Right, and since I personally have never had a problem with Dell's service (they show up at my door to fix what is wrong in less than 24 hrs) then I keep doing business with them. The day they change, is the day I change.
I dropped Earthlink for that very reason. No viable English technical skills, coupled with constantly different answers, plus a total disinterest in EVER getting a known problem fixed, caused me to dump Earthlink as my DSL provider.
We may continue to see the resurgance of "performance art" in the flesh, whether concerts or plays or clubs, as the young, good, inventive artists see their value higher than ever, and sell non-drm'd CDs after the performance.
So far, I see acknowledgement of change, to one degree or another depending on what is cited.
What I do NOT SEE, is quantification of whether the U.S. alone (the EU isn't too happy to change, and China simply will not, and the Brazilian peasants will not) can change physical factors which will stop the change or delaying for a specific period of time, and then the cost of that change.
I argue that any effect the U.S. can do will NOT ALTER THE LONG TERM CYCLES.
No nation is going to bankrupt itself voluntarily, to try to achieve something which is not known to be achievable. If we do not have sufficient mathematics or historical data to prove reasonably that we have a chance to stop an adverse event, then why even postulate a futile try. That is sort of a suicide compact to comitt to change that which is capable of just overwhelming you, with no amount of effort you have at your disposal.
The Greenland Ice Cores showed changes in climate in eons past which suggested changes in ocean level that could have been many meters change in JUST 10-20 YEARS.
So the prior record does show changes "different in degree to any previous change that can be measured or inferred." as you put it.
Thus I postulate that our political entities of the U.N. and individual country's governments of the world are NOT the ones to be issuing the demands on people for change. We are only a short decade or two into documenting what is going on, and still have a long way to go.
It is a long stretch between seeing a "Super Nova" (like at Galileo's time) and then finally having the knowledge and experience to be able to model and know the basis for what happens with a Super Nova.
We know change in ice caps are ocurring, but putting them in perspective, understanding their true nature (including how the temperature change at the surface over say a century, affects the base of the ice hundreds-thousands of feet below. Heck, we still have permafrost in some U.S. and Canadian locations a few feet underground from the last ice age.
Seeing is one thing. Understanding true causation is ENTIRELY ANOTHER THING.
Someone said "Nothing is constant except change." Get used to it, and learn to be a Darwinian survivor or become extinct. Is there more to say? Yup. But do not pretend that long term cycles DO NOT exist, and that those LONG TERM are so dramatically large in terms of varying solar input to the Earth's atmosphere, that they will not and can not dramatically alter Earth's climate over time. It is a fact these changes have ocurred regularly and will ocurr again.
The Earth's circular to elliptical orbit changes, the Earth axis tilt off the Solar plane, and the Precession of the Earth's spin axis all cause changes which seem to be at the root of a 100,000 year cycle. This has been seen in the Vostok ice core samples going back 500,000 years in Antarctic ice by measuring CO2 variations on the repetetive 100,000 year cycles (or nearly so).
Without man's influence these cycles and the "Ice Ages" ocurred regularly and repeatedly, and I propound that they will continue again, and I see nothing man is capable of doing to stop the cycles. Man might speed a cycle up by a few years or decades or slow it down, but I see no chance to "stop it".
Believe me? No. Start with the Milankovitch cycles and other data on this page http://www.aos.wisc.edu/~aos100-2/clim/>
No matter what the U.N. or the U.S. or all the countries of the world do, the weather will change dramatically, the sea levels will rise and fall, as will CO2 levels, and man will make little dent in this cycle.
Supplying Manhattan with "all solar" power would require covering a piece of land far larger than Manhattan with 100% solar cells. That damages the land underneath the solar cells, as no typical life forms can live there anymore.
We have maxed out the typical inland water power opportunities, and the Greenies want to remove some dams which makes for less hydropower. Wave power has been iffy, and would be massively impactive on coastlines to get significant power. Deep current power is 'friendly', but costly to set up, and no one has done it yet on any scale.
