You can't possibly be under the delusion that the x86 world is just waiting around for Apple to sell them overpriced x86 boxes?
No, absolutely not! I'm just under impression that - to quote myself - that part of the x86 world that doesn't worry too much about legal issues is actually waiting for a cracked MacOS X for x86 to install on their justly priced self-assembled x86 boxes.
I think MacOS for Intel will be a major challenge in 2006. Even the cracked developer built has already gained some popularity. This January we are likely to see the official end-user release. Should it be cracked as well, it might seriously challenge Windows domination among home users who don't worry too much about legal issues, don't want the whole Windows hassle but still want to run natively "Photoshop" or "Warcraft".
Seriously, why is printing "f**k" so difficult? I'm from Europe and I really can't understand you Americans.
I'm from Europe too and I think I have an explanation. We tend to learn American English primary from American popular culture - movies, song lyrics, comics, video games etc. That's why we think that the f-word is so common in everyday usage of American English - we imagine this country as populated mostly by hip handsome mobsters, private detectives in trench coats, muscular tatooed Afroamerican cocaine dealers able to rhyme everything with "mothafucka", bespectacled mad computer geniuses etc. When I set my foot for the first time on LAX, the biggest surprise for me was that actually everyone I met seemed to be nice and gentle, totally unlike what I have imagined from "Grand Theft Auto" or "Blade Runner":). I guess you made a similar mistake as someone in America who would try to imagine Paris from the "Amelie" movie - it just depicts a nonexistent culture of a nonexistent city in a nonexistent country.
Anyways, I would hardly call it "accidential". It wasn't any accident that Microsoft got to license their OS to the IBM (and compatible) machines, it was cold and calculated. While they might not have known they'd end up being some of the richest people to have ever lived, they had to have known that they were never going to have to worry about money again in their lives.
Since early 1980's? Probably they knew that. But in early 1970's, Allen and Gates were just a couple of nerdy students, sharing a belief that the future is in household computers. While in that age everyone else shared a belief that a "computer" is meant to be maintained and operated only by specially trained staff wearing laboratory overalls. Yes, their deal with IBM was no accident but in order to get that deal, they had to establish their position in the 8-bit personal computing world - writing BASIC for Altair and Apple, and lot of stuff for CP/M (originally that was the IBM's system of choice for their first PC). That was largely an accident - lots of companies active in the 8-bit market (such as Altair or Digital Research, makers of the CP/M) simply didn't make it in 1980's.
I guess I just don't understand the legal issues as much as I thought i did...is there not clearly plenty/ of prior art to this? Can Amazon claim they invented any of what they patented? Can someone please explain how this works
Your question is a bit similar to the question "can I drive 100 mph on the main street of my town". Technically you can with many stock vehicles. Theoretically you cannot but actually chances are, you won't get caught. It's similar with patents - theoretically you can't get a patent when there is prior art but chances are, you can get away with it (just because if you are a large corporation, you employ better lawyers than federal office). In fact, your patent won't get much chances in court - it is doubtful, for example, whether Amazon's "one click patent" is worth a dime. The only time it was actually tried in court, it was settled in secrecy and the settlement could bloody well be "OK, we give you $BIGNUM and you keep mum on worthlessness of our patent". It could be similar with this one.
Patents like this can be overthrown in court, but the procedure is expensive and cumbersome so nobody wants to invest his money and time into this. So you end up with a patent that is theoretically valid but actually it isn't.
Why does this happen? Think of USPTO as of a very very lousy cop, who actually is there on the main street distributing tickets but he is also half blind and easy to bribe, so some speeding vehicles pass with no penalty, while other get the tickets (but then can easily claim innocence in court). Solutions are obvious and suggested elsewhere in this thread: improve the patent examination procedures and remove entire categories of patents that are bound to be trivial, such as the "business method patents", the most stupid of them all.
Quick google search reveals that the phrase "iPod killer" was used about 500 times on slashdot, often in headlines - to quote "Latest "iPod Killer" Takes Aim at the Mini", Microsoft's iPod-Killer: Portable Media Center? or simply "More iPod Killers Introduced for the Holiday". Despite this abundance of killers, iPod is still very much alive. Many of these falied iPod killers actually did have more features - for example, OGG Vorbis support or built-in FM radio, which proves that actually it's very easy to outdo the iPod. There's no doubt that the open source firmware for this player can be more feature laden than the original iPod's firmware - but is it enought to compete with Apple's ease of use or access to the iTunes Music Store? I don't think so. It's going to be simply YAiK (Yet Another iPod Killer).
