They look uninspired now, because after they came out they were widely copied. Take a look at what laptops looked like before the powerbooks came out in the 90's. Chunky looking lap-bricks with trackballs hanging off the side. One year after the powerbook, nearly every laptop was black or dark gray with an integrated trackball in the palm rest. Ditto the Apple II - computers either looked like dumb terminals with CPU boxes bolted onto them, or mad scientist experiments.
Robert Heinlein was entirely serious about the message that the story delivers. That only those who serve in the military and commit violence in the name of their country should truly be considered "citizens" of the country
Not quite. His core belief was, as he put it, there's no such thing as a free lunch. You don't get to live in a free society without being required to defend it.
Even before cracking the naval Enigma, Turing et al devised a way to break Enigma should the Germans realise they had a vulnerability by using a known plaintext attack.
Was that the trick where the opening sentence of u-boat communiques was always a weather report? Too lazy to dig out my copy of The Code Book:)
You have an assumption of privacy in your house. You do not in public.
That does not mean you do NOT have a right to privacy while in public.
I like John C. Dvorak's take on the issue. Cops are lazy. They'd love to have a computer spit out suspects based on tracking everyone everywhere so they don't have to go out and do actual police work - collective evidence, interviewing witnesses, etc...
The end result of tracking everyone will be - you were the only person driving down the street when this crime happened, so you must be guilty. Sure someone could have walked or rode a bike - but cops usually go with the evidence they have.
you know, it's not unions, per se. Its things like pensions, health care, having a job you can actually put 20 into and retire.
It would be great if that's all they were asking for. They also want (or wanted and got) guaranteed jobs ad infinitum, no changes in shifts, guaranteed staffing levels, unlimited free health care, and, apparently, freedom to go to work high.
Need another story? My grandma's neighbors were UAW for Chrysler. The mom would take her four kids to the ER every time they had a cold or an earache, because she didn't like waiting around at the clinic. No copays for ER visits, you see. This practice was fairly common - I know a few other families who did the same thing. When a copay for ER visits was proposed in the early 2000's (somewhere around $30) the unions went on strike.
That's what got too costly for the auto manufacturers. Now, they're more a bank (GMAC...financing...) than a producer of cars.
GM and Chrysler are mostly divested of their finance divisions.
I'm not saying that unions got too corrupt and full of themselves, but if you keep supporting the corporate mantra then all labor will just become a race to the bottom.
Unions had nothing to do with this; Rapid deregulation brokered by large corporations and a cozy relationship with Congress did.
Sorry, in regards to the automotive industry, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. The Japanese, German and Korean car companies ATE THEIR LUNCH in the 80's, 90's and 2000's. That's what tanked the US car companies. Know how many foreign car companies have unionized factories? ZERO. OK, Toyota had ONE - NUMMI - that was a joint venture with GM (which was the only reason it was unionized) It's closed now, and they moved production to a non-union plant.
The union can be an important and positive force in the labor market. However, the auto worker unions have gone completely bonkers over the last 50 years. A couple years ago there was a minor scandal when Chrysler fired a dozen or so line workers for drinking and smoking weed on their lunch breaks. The UAW went to bat for these losers and got them reinstated. Got that? It's the UAW's policy that you can ingest legal and illegal intoxicating substances, then go work with heavy machinery, and it's perfectly OK.
I have dozens of stories about the self-destructive behavior of the UAW if you'd like more. Here's a quickie: the UAW retreat and conference center that costs the UAW $4 million a year. Good use of dues, right?
However, "underneath" it's exactly Windows, aside from running on ARM
... And missing just about every Windows UI library that's been around for 20 years.
(and you may be too young to remember, but the NT family - which includes Win7 and Win8 - has always come on multiple architectures
By "multiple" you mean x86-32, x86-64 and IA64, right? Or do you mean further back when NT4 ran on MIPS, Solaris, and Power?
Remove the restriction to Microsoft-signed binaries on the desktop, and you have a decent Windows machine which simply requires that native apps be recompiled first
In theory, yes, assuming you aren't using any x86 platform-specific calls, or optimizations, or system components wholesale deprecated by RT, or any UI other than Metro.
(.NET apps run on-modified, and there's even some hacked-up support for Java and Python).
A better analogy would be they replaced your regular coffee with a mug of water and a picture of a cup of coffee. It looks somewhat like Windows but underneath it's nothing like windows.
Most of it has to do with lowering your blood pressure.
You could also just chill and listen to some relaxing music or have a beer, which is cheaper and much more enjoyable than taping electrodes to your head.
