Ah, strictly speaking, you are right about karate's development into a distinct form occuring in Okinawa, but the poster was correct, too. In fact, if a clam is to be made that the poster was in error, it would have to be for limiting the claim to include *just* karate, because most of the asian martial arts (including karate) trace their geneologies to "kung fu", and the foundation of kung fu was established by a Indian Buddist monk (Bodhidharma, "Ta Mo" in Chinese or "Daruma" in Japanese) on pilgrimage to China, in the very same Shaolin monastary that was founded by a previous Indian Buddist monk (Ba Tuo)several decades previously.
Links with additional/supporting information are here (for information on the Shaolin/kung fu) and here (for info on karate).
Re:Not that I believe aliens are buzzing Earth, bu
on
Starcraft
·
· Score: 1
...nor was I "abducted" or any of that shit...
Not that you know of, you mean.
Does a large dish antenna pop out of your ass at inopportune times?
This is insightful? Once again, a the peanut gallery is revealing its ignorance.
This is a comment I'd expect by someone who probably thinks that "developing a computer system" involves buying a video card, motherboard, memory, a hard drive and a CD-RW drive and a cool game controller, installing them into a pre-built chassis and loading RedHat 8.0 from a CD s/he bought from CompUSA. For an added challenge, s/he might overclock the CPU!
For the record, this is called "assembling a computer", and requires no more engineering skill than installing a water filter on the kitchen faucet. Real computer ENGINEERS developing a new product know the value of a good system development kit, and wouldn't compare one to a "mini-ATX board". We're not talking about a system development kit that an code monkey would use to write the next greatest "Hello, World" perl script. System development kits are used in the creation of new computer-based hardware and software SYSTEMS, including embedded applications like settop boxes, robotic controllers, and automobile control electronics.
This development system may not provide the value and functionality required of it, but that should be determined by comparing the features/capabilities that it provides against those required by the engineers in the markets that Transmeta is trying to develop, and by comparing it to other similar system development kits, and not by comparing it to an off-the-shelf motherboard you get from Fry's and the perceived need of LAN party attendees.
Just of the top of my head. Granted,those examples were from some of the better characters from STTNG. And there are some STTNG characters that had no real depth to them (Riker, Beverly Crusher, Geordi, Tasha), and could arguably be interchanged. But you can't seriously maintain that any of the characters lines I quoted were interchangable with those of another characters?
The parent post to this one was "Insightful"? I think not. The author of that post picked one of the most repeated (and by now, hackneyed) lines from TOS (along with "Fascinating") and holds that up as proof. Riiiiight.
As for TOS's characters, IMHO, in the TV show, Spock was one of the most frustratingly faulty character, since he routinely said (and did) the most illogical things, and never got called to the mat on it. Like all the time he calculated probabilities to the nth decimal place, when he could possibily have enough quantitative information to carry a calculation to that level of significance. It's illogical to be that inaccurately precise, and I cringe just about every time Spock utters a line. One can perhaps argue that Spock was emotionless, but he was hardly "logical".
And, if you couldn't tell, the lines I quoted above were said by Worf, Q (incredible character and acting), and Data, respectively. Worf's character development was disappointing in the first few seasons, but he became the best and most underrated character in the whole franchise, IMHO. Data was a much better Spock than Spock. And Q saved the terribleseries' first two episodes for me, and every episode with Q in it was a must-see for me. (The one where he is stripped of his powers? Classic!)
I agree. The sophistication of these savages is impressive. Who would have thought that they can look beyond the dazzling glass beads and intoxicating liquor that Gates and Co. are offering to realize the long term business and economic implications fully getting in bed with Microsoft.
These new "Super Indians" are going to be a lot harder to herd onto a reservation than the ones we had to deal with in the past. Why, they may even be almost as smart at the White Man, and just as cunning!
Bring out the phrenologists! We must study the size and shapes of their skulls!
I hope Best Buy didn't pay PDB a lot of money to come up with the conceptual "design" for this laptop. I mean, how much conceptualizing does it take for a "designer" to copy (yet again) a form-factor that Apple pioneered?
I wonder what else the Porsche Design Boutique has created. Based of this one data point, I'd rather go with IDEO or Frog. At least they do original work.