Actually, it affects any system running any browser. If the validity of EOLAS patent is confirmed in court - and it looks quite possible right now - all modern browsers will have to be rewritten to avoid patent infringement. This means also that majority of websites will have to be redesigned in one way or another. So even if you use Lynx as your only web surfing tool - you are affected. Don't take the sectarian attitude "when Microsoft has problems it's always good news".
Ideas like this one are always based on one assumption: that everybody will be totally happy with the same keyboard layout. While it might be true US-wide for US-only customers, it's not true in Europe. All the European languages require keyboard layouts more or less different than the typical English QWERTY - such as the German QWERTZ or French AZERTY, not to mention all those weird accented characters that the Swedisch chef need to correctly spell his "bork! bork! bork!". Don't get me started with Slavic languages, especially those of Cyryllic alphabet... No European hotel would seriously consider offering this service as it would lock-out foreign visitors. Personally, I'm just totally happy traveling with my powerbook as my personal computer, all I want from the hotel is to have Airport and access to their printers.
how many of this stupid beos advernews stories do we need. this rubbish about beos being raised from the ashes by zeta has been on twice before. in fact i think maybe they used the same words almost
I would say they used the same words as in the stories that "Amiga is not quite dead yet and how they are being raised from the ashes by Escom/Gateway/Fleecy Moss/whatever/whoever". It seems that the "this dead platform is not really dead" is something deeply embedded in computer culture - just consider the whole "VMS forever" or even "CP/M forever" culture. I wouldn't be surprised if you could trace back the origins of this phenomenon to Charles Babbage (abacus forever, anyone?).
At the time Apple bought NeXT, THEY didn't have anything like Cocoa.
What on Earth makes you say so? Nextstep/Openstep was exactly "something like Cocoa"...
Apple built Cocoa from the ground up for the platform that they did have. They could have done it on a Be OS foundation.
Well, they would have built something and maybe even call it Cocoa... but it would be something entirely different. Building MacOS X on NexsStep, Apple immediately gained the entire *BSD software library and user experience for their new platform. Should they choose Be, they would end up in yet another proprietary dead end street. And without Jobs, there would be no iMac, iBook or iPod to save them.
You should definitely read his description in the words of Mamoru Oshii of the "Ghost In The Shell" fame:
My first impression was that he was a really light hearted person. But when the conversation got heated, he was really merciless, and I was told many harsh things. -laughs- So it ended with the impression like "what a SOB!"
John Lasseter could learn a few things about creativity from this man.
What makes you think he doesn't? Check this article:
Lasseter noted: "Miyazaki is one of the greatest filmmakers of our time and he has been a tremendous inspiration to generations of animators. At Pixar, when we have a problem and we can't seem to solve it, we often look at one of his films in our screening room. Toy Story owes a huge debt of gratitude to the films of Mr. Miyazaki.
.. but still behind the aftermarket, which has been making limited-range fm transmitters that let you play your mp3 player, portable compact disk, or whatever through the stereo w/o any wires.
I actually do use an iTrip for my iPod and frankly - I hate this solution. The sound quality is mediocre at best - AT BEST!. In order to achieve this mediocre quality, you have to find manually a free frequency spot. Unless you are not lost somewhere in the middle of Sahara desert, it's usually quite hard to find. Seems like in the entire FM range, someone is broadcasting something. And the output power of this limited-range transmitter is limited enough that you actually hear interference from neighboring city.
But even that was not the worst part: the worst part is that even if you succeeded to find the best frequency in your native town (and you can enjoy the mediocre sound quality), as soon as you venture into some road trip, sooner or later this frequency is no longer functional - drive 100 miles or so, and you are likely to catch some strong broadcast on this very channel. So you cannot use this device precisely where you would need it mostly - on long road-trips.
Aftermarket head units can be a solution as they can have (but not always do!) aux line-in stereo jack to plug in your iPod. But first, you might not be that much happy with purchasing an aftermarket car stereo just because you already paid for the OEM one (and even if you manage to sell it on eBay, you lose money on that). Moreover, aftermarket car stereo usually won't be cooperating with remote control built-in into your dashboard or steering wheel. And it is more likely to be stolen, while you can leave your OEM car stereo inside and do not need to worry.
