"a few million back" - do you know what this is costing to do?
It is enormously expensive to fabricate, operate and move this hardware. I think a few million runs the repair operation for a day or so.
They *did* plan to immediately seal the well, which is what they started doing, but to do so they need to drill underneath it and close it off. It takes a long time (months) to drill to the necessary point so they can seal it. The reason it is pouring oil into the ocean is because the BOP is broken - there is nothing to seal off on top, because it is *busted*, which is what caused the problem in the first place.
It's not like they have a big button on the (sunken) rig that says "seal off well". Well, they do, but it shuts the valves on the BOP, which is *broken*.
The rig sank - these things happen when you're working at sea, especially with flammable hydrocarbons and high pressures. The BOP should have sealed the well when that occurred, but it did not. They are redundant, so something seriously went wrong for it to get to the state it is in now.
At no point were they twiddling their thumbs while oil was pouring out while they discussed whether to seal it off - of course they wanted to seal it, even if (to appease your need to see them as an evil empire) their goal was saving the oil field, since they need the broken well capped before they can drill a new one to exploit the field.
Ok, so you pay the extra $5-10 per gallon fir the fuel to pay for that hardware to be sitting idle at every well. Do you know how many wells there are?
They had to design and fabricate new equipment from scratch to deal with this.
Things don't move instantly in the oceanic world, nor can you plan for every contingency (at least not in an economically feasible way that the oil consumer is willing to bear).
They were not thinking "how can we save this well", they were thinking "how can we shut this thing off" - the well was already a dead end, there was no way to salvage it for oil. The plan was always (immediately) seal it off and start again - to do that you need to drill a relief well that takes months. In the meantime while you're doing that, perhaps we can try some mitigation steps like a funnel, and a top kill procedure (that can't be attempted until the well pressure is a certain level for risk of it making it much worse).
Chernobyl was "cockpit error" if we redesignate it to be something like:
Flying the plane 6 feet off the ground at just above stall speed and disabling all the "too low! pull up!" alarms, the stick shaker and the emergency anti-stall system and then turning off the engines to see if there was enough residual hydraulic pressure in the system to deploy the landing gear, in a plane that featured an emergency throttle up that deployed the air brakes for several seconds before the engines went to full power.
There was considerable human error in the Reactor 4 disaster, but it was hardly a textbook "cockpit error" situation.
The started drilling the relief well right away, and started the designing and planning for the top kill right away.
What, you think they have all that custom-manufactured deep water stuff just lying around, or that they shouldn't try easier things that might mitigate some of the dame in the meantime while they work on the proper solution?
Either way, the top kill is only temporary - the bottom kill (from the relief well, which they started drilling immediately) is the only way to properly seal it off. It takes a few months to drill.
Why is the parent flamebait? It's a serious concern. It's silly that my iPhone's browser displays more adverts than my desktop copy of Safari, and the phone's screen is smaller and is often browsing via 3G, so is even more annoying for downloading content that I do not want. At least the flash ads are a non issue.
Xcode is free, you just need to pay the $99 to be able to sell apps on the store (which you would have to do on either platform) and opening up the machines you can develop on means potentially more apps in the store. Maybe it might even drive a few Mac sales, by choice rather than necessity.
I have to admit it's a bit out of left field, but stranger things have happened (like Apple going Intel, or Steam being released on the Mac [Valve 6 years ago: "Half Life will NEVER be ported to the Mac" Valve yesterday: "Half Life 2 for Mac!"]).
Interesting, so it's not enough merely to offer to provide the source, it has to be available right alongside the compiled program from the same supplying site.
This would seem to indicate that the way to be fully compliant would be for Apple to host the source with the app so you could get both at the same time.
Indeed, they have already taken the app down because it is a GPL violation. There are other GPL apps on the store though that are in compliance, with the source available via developer website linked within the app - it's not a fundamental incompatibility with the app store, it seems to be a developer issue.
