No, I was not aware of that actually. I haven't gone into real depth on his designs, because so much is presented whenever something newly-cool happens that I haven't had to.
Well, If this succeeds I'm going to give a lot more credit to Rutan than I am to the pilot, excepting the endurance that the pilot will need in order to do this at all, though that is a fairly critical thing.
Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites seem to be popular lately, though they've been pushing the envelope now for many, many years. The first time that I heard of Rutan was when he developed his asymetrical "Boomerang" aircraft and it made its debut in 1996, and from then on I've seen him and his company do increasingly cool things. Seeing as how Rutan's SpaceShipOne was the first private craft to go suborbital, he's going to make the news.
Let the rich people play with this stuff, at least it's pushing things into new realms, not like some rich guy who buys an existing small passenger jet just for a toy.
Openstep wasn't an Apple-only project, and the bulk of the NeXT-manufactured machines used Motorola processors. the Openstep/486 was an expensive and small distribution OS, and was a spinoff of the Motorola variant. So, when the Darwin kernel was developed, it had to then be ported to the x86 architecture. This probably wasn't as hard as if they had no experience porting NeXTStep, but it still required work that they could have *easily* not bothered with.
Did you ever actually play with that kernel? I did, and I can tell you that it required Intel chipsets for everything, including the main motherboard chipset (440BX, LX, and a P-Pro variant if memory serves), video, and ethernet. This may have been coincidental, but picking that particular vendor for everything seems like it was intentional.
When they developed the port, IBM wasn't making the whizzbang processors, Motorola was. IBM was making the 603 line, and then when they were making G3s, Motorola was making higher end chips. I know that IBM took the lead at some point, but everything that I've read had indicated that Motorola is manufacturing the new G5 chips, so I don't really know who's doing what at this point.
Okay then, how many Mrs. Non-geeks are going to let their family room be turned into another workstation? How many are going to want to take a device that they already don't know how to use very well (the computer) and try to use it for DVDs, streaming video, music, or anything else like that? Remember, NTSC televisions don't have the resolution that it takes to have a decent web surfing experience, so unless she likes running back to the den to put a movie in or to change CDs then odds are that she's going to want individual stereo audio components or else an all-in-one multimedia device that plays CDs and DVDs and has the surround sound built in. Ease of use, with a button that has "play" printed on it are what she's looking for.
I've had many consumer-level PCs near AV equipment, and I've never had any problems with electronic interference, and never any noise problems that couldn't be easily overcome by turning up the volume. Between the ceiling fan, the air conditioning blower motor, the traffic outside, the dog barking, and the conversations happening, the fans and hard disk drive of your average PC sitting across the room from you are negligible.
There's this device called a "TV View" that converts VGA to NTSC, as I've already stated twice. I have extensive experience with them as my employer has thousands of them hooked to PCs and Macintoshes. They work fine at 640x480 or 800x600. They're cheap, and there are others that are even cheaper than these.
Gateway 2000 tried to build a PC for the entertainment center, called the Destination series. It was a flop. I've never seen any corporate entertainment center PC take off, and I doubt that I will until everyone has HDTV with happy little digital inputs and until the costs of the units get down to near your average decent quality DVD player or AV receiver. Most people don't know how to even use their PCs for what they already can do anyway, and those that do frequently have their own solutions already in place, so I doubt that your device is going to attract too many buyers.
I really don't understand why Western religions consistently promote the idea that you need to accept a religion in order to be a moral person. The Eastern philosophical movements like Buddhism, Taoism, etc., not to mention many Western philosophies, long ago managed to promote ideas of acting ethically, treating other people well, etc., without having to resort to the idea of gods, eternal punishment, and the entire infrastructure necessary to support all that (churches, witch doctors, high priests, sacred texts, rigid commandments, and dogma).
Exactly. I'm a generally nice guy, even though I don't subscribe to the "you're going to hell" or "there's a big invisible man up in the sky looking at you" beliefs. I do as I will because being nice to people has helped me build a base of people that have shown themselves to be reliable and willing to participate in what I'm interested in. People are willing to go a long way with you through difficult times if they like you.