So... aftermarket solutions will never be as good as OEM jack line-in or USB "connect your hard drive here" solution provided by the car vendor.
the russians have unmanned cargo spacecraft?
and one just docked successfully with the ISS?
do i live under a rock?
Either you do - or you are trying to be sarcastic. Progress, Soviet space freighter is in use since late 1970's. Basically it's just a stripped-down version of the manned Soyuz. Both Soyuz and Progress fly to the ISS few times a year (you can check the timetable here). Unlike the US-made space shuttles, Soyuz and Progress are not reusable. Soviet shuttle project was not exactly succesful, but as it sometimes happens with stop-gap solutions, Soyuz and Progress proved to be a quite reliable workhorse for their orbital stations. And it looks like it's the best solution right now for the whole planet Earth.
Moving from valve oscilators and mixers to digital music synthesizers and samplers...
He was thinking "...and back". Lots of contemporary electronica/trip hop bands actually use analog synthesizers (Moog included) for many reasons. If you don't understand these reasons, just listen to groups such as Air.
As far as I know, the original article is wrong. Moog synthesizer in 1960's were modular. They were indeed easier to use than the competition because at least they included normal musical keyboard (oddly enough, Bob Moog was one of the rare engineers who understood that musicians want to play their synths just like piano or Hammond organ). Minimoog was the compact one, but it wasn't released until around 1970.
The success of using Navajo wasn't so much due to Japan being a closed society; it was because there were no Navajo speakers outside the US at all,.
But there were anthropologists, researchers, people who studied Navajo language etc. Japan "closedness" resulted in comparatively low interest in anthropology in general - while in pre-WWII European countries, including Poland, there were people studying alien cultures just for sake of interest in otherness as such. There are no native Nambikwara speakers outside Brasil but in case of war between Brasil and France, French code breakers could break the "Nambikwara code" thanks to works done on Nambikwara by Claude Levi-Strauss. The point is that there were no Levi-Strausses in Japan.
The most fascinating thing to me in the history of WWII encryption is not Enigma (which was pretty cool) but what the Americans used in the Pacific war: the Navajo language.
There's some interesting parallel here. Pre-WWII Polish cryptography (its less known success was breaking the Soviet codes during the war of 1920 - Polish victory helped to save the entire Western world from communism) was so strong thanks to polyethnic character of Polish culture. It was not really difficult to find bilingual Polish mathematicians - fluently speaking the language of the enemy, be it Russia or Germany. Pre-WWII Japan was - and to some extent, still is - a very closed society, with little interest in the world outside. It was difficult to find anyone with any interest in other cultures or languages - not even truly bilingual, among the Japanese mathematicians. In code breaking, victory belongs to the open - not just open algorithms, but also open minded, open societies. This is also why I think that right now, the Western world needs MORE interest in islamic cultures and MORE attempts to understand them - if not for any better reason, just for better decryption of intercepted messages.
Apple makes money selling hardware. They don't want 300-buck-Macs from Sony taking away their hardware sales.
It's not that simple. Gaming console is - well - a gaming console. To turn it into a functional equivalent of a computer, you have to invest in a proprietary harddrive and VGA adaptor. Add a price for MacOS X and your setup is already more expensive than the low-end Mac Mini. And a cheaper Mac Mini would still be better bang-for-buck if you just consider computing, not gaming. They wouldn't canibalize their sales this way - quite contrary, they might create a new market niche if Playstation 3 could easily cooperate via Airport with your home Mac network (usually easier to set up than Windows or Linux equivalents).
Apple is moving away from the PPC, not towards it.
They announced embracing the x86, not jettisoning the PPC right away. Noone really knows how long both architectures will coexist.
Apple would never let Sony release news like this in a meager press release.
Well, Apple would never let Quanta or other Chinese/Taiwanese contractors release news of their upcoming products- yet they were some genuine leaks released this way. Sony is even more difficult to control, I guess...
Sorry folks, but that's just plainly stupid. All IP issues with recipe for beer should be settled with Hildegard of Bingen. This German Benedictine nun was the first author to suggest that adding hops to the disgusting fluid hitherto known as beer will be generally a good idea. Since the age of Hildegard (12 century), no significant progress has been made in this topic - she has described the beer as we know it today. And as it was with many medieval philospophers, Hildegard created her "intellectual property" just "ad maiorem Dei gloriam", feel free to copy for the greater God's glory. So there is no need to make "open source beer" today - it was open source since last eight centuries.