The issue is getting a reliable safe, and non-air polluting & inexpensive new set of power plants on line quickly. Newer forms of safer core systems for nuclear plants used outside the US are the only commercially available solution right today. Coupled with batteries which have been improved drastically over the last 8 years (Prius batteries take up less than half the space they did in the original model in Japan), city cars will be powered by batteries charged off the grid, within less than a decade (Prius/Highlander without a gas engine). It costs 1/10 as much to run a Prius on 100% batteries as to buy gasoline to go the same distance.
Not to denegrate Princeton University geology Professor Kenneth Deffeyes, but Mr. Simmons of Simmons & Co Intnl has been speaking worldwide on this subject from his own research for over 5 years.
Mr. Simmons pdfs and PPTs used with his speaches are avaialable at his website, and are incredibly detailed and convincing.
Nuclear power is the ONLY rational solution, near term.
Weak kneed leaders in the U.S. have been totally 100% cowed by irrational environmental types who do not use any of this data or statistical evidence or engineering facts to oppose anything but "green". What these so-called leaders and environmentalists miss is that they may have doomed the U.S. to great hardship, by delaying the inevitable move to nuclear fission, which other major countries have done and are expanding as we speak.
vga, I'm in a similar boat, and now over the last couple years I've switched maybe a dozen friends and family to Mac, which I've used 'forever', or to be more precise, since the Mac 512k, BUT...
The single one program (I'm not a programmer) that I MUST USE, is ONLY available on Windows XP, and the next upgrade will be Vista (no surprise). In fact, the next 2 applications in line to take the place of that program are also only on Windows, with
ALL of the mainstream moderate priced 3D software companies having been seduced by Bill Gates' pledge of 'delivering' and industrial strength platform, has LIMITED user company's choices, and I'll bet one of these companies defects and starts to offer UNIX again (where they all used to be, and some still are, for their higher priced alternatives, except SolidWorks, which I use, because it is so productive).
3D solids CAD used to design most modern consumer, medical and industrial product is now a 'norm'. For most smallish-midish companies, SolidWorks, ProE/WildFire, Unigraphics & others run on Windows only (or their lower cost bretheren do), for reasons of programming cost, I assume.
I look forward to the day when there is an 'option out' of Unix, hopefully on the Mac. Hardware cost is NOT the issue. CAD + optional software for a single seat (on my Dell M60 @ $4500) costs me nearly $20k. The hardware is not the issue. Bill Gates has sold both users and software developers a "Bill of Gates, er, God, er Goods". Gates hoodwinked damn near EVERYONE back in the early 90s and we are all still paying the price.
I almost gag every time I see the guy stand up with a straight face and talk about Windows. All I can think of watching Bill is the old Carny, who would stand up on his orange crate and spew a fantastic, half way believable tale of his super vitamins he sold, knowing as an 8 year old kid that I was watching a con man. Sad thing is, when Bill becomes honest (giving him credit that he could), I will never be able to change my opinion of him. "Once burned...."
Is if I can pull up any document & format I want after having transferred the files from my own laptop because I'm primarily going to keep all my "documents" there on the laptop where I can use them (and copy & paste, etc) each day.
I am NOT going to add another device as a main storage component, unless it also is readable and usable on my laptop and then worse yet would be to have my 'downloaded ebook' go awry and not be viewable anymore, because of screwy DRM.
I can't see paying for content which vaporizes if my hard drive crashes, my laptop is stolen or I upgrade to a newer OS or change OS's. The "lock-in" or lose it mentality is not one I will buy into, never ever anyway and Sony needs to know this!
My Dell M60 with Windows XP has near zero maintenance time, as I never allow it on the Internet. My Mac PowerBook with OSX also has near zero maintenance time and handles all my Internet work.
I am sure Vista will "work". What I do not have is lots of free hours to keep fixing something & adding layers of applications to keep Vista "working".
Is Microsoft going to guarantee Vista going to change this ongoing user maintenance issue?
