The account really shouldn't be considered "compensation". It's a necessary tool for any volunteer to have (if you don't have an account to access the service then you can't volunteer). AOL was providing them with an account free, rather than charging people to volunteer (which would be absurd). They *were* volunteering in the charity sense. If they later got pissed off and decided they want to get paid for it, too bad. They were volunteers, not paid employees, and they knew that from the outset. If they don't like it, they don't have to volunteer anymore. And if they paid for the account, like everyone else, they could keep it.
In Europe (Eastern) where higher education is purely merit based, there is a true tragedy. Many Ph.D's are working as salespeople and plumbers, because anyone can get an education if they want to. Here in the US, if you can't pay, you can';t play, and this acts as a safety valve to curb Graduate overpopulatioon.
That may be true to some extent, however I think you are ignoring the rather important fact that the US economy is booming, whereas Europe isn't doing so great. This, I would suspect, is probably more the cause of the PhDs working low-end jobs than an overpopulation of PhDs is.
Another thought. Which would be better:
1) Everyone who wants to attend college can do so. This presumably creates a highly educated populace, which IMHO is a great thing. (The benefits of this could create a whole separate discussion). This also means that you're not losing any great minds of people who otherwise couldn't afford school, so you should presumably have the best and brightest available for whatever jobs need doing. A Good Thing, also. However, you do create more competition for the better jobs, so if the economy isn't sufficiently strong to employ all these people in their chosen fields, then you might have them working in jobs beneath their abilities. At the same time, their education allows them to be more flexible, so in times of hardship they could more easily transfer into different, but not necessarily inferior, careers.
or:
2)The system as it currently is in the US. Not everyone can afford college. A lot of people can't fulfill their potential because their couldn't afford the costs of a college education. You have shortages in certain fields because there aren't enough graduates, and because of this those you do get quite possibly aren't nearly as qualified as they should be. The populace in general is less educated than the one in choice 1. On the other hand, those who are sufficiently well-off, or who get enough in scholarships to attend school, have better prospects when they get out. The degree of competition they face in the job hunt is much less, and as a result they get higher pay.
It seems to me that choice 1 is the better one for society in general. In good times, everyone will be employed in their chosen professions. In bad times, sure some people may have to work outside their field. But this would happen in either choice 1 or choice 2. At least with choice 1 society is better educated (which could bring benefits in many areas besides economics. Consider how elections these days are often sound-byte contests rather than debate over the issues. Or how the mass media always has to simplify everything for people because they don't have the education to understand it. Or any of dozens of similar situations where an educated population would be beneficial)
you brought up some good points: benchmarks are often unreliable as indicators of overall performance (Apple's favorite Bytemark being a prime example), and that in "real-world" tests Mac systems are often hampered by inferior ports of software.
That said, one should evaluate a system by real-world results. When you buy a computer, you're buying a system, not just a processor. If the system as a whole performs poorly, it doesn't really matter whether it's due to anemic hardware or poorly written software. You know the saying, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
You also seem to be exaggerating the G3's abilities compared to x86 machines. With equal clock speeds, the G3 is somewhat faster (10-20%) than a PII for most tasks (that was the NTSL result IIRC). But since PIIs (and now PIIIs, which are about 10% faster than similarly clocked PIIs) are available at higher clocks, (and usually lower $) than the G3, the performance edge of the G3 is eliminated when comparing high end chips of each type.
As for your assertion that if you code the same routine in PPC asm and x86 asm, the PPC one will win, the truth of that depends highly on what routine you're coding. Each processor will do better at certain tasks than others. And since the assembly will differ for each, due to the different instruction sets, there may be more efficient ways to do a particular task in one processor than the other. Especially in the case of routines that could make use of things like the Katmai instructions. In some, the PPC chip may blow away the x86, whereas in other routines it could very well be the opposite.
I'm not sure where the "3D rendering" Celeron vs G3 story came from, but it's possible that it's based on some routine that happens to run much better on P6-based chips than G3s...but whether it is or not doesn't really matter since it's clearly not representative of overall performance. It could just be a rumor. Such things tend to abound on the Net:)
It would be interesting to see how Linux systems running on both x86 and PPC hardware fared...it might erase some of the penalty MacOS imposes on the PPC hardware.
actually, I don't find it "cute" either. Looks cheap, and kinda ugly to me. Not that beige is the greatest thing, but the iMac is worse than beige even.
