The metric works best if you have a strong grasp of place value and decimal notation.
The traditional system works better if you are good at fractions.
So, teach more about decimal notation and place value, and, if necessary, make up the time by teaching less about fractions (especially adding the stupid things) - although the problem is not that people succeed in learning fractions, but that they fail to learn decimal notation.
Teach the meaning of the centi-, deci-, milli- prefixes, powers of 10 and standard form. Don't chant "10 milimetres 1 centimetre, 10 centimetres 1 decimetre 10 decimetres" as if it were something arbitrary that had to be remembered, like inches, feet and yards.
While we're at it, can I recommend the European system of paper sizes, where each size is made by folding the size above in half? US letter encourages people to make lines too long, anyway.
Big problem is that Britain should have gone metric in the 70s, shortly after introducing decimal coinage (the old money system beggared belief) but instead of gritting their teeth and getting on with it the powers that be dithered and tried to peel the plaster off gently.
Lots of conservative* types, and certainly sections of the popular press, are wedded to the old units, and perceive (rightly or wrongly) as being imposed on us by the Eurpoean Union** so progress has been gradual and we measure distances in miles (but buy petrol in litres) and buy 6' x 4' x 25mm boards.
Generally, I'd prefer metric units (I wasn't taught Imperial at school - that was in the 70s) but if you want my pint of beer you can prise it from my cold (but not too cold if its proper British beer), dead fingers.
* The distinction between the UK Conservative and Unionist Party and the dictionary meaning of conservative is insignificant in this case.
** Stories about the EU imposing silly regulations about the minimum radius of curvature of banannas are very popular, although the rules in question often turn out to originate from the UK.
All this device integration is useless. A decent phone (free w/contract), camera ($100) and DS ($130) will do each job better than the iPhone.
...a good theory. Similar theories include "Wordpad or TextEdit is all the wordprocessor most people need, and if you need more you'd be better off with a dedicated DTP program than a bloated jack-of-all-trades like Word". Absolutely true, but reality hasn't caught up yet.
Apple could stick to the "dedicated is best" principle (its been their line in the past) but if reality doesn't agree then that's the iPod/iTunes business down the can. Remember, phone cameras took off (at least in UK/EU) because phone companies pushed them hard in order to get revenue from multimedia messaging services. Try buying a camera-less phone! When they decide that their networks are up to music downloads they might do the same with music (10 "free" tracks a month on your contract anybody?).
Yes folks, the iPhone is Apple hedging their bets - and maybe, just maybe, some if its "deficiencies" are because Apple doesn't really want it to replace people's iPods and MacBooks. They've got in bed with Cingular (one can speculate that they demanded some of the ommissions) because its the carriers that could kill the iPod business.
Incidentally, I don't entirely agree on the camera front: I'm sure that I'm not the only person with two digicams - a fairly bulky "prosumer" one with a decent lens for serious shots and a smaller, cheaper one to carry around just in case. A camera phone can definitely replace the latter.
Likewise, how many people have a small flash-based MP3 player for daily use, and a hard drive model for those occasions when they want their whole music collection? The iPhone could replace the former (as could my SmartPhone if the media players didn't suck so hard).
1) OSX is not open source. Its as proprietary as Windows.
Huge chunks of OSX's infrastructure are open source - notably the kernel, webkit and compiler suite, plus many of the usual suspects from BSD and GNU/linux. Its basically a closed source GUI sitting on an open source OS. OSX definitely ain't Linux but its much more standards-oriented and open than windows. And so what if it is proprietary? The problem with M% is not that they are proprietary, but that they have a virtual monopoly to abuse.
2) You still cannot buy a retail copy of OSX that will run on your shiny old MacIntel. You only get to buy either an upgrade or a retail pack for PPC. Can you think of any legitimate reason for this other than lockin?
3) Despite the fact that the MacIntel is a standard enough Intel box, Apple has gone to great lengths to lock OSX to only those Intel boxes that it has blessed with its logo. No technical reason, its pure lockin.
Er, there is a technical reason: Apple only have to support the stuff that they sell. "standard enough Intel box" covers a plethora of processors, chipsets, busses and lots of legacy crap (which Apple have stripped out) all of which would have to be supported, with any problem tarnishing Apple's "it just works" reputation. Also, since it is almost impossible to buy a ready-built PC without a M$ operating pre-installed, it would be very hard to sell a replacement desktop OS. Plus, the average user can't install an OS anyway. Remember, OSX's history owes more to NeXTStep than previous Apple OS's and Jobs already tried to sell that as a bare OS. Didn't work.
History has shown that its easier to sell people an nicely integrated "iProduct" than get them to change their OS. Plus, sales of premium-priced Apple hardware bankroll the development of OSX.
This isn't a problem because Apple doesn't have a monopoly - If you're worried, use FOSS applications (most of the popular ones work on OSX because it has a Unix-like structure and also supports X11) and you can always switch to Linux.
Remember, its not operating systems that lock you to a platform - its the applications and data formats that you use.
4) iTunes is a locked system. Yes, you do have to use the Apple software to buy an iTune, and then once you have it, you can't play it on another player without going through contortions and losing quality and maybe violating the DMCA. There is no reason to refuse to license fairplay other than a deliberate effort at consumer lockin.
When will people get this??? Yes, iTMS (the music store, as distinct from the iTunes application) is locked to the iPod, but the iPod isn't locked to iTMS. Find a source of unencumbered MP3s (buying CDs and ripping them is still the favorite ) and you can use on iPods or any other music player.
5) Jobs did say, to the NY Times, that you won't be able to run your own software on the iPhone. The laugable reason given was to protect you and the cellular network. But it fits with all the rest. Its just about control and lockin. As is the taboo on unlocking it and moving it to another network.