They didn't find their niche. In general, there are the Winamp fans who have always been Winamp fans, people who like the simplicity of iTunes or WMP, the hard core audio guys who like foobar2000, the people with huge media libraries who use MediaMonkey or jRiver, etc...
Songbird didn't quite fit into any of these categories. Not tweaky enough for the audiophiles, not simple enough for the casual user, not comprehensive enough for the digital media completists...
Possibly, but the argument is that Apple is preventing you from buying Android phones via patent lawsuits. Besides, there are other cell phone OSes you can use other than Android, if lawsuits are your concern.
32-bit to 64-bit ADO.NET drivers (they finally relented and released the 64-bit Access 2010 engine that gives you a few, but that was five years after your 32-bit SQL module completely broke in 64-bit SQL 2005)
SQL Server 2000 -> 2005: When automatically creating object change scripts, the code created in 2005 breaks in 2000 due to system object reorganization, with no backwards compatibility in 2005. Nice.
Flight Simulator (way to kill an immensely popular franchise) Mechwarrior (Ditto) Live Messenger (Skype is NOT a replacement, Lync is but it's not free).NET 1.1 ->.NET 2: You wouldn't think this is a big deal, but semi-random and seemingly arbitrary namespace changes make it so Word 2003 -> Word 2007: Looks fine to the end user, but they needlessly rename objects in the file so your document management system breaks when it, say, tries to update a header Outlook Express: Helpfully replaced with "Mail" in Vista, which has 1/10th of the features. Mail was then replaced with "Live Mail" which has even fewer features.
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They look uninspired now, because after they came out they were widely copied. Take a look at what laptops looked like before the powerbooks came out in the 90's. Chunky looking lap-bricks with trackballs hanging off the side. One year after the powerbook, nearly every laptop was black or dark gray with an integrated trackball in the palm rest. Ditto the Apple II - computers either looked like dumb terminals with CPU boxes bolted onto them, or mad scientist experiments.
Fines? Prison? How about just firing those not doing their job?
So what other times do they invoke taxpayer privacy?
So the punishment for not securing taxpayer data is... nothing? So why bother fixing anything?
Couldn't they have chipped off a tiny piece of it's shell and used radiocarbon dating?
Shoot in 50 years we'll have terminators running around firing micro heat-seeking missiles like the guy from KISS had in Runaway.
The interface will look remarkably like Ghost Recon. The l33t soldiers will use mouse and keyboard, the dual analog will be for the l00ser grunts :)
Absolutely. But then the problem would be giant intelligent alien bugs.
... they mean it's something new scientists haven't seen before, and haven't figured out yet.
Kinda like the same way you meet someone you don't know, you are dumbfounded by them.
Robert Heinlein was entirely serious about the message that the story delivers. That only those who serve in the military and commit violence in the name of their country should truly be considered "citizens" of the country
Not quite. His core belief was, as he put it, there's no such thing as a free lunch. You don't get to live in a free society without being required to defend it.
The stealerships wouldn't be able to charge Tesla drivers obscene rates for oil changes and such.
Electrics still need maintenance. At the very least, you need to replace the battery pack periodically. That'll be $$$$$$$$$.
Even before cracking the naval Enigma, Turing et al devised a way to break Enigma should the Germans realise they had a vulnerability by using a known plaintext attack.
Was that the trick where the opening sentence of u-boat communiques was always a weather report? Too lazy to dig out my copy of The Code Book :)
Key word is assumption.
You have an assumption of privacy in your house. You do not in public.
That does not mean you do NOT have a right to privacy while in public.
I like John C. Dvorak's take on the issue. Cops are lazy. They'd love to have a computer spit out suspects based on tracking everyone everywhere so they don't have to go out and do actual police work - collective evidence, interviewing witnesses, etc...
The end result of tracking everyone will be - you were the only person driving down the street when this crime happened, so you must be guilty. Sure someone could have walked or rode a bike - but cops usually go with the evidence they have.
And destroy all computer manufacturing facilities. And burn all books about computer science, so nobody accidentally builds another computer.
you know, it's not unions, per se. Its things like pensions, health care, having a job you can actually put 20 into and retire.
It would be great if that's all they were asking for. They also want (or wanted and got) guaranteed jobs ad infinitum, no changes in shifts, guaranteed staffing levels, unlimited free health care, and, apparently, freedom to go to work high.
Need another story? My grandma's neighbors were UAW for Chrysler. The mom would take her four kids to the ER every time they had a cold or an earache, because she didn't like waiting around at the clinic. No copays for ER visits, you see. This practice was fairly common - I know a few other families who did the same thing. When a copay for ER visits was proposed in the early 2000's (somewhere around $30) the unions went on strike.