So no, you're not the only one who thinks the iMac is not cute. Even some Mac fans I know think it's pretty ugly.
You make your points well, but some of your claims are rather debatable.
Small footprint: yes, this is definitely an advantage of the iMac. I wonder though how many people really even considered this in their purchasing decision.
"Coolness": well, that really depends on who you ask. I know people who think it's absolutely hideous (including some die-hard Mac fans), and there are others who think it's incredibly great.
Price/performance: well, not at all. You can get much better performing PCs for the same cost (or less) than the iMac. For example, a PC from Quantex (I have a Quantex and have been most impressed with it, and their tech support on those few occasions I needed it):
for $1218: Intel Celeron Processor 333MHz 96MB SDRAM 17" Monitor 16MB Voodoo 3 2000 AGP 2x video 8.4 Gig Ultra ATA Hard Disk 56K fax/modem 128-bit PCI wavetable sound card 32X Max Variable Speed CDROM Drive Stereo speakers Keyboard and MS mouse USB 3.5" 1.44MB Floppy Drive Quantex ATX Mid Tower Case
MS Windows 98 Corel WordPerfect Office Suite 8 MS Money 97 Dr. Solomon's AntiVirus AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve, Epoch software and other misc. titles
3-year limited warranty with 1 year on-site service 24-hr./7-day Technical Support ============================
versus the iMac for $1199: PowerPC G3 processor @ 266MHz 32 MB SDRAM 15" Monitor 6 MB ATI Rage Pro Turbo 6 Gig IDE hard disk 56K modem ethernet port sound (of unspecified capabilities) 24x variable speed CDROM USB Keyboard & mouse
MacOS 8.5.1 AppleWorks Adobe Page Mill Quicken 98 Earthlink software and a couple other misc. titles
plus whatever tech support situation Apple has
======================
The two machines have almost exactly the same price, with comparable software bundles, but the hardware on the Quantex is just leagues ahead of the iMac.
I can attest that setup of the Quantex should also be about as easy as the iMac. Cables are all color coded, making initial setup of the box easy. Also included is a easy-to-read/use setup guide, which is basically a poster-like thing with basic instructions in case you need it. All you do is plug the cables into their color-coded positions and turn the thing on. AOL setup is easy, and you're on the Net quickly.
oh, BTW, since you asked even Dell can do better than the iMac: ($1156 gives Celeron 333, 64MB SDRAM, 17" monitor, ATI 8MB AGP video, 32x CDROM, 64voice wavetable sound, 56K modem, Win98, MS Works 99 and MS Money 99, Keyboard and Logitech Mouse w/wheel, 3-yr warranty, 1-yr next day onsite service, floppy drive, McAfee Antivirus, yadda yadda yadda)
As you've pointed out, coupling and having children is the natural thing for humans to do, right? The easiest thing.
Sure, coupling is the easiest thing. I don't think that's what he meant; he said it's "certainly not as hard as finding someone who understands you and who you understand." Finding someone like that is rather more difficult than finding someone to have sex with.
Sure, having children isn't that hard, at least for the guy:-). It's raising them properly that is the challenge, and where the reward comes in. Belittling those who put decades into this, I think, is what is really angering a lot of us. If RMS doesn't want to have kids, great, that's his decision. But to trivialize the work and dedication that raising a family takes, and the importance of doing this well, is simply ignorant. The quality of society we will have in the future depends to a much greater extent on how well people raise their children, than on whether everyone thinks RMS is the greatest thing since sliced bread. RMS has done a lot, yes, and sure let's all give him credit for his contributions. But his chosen life's work is certainly not more important than that of others who choose to have a family.
What isn't cool is the eventual disintegration of society and the environment because of an overpopulated world of generation after generation of complacent do-nothing family-havers
And since when does having a family imply being a complacent do-nothing? There are lots of people out there making valuble contributions to society, through whatever their field of expertise is, and also through raising the next generation to continue the work in the future. The two are not mutually exclusive.