I'm fairly sure that was Cingular speaking, not Jobs. Not sure about the USA, but in the UK, the main channel for cellphone sales goes through the carriers (you can't throw a brick in the average high street without hitting a shop run by one of the carriers - and "independent" means phones branded by two or more carriers under the same roof) - and cellphone carriers are real buggers for lock-in.
OTOH - maybe jobs is right, the iPod hasn't suffered from not running third party software
(I have a WM5 cellphone and the main motivation for installing 3rd party apps is that the built-in stuff is crap)
Apart from the "nobody got fired for buying IBM" syndrome mentioned by others, Apple and other US-made stuff was stupidly expensive over here in the 80s and 90s when universities were switching from mainframes to PCs. In the 8-bit era Apple 2s were like hens teeth - its ecological niche was filled by the Acorn/BBC micro which (along with one other proprietary platform) pwn3d the education market - they didn't crack the higher education market (but probably divided the opposition to PC).
Also, the HE networking process in the latre 80s was hell on wheels, with the government mandating that institutions had to use the ISO networking stack - nice idea (open standards) with one small problem (it was vaporware).
"iPhone" gets launched as "Apple Phone", written as "[Apple logo]phone" just like they did with "iTV".
Everybody in the world from Steve Jobs down continues to call it the iPhone anyway.
...and the iPhone claims to run OSX "real desktop applications" and certainly appears to have Vista-esque eye candy. We don't know what CPU or RAM it has yet (the 4GB/8GB is presumably the Flash "hard drive").
Note I said somewhere between a smartphone and a UMPC.
Well, the tech specs are fairly sketchy - no details about CPU type or speed, amount of RAM (apart from flash storage) but unless the "videos" on apple.com are total fraud this thing has way more horsepower than your average smartphone. Looks to be somewhere between a top-end smartphone ($700 unlocked?) and something like the new OQO ($1600+). I'd guess a realistic "unlocked" price could easily top $1000.
Plus, as other people have pointed out, some of the tricks with voicemail and conference calls may have needed support from the mobile operator.
Just hope that when it comes to the UK it has 3G and is on T-Mobile, as they do a half-decent offer on "unlimited" (for a given value of unlimited) 3G internet access.
I've just got a Windows Mobile 5 phone and the iPhone demo makes that look like crap*. They'll sell to early adopters at whatever price.
* Mind you, a 1994 Psion makes WM5 look like a pile of crap with extra features and colour, so that's not sayimg much.
I'm sure this will blow over as nothing soon enough, but it's EXACTLY this kind of stuff that scares the crap out of corporations and prevents Open Source(TM) from making much headway.
Really? It just sounds like an open-source developer being dilligent. Nobody has sued anybody yet (and there's no huge damages to be made from doing so).
Using commercial software (especially in a corporate environment using volume licenses and developer tools) is no protection against getting sued by a patent or copyright troll, plus there's all those sign-in-blood licenses and paramilitary anti-piracy militias waiting for a big corp. to tread on the cracks in the pavement.
The main problem is simply culture - corporations are run buy Businessmen who like doing Business which means Money Changing Hands. Think of all those procurement and legal suits who would get downsized if they weren't negotiating software licensing deals and having their egos massaged by marketdroids.
Being cynical, its a complete myth that "big business" wants to save money. Suits like huge sums of money running through their departments - big budget = big responsibility = big paycheck. OK, they want to be seen to be "making savings" but what they mean is "juggle costs between accounts" not the sort of savings that actually make your budget go down... Perish the thought.
Quick clarification, seeing some of the posts here about "winmodems" and junkware-infested drivers:
Drivers run on your computer and let it talk to the device.
Firmware is "software" that runs on the device - typically code for on-board microcontrollers, Field Programmamble Gate Arrays (FPGA) and other "soft hardware".
There is nothing wrong with the idea of using driver-loaded firmware - it simplifies the device (no need for on-board flash memory) and makes it easier to fix "hardware" issues with an updated driver (with less risk of "bricking" a device by muffing a firmware update). Linux can actually cope with it quite happily - A lot of digital TV cards rely on driver-loaded firmware and its all fine and dandy provided that either (a) the manufacturer offers a download of the firmware or (b) it can be extracted from the windows driver CD or (c) some evil pirate has selfishly conspired to increase the manufacturer's customer base by posting an iffy copy.
There is an interesting question as to the status of such a "firmware blob" vis. the GPL (especialy the anti-TiVOization clauses of V3). Is it part of the software (thus tainting the free-ness of any drivers that require it) or part of the hardware (FPGA "software" is more like a circuit diagram than a program - and the "source code" might be useless without proprietary software from the FPGA manufacturer - and tweaking it might void the FCC/CE certification of the device)?
MySQL/MyISAM is the one with the massive legacy code base, the one that your open-source blogging software uses and probably the one that your web host supports. It beautifully hits the "sweet spot" for data-driven web sites with infrequent and simple updates, where trading integrity for "read only" performance is sensible. It does not even purport to compete with PostgreSQL on features - but it does offer fulltext searches, again
MySQL/InnoDB is the one that offers transactions, foreign keys etc. (ISTR it doesn't do fulltext indexes, though) - this is the "version" that bears comparison with PostgreSQL. I wonder how its user base compares?
(OK - you can mix InnoDB and MyISAM tables in a single database, but you can't use InnoDB if your web host hasn't installed it - heck, one provider I use is still on MySQL V3.23)
Flamewars have tended to pit PostgreSQL against a mythical database with the performance of MyISAM and the features of InnoDB...