So the app maker provides a link to their website (as many thousands of apps on the app store do to have forums/feedback/further info for the app in question) and on that website they have a big link that says "download source code".
They can include all the GPL code they have used, and leave out any Apple code that is not allowed to be released. If it is impossible to separate it out like this, then it wasn't Apple's fault in the first place, it was the developers for using GPL code in a way that would not be allowed by the licence of the GPL itself - they'll just have to pull the app if this is so.
Prior to the discussions about the next iPhone appearing online, NO ONE used the capital "G" to refer to Apple's hardware generations, and ALL used it when referring to cell tech generations.
It is referred to as 3G and 3GS because those are the official Apple names for those version, with that capitalisation - they don't designate hardware generation, it's the actual name (albeit a confusing one).
Hey, don;t shoot the messenger - you're preaching to the choir. I brought up the problems with calling the 3G and 3GS iPhones by those names for exactly this reason.
I guess Apple hired the guys who decided on the names "USB Full Speed, USB High Speed", etc.
We are not sure what Apple will call it - it has not been announced, but we will find out at the WWDC keynote. All the tech journalists (and all through the gizmodo theft/buying stolen goods debacle ) everyone has been calling it the iPhone 4G, but it remains to be seen if that is the real name.
Yes, of course I do, but things change under different conditions, like a chip with an order of magnitude more transistors on it, operating at an order of magnitude faster than before.
I understand how N and P type semiconductors are made, but elements are not always uniform across temperature/pressure ranges - grey tin is a semiconductor below about 12 degrees C, but becomes a metal above that temperature.
At the scales we are talking about. things are not always how they seem.
What proprietary formats? I gave you specific examples. What proprietary and "lock in" data formats do they use?
What exactly do they "do in software" that restricts users more than Microsoft?
The provide *optional* software registration for OS X and several of their products - the pro apps are all optional registrations, it has nothing to do with activating or validating the installs.
The last bit of DRM on the data formats they use is on movies and TV shows from the iTunes store, which they are working on removing (like they did with music), but cannot do so unless the content providers (namely the movie and TV studios) agree.
They "take advantage" (you try to make it sound like adding commercial weight to an OSS project is a bad thing) of free software and yet still favour data transparency - there is nothing stopping them using a proprietary blob for their formats on the other side (for example, the mailbox format in Mail - they didn't have to use.mbox, or they could have used.mbox but wrapped it up inside an app bundle with Mac-only extensions, or their office formats (iWork etc) could have used a non-documented and difficult to reverse engineer XML format, instead it is well specced and open for anyone to write a full converter.
All you are doing is spreading FUD of your own. Apple are no angels, but your post is nothing more than accusations with no citation. I gave you examples, I expect them in return in a counter argument. Oh right, you don;t have any, you're just making it up.
I mean the iPhone 4G, which (if not the official Apple name for it) is how everyone is referring to the next release of the iPhone, due to be announced officially by Steve at the WWDC keynote next month.
It has a real keyboard already - they sold them at launch. It also has USB - the dock connector has pinouts for standard USB, you just need an adaptor.
It should have had an actual USB port on the side though - I agree that was a silly omission.
That's slightly skewed - this is the slow time for iPhone, especially with the 4G around the corner. There is no doubt that Android is making huge gains (I was in the O2 store yesterday and they had some lovely HTC handsets out on display with Android) - the real crunch is going to be how sales stack up when the 4G comes out.
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"a few million back" - do you know what this is costing to do?
It is enormously expensive to fabricate, operate and move this hardware. I think a few million runs the repair operation for a day or so.
They *did* plan to immediately seal the well, which is what they started doing, but to do so they need to drill underneath it and close it off. It takes a long time (months) to drill to the necessary point so they can seal it. The reason it is pouring oil into the ocean is because the BOP is broken - there is nothing to seal off on top, because it is *busted*, which is what caused the problem in the first place.
It's not like they have a big button on the (sunken) rig that says "seal off well". Well, they do, but it shuts the valves on the BOP, which is *broken*.