I know exactly what you're talking about. What I'm asking is why I should spend another $200 for a device when I can just throw the PC that is laying around into the entertainment center rather than streaming over wireless or cat5. If I only have ONE computer then your device idea makes sense. If I have two computers, one of which is just sitting there because my newer one replaced it, then the old one goes into the cabinet with the VCR and stereo receiver, or goes on the floor next to it. If it's an iMac then the screen gets a piece of plastic placed over it to hide it. If it's a headless machine then it just gets plugged in, or plugged into a VGA to NTSC adapter, which is really cheap.
That depends on how much it costs to develop, and how many computers are already owned by the target audience. I have a video projector and a lot of other AV equipment and I've had various rackmount form factor computers hooked up to it. I like having all of it right there usable with the wireless IR keyboard. For quite some time my DVD playback was through the computer. I've since taken that computer apart and not gotten it back together, so right now I'm without a web browser in there.
If too many Apple fans already have a G3 or G4 tower laying around that has been obseleted by a more powerful Apple then they probably would hook that computer up instead of this one. Even an iMac could be integrated into an AV cabinet using a "TV View" or other VGA to NTSC device, or people could upgrade to something nicer like a TV with RGB inputs or digital. If too many people have other fairly easy options then Apple won't sell enough of these "Express 2" devices to pay off the development costs, let alone get into profit.
...what we've already known either because the products are out or because there have been pre-release photos of real equipment.
As much as I'd like Apple to diversify and build more products suitable to my needs, a 17" wide "pizza box" of an entertainment center computer isn't very likely and probably wouldn't sell well enough to pay off development costs. I'd buy one if it were less than $800, but the odds of that are small.
"...Mr Dell is deep in Intel's pocket, and wont be cooperating with AMD any time soon."
Dell comes out and announces this to keep Intel on its toes and to drive up interest in the company. It's like how Apple maintains an x86 port of the Darwin Kernel that OSX uses; not because they intend to switch to x86, but because it gives them, "see, we don't need to run on Motorola/IBM Power architecture, so if you want us to you'd better give us more of what we want," lattitude with an actual possible way to back it up.
Dell probably had some negotiations that were not going as well as they had hoped, so they made this announcement. Behind the scenes things got addressed, and now they've retracted it.
I tend to be skeptical of religions because most large religions have done something patently foolish during the era that they're establishing themselves, or else a significantly visible portion have done something stupid, claiming it for the religion. The Christians burned Alexandria and other "pagan" knowledge archives. The Muslims have gone from the days of invasion (Moors into Spain) to terrorism.
Most religions have at times held other faiths and people of those other faiths in distain to the point of suggesting they be killed for their beliefs. I find this offensive, and I interact with people who feel that their way is "the one true way" as absolutely little as possible. I do not seek to be 'converted', nor do I want to subject myself to the words of someone who refuses to accept me even though I'm relatively stable, not a drag on society, and not filling the world with children that have to be fed.
Even if debris from an asteroid collision manages to reach escape velocity from the Earth's gravity well, it damned sure isn't going to fall another 100,000,000 miles straight up, which is what it would take to reach Mars. It would end up in the Sun, or, at the very least, on Venus or Mercury.
Okay, what about debris sent hurling through space fifteen or twenty degrees just past the Sun, spun by the Sun into a highly elliptic orbit, where it goes from in as far as the fringes of Mercury's orbit (abeit for a short time) to as far out as Jupiter?
Or, instead of the Sun, which has nasty radiation, maybe the impact was terribly strong, which could send stuff out past Mars (like, every probe Earth has sent out into deep space ever)...
Without trying to be patronizing, please clarify what you mean. I'm curious. The section, "You are perhaps right in being skeptical of your perceptions, but deciding to be more skeptical of your perceptions just because you perceive things you don't like..." is what I'm having trouble interpreting.
"Suppose that, in a rather obviously impressive way, God descended from Heaven. Suppose he drops by your place and performs a few miracles. Maybe then he beams you down to Hell for a 5-minute tour, either Star Trek style or via the Earth just opening up for a moment..."
Okay, I don't normally, but I'll bite this time...