As for the GUI software, the MySQL GUI Admin/query browser stuff is shinier than PgAdmin3 - but the MacOS version of the former is a complete crashfest! Neither of them steps up to the plate of providing a FOSS equivalent of (the good bits) of MS Access.
Yeah, its really in the interest of M$ and Sony to ensure that the Wii gets daily mentions in the media during the run up to ex-mas (along with comments about how excited people are getting over them). Seen anything in the mainstream press about the PS3 last week?
As long as nothing really serious happens, the Nintendo marketing guys should be laughing all the way to the bank. They'll make more than enough to absorb a few ex-gratia payouts for broken tellys.
That stuff absolutely could be done automatically... The only potential obstacle is proprietary firmwares, and it could prompt you to insert the CD that came with the devices and automatically extract said proprietary firmware for you.
Yes, and some Linux distros will try and auto-configure your TV cards for you. This is the distro's job, not MythTVs! The V4L and Linux DVB drivers are kernel modules produced by independent groups, not the MythTV programmers. There's not much MythTV can do if the drivers weren't enabled in the kernel! The HotPlug mechanism (used for loading firmware) varies between distros and kernel versions. The same drivers are used by other software (e.g. Xine) - and since not everybody runs MythTV standalone it isn't actually a good idea for MythTV to automatically dick with the setup. Ditto xorg.conf (and X is rubbish at on-the-fly reconfiguration anyway). The solution is exactly what is described in the original article - a custom-configured LiveCD such as KnoppMyth or MythDora.
You seem to be confusing MythTV - the free, open source HTPC software maintained by unpaid volunteers) with MS Windows XP Media Centre Edition - the proprietary, closed source HTPC software produced by one of the richest companies in the world, which (as far as I know) still requires the user to install the required third-party drivers for various bits of hardware.
...except the bits that depend on loading the correct kernel modules and firmware blobs (DVB support), choosing the appropriate xorg drivers and xorg.conf hacking (TV out and screen resolution) undetectable hardware (Digital vs. analogue audio out) are a matter of choice (e.g. software vs. hardware MPEG, which interlace method to use).
Being built on Unix, I would expect to understand more about what OS X is doing -- but I don't.
Therein lies your problem - OS X is primarily a GUI-oriented operating system mainly aimed at "creatives" and home users. OK, Apple have traded a bit on the Unix foundation - and its certainly a better Unix system than Windows - but the main objective was clearly to hide Unix from Mac users. If you want to scare a typical Mac user, pop up the terminal (and if you really want to traumatise them, boot up to single user mode). Conversely, hardcore Unix users would typically rather use the shell and edit a.rc file than use a GUI. I suspect that one of the reasons that Unix/Linux GUIs are (still!) so clunky compared to Mac and Windows is that the programmers that design them only ever use them to run 8 simultaneous xterms.
If you want a Mac then - bonus!!! - it can also run a range of *nix/Linux/FOSS apps in something far closer to their natural environment than Windows. However, If your first requirement is a *nix workstation then get some cheap PC hardware (or even an Intel Mac) and stick Linux on it. The OS X GUI is far better than anything under Linux - but if you are a CLI person that doesn't really matter.
To be fair, if you've ever switched from a SysV-style Unix to a *BSD one - or even between a Debian-descended Linux distro and a RedHat-descended one - you'll have torn your hair out trying to find applications and config files. (Hint: in OSX the contents of/etc are largely bogus and the real beef is actually stored in the netinfo database - and if you google you can find the cli commands to manipulate that).
I have a 1.42 [Mini] with a GB of RAM and it still pinwheels constantly.
That sounds like a PPC (G4) Mac Mini. Think pre-Pentium-M Centrino. They are great little boxes provided you realise that they are more "iPod Maxi" than "Mac Mini". They are a perfect indication of why Apple had to switch to Intel Core processors.
Why has installation of Myth always been non-trivial?
Er, lets see: do you use satellite or terestrial TV? Is that analogue or digital? European-style DVB or the US equivalent? Does your tuner card need a firmware blob to work? Does your tuner card have onboard MPEG decoding? If not, does your video card have MPEG acceleration and is it supported by Xorg? How do you enable TV-out and set it to native PAL or NTSC resolution with sensible overscan? (anybody using a low power Via Epia system as a HTPC should be shuddering here) Analogue sound or passthrough digital? Do you want infra-red control - how would Sir like his buttons mapped? Do you need an IR emitter to control your STM?
I.e. its non-trivial to install because it has an impressively non-trivial feature list and works in many different environments. And, as other people have already posted, the major pain is getting all the hardware drivers working rather than installing Myth itself.
The weakest bit of Myth set-up has historically been DVB "tuning" (i.e. setting the half-dozen parameters for each channel) which got a lot better over the last few releases.
This is more death of free media. If the only FTA transmissions you can get are either state-sponsored or state-supported, how can you reliably get news?
Can't speak for the rest of Europe, but in the UK, State-sponsored != run by the current Party.
Check out "Have I Got News For You" from BBC ("state-run") or "Bremner, Bird and Fortune" from C4 (partly subsidised) and see if you think they are produced by government sock-puppets. Or the crack in "Doctor Who" about aliens with "Massive Weapons of Destruction that can be fired in 45 seconds". Heck, even the new "Robin Hood" series has a subtle-as-brick "get the troops out of Iraq" subtext.
There is a carefully maintained "chinese wall" between the government and the BBC - sure, the government has some influence over appointments to top jobs and the level of the license fee (which, although arguablty a tax, is not collected via our equivalent of the IRS*), but if the government got caught directly intervening in BBC editorial decisions they would be in a world of hurt.