What's he doing fraternizing with the enemy? Is he going to be shilling for this product like he was for the "room filling sound of the Bose Wave Radio" piece-of-carp?
I guess if I got an invite to the Porsche Design Boutique in Beverly Hills, I guess I might go, too.
I should have added (by way of further explanation) that the anode (the positive terminal) would attract the negative ions of a dissolved salt (the Cl- ions of NaCl), while the cathode (or the negative terminal) would attract the positve ions (the Na+).
If you pump the water around the anode out, you will have H20 with Cl- ions floating freely in it, in a highly reactive state, ready to bind to any available positive ion. Likewise, pumping the catholyte out would have H20 with Na+ free floating in a highly reactive state,ready to bind to any negative ion.
It seems like the biggest problem would be storing the end products, but it sounds like the anolyte and the catholyte could be produced fairly cheaply and easily as needed, in a small unit.
Seems to be pretty reasonable to me, but I haven't studied chem for 16 years....anactofgod...
It sounds like what they are doing is applying electricity to a solution containing a dissolved salt to create two "products". Around the anode, an "anolyte" is created that has antibacterial properties (though the article claims antiviral, anticyst(?), antigerm properties, as well). At the cathode, a "catholyte" is created that can be used "for treating industrial effluent like the ones from Electro-plating, photographic, and/or textile plants. Catholyte has powerful properties for flocculation, coagulation, bionutrient transfer, cleaning purposes, and neutralizing the toxicity of heavy metals."
Of course, all of this would be apparent to anyone who actually reads the supporting material. *GRYNN*...anactofgod...
...the best systems engineers, application architects, programmers, methodology gurus, information architects, UI designers, usability experts...you name it, I've hired them and been successful. My secret is...
RIIIIGHT!!!
Like I'm going to tell you! I'm going to keep all the wheat for myself, and leave the rest of you to make do with the chaff! Once my company full of Big Brains (TM) has achieved global domination over you Teen Brained (TM) competitors, you will all bow down to ME!
Precisely. This isn't capitalism, not by any definition I know. This is just corruption. This is yet another case of officers of company leveraging their authority to use corporate assets to subsidize their personal greed.
A corporate board voted to give themselves a no-recourse loan from corporate coffers to purchase stock. Explain to me how this was ever in the company's interest? Wasn't there a better use of the funds more in tuned to the *corporation's* interests? And where were the checks-and-balances to prevent this sort of crony-ism?
This sort of thing was common place in during the freewheeling days of the Internet bubble, when everyone expected a big payoff for little work. We (i.e., our economy) is going to be paying for those decisions for a long time to come.
And it is precisely this scenario (and Enron, MCIWorldcom, etc.) that I'm going to use as a counter-point to my laizze-faire free-market friends who claim that government has no business in then business of business. When corporate officers can't be trusted to act in the long-term best interests of their company over their own short-term self-interest, how can we reasonably expect them to make decisions that are in the best interest of society at large?
Any supposed free-market capitalist who is not opposed to these practices is actually merely a supporter of the aggregation off personal wealth, not competitive business.
Actually, while this action by the FCC may be fundamentally stoopid, it's not necessarily harmful. It merely adds unnecessary/redundant broadcast tuning functionality to the HDTV's that, for most consumers, will be connected to cable or satellite service providers' digital settop box tuners.
I'm more concerned with the second FCC initiative to address content providers' (i.e. the movie industry's) concerns about the potential to abuse this new technology to pirate content. No doubt these measure will lead to security feature creep to protect more than than just broad-/cable-/satellite-cast cotent and include other digital content.
Setting the issues of government-sponsored copy protection, didn't this "piracy" issue raise it's ugly head in the 1970s with the advent of consumer VCR technology? Didn't anyone learn anything about how this is a non-issue, especially when compared to the increased revenue opportunities that new technology made available to content creators and providers?
Actually, my understanding of the situation is that the last analog signal will be broadcast in 2006, corresponding to a complete switchover to digital. What the manufacturers are resisting is building broadcast digital tuners into the televisions, stating (probably correctly) that the vast majority of the television viewing public get their signal from cable- and/or satellite-casts.