If God exists and did this, or part of this, and it was obvious to all of those involved that he actually did these things and that there was absolutely no other way that these things could have happened then those involved would have a reason to believe in him. Fact of the matter is that none of these things have happened to me or to anyone I know, and those that I know who claim that God did something in their lives that's overly special are either crazy or are so bad at stastics that they're not accounting for the 10x number of bad things that happen for the one "miracle" that is simply fortuitous coincidence.
The British didn't defeat the Spanish Armada in Queen Elisabeth I's day because God helped, they had several unexpected advantages. Likewise, 1910-1920 era Germany lost the first World War despite asserting to themselves in some national motto "God is Great." The man referred to as "Comical Ali" the Iraqi Information Minister continually ranted how the Americans were losing, and how Allah was going to see the Iraqi army to victory over the Infidels.
This is the same damn argument that Science has had with religion from the earliest days of the discipline; skeptics don't blindly accept "truth" simply because people insist that it's true. Continual restatement of a position doesn't have anything to do with reality.
Show me one 'miracle' and I'll show you ten anti-miracles, like my 30 year old friend who was a vegetarian and otherwise the picture of health who died of completely natural causes, not realising that she had pulmonary hypertension until it was far, far too late to do anything about it.
In the mean time, I'm not going to believe something transcribed by hand over generations, across multiple languages, and at times by organizations with manipulative agendas. It was also originally written by people who didn't understand the natural world like we do. I don't doubt many of the positive "lessons" that are the ultimate theme of the parables, but the exact verbatim message can't be literally interpreted in my opinion.
"...I wouldn't find it all that shocking if life were found there (although it would certainly raise some interesting questions)."
You're probably not a religious fundamentalist either. Remember, the vast majority of the religions on the planet make Earth out to be something special in "all of God's work", and challenging that with something like, "Life has come to be elsewhere without spawning from Earth" would be a real problem for many religions, assuming that the message about life spawning managed to reach the people in these congregations.
If religious leaders condemn it they could advocate open violence against anyone spreading the knowledge or believing it. Since there are a LOT of people who fall into the Fundamentalist category or are influenced by them this could have really nasty ramifications.
Most people can't handle a major change in their world view.
The disjointed department doesn't work too efficiently. We aren't blocking known spyware sites, because while IS maintains the firewall hardware-wise, another department comprised of certified teachers maintains control of the filtering rules. We do scan email now, but it didn't happen for a long time and we had a lot of problems before it finally got started.
Spyware is a huge problem right now, because we have no effective way of fighting it. I end up using free tools to remove it from almost every PC that I work on, sometimes hundreds of components across a couple dozen packages. It's really frustrating.
The problem is that the Patent and Trademark Office takes the perspective that if the patent or trademark is wrong, it'll be sorted out in court, while the court takes the perspective that there must be some creedence to the patent or tradmark since the USPTO granted it.
This guy needs a blanket party, if you know what I mean.
I haven't had any popup ad troubles yet (Mozilla on Linux/x86) but the first time I tried to click on the "Read More" link below the story from Slashdot's main page, the web browser spontaneously closed itself. Interesting feature...
Servers and network infrastructure beyond the "activate the data drop by putting a cat-5 cable between the patch panel and hub" are handled by another team. We don't install data drops or work directly with servers. We do work with accounts as necessary sometimes, a "user administrator" kind of position.
There is a helpdesk, but there are no trained computer people on it. Training at the helpdesk consists of another helpdesk person showing one the ropes, so most of the time they end up simply taking workorders. They can usually walk a user through Eudora or through some weird Office quirk, but that's the limit.
I work for a school district. We have thirteen field technicians to support 25,000 desktop computers and approximately 2000 network printers. We have at least eight different Apple platforms (5260/5400/5500, beige G3, "new world" G series towers, iMacs of each vintage, and the eMac), and thirteen different PC platforms from NEC (1), Compaq (4), ABIT (1), ASUS (1), Dell (2), and Intel (5), plus all of the proprietary crap that people bring in. Our computers run everything from Windows 95 through XP, MacOS 7.5.3 through 10.4. Somehow we're still averaging 24 hour turnaround on our initial appearance, despite having about 100 sites (85 schools, fifteen or so admin sites) over a 20 mile wide area.
