While everyone else who's replying to your post (which was carefully worded, I see, to avoid a Flamebait mod) focuses on usability to make justifications for the slowness of current Macs, I want to take a different tack.
Apple's computers are currently slower than the competition--that's undeniable. That they are beautiful machines, and a delight to use--as opposed to Wintels--is also undeniable. But I don't think you need the latter to justify people still buying computers despite the former; I think the first point is basically moot.
When I buy a computer, I'm not just buying one computer. I'm planning to buy tons of software for that platform, and to commit to spending a lot of time learning to use it. That means that I'm committing to that platform for the long term. It doesn't matter to me how fast the different platforms are in comparison to one another right now, it matters how it will usually be in the future. The way to tell which platform will be faster in the future is to look at which one has been faster in the past.
Consider this version of history, and please forgive any innaccuracies (it's as good as I can make it without pulling up a bunch of reference on Google, and I have neither the time nor the inclination for that):
1984: Apple releases Macintosh. Macs are slow, due to having to run a complicated interface on a primitive processor. People buy them anyway. Cool.
1990: Motorola has been updating the 68k processors, and the current best 68040 was, at its introduction, quite a good processor. Now it's getting old and beginning to slide.
1993ish: Apple is definitely behind in the race...until they, Motorola and IBM roll out the PowerPC 601. Blammo! So much for the competition.
1996ish: The G1 (601, 625) and G2 (603, 604, 603e, 604e) processors were all very impressive at their introductions, but are lagging behind new Pentium IIs. The G3 (750) comes out and blasts the P2 out of the water. Then the P3 comes out and is slower than the P2. Haha!
1998ish: The G3 is still the best thing around for integer calculations, but for floating point operations the P3 is pulling ahead. Too damn bad; Motorola is behind, and by the time the G4 (7500) comes out we'll be behind in everything. Then it'll bring us up to speed. (It does.)
2003: The G4 is lagging significantly behind the P4, and Motorola is getting worse and worse about this as time goes on, as that history shows. On the other hand, Apple is dropping Motorola in favor of IBM. The G5 will not be a Motorola chip, but a POWER4-based 970. Apple considers suing Motorola for being so pathetic.
The trouble is, were they so pathetic? History looks bad right now because we're in a slump, but basically we've been ahead about half the time over the past 19 years. This means that history gives no guide whatsoever to choosing a platform based on speed, because over the course of your commitment to the platform, you will have the fastest computer on the block about half the time, no matter which one you choose.
What it comes down to is this: I want a computer that's fast, especially if I'm shelling out thousands of dollars. On the other hand, any new computer will seem fast compared to my 1999 PowerMac G4, so I'd rather stick to the platform I know best, and the platform with greater usability *to me*. So, being a Mac user, the Mac has greater usability to me; to a Windows user, even though the Mac is better, Windows might have greater usability *to that person* because they know how to use it. It's the new buyer that needs to know that history, so they know to ignore speed and choose a platform based on usability--and then they need to test each platform against the other and make an informed decision.
Needless to say, they don't. What can I say? Neither did I. I've been a Mac evangelist for years, but I've never sat down and done a side-by-side and point-by-point comparison of the two platforms. I've noticed certain things along the way, and I've read some such comparisons, but
On one hand, suing spammers; on the other, forcing providers to disclose customer activity. It's dancing with the devil.
with this:
-sig. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
So, denying people information is bad, but asking for certain information is also bad? You can't have your cake and eat it too (certain Dylan lyrics notwithstanding). Either that, or in your heart you dream yourself AOL's master.
Well, Ralph Waldo Emerson did say that "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines" (Self-Reliance). Perhaps I'm just being petty by asking you not to be too blatantly hypocritical. Or maybe ol' Ralph was full of hooey.
Complaints resulted in the boilerplate response of "email service is for entertainment purposes only"
Entertainment purposes only? What the hell does that mean? That you can only use it to receive spam advertising "The EZ way t0 1ncrease pen1s size?" and "World's largest c0cks pounding tiny chicks"?
I have two levels of on-chip cache and one level of backside cache on my processor daugtercard. I also have RAM, and my hard drive has an 8 meg cache all its own. That makes my hard drive a 6th-level cache.
You may not have three levels of CPU cache, but I suspect you have a drive cache, in which case the drive itself is a 5th-level cache.
Why is it that I find more to comment on in people's.sigs these days than in their actual posts?