In this case, I'm am tending to agree with the manufacturers. Why should I pay for a digital broadcast tuner if I get a tuner from my cable or satellite provider? And if one requires access to broadcasts, it would be simple to just sell external digital broadcast tuners, which, by the way, will be required for all current televisions, anyway.
In this case, I think the government is not thinking clearly. Go figure....anactofgod...
There is a pretty good overview of A/UX on applefritters. The article even provides a pretty good comparison & contrast between A/UX and MacOS X.
But your original question was why Apple didn't use *nix as the basis of it's modern OS way back in the 1990s. Do you remember "Taligent" and "Pink", the joint venture between IBM & Apple to create a viable OS standard based to compete with the Wintel cartel?
Pink was the OS that was supposed to be designed ground-up to be completely based on OO principles and technology. Apple put all it's eggs int that basket, and had to go shopping for an OS after years of missed delivery deadlines. Remember the play that Apple made for BeOS, before Jean-Louis Gasse and friends put a ridiculous price tag on what was still an unfinished OS? The net result was that Apple (and IBM) never finished fully OO-based Pink so it bought Job's NeXT. This allowed Apple to layer the MacOS on top of the OO-layer that NeXT had layered on top of BSD-Unix. And this also brought Apple's prodigal son back home.
It would be interesting to see the source for CYC's inference engine released under GPL.
This just won't happen, though. CYCORP is a company that is seeking to capitalize off of the decade-and-a-half of R&D by productizing the CYC inference engine and knowledge base in a variety of applications. Even though CYCORP has a 15+ year head start in creating the knowledge-base, publishing the code for "peer-review" would be inviting competition, maybe by someone with deeper pockets (Microsoft? Oracle? IBM?).
Wallace's comments on CYC are interesting, considering that CYC is on a whole other level than ALICEBOT in term of scope and complexity. I've been following Lenat's work since the early 1980s. Based on my understanding of ALICEBOT and CYC, comparing them is like a rubber-band powered plane to a 747 - both fly, but one is toy, and the other a tool.
You know, I'd be *VERY* interested in seeing a head2head interview between Wallace and Lenat. Can Slashdot make that happen?
This might be slightly off topic, but its related to the supposition that Mac users are more interested in using their computers to actually accomplish some work, rather than working on their computers...
Apple has (used to have?) the AppleMasters program, a group of noted international leaders in various fields who use Apple technology in the performance of their work. Apple used to have a list of their names and bios on the site, but it appears to have been taken down. Some of the names of AppleMasters that I remember are...
* Douglas Adams (Yes, *that* Douglas Adams)
* Donald Glaser - Nobel physicist
* Arthur C. Clarke
* Murray Gell-Mann - Nobel physicist, namer of the "quark"
* Herbie Hancock - composer/musician
* Gregory Hines - dancer/actor/singers
* Tom Clancy
* Richard Dreyfuss
* Richard Dawkins - zoologist, evolutionist
* Michael Crichton
* Sydney Pollock - film producer/director
* Richard Leakey - noted paleoanthropologist
No doubt one can create a comparable, or even more distinguised, list of notable notables who use Windows/Linux/Intel/AMD technology (as well as Sun, IBM, HP, SGI, etc.), but to paraphrase Steve Jobs, can you imagine an IntelMasters, CompaqMasters or DellMasters program?
"Applets" are passionate about their Macs, and feel an allegiance to the company. Why? The fact that Macs can be viewed as "status symbols" might be part of it, but more to the point, Macs just work. Everyone else treats their computers as commodities because, well, they are.
The only other comparable attitude by a consumer population that I can think of exists in the motorcyle world. Harley Davidson riders are passionate about their bikes and The Motor Company, even if they own bikes by other manufacturers. *Most* other bikers really couldn't care if their bikes were Hondas/Suzuki/Yamahas/Triumphs/BMW.
BTW, I own Toshiba (four towers & 2 laptops running Win2K & Linux), IBM (1 Linux laptop), Sony (1 Win2K laptop), and Apple (G4/OSX) systems. If everything were going up in flames, I'd make sure I had a firm grip on the Mac and my backups, I'd try to save the Sony (wouldn't be difficult, it so d*mn small!), but everything else is so replacable (probably with BrandX(tm) computers), that I wouldn't even care.