I have absolutely no sympathy for people who can't support their fifty computers because it's too hard for them. I would love it if we were down to less than 500:1 or if we could exchange 90% of the equipment to standardize on two or three Macs and two or three PCs, but it'll never happen.
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No, I was not aware of that actually. I haven't gone into real depth on his designs, because so much is presented whenever something newly-cool happens that I haven't had to.
I'll have to check it out.
Well, If this succeeds I'm going to give a lot more credit to Rutan than I am to the pilot, excepting the endurance that the pilot will need in order to do this at all, though that is a fairly critical thing.
Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites seem to be popular lately, though they've been pushing the envelope now for many, many years. The first time that I heard of Rutan was when he developed his asymetrical "Boomerang" aircraft and it made its debut in 1996, and from then on I've seen him and his company do increasingly cool things. Seeing as how Rutan's SpaceShipOne was the first private craft to go suborbital, he's going to make the news.
Let the rich people play with this stuff, at least it's pushing things into new realms, not like some rich guy who buys an existing small passenger jet just for a toy.
Openstep wasn't an Apple-only project, and the bulk of the NeXT-manufactured machines used Motorola processors. the Openstep/486 was an expensive and small distribution OS, and was a spinoff of the Motorola variant. So, when the Darwin kernel was developed, it had to then be ported to the x86 architecture. This probably wasn't as hard as if they had no experience porting NeXTStep, but it still required work that they could have *easily* not bothered with.
Did you ever actually play with that kernel? I did, and I can tell you that it required Intel chipsets for everything, including the main motherboard chipset (440BX, LX, and a P-Pro variant if memory serves), video, and ethernet. This may have been coincidental, but picking that particular vendor for everything seems like it was intentional.
When they developed the port, IBM wasn't making the whizzbang processors, Motorola was. IBM was making the 603 line, and then when they were making G3s, Motorola was making higher end chips. I know that IBM took the lead at some point, but everything that I've read had indicated that Motorola is manufacturing the new G5 chips, so I don't really know who's doing what at this point.
Isn't making the unit of mass based on a particular physical thing what they're trying to avoid?
Mind you I can't come up with a better solution either...
Okay then, how many Mrs. Non-geeks are going to let their family room be turned into another workstation? How many are going to want to take a device that they already don't know how to use very well (the computer) and try to use it for DVDs, streaming video, music, or anything else like that? Remember, NTSC televisions don't have the resolution that it takes to have a decent web surfing experience, so unless she likes running back to the den to put a movie in or to change CDs then odds are that she's going to want individual stereo audio components or else an all-in-one multimedia device that plays CDs and DVDs and has the surround sound built in. Ease of use, with a button that has "play" printed on it are what she's looking for.
I've had many consumer-level PCs near AV equipment, and I've never had any problems with electronic interference, and never any noise problems that couldn't be easily overcome by turning up the volume. Between the ceiling fan, the air conditioning blower motor, the traffic outside, the dog barking, and the conversations happening, the fans and hard disk drive of your average PC sitting across the room from you are negligible.
There's this device called a "TV View" that converts VGA to NTSC, as I've already stated twice. I have extensive experience with them as my employer has thousands of them hooked to PCs and Macintoshes. They work fine at 640x480 or 800x600. They're cheap, and there are others that are even cheaper than these.
Gateway 2000 tried to build a PC for the entertainment center, called the Destination series. It was a flop. I've never seen any corporate entertainment center PC take off, and I doubt that I will until everyone has HDTV with happy little digital inputs and until the costs of the units get down to near your average decent quality DVD player or AV receiver. Most people don't know how to even use their PCs for what they already can do anyway, and those that do frequently have their own solutions already in place, so I doubt that your device is going to attract too many buyers.
