I'm not going to bag on Canon's equipment; I have 4 film-based Canon SLRs and 28 of their lenses, and I love 'em. But my pride and joy is an Hasselblad EL. And the name on those lenses? Carl Zeiss. Arguably the best lenses in the world, along with Schneider-Kreuznach and Leitz.
Care to guess who's name is on the lens of man Sony cameras? Carl Zeiss. And T* coatings. You may not like Sony as a company, and Canon may have them beat, even so - I'm not that familiar with the higher end digital cameras. But I'd wager a goodly amount of money that any Zeiss T* lens is at least comparable to any equivalent Canon lens.
Incidentally, Sony has made cameras for a long, long time.
I'm trying to remember any source of information that is 'reliable' in any sense of the word. For instance, this was direct sabotage - which has happened in most information sources from one time to another, whether it be through scientific fraud, or fiat of the School Board of Kansas. Or Inadvertent errors - which happen all the time in instruments as prestigious as The Encyclopedia Brittannica and The New York Times (see errata, both publications).
In what sense of the word 'reliable' do you feel that Wikipedia is not, but some other souce is?
So basically, going through your list, if it's Microsoft Fanboi propaganda, you're gonna get hammered on/. Well, all I can say is, Duh. ROFLMAO
Come on, man. There are tons of windows trolls that post indignant, self-righteous, '/.ers pick on me and mine all the time, waaaah'. You have to include them in the generic '/.ers', y'know.
What 'baseless insinuations' are you referring to? I merely addressed the possible logical implications of your statements.
Perhaps I misunderstood; feel free to illustrate what parts I misunderstood. Or perhaps you haven't considered the implications of your assertions ( like when you stated blatantly that you know exactly what every adult knows, but some won't admit - which happens to be a very arrogant thing to do, and also a very common thing to do, that I find particularly baseless and infuriating). However it shakes down, feel free to point out my 'baseless insinuations'.
The fact is that, world wide, there have been many atrocities in recent years perpetrated by Christians. See Bosnia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and others. They're not much different from their Extremist Muslim Brethren Of the Book. In fact, here in the US, among American Citizens, Christians have comitted far more acts of terror than any other religious persuasion. Think abortion clinic bombings and shootings and the like. Not to mention stuff that is almost below the radar like what happened to the Professor in this story.
Shit, I think Christianity has the all time record so far for number of people killed in the name of God.
"I understand your point, but if you can withhold sarcasm for a moment, what are the odds that somewhere there are thousdands of men (and 7 women) masturbating to a fantasy scene of someone *pretending* to enjoy engineering a waste treatment facility and charging for viewing it."
Obviously you didn't. There may not be thousands of people masturbating to the visuals of a waste treatment facility engineer, but there are thousands of people who benefit from his or her actions.
"Whether they admit it or not, any intelligent adult knows sex wasn't intended for profit-generation. That it isn't on same level as a delivery driver or a fast-food worker."
Wow. And I thought only the Pope was infallible... Obviously, you've tapped into some deep root repository of 'humanness' that simply leaves me breathless. Crap. You've assumed so many things in this statement that aren't in evidence.... Like "intent"; your statement implies that, if sex was 'intended' for something, there must have been some intelligence that 'intended' it; thus, atheists must not be intelligent adults, by your thesis. Or perhaps you're simply pointing out that sex was 'intended' (in the weak sense of 'fits the purpose') for procreation; but then you seem to be suggesting that any other use (like, oh, recreation, communion, etc) is somehow invalid. You also suggest that there is some difference in 'level' (please define?) between a sex worker of any type and a delivery person or fast-food employee. I'm not sure what you mean. Would you say those are on the 'same level' as a doctor? A professor of English? A Sanitation Engineer? And what does it matter if they are or aren't 'on the same level'? No, none of that is relevant, because your statement here is typical semantically null, prudish rhetoric used to make people feel bad about their choices or good about their prudishness.
I must admit that the way to get me to withold sarcasm is *not* to assure me that you know exactly what I 'know' and 'won't admit'.
"Regardless of the level of enjoyment or satisfaction, the primary reason people don't work for free is sustenance. Plain and simple. Basic survival. That hasn't changed in thousands of years."
You think that sex is a new invention, or that the relationship between sex and sustenance is recent? How charming and naive.
"I find it fascinating, but mostly devastating, that as long as something isn't perceived socially as deviant or "hurting" anybody without their consent, that it's OK."
This is, as someone has pointed out, a side effect of Liberty; the fact is that free people will participate in things that other free people will abhor and find shocking. Put on your big girl panties and deal with it.
"Naw, we don't give a shit about them. They can fend for themselves in the Fastasmic Craptopia we're creating."
