"From a horrible constipation to a world-wide fame - Wired excusive interview with the Goatse Man in flesh"
"Apple annouces its release schedule for the whole next year. 'We are sick and tired of all the quarreling with rumor sites, so we wanted to cut it once for good' - explains Steve Jobs"
"It was supposed to be just yet another iPod killer... but this time, the clever digital music player from XXX company really made it!"
"A-hah! I predicted it back in 1978! Columnist John Dvorak happily comments the news of Apple Computer claiming Chapter 11 bankruptcy!"
"A-hah! I predicted it back in 1998! Apple CEO Steve Jobs happily comments the news of Apple Computer getting past 5% in desktop market share"
We also may be going thru a normal upwards deviation in the temperature of the Earth, as has happened before when there were NO "greenhouse gases" emitted by Man since Man was not around. It's all a hypothesis, nothing can be proven.
In general, hardly anything in science can be "proven", as Popper aptly put it, we can only have it "corroborated". The basic heat-trapping property of greenhouse gases (CO2, NOx, CH4, chlorofluorocarbons) is essentially undisputed. It is also undsisputed that concencrations of these soared since the dawn of industrial age, CO2 by about 30%, NOx by about 15%, CH4 by about 100%, chlorofluorocarbons weren't here at all before industrial age). One has to be insane to claim it has no effect on climate whatsoever. You can only choose answers from "yes, it will cause the weather to be more awful than usual" to "yes, it will actually increase sea level for few meters, erasing cities like New York or Amsterdam from the world map, but we never liked those dope-smoking Dutch or pink New Yorkers anyway". But only junk Republicans could call it junk science.
If we start now, we have 24 years to figgure out how to deflect it's orbit. If it's not on a collision course after all, then we still have learned how to deflect a large asteroid.
"Us", eh? Remember that mankind is not united in a Star-Trekish manner. First, try to imagine someone from NASA talking to the US Congress. "Dear legislators, there's a 1/233 chance that the world might come to an end in 2029. Please provide us with a few zillions of taxpayers money to do something about it". What will be the response? My guess goes for something like: "For starters, most of us are aging men, who probably won't be here in 2029 anyway, so we'd rather spend this money on research of treatment for wrinkles, baldness and erection disfunction. Besides, there's a 1/2 chance that the Democrats will rule in 2029 and why should we pay for their lunch?"
Seriously, the world is on collision course with greenhouse gases and the chance of disaster is actually close to 1/1. And still Bush & His Fellow Republicans flip their finger to the Kyoto agreement. Can you really imagine any plausible scenario for you "if we start now"? Start now what? Spending on research how to deflect asteroids? Who's gonna pay for that, Santa Claus?
....I'm not sure this would be a particularly useful feature for the typical Mac user
Just read all the complaints on "MacOS 10.x.y update ate my modem (or whatever"). Imagine the new situation. MacOS 10.x.y arrives. You clone your current main partiotion to a new one and do the upgrade there. You can safely test everything... and either make the new one your main work partition or happily return to 10.x.(y-1) and wait for 10.x.(y+1).
It's obvious that many Mac users would want to have a feature like this. Would they learn how to use it, it's another question, but judging from how Apple brilliantly designed the UI for managing multiple accounts (with incredibly foolproof "fast user switching"), one can be optimistic about that.
Let me guess - having published your praise of all the nice German hackers, who hack the system to get the "free joyride" on someone elses' property, you will then write yet another complaint on some mainstream media "improper usage" of the word "hacker" - "Dear Editors, you confuse us, the oh-so-ethical hackers with the bad nasty crackers"?
A friend of mine is blind, yet he effortlessly navigates through his Windows XP box (installing programs, buying stuff on eBay, reading web-pages, etc) using JAWS. When I asked him what open source resources were available for him, I was surprised to hear him say, 'Almost nothing.' Is this true? Are we just not looking at the right places, or do blind-friendly resources tend to be Microsoft-centric?
Well, as they say, open source software is written when someone has to scratch an itch. Sounds nice, but it has that one unpleasant consequence: the open source community satisfies primarily the needs of the open source community, while the commercial & proprietary software developers at least try to pretend they actually satisfy the need of their customers. Since there's not much blind people among the open source community - there's not much free software writting for them. But since blind people have money and are able to buy a piece of software - there is some commercial software written for them. I think it's as simple as that.
Maybe Apple doesn't have to keep revving their clock speeds because they don't have to worry about viruses and spyware all that much? Maybe because after about 500-1000Ghz, computers are pretty much "fast enough" for everyday usage?
My "everyday usage" includes gaming. I don't really demand much, I'm not a hardcore gamer. I'm used to the fact that I get a decent game half year or entire year after Windows users. I don't complain paying $50 for games whose Windows ports are now in bargain bins. But I want the game to be at least launchablel. Mac version of Doom III won't even start to boot on ANY of the Apple current portables and iMac G5's will ONLY meet the minimum requirements for the game. Once again - it will probably all change after MacExpo, but so far, Apple portables and consumer desktops are just not satisfactory even for casual gamer like me.