I know exactly what you're talking about. What I'm asking is why I should spend another $200 for a device when I can just throw the PC that is laying around into the entertainment center rather than streaming over wireless or cat5. If I only have ONE computer then your device idea makes sense. If I have two computers, one of which is just sitting there because my newer one replaced it, then the old one goes into the cabinet with the VCR and stereo receiver, or goes on the floor next to it. If it's an iMac then the screen gets a piece of plastic placed over it to hide it. If it's a headless machine then it just gets plugged in, or plugged into a VGA to NTSC adapter, which is really cheap.
That depends on how much it costs to develop, and how many computers are already owned by the target audience. I have a video projector and a lot of other AV equipment and I've had various rackmount form factor computers hooked up to it. I like having all of it right there usable with the wireless IR keyboard. For quite some time my DVD playback was through the computer. I've since taken that computer apart and not gotten it back together, so right now I'm without a web browser in there.
If too many Apple fans already have a G3 or G4 tower laying around that has been obseleted by a more powerful Apple then they probably would hook that computer up instead of this one. Even an iMac could be integrated into an AV cabinet using a "TV View" or other VGA to NTSC device, or people could upgrade to something nicer like a TV with RGB inputs or digital. If too many people have other fairly easy options then Apple won't sell enough of these "Express 2" devices to pay off the development costs, let alone get into profit.
...what we've already known either because the products are out or because there have been pre-release photos of real equipment.
As much as I'd like Apple to diversify and build more products suitable to my needs, a 17" wide "pizza box" of an entertainment center computer isn't very likely and probably wouldn't sell well enough to pay off development costs. I'd buy one if it were less than $800, but the odds of that are small.
"...Mr Dell is deep in Intel's pocket, and wont be cooperating with AMD any time soon."
Dell comes out and announces this to keep Intel on its toes and to drive up interest in the company. It's like how Apple maintains an x86 port of the Darwin Kernel that OSX uses; not because they intend to switch to x86, but because it gives them, "see, we don't need to run on Motorola/IBM Power architecture, so if you want us to you'd better give us more of what we want," lattitude with an actual possible way to back it up.
Dell probably had some negotiations that were not going as well as they had hoped, so they made this announcement. Behind the scenes things got addressed, and now they've retracted it.
I tend to be skeptical of religions because most large religions have done something patently foolish during the era that they're establishing themselves, or else a significantly visible portion have done something stupid, claiming it for the religion. The Christians burned Alexandria and other "pagan" knowledge archives. The Muslims have gone from the days of invasion (Moors into Spain) to terrorism.
Most religions have at times held other faiths and people of those other faiths in distain to the point of suggesting they be killed for their beliefs. I find this offensive, and I interact with people who feel that their way is "the one true way" as absolutely little as possible. I do not seek to be 'converted', nor do I want to subject myself to the words of someone who refuses to accept me even though I'm relatively stable, not a drag on society, and not filling the world with children that have to be fed.
"Like the Big Bang, it's reproducing the experiment that is proving to be the problem..."
Apparently you've never seen the Houston 500...
Or, instead of the Sun, which has nasty radiation, maybe the impact was terribly strong, which could send stuff out past Mars (like, every probe Earth has sent out into deep space ever)...
huh?
Without trying to be patronizing, please clarify what you mean. I'm curious. The section, "You are perhaps right in being skeptical of your perceptions, but deciding to be more skeptical of your perceptions just because you perceive things you don't like..." is what I'm having trouble interpreting.
Well, at least the TiVo service already somewhat goes with the current Apple naming scheme...
"Not all fundies are ignorant idiots. Don't paint us that way."
*blink* *blink*
BWAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!!
"Suppose that, in a rather obviously impressive way, God descended from Heaven. Suppose he drops by your place and performs a few miracles. Maybe then he beams you down to Hell for a 5-minute tour, either Star Trek style or via the Earth just opening up for a moment..."
Okay, I don't normally, but I'll bite this time...
If God exists and did this, or part of this, and it was obvious to all of those involved that he actually did these things and that there was absolutely no other way that these things could have happened then those involved would have a reason to believe in him. Fact of the matter is that none of these things have happened to me or to anyone I know, and those that I know who claim that God did something in their lives that's overly special are either crazy or are so bad at stastics that they're not accounting for the 10x number of bad things that happen for the one "miracle" that is simply fortuitous coincidence.