So, at $1/gallon, one'd would been reaping dividends on the initial premim of the engine ($3500) by the end of Year 3. At what *I* pay in the DC area ($1.40 minimum for 87 octane if I'm lucky), I'd be ahead of the game by the end of Y2/start of Y3.
A hybrid might not offer the performance/features bang-for-the-buck, but not for the math argument you posed.
Personally, I'd be happy with just my Buell, and a Suburu WRX STi for "urban rally racing". *grynn*
I know that this is Slashdot, and that everyone is supposed to march in lock-step and get excited about a new port to some esoteric (read "forgotten") platform, but why the hell would I want to run Linux on some circa early 90's IBM Model 70 MicroChannel-based 386? I mean, com'on! Next y'all be getting all excited about being able to dust off your PCJr's, with those infra-red chiclet keyboards.
I guess you missed the day in history class when you were supposed to learn about how the US Army distributed blankets known to be laced with smallpox to tribes of Indians that were being forceably relocated to reservations in the 1800s. This practice actually appears to have began in the mid 1700s. Small pox was even used as a weapon during the Revolutionary War against opponents who hadn't been innoculated against small pox (ie, the Native Americans). BTW
What? That wasn't in your high school history books? How could that be???
That, my friend, is a textbook example of genocide by European settlers upon the native populations. And a textbook example of how history is written by the victors.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree. Running Linux on an XBox (or PS/2) just to run Linux on an XBox (or PS/2) is a stoopid pointless waste of time.
But if I don't give money to MS, how explain to me how can I play Halo?
Damn Microsoft for being savvy enough to buy Bungie and limit it's work to the XBox, and damn Bungie for selling out to Microsoft!
Ah, strictly speaking, you are right about karate's development into a distinct form occuring in Okinawa, but the poster was correct, too. In fact, if a clam is to be made that the poster was in error, it would have to be for limiting the claim to include *just* karate, because most of the asian martial arts (including karate) trace their geneologies to "kung fu", and the foundation of kung fu was established by a Indian Buddist monk (Bodhidharma, "Ta Mo" in Chinese or "Daruma" in Japanese) on pilgrimage to China, in the very same Shaolin monastary that was founded by a previous Indian Buddist monk (Ba Tuo)several decades previously.
Links with additional/supporting information are here (for information on the Shaolin/kung fu) and here (for info on karate).
...nor was I "abducted" or any of that shit...
Not that you know of, you mean.
Does a large dish antenna pop out of your ass at inopportune times?
You might have been abducted by an alien.
This is insightful? Once again, a the peanut gallery is revealing its ignorance.
This is a comment I'd expect by someone who probably thinks that "developing a computer system" involves buying a video card, motherboard, memory, a hard drive and a CD-RW drive and a cool game controller, installing them into a pre-built chassis and loading RedHat 8.0 from a CD s/he bought from CompUSA. For an added challenge, s/he might overclock the CPU!
For the record, this is called "assembling a computer", and requires no more engineering skill than installing a water filter on the kitchen faucet. Real computer ENGINEERS developing a new product know the value of a good system development kit, and wouldn't compare one to a "mini-ATX board". We're not talking about a system development kit that an code monkey would use to write the next greatest "Hello, World" perl script. System development kits are used in the creation of new computer-based hardware and software SYSTEMS, including embedded applications like settop boxes, robotic controllers, and automobile control electronics.
This development system may not provide the value and functionality required of it, but that should be determined by comparing the features/capabilities that it provides against those required by the engineers in the markets that Transmeta is trying to develop, and by comparing it to other similar system development kits, and not by comparing it to an off-the-shelf motherboard you get from Fry's and the perceived need of LAN party attendees.
Let's see...
"I am NOT a merry man!"
"Eat any good book lately?"
"If you prick me, do I not...leak?"
Just of the top of my head. Granted,those examples were from some of the better characters from STTNG. And there are some STTNG characters that had no real depth to them (Riker, Beverly Crusher, Geordi, Tasha), and could arguably be interchanged. But you can't seriously maintain that any of the characters lines I quoted were interchangable with those of another characters?
The parent post to this one was "Insightful"? I think not. The author of that post picked one of the most repeated (and by now, hackneyed) lines from TOS (along with "Fascinating") and holds that up as proof. Riiiiight.
