I think it is clear as to which is a more secure platform.
A vulnerability is just that, a possible vulnerability. If no one takes advantage of it then it is of little concern until someone does.
Look at Windows and the billions of dollars it has cost its users. If you want a real world impact that would be it.
Compare the total numbers of dollars lost to vulnerabilites in UNIX and Windows. I think you will find Windows is the worst. You can argue that is because of a bigger installed base but that maybe another reason why it is so vulnerable.
Rumors are that in a few days at Macworld Apple will be releasing new ibooks based on the Intel Yonah processor. Maybe a PC based Mac mini as well.
I tried the Mac Dev version on mine but it lacks SSE2 and would not work. I think Apple should release OS X to any PC as Microsoft really needs the competition. It would prove to be good for Microsoft in the end.
I know I come off sounding like a Mac head and I probably am but I have been using PC's for just as long and have an MCP, MCSE and MCSE:E under my belt as well.
You can also use VLC or another player. I just use the Mac and PC to copy.....er backup DVD's....not watch them. All my outboard firedrives I put together myself with enclosures from tigerdirect and pioneer AO9's and 109's.
You are right about the iPod. Not so much as it is tied to one computer but that it is a pain to get the music back off the thing. However freeware and shareware do the job well.
Burning iTunes songs to a CD will remove the copy protection. Even with iTunes a click away I will often use xmms when I am in the terminal just for fun. It is easier to tweak when I telnet into my mac.
What I do like is that someone gave me an old X10 firecracker. I downloaded a unix program and complied it and can now control it via shell scripts via AppleScript and Automator. True, I could have hooked it to the PC and downloaded a windows program but doing it in unix was much more fun!
What I meant was that PC can't complain that it is not as fast or the same as a PC, since they will being using basically the same thing now. I hope Apple does release the OS so it will work with every PC, there is little reason for them not to now.
I don't know about the product lines however. With Apple build to order you could have as many options as the PC side has. I do agree with the build it yourself. I don't remember the last time I actually bought a PC I did not put together myself, probably 1985-1987. I have used both platforms since they came out and computers in general since 1978.
It is possible the new machines will run OS X with its unix core and can boot to any other intel based OS. This might change the equation as to what is restrictive. As far as Apple going out of business that old shoe has been around since Apple began. Many so called computer analysts preached doom and gloom for Apple yet did not see the end of many PC companies. Even now some are saying this while putting a good spin on why Gateway has not turned a profit in two years.
Dell is also making music players....they don't sell to many of them but they do make them. If we were on bizzaro world and the Dell players were as popular as the iPod would we worry that Dell might stop making computers since they have had decreased sales over the past year?
Get a Mac. Better software, no viri and best of all no Microsoft.
With Apple moving to intel this is little reason for hard core PC not to consider it anymore. Since OS X is based in unix you can compile and run unix programs from the terminal and run KDE from X11. Even Microsoft office is better on OS X.
This is from a group who does not want you to do illegal pirating but has no problems with its members being involved in payola to boost sales of their doggy artists, trust me I use the term artist very loosely and to also rip off these artists with very one sided contracts and are involved in price fixing the digital downloads they never wanted. They refuse to go after the real cause of their loss of profits, those who mass copy and sell their product.
Let's face it, the RIAA and its members had a very sweet deal. The made boat loads of money from album from artists who one had one or two decent songs on an album but you were stuck buying the whole thing. Add to this the one sided contracts, the cocaine used to grease the disc jockeys to play their crap. They had a good thing going and here comes digital music to spoil the party.
The people who made buggy whips probably felt the same way when that evil automobile started catching on with the public. Just imagine what would happen if someone started a digital only label and sold their songs for only 49 cents and gave most of that to the artist. Make the band responsible for their own advertising, the label would just make sure that the music got to the popular music download sites and took care of the transactions. Hey.....I just may patent that idea!
Nice to see that Microsoft has not changed their ways. Over this past year it made one wonder if they had learned humility. Guess not, it is back to Microsofts way or the highway.
Not that I know of. Since I am a dotmac user, ADC member and have signed up for various Apple email mailing lists I get a ton of email from Apple. I don't always read all of it.