Since vacuums on Earth, manufactured by humans, are never true vacuums, even "in a vacuum" doesn't mean a complete lack of friction. However, consider this: The reason to eliminate friction is so that very tiny forces will have greater effects than they otherwise would. The less friction opposes a force, the more that force can accelerate an object. But the linear relationship there means that it's not necessary to eliminate friction completely, only to reduce it to where it can be considered negligible. Therefore, especially when it's a news reporter and not a scientist speaking, "no friction" means "negligible friction."
Of course, some weird quantum phenomena do have literally no friction at all, but that's not what this article talks about.
They have a legitimate right to expect to make a profit on messages they transfer. The fact that a huge number of the messages they transfer never reach anyone, and therefore don't net them a profit, is not for a legitimate reason, but rather due to some damn fool exploiting their servers, so they sued him. It makes sense.
This is disgusting. It sounds like, from the wording given in the headline, it would be hard for an ISP to give someone permission to use an NAT, even if they wanted to. Of course, maybe that's what all that extra legalese was for, and someone will tell me to RTFA.
Either way, this isn't something that should be illegal, it's something that should be a matter of your ISP's terms of service. My university doesn't allow routers in the dorm rooms, but I have one anyway; without this law, if I'm discovered, my service could be terminated. With the law, I could face some massive fine, which would probably be totally out of proportion to the "crime" committed. Shenanigans!
They're talking about lost revenues, which are different from actual costs. They charge ~$.01 for each email delivered, so if all those 4 million emails had been delivered they'd have earned $55,000 (rounding makes up the difference, I guess).
They're not saying it actually cost them that much to handle all that bogus mail. They're saying that it cost them something, and that normally they would be reimbursed in a certain proportion to the cost, so they should be reimbursed in the same way in this case.
They didn't agonize the lighting...they agonized over the lighting. There were three different types of lighting over which for them to agonize. Hence, they agonized over three types of lighting.
Interesting that some people, who can easily parse a file in an artificial language tailored to machines, can't begin to parse a sentence in their native natural language.
No login is required. The server is down right now. Hopefully it'll be back up by 6 a.m. tomorrow.
I'm on spring break, so my computer, Louise, is here at home with me. I just need to update my dhs.org account to reflect the change, and you can get all the MP3s you want.
Too bad this announcement came about a week and a half after I ordered some replacement fans for my Power Mac G4's power supply.
Well, I'll order the new thing and see which is quieter, the modified noisy PSU or the brand new one. I'll be damned if I'm going to send back the old one. Having options is a good thing.
My credit card number, on the other hand, should be private no matter what company I give it to. What does the government want with my credit card number? Do they want to look at my past transactions to see if I've been purchasing plastic explosives? Would I put something like that on my credit card?
No, libraries wouldn't have to rethink their existence. They would have the much easier task of ceasing their existence. Free borrowing of materials would simultaneously be made possible by Palladium (since it would give meaning to the word "borrow" in an electronic context by having the ability to make the borrowed materials expire) and made impossible by the same (since enough content controllers, whether creators or publishers, would charge for the privilege of lending on a per-use basis to make free lending, library-style, unviable).
The thing is that Palladium itself will soon become unviable if it makes libraries impossible. Content publishing and organizations like the MPAA and RIAA may be about limiting availability of material to make it profitable, but content creation is about reaching as wide an audience as possible, through whatever means. Authors have not, historically, complained about libraries lending their books out for free because the authors just want to reach as many people as they possibly can. As long as enough people are paying for the content to support the creator, said creator usually doesn't care if a substantial portion of those consumers aren't actually paying for the content.
Once upon a time, the music industry cared as little about piracy as the book publishing industry cares about libraries. There are some folks who will never buy your book, no matter what you do, but who would be willing to read it if they found it in the library; you, as an author, want as large an audience as possible, so you allow the library to lend it to them. There are some folks who will never buy your album, no matter what you do, but would be willing to listen to it if they got hold of it by some other means; you, as a recording artist, will probably stop them from hearing your work at all costs, even though it is not in your best interest to do so, because (a) you have been brainwashed by the RIAA to believe that it is in your best interest, or (b) the RIAA forces you to try to stop piracy because it is in their best interest for you to do so and they have a certain power over you as your employer (or an association that includes your employer, which amounts to the same thing).