As for TOS's characters, IMHO, in the TV show, Spock was one of the most frustratingly faulty character, since he routinely said (and did) the most illogical things, and never got called to the mat on it. Like all the time he calculated probabilities to the nth decimal place, when he could possibily have enough quantitative information to carry a calculation to that level of significance. It's illogical to be that inaccurately precise, and I cringe just about every time Spock utters a line. One can perhaps argue that Spock was emotionless, but he was hardly "logical".
And, if you couldn't tell, the lines I quoted above were said by Worf, Q (incredible character and acting), and Data, respectively. Worf's character development was disappointing in the first few seasons, but he became the best and most underrated character in the whole franchise, IMHO. Data was a much better Spock than Spock. And Q saved the terribleseries' first two episodes for me, and every episode with Q in it was a must-see for me. (The one where he is stripped of his powers? Classic!)
"These people"?
I agree. The sophistication of these savages is impressive. Who would have thought that they can look beyond the dazzling glass beads and intoxicating liquor that Gates and Co. are offering to realize the long term business and economic implications fully getting in bed with Microsoft.
These new "Super Indians" are going to be a lot harder to herd onto a reservation than the ones we had to deal with in the past. Why, they may even be almost as smart at the White Man, and just as cunning!
Bring out the phrenologists! We must study the size and shapes of their skulls!
...that ScopeWare REQUIRES Windows XP or 2K.
...anactofgod...
LOL!!!
I hope Best Buy didn't pay PDB a lot of money to come up with the conceptual "design" for this laptop. I mean, how much conceptualizing does it take for a "designer" to copy (yet again) a form-factor that Apple pioneered?
I wonder what else the Porsche Design Boutique has created. Based of this one data point, I'd rather go with IDEO or Frog. At least they do original work.
---anactofgod---
Isn't/wasn't Herbie an Apple Fellow?
What's he doing fraternizing with the enemy? Is he going to be shilling for this product like he was for the "room filling sound of the Bose Wave Radio" piece-of-carp?
I guess if I got an invite to the Porsche Design Boutique in Beverly Hills, I guess I might go, too.
---anactofgod---
I should have added (by way of further explanation) that the anode (the positive terminal) would attract the negative ions of a dissolved salt (the Cl- ions of NaCl), while the cathode (or the negative terminal) would attract the positve ions (the Na+).
...anactofgod...
If you pump the water around the anode out, you will have H20 with Cl- ions floating freely in it, in a highly reactive state, ready to bind to any available positive ion. Likewise, pumping the catholyte out would have H20 with Na+ free floating in a highly reactive state,ready to bind to any negative ion.
It seems like the biggest problem would be storing the end products, but it sounds like the anolyte and the catholyte could be produced fairly cheaply and easily as needed, in a small unit.
Seems to be pretty reasonable to me, but I haven't studied chem for 16 years.
It sounds like what they are doing is applying electricity to a solution containing a dissolved salt to create two "products". Around the anode, an "anolyte" is created that has antibacterial properties (though the article claims antiviral, anticyst(?), antigerm properties, as well). At the cathode, a "catholyte" is created that can be used "for treating industrial effluent like the ones from Electro-plating, photographic, and/or textile plants. Catholyte has powerful properties for flocculation, coagulation, bionutrient transfer, cleaning purposes, and neutralizing the toxicity of heavy metals."
...anactofgod...
Of course, all of this would be apparent to anyone who actually reads the supporting material. *GRYNN*
...the best systems engineers, application architects, programmers, methodology gurus, information architects, UI designers, usability experts...you name it, I've hired them and been successful. My secret is...
A HAHAHAH!
RIIIIGHT!!!
Like I'm going to tell you! I'm going to keep all the wheat for myself, and leave the rest of you to make do with the chaff! Once my company full of Big Brains (TM) has achieved global domination over you Teen Brained (TM) competitors, you will all bow down to ME!
BUWAHAHAHAHAHAH!
BUWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
BUWAHAHAH
No, Minnie Steve! NO! We do NOT eat our kitties!
B. Gates.
Specifically, why should I have to pay any per-minute fees for long distance calls overseas?