I don't think the model would work in the USA where it would be expected/accepted for a state broadcasting authority to either be elected on a Party ticket or appointed by the incoming administration. Here we only elect the "executive" and the infrastructure is expected to act impartially (and sometimes held to this). Thats why, after an election, the new government can be up and running in 24 hours instead of 6 months.
Anyway, we can get ITV (independent commercial) and Murdochvision news on free-to-air digital, and anybody with any sense "interpolates" to get the truth.
* Actually, people who don't own a TV find that the regular tax collectors are pussycats compared to the TV licensing stormtroopers, but thats another story:-)
That said, it died for a reason. it didn't generate enough interest.
I think that selling so many shedloads of DVDs that the money-men greenlit a feature film counts as "generating interest".
Now, the film didn't do too well in the box office - but it was in pretty good company last year in an industry gonne mad where, if a film doesn't go into profit on its opening weekend it is pulled from theatres. If the world had been like that in the 70s, Luke Skywalker would still be fixing moisture condensers on his uncle's farm. Plus, these home theatre setups are getting awfully good in the face of multiplexes that don't know where the focus knob is. I think that cinema might really be going to crash this time.
Serenity was always going to be a tricky sell, and every effort was spared to market it well (e.g. duff title; the UK film poster made it look like a "Buffy" clone; the TV ads stopped as soon as the film actually came out). They did shift some DVDs though. I have a sneaky suspicion that Fox did better out of the film than Universal - after the film came out, the TV DVDs (by then a couple of years old) were back in the Amazon top 5 for months.
Of course, the film wasn't as good as the series anyway.
See above. The lawyers found this bulletproof, so they found a new way. They added patents as icing on the cake. Now since Novell signed a licensing deal, 7 of the GPL will never be a problem for them.
I thought the argument was that since Novell hadn't signed a licensing deal, but that instead M$ was making a covenent with Novell customers not to persue them for any undefined M$ patent violations which might happen to turn up in Novell linux, and that because there was no licensing deal between M$ and Novell, section 7 of the GPL didn't apply?
Now, I'd like to see a legally-informed opinion from someone other than FSF or PJ (both of whom are evangelising GPLv3 and have an incentive to find fault with v2) that explains (a) why that doesn't amount to an implicit license between M$ and Novell and (b) if not, why changing the GPL to address it won't also mean that a hostile party could close down any Linux distro by unilaterally promising not to sue anyone who had bought the "boxed" version; or make it hard for companies like Red Hat to offer indemnification to their paying customers.
I've not studied the topic in depth, but if PJ has, I trust her judgement.
Word to the wise: In SCO vs Linux Groklaw is presenting the case for the defence. Now, because PJ is a skilled ex-paralegal (and I assume that helping research and prepare court filings was a major part of that) she does a meticulous job of backing up her arguments with evidence and links to court documents, and often provideds an excellent explanation of the legal stuff. Her comments are usually an interesting and informative read, she has been doing a great service to the community by making documents available but for pity's sake don't kid yourself that her editorials are not written in the interest of her adopted and pro-bono client, the "free software community". In this case, she's almost certainly right - but lets face it, when did you last hear someone suggest that SCO might still have a case?
In the case of GPLv2 vs GPLv3 she has nailed her colours to GPLv3 and (in the absence of any court filings to analyse) has been presenting a much less convincing case, largely parroting the "Rubbish, You're not a lawyer, if you are against GPL3 you must be for DRM and Patents" responses to Linus et. al's criticisms.
And one of the most compelling features of the GPLv2 is that you didn't have to be a lawyer to understand it, and it left very little "wriggle room" for dispute. Its not simply that it stands up in court, its that it is so clear that it usually doesn't get that far. It should not be lightly dumped in favour of a slab of opaque legalese full of phases such as "in the recommended or principal context of use" (from the anti-TiVo bit of GPLv3 draft) or "patent licensing that is prejudicial among the downstream recipients" (from recent RMS quotes about Novell) that lawyers will probably interpret to death.
I certainly hope that nobody would dream of using the Novell incident as a political lever to overcome the objections to GPLv3.
I still don't get what the problem is with the GPL2 wrt the Novell deal - as far as I can see it (GPLv2) very specifically says that if you are unable (for any reason) to pass on the GPL rights to your customers then you can not distribute at all. If MS has given Novell convincing evidence of violations and told them that it has to sign this license or it will sue its users then how does this not apply? RMS seemed to be saying that it doesn't apply because its not a "patent license", but in section 7 the case of a "patent license" is given as an example after a much broader clause.
On the other hand, if (as seems likely) this is an excercise in FUD which carefully avoids making any (potentially disprovable) claims, how the hell can GPLv3 do anything about it without introducing equally muddy clauses?
Unfortunately, the widespread criticism of the GPLv3 seems to be met with non-responses along the lines of "you're not a lawyer" or "do you want DRM/TiVoization to win?" - nobody seems to be engaging with the critical qestion "what realistic chance does re-wording GPL stand of defeating DRM or causing patent reform, and does that benefit balance the risk of a more complex GPL prone to legal re-interpretation and FUD".
If the revised GPLv3 even sounds like suggesting (e.g.) that you will have to give away your private keys, or (e.g.) that you will have to indemnify all your downstream users against patent infringement or (e.g.) that you can't distribute under GPL if you have any sort of technology sharing agreement with another company then - even though these interpretations would eventually be tossed out by a court - these memes will be seized upon by anti-Linux schills and trumpeted around as FUD to scare off potenial adopters and contributors.
