Apple happens to have an incredibly great OS and great consumer and pro apps, but when it comes to what butters Apple's bread it's all about the hardware. Apple is not, nor will it ever likely be, a software company.
Does opening the source for OS X sell more Apple hardware? Obviously not, since it allows people to use OS X on non-Apple machines. That's not in Apple's interest, and that's why they're making that more difficult to do. Apple is first and foremost a business, and no smart business would cannibalize itself to pick up a market that they don't need.
People who are dogmatic about OSS have plenty of choices in the market. Apple just isn't one of them. Somehow, I doubt Steve Jobs really loses sleep over such a small part of the market.
Now as a new MAC OS X user who is thoroughly in love with it (compared to Windows but still MORE in love with Linux) if MAC OS made it's way to regular commodity PC boxes then I would gladly chuck all of our Mac boxes and iBooks and buy PC boxes.
And then Apple would go out of business.
Rule #1 when it comes to understanding Apple is this: Apple is a hardware company. They make their money selling those Macs and iBooks, and if they lose that revenue stream they go out of business. That is why Apple will never release a version of OS X for generic PCs unless their entire business model changes. Apple is first and foremost a hardware company that only happens to make some really, really good software. The margins on software are such that Apple could not offset the losses on hardware that would be incurred by selling boxed copies of OS X.
In other words, no, that is not going to happen. You're right, the margins on Apple's hardware is quite nice, and the margins on software are nowhere near as nice. Apple doesn't play the software game for that very reason - unless it's to boost their own hardware sales.
Google's doing this in a rather smart way, IMHO...
They're not chasing Excel's market. Nobody's going to be using this for business-critical applications, and this won't challenge the corporate market for Office. What Google is doing is chasing the long tail of the market - the people who might want to use a spreadsheet, but have no need for Excel. Let's face it, for a quick and dirty budget, a team roster, or a simple document, Excel is more than overkill.
What Google Spreadsheets has that Excel doesn't is simple collaboration -- no need to install SharePoint servers or any of that other Microsoft lock-in garbage required. Just add a few emails to a field and you're done. That is ideal for a whole host of simple, small projects. Say you're running a small business and want to have online schedules -- would you use Excel and some expensive Microsoft server setup, or just make a simple spreadsheet with Google and share it amongst your employees? It seems pretty easy to guess which one is the easiest and least painful option to someone without an IT budget.
Google knows that if they try to compete with Office, they'll get crushed. So they're not doing that at all. Google Spreadsheets isn't an enterprise app, it's a quick and dirty system for simple tasks -- and it excels at being what it is. By capturing that long tail of users who don't need Excels features and won't pay Excel's price, Google can pick up a sizeable user base. The real question is what Google intends to do with those users and how they'll turn this into a revenue generator.
I rather doubt that Osama bin Laden has a MySpace too, his idea of crimes against humanity are usually a bit grandiose...
In all seriousness, there's a lot that can be learned from online communities. Jihadi groups are as wired as any other group, and learning how social networks develop online helps determine how jihadi bulletin boards and websites connect with terrorist cells worldwide. Terrorist groups like al-Qaeda also recruit online more and more these days, and being able to stop that will be of great importance as al-Qaeda further tries to recruit home-grown extremists like the Canadians who were recently arrested by the RCMP.
From what I understand, terrorists have quite distinctive patterns in their connections with other members of their organization than does anyone else - and once anti-terrorist agencies can learn to isolate and recognize those patterns of activity it gives them a valuable tool in stopping attacks.
It will either mean cheaper Macs, or Macs with more features for the same price.
Remember that Apple is not a company that tries (too hard) to compete for the bottom end of the market. Even the Mac mini isn't designed to compete with a bargain-basement Dell. Apple might very well cut their prices with cheaper chips, or they might sweeten the deal with larger hard drives, making the low-end mini use a Core Duo rather than a Core Solo, etc.
However, as a Mac owner and someone who's looking to replace an iBook with a MacBook (Pro) in the near future, this is good news indeed.
Or how about the protections in Apple hardware to prevent you from installing a non-Apple OS on it?
There are no such protections. In fact, Apple has provided a semi-official way of doing just that. The only reason why Windows doesn't natively boot on a Mac is because Macs use EFI, which Windows does not yet support.
Add in Parallels which provides virtualization support and you can have a machine that runs Mac OS X, Windows, any Linux distro, Solaris, OS/2, QNX, or damn near any other OS you can think of - without the need to reboot the machine.
Given that my Mac has nearly a dozen OSes installed on it through virtualization at the moment, it's clear that your argument is simply untrue.
Okay, so when this demonstration is over, what are they going to do with all that crap when the piñata pops? More orbital junk?
Right until the time it hits the atmosphere... if there are any English coins in the collection it would then give new meaning to the phrase "hey, check out that flaming queen."
(Too much Family Guy for me...)
I'd be very skeptical this program given the history Airbus aircraft have had with their control systems and their general managerial attitudes for safety.