Anyone who uses multiple platforms knows where he has to spend most of his maintenance and fixer-upper time.
I spend almost no time on MacOSX keeping it running.
I gave up on my WinXP and it simply doesn't connect to the Internet, and it now has no maintenance time either.
Bo
I have yet to see even my Toyota not need to have something fixed after 3-4 years.
I expect my Apple laptops to require the same after that length of time. I get my money out of them as they are heavily used and I'm not surprised when something bonks out. And yes I buy extended warranties just because of the screens and other fragile expensive parts, and they have saved me more than they cost over time.
My Dell laptops seem to require even more service, so on a subjective scale the Apple's have about half the repair frequency for me.
Insisting that a complex, somewhat fragile product should have no repairs in years is a bit unrealistic at the least.
You may be right. JGG may have harmed you. JGG may have taken your property or deprived you of assets or income wrongly. But the JGG is so large that one little nudge can spell the end of your life, & (in the U.S.) he can get a legal judgement that goes even beyond bankruptcy. The JGG can get a judgement that locks you out of your field of expertise (unless you want to leave your native country, and even then today that may not help).
Trust me that when they accuse you, it is a curse, and when they claim (rightfully or not) that you have caused $60 million (or pick the number they invent) of damages, and are willing to spend millions to shut you down (because they only claim something might not be right, and can say without penalty later, "well, I guess he didn't do anything wrong, but we didn't know that until we did discovery and got a jury verdict", and the JGG has no fear of being sued for malitious prosecution), you generally have no choice (though you might just be stupid enough to fight). What a horrible sentence (in so many ways).
It happened, and stupidly I figured I did not have anything to worry about, since I did not cause them harm. The JGG just assumed I would eventually cause harm & they said "So hammer the SOB".
In the end the JGG made a FATAL mistake, and David caused JGG to go back to his hole, but ONLY because the JGG organized a really horrible RICO crime operation, which I found out about when gathering evidence to defend my self (from where I will not tell), which would have landed the multi-national JGG in world headlines had they gone a single step further./.rs might think "Great, a win for the small guy." It was on several levels, including that JGG went away, and I had no more restrictions. But do you have any concept what happens with multiple teams of rapacious lawyers over 5 years who work for you & me, who figure you are going to lose and go bankrupt anyway, so "Let's just bleed the chicken now, before he dies, so we can pay our overhead". I paid for more criminals to defend me than the JGG did to attack me. In the end, a single lone attorney, talked to the other side one time about the RICO issue, and in two days, the JGG was only a bad memory.
It worked out to about $1 million in defense fees, out of pocket, the JGG was not harmed and I won?
"You don't tug on Superman's cape and you don't mess around with JGG", to coin a variation which I suppose could infringe someone's copyright, except we are allowed to do short quotes for literary review.
Some take longer than other to learn...some lie...some view themselves as immortal...but the time and money are what will take you down, if you insist on stomping on toes.
I reinstall myself, so I get a new hard drive, do Dell's recommendations and update EVERYTHING, so BIOS, etc etc (well over a dozen downloads), Windows Install, Update, MSOffice updates (god how come so many), applications galore. It only took me 22 hours.
Balmer just screams "Get me a new box that works NOW or I rip your guts out and then you are fired."
I don't believe Gates and Balmer maintain their own hardware & OS, and have no clue the amount of time is involved on the Wintel side.
that you can manage to use a spell checker correctly on your web pages.
Re:Hard to admit, but North Korea...
on
Sober Code Cracked
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
& China & India groups might be using surepticious quiet entries to gather up all sorts of intellectual property secrets so they don't have to invent them "in-house".
Once it has been out for a year, and all the BS/Hype/Biz Mktg 101 has died down, the facts will become more clear...including ALL the Costs!
Consumer Reports will be the first top notch independent testing labs to report on all the cost comparison points between the units and we will actually see who comes out on top.
A bit more important is the service life and repair costs and what warranty is in effect and who will stand behind the warranty.