It would take so little to change the world, but we don't, simply because we tend to gravitate towards what comes naturally to us. Like childrearing
So if we all stop having children, in order to "change the world", what do we accomplish? We eliminate the species from the universe. Sure, it changes the world, but what the hell is the point if there's nobody left to enjoy it?
You mean besides the fact that he's living proof that if you put idealism before nature, one person can defeat even the largest problems? If everyone did as much with their life as RMS has, there would be no problems on earth. We would be living in a perfect society.
Why do you think that idealism is opposite to nature? Having a family could very well be true to one's ideals; idealism does not imply becoming a loner. If we all followed the sort of idealism RMS has humanity would cease to exist in a few decades. Then what have we gained? Nothing. We wouldn't have a perfect society. We'd have no society. No problems on earth? I doubt it, not that it would matter since there would be nobody left to solve any that did appear.
And since when has RMS defeated "the largest problems"? Has he eliminated hatred? Created world peace? Found a cure to a deadly disease? Secured an end to oppression around the globe? No. He's dedicated himself to telling everyone that software should be free. And created a lot of great software along the way. But this hardly qualifies as defeating one of the world's greatest problems. Let's try to keep things in perspective.
the Celeron doesn't support SSE, yet it still did better than the K6-3 (at same clock rates) on most tests...so it's not a result of benchmark bias toward SSE.
And from a realistic standpoint, you have to work with the software available. So it doesn't matter if you have these great 3DNow! instructions if your software doesn't make use of them.
anyone remember the "live video" on the machines in that movie (which I think were Macs)? Only problem was, you could see the Quicktime scrollbar moving along beneath the "live" video!
I also thought it was dumb how they made the movie politically correct by making the girl the computer genius and the boy unknowledgable, versus the boy being the one with the knowledge like it was in the book. Realistically, the boy was the more likely candidate for computer know-how anyway .
well, they could if you install it (there's MkLinux or PPC, I've heard PPC is better) but I don't know of anyone who sells Linux PowerBooks. My guess is you'd have to do it yourself. I don't know how PowerBook prices compare to similar notebooks from PC makers. If it's overpriced (like the Apple desktops) then maybe you'd want to go for a PC notebook. But if not, the PowerBooks are supposedly pretty good (never used one, myself).
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The account really shouldn't be considered "compensation". It's a necessary tool for any volunteer to have (if you don't have an account to access the service then you can't volunteer). AOL was providing them with an account free, rather than charging people to volunteer (which would be absurd). They *were* volunteering in the charity sense. If they later got pissed off and decided they want to get paid for it, too bad. They were volunteers, not paid employees, and they knew that from the outset. If they don't like it, they don't have to volunteer anymore. And if they paid for the account, like everyone else, they could keep it.
In Europe (Eastern) where higher education is purely merit based, there is a true tragedy. Many Ph.D's are working as salespeople and plumbers, because anyone can get an education if they want to. Here in the US, if you can't pay, you can';t play, and this acts as a safety valve to curb Graduate overpopulatioon.
That may be true to some extent, however I think you are ignoring the rather important fact that the US economy is booming, whereas Europe isn't doing so great. This, I would suspect, is probably more the cause of the PhDs working low-end jobs than an overpopulation of PhDs is.
Another thought. Which would be better:
1) Everyone who wants to attend college can do so. This presumably creates a highly educated populace, which IMHO is a great thing. (The benefits of this could create a whole separate discussion). This also means that you're not losing any great minds of people who otherwise couldn't afford school, so you should presumably have the best and brightest available for whatever jobs need doing. A Good Thing, also. However, you do create more competition for the better jobs, so if the economy isn't sufficiently strong to employ all these people in their chosen fields, then you might have them working in jobs beneath their abilities. At the same time, their education allows them to be more flexible, so in times of hardship they could more easily transfer into different, but not necessarily inferior, careers.
or:
2)The system as it currently is in the US. Not everyone can afford college. A lot of people can't fulfill their potential because their couldn't afford the costs of a college education. You have shortages in certain fields because there aren't enough graduates, and because of this those you do get quite possibly aren't nearly as qualified as they should be. The populace in general is less educated than the one in choice 1. On the other hand, those who are sufficiently well-off, or who get enough in scholarships to attend school, have better prospects when they get out. The degree of competition they face in the job hunt is much less, and as a result they get higher pay.