Personally, I think the idea of adding guarana to beer is just plainly insane. Beer is meant to relax people. If I want to stay alert and awake I can drink coffee or energy drinks. Beer is something to drink when the work is over and you can relax. Guarana beer is like coffee with sleeping pills.
You should look at the Powermac G5s. I found the stock model very quiet. Not iBook or Powerbook no-fan-running-quiet, but I have to strain to hear it when it was on.
I did! I'm in quite comfortable position - I can borrow fairly new Macs for few days to test in my home environment (you can't really judge how loud a computer runs in a store - with all the ambient noise, every Mac seems to run quiet). I had PowerMac G5 for a week (the lowest low-end available, single CPU 1.8) and it was even louder than iMac G5. In fact, if Apple wouldn't do the switch to x86, I was considering it myself, even being Apple fanboy for years. I became this fanboy back in the age of fanless powerpc 603, then I moved to various fanless G3's. The heat dissipated by G4 and G5 always seemed to me just a step in the wrong direction and what I heard of the Pentium M made me a bit jealous. I hope switch to Intel will mean return to quiet Macs - like my good old powerbook 1400 or iMac G3.
Well, it can meet the "minimum" requirements - not the "recommended" ones. GPU is the main bottleneck here - I hope in Rev. B it will get the long expected 64 MB VRAM. CPU speed bump will obviously go further than 1.5 GHz (since even right now it's 1.42 GHz). I play D3 right now on '2005 12" powerbook G4 with exactly the minimum requirements (probably they were written with this machine in mind) and it's more than playable.
Good for you - but please do consider the part of my comment saying, quote "with all features", end quote. Your 2000 iBook was not able to run Quartz Extreme - essential to launch many cool features of 10.3.
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What's wrong with "Capsule hotel" name?
It's not sarcastic so it's un-British.
You can't possibly be under the delusion that the x86 world is just waiting around for Apple to sell them overpriced x86 boxes?
No, absolutely not! I'm just under impression that - to quote myself - that part of the x86 world that doesn't worry too much about legal issues is actually waiting for a cracked MacOS X for x86 to install on their justly priced self-assembled x86 boxes.
I think MacOS for Intel will be a major challenge in 2006. Even the cracked developer built has already gained some popularity. This January we are likely to see the official end-user release. Should it be cracked as well, it might seriously challenge Windows domination among home users who don't worry too much about legal issues, don't want the whole Windows hassle but still want to run natively "Photoshop" or "Warcraft".
Seriously, why is printing "f**k" so difficult? I'm from Europe and I really can't understand you Americans.
:). I guess you made a similar mistake as someone in America who would try to imagine Paris from the "Amelie" movie - it just depicts a nonexistent culture of a nonexistent city in a nonexistent country.
I'm from Europe too and I think I have an explanation. We tend to learn American English primary from American popular culture - movies, song lyrics, comics, video games etc. That's why we think that the f-word is so common in everyday usage of American English - we imagine this country as populated mostly by hip handsome mobsters, private detectives in trench coats, muscular tatooed Afroamerican cocaine dealers able to rhyme everything with "mothafucka", bespectacled mad computer geniuses etc. When I set my foot for the first time on LAX, the biggest surprise for me was that actually everyone I met seemed to be nice and gentle, totally unlike what I have imagined from "Grand Theft Auto" or "Blade Runner"
Anyways, I would hardly call it "accidential". It wasn't any accident that Microsoft got to license their OS to the IBM (and compatible) machines, it was cold and calculated. While they might not have known they'd end up being some of the richest people to have ever lived, they had to have known that they were never going to have to worry about money again in their lives.
Since early 1980's? Probably they knew that. But in early 1970's, Allen and Gates were just a couple of nerdy students, sharing a belief that the future is in household computers. While in that age everyone else shared a belief that a "computer" is meant to be maintained and operated only by specially trained staff wearing laboratory overalls. Yes, their deal with IBM was no accident but in order to get that deal, they had to establish their position in the 8-bit personal computing world - writing BASIC for Altair and Apple, and lot of stuff for CP/M (originally that was the IBM's system of choice for their first PC). That was largely an accident - lots of companies active in the 8-bit market (such as Altair or Digital Research, makers of the CP/M) simply didn't make it in 1980's.