The rig sank - these things happen when you're working at sea, especially with flammable hydrocarbons and high pressures. The BOP should have sealed the well when that occurred, but it did not. They are redundant, so something seriously went wrong for it to get to the state it is in now.
At no point were they twiddling their thumbs while oil was pouring out while they discussed whether to seal it off - of course they wanted to seal it, even if (to appease your need to see them as an evil empire) their goal was saving the oil field, since they need the broken well capped before they can drill a new one to exploit the field.
Ok, so you pay the extra $5-10 per gallon fir the fuel to pay for that hardware to be sitting idle at every well. Do you know how many wells there are?
They had to design and fabricate new equipment from scratch to deal with this.
Things don't move instantly in the oceanic world, nor can you plan for every contingency (at least not in an economically feasible way that the oil consumer is willing to bear).
They were not thinking "how can we save this well", they were thinking "how can we shut this thing off" - the well was already a dead end, there was no way to salvage it for oil. The plan was always (immediately) seal it off and start again - to do that you need to drill a relief well that takes months. In the meantime while you're doing that, perhaps we can try some mitigation steps like a funnel, and a top kill procedure (that can't be attempted until the well pressure is a certain level for risk of it making it much worse).
The i in "iMac" does not stand for the square root of minus one.
All Macs are in the real set.
Chernobyl was "cockpit error" if we redesignate it to be something like:
Flying the plane 6 feet off the ground at just above stall speed and disabling all the "too low! pull up!" alarms, the stick shaker and the emergency anti-stall system and then turning off the engines to see if there was enough residual hydraulic pressure in the system to deploy the landing gear, in a plane that featured an emergency throttle up that deployed the air brakes for several seconds before the engines went to full power.
There was considerable human error in the Reactor 4 disaster, but it was hardly a textbook "cockpit error" situation.
The started drilling the relief well right away, and started the designing and planning for the top kill right away.
What, you think they have all that custom-manufactured deep water stuff just lying around, or that they shouldn't try easier things that might mitigate some of the dame in the meantime while they work on the proper solution?
Either way, the top kill is only temporary - the bottom kill (from the relief well, which they started drilling immediately) is the only way to properly seal it off. It takes a few months to drill.
"Financial interest in H.264" - you mean 1 patent, out of the thousands in the pool.
I'm sure they bet the company on that one!
Why is the parent flamebait? It's a serious concern. It's silly that my iPhone's browser displays more adverts than my desktop copy of Safari, and the phone's screen is smaller and is often browsing via 3G, so is even more annoying for downloading content that I do not want. At least the flash ads are a non issue.
Why not?
Xcode is free, you just need to pay the $99 to be able to sell apps on the store (which you would have to do on either platform) and opening up the machines you can develop on means potentially more apps in the store. Maybe it might even drive a few Mac sales, by choice rather than necessity.
I have to admit it's a bit out of left field, but stranger things have happened (like Apple going Intel, or Steam being released on the Mac [Valve 6 years ago: "Half Life will NEVER be ported to the Mac" Valve yesterday: "Half Life 2 for Mac!"]).
"completely proprietary" - which is why they have so many open source projects going, and use .mbox, documented xml, aac, h.264, .ics...
They are strongly vertically integrated, yes, but they use formats that enable you to easily move your data around.
Yes, for all those things, I have the iMac that the iPad syncs with.
It also acts as the server for my XBMC box.
Interesting, so it's not enough merely to offer to provide the source, it has to be available right alongside the compiled program from the same supplying site.
This would seem to indicate that the way to be fully compliant would be for Apple to host the source with the app so you could get both at the same time.
Indeed, they have already taken the app down because it is a GPL violation. There are other GPL apps on the store though that are in compliance, with the source available via developer website linked within the app - it's not a fundamental incompatibility with the app store, it seems to be a developer issue.
So the app maker provides a link to their website (as many thousands of apps on the app store do to have forums/feedback/further info for the app in question) and on that website they have a big link that says "download source code".
