I'm not sure if I'm right, but my first thought was "surely the colour doesn't matter, since the momentum of the photons are transferred whether they are absorbed or reflected?". Perhaps someone with more knowledge of the relevant physics can answer.
In any case, it seems like a very impractical proposal. Shouldn't students be given more useful topics to make studies of?
it ran on PowerPC chips that were far slower than Intel chips
I largely concur with your post, but this bit isn't true for the time period you are talking about, when OS 9 was current. PowerPC had an early speed advantage over contemporary Intel and mostly maintained that, though the projected advantage didn't increase in the way the PowerPC consortium had predicted. It was only once speeds hit around the 1GHz mark that Intel started to pull ahead decisively. The G4 of ~2003 was a pretty decent chip but Intel was at 3.2 GHz where the G4 peaked at around 2.2. The G5 was a stopgap that Steve Jobs begged for, and just about got, but it was too little, too late by then. But then we're well into the OS X era by this time. In the OS 9 days, PowerPC could runs rings around 386/486 Intel boxes, though part of the reason for that was the relatively unsophisticated nature of the OS which was willing to let code hog the CPU whenever it liked.
If all hammers were the same price, I'd pick the sledge hammer.
Your analogy undermines your argument. In fact hammers are, more or less, to within an order of magnitude, the same price, but there are lots of different types. You wouldn't pick a sledgehammer if you could have only one, and the task at hand was driving small nails or doing fine work. I own about five different hammers, they all get used on very different jobs.
I'd pick the right microcontroller for a job likewise. This looks like a good boost for Arduino - the older models are nice for certain jobs and are easy to program, but I have wished they were a bit faster and had more memory at times.
Fill one wall with component cabinets, and organise them well. You need enough so that every resistor value, capacitor value, transistor, diode, IC and every possible component variation has its own partition. This costs a small fortune but is well worth it for the hours it saves looking for the parts you need.
More accurate really, since bat shit is, well, just bat shit. It's not especially crazy. Whereas a dog suffering from hydrophobia might be considered "barking mad", and by analogy, Romney could be equated with that dog.
The "fucking mor(m)on" quip though, is very hard to argue with.
I agree, it's nuts to cut down the trees (which will take years to replace, if ever) when they could have removed the wings temporarily. It's not as if it needs to be put back into flying condition.
In that case it seems you can't win. If 'appearing not to care about fashion' is now cool, then I'm accidentally cool. Actually I doubt it - I always look pretty scruffy, no-one would mistake me for any kind of hipster. I've always not cared about fashion, even when maybe I should. Back in the 1970s at school I was bullied for it - having the 'wrong sort of sports bag'. It's just a form of tribalism and as such to me is the same as nationalism, or racism, or white supremacism. Something to be despised. The only tribe I'm prepared to stand up for is the tribe of me (and my immediate family).
Of course but I don't have a prominent label sticking out of my jeans that has a brand-name on it (which effectively tells the world 'I'm the sort of idiot that will pay ten times more than the cost of the jeans just to show off this label'). I need to wear clothes, they have to be bought somewhere.
My point is that while there probably are a lot of people who use Apple products for the same reason ('I'm the sort of idiot....' etc) it's not the case that ALL Apple users do it for that reason, as the OP stated.
Well, maybe one data point doesn't disprove your argument, but the way you've framed it, it goes a long way to.
I am the least fashionable person imaginable. I'm a little bit of a lefty and despise brand worship and the creeping corporatism of our age. I abhor labels and typically buy no-name brand jeans from Target.
Oddly enough, I do have an iPhone. I find it well designed, very functional and useful as a phone and portable web browser, music player, gps, camera, and very occasional puzzle and games machine. That's why I have one, it's NOTHING to do with fashion.
Pare down your legal department to a skeleton staff of just enough to handle the day-to-day needs of a company, and turn the budget over to the developers.
You're in a hole. Stop digging. The way to win hearts and minds and customers is to stop being such an arrogant prick of a company and make stuff people want. The whole Mac vs Windows 95 thing is starting to unfold all over again. Have you learned nothing?