I have used programs like Napster, back in the day, and limewire to download some songs or discs. Most of them were just a lazy move on my part. I already owned the disc but 90 percent of them are in storage and it was easier to download than to make a trip for a song or disc. Since I already own them I don't count those downloads as "pirated". I have been really lucky in my collection of compact discs. I have quite a few with misprints and a lot of out of print discs.
I find it amazing that the music industry has to blame piracy first and foremost as a cause of declining sales. It should be clear to anyone that if they are using payola to push records by J-lo and the Dixie Chicks is that these records suck.
The are facing the same problem that the American automobile industry did in the 70's. The are making a crappy product that nobody wants and are in denial. The are slow to adopt new business models that their customers want. Why release a 10-12 song CD when the artist can only write 1 or 2 good songs? They may claim file sharing as the main cause as it is the easiest to try and stop. It is very easy to have the feds and courts do the dirty work for them. It is much harder for them to stop the main cause of piracy, that of people selling knock-off products. Besides the mobs of several countries are involved in that business and it would mean getting their hands dirty in trying to stop it. It is easier to go after the consumers.
Most of the iPod owners I know, including myself, have stopped using file sharing services and now buy our music from the iTunes Music Store. I use iTunes podcasting feature more than anything else these days. It is more cutting edge than the music groups put out these days. The few tunes that I don't buy on iTunes are given away free by unsigned groups who want the airplay and have not signed a deal with the evil record companies.
As far as these artist claiming they did not know that their companies were doing the payola thing.....please, if you are that ignorant of where your money goes you should not be in the business. They knew payola was going on as spending money to get spins puts more money in their pockets in the long run.
That is one view that in the end towards the fall of Greenland when the climate was getting colder may have been true. The Vikings also had after 985 lots of grazing animals. Lots of cattle, sheep and goats. Cattle and sheep need large amounts of fertile grasslands. I am not saying the entire country was one green grassland, far from it. For several hundred years Greenland and the Vikings did prosper and had plenty of wood to use for even trivial use. As the climate grew colder they grew weaker and the ice bridging that was not present before allowed Inuits to move down from other regions and attack the weakened Viking people. Vikings were use to surviving in cold climates but not as cold as Greenland became. The Inuits were much more accustomed to the colder climates and had the advantage.
You can tell there was a great climatic change there as to reach the old Viking settlements many areas had to remove layers of sand, soil and permafrost. Large numbers of cattle would not survive in areas of permafrost.
Both the little ice age and the warmer temperatures before are pretty much agreed on by all scientist. Actually both were responsible for both the lives and deaths of many people around Europe and middle east at that time. Mostly by making the environment palatable to disease carrying insects and animals.
It may turn out then when the shift comes and one is coming at sometime in the future, that the animals may handle it better than we do. They have been around, pretty much in their present form, for longer than we have and thus have seen more shifts.
The problem I have with some environmentalists is they subscribe to the stable earth view. That the climate has not changed until man started messing with it. In fact between 1350 and 1850 we had what was called the little lce age. The was responsible for the many glaciers and ice depths that are now melting. Around 985 the Vikings were populating Greenland, they called it Greenland because of the abundant grasslands and forests present on it. In fact the temperatures back then were warmer than today.
Do I think we are warming the environment, sure I think we are. Are we responsible for all of the warming. I don't think so. The problem is we don't have enough information to be sure. Environmentalists in the 1800-1900's thought that the solution for local pollution was to make the smokestacks of factories higher. It did help with local pollutions but spread the problem over a much larger area. Another problem not helping the cause of the environmentalists is that anything they wish to come up with says proves their point. It is hotter than laster year, it is colder than last year, it is the same as last year, we have more rain, less rain, the same rain, more storm, less storms, the same storms, all seem to them to prove that disaster is around the corner.
Should we all be driving electric cars? Well it would cut our dependence on oil or at least cut it down but where is the electricity to come from. California democrats have vetoed again and again any new hydroelectric or nuclear plants. The power to charge electric cars has to come from someplace.
Apple did have a rather open ended agreement with Microsoft about what they could take from the MacOS but the finding was that menus and windows were generic and the case was thrown out on those findings.
Even if you take that out of the equation, Apple did have the menu system on a handheld device that did play sounds, the newton. It was not a music player by any stretch.
Don't you think if Creative had the trump card they claim to have they would have used it by now? What are they waiting for, Apple to rake in the cash during the Xmas season?