They can include all the GPL code they have used, and leave out any Apple code that is not allowed to be released. If it is impossible to separate it out like this, then it wasn't Apple's fault in the first place, it was the developers for using GPL code in a way that would not be allowed by the licence of the GPL itself - they'll just have to pull the app if this is so.
Prior to the discussions about the next iPhone appearing online, NO ONE used the capital "G" to refer to Apple's hardware generations, and ALL used it when referring to cell tech generations.
It is referred to as 3G and 3GS because those are the official Apple names for those version, with that capitalisation - they don't designate hardware generation, it's the actual name (albeit a confusing one).
Hey, don;t shoot the messenger - you're preaching to the choir. I brought up the problems with calling the 3G and 3GS iPhones by those names for exactly this reason.
I guess Apple hired the guys who decided on the names "USB Full Speed, USB High Speed", etc.
We are not sure what Apple will call it - it has not been announced, but we will find out at the WWDC keynote. All the tech journalists (and all through the gizmodo theft/buying stolen goods debacle ) everyone has been calling it the iPhone 4G, but it remains to be seen if that is the real name.
Yes, of course I do, but things change under different conditions, like a chip with an order of magnitude more transistors on it, operating at an order of magnitude faster than before.
I understand how N and P type semiconductors are made, but elements are not always uniform across temperature/pressure ranges - grey tin is a semiconductor below about 12 degrees C, but becomes a metal above that temperature.
At the scales we are talking about. things are not always how they seem.
Silicon is a semiconductor itself - it may not be suitable if you pack millions of these little 7 atom transistors together, but who knows.
You can just keep it in an inert atmosphere or cover it in an inert insulator.
You can store phosphorus under oil relatively easily. No need for a vacuum per se.
"Are you sure you want to insert a proton?"
(Positive, Cancel)
What proprietary formats? I gave you specific examples. What proprietary and "lock in" data formats do they use?
What exactly do they "do in software" that restricts users more than Microsoft?
The provide *optional* software registration for OS X and several of their products - the pro apps are all optional registrations, it has nothing to do with activating or validating the installs.
The last bit of DRM on the data formats they use is on movies and TV shows from the iTunes store, which they are working on removing (like they did with music), but cannot do so unless the content providers (namely the movie and TV studios) agree.
They "take advantage" (you try to make it sound like adding commercial weight to an OSS project is a bad thing) of free software and yet still favour data transparency - there is nothing stopping them using a proprietary blob for their formats on the other side (for example, the mailbox format in Mail - they didn't have to use .mbox, or they could have used .mbox but wrapped it up inside an app bundle with Mac-only extensions, or their office formats (iWork etc) could have used a non-documented and difficult to reverse engineer XML format, instead it is well specced and open for anyone to write a full converter.
All you are doing is spreading FUD of your own. Apple are no angels, but your post is nothing more than accusations with no citation. I gave you examples, I expect them in return in a counter argument. Oh right, you don;t have any, you're just making it up.
I mean the iPhone 4G, which (if not the official Apple name for it) is how everyone is referring to the next release of the iPhone, due to be announced officially by Steve at the WWDC keynote next month.
Not any more - except for the TV and movies on the iTunes store, due to content provider requirement.
The music has no DRM now, which they wanted from the start. On the whole, their formats are DRM free.
Consider that the iPhone also received similar hype on the lead up to its launch.
That is why I compared the sales rates of the two devices in their launch quarters, and because Apple themselves released figures.
Also, you're saying the iPad is cheap now? I thought it was a massively overpriced toy? Which is it today?
It has a real keyboard already - they sold them at launch. It also has USB - the dock connector has pinouts for standard USB, you just need an adaptor.
It should have had an actual USB port on the side though - I agree that was a silly omission.
That's slightly skewed - this is the slow time for iPhone, especially with the 4G around the corner. There is no doubt that Android is making huge gains (I was in the O2 store yesterday and they had some lovely HTC handsets out on display with Android) - the real crunch is going to be how sales stack up when the 4G comes out.