Sobering thought: Lots of entities own the copyright to bits of Linux and other FOSS projects. These entities might go to the dark side, or go bust and have their assets sold to the highest bidder. Fortunately, all of these are uncomplicatedly released under GPLv2 - however, with a more turgid GPL the future could see trolls aquiring these copyrights and firing off nuicance GPL violation lawsuits agains Mom & Pop.
Umm, it's "per se".
I realize this is how different flavours of languages propagate over the ages, but I'm all in favor of keeping English as unified as possible.
Stock loss last quarter was £60,000. That's not small by any means for a store.
Well, that means nothing without knowing whether you work for Mom and Pop's corner shop or Walmart.
Personally i'd like to be able to walk in, pick up my stuff and go
Unfortunately, so do the thieves:-)
"I need some help with a PC". Do i help the customer directly asking me for help or do i wait behind the counter to serve up goods like ink
Hmmm... try and sell someone a $2000 PC or hang around on the offchance that someone will buy $20 worth of ink... Nope, I'm not going to armchair quarterback that one. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if you make more profit on the ink!
We have 4 too many staff one minute and a surge in customers can suddenly create a shortage
I expect that the real problem is that the PHB turns up when its dead quiet, observes that 4 people don't seem to be working, yells at the person behind the ink counter and then leaves.
Slashdot Mirror
Er... that if Apple is going to do a spoiler announcement then two weeks ago would have been a bit premature?
The metric works best if you have a strong grasp of place value and decimal notation.
The traditional system works better if you are good at fractions.
So, teach more about decimal notation and place value, and, if necessary, make up the time by teaching less about fractions (especially adding the stupid things) - although the problem is not that people succeed in learning fractions, but that they fail to learn decimal notation.
Teach the meaning of the centi-, deci-, milli- prefixes, powers of 10 and standard form. Don't chant "10 milimetres 1 centimetre, 10 centimetres 1 decimetre 10 decimetres" as if it were something arbitrary that had to be remembered, like inches, feet and yards.
While we're at it, can I recommend the European system of paper sizes, where each size is made by folding the size above in half? US letter encourages people to make lines too long, anyway.
Big problem is that Britain should have gone metric in the 70s, shortly after introducing decimal coinage (the old money system beggared belief) but instead of gritting their teeth and getting on with it the powers that be dithered and tried to peel the plaster off gently.
Lots of conservative* types, and certainly sections of the popular press, are wedded to the old units, and perceive (rightly or wrongly) as being imposed on us by the Eurpoean Union** so progress has been gradual and we measure distances in miles (but buy petrol in litres) and buy 6' x 4' x 25mm boards.
Generally, I'd prefer metric units (I wasn't taught Imperial at school - that was in the 70s) but if you want my pint of beer you can prise it from my cold (but not too cold if its proper British beer), dead fingers.
* The distinction between the UK Conservative and Unionist Party and the dictionary meaning of conservative is insignificant in this case.
** Stories about the EU imposing silly regulations about the minimum radius of curvature of banannas are very popular, although the rules in question often turn out to originate from the UK.
...a good theory. Similar theories include "Wordpad or TextEdit is all the wordprocessor most people need, and if you need more you'd be better off with a dedicated DTP program than a bloated jack-of-all-trades like Word". Absolutely true, but reality hasn't caught up yet.
Apple could stick to the "dedicated is best" principle (its been their line in the past) but if reality doesn't agree then that's the iPod/iTunes business down the can. Remember, phone cameras took off (at least in UK/EU) because phone companies pushed them hard in order to get revenue from multimedia messaging services. Try buying a camera-less phone! When they decide that their networks are up to music downloads they might do the same with music (10 "free" tracks a month on your contract anybody?).
Yes folks, the iPhone is Apple hedging their bets - and maybe, just maybe, some if its "deficiencies" are because Apple doesn't really want it to replace people's iPods and MacBooks. They've got in bed with Cingular (one can speculate that they demanded some of the ommissions) because its the carriers that could kill the iPod business.
Incidentally, I don't entirely agree on the camera front: I'm sure that I'm not the only person with two digicams - a fairly bulky "prosumer" one with a decent lens for serious shots and a smaller, cheaper one to carry around just in case. A camera phone can definitely replace the latter.
Likewise, how many people have a small flash-based MP3 player for daily use, and a hard drive model for those occasions when they want their whole music collection? The iPhone could replace the former (as could my SmartPhone if the media players didn't suck so hard).
Huge chunks of OSX's infrastructure are open source - notably the kernel, webkit and compiler suite, plus many of the usual suspects from BSD and GNU/linux. Its basically a closed source GUI sitting on an open source OS. OSX definitely ain't Linux but its much more standards-oriented and open than windows. And so what if it is proprietary? The problem with M% is not that they are proprietary, but that they have a virtual monopoly to abuse.
Er, there is a technical reason: Apple only have to support the stuff that they sell. "standard enough Intel box" covers a plethora of processors, chipsets, busses and lots of legacy crap (which Apple have stripped out) all of which would have to be supported, with any problem tarnishing Apple's "it just works" reputation. Also, since it is almost impossible to buy a ready-built PC without a M$ operating pre-installed, it would be very hard to sell a replacement desktop OS. Plus, the average user can't install an OS anyway. Remember, OSX's history owes more to NeXTStep than previous Apple OS's and Jobs already tried to sell that as a bare OS. Didn't work.
History has shown that its easier to sell people an nicely integrated "iProduct" than get them to change their OS. Plus, sales of premium-priced Apple hardware bankroll the development of OSX.
This isn't a problem because Apple doesn't have a monopoly - If you're worried, use FOSS applications (most of the popular ones work on OSX because it has a Unix-like structure and also supports X11) and you can always switch to Linux.
