing you don't remember any other operating system that threw up their hat, said that they didn't need to make drivers for every piece of hardware, and was absolutely destroyed in the public light when it comes to hardware stability.. Oh, that would be Microsoft, of course.
They don't need to support every piece of hardware out there, all they need to support is the stuff going into their hardware. As for your thought that they don't need to support every piece of hardware out there, I'm surprised this community didn't mod you troll. Even the Linux kids try their damnedest to support every piece of hardware in every possible configuration.
It's really simple business. You control the hardware, the software's predictable. While you may think that the hardware market's all the same, ask ANY linux kernel maintainer, and they will all tell you that the harware is hell. Standards may be standards, but nobody follows them to a tee; vendors often change one thing or another just to make it work, and that requires the drivers to know about the hack.
Mac users enjoy the security of knowing it'll always work. That's why we pay for it. Just because you want to play with the operating system, and not pay for the machine to run it on, doesn't make your opinion any more correct than Apple's. And Apple and Dell both know that the money's on in the OS, the money's in the hardware.
That link didn't rule out crap, that link says that Intel macs (as of now) don't have OpenFirmware, which is of course, common knowledge to us geeks, but maybe not to a lot of new Mac devs.
The link says absolutely nothing about future Intel macs, which is where the speculation currently resides.
A bit harder to protect than we thought it was, then? Hell, I know a lot of people telling me explicitly that they won't apply for patents because it'll allow corporations to use them, and they will get virtually no money for it. If their idea's totally unheard of, then they'll make the millions, and be fine and dandy.
If we had an open technology interchange, we'd all be making progress at the same rate. Any new technologies invented or discovered could be passed along for the common good, and the people making money could be the various different implementers of the technology. Perhaps the government should get into the Knowledge Farming business; simply churn out enough ideas and let big business implement.
If you wanted to be less radical, simply shorten the length of patent protection, and for certain, disallow patents of stupid, unoriginal things. This is simple enough to do; pay a few college students 10 bucks an hour to go through a stack of patent documents, do a quick google, use common sense and rule against patents. The ones that get past the students go on to supervisors, who make sure patents are being well put down (all they really have to do is check a website, or actually read the patent aloud and laugh their asses off). The ones that nobody can find a problem with, goes on to a small public review (say pull in people like jury duty), pay them a few bucks a day and have them listen to a company explain their patent, why it should be aloud. Make patents a courtable ideal, and there will be much, much less abuse of the system, as they realize they can't pass bullshit on people.
I dunno.. I have strong opinions, but you've got to agree that it's rediculous that we're churning our asses off with new technologies, and meanwhile they're taking all of our exploits, making more of their own, and at a rate that we can't possibly ever hope to keep up with. If we share, we'll both succeed. If we become secretive, nobody will, and really, patents are just the legal way of being secretive (of course, not getting one is "top secret", but not without it's own problems).
American education isn't bad because it's run by the government. It's bad because it's run by the politicians. If politicians focused more on the future of our students, they'd devote a greater share of our tax dollars on education. Instead, we worry more about the troubles of the day; a pointless war in a country half a world away.
Giving money to education is not a bold move in America, like it should be. Hell, Gates has given TONS of money to educate kids, and he's still looked down upon as the scum of the earth for inventing Microsoft, which, like it or not, is the means to an end.
We need to start caring about the future; nuclear reactors, hydrogen cars, an education system that doesn't leak students across the union, and the proper facilities to stop corruption from spreading through our government any more than it already has (even if people don't want to admit it). And if I could have my way, digital rights would be included in there some where. The only way these things are going to come about is if we mend our constitution and our law system from the hopelessly outdated system we put in place three hundred years ago, two hundred years ago and a hundred years ago, and replace it with fixes for the 21st century which will allow us to be the competitive powerhouse we were.
Personally, I think complacency is the root of all evil, as through complacency comes money, and money's generally accepted.
If you distribute a problem among a lot of people, the job will get easier and easier, until it is subject to the laws of diminishing returns. The more people you have working, the easier it is to find people who are smart (and China has a lot of smart people. In the past they were all leaving China, but they've been doing a remarkably good job of keeping them as of late).
The thing is, even if you assume that the rate of smart people is smaller in China, you've still got 8x the population to select the smart people from, which means it will occur. But the facts would more support that China has more smart people (Asian Intellegence, Artificial Intellegence, same difference), meaning that it's pretty obvious China is gonna be on top very quickly. And with their government set up communistically with democratic influences, it has the possibility to grow fast, and start outputing at a rate that will bury the states, a lot like how Japanese car companies got on top during the 80's.