Airbus' overreliance on technology and dysfunctional managerial culture continues to put passengers at risk - and this new automated system ensures that the pilot has even less control than he or she did before. Trusting that system to do the right thing in a crisis is always a risky proposition - trusting a manufacturer with such a generally shoddy attitude towards safety makes it even riskier.
Add as much RAM as you can afford, (best purchased from someone other than Apple - their RAM prices tend to be exorbitant) and you have a very portable development system capable of running Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows. I'm current developing with Dapper running via Parallels Desktop, and its very responsive despite being virtualized. The MacBooks are by far the best portable for the money at the moment, and the fact that you have an inexpensive virtualization system available makes them an even better buy.
There is a reason why we have made freedom of the press a nearly absolute right. Throughout history we have seen that hiding the activities of government creates corruption, and even when the media is biased, we need them to be able to get the issues out to the public so that they can be discussed.
Since when has "freedom of speech" been a "nearly absolute right"? We limit free speech all the time in this country. For instance, you can't:
Yell "fire" in a crowded theater.
Commit libel or slander
Say something that creates a "hostile work environment" for others
Criticize a political candidate on television 60 days before an elections. (Thanks to the new Alien and Sedition Acts - AKA McCain-Feingold)
Those are just the ones I can think of before I've had my full cup of coffee.
So, the idea that freedom of speech is some absolute right just isn't true, and has never really been. The question isn't "can the government restrict freedom of speech in certain cases?" but "is this one of those cases?"
Despite our official stance to the contrary, Taiwan (the Republic of China) is not part of the People's Republic of China. We don't officially recognize their government, but we're more than happy to provide them with weapons technology and supplies to ensure that the mainland doesn't try and take Taiwan by force.
The Taiwanese don't need to steal our military technologies -- we're quite happy to sell them pretty much anything they need.
WombatControl -- I didn't mean to imply that Al-Qaeda did not exist, and I'm fully aware of the "The Database" explaination. However, by positioning Al-Qaeda as something much larger than what it actually was, the US Government's propaganda effort essentially created "Al-Qaeda London", "Al-Qaeda Spain", and "Al-Qaeda Iraq" out of random disorganized groups, thus mainfesting a "worldwide" enemy were there simply was not one before.
Except that is also not quite accurate. Al-Qaeda basically operated like a "franchise" - operatives were trained in Afghanistan, but then scattered across the globe. It didn't become nearly as decentralized until after September 11, 2001 when such centralization became too dangerous. For instance, the 9/11 plot was planned in Kuala Lumpur, and executed by a cell originating in Hamburg, Germany that later moved to Florida.
There may be three different McDonald's in a town, owned and operated by different people, but they were still McDonald's. Al-Qaeda's real genius was in taking that kind of model and applying it to terrorism.
This is not as far out as it seems. What everybody seems to forget is that Bin Laden was a CIA agent for years and years when he was part of the mujahideen that were fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. He was our boy, on our payroll. We gave him cash, weapons, logistical support, equipment and god knows what else. So what I wanna know is this:
The short answer is we didn't.
Bin Laden wasn't funded by the CIA. He wouldn't have taken American money anyway, and didn't need it besides. We did fund some groups that were associated with his Arab mujihadeen, but not his group directly.
The person you're thinking of was Ahmad Shah Masood, who was one of the more successful Afghan fighters during the war. Masood was an enemy of the Taliban, and was assassinated by al-Qaeda shortly before 9/11 to help reassure the Taliban that al-Qaeda would protect them from American reprisals. (Bloody lot of good that did!)
Ahmad Shah Masood was the founder of the anti-Taliban resistance called The Northern Alliance - and that's one of the reasons that the CIA had such good luck in Afghanistan - we were working with the same fighters we had a decade before in fighting the Russians.
And it still doesn't change the fact that an official conspiracy theory was put forward, and acted on, without a whole lot of evidence. (Not just "religious extremists", but the whole "Al Qaeda==Worldwide Terrorist Network", when the reality is that the conspiracy theory created Al Qaeda rather than visa-versa.)
That is completely untrue.
Al-Qaeda is Arabic for "the Base" or "the Foundation" - but it's actually a shortened form of the Arabic term "qaedat bayanat" - or database. Al-Qaeda started in the mid 1990s based on Osama bin Laden's personal database of Arab mujihadeen who had fought with him in Afghanistan against the Soviets. His number 2 man, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri was recruited in order to merge al-Qaeda with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
As a side note, the CIA did not fund bin Laden, although they knew of him and knew that some fighters they did fund were also working with him. The CIA's main group in Afghanistan throughout the 1990s was led by a man named Ahmad Shah Masood. Masood was assassinated by bin Laden on September 9, 2001 as a symbol of al-Qaeda's commitment to protecting the Taliban. The group that Masood founded was the Northern Alliance - the same fighters who fought with the CIA in 2001 against the Taliban.
Al-Qaeda has existed as a terrorist organization since at least 1998, and probably earlier. It was 1998 when al-Qaeda launched the attacks against the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and bin Laden declared his fatwa against the presence of American troops on the Arabian peninsula.