I believe in Liberty. Perhaps you'd be more comfortable in a world where you found nothing offensive; frankly, such a place would be rather gray and tasteless for me. The more people are allowed to do 'offensive' things, the less likely it becomes that whatever I do will be stopped based on someone else taking offense to it. Freedom is as freedom does, y'know. Life is like a box of condoms; ya never know who's gonna get screwed.
Paraphrasing Ben Franklin for a moment... "Those who would give up essential liberties in order to avoid being offended by the world deserve what they get, and should probably get laid more often; perhaps they'd be less concerned about what other people were doing with *their* private parts."
Oh, come on. Every person who gets up every day and goes to work at a job they wouldn't do for free is 'commodified'. One could just as well say, 'They're called human beings, and they aren't supposed to be the wage slaves for the wealthy of the world.' We all make decisions every day about how we choose to be commodified, and who will profit from it.
Oh, man, where have you BEEN? Don't you know that allowing children to see naked people will scar them for life in many unimagineably crippling ways!? Only Terrorists and Left Wing Nuts would fail to understand what that sentence meant! Which are you, mister?
All right thinking people know that it's *bad* for kids to see naked people, but *good* for them to see dead/dying/killing people, because it shows them what the *real world* is like.
Well, there is already an infinitely modifiable user interface - or five. Run, don't walk, to freshmeat and look over the windowmangers for *nix. That's not a plug, just an observation.
I love *nix... Heh. I like linux a lot, and used it as a desktop for a long time, but I'll tell you one problem for someone like me with an extremely customizeable user interface. I tend to spend waaaaay too much time actually customizing the interface; tweak this, tweak that, change that, change this. Since I bought a Mac - with much more limited customization choices - I've spent far less time customizing and much more time using.:D
OSX is like... well, it's a little schizophrenic for a *nix weenie, because of some of the issues between the Mac way ( resource forks and the like) and the *nix way (where apps become directories in the file system, and easy to break !:D) but still, Aqua is a wonderful interface, and as long as you don't mix Aqua with *BSD, you're golden; pop open terminal, it's *nix. click on Finder, and it's this wonderfully functional GUI.
Either way, I think that a certain susceptible portion of the population will be completely paralyzed by your suggested infinitely adjustable GUI. It would be like throwing a strobe light into a room full of epileptics.
You're certainly right there! I wasn't advocating the immediate and absolute abandonment of Captitalism as a concept; I was merely attempting to mitigate the pie-in-the-sky worship of the philosophy that the parent post advocated.
Obviously, like most concepts, a single-vendor (or single-philosophy) solution will be incorrect. The 'ideal' economic philosophy, by definition, I think, will incorporate pieces of all of them where appropriate. It will have facets of Capitalism, Socialism, Communism - you name it.
The ideal governmental form will probably follow suit, sharing many characteristics with multiple 'absolute' philosophies.
Nah, what we need is an Operating System with some rational design parameters. One that's easy to use, intuitive, that my Grandma can surf the web and do email on, that isn't designed to be susceptible to virus or spyware attack by default. One that makes it difficult to build those things for it, but doesn't require that one is an expert to use it safely on the internet.
Oh, wait. Apple already did that. Now we just have to make sure our Grandmas get one of them.
The problem is that the philosophy you have expressed only inheres in a capitalism inhabited solely by those who act in rational self-interest. Rational means considering the ramifications of one's actions. Unfortunately, both producers and consumers in their various guises have proven to be terrible at this game. We live in a society where consumers are unreasonably swayed by marketing and the oft-championed 'excellence of product' that capitalism encourages is virtually unrecognizable. Frequently - and by frequently, I mean, say, 50% of the time or more, consumers purchase things, and feel that they have been taken advantage of. In many cases, they are right.
I am constantly amazed at the fact that those who deplore social anarchy the most are often the biggest champions of financial anarchy - Capitalism. And just like social anarchy, it only lasts as long as it takes for one player to accumulate enough 'stuff' to influence others, and then we have a de facto government, or a de facto monopoly.
The "White Smoke" you speak of is - oh my god - Steam! Yep, hot water - other stuff, too, but that's what makes it white.
I'm not sure what Biodiesel vehicles you've been stuck behind in traffic. My only experience with biodiesel vehicles is a local hobbyist who buys (cheaply) used oil from local restaurants and filters/processes it, and it doesn't stink at all when his old Volvo Diesel is buring that fuel. In fact, it smells faintly of french fries. And I've ridden with him many times on the highway; he certainly doesn't have any trouble getting into traffic or passing slower vehicles; I've never seen him drive over 75 mph, but since 70 is the highest speed limit on local hiways, I can't imagine *needing* much more. Most resources one can locate on Google suggest a 10% loss in power. Significant, but not fatal; a 225 HP diesel will be a ~203 hp biodiesel. A matching 10% loss in 'economy' is also measured, so if you got 25 MPG, you're now going to get ~22.5 MPG. Again, not fatal from a pragmatic standpoint.