And we wonder why country music is so prominant in the South... the sad poor folks have nothing better to do than watch TV all the time, and get depressed and write songs about how the new movies are suckier than the old ones!!!!
I think you need to do a little fact checking. Nobody knows what Apple is going with, but everyone assumes EFI because it's the best, ready to go alternative. They still have the option of BIOS + DRM chip and OpenFirmware + DRM chip, as well as BIOS and OpenFirmware without DRM.
The idea is simple; Apple is competing for your money. If they see you looking at an iBook, they can only, accurately guess, that you've also looked at a Powerbook, which means you're interested in buying an Apple laptop. If you've declined on the Powerbook, it's probably because it's out of your price range, as it's an amazing deal. But at this point, you are probably still shopping with Apple, so you take a look at the iBooks. iBooks offer a lot of the same things their Power brothers offer, but use cheaper displays and graphics cards (because you really don't need them, especially if you're pinching pennies, at least in Apple's eyes).
You can't look at Apple like any other PC manufacturer. When you evaluate Apple computers, it's not like buying a new car, where you shop around and try to find your best value, try to get all the discounts, etc. That's what Dell is there for. When you're buying an Apple computer, it's like buying a luxury car (best I can come up with), where you are sure of what you want, but don't nessicarily have all of the money in the world.
Don't take this as a "oh no apple are elitest!!one", it's simply a fact; Apple users tend to be more enthusiastic about their machines, and their operating system. So they buy what they can. Those who really enjoy Apple will move up the ranks to the Power products, regardless if they actually need that power. Those who are new to Apple buy for the cuteness factor, and get sucked into the Reality Distortion Field. Apple just isn't your ordinary computer company.
So, in this crowd, everyone bags on Apple every time they release any product, saying how it could be better, but let's understand it folks; the people who are going to Apple have a reason for crossing the line. Whether it is a fad and they're doing it because the machine looks good, whether it's a status symbol, whether it is the best computer for the money isn't nessicarily the reason. So, if you want a machine with a better graphics card, fine, go out and buy a Dell, and make sure they're using a desktop board and CPU and a 19" flatpanel, and come back and brag to us about how you paid the same amount for it as some guy's 17" Powerbook. But, I can assure you that the Powerbook user's back will have the last laugh;).
This has a lot to do with Apple's care of details. The henge was designed an atypical manner; instead of actually having a henge that holds the top lid on, Apple laptops open more like a car door; the actual henge is located in the main body of the laptop and the whole top lid unit moves (unlike most dells I've seen). While this may seem insignficant, it makes the laptop feel more sturdy, and makes it sit on a lap or a desk better.
The other half, of course, is using a widescreen, but even the iBooks are henged similarly and perform just as well in an economy car (speaking from my own experiences of course), with a standard 14.1" screen.
I often wondered why Podcasting took off, and on the way home, I had to ride with a friend who happened to have a radio in his car (my Jeep explicitly doesn't, for a vast number of reasons).
Anyways, I listened to the top 40 station in the region, and let's just say, I was not impressed. He then switched the radio to his iPod and listened to the a science news cast and a indie-top-40, and, the easest way to put it; I'm never listening to the radio again.
Well I can assure you that the Pentium M wins. Need proof? Go read a laptop review, Turion 64 vs Pentium M. The Pentium M kills the Turion in heat production and battery life, but the Turion's better performance-wise, which is all that matters to a lot of people.
Why I'm answering this is that you're being very ignorant of the fact that the Pentium M, relatively unchanged, is the next Intel desktop CPU, therefore completely invalidating your statement that a Laptop CPU vs a Desktop CPU isn't fair, or irrelevant in any way. Simply put, the Pentium M is about to destroy the competition when it comes to IPC, the entire system around.
A Pentium M northbridge will use more power, this is obvious; it's got to deal with DDR2 memory, it's got to deal with PCI Express and all of these other controllers on the bus. AMD trying to stick all of these controllers on to the CPU is only relocating the heat, and at the cost to the consumer; now every time a bump in CPU speed comes about, I'm going to have to throw out my whole system.