If they do play the card sometime and the case is toss, as I am sure it will be, then they have lost. If they keep it to themselves and just threaten to use it without mention a company it my worry one of their competitors into making a deal. I believe that is what they are doing now, shopping for a deal with another player maker.
Microsoft has soiled any chance that you had with this patent. When Microsoft won the suit Apple brought against them about interface elements the judge ruled that things like menus and windows are generic and thus public domain and not protected.
Apple would still win on proof of concept as the have had nested menus on devices long before Creative. Both Macs and the newton was using them long before creative got into the Music Player business.
I have already sent a letter off to Warner telling them I am boycotting all Warner media. I told them that they are a little mixed up, having access to the lyrics is not against the law, payola is. I also pointed out the fact the cheap packaging where the original packaging that contained lyrics is replaced by a simple card rips off the artist and puts the profit in their pockets.
I suspect they could care less but they have lost one customer.
I agree. Microsoft took a great thing, a standards based internet, and screwed it up so bad it will be years before the damage can be fixed, if at all.
The worst offender is Active X. Great if you are running Windows and Internet Explorer but bad for the rest of the world. Of course when Microsoft proposed this they were going to give it to the world and provide the tools for all platforms but that never happened. Now we have websites and even embedded devices that will only work on their platform. Of course that was the plan. The only way to own the internet is to make sure it only works with your OS. This has spread to their servers and content creation tools. When now have sites that only work when running windows and internet explorer.
When sun made a deal with Microsoft for Java it was to be a two way street. Any of the code developed for Java was to be sent to sun and the rest of the world. Microsoft accepted. Until it came time for their code to be opened sent back to sun where it would be open for all.
With Microsoft you have to wonder what their intentions are. Most often it is to entrench their OS at all costs, despite the gloss their PR department tells the rest of the world. As for not going through the "official" standards channels there is probably a very good reason for that and Microsoft knows that.
Re:Ummm, so about that second law of thermodynamic
on
Artificial Tornadoes
·
· Score: 1
In order for this to spawn a real tornado it would have to tie into the jet stream. I doubt this device could spawn even a half way powerful whirlwind.
A bonus, if it could produce a decent amount of convective upflow it could be sold to farmers for use in orchards to create airflow and prevent a hard freeze. I doubt it would be any more energy efficient than the currently used devices.
My mouse could be neon green with 60 flashing lights on it and I would never notice it. I just went to the AT&T natural voice site and created a few female voice messages with the text I typed in to alert me of mail from certain people or business. Since she has an English accent it is different from my regular computer voice. I am using OS X so I just create a mail rule that will color the background of the message and then play the sound file for that person. Since I leave mail running in the background most of the day I will always know when I get an email from a person that I know, even if I am not looking at the computer.
The problem was that those claiming gloom and doom often glossed over some major facts to make their points. Often being either uninformed or lying to make the figures fit. They have said, and sadly some still say, that the climate of the last 2000 years has been stable and warming. This is not true. Earth went through a period of cold called the little ice age from 1350 to 1850. Even as far as 500 to 850 the earth was much warmer than it is now. Greenland was actually green when the Vikings landed there and set up colonies. There were even forests on Greenland.
The earth has gone though much more drastic changes than it has since we have been around. Even if we do heat it up the earth will correct itself once we are gone. China is one of the most major polluters on the planet now but you don't hear much about trying to stop them. One thing environmentalist will have to deal with in their quest for reduced emissions is that energy will need to come from somewhere. If not from nuclear power then from more dams on more rivers. Solar power on a home by home basis would help quite a bit but most will not want to pay for it. Houses built into the ground would also cut energy use drastically but there is extra cost in that as well. Even adobe houses would help in areas that would benefit from that but then the government has to step in to raise the cost on that in an effort to protect ourselves.
Apple is rumored to have an 'iTunes" like view of the filesystem upcoming in 10.5. It is getting close if you consider Apples Spotlight search engine, which I am using more and more to hunt down applications and files that I don't use often. Microsoft is working on something close to spotlight for Vista. Does Microsoft have an R&D anymore or do they just get the latest version of OS X and reverse engineer?
With the amount of files we are dealing with these days we need a new way to find them. Apple is getting close but it still needs work. Windows has nowhere to go but up from their terrible search engine in XP.