First, what in the name of heck makes you think the G5 Tower is noisy? Yes, there are fans in there, but unless your ambient room temperature is up around 35 C, they stay pretty quiet.
My ears, actually. I own a few Macs but I work with quite many others that I don't own (and don't intend to). Among them, there's a 1.8 GHz PM G5 (the newest one). Theoretically, should be the quietest model of them all - as it's the one with least horsepower. It's still noisy like average PC tower.
Also, if you've been a Mac Fan for any amount of time, you know that the laptops are only fantastic when the line gets revamped, then they stagnate.
Well, I have become a "Mac fanboy", as you aptly put it, precisely because these machines used to be the quietest ones on the market. And their portables still are (until the fan kicks in - but it does quite rarely, at least in my iBook). The only Apple desktop I ever owned was indigo iMac G3 and it was entirely fanless. I hope future revisions of iMac G5 will be also quiet (early bondi-blue G3's also had a fan). Then I'll buy one right away. Otherwise... switch to x86 will be an obvious choice, if it has to be noisy, at least be it cheaper.
His reviews mostly made sense except for the eMac rip. I'm not a huge Mac fan (nothing wrong with them, just not my cup of tea),
I am a Mac fan, but I will defend the eMac rip. I really wanted badly to treat myself with a new Mac for this Christmas, but eventually decided to wait for MacExpo this January - so far, everything Apple has to offer is far from satisfactory. I'm typing these words on an aging G3/800 iBook, running totally silent and cool (in both meanings). I love my machine, as I loved its predecessors, a G3 iMac, a clamshell iBook and old 603 powerbook. However, current Apple offer is not that cool:
Desktops, that are either incredibly noisy (Powermac G5, eMac) or just noisy (iMac G5). eMac won't run any new game (even new Mac releases - which means "last year's Windows releases") and its fan is LOUD AS HELL. It will also run just so-so the upcoming MacOS X 10.4 iteration. eMac is also ridculously underpowered which goes the same for...
Portables Apple defies Moore's law once again. Come'on, two years has passed and all that the new iBook has to offer is a 1.2 GHz G4 versus 800 MHz G3 in the old one (November '2002)? In two years we have a stunning 50% increase of clock speed? Plus the upgrade from 32 MB Radeon 7500 to 32 MB Radeon 9200? And NO increase whatsoever in harddrive space? (still 30 GB)? Size and weight also remains the same? I'd have to be crazy to upgrade from my old iBook to the new one, the difference just does not justify the price.
Powerbooks, while pricey, are not much better. They were not upgraded since this April (!). 1.33 GHz G4 + nVidia 5200 Go was acceptable a year ago, but not today, especially not in a $1600 laptop. That's for the 12" model. 15" and 17" are a bit better (I don't want them anyway), but still none of them will run Mac version of Doom III. And the price is just insane.
I seriously hope to see new machines this January, but so far, I see nothing interesting in Apple's offer. Should I want a noisy desktop, I'd buy a PC. Should I want an underpowered laptop, I'd just stick with my old iBook. And I did.
How can you claim that patents are not harder to get than copyright? Your post, mine too, are both protected by copyright. Neither of us did ANYTHING to accomplish that. TO get a patent you have to hire a patent lawyer to help write it, pay the filing fee, and it frequently takes multiple submissions to get accepted (if it gets accepted). Then about 3 years later, poof you have a patent!
On the other hand, if I'll infringe your copyright right now, in order to protect your rights you would have to commence a quite costly legal hassle. Should I be a vicious corporation that could countersue you to death - you'd stand no chance in that battle. With patents, it's the other way round. They are indeed harder to get than copyright, but they are incredibly easy to defend (once acquired). And there are known cases when a small company succesfully defended its patent against a Microsoft-sized giant, even against Microsoft itself. Actually, the ease of getting patents is the main danger in software patents - you never know who patented what when you start to write your own program.
They have been predicting the demise of programmers since the invention of COBOL in the 60s. It was supposed to turn ordinary business users into programmers thanks to its easy, English-like syntax. We're still waiting. Now this writer is talking about running out of programmers capable of maintaining code that was presumably easy to write and maintain?
I think you mistake COBOL for ALGOL. The latter was indeed advertised for it's "ease of use" and it started a long line of (supposedly) user friendly languages, through it direct descendant - Basic - to contemporary Visual Basic and AppleScript. Cobol was rather advertised as being "business friendly" because it allowed ease separation of data and code and that - allegedly - suited it better for business/office data processing than its main competitor, Fortran. Noone could seriously predict "demise of programmers" in early 1960's. There were no personal computers in present meaning - even the so called minis of the PDP family, still required a separate room, had a price of a small airplane and were operated by dedicated staff wearing lab suits.