Remember, its not operating systems that lock you to a platform - its the applications and data formats that you use.
When will people get this??? Yes, iTMS (the music store, as distinct from the iTunes application) is locked to the iPod, but the iPod isn't locked to iTMS. Find a source of unencumbered MP3s (buying CDs and ripping them is still the favorite ) and you can use on iPods or any other music player.
I'm fairly sure that was Cingular speaking, not Jobs. Not sure about the USA, but in the UK, the main channel for cellphone sales goes through the carriers (you can't throw a brick in the average high street without hitting a shop run by one of the carriers - and "independent" means phones branded by two or more carriers under the same roof) - and cellphone carriers are real buggers for lock-in.
OTOH - maybe jobs is right, the iPod hasn't suffered from not running third party software (I have a WM5 cellphone and the main motivation for installing 3rd party apps is that the built-in stuff is crap)
Also, the HE networking process in the latre 80s was hell on wheels, with the government mandating that institutions had to use the ISO networking stack - nice idea (open standards) with one small problem (it was vaporware).
"iPhone" gets launched as "Apple Phone", written as "[Apple logo]phone" just like they did with "iTV". Everybody in the world from Steve Jobs down continues to call it the iPhone anyway.
...and the iPhone claims to run OSX "real desktop applications" and certainly appears to have Vista-esque eye candy. We don't know what CPU or RAM it has yet (the 4GB/8GB is presumably the Flash "hard drive"). Note I said somewhere between a smartphone and a UMPC.
Well, the tech specs are fairly sketchy - no details about CPU type or speed, amount of RAM (apart from flash storage) but unless the "videos" on apple.com are total fraud this thing has way more horsepower than your average smartphone. Looks to be somewhere between a top-end smartphone ($700 unlocked?) and something like the new OQO ($1600+). I'd guess a realistic "unlocked" price could easily top $1000.
Plus, as other people have pointed out, some of the tricks with voicemail and conference calls may have needed support from the mobile operator.
Just hope that when it comes to the UK it has 3G and is on T-Mobile, as they do a half-decent offer on "unlimited" (for a given value of unlimited) 3G internet access.
I've just got a Windows Mobile 5 phone and the iPhone demo makes that look like crap*. They'll sell to early adopters at whatever price.
* Mind you, a 1994 Psion makes WM5 look like a pile of crap with extra features and colour, so that's not sayimg much.
Really? It just sounds like an open-source developer being dilligent. Nobody has sued anybody yet (and there's no huge damages to be made from doing so).
Using commercial software (especially in a corporate environment using volume licenses and developer tools) is no protection against getting sued by a patent or copyright troll, plus there's all those sign-in-blood licenses and paramilitary anti-piracy militias waiting for a big corp. to tread on the cracks in the pavement.
The main problem is simply culture - corporations are run buy Businessmen who like doing Business which means Money Changing Hands. Think of all those procurement and legal suits who would get downsized if they weren't negotiating software licensing deals and having their egos massaged by marketdroids.
Being cynical, its a complete myth that "big business" wants to save money. Suits like huge sums of money running through their departments - big budget = big responsibility = big paycheck. OK, they want to be seen to be "making savings" but what they mean is "juggle costs between accounts" not the sort of savings that actually make your budget go down... Perish the thought.
Quick clarification, seeing some of the posts here about "winmodems" and junkware-infested drivers:
Drivers run on your computer and let it talk to the device.
Firmware is "software" that runs on the device - typically code for on-board microcontrollers, Field Programmamble Gate Arrays (FPGA) and other "soft hardware".
There is nothing wrong with the idea of using driver-loaded firmware - it simplifies the device (no need for on-board flash memory) and makes it easier to fix "hardware" issues with an updated driver (with less risk of "bricking" a device by muffing a firmware update). Linux can actually cope with it quite happily - A lot of digital TV cards rely on driver-loaded firmware and its all fine and dandy provided that either (a) the manufacturer offers a download of the firmware or (b) it can be extracted from the windows driver CD or (c) some evil pirate has selfishly conspired to increase the manufacturer's customer base by posting an iffy copy.
There is an interesting question as to the status of such a "firmware blob" vis. the GPL (especialy the anti-TiVOization clauses of V3). Is it part of the software (thus tainting the free-ness of any drivers that require it) or part of the hardware (FPGA "software" is more like a circuit diagram than a program - and the "source code" might be useless without proprietary software from the FPGA manufacturer - and tweaking it might void the FCC/CE certification of the device)?
MySQL/MyISAM is the one with the massive legacy code base, the one that your open-source blogging software uses and probably the one that your web host supports. It beautifully hits the "sweet spot" for data-driven web sites with infrequent and simple updates, where trading integrity for "read only" performance is sensible. It does not even purport to compete with PostgreSQL on features - but it does offer fulltext searches, again
MySQL/InnoDB is the one that offers transactions, foreign keys etc. (ISTR it doesn't do fulltext indexes, though) - this is the "version" that bears comparison with PostgreSQL. I wonder how its user base compares?
(OK - you can mix InnoDB and MyISAM tables in a single database, but you can't use InnoDB if your web host hasn't installed it - heck, one provider I use is still on MySQL V3.23)
Flamewars have tended to pit PostgreSQL against a mythical database with the performance of MyISAM and the features of InnoDB...
As for the GUI software, the MySQL GUI Admin/query browser stuff is shinier than PgAdmin3 - but the MacOS version of the former is a complete crashfest! Neither of them steps up to the plate of providing a FOSS equivalent of (the good bits) of MS Access.