I guess I just don't understand the legal issues as much as I thought i did...is there not clearly plenty/ of prior art to this? Can Amazon claim they invented any of what they patented? Can someone please explain how this works
Your question is a bit similar to the question "can I drive 100 mph on the main street of my town". Technically you can with many stock vehicles. Theoretically you cannot but actually chances are, you won't get caught. It's similar with patents - theoretically you can't get a patent when there is prior art but chances are, you can get away with it (just because if you are a large corporation, you employ better lawyers than federal office). In fact, your patent won't get much chances in court - it is doubtful, for example, whether Amazon's "one click patent" is worth a dime. The only time it was actually tried in court, it was settled in secrecy and the settlement could bloody well be "OK, we give you $BIGNUM and you keep mum on worthlessness of our patent". It could be similar with this one.
Patents like this can be overthrown in court, but the procedure is expensive and cumbersome so nobody wants to invest his money and time into this. So you end up with a patent that is theoretically valid but actually it isn't.
Why does this happen? Think of USPTO as of a very very lousy cop, who actually is there on the main street distributing tickets but he is also half blind and easy to bribe, so some speeding vehicles pass with no penalty, while other get the tickets (but then can easily claim innocence in court). Solutions are obvious and suggested elsewhere in this thread: improve the patent examination procedures and remove entire categories of patents that are bound to be trivial, such as the "business method patents", the most stupid of them all.
Hope I answered your question.
Quick google search reveals that the phrase "iPod killer" was used about 500 times on slashdot, often in headlines - to quote "Latest "iPod Killer" Takes Aim at the Mini", Microsoft's iPod-Killer: Portable Media Center? or simply "More iPod Killers Introduced for the Holiday". Despite this abundance of killers, iPod is still very much alive. Many of these falied iPod killers actually did have more features - for example, OGG Vorbis support or built-in FM radio, which proves that actually it's very easy to outdo the iPod. There's no doubt that the open source firmware for this player can be more feature laden than the original iPod's firmware - but is it enought to compete with Apple's ease of use or access to the iTunes Music Store? I don't think so. It's going to be simply YAiK (Yet Another iPod Killer).
I run Gentoo Linux, how does this affect me?
Actually, it affects any system running any browser. If the validity of EOLAS patent is confirmed in court - and it looks quite possible right now - all modern browsers will have to be rewritten to avoid patent infringement. This means also that majority of websites will have to be redesigned in one way or another. So even if you use Lynx as your only web surfing tool - you are affected. Don't take the sectarian attitude "when Microsoft has problems it's always good news".
Ideas like this one are always based on one assumption: that everybody will be totally happy with the same keyboard layout. While it might be true US-wide for US-only customers, it's not true in Europe. All the European languages require keyboard layouts more or less different than the typical English QWERTY - such as the German QWERTZ or French AZERTY, not to mention all those weird accented characters that the Swedisch chef need to correctly spell his "bork! bork! bork!". Don't get me started with Slavic languages, especially those of Cyryllic alphabet... No European hotel would seriously consider offering this service as it would lock-out foreign visitors. Personally, I'm just totally happy traveling with my powerbook as my personal computer, all I want from the hotel is to have Airport and access to their printers.
how many of this stupid beos advernews stories do we need. this rubbish about beos being raised from the ashes by zeta has been on twice before. in fact i think maybe they used the same words almost
I would say they used the same words as in the stories that "Amiga is not quite dead yet and how they are being raised from the ashes by Escom/Gateway/Fleecy Moss/whatever/whoever". It seems that the "this dead platform is not really dead" is something deeply embedded in computer culture - just consider the whole "VMS forever" or even "CP/M forever" culture. I wouldn't be surprised if you could trace back the origins of this phenomenon to Charles Babbage (abacus forever, anyone?).
At the time Apple bought NeXT, THEY didn't have anything like Cocoa.
What on Earth makes you say so? Nextstep/Openstep was exactly "something like Cocoa"...
Apple built Cocoa from the ground up for the platform that they did have. They could have done it on a Be OS foundation.