To the poster earlier that noted that it must still produce CO2, therefore cannot be carbon neutral - your assumptions are wrong. It's carbon neutral because it's adding no NEW CO2 to the atmosphere - ie, it can only release CO2 that was already in the atmosphere, and then bound by plants in the production of leaves, seeds, stems, etc. Thus, using biodiesel adds no NEW CO2 to the atmosphere, and cannot increase the overall CO2 percentage; burning petrochemicals releases CO2 that has been locked under the crust of the planet, increasing the overall CO2 content of the atmosphere.
To anyone who's looking at this thread and interested in Biodiesel, I suggest you get cozy with google and find out for yourself, rather than paying attention to the FUD here.
Of course we (as USians - heeh ) don't bear the onus for the behavior of our forefathers. But for us, that's not much help; we still have to tote the barge of our own continued behavior, both in the world arena, and the continued mistreatment of Native Americans.
And you can't really blame the Brits for their Empiricism - they conquered the world looking for a country with decent restaurants...:D
It's all about resources invested. Sure, as the complexity of a product or operating system increases, all development work becomes more time consuming; however, every company, large or small, must decide what ratio of their development man hours go to patching bugs vs. developing new features vs. optimizing current features.
Microsoft has demonstrated that they aren't willing to increase that ratio to reasonable levels, as demonstrated by the number of publicized, unpatched vulnerabilities in their products.
It certainly LOOKS sweet; we'll see how it shakes out. Like I said, no OSX version 'til xmas, and linux version is '2006'... Certainly looks like a platform to watch, though! If it's half as good as it's hype, it's a great concept, and Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo will be buying it before St. Patty's Day.
I'm hoping that you're joking. If this device contains the mp3s it promises. it's the antithesis of your description, no matter what kind of marketing ploy someone thought up; if BNL got honest-to-god drm-free mp3s on this, some marketroid dropped the ball, and BNL stuck it to the man, just a little.
Ah. So they don't really "kick the crap out of 'em at comparable speeds", like you said earlier ? (Incidentally, I really wish people wouldn't say "speed" when they really mean "clock speed".)
Yeah, you're right here; I engaged in the same kind of hyperbole I was attacking. ROFLMAO. Doesn't make my point any less relevant. The point I was making, when we got sidetracked into chip bashing - and I'm not an intel basher at all, contrary to your apparent perception - is that we blow small performance differences all out of proportion (yes, I did so as well, touche) to actual difference in operational measurements and specifically human perception. 5% would make a big difference in the budget of a big-time high resolution feature movie rendered in 3d with raytracing and radiosity... cutting five days off of a hundred day job might save thousands of dollars - maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars. But running applications personally, if someone thinks they can see 5% difference between one processor and another, I'd like to see their perception tested with double blind studies.
LOL... speed bumps and die reduction don't count as 'new generations', usually, in the generally accepted parlance. And I bet Intel would take exception to your claim that a pentium M is nothing more than a p3 sitting on a p4 bus. And I wasn't 'waving anything away', and I'm not so specifically a fan of the power pc chip so much as I am a fan of Mac OS X. The fact is that there are at least two versions of the Pentium M in 1.7 Ghz, and one- the newer one - is MUCH faster than the earlier one. The original was the Banias(Sp?) and the new one is the 725(or 35, whichever is 1.7). The 1.67 Ghz g4 stacks up favorably against P4s, at clock speeds upwards of 2.2-2.6, depending on benchmark and type of application and optimizations. It beats the 1.7 Pentium M (Banias), and loses (as you pointed out) to the newest Pentium M 735 at a clock speed of 1.7 Ghz. By a tiny amount, in most applications. I am not religious about processors at all; I will be just as happy to run Mac OSX on intel as I am on PPC (I can't afford the dual dual core, as much as I'd like to, and I'm interested in seeing how Apple follows THAT one up with Intel hardware). I'm actually looking forward to laptops running Intel chips - that are, as you pointed out, MUCH faster then their PPC brethren, when we can buy a Pentium M at 2.2 Ghz, isn't it?
Regardless, you're certainly right to call me out for the hyperbole; but I would still like to see your sources for claims like "The Pentium M is just a P3 on a P4 bus".