I'm an Apple developer and have been for a long time (note to readers: this in no way equates with "fanboy". It's my living). Even I'm bored to the back teeth with this case and don't see it doing anything but harm. So, Samsung copied you. Boo hoo. Make something better and people will buy it.
How long ago was it that you claimed the Power PC was better than the Intel chip you now sport?
Well, it was during the time that the PowerPC was better (by which I assume you mean faster) than Intel. Its architecture was always superior to the x86. That was most of the 90s. It was only after Motorola took it over, repositioned it and stopped trying to keep up that Intel's performance overtook it again with new architectures and technologies. Apple just did the pragmatic thing (unthinkable to some) to keep their products competitive.
You're right, local regulations will have an effect on design. I'm assuming you're in the US and looking at things from a US-based perspective. As such it might not be so obvious to you how design influences cross the Atlantic (very much in both directions).
Pop-up headlights originated in the 1960s on Italian sports cars because they improved aerodynamics, or least that's the perception - a smooth body looks faster. Later, by having pop-up headlights, your design acquired a sporty look by association whether it was actually sporty or not. So another fashion was born. I'm not quite sure whether this was really driven by the need to get around sealed-beam regulations, after all, pop-up lights were everywhere even where sealed-beam units were not mandated. The ugly rectangular headlights were not just in the US in the 1980s, look at the ultra-boxy Citroen BX which as far as I know never made it to the US.
Glass covers were another fashion, which reached a high point on the Ferrari 365 "Daytona". The design was largely copied by the Rover SD-1 but where that model was exported to the USA the glass covers were not allowed so it ended up with some rather ugly-looking dual headlamp units instead. For the same reason the strongly US-influenced GM/Vauxhall Firenza HPF could not be exported to the USA, though an export model was prepared. I assume that the "glass cover" rule came in in about 1975 because otherwise both of these designs from slightly earlier would have probably been a bit different. For example, the later GM/Pontiac Transam had a very similar nose design to the HPF but did not have glass covers.
I believe the real influence on headlights for today's cars is the improvements in aerodynamic design and also moulding/design technology that allows complex shapes to be made, but if regulations didn't allow separate bulbs that would make life difficult for the manufacturers. I expect they lobbied for the rule change which was hampering design.
It was only the cars back then that were plain and ugly and boxy, mainly due to economics I think.
No, it's just fashion. It costs the same to make a boxy car or a curvy car. These things tend to go in cycles and also get dictated by the technology available to design them - in the 70s cars were designed on paper and with clay models, now it's all CAD so more complex shapes are achievable. But once people get bored with a certain look, one of the big manufacturers will strike out in a new direction and everyone follows.
The two biggest design influences on cars in the late 1970s were Guigaro and Bertone. They came up with the sharp-edged "folded paper" look that prevailed in the 80s (it usually takes 3-4 years for a new design to come to market, or at least it did back then). It might seem hard to believe, but these boxy shapes seemed fresh and exciting at the time, just as big shoulder pads, ra-ra skirts and leggings seemed fresh and exciting once. It's just fashion.
Personally I like Italian-influenced european cars of the 1970s, far more than most models today, and far more than American-styled cars of the 1970s (with a few exceptions). What appeals depends on your local culture as much as anything, but it's still all fashion.
"It looks like you're depressed. Would you like help with:"
[ ] Slitting your wrists.
[ ] Weeping morosely into a pint of beer.
[ ] Retreating into an endless cycle of binge eating and self-hatred.
[ ] Getting professional help.
I have found that people from the US tend to not have a very good ear for understanding English spoken by non US speakers. I genuinely wonder what is up with that.
I've wondered that too. I grew up in England where accents abound and vary very considerably, even over relatively small distances. In one place I lived the accent was one particular strong 'west country' where I lived (West Gloucestershire) and completely different and equally strong Welsh lilt 3 miles away (Monmouthshire). It was even possible to detect a blend of the two for people living half way between - a difference of 1.5 miles either side!