...anactofgod...
As soon we could do that, we truly will be one global community. Pick up the (VoIP) phone, and call just as easily as you would locally.
Imagine what "Crank Yankers" could do with this technology!!!
*boGGle*
("Hello. I'm looking for a Jacque Strauppe, please.")
A corporate board voted to give themselves a no-recourse loan from corporate coffers to purchase stock. Explain to me how this was ever in the company's interest? Wasn't there a better use of the funds more in tuned to the *corporation's* interests? And where were the checks-and-balances to prevent this sort of crony-ism?
This sort of thing was common place in during the freewheeling days of the Internet bubble, when everyone expected a big payoff for little work. We (i.e., our economy) is going to be paying for those decisions for a long time to come.
And it is precisely this scenario (and Enron, MCIWorldcom, etc.) that I'm going to use as a counter-point to my laizze-faire free-market friends who claim that government has no business in then business of business. When corporate officers can't be trusted to act in the long-term best interests of their company over their own short-term self-interest, how can we reasonably expect them to make decisions that are in the best interest of society at large?
Any supposed free-market capitalist who is not opposed to these practices is actually merely a supporter of the aggregation off personal wealth, not competitive business.
I'm more concerned with the second FCC initiative to address content providers' (i.e. the movie industry's) concerns about the potential to abuse this new technology to pirate content. No doubt these measure will lead to security feature creep to protect more than than just broad-/cable-/satellite-cast cotent and include other digital content.
Setting the issues of government-sponsored copy protection, didn't this "piracy" issue raise it's ugly head in the 1970s with the advent of consumer VCR technology? Didn't anyone learn anything about how this is a non-issue, especially when compared to the increased revenue opportunities that new technology made available to content creators and providers?
Actually, my understanding of the situation is that the last analog signal will be broadcast in 2006, corresponding to a complete switchover to digital. What the manufacturers are resisting is building broadcast digital tuners into the televisions, stating (probably correctly) that the vast majority of the television viewing public get their signal from cable- and/or satellite-casts.
...anactofgod...
In this case, I'm am tending to agree with the manufacturers. Why should I pay for a digital broadcast tuner if I get a tuner from my cable or satellite provider? And if one requires access to broadcasts, it would be simple to just sell external digital broadcast tuners, which, by the way, will be required for all current televisions, anyway.
In this case, I think the government is not thinking clearly. Go figure.
But your original question was why Apple didn't use *nix as the basis of it's modern OS way back in the 1990s. Do you remember "Taligent" and "Pink", the joint venture between IBM & Apple to create a viable OS standard based to compete with the Wintel cartel?
Pink was the OS that was supposed to be designed ground-up to be completely based on OO principles and technology. Apple put all it's eggs int that basket, and had to go shopping for an OS after years of missed delivery deadlines. Remember the play that Apple made for BeOS, before Jean-Louis Gasse and friends put a ridiculous price tag on what was still an unfinished OS? The net result was that Apple (and IBM) never finished fully OO-based Pink so it bought Job's NeXT. This allowed Apple to layer the MacOS on top of the OO-layer that NeXT had layered on top of BSD-Unix. And this also brought Apple's prodigal son back home.
This just won't happen, though. CYCORP is a company that is seeking to capitalize off of the decade-and-a-half of R&D by productizing the CYC inference engine and knowledge base in a variety of applications. Even though CYCORP has a 15+ year head start in creating the knowledge-base, publishing the code for "peer-review" would be inviting competition, maybe by someone with deeper pockets (Microsoft? Oracle? IBM?).
Wallace's comments on CYC are interesting, considering that CYC is on a whole other level than ALICEBOT in term of scope and complexity. I've been following Lenat's work since the early 1980s. Based on my understanding of ALICEBOT and CYC, comparing them is like a rubber-band powered plane to a 747 - both fly, but one is toy, and the other a tool.
You know, I'd be *VERY* interested in seeing a head2head interview between Wallace and Lenat. Can Slashdot make that happen?
Agreed!
...anactofgod...
``Other than the gifts of God and Nature, that which is free is free only because someone else has paid for it.'' - Edgar Bronfman, Jr. CEO Seagram.