That's what got too costly for the auto manufacturers. Now, they're more a bank (GMAC...financing...) than a producer of cars.
GM and Chrysler are mostly divested of their finance divisions.
I'm not saying that unions got too corrupt and full of themselves, but if you keep supporting the corporate mantra then all labor will just become a race to the bottom.
Unions had nothing to do with this; Rapid deregulation brokered by large corporations and a cozy relationship with Congress did.
Sorry, in regards to the automotive industry, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. The Japanese, German and Korean car companies ATE THEIR LUNCH in the 80's, 90's and 2000's. That's what tanked the US car companies. Know how many foreign car companies have unionized factories? ZERO. OK, Toyota had ONE - NUMMI - that was a joint venture with GM (which was the only reason it was unionized) It's closed now, and they moved production to a non-union plant.
The union can be an important and positive force in the labor market. However, the auto worker unions have gone completely bonkers over the last 50 years. A couple years ago there was a minor scandal when Chrysler fired a dozen or so line workers for drinking and smoking weed on their lunch breaks. The UAW went to bat for these losers and got them reinstated. Got that? It's the UAW's policy that you can ingest legal and illegal intoxicating substances, then go work with heavy machinery, and it's perfectly OK.
I have dozens of stories about the self-destructive behavior of the UAW if you'd like more. Here's a quickie: the UAW retreat and conference center that costs the UAW $4 million a year. Good use of dues, right?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/22/us-usa-autos-union-property-idUSTRE78L29Y20110922
If the refactor is done properly I don't think the OpenCL acceleration would be necessary. Heck, 1-2-3 running on a 486 was pretty speedy.
However, "underneath" it's exactly Windows, aside from running on ARM
... And missing just about every Windows UI library that's been around for 20 years.
(and you may be too young to remember, but the NT family - which includes Win7 and Win8 - has always come on multiple architectures
By "multiple" you mean x86-32, x86-64 and IA64, right? Or do you mean further back when NT4 ran on MIPS, Solaris, and Power?
Remove the restriction to Microsoft-signed binaries on the desktop, and you have a decent Windows machine which simply requires that native apps be recompiled first
In theory, yes, assuming you aren't using any x86 platform-specific calls, or optimizations, or system components wholesale deprecated by RT, or any UI other than Metro.
(.NET apps run on-modified, and there's even some hacked-up support for Java and Python).
Kinda sorta, see above.
A better analogy would be they replaced your regular coffee with a mug of water and a picture of a cup of coffee. It looks somewhat like Windows but underneath it's nothing like windows.
Most of it has to do with lowering your blood pressure.
You could also just chill and listen to some relaxing music or have a beer, which is cheaper and much more enjoyable than taping electrodes to your head.
They didn't find their niche. In general, there are the Winamp fans who have always been Winamp fans, people who like the simplicity of iTunes or WMP, the hard core audio guys who like foobar2000, the people with huge media libraries who use MediaMonkey or jRiver, etc...
Songbird didn't quite fit into any of these categories. Not tweaky enough for the audiophiles, not simple enough for the casual user, not comprehensive enough for the digital media completists...
Windows 7?
Possibly, but the argument is that Apple is preventing you from buying Android phones via patent lawsuits. Besides, there are other cell phone OSes you can use other than Android, if lawsuits are your concern.
... you can still buy Android phones. Even Samsungs. Go figure.
They also tried building a digital magazines-on-tape player, but failed (probably 'cause this was in the late 90's and the tech sucked)
You're missing some:
32-bit to 64-bit ADO.NET drivers (they finally relented and released the 64-bit Access 2010 engine that gives you a few, but that was five years after your 32-bit SQL module completely broke in 64-bit SQL 2005)
SQL Server 2000 -> 2005: When automatically creating object change scripts, the code created in 2005 breaks in 2000 due to system object reorganization, with no backwards compatibility in 2005. Nice.
Flight Simulator (way to kill an immensely popular franchise) .NET 1.1 -> .NET 2: You wouldn't think this is a big deal, but semi-random and seemingly arbitrary namespace changes make it so
Mechwarrior (Ditto)
Live Messenger (Skype is NOT a replacement, Lync is but it's not free)
Word 2003 -> Word 2007: Looks fine to the end user, but they needlessly rename objects in the file so your document management system breaks when it, say, tries to update a header
Outlook Express: Helpfully replaced with "Mail" in Vista, which has 1/10th of the features. Mail was then replaced with "Live Mail" which has even fewer features.