I wish Apples Hot Sauce project would have panned out into something useful. Their 3d based browsers with relationships was quite cool and with todays processors and graphic cards would have been a nice alternative view...more so with spotlight metadata.
Of course most of the power of the supercomputer will be used to run Anti-Virus, Anti-Adware and to download ads to display in the terminal.
I can see it now.
"Virus detected- Cleaned"
"Adware detected- Cleaned"
C:|| Run genome project calc
"Preparing to run genome project calc but first a word from geritol"
"Loading Geritol ad........do you have MSN?............loading..........Try Windows Vista, it's cool..........loading.........."
This web page is even more funny after reading the article about how most of the Microsoft employees have iPods.
I also find it funny that people talk about the Steve Jobs reality distortion field but no one calls these people trying to compete with the iPod for the same thing. Microsoft calls a 64kbps WMA CD Quality, Creative calls the same 64kbps WMA high quailty. This is done to appear that these players have more storage than an iPod. While I am not a shuffle fan I do thing the hard drive based iPods are the best MP3 players out there.
The fact the cherryos uses the same MAC address as PearPC pretty much means they ripped off the code.
The chance they would use the same code is 281,474,976,710,656 to 1.
If the PearPC group can lay claim to the first 3 digit groups, such as 00 FF C0, and those were assigned to PearPC then the case is pretty much closed.
Even though I am getting close to my MCSE and do a lot of work on Windows I more productive on the Mac. The Mac makes me feel like the computer is working for me. With Windows I feel like I am working for the computer.
With Windows virus updates come in on a daily basis, if you surf the net then you have to run ad-aware. I have saved a lot of grief and work by not even using Windows for email. I do all of my email on the Mac. I prefer the Mac version of Microsoft Office over the PC version and I can do over 90 percent of everything I need to do on the Mac.
I even find it easier to test bed stuff in Virtual PC than using my real PC. The best thing I ever did with my PC was to dump Windows XP Pro and install Windows 2000 Pro.
Actually since this is Microsofts SOP Bill is open to getting all the evil put on his head.
If, as microsoft claims, their product is the best and most cost effective then why do they need to pressure politicians, smear the competition, etc.
Standard Oil did exactly the same thing and they got a lot more bad press. Getty was cosidered truly evil was displayed that way in the press. Gates and Balmer are doing the same thing and are pretty much getting a free ride.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it is clear as to which is a more secure platform.
A vulnerability is just that, a possible vulnerability. If no one takes advantage of it then it is of little concern until someone does.
Look at Windows and the billions of dollars it has cost its users. If you want a real world impact that would be it.
Compare the total numbers of dollars lost to vulnerabilites in UNIX and Windows. I think you will find Windows is the worst. You can argue that is because of a bigger installed base but that maybe another reason why it is so vulnerable.
Rumors are that in a few days at Macworld Apple will be releasing new ibooks based on the Intel Yonah processor. Maybe a PC based Mac mini as well.
I tried the Mac Dev version on mine but it lacks SSE2 and would not work. I think Apple should release OS X to any PC as Microsoft really needs the competition. It would prove to be good for Microsoft in the end.
I know I come off sounding like a Mac head and I probably am but I have been using PC's for just as long and have an MCP, MCSE and MCSE:E under my belt as well.
You can also use VLC or another player. I just use the Mac and PC to copy.....er backup DVD's....not watch them. All my outboard firedrives I put together myself with enclosures from tigerdirect and pioneer AO9's and 109's.
You are right about the iPod. Not so much as it is tied to one computer but that it is a pain to get the music back off the thing. However freeware and shareware do the job well.
Burning iTunes songs to a CD will remove the copy protection. Even with iTunes a click away I will often use xmms when I am in the terminal just for fun. It is easier to tweak when I telnet into my mac.
What I do like is that someone gave me an old X10 firecracker. I downloaded a unix program and complied it and can now control it via shell scripts via AppleScript and Automator. True, I could have hooked it to the PC and downloaded a windows program but doing it in unix was much more fun!
What I meant was that PC can't complain that it is not as fast or the same as a PC, since they will being using basically the same thing now. I hope Apple does release the OS so it will work with every PC, there is little reason for them not to now.
I don't know about the product lines however. With Apple build to order you could have as many options as the PC side has. I do agree with the build it yourself. I don't remember the last time I actually bought a PC I did not put together myself, probably 1985-1987. I have used both platforms since they came out and computers in general since 1978.