AMD64's do a great job throttling, but I'm sorry to burst your bubble; Enhanced SpeedStep is far superior when paired up with software that can use it right. Fine-grained CPU speed speeds can drop the Pentium M to virtually no output, and it can still run a screensaver or two;) (to me, this is amazing; my desktop computer's a dual proc Pentium 3 workstation from last century and it can barely run the screensavers that came with my linux distro).
Stop being ignorant. The competition's about to get red-hot again, and we're the ones who will benefit. Choosing sides too early's only going to cost you more money in the long run. And as I'm due for a new desktop very soon, I'm watching the playing field very, very closely.
I've read some reviews of that AOpen board; apparently AOpen sacrificed the insanely low heat production of the Pentium M by strapping a heatsink and fan that looks like it came from a northbridge rather than a desktop CPU. To further this, they've formatted the mounting points on the board to be completely industry incompatible, meaning that you're stuck with their heatsink unless you fab your own.
That's a pretty big letdown to me, as I have been wanting a desktop Pentium M since Pentium M's existed. This adapter makes a lot more sense to me.
I'd argue against that. The Pentium M is a number crusher, with an IPC up there with the newer AMD64's. When the first generation came out, they were destroying chips that were clocked nearly one and a half times faster, and it was doing it without putting out the absurd amount of heat that now makes these chips legendary.
With that, the Pentium M is an overclocker, game enthusiast's dream. If you could get it to run (Vcore problems I would assume forthright), it could soar to the cycle-rate of the P4's today and be crushing newer processors. And I assure you, everyone, including Intel, gets this.
I'm very, very surprised that Intel hasn't tried to slip it on desktop consumers yet. I guess they wouldn't get away with it thanks to enthusiasts, which would spread pretty quick to the general public, especially without 64-bit support. I really don't understand the panecea it's supposed to offer (more ram addressing, a few more registers, anything else worth my while?), but right now, it's the key to public support.
But that's just it, if it wasn't for the Pentium 4, there'd be no Pentium M. Pentium M was designed as a comprimise between the Pentium 3 M and the Pentium 4 M. The P3M was a fast mobile chip, but they needed something faster and lower in heat production. So, taking the technologies from the Pentium 4 (Netburst-style micro-ops fusion, QDR FSB (and pretty much all of the logic dedicated to bussing), SSE2, (SSE3 eventually), along with the Pentium 4's voltage profile, etc), they made a fairly compatible chip (testimony to the ability to use a small adapter to fix the pinout for the P4 board to use a PM).
Now, the Pentium 4 serves the Pentium M in one last service until they can retire this iteration of Netburst; a technological proving ground for new technologies. Think about all of the innovation going into the Pentium 4, better virtualization support (vanderpool), dual cores, EM64T, NX Bit, the list goes on and on. These are all things that will find their way into the Pentium M, but aren't appropriate as of current for a mobile processor.
Lastly, I'd hate to say that Netburst is dead. I think just as everyone does, Intel has made some mistakes with the Pentium 4 that are unforgivable. The next iteration of the Pentium series based on Netburst will probably have the Pentium M's cache system, a shortened pipeline, and a lot of micro-op revamping. It'll probably only see the light of day in the Xeon department, giving Intel something they've been working towards for quite a while; having different archetectures, better suited for work that they're doing.
Normally, I'd go into everything AMD is doing to compete, but since this articles all about Intel, I'm just gonna sit back and be done. Note that I'm an all-around processor fanboy from lowly ARMs to the biggest of the bigboy processors IBM's cranking out.
Well, I have a right to my opinion too, and it's based off of the simple economic prinipal of the law of demand. When demand is virtually non-existant, cost is through the roof (basically, you'll have to build your own, which, you Linux guys won't have too much of an objection with, eh?).
I expect to see the media players like Dell's to become more and more feature rich, but I also expect to see music players as a whole go more and more towards the iPod; design simplicity, and cheap components. While not everyone would consider a laptop HD as a cheap component, the only viable alternative is flash, and to get flash in the densities of HDs would require multiple thousands of dollars.
Because, honestly, nobody knows how ubiquitous Google is except for Google. Your number is complete and total rubbish.
The book, Google Hacking, exists because there's a such thing as "Google Hacking", and google is an accepted English word meaning "to search". If you want to think about it, Google Hacking means exactly the same thing as Search Hacking, which really isn't that different from Search Engine Hacking, especially if you're talking about the internet.
Semantics aside, Google is a dataheap waiting to be mined. Just about anything you want to know about human patterns dealing with the Internet can be figured out through Google in some way or another, and a lot of patterns that are offline can be assessed as well (Maps? Local? News?).