As a mechanical engineer, I like new gadgets, but I take a long time before I jump into new household appliances.
Big Market Share...= Really Big Problems
on
Bad Day To Be Sony
·
· Score: 1
When biological or other complex systems become nearly homogeneous (like central governments), they are subject to extinction from just one new unplanned for adverse error or "bug".
Jobs and the Apple crew know how hard it would be to design an OS so it "Fits All".
It literally becomes impossible to 'check everything' due to the limits to testing.
The cost and complexity of designing the whole OS due to all the large numbers of Intel box hardware options would simply result in an almost infinite increase in the chances for glitches that would bring down the OS and that sounds a lot like...
the 'Other' operating system I use when I must use it because I have no other choice.
Bo
What patents have allowed is a way for a small company or individual, to spend the thousands of hours needed to create and perfect something, and then retain some form of exclusivity long enough to get a return on all the hours and dollars required to make an "invention".
Our country's founders realized the need for innovation and the need to incent people to risk their time and capital. (Initially letters of marque were used by Kings and governments to give a "right" to conduct business to ship captains, and I think the intellectual property patent may have evolved from that government sanctioned activity.)
There is often so many ways to accomplish some task that a patent doesn't mean it keeps the competition away, but just makes them do it a different way.
In a newly evolving field, where a certain patent is key to using a new technology, it means that the patent holder will either have to produce like mad to supply demand, or license his patent, or both.
We do not want to return to the days where the landowners of the valley with the armed knights and essentially most of the money just take what they want from every other person in the valley.
due to my recommendation in the last year, including my wife.
The difficulty each of those people saw with using Windows and keeping it working deterred them from buying their own PC.
For all 3 of them, the iBooks are a literal dream, with only the normal learning curve resulting in some study of training books and DVDs.
It has also been almost totally painless for me, as I don't have any significant support to deal with on these machines.
Slashdot Mirror
Right, and since I personally have never had a problem with Dell's service (they show up at my door to fix what is wrong in less than 24 hrs) then I keep doing business with them. The day they change, is the day I change.
I dropped Earthlink for that very reason. No viable English technical skills, coupled with constantly different answers, plus a total disinterest in EVER getting a known problem fixed, caused me to dump Earthlink as my DSL provider.
They probably do not know why, either.
We may continue to see the resurgance of "performance art" in the flesh, whether concerts or plays or clubs, as the young, good, inventive artists see their value higher than ever, and sell non-drm'd CDs after the performance.
So far, I see acknowledgement of change, to one degree or another depending on what is cited.
What I do NOT SEE, is quantification of whether the U.S. alone (the EU isn't too happy to change, and China simply will not, and the Brazilian peasants will not) can change physical factors which will stop the change or delaying for a specific period of time, and then the cost of that change.
I argue that any effect the U.S. can do will NOT ALTER THE LONG TERM CYCLES.
No nation is going to bankrupt itself voluntarily, to try to achieve something which is not known to be achievable. If we do not have sufficient mathematics or historical data to prove reasonably that we have a chance to stop an adverse event, then why even postulate a futile try. That is sort of a suicide compact to comitt to change that which is capable of just overwhelming you, with no amount of effort you have at your disposal.
The Greenland Ice Cores showed changes in climate in eons past which suggested changes in ocean level that could have been many meters change in JUST 10-20 YEARS. So the prior record does show changes "different in degree to any previous change that can be measured or inferred." as you put it. Thus I postulate that our political entities of the U.N. and individual country's governments of the world are NOT the ones to be issuing the demands on people for change. We are only a short decade or two into documenting what is going on, and still have a long way to go. It is a long stretch between seeing a "Super Nova" (like at Galileo's time) and then finally having the knowledge and experience to be able to model and know the basis for what happens with a Super Nova. We know change in ice caps are ocurring, but putting them in perspective, understanding their true nature (including how the temperature change at the surface over say a century, affects the base of the ice hundreds-thousands of feet below. Heck, we still have permafrost in some U.S. and Canadian locations a few feet underground from the last ice age. Seeing is one thing. Understanding true causation is ENTIRELY ANOTHER THING.