Again, you're mislead by the same things I mentioned in the original post. A quick survey of benchmarking sites shows that the g4s (which peak at 1.67 Ghz on mac) are roughly comparable to the contemporary Pentium Ms (1.6 and 1.7); I presume you would not consider it a reasonable comparison to pit a 1.67 G4 (one or two generation old tech, depending on how you look at it) against the Pentium M's above 1.7 Ghz (current tech, or at worst one generation old). And even then the difference in overall performance between, say, a 1.67Ghz G4 and the Pentium M 725 (current gen without question) is somewhere between 1% and three %. The bandwidth of the current gen Pentium M's IS higher - I would certainly HOPE so, since the g4s are at least a full processor gen older. If you compare the M's to the current gen PPC chips, the story is a little different, but you're missing my whole point. You use the term "spanked" to describe differences of less than a full percentage point - particularly when a PentiumM 1.7 (Banias) is *not* as fast as a 1.67 PowerPC G4 - you have to go to the 725 or 735 for that; yet based on a very limited performance advantage, you're willing to pronounce the G4 "trounced". If these were humans racing down a track, they would be photo finishes. Which all illustrates the fact that we're straining over gnats in processor performance, particularly when most people cannot reliably discern a performance difference of less than 50%. We talk about games driving technology, but if you take the frame counters away, most people can't discern the difference between a system that will put up 200 fps at Q3A, and one that will do 230fps, but a 'tech site' or 'game site' would call it "pwned".
How the hell can AMD be making such better chips and companies like Dell still selling Intel powered crap?
Initially I think you have to consider exactly what Apple is trying to achieve. IBM won't play ball with Apple's laptop designs, and the powerbooks (as much as I love 'em) are being left behind, pretty badly, by X86 stuff. Intel mobile chips, as nearly as I can tell, offer the very best performance per watt of mobile solution at the high end (The G4 still kicks the crap out of 'em at comparable speeds, but since the fastest mobile G4 Mac you can get is 1.67 Ghz, it's a moot point).
And one thing that the geek community loses sight of is that when we talk about AMD 'kicking the crap out of Intel', it's on a pass/fail basis; overall, they have traded the 'speed lead' several times since the initial offering of the Athlon, and rarely has one lead the other, in dollars per MIP, by more than 3-5%; since most websites that do comparative benchmarks trim the chaff so you can see the difference, the average page scanning consumer or geek gets a warped impression. If we have a scale that's 1000 units long, and Intel's chip does 990, and the AMD chip does 995, and we only show the last 10, it looks like the AMD is twice as fast, when it's really only.5% faster. In these days, a hardware site will pronounce a significant win over a 3% overall difference in performance!
Application also matters. For instance, I do a lot of recording with pro hardware and software. The fact is that most of the software is optimized for the Intel chips much more so than the AMD, so in side-by-sides, I see about 20% better performance for the same hardware and software on my P4 over my Athlon. In some cases as much as 200-300%; I assume that those are REALLY optimized for the P4. But if I run up games on the two machines, the Athlon is 5-10% faster across the board (With the same video card).
Suckage is relative, of course, and all operating systems may have their niche. I love the way kde handles networking. I really, really like KDE, even. For web development and systems support (I'm a *nix engineer and systems integrator) I love to work on Linux and KDE. But, unfortunately, Ableton Live, Tracktion, etc, won't work on it.
If you haven't had any trouble with Linux, installation/configuration wise, you either 1) spent a lot of time choosing hardware, or 2) got lucky. It's not, as has been pointed out, linux's fault that so much hardware sucks ass in linux; if the vendor doesn't pay for drivers, the linux community has to wait for the confluence of events: a linux user who is also a sufficiently good programmer to write a drive buys the hardware and discovers that it doesn't work. Nowadays, most people fitting that description will just check online, find hardware of the type they are interested in that is supported by linux, and buy that, rather than buying the unsupported hardware and doing the work to fix it.
You're dead right about windows sucking, but windows sucks after the accumulation of the annoyances you describe here. Linux desktops - say, Ubuntu - are pretty sweet once they're working, and provided all of your hardware is supported. Try getting Ubuntu to boot on a Toshiba M3... or at least, *my* toshiba m3.
I'm not sure what hardware you're using, or what configuration you're using, but I've never found a linux desktop that could match windows - when properly configured - for responsiveness; but I don't have a dual mac yet, either, so I'll hold judgement on that. But on a 3ghz p4 HT with a gig of ram, windows SMOKES any *nix variant or desktop I've thrown on it for sheer Interface responsiveness. Now, it still sux, mind you, but it does it *really fast*.
I should modify that - I've never had it crash on its own. I've managed to crash it by killing the wrong processes... Root and a *nix terminal are dangerous tools for someone who's really familiar with a *different* *nix variant!
I've experienced problems with the USB subsystem, but mostly in re my m-audio Ozone. I have, currently, two USB 2.0 drives and one Firewire drive plugged into this Mac.
And I've never had any problem with Safari failling to die with a "Force Quit"... but if a kill -9 didn't work, the chances are that it was timed out waiting on hardware. Your USB drive, perhaps?
No, OS X isn't perfect. I expect Apple will keep improving it. As it stands right now, though, it's a drag to use anything else. All of my familiar open source tools will build (or most of them, via the various packages for darwin, like fink and similar) and most of the commercial software I use regularly is also available. It's the best of both worlds.
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I'm not going to bag on Canon's equipment; I have 4 film-based Canon SLRs and 28 of their lenses, and I love 'em. But my pride and joy is an Hasselblad EL. And the name on those lenses? Carl Zeiss. Arguably the best lenses in the world, along with Schneider-Kreuznach and Leitz.