It seems to me that choice 1 is the better one for society in general. In good times, everyone will be employed in their chosen professions. In bad times, sure some people may have to work outside their field. But this would happen in either choice 1 or choice 2. At least with choice 1 society is better educated (which could bring benefits in many areas besides economics. Consider how elections these days are often sound-byte contests rather than debate over the issues. Or how the mass media always has to simplify everything for people because they don't have the education to understand it. Or any of dozens of similar situations where an educated population would be beneficial)
Any comments?
you brought up some good points: benchmarks are often unreliable as indicators of overall performance (Apple's favorite Bytemark being a prime example), and that in "real-world" tests Mac systems are often hampered by inferior ports of software.
:)
That said, one should evaluate a system by real-world results. When you buy a computer, you're buying a system, not just a processor. If the system as a whole performs poorly, it doesn't really matter whether it's due to anemic hardware or poorly written software. You know the saying, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
You also seem to be exaggerating the G3's abilities compared to x86 machines. With equal clock speeds, the G3 is somewhat faster (10-20%) than a PII for most tasks (that was the NTSL result IIRC). But since PIIs (and now PIIIs, which are about 10% faster than similarly clocked PIIs) are available at higher clocks, (and usually lower $) than the G3, the performance edge of the G3 is eliminated when comparing high end chips of each type.
As for your assertion that if you code the same routine in PPC asm and x86 asm, the PPC one will win, the truth of that depends highly on what routine you're coding. Each processor will do better at certain tasks than others. And since the assembly will differ for each, due to the different instruction sets, there may be more efficient ways to do a particular task in one processor than the other. Especially in the case of routines that could make use of things like the Katmai instructions. In some, the PPC chip may blow away the x86, whereas in other routines it could very well be the opposite.
I'm not sure where the "3D rendering" Celeron vs G3 story came from, but it's possible that it's based on some routine that happens to run much better on P6-based chips than G3s...but whether it is or not doesn't really matter since it's clearly not representative of overall performance. It could just be a rumor. Such things tend to abound on the Net
It would be interesting to see how Linux systems running on both x86 and PPC hardware fared...it might erase some of the penalty MacOS imposes on the PPC hardware.
actually, I don't find it "cute" either. Looks cheap, and kinda ugly to me. Not that beige is the greatest thing, but the iMac is worse than beige even.
So no, you're not the only one who thinks the iMac is not cute. Even some Mac fans I know think it's pretty ugly.
-- my $.02
ah, but handling the 6-ft blonde chick is SO much more fun than handling Linux!
;-p
You make your points well, but some of your claims are rather debatable.
Small footprint: yes, this is definitely an advantage of the iMac. I wonder though how many people really even considered this in their purchasing decision.
"Coolness": well, that really depends on who you ask. I know people who think it's absolutely hideous (including some die-hard Mac fans), and there are others who think it's incredibly great.
Price/performance: well, not at all. You can get much better performing PCs for the same cost (or less) than the iMac. For example, a PC from Quantex (I have a Quantex and have been most impressed with it, and their tech support on those few occasions I needed it):
for $1218:
Intel Celeron Processor 333MHz
96MB SDRAM
17" Monitor
16MB Voodoo 3 2000 AGP 2x video
8.4 Gig Ultra ATA Hard Disk
56K fax/modem
128-bit PCI wavetable sound card
32X Max Variable Speed CDROM Drive
Stereo speakers
Keyboard and MS mouse
USB
3.5" 1.44MB Floppy Drive
Quantex ATX Mid Tower Case
MS Windows 98
Corel WordPerfect Office Suite 8
MS Money 97
Dr. Solomon's AntiVirus
AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve, Epoch software
and other misc. titles
3-year limited warranty with 1 year on-site service
24-hr./7-day Technical Support
============================
versus the iMac for $1199:
PowerPC G3 processor @ 266MHz
32 MB SDRAM
15" Monitor
6 MB ATI Rage Pro Turbo
6 Gig IDE hard disk
56K modem
ethernet port
sound (of unspecified capabilities)
24x variable speed CDROM
USB
Keyboard & mouse
MacOS 8.5.1
AppleWorks
Adobe Page Mill
Quicken 98
Earthlink software
and a couple other misc. titles
plus whatever tech support situation Apple has
======================
The two machines have almost exactly the same price, with comparable software bundles, but the hardware on the Quantex is just leagues ahead of the iMac.