In England you are exposed to a wide variety of accents and so understanding the various forms of English spoken globally from all the American varieties to Australian to all the versions spoken by non-native speakers with all sorts of overlaid foreign accents is not much of a problem. I'm often surprised that TV show makers (e.g. US made reality shows) feel the need to subtitle speech that is perfectly understandable.
It seems odd that Americans would find it difficult, because they have a very wide variety of accents as well, albeit not as localised. It doesn't make sense because Aussies also seem able to understand most accents, and yet overall there is far less accent variation in Australia.
I bet most English people could do a fair spread of American accents fairly well, but most amateur American attempts at English accents are awful, and that's without going into regional variants. I guess Usasians just don't have the ear for it.
But it is a shitty website that is trying to do a ton of things behind the scenes (even if they aren't things that the user wants or sees). A dedicated app could (conceivably) handle that more elegantly.
Conceivably, but it doesn't. Most of the iOS Facebook app is just a WebKit view. In other words it's a cut-down browser that only allows you to view one site, which is pretty much what the parent was saying.
You can blame whomever you like, it doesn't change the fact that you have a large, intractable codebase that you are going to have to deal with. Learn your lesson, vow to do better in future, but complaining about it after the fact is just a load of time and energy, after which expenditure your code will be.... exactly the same.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure if I'm right, but my first thought was "surely the colour doesn't matter, since the momentum of the photons are transferred whether they are absorbed or reflected?". Perhaps someone with more knowledge of the relevant physics can answer.
In any case, it seems like a very impractical proposal. Shouldn't students be given more useful topics to make studies of?
Islam is a peaceful and tolerant religion...
...and we'll kill anyone who says otherwise.
(Actually I don't single out Islam, they're all as bad as each other).
Sounds pretty much like the experience you get on the Mac App Store as well. Can't Microsoft do anything without copying?
(Seriously, the MAS staff are some of the most arrogant assholes I've had to deal with from that company, and that's saying something!)
it ran on PowerPC chips that were far slower than Intel chips
I largely concur with your post, but this bit isn't true for the time period you are talking about, when OS 9 was current. PowerPC had an early speed advantage over contemporary Intel and mostly maintained that, though the projected advantage didn't increase in the way the PowerPC consortium had predicted. It was only once speeds hit around the 1GHz mark that Intel started to pull ahead decisively. The G4 of ~2003 was a pretty decent chip but Intel was at 3.2 GHz where the G4 peaked at around 2.2. The G5 was a stopgap that Steve Jobs begged for, and just about got, but it was too little, too late by then. But then we're well into the OS X era by this time. In the OS 9 days, PowerPC could runs rings around 386/486 Intel boxes, though part of the reason for that was the relatively unsophisticated nature of the OS which was willing to let code hog the CPU whenever it liked.
If all hammers were the same price, I'd pick the sledge hammer.
Your analogy undermines your argument. In fact hammers are, more or less, to within an order of magnitude, the same price, but there are lots of different types. You wouldn't pick a sledgehammer if you could have only one, and the task at hand was driving small nails or doing fine work. I own about five different hammers, they all get used on very different jobs.
I'd pick the right microcontroller for a job likewise. This looks like a good boost for Arduino - the older models are nice for certain jobs and are easy to program, but I have wished they were a bit faster and had more memory at times.
My PVR also runs VxWorks. Given that it still crashes randomly now and again, I hope they have a better version for space probes.
At infinite velocity, a particle would necessarily pass through every point in the universe.
Nah, you're thinking of the Infinite Improbability Drive. It beats all that tedious mucking about with faster-than-light equations.
Fill one wall with component cabinets, and organise them well. You need enough so that every resistor value, capacitor value, transistor, diode, IC and every possible component variation has its own partition. This costs a small fortune but is well worth it for the hours it saves looking for the parts you need.
More accurate really, since bat shit is, well, just bat shit. It's not especially crazy. Whereas a dog suffering from hydrophobia might be considered "barking mad", and by analogy, Romney could be equated with that dog.