However, eating or inhaling heavy metals (esp. as dust or salts) is rarely a good idea, even if they're not radioactive.
Yeah, its really in the interest of M$ and Sony to ensure that the Wii gets daily mentions in the media during the run up to ex-mas (along with comments about how excited people are getting over them). Seen anything in the mainstream press about the PS3 last week?
As long as nothing really serious happens, the Nintendo marketing guys should be laughing all the way to the bank. They'll make more than enough to absorb a few ex-gratia payouts for broken tellys.
Yes, and some Linux distros will try and auto-configure your TV cards for you. This is the distro's job, not MythTVs! The V4L and Linux DVB drivers are kernel modules produced by independent groups, not the MythTV programmers. There's not much MythTV can do if the drivers weren't enabled in the kernel! The HotPlug mechanism (used for loading firmware) varies between distros and kernel versions. The same drivers are used by other software (e.g. Xine) - and since not everybody runs MythTV standalone it isn't actually a good idea for MythTV to automatically dick with the setup. Ditto xorg.conf (and X is rubbish at on-the-fly reconfiguration anyway). The solution is exactly what is described in the original article - a custom-configured LiveCD such as KnoppMyth or MythDora.
You seem to be confusing MythTV - the free, open source HTPC software maintained by unpaid volunteers) with MS Windows XP Media Centre Edition - the proprietary, closed source HTPC software produced by one of the richest companies in the world, which (as far as I know) still requires the user to install the required third-party drivers for various bits of hardware.
...except the bits that depend on loading the correct kernel modules and firmware blobs (DVB support), choosing the appropriate xorg drivers and xorg.conf hacking (TV out and screen resolution) undetectable hardware (Digital vs. analogue audio out) are a matter of choice (e.g. software vs. hardware MPEG, which interlace method to use).
Therein lies your problem - OS X is primarily a GUI-oriented operating system mainly aimed at "creatives" and home users. OK, Apple have traded a bit on the Unix foundation - and its certainly a better Unix system than Windows - but the main objective was clearly to hide Unix from Mac users. If you want to scare a typical Mac user, pop up the terminal (and if you really want to traumatise them, boot up to single user mode). Conversely, hardcore Unix users would typically rather use the shell and edit a .rc file than use a GUI. I suspect that one of the reasons that Unix/Linux GUIs are (still!) so clunky compared to Mac and Windows is that the programmers that design them only ever use them to run 8 simultaneous xterms.
If you want a Mac then - bonus!!! - it can also run a range of *nix/Linux/FOSS apps in something far closer to their natural environment than Windows. However, If your first requirement is a *nix workstation then get some cheap PC hardware (or even an Intel Mac) and stick Linux on it. The OS X GUI is far better than anything under Linux - but if you are a CLI person that doesn't really matter.
To be fair, if you've ever switched from a SysV-style Unix to a *BSD one - or even between a Debian-descended Linux distro and a RedHat-descended one - you'll have torn your hair out trying to find applications and config files. (Hint: in OSX the contents of /etc are largely bogus and the real beef is actually stored in the netinfo database - and if you google you can find the cli commands to manipulate that).
That sounds like a PPC (G4) Mac Mini. Think pre-Pentium-M Centrino. They are great little boxes provided you realise that they are more "iPod Maxi" than "Mac Mini". They are a perfect indication of why Apple had to switch to Intel Core processors.
Er, lets see: do you use satellite or terestrial TV? Is that analogue or digital? European-style DVB or the US equivalent? Does your tuner card need a firmware blob to work? Does your tuner card have onboard MPEG decoding? If not, does your video card have MPEG acceleration and is it supported by Xorg? How do you enable TV-out and set it to native PAL or NTSC resolution with sensible overscan? (anybody using a low power Via Epia system as a HTPC should be shuddering here) Analogue sound or passthrough digital? Do you want infra-red control - how would Sir like his buttons mapped? Do you need an IR emitter to control your STM?
I.e. its non-trivial to install because it has an impressively non-trivial feature list and works in many different environments. And, as other people have already posted, the major pain is getting all the hardware drivers working rather than installing Myth itself.
The weakest bit of Myth set-up has historically been DVB "tuning" (i.e. setting the half-dozen parameters for each channel) which got a lot better over the last few releases.
Can't speak for the rest of Europe, but in the UK, State-sponsored != run by the current Party.
Check out "Have I Got News For You" from BBC ("state-run") or "Bremner, Bird and Fortune" from C4 (partly subsidised) and see if you think they are produced by government sock-puppets. Or the crack in "Doctor Who" about aliens with "Massive Weapons of Destruction that can be fired in 45 seconds". Heck, even the new "Robin Hood" series has a subtle-as-brick "get the troops out of Iraq" subtext.
There is a carefully maintained "chinese wall" between the government and the BBC - sure, the government has some influence over appointments to top jobs and the level of the license fee (which, although arguablty a tax, is not collected via our equivalent of the IRS*), but if the government got caught directly intervening in BBC editorial decisions they would be in a world of hurt.
I don't think the model would work in the USA where it would be expected/accepted for a state broadcasting authority to either be elected on a Party ticket or appointed by the incoming administration. Here we only elect the "executive" and the infrastructure is expected to act impartially (and sometimes held to this). Thats why, after an election, the new government can be up and running in 24 hours instead of 6 months.
Anyway, we can get ITV (independent commercial) and Murdochvision news on free-to-air digital, and anybody with any sense "interpolates" to get the truth. * Actually, people who don't own a TV find that the regular tax collectors are pussycats compared to the TV licensing stormtroopers, but thats another story :-)
I think that selling so many shedloads of DVDs that the money-men greenlit a feature film counts as "generating interest".