I'm in college studying bassoon performance, and while I'm dual-enrolled with my university's literature, science and arts college to study physics as well, I'm seriously considering becoming a professional musician. I'm sure that the classical music world is enormously different from the pop music world, but nonetheless I think the fact that I don't see my views on this matter changing if I become a professional musician should lend some credibility to this line of reasoning.
Hmm, it's obviously late...I strayed from my original topic by a considerable distance. However, everything I said stands.
The DMCA, however, does violate fair use. I am able to make a copy of a DVD for my archives, but the DVCA contradicts copyright law by saying that I'm not allowed to. If Palladium isn't circumventable, then you may be correct; if it is, and people who circumvent it start being prosecuted under the DMCA, then there's a problem. However, the problem is not so much Palladium itself as the DMCA.
In any case, I'll continue to buy Macintoshes as long as that's a viable alternative. Voting with my pocketbook: I have never paid a dollar to Microsoft, and I never will. Hopefully at some point I will get away from even using pirated copies of Microsoft software. On the other hand, you won't see me suicide-bombing Microsoft headquarters in Redmond over this. I simply convert as many people around me as possible to the Mac and consider myself to be helping the cause.
Actually, almost every time I've bought anything online I've had to give either that three-digit code you mentioned or my "credit" card issuer's phone number, also on the back of the card. (Quotes because it's a debit card.)
That makes me feel a little safer, but if that information is being stored unencrypted alongside the number and expiration date, those companies deserve to be taken out and shot.
You encrypt the number like crazy when it's traveling to your server. You protect it with all the firewalls and whatnot you can muster. You limit who has legitimate access to it. And you don't encrypt it when it's stored on the server?
I don't get it. Passwords are stored encrypted. Why not credit cards?
For all the time I've spent reassuring my parents that it's okay to pay for things on the Internet because the encryption is impossible to break, things like this make me really nervous. I think we need legislation requiring all company databases that store credit cards to store them encrypted.
That way, if someone does break the encryption and get our credit card numbers, at least we can prosecute them under the DMCA!
Slashdot Mirror
While everyone else who's replying to your post (which was carefully worded, I see, to avoid a Flamebait mod) focuses on usability to make justifications for the slowness of current Macs, I want to take a different tack.
Apple's computers are currently slower than the competition--that's undeniable. That they are beautiful machines, and a delight to use--as opposed to Wintels--is also undeniable. But I don't think you need the latter to justify people still buying computers despite the former; I think the first point is basically moot.
When I buy a computer, I'm not just buying one computer. I'm planning to buy tons of software for that platform, and to commit to spending a lot of time learning to use it. That means that I'm committing to that platform for the long term. It doesn't matter to me how fast the different platforms are in comparison to one another right now, it matters how it will usually be in the future. The way to tell which platform will be faster in the future is to look at which one has been faster in the past.
Consider this version of history, and please forgive any innaccuracies (it's as good as I can make it without pulling up a bunch of reference on Google, and I have neither the time nor the inclination for that):
1984: Apple releases Macintosh. Macs are slow, due to having to run a complicated interface on a primitive processor. People buy them anyway. Cool.
1990: Motorola has been updating the 68k processors, and the current best 68040 was, at its introduction, quite a good processor. Now it's getting old and beginning to slide.
1993ish: Apple is definitely behind in the race...until they, Motorola and IBM roll out the PowerPC 601. Blammo! So much for the competition.
1996ish: The G1 (601, 625) and G2 (603, 604, 603e, 604e) processors were all very impressive at their introductions, but are lagging behind new Pentium IIs. The G3 (750) comes out and blasts the P2 out of the water. Then the P3 comes out and is slower than the P2. Haha!
1998ish: The G3 is still the best thing around for integer calculations, but for floating point operations the P3 is pulling ahead. Too damn bad; Motorola is behind, and by the time the G4 (7500) comes out we'll be behind in everything. Then it'll bring us up to speed. (It does.)
2003: The G4 is lagging significantly behind the P4, and Motorola is getting worse and worse about this as time goes on, as that history shows. On the other hand, Apple is dropping Motorola in favor of IBM. The G5 will not be a Motorola chip, but a POWER4-based 970. Apple considers suing Motorola for being so pathetic.
The trouble is, were they so pathetic? History looks bad right now because we're in a slump, but basically we've been ahead about half the time over the past 19 years. This means that history gives no guide whatsoever to choosing a platform based on speed, because over the course of your commitment to the platform, you will have the fastest computer on the block about half the time, no matter which one you choose.