Sorry kid, we passed that stop almost 4 years ago with the RIO players (except that OGG part.. but if you're seriously using OGG, well, I'm sorry. It might offer superior compression, I dunno, but nothing supports it and nothing ever will. MP3 (and too soon, MP4) is too ubiquitous to ever seriously be challenged).
The fact is, rechargeable batteries are better all around. Better for the environment, better for battery life, even though it might be more inconvienent to recharge. And if that's your problem there are plenty of add-on devices that supply external power to portable media players, cell phones, laptops, etc, while being extremely portable themselves.
As for flash cards, I'd love that too, but it just seems inpractical to carry around all of those flash cards when your player has an integrated thumbnail harddrive, and you've got a cable to attach it to your digital (video) camera. Even higher end digital cameras are starting to move towards including harddrives simply because the storage density is hard to beat.
Lastly, a request of my own (other than for people to stop trolling about Ogg, the superior format that failed just like Betamax): a waterproof player. I've found a few water-tight cases for my iPod, but they all make it feel more clunky than it should be. I'd love to hack my iPod and seal it up for water-tight uses, but it's still under warranty and will be for a long, long time, so I'm stuck with my shitty iCondom.
Well the answer's simple really. If you want to start a business around it, get a commercial-grade connection, and sell off. But if you're only serving to your neighbors and such, I really don't think they'd care very much; it only changes a few bucks they'd be getting otherwise. Just to be safe, you could get a "business-grade" connection and sign your neighbors as employees of your not-for-profit;).
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Comes at an expensive cost; paint has weight, and when you're coating that much surface area, the weight adds up. More weight on the tank, less the shuttle can lift as currently formatted.
No, the real thing we need to do is replace the fleet, and go through with the current redesign plans to place the shuttle's body utop the fuel tank. That way anything that falls hits an SRB and not the shuttle's hull.
Personally I think it pedantic and panicky to ground the whole fleet due to some insulation falling, but it was that which harmed Columbia. I mean every launch has had parts fall.
But, I guess I will side with them for now, until we get more information these next few days.
Sorry, but after some investigation, I think you are the troll here. Hell, you tell us to search for your email address in NASA projects and you don't even post your email address, not even in your profile!
As it may be, I happen to have a few friends at NASA as well, as my engineering school tends to send them down on co-op at a frequent rate of about one or two per year (I'm at a small engineering school, University of Louisville's Speed program). So, knowing the same things you know, I can honestly tell you that you're barking up a tree you have absolutely no evidence to support yourself on.
Measuring temperature with thermocouples? Why does it matter? We don't need to know the temperature of the undersurface of the shuttle; we've built materials in our previous studies of re-entry temperatures that are now more than capable of withstanding the temperatures, even while being mild-to-moderately damaged. What we have a problem with now is damage to the very leading surfaces of the wings, the Reenforced Carbon Carbon (RCC sections), and the scientists on the space shuttle right now are working on building a solution to those problems. We honestly can't solve this problem from earth alone; without testing the solution, we have no idea if it will work or not. And for your information, the shuttle tiles come off all the fucking time, no big deal. But to be safe, they shuttle astronauts are also testing a replacement material for the tiles, in case of a catastrophic tile event, which, just for common knowledge, has never happened.
Your temperature gradient information's about that of a college student in thermo, that's great. Thermodynamic prinipals are not that hard to understand; if a temperature gradient exists, it will correct itself at an appropriate rate. If it's too great a gradient, then yes, it could cause damage to the shuttle. But the thing is, this isn't even a question; the shuttle is a mostly depressurized space ship, and any thermal gradient created during re-entry is most likely to be a fatal event. There is nothing that the shuttle pilots can do during re-entry to stop the shuttle, and haul ass back into space and repair it, they can't bail out in an escape pod, they can't repair it while re-entering.
Every person who gets on the space shuttle knows exactly the costs of getting on it, and the payoff. Everyone knows that they can be the next person to die, even the first person to die in space. But they also know that in the history of over a hundred launches, only 2 have ever failed, and neither in space. Not only that, but more eyes are on the space shuttle than ever before, scrutinizing every last bolt, screw, manifold cover and ashtray.. okay screw the ashtray, but you see my point. It's safer than ever before, and it was never that safe to begin with. Still, the deathrate is smaller than that of car accidents in the nation, and not everyone who steps in a car realizes the dangers of the road. We take too much for granted in that way. The risks are definitely worth it though, in my opinion, as I would gladly give my life to find a new medicine to treat AIDS and cancer, to give the world well needed inventions, and to have just, for once, felt utterly weightless as I looked down at the marble of earth below.