The British didn't defeat the Spanish Armada in Queen Elisabeth I's day because God helped, they had several unexpected advantages. Likewise, 1910-1920 era Germany lost the first World War despite asserting to themselves in some national motto "God is Great." The man referred to as "Comical Ali" the Iraqi Information Minister continually ranted how the Americans were losing, and how Allah was going to see the Iraqi army to victory over the Infidels.
This is the same damn argument that Science has had with religion from the earliest days of the discipline; skeptics don't blindly accept "truth" simply because people insist that it's true. Continual restatement of a position doesn't have anything to do with reality.
Show me one 'miracle' and I'll show you ten anti-miracles, like my 30 year old friend who was a vegetarian and otherwise the picture of health who died of completely natural causes, not realising that she had pulmonary hypertension until it was far, far too late to do anything about it.
In the mean time, I'm not going to believe something transcribed by hand over generations, across multiple languages, and at times by organizations with manipulative agendas. It was also originally written by people who didn't understand the natural world like we do. I don't doubt many of the positive "lessons" that are the ultimate theme of the parables, but the exact verbatim message can't be literally interpreted in my opinion.
"...I wouldn't find it all that shocking if life were found there (although it would certainly raise some interesting questions)."
You're probably not a religious fundamentalist either. Remember, the vast majority of the religions on the planet make Earth out to be something special in "all of God's work", and challenging that with something like, "Life has come to be elsewhere without spawning from Earth" would be a real problem for many religions, assuming that the message about life spawning managed to reach the people in these congregations.
If religious leaders condemn it they could advocate open violence against anyone spreading the knowledge or believing it. Since there are a LOT of people who fall into the Fundamentalist category or are influenced by them this could have really nasty ramifications.
Most people can't handle a major change in their world view.
The disjointed department doesn't work too efficiently. We aren't blocking known spyware sites, because while IS maintains the firewall hardware-wise, another department comprised of certified teachers maintains control of the filtering rules. We do scan email now, but it didn't happen for a long time and we had a lot of problems before it finally got started.
Spyware is a huge problem right now, because we have no effective way of fighting it. I end up using free tools to remove it from almost every PC that I work on, sometimes hundreds of components across a couple dozen packages. It's really frustrating.
The problem is that the Patent and Trademark Office takes the perspective that if the patent or trademark is wrong, it'll be sorted out in court, while the court takes the perspective that there must be some creedence to the patent or tradmark since the USPTO granted it.
This guy needs a blanket party, if you know what I mean.
I haven't had any popup ad troubles yet (Mozilla on Linux/x86) but the first time I tried to click on the "Read More" link below the story from Slashdot's main page, the web browser spontaneously closed itself. Interesting feature...
Servers and network infrastructure beyond the "activate the data drop by putting a cat-5 cable between the patch panel and hub" are handled by another team. We don't install data drops or work directly with servers. We do work with accounts as necessary sometimes, a "user administrator" kind of position.
There is a helpdesk, but there are no trained computer people on it. Training at the helpdesk consists of another helpdesk person showing one the ropes, so most of the time they end up simply taking workorders. They can usually walk a user through Eudora or through some weird Office quirk, but that's the limit.
I work for a school district. We have thirteen field technicians to support 25,000 desktop computers and approximately 2000 network printers. We have at least eight different Apple platforms (5260/5400/5500, beige G3, "new world" G series towers, iMacs of each vintage, and the eMac), and thirteen different PC platforms from NEC (1), Compaq (4), ABIT (1), ASUS (1), Dell (2), and Intel (5), plus all of the proprietary crap that people bring in. Our computers run everything from Windows 95 through XP, MacOS 7.5.3 through 10.4. Somehow we're still averaging 24 hour turnaround on our initial appearance, despite having about 100 sites (85 schools, fifteen or so admin sites) over a 20 mile wide area.
I have absolutely no sympathy for people who can't support their fifty computers because it's too hard for them. I would love it if we were down to less than 500:1 or if we could exchange 90% of the equipment to standardize on two or three Macs and two or three PCs, but it'll never happen.