What it comes down to is this: I want a computer that's fast, especially if I'm shelling out thousands of dollars. On the other hand, any new computer will seem fast compared to my 1999 PowerMac G4, so I'd rather stick to the platform I know best, and the platform with greater usability *to me*. So, being a Mac user, the Mac has greater usability to me; to a Windows user, even though the Mac is better, Windows might have greater usability *to that person* because they know how to use it. It's the new buyer that needs to know that history, so they know to ignore speed and choose a platform based on usability--and then they need to test each platform against the other and make an informed decision.
Needless to say, they don't. What can I say? Neither did I. I've been a Mac evangelist for years, but I've never sat down and done a side-by-side and point-by-point comparison of the two platforms. I've noticed certain things along the way, and I've read some such comparisons, but
with this:
So, denying people information is bad, but asking for certain information is also bad? You can't have your cake and eat it too (certain Dylan lyrics notwithstanding). Either that, or in your heart you dream yourself AOL's master.
Well, Ralph Waldo Emerson did say that "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines" (Self-Reliance). Perhaps I'm just being petty by asking you not to be too blatantly hypocritical. Or maybe ol' Ralph was full of hooey.
So, really, you're the one who has found a truly remarkable .sig that these 120 chars are too few to contain.
Ah well.
Your hard drive is a 4th level cache?
.sigs these days than in their actual posts?
I have two levels of on-chip cache and one level of backside cache on my processor daugtercard. I also have RAM, and my hard drive has an 8 meg cache all its own. That makes my hard drive a 6th-level cache.
You may not have three levels of CPU cache, but I suspect you have a drive cache, in which case the drive itself is a 5th-level cache.
Why is it that I find more to comment on in people's
Please don't use quotations without attribution. It's rude.
.sig is the property of Margaret Meade.
Your
What's the source of the quote in your .sig? I've read it before, but I can't remember where.
Since vacuums on Earth, manufactured by humans, are never true vacuums, even "in a vacuum" doesn't mean a complete lack of friction. However, consider this: The reason to eliminate friction is so that very tiny forces will have greater effects than they otherwise would. The less friction opposes a force, the more that force can accelerate an object. But the linear relationship there means that it's not necessary to eliminate friction completely, only to reduce it to where it can be considered negligible. Therefore, especially when it's a news reporter and not a scientist speaking, "no friction" means "negligible friction."
Of course, some weird quantum phenomena do have literally no friction at all, but that's not what this article talks about.
Maybe you didn't notice, but the system isn't closed. When you pump electrical energy into a system, it needn't obey the Second Law.
Good point. Sorry for the OT, but I felt the need to respond to that guy.
.sig.
By the way, nice
They have a legitimate right to expect to make a profit on messages they transfer. The fact that a huge number of the messages they transfer never reach anyone, and therefore don't net them a profit, is not for a legitimate reason, but rather due to some damn fool exploiting their servers, so they sued him. It makes sense.
That isn't the only similarity between this adiminstration and Nazi Germany.
This is disgusting. It sounds like, from the wording given in the headline, it would be hard for an ISP to give someone permission to use an NAT, even if they wanted to. Of course, maybe that's what all that extra legalese was for, and someone will tell me to RTFA.
Either way, this isn't something that should be illegal, it's something that should be a matter of your ISP's terms of service. My university doesn't allow routers in the dorm rooms, but I have one anyway; without this law, if I'm discovered, my service could be terminated. With the law, I could face some massive fine, which would probably be totally out of proportion to the "crime" committed. Shenanigans!
They're talking about lost revenues, which are different from actual costs. They charge ~$.01 for each email delivered, so if all those 4 million emails had been delivered they'd have earned $55,000 (rounding makes up the difference, I guess).
They're not saying it actually cost them that much to handle all that bogus mail. They're saying that it cost them something, and that normally they would be reimbursed in a certain proportion to the cost, so they should be reimbursed in the same way in this case.
They didn't agonize the lighting...they agonized over the lighting. There were three different types of lighting over which for them to agonize. Hence, they agonized over three types of lighting.
Interesting that some people, who can easily parse a file in an artificial language tailored to machines, can't begin to parse a sentence in their native natural language.
No login is required. The server is down right now. Hopefully it'll be back up by 6 a.m. tomorrow.
I'm on spring break, so my computer, Louise, is here at home with me. I just need to update my dhs.org account to reflect the change, and you can get all the MP3s you want.