Care to guess who's name is on the lens of man Sony cameras? Carl Zeiss. And T* coatings. You may not like Sony as a company, and Canon may have them beat, even so - I'm not that familiar with the higher end digital cameras. But I'd wager a goodly amount of money that any Zeiss T* lens is at least comparable to any equivalent Canon lens.
Incidentally, Sony has made cameras for a long, long time.
Point well made, but I think you've a higher opinion of the accuracy and intent of the media outlets than I do! :D
I'm trying to remember any source of information that is 'reliable' in any sense of the word. For instance, this was direct sabotage - which has happened in most information sources from one time to another, whether it be through scientific fraud, or fiat of the School Board of Kansas. Or Inadvertent errors - which happen all the time in instruments as prestigious as The Encyclopedia Brittannica and The New York Times (see errata, both publications).
In what sense of the word 'reliable' do you feel that Wikipedia is not, but some other souce is?
So basically, going through your list, if it's Microsoft Fanboi propaganda, you're gonna get hammered on /. Well, all I can say is, Duh. ROFLMAO
Come on, man. There are tons of windows trolls that post indignant, self-righteous, '/.ers pick on me and mine all the time, waaaah'. You have to include them in the generic '/.ers', y'know.
What 'baseless insinuations' are you referring to? I merely addressed the possible logical implications of your statements.
Perhaps I misunderstood; feel free to illustrate what parts I misunderstood. Or perhaps you haven't considered the implications of your assertions ( like when you stated blatantly that you know exactly what every adult knows, but some won't admit - which happens to be a very arrogant thing to do, and also a very common thing to do, that I find particularly baseless and infuriating). However it shakes down, feel free to point out my 'baseless insinuations'.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
The fact is that, world wide, there have been many atrocities in recent years perpetrated by Christians. See Bosnia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and others. They're not much different from their Extremist Muslim Brethren Of the Book. In fact, here in the US, among American Citizens, Christians have comitted far more acts of terror than any other religious persuasion. Think abortion clinic bombings and shootings and the like. Not to mention stuff that is almost below the radar like what happened to the Professor in this story.
Shit, I think Christianity has the all time record so far for number of people killed in the name of God.
"I understand your point, but if you can withhold sarcasm for a moment, what are the odds that somewhere there are thousdands of men (and 7 women) masturbating to a fantasy scene of someone *pretending* to enjoy engineering a waste treatment facility and charging for viewing it."
Obviously you didn't. There may not be thousands of people masturbating to the visuals of a waste treatment facility engineer, but there are thousands of people who benefit from his or her actions.
"Whether they admit it or not, any intelligent adult knows sex wasn't intended for profit-generation. That it isn't on same level as a delivery driver or a fast-food worker."
Wow. And I thought only the Pope was infallible... Obviously, you've tapped into some deep root repository of 'humanness' that simply leaves me breathless. Crap. You've assumed so many things in this statement that aren't in evidence.... Like "intent"; your statement implies that, if sex was 'intended' for something, there must have been some intelligence that 'intended' it; thus, atheists must not be intelligent adults, by your thesis. Or perhaps you're simply pointing out that sex was 'intended' (in the weak sense of 'fits the purpose') for procreation; but then you seem to be suggesting that any other use (like, oh, recreation, communion, etc) is somehow invalid. You also suggest that there is some difference in 'level' (please define?) between a sex worker of any type and a delivery person or fast-food employee. I'm not sure what you mean. Would you say those are on the 'same level' as a doctor? A professor of English? A Sanitation Engineer? And what does it matter if they are or aren't 'on the same level'? No, none of that is relevant, because your statement here is typical semantically null, prudish rhetoric used to make people feel bad about their choices or good about their prudishness.
I must admit that the way to get me to withold sarcasm is *not* to assure me that you know exactly what I 'know' and 'won't admit'.
"Regardless of the level of enjoyment or satisfaction, the primary reason people don't work for free is sustenance. Plain and simple. Basic survival. That hasn't changed in thousands of years."
You think that sex is a new invention, or that the relationship between sex and sustenance is recent? How charming and naive.
"I find it fascinating, but mostly devastating, that as long as something isn't perceived socially as deviant or "hurting" anybody without their consent, that it's OK."
This is, as someone has pointed out, a side effect of Liberty; the fact is that free people will participate in things that other free people will abhor and find shocking. Put on your big girl panties and deal with it.
"Naw, we don't give a shit about them. They can fend for themselves in the Fastasmic Craptopia we're creating."
I believe in Liberty. Perhaps you'd be more comfortable in a world where you found nothing offensive; frankly, such a place would be rather gray and tasteless for me. The more people are allowed to do 'offensive' things, the less likely it becomes that whatever I do will be stopped based on someone else taking offense to it. Freedom is as freedom does, y'know. Life is like a box of condoms; ya never know who's gonna get screwed.