Now, the film didn't do too well in the box office - but it was in pretty good company last year in an industry gonne mad where, if a film doesn't go into profit on its opening weekend it is pulled from theatres. If the world had been like that in the 70s, Luke Skywalker would still be fixing moisture condensers on his uncle's farm. Plus, these home theatre setups are getting awfully good in the face of multiplexes that don't know where the focus knob is. I think that cinema might really be going to crash this time.
Serenity was always going to be a tricky sell, and every effort was spared to market it well (e.g. duff title; the UK film poster made it look like a "Buffy" clone; the TV ads stopped as soon as the film actually came out). They did shift some DVDs though. I have a sneaky suspicion that Fox did better out of the film than Universal - after the film came out, the TV DVDs (by then a couple of years old) were back in the Amazon top 5 for months.
Of course, the film wasn't as good as the series anyway.
I thought the argument was that since Novell hadn't signed a licensing deal, but that instead M$ was making a covenent with Novell customers not to persue them for any undefined M$ patent violations which might happen to turn up in Novell linux, and that because there was no licensing deal between M$ and Novell, section 7 of the GPL didn't apply?
Now, I'd like to see a legally-informed opinion from someone other than FSF or PJ (both of whom are evangelising GPLv3 and have an incentive to find fault with v2) that explains (a) why that doesn't amount to an implicit license between M$ and Novell and (b) if not, why changing the GPL to address it won't also mean that a hostile party could close down any Linux distro by unilaterally promising not to sue anyone who had bought the "boxed" version; or make it hard for companies like Red Hat to offer indemnification to their paying customers.
Word to the wise: In SCO vs Linux Groklaw is presenting the case for the defence. Now, because PJ is a skilled ex-paralegal (and I assume that helping research and prepare court filings was a major part of that) she does a meticulous job of backing up her arguments with evidence and links to court documents, and often provideds an excellent explanation of the legal stuff. Her comments are usually an interesting and informative read, she has been doing a great service to the community by making documents available but for pity's sake don't kid yourself that her editorials are not written in the interest of her adopted and pro-bono client, the "free software community". In this case, she's almost certainly right - but lets face it, when did you last hear someone suggest that SCO might still have a case?
In the case of GPLv2 vs GPLv3 she has nailed her colours to GPLv3 and (in the absence of any court filings to analyse) has been presenting a much less convincing case, largely parroting the "Rubbish, You're not a lawyer, if you are against GPL3 you must be for DRM and Patents" responses to Linus et. al's criticisms.
And one of the most compelling features of the GPLv2 is that you didn't have to be a lawyer to understand it, and it left very little "wriggle room" for dispute. Its not simply that it stands up in court, its that it is so clear that it usually doesn't get that far. It should not be lightly dumped in favour of a slab of opaque legalese full of phases such as "in the recommended or principal context of use" (from the anti-TiVo bit of GPLv3 draft) or "patent licensing that is prejudicial among the downstream recipients" (from recent RMS quotes about Novell) that lawyers will probably interpret to death.
I certainly hope that nobody would dream of using the Novell incident as a political lever to overcome the objections to GPLv3.
I still don't get what the problem is with the GPL2 wrt the Novell deal - as far as I can see it (GPLv2) very specifically says that if you are unable (for any reason) to pass on the GPL rights to your customers then you can not distribute at all. If MS has given Novell convincing evidence of violations and told them that it has to sign this license or it will sue its users then how does this not apply? RMS seemed to be saying that it doesn't apply because its not a "patent license", but in section 7 the case of a "patent license" is given as an example after a much broader clause.
On the other hand, if (as seems likely) this is an excercise in FUD which carefully avoids making any (potentially disprovable) claims, how the hell can GPLv3 do anything about it without introducing equally muddy clauses?
Unfortunately, the widespread criticism of the GPLv3 seems to be met with non-responses along the lines of "you're not a lawyer" or "do you want DRM/TiVoization to win?" - nobody seems to be engaging with the critical qestion "what realistic chance does re-wording GPL stand of defeating DRM or causing patent reform, and does that benefit balance the risk of a more complex GPL prone to legal re-interpretation and FUD".
If the revised GPLv3 even sounds like suggesting (e.g.) that you will have to give away your private keys, or (e.g.) that you will have to indemnify all your downstream users against patent infringement or (e.g.) that you can't distribute under GPL if you have any sort of technology sharing agreement with another company then - even though these interpretations would eventually be tossed out by a court - these memes will be seized upon by anti-Linux schills and trumpeted around as FUD to scare off potenial adopters and contributors.
Sobering thought: Lots of entities own the copyright to bits of Linux and other FOSS projects. These entities might go to the dark side, or go bust and have their assets sold to the highest bidder. Fortunately, all of these are uncomplicatedly released under GPLv2 - however, with a more turgid GPL the future could see trolls aquiring these copyrights and firing off nuicance GPL violation lawsuits agains Mom & Pop.
I think you'll find per se is Latin :-)
Well, that means nothing without knowing whether you work for Mom and Pop's corner shop or Walmart.
Unfortunately, so do the thieves :-)
Hmmm... try and sell someone a $2000 PC or hang around on the offchance that someone will buy $20 worth of ink... Nope, I'm not going to armchair quarterback that one. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if you make more profit on the ink!
I expect that the real problem is that the PHB turns up when its dead quiet, observes that 4 people don't seem to be working, yells at the person behind the ink counter and then leaves.
Ah, a friend who worked with young offenders explained this one. They asked a habitual shoplifter how they got around security tags:
"Duh! We nicked one of the tools that takes them off!"
Criminals tend not to obey the rules - its in the job description