So, no, you are not correct. Al-Qaeda has root well before 9/11, and to insinuate that it was invented afterwards is simply not correct.
Now that you claim MS is in IBM's spot, is this where we draw that MS will be squashed by another competitor in the OS market? Perhaps OS X or Linux?
I'm not so sure that the OS market is going to be all that relevant after a while. Microsoft's biggest problem isn't in the OS space - OS X could quadruple its market share and Microsoft would still have the dominant position. It's in other spaces - Microsoft (and everyone else) couldn't complete with the iPod. Microsoft's online services are getting creamed by Google. The XBox is doing well, but it's also a major drain on Microsoft's finances.
Microsoft is losing because they have been trying to use their OS dominance to push everything else, while others are trying to compete where Microsoft is weak. Microsoft by nature can only lose market share - you can't get much higher than where they are now in a market. They have to find new sources of revenue to keep growing as the growth of the PC industry reaches saturation. Devices like the iPod are the future, and Microsoft isn't dominant in those spaces and doesn't seem like they have a great chance of replicating their success in the OS market elsewhere.
I don't think Microsoft is in any danger of dying - companies with billions of dollars in their war chest don't tend to die. What Microsoft will do is lose their dominance of the market to smaller, more nimble competitors. Microsoft is in the same position that IBM was in during most of the 1980s - they have a near-monopoly position in a maturing market, but they're struggling to adapt themselves to changing conditions.
Like Microsoft, IBM was a massive corporation with an entrenched and risk-averse corporate culture. IBM had the same kind of market dominance and clout that Microsoft has now. IBM came out with their latest and greatest consumer machine in 1984 - the PCjr - but it was a horrendous flop because it didn't take the needs of users into consideration. I'm becoming more and more convinced that Windows Vista will be the same thing - a flop that came about because of a poor understanding of what users really want. I think that the LUA system in Vista will be as badly received as the PCjr's chiclet keys.
IBM didn't die, but they did lose a lot of money and a lot of marketshare to smaller, more nimble competitors like Compaq. It was only after IBM started refocusing on their core competencies (big iron, blade servers, etc.) that IBM's really regained some of its strength - but even today it doesn't have near the dominance that it did now.
The days of the Windows monoculture are starting to wane - Apple has a product that's more than competitive with Microsoft's offerings. Microsoft, like IBM back then, just isn't nimble enough to meet the demands of a changing marketplace. Microsoft's attempts to do vertical integration aren't working all that well - the XBox Division is bleeding cash left and right despite the popularity of their product, the online division is floundering to compete with Google, and businesses aren't going to retrain their staff to deal with Office 2007.
Microsoft isn't belly up yet, and probably won't be for a good, long time, but their continued missteps may see them lose a significant amount of money and marketshare.
All of these projects don't understand the medium. The web is not a desktop. The web doesn't work like a desktop, and attempts to translate the desktop metaphor to the web almost all suck hard. The web doesn't have milisecond response rates -- even with AJAX. You don't have a consistant set of APIs across browsers like you do on the desktop. You can't assume everyone has JavaScript, images, or styles on, and a smart developer will try to make sure that their users get a site that degrades gracefully through any of those cases.
You can't just shoehorn a "desktop" style experience into a system that isn't at all designed for it. The web is a unique medium from the desktop. It demands a totally different metaphor than desktop applications.
A desktop metaphor adds a lot of unnecessary cruft to the web -- trying to use drop-down menus, popup windows, crappy DHTML "controls" and the like degrade user experiences and make sites slow, frustrating, and buggy. Applications like GMail and Yahoo! Mail try to use the technologies in appropriate ways - they have some elements of desktop applications, but they're not trying to mimic a desktop application.
We have a great, if maturing, set of tools in XHTML, CSS, and the JavaScript DOM. You can do amazing things with those tools provided you understand what their limitations and appropriate uses are. Trying to use those tools to emulate the usability problems of a whole different medium is misusing and misunderstanding the technology. A smart developer looks towards what works for the web rather than trying to force the medium to match an experience that it just can't do.
The short answer to the query is "absolutely not."
Adding "features" is the last thing a successful company does. Added "features" are what delineates a Creative Zen or a Dell DJ from an Apple iPod. The former two concentrated on adding a bunch of superfluous "features" designed to placate a narrow audience, while Apple just built the best damn music player they could before starting to add things.
"Features" are the enemy of a shipping product in the same way the perfect is the enemy of the good. How do you know what "features" are really useful and what "features" are wastes of time and energy. You don't - at least not if you're honest with yourself.
Successful technologies like the iPod are based on simplicity. Bad products, like Windows Vista or Office, are based on trying to jam a bunch of features down the throats of their users. The iPod isn't a success because it has the most features of any digital music player, it's the king of the hill because it does what it does damn well. Hell, the iPod shuffle is about as simple as it is possible for a music player to get, and that simplicity is why it was the success that it was.
Good design isn't about adding features. It's about ensuring that every feature is essential. If you're delaying ship dates to add features you think are worthwhile rather than features which really are essential (and those are rarely overlapping sets), then you're doing something wrong.