IBM is a company focused on growing its services biz and Apple has none.
Apple is primarily a B2C company and IBM is B2B.
...and both companies have long tradition in attempting to get a beachhead on the other side. Apple's beachhead on the b2b is the xServe, IBM tried many times to build their position on consumer market with "consumer" ThinkPads.
Cultural differences make east vs west like the definition of homogenized
Steve Jobs and his amazing ego
Both are overrated. IBM and Apple had to overcome their cultural differences dozen years ago when their founded the PowerPC joint effort. Even then it turned out to be surprisingly easy, although there is an anecdote about IBM engineers wearing jeans and T-Shirts and their Apple counterparts wearing business suits on their first meeting - both sides wanted so badly to please the other side. It's been a long time since then, Apple is no longer a bunch of jolly hippies, IBM is no longer a deadly serious behemoth. Whatever they do together, they do it pretty well, and they did many things together since founding PowerPC platform - to name the powerbook 2400 outsourced to IBM Japan and PowerMac G5. Steve's ego also was no obstacle in striking a deal with Disney, striking a deal with Apple (to buy him back), striking a deal with RIAA to start iTunes Music Store. So I thik all the obstacles you mention actually do not exist at all.
To begin with, to help all fellow nerds to understand that terms such as "cybernetics", "algorithm" or even "program" are not directly related to microchip-based modern computers. The term cyber- is often foolishly interpreted as "something computerlike" (especially in media buzzwords such as cyberporn or cyberbusiness) while it comes from ancient Greek (kybernetikos) and means actually "steering". I think it's good for any nerd worth its name to abstract sometimes from modern computer hardware and think of the whole theory of steering and algorithms in its pure form.
By the way: since pornography comes also from ancient Greek and means "depiction of a whore", cyberporn literally could be translated to "steering whore". Hmmmmm...
As mentioned by another poster, your computer hardware is probably embraced by patented IP. Your automobile would probably still have patented IP. Don't forget your local phone system you are using.
But what if I'm using, say, '1984 PC AT, Sun or Apollo workstation, all of them running FreeBSD or compatible? What if I drive a '1973 AMX Javelin? Local phone is probably a hopeless case, but if I could have some sort of Internet access, I can live with no phone.
I'm rather thinking of it as a pet-project for some middle class guy with too much spare time and enough resources. I'd rather avoid imagining a billionaire, as it would make things too easy (you could invent your own technologies and release them for free). Let's assume the guy can afford buying a 1960 refrigerator on ebay and then restoring it to full working condition, but he's too short to sponsor a full-fledged research leading to building and entirely new CPU from scratch.
On the WIPO site there is a passage that might sound kind of scary:
Intellectual property surrounds us in nearly everything we do. At home, at school, at work. At rest and at play. No matter what we do, we are surrounded by the fruits of human creativity and invention.
I wonder if it's possible to live in a IP-free environment. Let's assume that you build your house from a public domain blueprint, you read only books written by authors who died before 1954, you use self-assembled PC running only free software, you use only generic drugs and own devices that either never were patented or whose patents have already expired. I think it's possible without resorting to Amish-style technophobia and living in such environment might even be quite comfortable and stylish (imagine all those 1960's refrigerators, air conditioning systems, eight-track stereo with nothing but folk and classic music etc.). Am I wrong? Any educated comment, please?
I know that Mac OS X is a great OS. I think I know the most important advantages of switching. What is holding me back, however, is the fact that no-one is talking about the disadvantages of doing so.
Well, I consider myself a real Apple fan, bought 4 of their machines and the next one probably will also have the fruity logo. The hardest part of the apple to chew for me is the limited choice of hardware. I mean, the hardware itself is absolutely great, but the choice isn't. For example, if you fancy a subnotebook - stick with x86. Apple just abandoned this segment since powerbook 2400 (that is, around 1998). The smallest machine they manufacture is powerbook 12" - not upgraded since April 2004 and still actually not as small as some Sony Vaio subnotebooks.
Also, it's frustrating that Apple cripples some "low-end" machines just to emphasize the difference between low-end and high-end. There's no technical reason for Powermac 1.8-single CPU to have slower bus than its siblings, dual G5 Powermacs, it's done only to make them "different" so higher price tag on dual is more "justified". But what if I don't need dual CPU. single CPU with fast bus would be enough for my needs? What if I don't want modular design, I'd rather have something like iMac - but with the fastest G5 and graphics card on the market? Then I'm screwed. Of course, every company is doing things like this - abandoning certain market segments, crippling its low-end machines etc. But on the x86 the competition is too sharp and too widespread - if Dell abandons certain segment, probably HP will take it from here. If you stick with MacOS, you suddenly find yourself out of many choices you took for granted so far.