It is possible the new machines will run OS X with its unix core and can boot to any other intel based OS. This might change the equation as to what is restrictive. As far as Apple going out of business that old shoe has been around since Apple began. Many so called computer analysts preached doom and gloom for Apple yet did not see the end of many PC companies. Even now some are saying this while putting a good spin on why Gateway has not turned a profit in two years.
Dell is also making music players....they don't sell to many of them but they do make them. If we were on bizzaro world and the Dell players were as popular as the iPod would we worry that Dell might stop making computers since they have had decreased sales over the past year?
Get a Mac. Better software, no viri and best of all no Microsoft.
With Apple moving to intel this is little reason for hard core PC not to consider it anymore. Since OS X is based in unix you can compile and run unix programs from the terminal and run KDE from X11. Even Microsoft office is better on OS X.
This is from a group who does not want you to do illegal pirating but has no problems with its members being involved in payola to boost sales of their doggy artists, trust me I use the term artist very loosely and to also rip off these artists with very one sided contracts and are involved in price fixing the digital downloads they never wanted. They refuse to go after the real cause of their loss of profits, those who mass copy and sell their product.
Let's face it, the RIAA and its members had a very sweet deal. The made boat loads of money from album from artists who one had one or two decent songs on an album but you were stuck buying the whole thing. Add to this the one sided contracts, the cocaine used to grease the disc jockeys to play their crap. They had a good thing going and here comes digital music to spoil the party.
The people who made buggy whips probably felt the same way when that evil automobile started catching on with the public. Just imagine what would happen if someone started a digital only label and sold their songs for only 49 cents and gave most of that to the artist. Make the band responsible for their own advertising, the label would just make sure that the music got to the popular music download sites and took care of the transactions. Hey.....I just may patent that idea!
Microsoft see, Microsoft pound, Microsoft crush!
Nice to see that Microsoft has not changed their ways. Over this past year it made one wonder if they had learned humility. Guess not, it is back to Microsofts way or the highway.
Not that I know of. Since I am a dotmac user, ADC member and have signed up for various Apple email mailing lists I get a ton of email from Apple. I don't always read all of it.
I have used programs like Napster, back in the day, and limewire to download some songs or discs. Most of them were just a lazy move on my part. I already owned the disc but 90 percent of them are in storage and it was easier to download than to make a trip for a song or disc. Since I already own them I don't count those downloads as "pirated". I have been really lucky in my collection of compact discs. I have quite a few with misprints and a lot of out of print discs.
I find it amazing that the music industry has to blame piracy first and foremost as a cause of declining sales. It should be clear to anyone that if they are using payola to push records by J-lo and the Dixie Chicks is that these records suck.
The are facing the same problem that the American automobile industry did in the 70's. The are making a crappy product that nobody wants and are in denial. The are slow to adopt new business models that their customers want. Why release a 10-12 song CD when the artist can only write 1 or 2 good songs? They may claim file sharing as the main cause as it is the easiest to try and stop. It is very easy to have the feds and courts do the dirty work for them. It is much harder for them to stop the main cause of piracy, that of people selling knock-off products. Besides the mobs of several countries are involved in that business and it would mean getting their hands dirty in trying to stop it. It is easier to go after the consumers.
Most of the iPod owners I know, including myself, have stopped using file sharing services and now buy our music from the iTunes Music Store. I use iTunes podcasting feature more than anything else these days. It is more cutting edge than the music groups put out these days. The few tunes that I don't buy on iTunes are given away free by unsigned groups who want the airplay and have not signed a deal with the evil record companies.
As far as these artist claiming they did not know that their companies were doing the payola thing.....please, if you are that ignorant of where your money goes you should not be in the business. They knew payola was going on as spending money to get spins puts more money in their pockets in the long run.
It would depend on many things. Path of the jetstream and other factors. No a warmer need not flood Europe. It really depends on how warm and where.
That is one view that in the end towards the fall of Greenland when the climate was getting colder may have been true. The Vikings also had after 985 lots of grazing animals. Lots of cattle, sheep and goats. Cattle and sheep need large amounts of fertile grasslands. I am not saying the entire country was one green grassland, far from it. For several hundred years Greenland and the Vikings did prosper and had plenty of wood to use for even trivial use. As the climate grew colder they grew weaker and the ice bridging that was not present before allowed Inuits to move down from other regions and attack the weakened Viking people. Vikings were use to surviving in cold climates but not as cold as Greenland became. The Inuits were much more accustomed to the colder climates and had the advantage.