Linux Also Runs Through Boot Camp
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Going To Boot Camp
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Given the desire for Linux to run on everything, it's not surprising that someone's already tried running Linux with Boot Camp, which apparently does seem to work. Granted, there's still the issue of Linux drivers for the hardware, but it is a start.
It's always much harder to overturn an entrenched leader in a field than to jump ahead of the pack - and the iPod has massive marketshare. The article has this really important observation:
In fact, at least six factors make the iPod such a hit: cool-looking hardware; a fun-to-use, variable-speed scroll wheel; an ultrasimple software menu; effortless song synchronization with Mac or Windows; seamless, rock-solid integration with an online music store (iTunes); and a universe of accessories. Mess up any aspect of the formula, and your iPod killer is doomed to market-share crumbs.
That's the problem for other manufacturers. That's a damn near insurmountable hill to climb. Sony had some solid electronics but terrible software. The players that use PlaysForSure are doomed with the horrendous WMP system, terrible DRM, and electronics that are crappily designed. Even if you get nicely designed hardware and nicely designed software, you're stuck in a world where you can get iPod accessories everywhere, but nobody's going to carry accessories for your particular product unless you can get a credible amount of marketshare - which is hard when you don't have the accessories to spur sales.
The only way the iPod can be beaten is if Apple screws it up (which is unlikely, but possible) or someone manages to buy their way into market. The only company that could compete with Apple is Microsoft, doing what they did to the gaming market with the XBox. If Microsoft wanted to create a product that would be a severe loss-leader (priced well under the iPod) and could totally redesign WMP to be halfway usable, they might have a shot at unseating the iPod - but not a good one. Microsoft won't do that because the XBox division is currently hemmorhaging money as it is and Microsoft's bottom line would be adversely affected by trying to go toe-to-toe with the most popular piece of consumer electronics on the planet.
The iPod didn't get it first, but it got it right, and unless the cachet wears off (which may happen, but not for a while), trying to beat the iPod is not a particularly sound business strategy.
I've been able to put together a few simple apps using the.NET Framework, which despite being a Microsoft product, is actually pretty decent.
You can use the Visual Studio Express products, but if you'd rather deal with a free (as in speech) alternative, SharpDevelop is as good as anything I've tried. You can use it to develop in either Visual Basic.NET or C#.Net, and it has a full and quite useful Windows.Forms layout system. For writing a basic Windows.Forms GUI, it's much less resource-intensive than Visual Studio, offers nearly the same features, and is GPL licensed.
For doing Windows development, the.NET framework and Windows.Forms is your best bet, and SharpDevelop gives you a nice open-source IDE with all the features you need.
First of all, this case will be thrown out for lack of standing. The ACLU is arguing that a hypothetical harm may have occurred. There's no evidence that Hitchens, Diamond, or anyone else was actually subject to an intercept - and furthermore, there's no reasonable expectation of privacy in such a situation. No doubt the Pakistanis, Saudis, Iranians, etc, don't give two shits about who they wiretap - any conversations taking place in such a regime are very likely to have been tapped on the other end.
The other reason why this whole affair is deeply idiotic is that everyone's going off half-cocked over a series of hypothetical situations. Nobody outside the NSA, a few members of Congress, and some in the Administration know the true depth and scale of this program. What Russell Tice described sounds much more like Echelon, which has been in operation for somewhere around a decade. What we have been told is that this program only applies in scenarios where one end of the communication is foreign. So long as that is true, it falls under the Executive's wartime authorities under the Constitution. Remember, Congress was briefed on this program. Congress has the right to terminate the program by simply cutting the NSA's budget and the Administration couldn't do much to stop them.
Here's the other big problem: the Fourth Amendment prevents "unreasonable" searched and seizures without "probable cause." Exactly what is "unreasonable" about these intercepts - if someone is talking with a known al-Qaeada associate in a suspected terror cell, it would seem altogether reasonable that the government should be able to listen in on that conversation - regardless if the other end is in Kandahar or Kansas.
We're facing an enemy that has already planted sleeper cells within the United States and has the avowed objective of killing as many Americans as they can. After 9/11 there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth about how we didn't "put the dots together" - and now once the government finally tries to do just that, there's even more wailing and gnashing of teeth. The 9/11 Commission Report specifically singled out FISA as being inefficient and simply too slow to provide actionable intelligence. The 72 hour exemption means that unless the FISA Court could provide a warrant within that time period, the government would have to stop at hour 73 even if that means losing valuable intelligence.
There's nothing wrong with a strong stand on civil liberties. However, civil libertarians aren't going to be taken seriously until they realize that there is a threat out there, and our law enforcement and military need tools that can prevent an attack like 9/11 - or something worse. They have to realize that for the majority of Americans, the idea that the government might intercept their conversations if they're talking to someone abroad suspected of being an al-Qaeda associate isn't a particularly big worry for them. Going about half-cocked and crying wolf over and over again isn't persuasive - if anything it's only going to cement the idea in many American's heads that groups like the ACLU are altogether unconcerned with protecting this nation against another terrorist attack.