If you had any proof at all to back up any of your claims, that'd be great, but until I see any, I can do nothing than give my blessings for the shuttle program getting back into space and bark at trolls who are being alarmist about a few, mostly planned or known about, objects falling from the shuttle. Call me back if they find out the Reenforced Carbon Carbon modules have been punctured or there's a whole the size of a basketball through a wing. Those would be reasons for alarm. But a few scraps of styrofoam-sandlike tile insulation falling from the underbelly of the shuttle doesn't scare me one bit.
And you don't think AMD is capable of hype? The Turion is hardly a competitor with the Pentium M. While it may outperform it in benchmarks (as is AMD's way), it can't outperform it in heat production, and when you're making PCs the size of lunchpails, you can't be pumping out the kind of heat the Turion and company produce.
Apple would have never considered the change if it weren't for the Pentium M. They would have stuck with a company that could produce chips that perform and do it coolly, which, nowadays is paramount; even IBM is losing that uphill battle.
It won't matter if Apple wears an Intel Inside sticker, Mac users don't care about fancy little stickers. If anything, that'd be a reason against wearing the badge. Of course, Intel's been trying to sleep with Apple for years, you think they're going to give it all up because Apple doesn't feel like wearing Intel's shirt.
Everyone in the industry knows what's inside of an Apple, why do they need to wear the badge?
Secondly, Apple does want innovation. That's specifically why they didn't go with AMD. AMD's "innovation" is competing with Intel. Intel's innovation is extremely low heat profile general purpose processors for Apple's next generation of PCs.
Don't think that Apple looked at AMD with a very scruplous eye; they've obviously been planning this move for years now, and they've had more than enough time to decide. Intel probably came with their showboat Pentium M and showed it off, and unlike the AMD64's pumping off 60W or the Intel P4's pumping out 100W, these pump out 20W, and still have the performace of a race car.
People are being so nieve when they say Apple should have went AMD. When AMD gets their Turion's into shape, it'd be a managable proposition, but they're simply in the game to compete with Intel. If they were in the game for the future, they'd realize that their business habits are non-maintainable.
I'm guessing you don't remember any other operating system that threw up their hat, said that they didn't need to make drivers for every piece of hardware, and was absolutely destroyed in the public light when it comes to hardware stability.. Oh, that would be Microsoft, of course.
They don't need to support every piece of hardware out there, all they need to support is the stuff going into their hardware. As for your thought that they don't need to support every piece of hardware out there, I'm surprised this community didn't mod you troll. Even the Linux kids try their damnedest to support every piece of hardware in every possible configuration.
It's really simple business. You control the hardware, the software's predictable. While you may think that the hardware market's all the same, ask ANY linux kernel maintainer, and they will all tell you that the harware is hell. Standards may be standards, but nobody follows them to a tee; vendors often change one thing or another just to make it work, and that requires the drivers to know about the hack.
Mac users enjoy the security of knowing it'll always work. That's why we pay for it. Just because you want to play with the operating system, and not pay for the machine to run it on, doesn't make your opinion any more correct than Apple's. And Apple and Dell both know that the money's on in the OS, the money's in the hardware.
That link didn't rule out crap, that link says that Intel macs (as of now) don't have OpenFirmware, which is of course, common knowledge to us geeks, but maybe not to a lot of new Mac devs.
The link says absolutely nothing about future Intel macs, which is where the speculation currently resides.
A bit harder to protect than we thought it was, then? Hell, I know a lot of people telling me explicitly that they won't apply for patents because it'll allow corporations to use them, and they will get virtually no money for it. If their idea's totally unheard of, then they'll make the millions, and be fine and dandy.
If we had an open technology interchange, we'd all be making progress at the same rate. Any new technologies invented or discovered could be passed along for the common good, and the people making money could be the various different implementers of the technology. Perhaps the government should get into the Knowledge Farming business; simply churn out enough ideas and let big business implement.