Someone said "Nothing is constant except change." Get used to it, and learn to be a Darwinian survivor or become extinct. Is there more to say? Yup. But do not pretend that long term cycles DO NOT exist, and that those LONG TERM are so dramatically large in terms of varying solar input to the Earth's atmosphere, that they will not and can not dramatically alter Earth's climate over time. It is a fact these changes have ocurred regularly and will ocurr again.
The Earth's circular to elliptical orbit changes, the Earth axis tilt off the Solar plane, and the Precession of the Earth's spin axis all cause changes which seem to be at the root of a 100,000 year cycle. This has been seen in the Vostok ice core samples going back 500,000 years in Antarctic ice by measuring CO2 variations on the repetetive 100,000 year cycles (or nearly so).
Without man's influence these cycles and the "Ice Ages" ocurred regularly and repeatedly, and I propound that they will continue again, and I see nothing man is capable of doing to stop the cycles. Man might speed a cycle up by a few years or decades or slow it down, but I see no chance to "stop it".
Believe me? No. Start with the Milankovitch cycles and other data on this page http://www.aos.wisc.edu/~aos100-2/clim/>
No matter what the U.N. or the U.S. or all the countries of the world do, the weather will change dramatically, the sea levels will rise and fall, as will CO2 levels, and man will make little dent in this cycle.
Supplying Manhattan with "all solar" power would require covering a piece of land far larger than Manhattan with 100% solar cells. That damages the land underneath the solar cells, as no typical life forms can live there anymore.
We have maxed out the typical inland water power opportunities, and the Greenies want to remove some dams which makes for less hydropower. Wave power has been iffy, and would be massively impactive on coastlines to get significant power. Deep current power is 'friendly', but costly to set up, and no one has done it yet on any scale.
The issue is getting a reliable safe, and non-air polluting & inexpensive new set of power plants on line quickly. Newer forms of safer core systems for nuclear plants used outside the US are the only commercially available solution right today. Coupled with batteries which have been improved drastically over the last 8 years (Prius batteries take up less than half the space they did in the original model in Japan), city cars will be powered by batteries charged off the grid, within less than a decade (Prius/Highlander without a gas engine). It costs 1/10 as much to run a Prius on 100% batteries as to buy gasoline to go the same distance.
Not to denegrate Princeton University geology Professor Kenneth Deffeyes, but Mr. Simmons of Simmons & Co Intnl has been speaking worldwide on this subject from his own research for over 5 years.
Mr. Simmons pdfs and PPTs used with his speaches are avaialable at his website, and are incredibly detailed and convincing.
Nuclear power is the ONLY rational solution, near term.
Weak kneed leaders in the U.S. have been totally 100% cowed by irrational environmental types who do not use any of this data or statistical evidence or engineering facts to oppose anything but "green". What these so-called leaders and environmentalists miss is that they may have doomed the U.S. to great hardship, by delaying the inevitable move to nuclear fission, which other major countries have done and are expanding as we speak.
Bo
MI6 has a nondescript rock for you.
And I quote "God your stupid".
I rest the case defined in the message heading as a case of Slashdot user self-flagellation, which is not a part of the Karma Sutra.
vga, I'm in a similar boat, and now over the last couple years I've switched maybe a dozen friends and family to Mac, which I've used 'forever', or to be more precise, since the Mac 512k, BUT...
The single one program (I'm not a programmer) that I MUST USE, is ONLY available on Windows XP, and the next upgrade will be Vista (no surprise). In fact, the next 2 applications in line to take the place of that program are also only on Windows, with
ALL of the mainstream moderate priced 3D software companies having been seduced by Bill Gates' pledge of 'delivering' and industrial strength platform, has LIMITED user company's choices, and I'll bet one of these companies defects and starts to offer UNIX again (where they all used to be, and some still are, for their higher priced alternatives, except SolidWorks, which I use, because it is so productive).