Paraphrasing Ben Franklin for a moment... "Those who would give up essential liberties in order to avoid being offended by the world deserve what they get, and should probably get laid more often; perhaps they'd be less concerned about what other people were doing with *their* private parts."
Oh, come on. Every person who gets up every day and goes to work at a job they wouldn't do for free is 'commodified'. One could just as well say, 'They're called human beings, and they aren't supposed to be the wage slaves for the wealthy of the world.' We all make decisions every day about how we choose to be commodified, and who will profit from it.
Oh, man, where have you BEEN? Don't you know that allowing children to see naked people will scar them for life in many unimagineably crippling ways!? Only Terrorists and Left Wing Nuts would fail to understand what that sentence meant! Which are you, mister?
All right thinking people know that it's *bad* for kids to see naked people, but *good* for them to see dead/dying/killing people, because it shows them what the *real world* is like.
Well, there is already an infinitely modifiable user interface - or five. Run, don't walk, to freshmeat and look over the windowmangers for *nix. That's not a plug, just an observation.
:D
:D) but still, Aqua is a wonderful interface, and as long as you don't mix Aqua with *BSD, you're golden; pop open terminal, it's *nix. click on Finder, and it's this wonderfully functional GUI.
I love *nix... Heh. I like linux a lot, and used it as a desktop for a long time, but I'll tell you one problem for someone like me with an extremely customizeable user interface. I tend to spend waaaaay too much time actually customizing the interface; tweak this, tweak that, change that, change this. Since I bought a Mac - with much more limited customization choices - I've spent far less time customizing and much more time using.
OSX is like... well, it's a little schizophrenic for a *nix weenie, because of some of the issues between the Mac way ( resource forks and the like) and the *nix way (where apps become directories in the file system, and easy to break !
Either way, I think that a certain susceptible portion of the population will be completely paralyzed by your suggested infinitely adjustable GUI. It would be like throwing a strobe light into a room full of epileptics.
You're certainly right there! I wasn't advocating the immediate and absolute abandonment of Captitalism as a concept; I was merely attempting to mitigate the pie-in-the-sky worship of the philosophy that the parent post advocated.
Obviously, like most concepts, a single-vendor (or single-philosophy) solution will be incorrect. The 'ideal' economic philosophy, by definition, I think, will incorporate pieces of all of them where appropriate. It will have facets of Capitalism, Socialism, Communism - you name it.
The ideal governmental form will probably follow suit, sharing many characteristics with multiple 'absolute' philosophies.
Nah, what we need is an Operating System with some rational design parameters. One that's easy to use, intuitive, that my Grandma can surf the web and do email on, that isn't designed to be susceptible to virus or spyware attack by default. One that makes it difficult to build those things for it, but doesn't require that one is an expert to use it safely on the internet.
Oh, wait. Apple already did that. Now we just have to make sure our Grandmas get one of them.
Looks wonderful on paper, doesn't it?
The problem is that the philosophy you have expressed only inheres in a capitalism inhabited solely by those who act in rational self-interest. Rational means considering the ramifications of one's actions. Unfortunately, both producers and consumers in their various guises have proven to be terrible at this game. We live in a society where consumers are unreasonably swayed by marketing and the oft-championed 'excellence of product' that capitalism encourages is virtually unrecognizable. Frequently - and by frequently, I mean, say, 50% of the time or more, consumers purchase things, and feel that they have been taken advantage of. In many cases, they are right.
I am constantly amazed at the fact that those who deplore social anarchy the most are often the biggest champions of financial anarchy - Capitalism. And just like social anarchy, it only lasts as long as it takes for one player to accumulate enough 'stuff' to influence others, and then we have a de facto government, or a de facto monopoly.
The "White Smoke" you speak of is - oh my god - Steam! Yep, hot water - other stuff, too, but that's what makes it white.
I'm not sure what Biodiesel vehicles you've been stuck behind in traffic. My only experience with biodiesel vehicles is a local hobbyist who buys (cheaply) used oil from local restaurants and filters/processes it, and it doesn't stink at all when his old Volvo Diesel is buring that fuel. In fact, it smells faintly of french fries. And I've ridden with him many times on the highway; he certainly doesn't have any trouble getting into traffic or passing slower vehicles; I've never seen him drive over 75 mph, but since 70 is the highest speed limit on local hiways, I can't imagine *needing* much more. Most resources one can locate on Google suggest a 10% loss in power. Significant, but not fatal; a 225 HP diesel will be a ~203 hp biodiesel. A matching 10% loss in 'economy' is also measured, so if you got 25 MPG, you're now going to get ~22.5 MPG. Again, not fatal from a pragmatic standpoint.