You can tell there was a great climatic change there as to reach the old Viking settlements many areas had to remove layers of sand, soil and permafrost. Large numbers of cattle would not survive in areas of permafrost.
Both the little ice age and the warmer temperatures before are pretty much agreed on by all scientist. Actually both were responsible for both the lives and deaths of many people around Europe and middle east at that time. Mostly by making the environment palatable to disease carrying insects and animals.
It may turn out then when the shift comes and one is coming at sometime in the future, that the animals may handle it better than we do. They have been around, pretty much in their present form, for longer than we have and thus have seen more shifts.
The problem I have with some environmentalists is they subscribe to the stable earth view. That the climate has not changed until man started messing with it. In fact between 1350 and 1850 we had what was called the little lce age. The was responsible for the many glaciers and ice depths that are now melting. Around 985 the Vikings were populating Greenland, they called it Greenland because of the abundant grasslands and forests present on it. In fact the temperatures back then were warmer than today.
Do I think we are warming the environment, sure I think we are. Are we responsible for all of the warming. I don't think so. The problem is we don't have enough information to be sure. Environmentalists in the 1800-1900's thought that the solution for local pollution was to make the smokestacks of factories higher. It did help with local pollutions but spread the problem over a much larger area. Another problem not helping the cause of the environmentalists is that anything they wish to come up with says proves their point. It is hotter than laster year, it is colder than last year, it is the same as last year, we have more rain, less rain, the same rain, more storm, less storms, the same storms, all seem to them to prove that disaster is around the corner.
Should we all be driving electric cars? Well it would cut our dependence on oil or at least cut it down but where is the electricity to come from. California democrats have vetoed again and again any new hydroelectric or nuclear plants. The power to charge electric cars has to come from someplace.
Apple did have a rather open ended agreement with Microsoft about what they could take from the MacOS but the finding was that menus and windows were generic and the case was thrown out on those findings.
Even if you take that out of the equation, Apple did have the menu system on a handheld device that did play sounds, the newton. It was not a music player by any stretch.
Don't you think if Creative had the trump card they claim to have they would have used it by now? What are they waiting for, Apple to rake in the cash during the Xmas season?
If they do play the card sometime and the case is toss, as I am sure it will be, then they have lost. If they keep it to themselves and just threaten to use it without mention a company it my worry one of their competitors into making a deal. I believe that is what they are doing now, shopping for a deal with another player maker.
Microsoft has soiled any chance that you had with this patent. When Microsoft won the suit Apple brought against them about interface elements the judge ruled that things like menus and windows are generic and thus public domain and not protected.
Apple would still win on proof of concept as the have had nested menus on devices long before Creative. Both Macs and the newton was using them long before creative got into the Music Player business.
I have already sent a letter off to Warner telling them I am boycotting all Warner media. I told them that they are a little mixed up, having access to the lyrics is not against the law, payola is. I also pointed out the fact the cheap packaging where the original packaging that contained lyrics is replaced by a simple card rips off the artist and puts the profit in their pockets.
I suspect they could care less but they have lost one customer.
I agree. Microsoft took a great thing, a standards based internet, and screwed it up so bad it will be years before the damage can be fixed, if at all.
The worst offender is Active X. Great if you are running Windows and Internet Explorer but bad for the rest of the world. Of course when Microsoft proposed this they were going to give it to the world and provide the tools for all platforms but that never happened. Now we have websites and even embedded devices that will only work on their platform. Of course that was the plan. The only way to own the internet is to make sure it only works with your OS. This has spread to their servers and content creation tools. When now have sites that only work when running windows and internet explorer.
When sun made a deal with Microsoft for Java it was to be a two way street. Any of the code developed for Java was to be sent to sun and the rest of the world. Microsoft accepted. Until it came time for their code to be opened sent back to sun where it would be open for all.
With Microsoft you have to wonder what their intentions are. Most often it is to entrench their OS at all costs, despite the gloss their PR department tells the rest of the world. As for not going through the "official" standards channels there is probably a very good reason for that and Microsoft knows that.