3D solids CAD used to design most modern consumer, medical and industrial product is now a 'norm'. For most smallish-midish companies, SolidWorks, ProE/WildFire, Unigraphics & others run on Windows only (or their lower cost bretheren do), for reasons of programming cost, I assume.
I look forward to the day when there is an 'option out' of Unix, hopefully on the Mac. Hardware cost is NOT the issue. CAD + optional software for a single seat (on my Dell M60 @ $4500) costs me nearly $20k. The hardware is not the issue. Bill Gates has sold both users and software developers a "Bill of Gates, er, God, er Goods". Gates hoodwinked damn near EVERYONE back in the early 90s and we are all still paying the price.
I almost gag every time I see the guy stand up with a straight face and talk about Windows. All I can think of watching Bill is the old Carny, who would stand up on his orange crate and spew a fantastic, half way believable tale of his super vitamins he sold, knowing as an 8 year old kid that I was watching a con man. Sad thing is, when Bill becomes honest (giving him credit that he could), I will never be able to change my opinion of him. "Once burned...."
Is if I can pull up any document & format I want after having transferred the files from my own laptop because I'm primarily going to keep all my "documents" there on the laptop where I can use them (and copy & paste, etc) each day.
I am NOT going to add another device as a main storage component, unless it also is readable and usable on my laptop and then worse yet would be to have my 'downloaded ebook' go awry and not be viewable anymore, because of screwy DRM.
I can't see paying for content which vaporizes if my hard drive crashes, my laptop is stolen or I upgrade to a newer OS or change OS's. The "lock-in" or lose it mentality is not one I will buy into, never ever anyway and Sony needs to know this!
My Dell M60 with Windows XP has near zero maintenance time, as I never allow it on the Internet. My Mac PowerBook with OSX also has near zero maintenance time and handles all my Internet work.
I am sure Vista will "work". What I do not have is lots of free hours to keep fixing something & adding layers of applications to keep Vista "working".
Is Microsoft going to guarantee Vista going to change this ongoing user maintenance issue?
Bo
Anyone who uses multiple platforms knows where he has to spend most of his maintenance and fixer-upper time. I spend almost no time on MacOSX keeping it running. I gave up on my WinXP and it simply doesn't connect to the Internet, and it now has no maintenance time either. Bo
I seriously doubt they ever did a valid consumer market survey before spending all those investor dollars.
separate anti-virus &/or adware/spyware apps.
I have yet to see even my Toyota not need to have something fixed after 3-4 years.
I expect my Apple laptops to require the same after that length of time. I get my money out of them as they are heavily used and I'm not surprised when something bonks out. And yes I buy extended warranties just because of the screens and other fragile expensive parts, and they have saved me more than they cost over time.
My Dell laptops seem to require even more service, so on a subjective scale the Apple's have about half the repair frequency for me.
Insisting that a complex, somewhat fragile product should have no repairs in years is a bit unrealistic at the least.
The Jolly Green Giant's Toe!
/.rs might think "Great, a win for the small guy." It was on several levels, including that JGG went away, and I had no more restrictions. But do you have any concept what happens with multiple teams of rapacious lawyers over 5 years who work for you & me, who figure you are going to lose and go bankrupt anyway, so "Let's just bleed the chicken now, before he dies, so we can pay our overhead". I paid for more criminals to defend me than the JGG did to attack me. In the end, a single lone attorney, talked to the other side one time about the RICO issue, and in two days, the JGG was only a bad memory.
You may be right. JGG may have harmed you. JGG may have taken your property or deprived you of assets or income wrongly. But the JGG is so large that one little nudge can spell the end of your life, & (in the U.S.) he can get a legal judgement that goes even beyond bankruptcy. The JGG can get a judgement that locks you out of your field of expertise (unless you want to leave your native country, and even then today that may not help).