The "fucking mor(m)on" quip though, is very hard to argue with.
I agree, it's nuts to cut down the trees (which will take years to replace, if ever) when they could have removed the wings temporarily. It's not as if it needs to be put back into flying condition.
Not only that, but Steve Jobs was quoting Picasso during the run-up to the launch of the Macintosh in around 1982, not 1994.
...so in a bid to influence other voters through an online medium:
DON'T VOTE FOR A DICKHEAD!
If everyone takes notice of this we could fix the political system pretty quickly.
Samsung: Our phones are WAAAAY crappier than Apple's!
Apple: No they're not, they're just as good!
Bizarro world.
In that case it seems you can't win. If 'appearing not to care about fashion' is now cool, then I'm accidentally cool. Actually I doubt it - I always look pretty scruffy, no-one would mistake me for any kind of hipster. I've always not cared about fashion, even when maybe I should. Back in the 1970s at school I was bullied for it - having the 'wrong sort of sports bag'. It's just a form of tribalism and as such to me is the same as nationalism, or racism, or white supremacism. Something to be despised. The only tribe I'm prepared to stand up for is the tribe of me (and my immediate family).
Of course but I don't have a prominent label sticking out of my jeans that has a brand-name on it (which effectively tells the world 'I'm the sort of idiot that will pay ten times more than the cost of the jeans just to show off this label'). I need to wear clothes, they have to be bought somewhere.
My point is that while there probably are a lot of people who use Apple products for the same reason ('I'm the sort of idiot....' etc) it's not the case that ALL Apple users do it for that reason, as the OP stated.
They are purely fashion statements.
Well, maybe one data point doesn't disprove your argument, but the way you've framed it, it goes a long way to.
I am the least fashionable person imaginable. I'm a little bit of a lefty and despise brand worship and the creeping corporatism of our age. I abhor labels and typically buy no-name brand jeans from Target.
Oddly enough, I do have an iPhone. I find it well designed, very functional and useful as a phone and portable web browser, music player, gps, camera, and very occasional puzzle and games machine. That's why I have one, it's NOTHING to do with fashion.
Shitty people
If your starting premise is actually true, then the UK gets what it deserves, no?
In my experience, in fact most people I know in the UK are not shitty, so the reason the place is so far up shit creek is a bit harder to figure out.
Pare down your legal department to a skeleton staff of just enough to handle the day-to-day needs of a company, and turn the budget over to the developers. You're in a hole. Stop digging. The way to win hearts and minds and customers is to stop being such an arrogant prick of a company and make stuff people want. The whole Mac vs Windows 95 thing is starting to unfold all over again. Have you learned nothing? I'm an Apple developer and have been for a long time (note to readers: this in no way equates with "fanboy". It's my living). Even I'm bored to the back teeth with this case and don't see it doing anything but harm. So, Samsung copied you. Boo hoo. Make something better and people will buy it.
How long ago was it that you claimed the Power PC was better than the Intel chip you now sport?
Well, it was during the time that the PowerPC was better (by which I assume you mean faster) than Intel. Its architecture was always superior to the x86. That was most of the 90s. It was only after Motorola took it over, repositioned it and stopped trying to keep up that Intel's performance overtook it again with new architectures and technologies. Apple just did the pragmatic thing (unthinkable to some) to keep their products competitive.
Wandering well off-topic now, but ne'mind....
You're right, local regulations will have an effect on design. I'm assuming you're in the US and looking at things from a US-based perspective. As such it might not be so obvious to you how design influences cross the Atlantic (very much in both directions).
Pop-up headlights originated in the 1960s on Italian sports cars because they improved aerodynamics, or least that's the perception - a smooth body looks faster. Later, by having pop-up headlights, your design acquired a sporty look by association whether it was actually sporty or not. So another fashion was born. I'm not quite sure whether this was really driven by the need to get around sealed-beam regulations, after all, pop-up lights were everywhere even where sealed-beam units were not mandated. The ugly rectangular headlights were not just in the US in the 1980s, look at the ultra-boxy Citroen BX which as far as I know never made it to the US.