Interpreted Versus Compiled
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Java Is So 90s
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· Score: 1, Insightful
The big issue here is speed of development and ease of use. Java is a bitch to learn, it requires a compiler, and it has a syntax that's byzantine as hell. Compare that to an interpreted language like Python or Ruby that has a very spare syntax, is interpreted, and are quite easy to learn.
That isn't to say that Java doesn't have its place, just as an IBM mainframe has its place, but the vast majority of tasks don't require a mainframe. For doing something like simple text process, Java's syntax just gets in the way - why build a massive application in Java when you can bang out a much simpler and easier system in Perl, Python, PHP, or Ruby?
Look at Ruby on Rails - the idea that you can create a simple but powerful framework that does an excellent job of getting out of your way is nothing short of revolutionary. Struts provides many of the same benefits, but has nowhere near the elegance of Ruby and nowhere near the simplicity.
It's all about the KISS principle, and syntactically and practically Java is just too complex - it's like trying to dust a room with a jackhammer.
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Apple is a hardware company.
Apple happens to have an incredibly great OS and great consumer and pro apps, but when it comes to what butters Apple's bread it's all about the hardware. Apple is not, nor will it ever likely be, a software company.
Does opening the source for OS X sell more Apple hardware? Obviously not, since it allows people to use OS X on non-Apple machines. That's not in Apple's interest, and that's why they're making that more difficult to do. Apple is first and foremost a business, and no smart business would cannibalize itself to pick up a market that they don't need.
People who are dogmatic about OSS have plenty of choices in the market. Apple just isn't one of them. Somehow, I doubt Steve Jobs really loses sleep over such a small part of the market.
And then Apple would go out of business.
Rule #1 when it comes to understanding Apple is this: Apple is a hardware company . They make their money selling those Macs and iBooks, and if they lose that revenue stream they go out of business. That is why Apple will never release a version of OS X for generic PCs unless their entire business model changes. Apple is first and foremost a hardware company that only happens to make some really, really good software. The margins on software are such that Apple could not offset the losses on hardware that would be incurred by selling boxed copies of OS X.
In other words, no, that is not going to happen. You're right, the margins on Apple's hardware is quite nice, and the margins on software are nowhere near as nice. Apple doesn't play the software game for that very reason - unless it's to boost their own hardware sales.
Google's doing this in a rather smart way, IMHO...
They're not chasing Excel's market. Nobody's going to be using this for business-critical applications, and this won't challenge the corporate market for Office. What Google is doing is chasing the long tail of the market - the people who might want to use a spreadsheet, but have no need for Excel. Let's face it, for a quick and dirty budget, a team roster, or a simple document, Excel is more than overkill.
What Google Spreadsheets has that Excel doesn't is simple collaboration -- no need to install SharePoint servers or any of that other Microsoft lock-in garbage required. Just add a few emails to a field and you're done. That is ideal for a whole host of simple, small projects. Say you're running a small business and want to have online schedules -- would you use Excel and some expensive Microsoft server setup, or just make a simple spreadsheet with Google and share it amongst your employees? It seems pretty easy to guess which one is the easiest and least painful option to someone without an IT budget.
Google knows that if they try to compete with Office, they'll get crushed. So they're not doing that at all. Google Spreadsheets isn't an enterprise app, it's a quick and dirty system for simple tasks -- and it excels at being what it is. By capturing that long tail of users who don't need Excels features and won't pay Excel's price, Google can pick up a sizeable user base. The real question is what Google intends to do with those users and how they'll turn this into a revenue generator.
I rather doubt that Osama bin Laden has a MySpace too, his idea of crimes against humanity are usually a bit grandiose...
In all seriousness, there's a lot that can be learned from online communities. Jihadi groups are as wired as any other group, and learning how social networks develop online helps determine how jihadi bulletin boards and websites connect with terrorist cells worldwide. Terrorist groups like al-Qaeda also recruit online more and more these days, and being able to stop that will be of great importance as al-Qaeda further tries to recruit home-grown extremists like the Canadians who were recently arrested by the RCMP.
From what I understand, terrorists have quite distinctive patterns in their connections with other members of their organization than does anyone else - and once anti-terrorist agencies can learn to isolate and recognize those patterns of activity it gives them a valuable tool in stopping attacks.
It will either mean cheaper Macs, or Macs with more features for the same price.
Remember that Apple is not a company that tries (too hard) to compete for the bottom end of the market. Even the Mac mini isn't designed to compete with a bargain-basement Dell. Apple might very well cut their prices with cheaper chips, or they might sweeten the deal with larger hard drives, making the low-end mini use a Core Duo rather than a Core Solo, etc.
However, as a Mac owner and someone who's looking to replace an iBook with a MacBook (Pro) in the near future, this is good news indeed.
There are no such protections. In fact, Apple has provided a semi-official way of doing just that. The only reason why Windows doesn't natively boot on a Mac is because Macs use EFI, which Windows does not yet support.