Like I said, I think the benefits are still more important than lack of choice so it's not that I'm discouraging you - but you (wisely) didn't ask about benefits this time, you wanted to hear about annoyances.
It's "teddy bear". No, really. I think they will progress according to the old Presley song: "I don't wanna be a tiger, 'cause tigers play too rough. I don't wanna be a lion, 'cause lions ain't the kind you love enough. I just wanna be your teddy bear":-)
Damn, I miss that era when "Computers used to do X" was always newsworthy no matter how mundane the X was ("Computers used to typeset newspapers"). The whole article looks like something written 20 years ago or so and sadly it is replicating some fake asumptions that since them were sufficiently refuted. The method (...) promises to reduce the subjectivity of art assessments made by human experts." If it does, don't believe this promise. You don't get magical infallibility just becouse you use a computer. Even with this method, human experts will have to do the scanning, write comparison algorhitms and analyze the results (including utterly subjective questions such as "does this pattern match sufficiently well the typical pattern of Van Gogh brushstrokes"). To hope that you reduce subjectivity by using a computer is like hoping that human expert will be less subjective just because he's typing his report on a computer instead of mechanical typewriter.
Cathedral/bazaar refers to the software development process, IMO, not to the user (you). You should be able to choose something delicious from the free software/bazaar menu. If you cannot, it means you have been unable to find something suitable for you.
But that's why I think the c/b metaphor is flawed. A restaurant is not an instituion existing for the sole purpose of existence (let's skip the money laundries for New Jersey mafia and alike in this conversation). It's an institution designed to attract customers - the chef is limited in his choices by the restaurant's owner, who wants to make money. It's similar with proprietary software - it is usually written with the average user needs in mind. However, with Free Software it's not that simple. It is largely written by programmers for programmers (hackers etc.). That's why it excels with software aimed for computer professionals (Apache, gcc etc.) and fares much worse with software aimed at the average consumer (games, desktop applications etc.). The very fact that ESR was choosing the "development process" as the focal point in constructing his metaphor is already telling us something. The user doesn't care the least about "development process", he cares about the ease-of-use.
Frankly, I always hated the whole cathedral vs bazaar metaphor. I don't think it portrays well the virtues and faults of open source and proprietary software. I use proprietary software (MacOS + some closed apps) for the same reason I prefer to "dine out" rather than cook my own meals. I just want to choose something delicious from the restaurant's menu - and I don't care that my choices are limited. Yes, if you cook in your own kitchen, you can customize you meal the way you like it - as it is with open source software. But this will consume you a lot of time and effort, so most people would rather avoid it - unless they really enjoy cooking, have really to much spare time or are really short on cash. It's similar with Free Software - you use it if you really like to 'tinker' with everything or are really short on cash. But if you don't like the former and are not limited by latter, you will rather go to a store with proprietary solutions - where your choices are obviously limited, but you're saving time and effort. So I think restaurant vs kitchen is a better metaphor for proprietary vs free/open.
Not likely. Poland is right now in a severe political turmoil, the government has recently fallen due to corruption allegations and there's another interim government with rather weak (if any) support in the parlament. There's no long-term planning of anything, the government will just manage things until the next election. Every day the press reveals another evidence of corruption. The sentence "Tinted windscreen, man, tinted windscreen.. it's better than... better than... better than... anything!", taken from transcript of secret service taping of conversations of one MP with a lobbyist corrupting him with a gift of a brand-new Mercedes Benz (with tinted windscreen) is now as popular in "watercooler" conversations as "You forgot about Poland". It turned out that in Polish government everyone took bribes from everyone, but they were too lazy/incompetent to do what they took bribes for. It's quite typical for Poland and that's why things have sometimes a happy ending here - when the politicians become too corupt and stupid, they sortof step back, enjoy their tinted windscreens and... let the wise men do their job. I guess that's what happened here.
Iron Giant a masterpiece? Apparently, you're underestimating how the quality of animation in trailers impacts interest in the movie. To me, Iron Giant looked boring in the trailers
Trailers are also a part of marketing. You are right - trailers for "Iron Giant" were a failure. Even posters were a failure and watching them you can only ask "what were they thinking? what mother will take her kids to a movie using some dangerous robotic creature as it's main... mascot?". Tha'ts what I meant by Warner had no clue how to market it. Ironically, what you thought was bad was exactly the same quality that makes the animation in "The Incredibles" so brilliant - "Iron Giant" was a pastiche of 1950's sci-fi just as "The Incredibles" are a pastiche of the "golden age" superhero cartoons.
Slashdot Mirror
"From a horrible constipation to a world-wide fame - Wired excusive interview with the Goatse Man in flesh"
"Apple annouces its release schedule for the whole next year. 'We are sick and tired of all the quarreling with rumor sites, so we wanted to cut it once for good' - explains Steve Jobs"
"It was supposed to be just yet another iPod killer... but this time, the clever digital music player from XXX company really made it!"