If you wanted to be less radical, simply shorten the length of patent protection, and for certain, disallow patents of stupid, unoriginal things. This is simple enough to do; pay a few college students 10 bucks an hour to go through a stack of patent documents, do a quick google, use common sense and rule against patents. The ones that get past the students go on to supervisors, who make sure patents are being well put down (all they really have to do is check a website, or actually read the patent aloud and laugh their asses off). The ones that nobody can find a problem with, goes on to a small public review (say pull in people like jury duty), pay them a few bucks a day and have them listen to a company explain their patent, why it should be aloud. Make patents a courtable ideal, and there will be much, much less abuse of the system, as they realize they can't pass bullshit on people.
I dunno.. I have strong opinions, but you've got to agree that it's rediculous that we're churning our asses off with new technologies, and meanwhile they're taking all of our exploits, making more of their own, and at a rate that we can't possibly ever hope to keep up with. If we share, we'll both succeed. If we become secretive, nobody will, and really, patents are just the legal way of being secretive (of course, not getting one is "top secret", but not without it's own problems).
I think it's more along this line:
American education isn't bad because it's run by the government. It's bad because it's run by the politicians. If politicians focused more on the future of our students, they'd devote a greater share of our tax dollars on education. Instead, we worry more about the troubles of the day; a pointless war in a country half a world away.
Giving money to education is not a bold move in America, like it should be. Hell, Gates has given TONS of money to educate kids, and he's still looked down upon as the scum of the earth for inventing Microsoft, which, like it or not, is the means to an end.
We need to start caring about the future; nuclear reactors, hydrogen cars, an education system that doesn't leak students across the union, and the proper facilities to stop corruption from spreading through our government any more than it already has (even if people don't want to admit it). And if I could have my way, digital rights would be included in there some where. The only way these things are going to come about is if we mend our constitution and our law system from the hopelessly outdated system we put in place three hundred years ago, two hundred years ago and a hundred years ago, and replace it with fixes for the 21st century which will allow us to be the competitive powerhouse we were.
Personally, I think complacency is the root of all evil, as through complacency comes money, and money's generally accepted.
If you distribute a problem among a lot of people, the job will get easier and easier, until it is subject to the laws of diminishing returns. The more people you have working, the easier it is to find people who are smart (and China has a lot of smart people. In the past they were all leaving China, but they've been doing a remarkably good job of keeping them as of late).
The thing is, even if you assume that the rate of smart people is smaller in China, you've still got 8x the population to select the smart people from, which means it will occur. But the facts would more support that China has more smart people (Asian Intellegence, Artificial Intellegence, same difference), meaning that it's pretty obvious China is gonna be on top very quickly. And with their government set up communistically with democratic influences, it has the possibility to grow fast, and start outputing at a rate that will bury the states, a lot like how Japanese car companies got on top during the 80's.
I just got it...
Thundercats are LOOSE. EWWWWWwwwwwww.....
And we wonder why country music is so prominant in the South... the sad poor folks have nothing better to do than watch TV all the time, and get depressed and write songs about how the new movies are suckier than the old ones!!!!
(I apologize to country music fans..)
I think you need to do a little fact checking. Nobody knows what Apple is going with, but everyone assumes EFI because it's the best, ready to go alternative. They still have the option of BIOS + DRM chip and OpenFirmware + DRM chip, as well as BIOS and OpenFirmware without DRM.
The idea is simple; Apple is competing for your money. If they see you looking at an iBook, they can only, accurately guess, that you've also looked at a Powerbook, which means you're interested in buying an Apple laptop. If you've declined on the Powerbook, it's probably because it's out of your price range, as it's an amazing deal. But at this point, you are probably still shopping with Apple, so you take a look at the iBooks. iBooks offer a lot of the same things their Power brothers offer, but use cheaper displays and graphics cards (because you really don't need them, especially if you're pinching pennies, at least in Apple's eyes).
;).
You can't look at Apple like any other PC manufacturer. When you evaluate Apple computers, it's not like buying a new car, where you shop around and try to find your best value, try to get all the discounts, etc. That's what Dell is there for. When you're buying an Apple computer, it's like buying a luxury car (best I can come up with), where you are sure of what you want, but don't nessicarily have all of the money in the world.
Don't take this as a "oh no apple are elitest!!one", it's simply a fact; Apple users tend to be more enthusiastic about their machines, and their operating system. So they buy what they can. Those who really enjoy Apple will move up the ranks to the Power products, regardless if they actually need that power. Those who are new to Apple buy for the cuteness factor, and get sucked into the Reality Distortion Field. Apple just isn't your ordinary computer company.