Trust me that when they accuse you, it is a curse, and when they claim (rightfully or not) that you have caused $60 million (or pick the number they invent) of damages, and are willing to spend millions to shut you down (because they only claim something might not be right, and can say without penalty later, "well, I guess he didn't do anything wrong, but we didn't know that until we did discovery and got a jury verdict", and the JGG has no fear of being sued for malitious prosecution), you generally have no choice (though you might just be stupid enough to fight). What a horrible sentence (in so many ways).
It happened, and stupidly I figured I did not have anything to worry about, since I did not cause them harm. The JGG just assumed I would eventually cause harm & they said "So hammer the SOB".
In the end the JGG made a FATAL mistake, and David caused JGG to go back to his hole, but ONLY because the JGG organized a really horrible RICO crime operation, which I found out about when gathering evidence to defend my self (from where I will not tell), which would have landed the multi-national JGG in world headlines had they gone a single step further.
It worked out to about $1 million in defense fees, out of pocket, the JGG was not harmed and I won?
"You don't tug on Superman's cape and you don't mess around with JGG", to coin a variation which I suppose could infringe someone's copyright, except we are allowed to do short quotes for literary review.
Some take longer than other to learn...some lie...some view themselves as immortal...but the time and money are what will take you down, if you insist on stomping on toes.
I reinstall myself, so I get a new hard drive, do Dell's recommendations and update EVERYTHING, so BIOS, etc etc (well over a dozen downloads), Windows Install, Update, MSOffice updates (god how come so many), applications galore. It only took me 22 hours.
Balmer just screams "Get me a new box that works NOW or I rip your guts out and then you are fired."
I don't believe Gates and Balmer maintain their own hardware & OS, and have no clue the amount of time is involved on the Wintel side.
Bo
that you can manage to use a spell checker correctly on your web pages.
& China & India groups might be using surepticious quiet entries to gather up all sorts of intellectual property secrets so they don't have to invent them "in-house".
Once it has been out for a year, and all the BS/Hype/Biz Mktg 101 has died down, the facts will become more clear...including ALL the Costs!
Consumer Reports will be the first top notch independent testing labs to report on all the cost comparison points between the units and we will actually see who comes out on top.
A bit more important is the service life and repair costs and what warranty is in effect and who will stand behind the warranty.
As a mechanical engineer, I like new gadgets, but I take a long time before I jump into new household appliances.
When biological or other complex systems become nearly homogeneous (like central governments), they are subject to extinction from just one new unplanned for adverse error or "bug".
Jobs and the Apple crew know how hard it would be to design an OS so it "Fits All". It literally becomes impossible to 'check everything' due to the limits to testing. The cost and complexity of designing the whole OS due to all the large numbers of Intel box hardware options would simply result in an almost infinite increase in the chances for glitches that would bring down the OS and that sounds a lot like... the 'Other' operating system I use when I must use it because I have no other choice. Bo
What patents have allowed is a way for a small company or individual, to spend the thousands of hours needed to create and perfect something, and then retain some form of exclusivity long enough to get a return on all the hours and dollars required to make an "invention".
Our country's founders realized the need for innovation and the need to incent people to risk their time and capital. (Initially letters of marque were used by Kings and governments to give a "right" to conduct business to ship captains, and I think the intellectual property patent may have evolved from that government sanctioned activity.)
There is often so many ways to accomplish some task that a patent doesn't mean it keeps the competition away, but just makes them do it a different way.
In a newly evolving field, where a certain patent is key to using a new technology, it means that the patent holder will either have to produce like mad to supply demand, or license his patent, or both.
We do not want to return to the days where the landowners of the valley with the armed knights and essentially most of the money just take what they want from every other person in the valley.
due to my recommendation in the last year, including my wife. The difficulty each of those people saw with using Windows and keeping it working deterred them from buying their own PC. For all 3 of them, the iBooks are a literal dream, with only the normal learning curve resulting in some study of training books and DVDs. It has also been almost totally painless for me, as I don't have any significant support to deal with on these machines.