"A-hah! I predicted it back in 1978! Columnist John Dvorak happily comments the news of Apple Computer claiming Chapter 11 bankruptcy!"
"A-hah! I predicted it back in 1998! Apple CEO Steve Jobs happily comments the news of Apple Computer getting past 5% in desktop market share"
"Pixar's latest release is a boring flop"
We also may be going thru a normal upwards deviation in the temperature of the Earth, as has happened before when there were NO "greenhouse gases" emitted by Man since Man was not around. It's all a hypothesis, nothing can be proven.
In general, hardly anything in science can be "proven", as Popper aptly put it, we can only have it "corroborated". The basic heat-trapping property of greenhouse gases (CO2, NOx, CH4, chlorofluorocarbons) is essentially undisputed. It is also undsisputed that concencrations of these soared since the dawn of industrial age, CO2 by about 30%, NOx by about 15%, CH4 by about 100%, chlorofluorocarbons weren't here at all before industrial age). One has to be insane to claim it has no effect on climate whatsoever. You can only choose answers from "yes, it will cause the weather to be more awful than usual" to "yes, it will actually increase sea level for few meters, erasing cities like New York or Amsterdam from the world map, but we never liked those dope-smoking Dutch or pink New Yorkers anyway". But only junk Republicans could call it junk science.
If we start now, we have 24 years to figgure out how to deflect it's orbit. If it's not on a collision course after all, then we still have learned how to deflect a large asteroid.
"Us", eh? Remember that mankind is not united in a Star-Trekish manner. First, try to imagine someone from NASA talking to the US Congress. "Dear legislators, there's a 1/233 chance that the world might come to an end in 2029. Please provide us with a few zillions of taxpayers money to do something about it". What will be the response? My guess goes for something like: "For starters, most of us are aging men, who probably won't be here in 2029 anyway, so we'd rather spend this money on research of treatment for wrinkles, baldness and erection disfunction. Besides, there's a 1/2 chance that the Democrats will rule in 2029 and why should we pay for their lunch?"
Seriously, the world is on collision course with greenhouse gases and the chance of disaster is actually close to 1/1. And still Bush & His Fellow Republicans flip their finger to the Kyoto agreement. Can you really imagine any plausible scenario for you "if we start now"? Start now what? Spending on research how to deflect asteroids? Who's gonna pay for that, Santa Claus?
....I'm not sure this would be a particularly useful feature for the typical Mac user
Just read all the complaints on "MacOS 10.x.y update ate my modem (or whatever"). Imagine the new situation. MacOS 10.x.y arrives. You clone your current main partiotion to a new one and do the upgrade there. You can safely test everything... and either make the new one your main work partition or happily return to 10.x.(y-1) and wait for 10.x.(y+1).
It's obvious that many Mac users would want to have a feature like this. Would they learn how to use it, it's another question, but judging from how Apple brilliantly designed the UI for managing multiple accounts (with incredibly foolproof "fast user switching"), one can be optimistic about that.
Latest "iPod Killer" Takes Aim...
I wonder if Steve Jobs has a whole collection of these, somewhere in his mansion - labeled "iPod killer #841, iPod killer #842, iPod killer #843...".
Let me guess - having published your praise of all the nice German hackers, who hack the system to get the "free joyride" on someone elses' property, you will then write yet another complaint on some mainstream media "improper usage" of the word "hacker" - "Dear Editors, you confuse us, the oh-so-ethical hackers with the bad nasty crackers"?
A friend of mine is blind, yet he effortlessly navigates through his Windows XP box (installing programs, buying stuff on eBay, reading web-pages, etc) using JAWS. When I asked him what open source resources were available for him, I was surprised to hear him say, 'Almost nothing.' Is this true? Are we just not looking at the right places, or do blind-friendly resources tend to be Microsoft-centric?
Well, as they say, open source software is written when someone has to scratch an itch. Sounds nice, but it has that one unpleasant consequence: the open source community satisfies primarily the needs of the open source community, while the commercial & proprietary software developers at least try to pretend they actually satisfy the need of their customers. Since there's not much blind people among the open source community - there's not much free software writting for them. But since blind people have money and are able to buy a piece of software - there is some commercial software written for them. I think it's as simple as that.
Maybe Apple doesn't have to keep revving their clock speeds because they don't have to worry about viruses and spyware all that much? Maybe because after about 500-1000Ghz, computers are pretty much "fast enough" for everyday usage?