So, in this crowd, everyone bags on Apple every time they release any product, saying how it could be better, but let's understand it folks; the people who are going to Apple have a reason for crossing the line. Whether it is a fad and they're doing it because the machine looks good, whether it's a status symbol, whether it is the best computer for the money isn't nessicarily the reason. So, if you want a machine with a better graphics card, fine, go out and buy a Dell, and make sure they're using a desktop board and CPU and a 19" flatpanel, and come back and brag to us about how you paid the same amount for it as some guy's 17" Powerbook. But, I can assure you that the Powerbook user's back will have the last laugh
This has a lot to do with Apple's care of details. The henge was designed an atypical manner; instead of actually having a henge that holds the top lid on, Apple laptops open more like a car door; the actual henge is located in the main body of the laptop and the whole top lid unit moves (unlike most dells I've seen). While this may seem insignficant, it makes the laptop feel more sturdy, and makes it sit on a lap or a desk better.
The other half, of course, is using a widescreen, but even the iBooks are henged similarly and perform just as well in an economy car (speaking from my own experiences of course), with a standard 14.1" screen.
I often wondered why Podcasting took off, and on the way home, I had to ride with a friend who happened to have a radio in his car (my Jeep explicitly doesn't, for a vast number of reasons).
Anyways, I listened to the top 40 station in the region, and let's just say, I was not impressed. He then switched the radio to his iPod and listened to the a science news cast and a indie-top-40, and, the easest way to put it; I'm never listening to the radio again.
Well I can assure you that the Pentium M wins. Need proof? Go read a laptop review, Turion 64 vs Pentium M. The Pentium M kills the Turion in heat production and battery life, but the Turion's better performance-wise, which is all that matters to a lot of people.
;) (to me, this is amazing; my desktop computer's a dual proc Pentium 3 workstation from last century and it can barely run the screensavers that came with my linux distro).
Why I'm answering this is that you're being very ignorant of the fact that the Pentium M, relatively unchanged, is the next Intel desktop CPU, therefore completely invalidating your statement that a Laptop CPU vs a Desktop CPU isn't fair, or irrelevant in any way. Simply put, the Pentium M is about to destroy the competition when it comes to IPC, the entire system around.
A Pentium M northbridge will use more power, this is obvious; it's got to deal with DDR2 memory, it's got to deal with PCI Express and all of these other controllers on the bus. AMD trying to stick all of these controllers on to the CPU is only relocating the heat, and at the cost to the consumer; now every time a bump in CPU speed comes about, I'm going to have to throw out my whole system.
AMD64's do a great job throttling, but I'm sorry to burst your bubble; Enhanced SpeedStep is far superior when paired up with software that can use it right. Fine-grained CPU speed speeds can drop the Pentium M to virtually no output, and it can still run a screensaver or two
Stop being ignorant. The competition's about to get red-hot again, and we're the ones who will benefit. Choosing sides too early's only going to cost you more money in the long run. And as I'm due for a new desktop very soon, I'm watching the playing field very, very closely.
I've read some reviews of that AOpen board; apparently AOpen sacrificed the insanely low heat production of the Pentium M by strapping a heatsink and fan that looks like it came from a northbridge rather than a desktop CPU. To further this, they've formatted the mounting points on the board to be completely industry incompatible, meaning that you're stuck with their heatsink unless you fab your own.
That's a pretty big letdown to me, as I have been wanting a desktop Pentium M since Pentium M's existed. This adapter makes a lot more sense to me.
I'd argue against that. The Pentium M is a number crusher, with an IPC up there with the newer AMD64's. When the first generation came out, they were destroying chips that were clocked nearly one and a half times faster, and it was doing it without putting out the absurd amount of heat that now makes these chips legendary.
With that, the Pentium M is an overclocker, game enthusiast's dream. If you could get it to run (Vcore problems I would assume forthright), it could soar to the cycle-rate of the P4's today and be crushing newer processors. And I assure you, everyone, including Intel, gets this.
I'm very, very surprised that Intel hasn't tried to slip it on desktop consumers yet. I guess they wouldn't get away with it thanks to enthusiasts, which would spread pretty quick to the general public, especially without 64-bit support. I really don't understand the panecea it's supposed to offer (more ram addressing, a few more registers, anything else worth my while?), but right now, it's the key to public support.