Well, they would have built something and maybe even call it Cocoa... but it would be something entirely different. Building MacOS X on NexsStep, Apple immediately gained the entire *BSD software library and user experience for their new platform. Should they choose Be, they would end up in yet another proprietary dead end street. And without Jobs, there would be no iMac, iBook or iPod to save them.
Had no idea Miyazaki was such a tough S.O.B.
You should definitely read his description in the words of Mamoru Oshii of the "Ghost In The Shell" fame:
My first impression was that he was a really light hearted person. But when the conversation got heated, he was really merciless, and I was told many harsh things. -laughs- So it ended with the impression like "what a SOB!"
John Lasseter could learn a few things about creativity from this man.
What makes you think he doesn't? Check this article:
Lasseter noted: "Miyazaki is one of the greatest filmmakers of our time and he has been a tremendous inspiration to generations of animators. At Pixar, when we have a problem and we can't seem to solve it, we often look at one of his films in our screening room. Toy Story owes a huge debt of gratitude to the films of Mr. Miyazaki.
.. but still behind the aftermarket, which has been making limited-range fm transmitters that let you play your mp3 player, portable compact disk, or whatever through the stereo w/o any wires.
I actually do use an iTrip for my iPod and frankly - I hate this solution. The sound quality is mediocre at best - AT BEST!. In order to achieve this mediocre quality, you have to find manually a free frequency spot. Unless you are not lost somewhere in the middle of Sahara desert, it's usually quite hard to find. Seems like in the entire FM range, someone is broadcasting something. And the output power of this limited-range transmitter is limited enough that you actually hear interference from neighboring city.
But even that was not the worst part: the worst part is that even if you succeeded to find the best frequency in your native town (and you can enjoy the mediocre sound quality), as soon as you venture into some road trip, sooner or later this frequency is no longer functional - drive 100 miles or so, and you are likely to catch some strong broadcast on this very channel. So you cannot use this device precisely where you would need it mostly - on long road-trips.
Aftermarket head units can be a solution as they can have (but not always do!) aux line-in stereo jack to plug in your iPod. But first, you might not be that much happy with purchasing an aftermarket car stereo just because you already paid for the OEM one (and even if you manage to sell it on eBay, you lose money on that). Moreover, aftermarket car stereo usually won't be cooperating with remote control built-in into your dashboard or steering wheel. And it is more likely to be stolen, while you can leave your OEM car stereo inside and do not need to worry.
So... aftermarket solutions will never be as good as OEM jack line-in or USB "connect your hard drive here" solution provided by the car vendor.
the russians have unmanned cargo spacecraft? and one just docked successfully with the ISS? do i live under a rock?
Either you do - or you are trying to be sarcastic. Progress, Soviet space freighter is in use since late 1970's. Basically it's just a stripped-down version of the manned Soyuz. Both Soyuz and Progress fly to the ISS few times a year (you can check the timetable here). Unlike the US-made space shuttles, Soyuz and Progress are not reusable. Soviet shuttle project was not exactly succesful, but as it sometimes happens with stop-gap solutions, Soyuz and Progress proved to be a quite reliable workhorse for their orbital stations. And it looks like it's the best solution right now for the whole planet Earth.
Moving from valve oscilators and mixers to digital music synthesizers and samplers...
He was thinking "...and back". Lots of contemporary electronica/trip hop bands actually use analog synthesizers (Moog included) for many reasons. If you don't understand these reasons, just listen to groups such as Air.
As far as I know, the original article is wrong. Moog synthesizer in 1960's were modular. They were indeed easier to use than the competition because at least they included normal musical keyboard (oddly enough, Bob Moog was one of the rare engineers who understood that musicians want to play their synths just like piano or Hammond organ). Minimoog was the compact one, but it wasn't released until around 1970.
The success of using Navajo wasn't so much due to Japan being a closed society; it was because there were no Navajo speakers outside the US at all, .
But there were anthropologists, researchers, people who studied Navajo language etc. Japan "closedness" resulted in comparatively low interest in anthropology in general - while in pre-WWII European countries, including Poland, there were people studying alien cultures just for sake of interest in otherness as such. There are no native Nambikwara speakers outside Brasil but in case of war between Brasil and France, French code breakers could break the "Nambikwara code" thanks to works done on Nambikwara by Claude Levi-Strauss. The point is that there were no Levi-Strausses in Japan.
The most fascinating thing to me in the history of WWII encryption is not Enigma (which was pretty cool) but what the Americans used in the Pacific war: the Navajo language.