My "everyday usage" includes gaming. I don't really demand much, I'm not a hardcore gamer. I'm used to the fact that I get a decent game half year or entire year after Windows users. I don't complain paying $50 for games whose Windows ports are now in bargain bins. But I want the game to be at least launchablel. Mac version of Doom III won't even start to boot on ANY of the Apple current portables and iMac G5's will ONLY meet the minimum requirements for the game. Once again - it will probably all change after MacExpo, but so far, Apple portables and consumer desktops are just not satisfactory even for casual gamer like me.
First, what in the name of heck makes you think the G5 Tower is noisy? Yes, there are fans in there, but unless your ambient room temperature is up around 35 C, they stay pretty quiet.
My ears, actually. I own a few Macs but I work with quite many others that I don't own (and don't intend to). Among them, there's a 1.8 GHz PM G5 (the newest one). Theoretically, should be the quietest model of them all - as it's the one with least horsepower. It's still noisy like average PC tower.
Also, if you've been a Mac Fan for any amount of time, you know that the laptops are only fantastic when the line gets revamped, then they stagnate.
Well, I have become a "Mac fanboy", as you aptly put it, precisely because these machines used to be the quietest ones on the market. And their portables still are (until the fan kicks in - but it does quite rarely, at least in my iBook). The only Apple desktop I ever owned was indigo iMac G3 and it was entirely fanless. I hope future revisions of iMac G5 will be also quiet (early bondi-blue G3's also had a fan). Then I'll buy one right away. Otherwise... switch to x86 will be an obvious choice, if it has to be noisy, at least be it cheaper.
His reviews mostly made sense except for the eMac rip. I'm not a huge Mac fan (nothing wrong with them, just not my cup of tea),
I am a Mac fan, but I will defend the eMac rip. I really wanted badly to treat myself with a new Mac for this Christmas, but eventually decided to wait for MacExpo this January - so far, everything Apple has to offer is far from satisfactory. I'm typing these words on an aging G3/800 iBook, running totally silent and cool (in both meanings). I love my machine, as I loved its predecessors, a G3 iMac, a clamshell iBook and old 603 powerbook. However, current Apple offer is not that cool:
Desktops, that are either incredibly noisy (Powermac G5, eMac) or just noisy (iMac G5). eMac won't run any new game (even new Mac releases - which means "last year's Windows releases") and its fan is LOUD AS HELL. It will also run just so-so the upcoming MacOS X 10.4 iteration. eMac is also ridculously underpowered which goes the same for...
Portables Apple defies Moore's law once again. Come'on, two years has passed and all that the new iBook has to offer is a 1.2 GHz G4 versus 800 MHz G3 in the old one (November '2002)? In two years we have a stunning 50% increase of clock speed? Plus the upgrade from 32 MB Radeon 7500 to 32 MB Radeon 9200? And NO increase whatsoever in harddrive space? (still 30 GB)? Size and weight also remains the same? I'd have to be crazy to upgrade from my old iBook to the new one, the difference just does not justify the price.
Powerbooks, while pricey, are not much better. They were not upgraded since this April (!). 1.33 GHz G4 + nVidia 5200 Go was acceptable a year ago, but not today, especially not in a $1600 laptop. That's for the 12" model. 15" and 17" are a bit better (I don't want them anyway), but still none of them will run Mac version of Doom III. And the price is just insane.
I seriously hope to see new machines this January, but so far, I see nothing interesting in Apple's offer. Should I want a noisy desktop, I'd buy a PC. Should I want an underpowered laptop, I'd just stick with my old iBook. And I did.
How can you claim that patents are not harder to get than copyright? Your post, mine too, are both protected by copyright. Neither of us did ANYTHING to accomplish that. TO get a patent you have to hire a patent lawyer to help write it, pay the filing fee, and it frequently takes multiple submissions to get accepted (if it gets accepted). Then about 3 years later, poof you have a patent!
On the other hand, if I'll infringe your copyright right now, in order to protect your rights you would have to commence a quite costly legal hassle. Should I be a vicious corporation that could countersue you to death - you'd stand no chance in that battle. With patents, it's the other way round. They are indeed harder to get than copyright, but they are incredibly easy to defend (once acquired). And there are known cases when a small company succesfully defended its patent against a Microsoft-sized giant, even against Microsoft itself. Actually, the ease of getting patents is the main danger in software patents - you never know who patented what when you start to write your own program.
They have been predicting the demise of programmers since the invention of COBOL in the 60s. It was supposed to turn ordinary business users into programmers thanks to its easy, English-like syntax. We're still waiting. Now this writer is talking about running out of programmers capable of maintaining code that was presumably easy to write and maintain?
I think you mistake COBOL for ALGOL. The latter was indeed advertised for it's "ease of use" and it started a long line of (supposedly) user friendly languages, through it direct descendant - Basic - to contemporary Visual Basic and AppleScript. Cobol was rather advertised as being "business friendly" because it allowed ease separation of data and code and that - allegedly - suited it better for business/office data processing than its main competitor, Fortran. Noone could seriously predict "demise of programmers" in early 1960's. There were no personal computers in present meaning - even the so called minis of the PDP family, still required a separate room, had a price of a small airplane and were operated by dedicated staff wearing lab suits.