Add in Parallels which provides virtualization support and you can have a machine that runs Mac OS X, Windows, any Linux distro, Solaris, OS/2, QNX, or damn near any other OS you can think of - without the need to reboot the machine.
Given that my Mac has nearly a dozen OSes installed on it through virtualization at the moment, it's clear that your argument is simply untrue.
I'd be very skeptical this program given the history Airbus aircraft have had with their control systems and their general managerial attitudes for safety.
For instance, the crash of Flight 587, an Airbus A300 in November 2001 was caused by a "delamination" of the vertical stabilizer's composite structure - moisture got in between the layers of composite material and caused them to pull apart. Subsequent inspections found other aircraft with signs of vertical stabilizer delamination. The Canadian Transportation Safety Board has recommended detailed checks of Airbus A3000 rudder assemblies because of the issue.
The problem is that manual inspections can't always reveal signs of delamination - it often requires ultrasound inspection - something Airbus has refused to support, and there has even been accusations that Airbus has tried to inappropriately lobby the NTSB against such a recommendation.
Airbus' overreliance on technology and dysfunctional managerial culture continues to put passengers at risk - and this new automated system ensures that the pilot has even less control than he or she did before. Trusting that system to do the right thing in a crisis is always a risky proposition - trusting a manufacturer with such a generally shoddy attitude towards safety makes it even riskier.
My recommendation: MacBook.
Add as much RAM as you can afford, (best purchased from someone other than Apple - their RAM prices tend to be exorbitant) and you have a very portable development system capable of running Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows. I'm current developing with Dapper running via Parallels Desktop, and its very responsive despite being virtualized. The MacBooks are by far the best portable for the money at the moment, and the fact that you have an inexpensive virtualization system available makes them an even better buy.
That's great, except for the part where it just isn't true.
Those are just the ones I can think of before I've had my full cup of coffee.
So, the idea that freedom of speech is some absolute right just isn't true, and has never really been. The question isn't "can the government restrict freedom of speech in certain cases?" but "is this one of those cases?"
Despite our official stance to the contrary, Taiwan (the Republic of China) is not part of the People's Republic of China. We don't officially recognize their government, but we're more than happy to provide them with weapons technology and supplies to ensure that the mainland doesn't try and take Taiwan by force.
The Taiwanese don't need to steal our military technologies -- we're quite happy to sell them pretty much anything they need.
Except that is also not quite accurate. Al-Qaeda basically operated like a "franchise" - operatives were trained in Afghanistan, but then scattered across the globe. It didn't become nearly as decentralized until after September 11, 2001 when such centralization became too dangerous. For instance, the 9/11 plot was planned in Kuala Lumpur, and executed by a cell originating in Hamburg, Germany that later moved to Florida.
There may be three different McDonald's in a town, owned and operated by different people, but they were still McDonald's. Al-Qaeda's real genius was in taking that kind of model and applying it to terrorism.
The short answer is we didn't.
Bin Laden wasn't funded by the CIA. He wouldn't have taken American money anyway, and didn't need it besides. We did fund some groups that were associated with his Arab mujihadeen, but not his group directly.
The person you're thinking of was Ahmad Shah Masood, who was one of the more successful Afghan fighters during the war. Masood was an enemy of the Taliban, and was assassinated by al-Qaeda shortly before 9/11 to help reassure the Taliban that al-Qaeda would protect them from American reprisals. (Bloody lot of good that did!)
Ahmad Shah Masood was the founder of the anti-Taliban resistance called The Northern Alliance - and that's one of the reasons that the CIA had such good luck in Afghanistan - we were working with the same fighters we had a decade before in fighting the Russians.
Judicial Watch is an explicitly conservative watchdog group.
That is completely untrue.
Al-Qaeda is Arabic for "the Base" or "the Foundation" - but it's actually a shortened form of the Arabic term "qaedat bayanat" - or database. Al-Qaeda started in the mid 1990s based on Osama bin Laden's personal database of Arab mujihadeen who had fought with him in Afghanistan against the Soviets. His number 2 man, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri was recruited in order to merge al-Qaeda with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
As a side note, the CIA did not fund bin Laden, although they knew of him and knew that some fighters they did fund were also working with him. The CIA's main group in Afghanistan throughout the 1990s was led by a man named Ahmad Shah Masood. Masood was assassinated by bin Laden on September 9, 2001 as a symbol of al-Qaeda's commitment to protecting the Taliban. The group that Masood founded was the Northern Alliance - the same fighters who fought with the CIA in 2001 against the Taliban.
Al-Qaeda has existed as a terrorist organization since at least 1998, and probably earlier. It was 1998 when al-Qaeda launched the attacks against the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and bin Laden declared his fatwa against the presence of American troops on the Arabian peninsula.
So, no, you are not correct. Al-Qaeda has root well before 9/11, and to insinuate that it was invented afterwards is simply not correct.
I'm not so sure that the OS market is going to be all that relevant after a while. Microsoft's biggest problem isn't in the OS space - OS X could quadruple its market share and Microsoft would still have the dominant position. It's in other spaces - Microsoft (and everyone else) couldn't complete with the iPod. Microsoft's online services are getting creamed by Google. The XBox is doing well, but it's also a major drain on Microsoft's finances.