To the poster earlier that noted that it must still produce CO2, therefore cannot be carbon neutral - your assumptions are wrong. It's carbon neutral because it's adding no NEW CO2 to the atmosphere - ie, it can only release CO2 that was already in the atmosphere, and then bound by plants in the production of leaves, seeds, stems, etc. Thus, using biodiesel adds no NEW CO2 to the atmosphere, and cannot increase the overall CO2 percentage; burning petrochemicals releases CO2 that has been locked under the crust of the planet, increasing the overall CO2 content of the atmosphere.
To anyone who's looking at this thread and interested in Biodiesel, I suggest you get cozy with google and find out for yourself, rather than paying attention to the FUD here.
Of course we (as USians - heeh ) don't bear the onus for the behavior of our forefathers. But for us, that's not much help; we still have to tote the barge of our own continued behavior, both in the world arena, and the continued mistreatment of Native Americans.
:D
And you can't really blame the Brits for their Empiricism - they conquered the world looking for a country with decent restaurants...
It's all about resources invested. Sure, as the complexity of a product or operating system increases, all development work becomes more time consuming; however, every company, large or small, must decide what ratio of their development man hours go to patching bugs vs. developing new features vs. optimizing current features.
Microsoft has demonstrated that they aren't willing to increase that ratio to reasonable levels, as demonstrated by the number of publicized, unpatched vulnerabilities in their products.
It certainly LOOKS sweet; we'll see how it shakes out. Like I said, no OSX version 'til xmas, and linux version is '2006'... Certainly looks like a platform to watch, though! If it's half as good as it's hype, it's a great concept, and Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo will be buying it before St. Patty's Day.
I'm hoping that you're joking. If this device contains the mp3s it promises. it's the antithesis of your description, no matter what kind of marketing ploy someone thought up; if BNL got honest-to-god drm-free mp3s on this, some marketroid dropped the ball, and BNL stuck it to the man, just a little.
Ah. So they don't really "kick the crap out of 'em at comparable speeds", like you said earlier ? (Incidentally, I really wish people wouldn't say "speed" when they really mean "clock speed".)
Yeah, you're right here; I engaged in the same kind of hyperbole I was attacking. ROFLMAO. Doesn't make my point any less relevant. The point I was making, when we got sidetracked into chip bashing - and I'm not an intel basher at all, contrary to your apparent perception - is that we blow small performance differences all out of proportion (yes, I did so as well, touche) to actual difference in operational measurements and specifically human perception. 5% would make a big difference in the budget of a big-time high resolution feature movie rendered in 3d with raytracing and radiosity... cutting five days off of a hundred day job might save thousands of dollars - maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars. But running applications personally, if someone thinks they can see 5% difference between one processor and another, I'd like to see their perception tested with double blind studies.
LOL... speed bumps and die reduction don't count as 'new generations', usually, in the generally accepted parlance. And I bet Intel would take exception to your claim that a pentium M is nothing more than a p3 sitting on a p4 bus. And I wasn't 'waving anything away', and I'm not so specifically a fan of the power pc chip so much as I am a fan of Mac OS X. The fact is that there are at least two versions of the Pentium M in 1.7 Ghz, and one- the newer one - is MUCH faster than the earlier one. The original was the Banias(Sp?) and the new one is the 725(or 35, whichever is 1.7). The 1.67 Ghz g4 stacks up favorably against P4s, at clock speeds upwards of 2.2-2.6, depending on benchmark and type of application and optimizations. It beats the 1.7 Pentium M (Banias), and loses (as you pointed out) to the newest Pentium M 735 at a clock speed of 1.7 Ghz. By a tiny amount, in most applications. I am not religious about processors at all; I will be just as happy to run Mac OSX on intel as I am on PPC (I can't afford the dual dual core, as much as I'd like to, and I'm interested in seeing how Apple follows THAT one up with Intel hardware). I'm actually looking forward to laptops running Intel chips - that are, as you pointed out, MUCH faster then their PPC brethren, when we can buy a Pentium M at 2.2 Ghz, isn't it?
Regardless, you're certainly right to call me out for the hyperbole; but I would still like to see your sources for claims like "The Pentium M is just a P3 on a P4 bus".