And all claims to the contrary, Steve Jobs is not God. *grynn*
This might be slightly off topic, but its related to the supposition that Mac users are more interested in using their computers to actually accomplish some work, rather than working on their computers...
...anactofgod...
Apple has (used to have?) the AppleMasters program, a group of noted international leaders in various fields who use Apple technology in the performance of their work. Apple used to have a list of their names and bios on the site, but it appears to have been taken down. Some of the names of AppleMasters that I remember are...
* Douglas Adams (Yes, *that* Douglas Adams)
* Donald Glaser - Nobel physicist
* Arthur C. Clarke
* Murray Gell-Mann - Nobel physicist, namer of the "quark"
* Herbie Hancock - composer/musician
* Gregory Hines - dancer/actor/singers
* Tom Clancy
* Richard Dreyfuss
* Richard Dawkins - zoologist, evolutionist
* Michael Crichton
* Sydney Pollock - film producer/director
* Richard Leakey - noted paleoanthropologist
No doubt one can create a comparable, or even more distinguised, list of notable notables who use Windows/Linux/Intel/AMD technology (as well as Sun, IBM, HP, SGI, etc.), but to paraphrase Steve Jobs, can you imagine an IntelMasters, CompaqMasters or DellMasters program?
"Applets" are passionate about their Macs, and feel an allegiance to the company. Why? The fact that Macs can be viewed as "status symbols" might be part of it, but more to the point, Macs just work. Everyone else treats their computers as commodities because, well, they are.
The only other comparable attitude by a consumer population that I can think of exists in the motorcyle world. Harley Davidson riders are passionate about their bikes and The Motor Company, even if they own bikes by other manufacturers. *Most* other bikers really couldn't care if their bikes were Hondas/Suzuki/Yamahas/Triumphs/BMW.
BTW, I own Toshiba (four towers & 2 laptops running Win2K & Linux), IBM (1 Linux laptop), Sony (1 Win2K laptop), and Apple (G4/OSX) systems. If everything were going up in flames, I'd make sure I had a firm grip on the Mac and my backups, I'd try to save the Sony (wouldn't be difficult, it so d*mn small!), but everything else is so replacable (probably with BrandX(tm) computers), that I wouldn't even care.
My personal preferrences.
And I have owned Harleys and Buells.
Doing dimensional analysis, with an criminally optimistic fuel price of $1/gallon...
12,000mi/year / (48 - 38)mi/gallon * $1/gallon = $1,200/yr
So, at $1/gallon, one'd would been reaping dividends on the initial premim of the engine ($3500) by the end of Year 3. At what *I* pay in the DC area ($1.40 minimum for 87 octane if I'm lucky), I'd be ahead of the game by the end of Y2/start of Y3.
A hybrid might not offer the performance/features bang-for-the-buck, but not for the math argument you posed.
Personally, I'd be happy with just my Buell, and a Suburu WRX STi for "urban rally racing". *grynn*
Hmmm...
Remember the reports of tumors resulting from cell phone antennae being held so close to the brain when the phones are in use?
How bad could it be to embed the antenna *IN* your skull?
...anactofgod...
Embed a piezoelectric in the prosthetic cell tooth's chewing surface.
Voila! Whenever you need to charge the phone, pop in a stick of gum.
That, or replace the top of your skull with solar panels.
...anactofgod...
I know that this is Slashdot, and that everyone is supposed to march in lock-step and get excited about a new port to some esoteric (read "forgotten") platform, but why the hell would I want to run Linux on some circa early 90's IBM Model 70 MicroChannel-based 386? I mean, com'on! Next y'all be getting all excited about being able to dust off your PCJr's, with those infra-red chiclet keyboards.
*Sheesh*
...anactofgod...
I guess you missed the day in history class when you were supposed to learn about how the US Army distributed blankets known to be laced with smallpox to tribes of Indians that were being forceably relocated to reservations in the 1800s. This practice actually appears to have began in the mid 1700s. Small pox was even used as a weapon during the Revolutionary War against opponents who hadn't been innoculated against small pox (ie, the Native Americans). BTW
What? That wasn't in your high school history books? How could that be???
That, my friend, is a textbook example of genocide by European settlers upon the native populations. And a textbook example of how history is written by the victors.
...anactofgod...