Microsoft is losing because they have been trying to use their OS dominance to push everything else, while others are trying to compete where Microsoft is weak. Microsoft by nature can only lose market share - you can't get much higher than where they are now in a market. They have to find new sources of revenue to keep growing as the growth of the PC industry reaches saturation. Devices like the iPod are the future, and Microsoft isn't dominant in those spaces and doesn't seem like they have a great chance of replicating their success in the OS market elsewhere.
I don't think Microsoft is in any danger of dying - companies with billions of dollars in their war chest don't tend to die. What Microsoft will do is lose their dominance of the market to smaller, more nimble competitors. Microsoft is in the same position that IBM was in during most of the 1980s - they have a near-monopoly position in a maturing market, but they're struggling to adapt themselves to changing conditions.
Like Microsoft, IBM was a massive corporation with an entrenched and risk-averse corporate culture. IBM had the same kind of market dominance and clout that Microsoft has now. IBM came out with their latest and greatest consumer machine in 1984 - the PCjr - but it was a horrendous flop because it didn't take the needs of users into consideration. I'm becoming more and more convinced that Windows Vista will be the same thing - a flop that came about because of a poor understanding of what users really want. I think that the LUA system in Vista will be as badly received as the PCjr's chiclet keys.
IBM didn't die, but they did lose a lot of money and a lot of marketshare to smaller, more nimble competitors like Compaq. It was only after IBM started refocusing on their core competencies (big iron, blade servers, etc.) that IBM's really regained some of its strength - but even today it doesn't have near the dominance that it did now.
The days of the Windows monoculture are starting to wane - Apple has a product that's more than competitive with Microsoft's offerings. Microsoft, like IBM back then, just isn't nimble enough to meet the demands of a changing marketplace. Microsoft's attempts to do vertical integration aren't working all that well - the XBox Division is bleeding cash left and right despite the popularity of their product, the online division is floundering to compete with Google, and businesses aren't going to retrain their staff to deal with Office 2007.
Microsoft isn't belly up yet, and probably won't be for a good, long time, but their continued missteps may see them lose a significant amount of money and marketshare.
All of these projects don't understand the medium. The web is not a desktop. The web doesn't work like a desktop, and attempts to translate the desktop metaphor to the web almost all suck hard. The web doesn't have milisecond response rates -- even with AJAX. You don't have a consistant set of APIs across browsers like you do on the desktop. You can't assume everyone has JavaScript, images, or styles on, and a smart developer will try to make sure that their users get a site that degrades gracefully through any of those cases.
You can't just shoehorn a "desktop" style experience into a system that isn't at all designed for it. The web is a unique medium from the desktop. It demands a totally different metaphor than desktop applications.
A desktop metaphor adds a lot of unnecessary cruft to the web -- trying to use drop-down menus, popup windows, crappy DHTML "controls" and the like degrade user experiences and make sites slow, frustrating, and buggy. Applications like GMail and Yahoo! Mail try to use the technologies in appropriate ways - they have some elements of desktop applications, but they're not trying to mimic a desktop application.
We have a great, if maturing, set of tools in XHTML, CSS, and the JavaScript DOM. You can do amazing things with those tools provided you understand what their limitations and appropriate uses are. Trying to use those tools to emulate the usability problems of a whole different medium is misusing and misunderstanding the technology. A smart developer looks towards what works for the web rather than trying to force the medium to match an experience that it just can't do.
The short answer to the query is "absolutely not."
Adding "features" is the last thing a successful company does. Added "features" are what delineates a Creative Zen or a Dell DJ from an Apple iPod. The former two concentrated on adding a bunch of superfluous "features" designed to placate a narrow audience, while Apple just built the best damn music player they could before starting to add things.
"Features" are the enemy of a shipping product in the same way the perfect is the enemy of the good. How do you know what "features" are really useful and what "features" are wastes of time and energy. You don't - at least not if you're honest with yourself.
Successful technologies like the iPod are based on simplicity. Bad products, like Windows Vista or Office, are based on trying to jam a bunch of features down the throats of their users. The iPod isn't a success because it has the most features of any digital music player, it's the king of the hill because it does what it does damn well. Hell, the iPod shuffle is about as simple as it is possible for a music player to get, and that simplicity is why it was the success that it was.
Good design isn't about adding features. It's about ensuring that every feature is essential . If you're delaying ship dates to add features you think are worthwhile rather than features which really are essential (and those are rarely overlapping sets), then you're doing something wrong.
Given the desire for Linux to run on everything, it's not surprising that someone's already tried running Linux with Boot Camp, which apparently does seem to work. Granted, there's still the issue of Linux drivers for the hardware, but it is a start.