Again, you're mislead by the same things I mentioned in the original post. A quick survey of benchmarking sites shows that the g4s (which peak at 1.67 Ghz on mac) are roughly comparable to the contemporary Pentium Ms (1.6 and 1.7); I presume you would not consider it a reasonable comparison to pit a 1.67 G4 (one or two generation old tech, depending on how you look at it) against the Pentium M's above 1.7 Ghz (current tech, or at worst one generation old). And even then the difference in overall performance between, say, a 1.67Ghz G4 and the Pentium M 725 (current gen without question) is somewhere between 1% and three %. The bandwidth of the current gen Pentium M's IS higher - I would certainly HOPE so, since the g4s are at least a full processor gen older. If you compare the M's to the current gen PPC chips, the story is a little different, but you're missing my whole point. You use the term "spanked" to describe differences of less than a full percentage point - particularly when a PentiumM 1.7 (Banias) is *not* as fast as a 1.67 PowerPC G4 - you have to go to the 725 or 735 for that; yet based on a very limited performance advantage, you're willing to pronounce the G4 "trounced". If these were humans racing down a track, they would be photo finishes. Which all illustrates the fact that we're straining over gnats in processor performance, particularly when most people cannot reliably discern a performance difference of less than 50%. We talk about games driving technology, but if you take the frame counters away, most people can't discern the difference between a system that will put up 200 fps at Q3A, and one that will do 230fps, but a 'tech site' or 'game site' would call it "pwned".
How the hell can AMD be making such better chips and companies like Dell still selling Intel powered crap?
.5% faster. In these days, a hardware site will pronounce a significant win over a 3% overall difference in performance!
Initially I think you have to consider exactly what Apple is trying to achieve. IBM won't play ball with Apple's laptop designs, and the powerbooks (as much as I love 'em) are being left behind, pretty badly, by X86 stuff. Intel mobile chips, as nearly as I can tell, offer the very best performance per watt of mobile solution at the high end (The G4 still kicks the crap out of 'em at comparable speeds, but since the fastest mobile G4 Mac you can get is 1.67 Ghz, it's a moot point).
And one thing that the geek community loses sight of is that when we talk about AMD 'kicking the crap out of Intel', it's on a pass/fail basis; overall, they have traded the 'speed lead' several times since the initial offering of the Athlon, and rarely has one lead the other, in dollars per MIP, by more than 3-5%; since most websites that do comparative benchmarks trim the chaff so you can see the difference, the average page scanning consumer or geek gets a warped impression. If we have a scale that's 1000 units long, and Intel's chip does 990, and the AMD chip does 995, and we only show the last 10, it looks like the AMD is twice as fast, when it's really only
Application also matters. For instance, I do a lot of recording with pro hardware and software. The fact is that most of the software is optimized for the Intel chips much more so than the AMD, so in side-by-sides, I see about 20% better performance for the same hardware and software on my P4 over my Athlon. In some cases as much as 200-300%; I assume that those are REALLY optimized for the P4. But if I run up games on the two machines, the Athlon is 5-10% faster across the board (With the same video card).
Suckage is relative, of course, and all operating systems may have their niche. I love the way kde handles networking. I really, really like KDE, even. For web development and systems support (I'm a *nix engineer and systems integrator) I love to work on Linux and KDE. But, unfortunately, Ableton Live, Tracktion, etc, won't work on it.
If you haven't had any trouble with Linux, installation/configuration wise, you either 1) spent a lot of time choosing hardware, or 2) got lucky. It's not, as has been pointed out, linux's fault that so much hardware sucks ass in linux; if the vendor doesn't pay for drivers, the linux community has to wait for the confluence of events: a linux user who is also a sufficiently good programmer to write a drive buys the hardware and discovers that it doesn't work. Nowadays, most people fitting that description will just check online, find hardware of the type they are interested in that is supported by linux, and buy that, rather than buying the unsupported hardware and doing the work to fix it.
You're dead right about windows sucking, but windows sucks after the accumulation of the annoyances you describe here. Linux desktops - say, Ubuntu - are pretty sweet once they're working, and provided all of your hardware is supported. Try getting Ubuntu to boot on a Toshiba M3... or at least, *my* toshiba m3.
I'm not sure what hardware you're using, or what configuration you're using, but I've never found a linux desktop that could match windows - when properly configured - for responsiveness; but I don't have a dual mac yet, either, so I'll hold judgement on that. But on a 3ghz p4 HT with a gig of ram, windows SMOKES any *nix variant or desktop I've thrown on it for sheer Interface responsiveness. Now, it still sux, mind you, but it does it *really fast*.
I should modify that - I've never had it crash on its own. I've managed to crash it by killing the wrong processes... Root and a *nix terminal are dangerous tools for someone who's really familiar with a *different* *nix variant!
I've experienced problems with the USB subsystem, but mostly in re my m-audio Ozone. I have, currently, two USB 2.0 drives and one Firewire drive plugged into this Mac.
And I've never had any problem with Safari failling to die with a "Force Quit"... but if a kill -9 didn't work, the chances are that it was timed out waiting on hardware. Your USB drive, perhaps?
No, OS X isn't perfect. I expect Apple will keep improving it. As it stands right now, though, it's a drag to use anything else. All of my familiar open source tools will build (or most of them, via the various packages for darwin, like fink and similar) and most of the commercial software I use regularly is also available. It's the best of both worlds.
aaaahhhh - it doesn't WORK yet. And they're going to port it to Mac OS X, too. But thanks for the heads up, again, and I'll keep an eye on it.