In order for this to spawn a real tornado it would have to tie into the jet stream. I doubt this device could spawn even a half way powerful whirlwind.
A bonus, if it could produce a decent amount of convective upflow it could be sold to farmers for use in orchards to create airflow and prevent a hard freeze. I doubt it would be any more energy efficient than the currently used devices.
My mouse could be neon green with 60 flashing lights on it and I would never notice it. I just went to the AT&T natural voice site and created a few female voice messages with the text I typed in to alert me of mail from certain people or business. Since she has an English accent it is different from my regular computer voice. I am using OS X so I just create a mail rule that will color the background of the message and then play the sound file for that person. Since I leave mail running in the background most of the day I will always know when I get an email from a person that I know, even if I am not looking at the computer.
The problem was that those claiming gloom and doom often glossed over some major facts to make their points. Often being either uninformed or lying to make the figures fit. They have said, and sadly some still say, that the climate of the last 2000 years has been stable and warming. This is not true. Earth went through a period of cold called the little ice age from 1350 to 1850. Even as far as 500 to 850 the earth was much warmer than it is now. Greenland was actually green when the Vikings landed there and set up colonies. There were even forests on Greenland.
The earth has gone though much more drastic changes than it has since we have been around. Even if we do heat it up the earth will correct itself once we are gone. China is one of the most major polluters on the planet now but you don't hear much about trying to stop them. One thing environmentalist will have to deal with in their quest for reduced emissions is that energy will need to come from somewhere. If not from nuclear power then from more dams on more rivers. Solar power on a home by home basis would help quite a bit but most will not want to pay for it. Houses built into the ground would also cut energy use drastically but there is extra cost in that as well. Even adobe houses would help in areas that would benefit from that but then the government has to step in to raise the cost on that in an effort to protect ourselves.
With the amount of files we are dealing with these days we need a new way to find them. Apple is getting close but it still needs work. Windows has nowhere to go but up from their terrible search engine in XP.
I wish Apples Hot Sauce project would have panned out into something useful. Their 3d based browsers with relationships was quite cool and with todays processors and graphic cards would have been a nice alternative view...more so with spotlight metadata.
Of course most of the power of the supercomputer will be used to run Anti-Virus, Anti-Adware and to download ads to display in the terminal. I can see it now. "Virus detected- Cleaned" "Adware detected- Cleaned" C:|| Run genome project calc "Preparing to run genome project calc but first a word from geritol" "Loading Geritol ad........do you have MSN?............loading..........Try Windows Vista, it's cool..........loading.........."
This web page is even more funny after reading the article about how most of the Microsoft employees have iPods.
I also find it funny that people talk about the Steve Jobs reality distortion field but no one calls these people trying to compete with the iPod for the same thing. Microsoft calls a 64kbps WMA CD Quality, Creative calls the same 64kbps WMA high quailty. This is done to appear that these players have more storage than an iPod. While I am not a shuffle fan I do thing the hard drive based iPods are the best MP3 players out there.
The fact the cherryos uses the same MAC address as PearPC pretty much means they ripped off the code.
The chance they would use the same code is 281,474,976,710,656 to 1.
If the PearPC group can lay claim to the first 3 digit groups, such as 00 FF C0, and those were assigned to PearPC then the case is pretty much closed.
Without a doubt, MacOS X.
Even though I am getting close to my MCSE and do a lot of work on Windows I more productive on the Mac. The Mac makes me feel like the computer is working for me. With Windows I feel like I am working for the computer.
With Windows virus updates come in on a daily basis, if you surf the net then you have to run ad-aware. I have saved a lot of grief and work by not even using Windows for email. I do all of my email on the Mac. I prefer the Mac version of Microsoft Office over the PC version and I can do over 90 percent of everything I need to do on the Mac.
I even find it easier to test bed stuff in Virtual PC than using my real PC. The best thing I ever did with my PC was to dump Windows XP Pro and install Windows 2000 Pro.
Actually since this is Microsofts SOP Bill is open to getting all the evil put on his head.
If, as microsoft claims, their product is the best and most cost effective then why do they need to pressure politicians, smear the competition, etc.
Standard Oil did exactly the same thing and they got a lot more bad press. Getty was cosidered truly evil was displayed that way in the press. Gates and Balmer are doing the same thing and are pretty much getting a free ride.