IBM is a company focused on growing its services biz and Apple has none.
...and both companies have long tradition in attempting to get a beachhead on the other side. Apple's beachhead on the b2b is the xServe, IBM tried many times to build their position on consumer market with "consumer" ThinkPads.
Apple is primarily a B2C company and IBM is B2B.
Cultural differences make east vs west like the definition of homogenized
Steve Jobs and his amazing ego
Both are overrated. IBM and Apple had to overcome their cultural differences dozen years ago when their founded the PowerPC joint effort. Even then it turned out to be surprisingly easy, although there is an anecdote about IBM engineers wearing jeans and T-Shirts and their Apple counterparts wearing business suits on their first meeting - both sides wanted so badly to please the other side. It's been a long time since then, Apple is no longer a bunch of jolly hippies, IBM is no longer a deadly serious behemoth. Whatever they do together, they do it pretty well, and they did many things together since founding PowerPC platform - to name the powerbook 2400 outsourced to IBM Japan and PowerMac G5. Steve's ego also was no obstacle in striking a deal with Disney, striking a deal with Apple (to buy him back), striking a deal with RIAA to start iTunes Music Store. So I thik all the obstacles you mention actually do not exist at all.
To begin with, to help all fellow nerds to understand that terms such as "cybernetics", "algorithm" or even "program" are not directly related to microchip-based modern computers. The term cyber- is often foolishly interpreted as "something computerlike" (especially in media buzzwords such as cyberporn or cyberbusiness) while it comes from ancient Greek (kybernetikos) and means actually "steering". I think it's good for any nerd worth its name to abstract sometimes from modern computer hardware and think of the whole theory of steering and algorithms in its pure form.
By the way: since pornography comes also from ancient Greek and means "depiction of a whore", cyberporn literally could be translated to "steering whore". Hmmmmm...
As mentioned by another poster, your computer hardware is probably embraced by patented IP. Your automobile would probably still have patented IP. Don't forget your local phone system you are using.
But what if I'm using, say, '1984 PC AT, Sun or Apollo workstation, all of them running FreeBSD or compatible? What if I drive a '1973 AMX Javelin? Local phone is probably a hopeless case, but if I could have some sort of Internet access, I can live with no phone.
I'm rather thinking of it as a pet-project for some middle class guy with too much spare time and enough resources. I'd rather avoid imagining a billionaire, as it would make things too easy (you could invent your own technologies and release them for free). Let's assume the guy can afford buying a 1960 refrigerator on ebay and then restoring it to full working condition, but he's too short to sponsor a full-fledged research leading to building and entirely new CPU from scratch.
On the WIPO site there is a passage that might sound kind of scary:
Intellectual property surrounds us in nearly everything we do. At home, at school, at work. At rest and at play. No matter what we do, we are surrounded by the fruits of human creativity and invention.
I wonder if it's possible to live in a IP-free environment. Let's assume that you build your house from a public domain blueprint, you read only books written by authors who died before 1954, you use self-assembled PC running only free software, you use only generic drugs and own devices that either never were patented or whose patents have already expired. I think it's possible without resorting to Amish-style technophobia and living in such environment might even be quite comfortable and stylish (imagine all those 1960's refrigerators, air conditioning systems, eight-track stereo with nothing but folk and classic music etc.). Am I wrong? Any educated comment, please?
I know that Mac OS X is a great OS. I think I know the most important advantages of switching. What is holding me back, however, is the fact that no-one is talking about the disadvantages of doing so.
Well, I consider myself a real Apple fan, bought 4 of their machines and the next one probably will also have the fruity logo. The hardest part of the apple to chew for me is the limited choice of hardware. I mean, the hardware itself is absolutely great, but the choice isn't. For example, if you fancy a subnotebook - stick with x86. Apple just abandoned this segment since powerbook 2400 (that is, around 1998). The smallest machine they manufacture is powerbook 12" - not upgraded since April 2004 and still actually not as small as some Sony Vaio subnotebooks.
Also, it's frustrating that Apple cripples some "low-end" machines just to emphasize the difference between low-end and high-end. There's no technical reason for Powermac 1.8-single CPU to have slower bus than its siblings, dual G5 Powermacs, it's done only to make them "different" so higher price tag on dual is more "justified". But what if I don't need dual CPU. single CPU with fast bus would be enough for my needs? What if I don't want modular design, I'd rather have something like iMac - but with the fastest G5 and graphics card on the market? Then I'm screwed. Of course, every company is doing things like this - abandoning certain market segments, crippling its low-end machines etc. But on the x86 the competition is too sharp and too widespread - if Dell abandons certain segment, probably HP will take it from here. If you stick with MacOS, you suddenly find yourself out of many choices you took for granted so far.