Glass covers were another fashion, which reached a high point on the Ferrari 365 "Daytona". The design was largely copied by the Rover SD-1 but where that model was exported to the USA the glass covers were not allowed so it ended up with some rather ugly-looking dual headlamp units instead. For the same reason the strongly US-influenced GM/Vauxhall Firenza HPF could not be exported to the USA, though an export model was prepared. I assume that the "glass cover" rule came in in about 1975 because otherwise both of these designs from slightly earlier would have probably been a bit different. For example, the later GM/Pontiac Transam had a very similar nose design to the HPF but did not have glass covers.
I believe the real influence on headlights for today's cars is the improvements in aerodynamic design and also moulding/design technology that allows complex shapes to be made, but if regulations didn't allow separate bulbs that would make life difficult for the manufacturers. I expect they lobbied for the rule change which was hampering design.
It was only the cars back then that were plain and ugly and boxy, mainly due to economics I think.
No, it's just fashion. It costs the same to make a boxy car or a curvy car. These things tend to go in cycles and also get dictated by the technology available to design them - in the 70s cars were designed on paper and with clay models, now it's all CAD so more complex shapes are achievable. But once people get bored with a certain look, one of the big manufacturers will strike out in a new direction and everyone follows.
The two biggest design influences on cars in the late 1970s were Guigaro and Bertone. They came up with the sharp-edged "folded paper" look that prevailed in the 80s (it usually takes 3-4 years for a new design to come to market, or at least it did back then). It might seem hard to believe, but these boxy shapes seemed fresh and exciting at the time, just as big shoulder pads, ra-ra skirts and leggings seemed fresh and exciting once. It's just fashion.
Personally I like Italian-influenced european cars of the 1970s, far more than most models today, and far more than American-styled cars of the 1970s (with a few exceptions). What appeals depends on your local culture as much as anything, but it's still all fashion.
"It looks like you're depressed. Would you like help with:"
[ ] Slitting your wrists.
[ ] Weeping morosely into a pint of beer.
[ ] Retreating into an endless cycle of binge eating and self-hatred.
[ ] Getting professional help.
I have found that people from the US tend to not have a very good ear for understanding English spoken by non US speakers. I genuinely wonder what is up with that.
I've wondered that too. I grew up in England where accents abound and vary very considerably, even over relatively small distances. In one place I lived the accent was one particular strong 'west country' where I lived (West Gloucestershire) and completely different and equally strong Welsh lilt 3 miles away (Monmouthshire). It was even possible to detect a blend of the two for people living half way between - a difference of 1.5 miles either side!
In England you are exposed to a wide variety of accents and so understanding the various forms of English spoken globally from all the American varieties to Australian to all the versions spoken by non-native speakers with all sorts of overlaid foreign accents is not much of a problem. I'm often surprised that TV show makers (e.g. US made reality shows) feel the need to subtitle speech that is perfectly understandable.
It seems odd that Americans would find it difficult, because they have a very wide variety of accents as well, albeit not as localised. It doesn't make sense because Aussies also seem able to understand most accents, and yet overall there is far less accent variation in Australia.
I bet most English people could do a fair spread of American accents fairly well, but most amateur American attempts at English accents are awful, and that's without going into regional variants. I guess Usasians just don't have the ear for it.
But it is a shitty website that is trying to do a ton of things behind the scenes (even if they aren't things that the user wants or sees). A dedicated app could (conceivably) handle that more elegantly.
Conceivably, but it doesn't. Most of the iOS Facebook app is just a WebKit view. In other words it's a cut-down browser that only allows you to view one site, which is pretty much what the parent was saying.
You can blame whomever you like, it doesn't change the fact that you have a large, intractable codebase that you are going to have to deal with. Learn your lesson, vow to do better in future, but complaining about it after the fact is just a load of time and energy, after which expenditure your code will be.... exactly the same.