But that's just it, if it wasn't for the Pentium 4, there'd be no Pentium M. Pentium M was designed as a comprimise between the Pentium 3 M and the Pentium 4 M. The P3M was a fast mobile chip, but they needed something faster and lower in heat production. So, taking the technologies from the Pentium 4 (Netburst-style micro-ops fusion, QDR FSB (and pretty much all of the logic dedicated to bussing), SSE2, (SSE3 eventually), along with the Pentium 4's voltage profile, etc), they made a fairly compatible chip (testimony to the ability to use a small adapter to fix the pinout for the P4 board to use a PM).
Now, the Pentium 4 serves the Pentium M in one last service until they can retire this iteration of Netburst; a technological proving ground for new technologies. Think about all of the innovation going into the Pentium 4, better virtualization support (vanderpool), dual cores, EM64T, NX Bit, the list goes on and on. These are all things that will find their way into the Pentium M, but aren't appropriate as of current for a mobile processor.
Lastly, I'd hate to say that Netburst is dead. I think just as everyone does, Intel has made some mistakes with the Pentium 4 that are unforgivable. The next iteration of the Pentium series based on Netburst will probably have the Pentium M's cache system, a shortened pipeline, and a lot of micro-op revamping. It'll probably only see the light of day in the Xeon department, giving Intel something they've been working towards for quite a while; having different archetectures, better suited for work that they're doing.
Normally, I'd go into everything AMD is doing to compete, but since this articles all about Intel, I'm just gonna sit back and be done. Note that I'm an all-around processor fanboy from lowly ARMs to the biggest of the bigboy processors IBM's cranking out.
Well, I have a right to my opinion too, and it's based off of the simple economic prinipal of the law of demand. When demand is virtually non-existant, cost is through the roof (basically, you'll have to build your own, which, you Linux guys won't have too much of an objection with, eh?).
I expect to see the media players like Dell's to become more and more feature rich, but I also expect to see music players as a whole go more and more towards the iPod; design simplicity, and cheap components. While not everyone would consider a laptop HD as a cheap component, the only viable alternative is flash, and to get flash in the densities of HDs would require multiple thousands of dollars.
Because, honestly, nobody knows how ubiquitous Google is except for Google. Your number is complete and total rubbish.
The book, Google Hacking, exists because there's a such thing as "Google Hacking", and google is an accepted English word meaning "to search". If you want to think about it, Google Hacking means exactly the same thing as Search Hacking, which really isn't that different from Search Engine Hacking, especially if you're talking about the internet.
Semantics aside, Google is a dataheap waiting to be mined. Just about anything you want to know about human patterns dealing with the Internet can be figured out through Google in some way or another, and a lot of patterns that are offline can be assessed as well (Maps? Local? News?).
Sorry kid, we passed that stop almost 4 years ago with the RIO players (except that OGG part.. but if you're seriously using OGG, well, I'm sorry. It might offer superior compression, I dunno, but nothing supports it and nothing ever will. MP3 (and too soon, MP4) is too ubiquitous to ever seriously be challenged).
The fact is, rechargeable batteries are better all around. Better for the environment, better for battery life, even though it might be more inconvienent to recharge. And if that's your problem there are plenty of add-on devices that supply external power to portable media players, cell phones, laptops, etc, while being extremely portable themselves.
As for flash cards, I'd love that too, but it just seems inpractical to carry around all of those flash cards when your player has an integrated thumbnail harddrive, and you've got a cable to attach it to your digital (video) camera. Even higher end digital cameras are starting to move towards including harddrives simply because the storage density is hard to beat.
Lastly, a request of my own (other than for people to stop trolling about Ogg, the superior format that failed just like Betamax): a waterproof player. I've found a few water-tight cases for my iPod, but they all make it feel more clunky than it should be. I'd love to hack my iPod and seal it up for water-tight uses, but it's still under warranty and will be for a long, long time, so I'm stuck with my shitty iCondom.
Nah, they'd simply give you a free copy of Windows as your commission, hell, they can buy off the EU with it, it's good enough for you!
I feel this definitely constitutes a brute force approach, and it might not always work, and there may be a few jurisdictional problems ;)
Well the answer's simple really. If you want to start a business around it, get a commercial-grade connection, and sell off. But if you're only serving to your neighbors and such, I really don't think they'd care very much; it only changes a few bucks they'd be getting otherwise. Just to be safe, you could get a "business-grade" connection and sign your neighbors as employees of your not-for-profit ;).