There's some interesting parallel here. Pre-WWII Polish cryptography (its less known success was breaking the Soviet codes during the war of 1920 - Polish victory helped to save the entire Western world from communism) was so strong thanks to polyethnic character of Polish culture. It was not really difficult to find bilingual Polish mathematicians - fluently speaking the language of the enemy, be it Russia or Germany. Pre-WWII Japan was - and to some extent, still is - a very closed society, with little interest in the world outside. It was difficult to find anyone with any interest in other cultures or languages - not even truly bilingual, among the Japanese mathematicians. In code breaking, victory belongs to the open - not just open algorithms, but also open minded, open societies. This is also why I think that right now, the Western world needs MORE interest in islamic cultures and MORE attempts to understand them - if not for any better reason, just for better decryption of intercepted messages.
Apple makes money selling hardware. They don't want 300-buck-Macs from Sony taking away their hardware sales.
It's not that simple. Gaming console is - well - a gaming console. To turn it into a functional equivalent of a computer, you have to invest in a proprietary harddrive and VGA adaptor. Add a price for MacOS X and your setup is already more expensive than the low-end Mac Mini. And a cheaper Mac Mini would still be better bang-for-buck if you just consider computing, not gaming. They wouldn't canibalize their sales this way - quite contrary, they might create a new market niche if Playstation 3 could easily cooperate via Airport with your home Mac network (usually easier to set up than Windows or Linux equivalents).
Apple is moving away from the PPC, not towards it.
They announced embracing the x86, not jettisoning the PPC right away. Noone really knows how long both architectures will coexist.
Apple would never let Sony release news like this in a meager press release.
Well, Apple would never let Quanta or other Chinese/Taiwanese contractors release news of their upcoming products- yet they were some genuine leaks released this way. Sony is even more difficult to control, I guess...
But I'm a descendent of Hildegard, and I demand royalties!
:-)
Sue God - she transfered her rights to Him
Sorry folks, but that's just plainly stupid. All IP issues with recipe for beer should be settled with Hildegard of Bingen. This German Benedictine nun was the first author to suggest that adding hops to the disgusting fluid hitherto known as beer will be generally a good idea. Since the age of Hildegard (12 century), no significant progress has been made in this topic - she has described the beer as we know it today. And as it was with many medieval philospophers, Hildegard created her "intellectual property" just "ad maiorem Dei gloriam", feel free to copy for the greater God's glory. So there is no need to make "open source beer" today - it was open source since last eight centuries.
Personally, I think the idea of adding guarana to beer is just plainly insane. Beer is meant to relax people. If I want to stay alert and awake I can drink coffee or energy drinks. Beer is something to drink when the work is over and you can relax. Guarana beer is like coffee with sleeping pills.
You should look at the Powermac G5s. I found the stock model very quiet. Not iBook or Powerbook no-fan-running-quiet, but I have to strain to hear it when it was on.
I did! I'm in quite comfortable position - I can borrow fairly new Macs for few days to test in my home environment (you can't really judge how loud a computer runs in a store - with all the ambient noise, every Mac seems to run quiet). I had PowerMac G5 for a week (the lowest low-end available, single CPU 1.8) and it was even louder than iMac G5. In fact, if Apple wouldn't do the switch to x86, I was considering it myself, even being Apple fanboy for years. I became this fanboy back in the age of fanless powerpc 603, then I moved to various fanless G3's. The heat dissipated by G4 and G5 always seemed to me just a step in the wrong direction and what I heard of the Pentium M made me a bit jealous. I hope switch to Intel will mean return to quiet Macs - like my good old powerbook 1400 or iMac G3.
Don't think a mini will be there anytime soon...
Well, it can meet the "minimum" requirements - not the "recommended" ones. GPU is the main bottleneck here - I hope in Rev. B it will get the long expected 64 MB VRAM. CPU speed bump will obviously go further than 1.5 GHz (since even right now it's 1.42 GHz). I play D3 right now on '2005 12" powerbook G4 with exactly the minimum requirements (probably they were written with this machine in mind) and it's more than playable.
Odd, my 2000 iBook ran OS X 10.3 just fine
Good for you - but please do consider the part of my comment saying, quote "with all features", end quote. Your 2000 iBook was not able to run Quartz Extreme - essential to launch many cool features of 10.3.