It's always much harder to overturn an entrenched leader in a field than to jump ahead of the pack - and the iPod has massive marketshare. The article has this really important observation:
That's the problem for other manufacturers. That's a damn near insurmountable hill to climb. Sony had some solid electronics but terrible software. The players that use PlaysForSure are doomed with the horrendous WMP system, terrible DRM, and electronics that are crappily designed. Even if you get nicely designed hardware and nicely designed software, you're stuck in a world where you can get iPod accessories everywhere, but nobody's going to carry accessories for your particular product unless you can get a credible amount of marketshare - which is hard when you don't have the accessories to spur sales.
The only way the iPod can be beaten is if Apple screws it up (which is unlikely, but possible) or someone manages to buy their way into market. The only company that could compete with Apple is Microsoft, doing what they did to the gaming market with the XBox. If Microsoft wanted to create a product that would be a severe loss-leader (priced well under the iPod) and could totally redesign WMP to be halfway usable, they might have a shot at unseating the iPod - but not a good one. Microsoft won't do that because the XBox division is currently hemmorhaging money as it is and Microsoft's bottom line would be adversely affected by trying to go toe-to-toe with the most popular piece of consumer electronics on the planet.
The iPod didn't get it first, but it got it right, and unless the cachet wears off (which may happen, but not for a while), trying to beat the iPod is not a particularly sound business strategy.
I've been able to put together a few simple apps using the .NET Framework, which despite being a Microsoft product, is actually pretty decent.
You can use the Visual Studio Express products, but if you'd rather deal with a free (as in speech) alternative, SharpDevelop is as good as anything I've tried. You can use it to develop in either Visual Basic.NET or C#.Net, and it has a full and quite useful Windows.Forms layout system. For writing a basic Windows.Forms GUI, it's much less resource-intensive than Visual Studio, offers nearly the same features, and is GPL licensed.
For doing Windows development, the .NET framework and Windows.Forms is your best bet, and SharpDevelop gives you a nice open-source IDE with all the features you need.
First of all, this case will be thrown out for lack of standing. The ACLU is arguing that a hypothetical harm may have occurred. There's no evidence that Hitchens, Diamond, or anyone else was actually subject to an intercept - and furthermore, there's no reasonable expectation of privacy in such a situation. No doubt the Pakistanis, Saudis, Iranians, etc, don't give two shits about who they wiretap - any conversations taking place in such a regime are very likely to have been tapped on the other end.
The other reason why this whole affair is deeply idiotic is that everyone's going off half-cocked over a series of hypothetical situations. Nobody outside the NSA, a few members of Congress, and some in the Administration know the true depth and scale of this program. What Russell Tice described sounds much more like Echelon, which has been in operation for somewhere around a decade. What we have been told is that this program only applies in scenarios where one end of the communication is foreign. So long as that is true, it falls under the Executive's wartime authorities under the Constitution. Remember, Congress was briefed on this program. Congress has the right to terminate the program by simply cutting the NSA's budget and the Administration couldn't do much to stop them.
Here's the other big problem: the Fourth Amendment prevents "unreasonable" searched and seizures without "probable cause." Exactly what is "unreasonable" about these intercepts - if someone is talking with a known al-Qaeada associate in a suspected terror cell, it would seem altogether reasonable that the government should be able to listen in on that conversation - regardless if the other end is in Kandahar or Kansas.
We're facing an enemy that has already planted sleeper cells within the United States and has the avowed objective of killing as many Americans as they can. After 9/11 there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth about how we didn't "put the dots together" - and now once the government finally tries to do just that, there's even more wailing and gnashing of teeth. The 9/11 Commission Report specifically singled out FISA as being inefficient and simply too slow to provide actionable intelligence. The 72 hour exemption means that unless the FISA Court could provide a warrant within that time period, the government would have to stop at hour 73 even if that means losing valuable intelligence.
There's nothing wrong with a strong stand on civil liberties. However, civil libertarians aren't going to be taken seriously until they realize that there is a threat out there, and our law enforcement and military need tools that can prevent an attack like 9/11 - or something worse. They have to realize that for the majority of Americans, the idea that the government might intercept their conversations if they're talking to someone abroad suspected of being an al-Qaeda associate isn't a particularly big worry for them. Going about half-cocked and crying wolf over and over again isn't persuasive - if anything it's only going to cement the idea in many American's heads that groups like the ACLU are altogether unconcerned with protecting this nation against another terrorist attack.
The big issue here is speed of development and ease of use. Java is a bitch to learn, it requires a compiler, and it has a syntax that's byzantine as hell. Compare that to an interpreted language like Python or Ruby that has a very spare syntax, is interpreted, and are quite easy to learn.
That isn't to say that Java doesn't have its place, just as an IBM mainframe has its place, but the vast majority of tasks don't require a mainframe. For doing something like simple text process, Java's syntax just gets in the way - why build a massive application in Java when you can bang out a much simpler and easier system in Perl, Python, PHP, or Ruby?
Look at Ruby on Rails - the idea that you can create a simple but powerful framework that does an excellent job of getting out of your way is nothing short of revolutionary. Struts provides many of the same benefits, but has nowhere near the elegance of Ruby and nowhere near the simplicity.
It's all about the KISS principle, and syntactically and practically Java is just too complex - it's like trying to dust a room with a jackhammer.