Like I said, I think the benefits are still more important than lack of choice so it's not that I'm discouraging you - but you (wisely) didn't ask about benefits this time, you wanted to hear about annoyances.
It's "teddy bear". No, really. I think they will progress according to the old Presley song: "I don't wanna be a tiger, 'cause tigers play too rough. I don't wanna be a lion, 'cause lions ain't the kind you love enough. I just wanna be your teddy bear" :-)
Damn, I miss that era when "Computers used to do X" was always newsworthy no matter how mundane the X was ("Computers used to typeset newspapers"). The whole article looks like something written 20 years ago or so and sadly it is replicating some fake asumptions that since them were sufficiently refuted. The method (...) promises to reduce the subjectivity of art assessments made by human experts." If it does, don't believe this promise. You don't get magical infallibility just becouse you use a computer. Even with this method, human experts will have to do the scanning, write comparison algorhitms and analyze the results (including utterly subjective questions such as "does this pattern match sufficiently well the typical pattern of Van Gogh brushstrokes"). To hope that you reduce subjectivity by using a computer is like hoping that human expert will be less subjective just because he's typing his report on a computer instead of mechanical typewriter.
Cathedral/bazaar refers to the software development process, IMO, not to the user (you). You should be able to choose something delicious from the free software/bazaar menu. If you cannot, it means you have been unable to find something suitable for you.
But that's why I think the c/b metaphor is flawed. A restaurant is not an instituion existing for the sole purpose of existence (let's skip the money laundries for New Jersey mafia and alike in this conversation). It's an institution designed to attract customers - the chef is limited in his choices by the restaurant's owner, who wants to make money. It's similar with proprietary software - it is usually written with the average user needs in mind. However, with Free Software it's not that simple. It is largely written by programmers for programmers (hackers etc.). That's why it excels with software aimed for computer professionals (Apache, gcc etc.) and fares much worse with software aimed at the average consumer (games, desktop applications etc.). The very fact that ESR was choosing the "development process" as the focal point in constructing his metaphor is already telling us something. The user doesn't care the least about "development process", he cares about the ease-of-use.
Frankly, I always hated the whole cathedral vs bazaar metaphor. I don't think it portrays well the virtues and faults of open source and proprietary software. I use proprietary software (MacOS + some closed apps) for the same reason I prefer to "dine out" rather than cook my own meals. I just want to choose something delicious from the restaurant's menu - and I don't care that my choices are limited. Yes, if you cook in your own kitchen, you can customize you meal the way you like it - as it is with open source software. But this will consume you a lot of time and effort, so most people would rather avoid it - unless they really enjoy cooking, have really to much spare time or are really short on cash. It's similar with Free Software - you use it if you really like to 'tinker' with everything or are really short on cash. But if you don't like the former and are not limited by latter, you will rather go to a store with proprietary solutions - where your choices are obviously limited, but you're saving time and effort. So I think restaurant vs kitchen is a better metaphor for proprietary vs free/open.
It's stupid for a Pole to respond to another Pole's criticism of Poland on Slashdot,
:)
Stupid - maybe. But also quite typical for us, isn't it?
Not likely. Poland is right now in a severe political turmoil, the government has recently fallen due to corruption allegations and there's another interim government with rather weak (if any) support in the parlament. There's no long-term planning of anything, the government will just manage things until the next election. Every day the press reveals another evidence of corruption. The sentence "Tinted windscreen, man, tinted windscreen.. it's better than... better than... better than... anything!", taken from transcript of secret service taping of conversations of one MP with a lobbyist corrupting him with a gift of a brand-new Mercedes Benz (with tinted windscreen) is now as popular in "watercooler" conversations as "You forgot about Poland". It turned out that in Polish government everyone took bribes from everyone, but they were too lazy/incompetent to do what they took bribes for. It's quite typical for Poland and that's why things have sometimes a happy ending here - when the politicians become too corupt and stupid, they sortof step back, enjoy their tinted windscreens and... let the wise men do their job. I guess that's what happened here.
Iron Giant a masterpiece? Apparently, you're underestimating how the quality of animation in trailers impacts interest in the movie. To me, Iron Giant looked boring in the trailers
Trailers are also a part of marketing. You are right - trailers for "Iron Giant" were a failure. Even posters were a failure and watching them you can only ask "what were they thinking? what mother will take her kids to a movie using some dangerous robotic creature as it's main... mascot?". Tha'ts what I meant by Warner had no clue how to market it. Ironically, what you thought was bad was exactly the same quality that makes the animation in "The Incredibles" so brilliant - "Iron Giant" was a pastiche of 1950's sci-fi just as "The Incredibles" are a pastiche of the "golden age" superhero cartoons.