Too bad this announcement came about a week and a half after I ordered some replacement fans for my Power Mac G4's power supply.
Well, I'll order the new thing and see which is quieter, the modified noisy PSU or the brand new one. I'll be damned if I'm going to send back the old one. Having options is a good thing.
Yeah, I only have one Windows computer, and I get the BSOD every single time I try to use it.
Of course, the fact that it's a Virtual PC might have something to do with this.
Many of us are getting tired of it as well.
My credit card number, on the other hand, should be private no matter what company I give it to. What does the government want with my credit card number? Do they want to look at my past transactions to see if I've been purchasing plastic explosives? Would I put something like that on my credit card?
No, libraries wouldn't have to rethink their existence. They would have the much easier task of ceasing their existence. Free borrowing of materials would simultaneously be made possible by Palladium (since it would give meaning to the word "borrow" in an electronic context by having the ability to make the borrowed materials expire) and made impossible by the same (since enough content controllers, whether creators or publishers, would charge for the privilege of lending on a per-use basis to make free lending, library-style, unviable).
The thing is that Palladium itself will soon become unviable if it makes libraries impossible. Content publishing and organizations like the MPAA and RIAA may be about limiting availability of material to make it profitable, but content creation is about reaching as wide an audience as possible, through whatever means. Authors have not, historically, complained about libraries lending their books out for free because the authors just want to reach as many people as they possibly can. As long as enough people are paying for the content to support the creator, said creator usually doesn't care if a substantial portion of those consumers aren't actually paying for the content.
Once upon a time, the music industry cared as little about piracy as the book publishing industry cares about libraries. There are some folks who will never buy your book, no matter what you do, but who would be willing to read it if they found it in the library; you, as an author, want as large an audience as possible, so you allow the library to lend it to them. There are some folks who will never buy your album, no matter what you do, but would be willing to listen to it if they got hold of it by some other means; you, as a recording artist, will probably stop them from hearing your work at all costs, even though it is not in your best interest to do so, because (a) you have been brainwashed by the RIAA to believe that it is in your best interest, or (b) the RIAA forces you to try to stop piracy because it is in their best interest for you to do so and they have a certain power over you as your employer (or an association that includes your employer, which amounts to the same thing).
I'm in college studying bassoon performance, and while I'm dual-enrolled with my university's literature, science and arts college to study physics as well, I'm seriously considering becoming a professional musician. I'm sure that the classical music world is enormously different from the pop music world, but nonetheless I think the fact that I don't see my views on this matter changing if I become a professional musician should lend some credibility to this line of reasoning.
Hmm, it's obviously late...I strayed from my original topic by a considerable distance. However, everything I said stands.
The DMCA, however, does violate fair use. I am able to make a copy of a DVD for my archives, but the DVCA contradicts copyright law by saying that I'm not allowed to. If Palladium isn't circumventable, then you may be correct; if it is, and people who circumvent it start being prosecuted under the DMCA, then there's a problem. However, the problem is not so much Palladium itself as the DMCA.
In any case, I'll continue to buy Macintoshes as long as that's a viable alternative. Voting with my pocketbook: I have never paid a dollar to Microsoft, and I never will. Hopefully at some point I will get away from even using pirated copies of Microsoft software. On the other hand, you won't see me suicide-bombing Microsoft headquarters in Redmond over this. I simply convert as many people around me as possible to the Mac and consider myself to be helping the cause.
Actually, almost every time I've bought anything online I've had to give either that three-digit code you mentioned or my "credit" card issuer's phone number, also on the back of the card. (Quotes because it's a debit card.)
That makes me feel a little safer, but if that information is being stored unencrypted alongside the number and expiration date, those companies deserve to be taken out and shot.
Why are so many companies so foolish?
You encrypt the number like crazy when it's traveling to your server. You protect it with all the firewalls and whatnot you can muster. You limit who has legitimate access to it. And you don't encrypt it when it's stored on the server?
I don't get it. Passwords are stored encrypted. Why not credit cards?
For all the time I've spent reassuring my parents that it's okay to pay for things on the Internet because the encryption is impossible to break, things like this make me really nervous. I think we need legislation requiring all company databases that store credit cards to store them encrypted.
That way, if someone does break the encryption and get our credit card numbers, at least we can prosecute them under the DMCA!
Or maybe he bought some cheese to go with his crackers.