I can attest that setup of the Quantex should also be about as easy as the iMac. Cables are all color coded, making initial setup of the box easy. Also included is a easy-to-read/use setup guide, which is basically a poster-like thing with basic instructions in case you need it. All you do is plug the cables into their color-coded positions and turn the thing on. AOL setup is easy, and you're on the Net quickly.
oh, BTW, since you asked even Dell can do better than the iMac: ($1156 gives Celeron 333, 64MB SDRAM, 17" monitor, ATI 8MB AGP video, 32x CDROM, 64voice wavetable sound, 56K modem, Win98, MS Works 99 and MS Money 99, Keyboard and Logitech Mouse w/wheel, 3-yr warranty, 1-yr next day onsite service, floppy drive, McAfee Antivirus, yadda yadda yadda)
As you've pointed out, coupling and having children is the natural thing for humans to do, right? The easiest thing.
Sure, coupling is the easiest thing. I don't think that's what he meant; he said it's "certainly not as hard as finding someone who understands you and who you understand." Finding someone like that is rather more difficult than finding someone to have sex with.
Sure, having children isn't that hard, at least for the guy :-). It's raising them properly that is the challenge, and where the reward comes in. Belittling those who put decades into this, I think, is what is really angering a lot of us. If RMS doesn't want to have kids, great, that's his decision. But to trivialize the work and dedication that raising a family takes, and the importance of doing this well, is simply ignorant. The quality of society we will have in the future depends to a much greater extent on how well people raise their children, than on whether everyone thinks RMS is the greatest thing since sliced bread. RMS has done a lot, yes, and sure let's all give him credit for his contributions. But his chosen life's work is certainly not more important than that of others who choose to have a family.
What isn't cool is the eventual disintegration of society and the environment because of an overpopulated world of generation after generation of complacent do-nothing family-havers
And since when does having a family imply being a complacent do-nothing? There are lots of people out there making valuble contributions to society, through whatever their field of expertise is, and also through raising the next generation to continue the work in the future. The two are not mutually exclusive.
It would take so little to change the world, but we don't, simply because we tend to gravitate towards what comes naturally to us. Like childrearing
So if we all stop having children, in order to "change the world", what do we accomplish? We eliminate the species from the universe. Sure, it changes the world, but what the hell is the point if there's nobody left to enjoy it?
You mean besides the fact that he's living proof that if you put idealism before nature, one person can defeat even the largest problems? If everyone did as much with their life as RMS has, there would be no problems on earth. We would be living in a perfect society.
Why do you think that idealism is opposite to nature? Having a family could very well be true to one's ideals; idealism does not imply becoming a loner. If we all followed the sort of idealism RMS has humanity would cease to exist in a few decades. Then what have we gained? Nothing. We wouldn't have a perfect society. We'd have no society. No problems on earth? I doubt it, not that it would matter since there would be nobody left to solve any that did appear.
And since when has RMS defeated "the largest problems"? Has he eliminated hatred? Created world peace? Found a cure to a deadly disease? Secured an end to oppression around the globe? No. He's dedicated himself to telling everyone that software should be free. And created a lot of great software along the way. But this hardly qualifies as defeating one of the world's greatest problems. Let's try to keep things in perspective.
the Celeron doesn't support SSE, yet it still did better than the K6-3 (at same clock rates) on most tests...so it's not a result of benchmark bias toward SSE.
And from a realistic standpoint, you have to work with the software available. So it doesn't matter if you have these great 3DNow! instructions if your software doesn't make use of them.
anyone remember the "live video" on the machines in that movie (which I think were Macs)? Only problem was, you could see the Quicktime scrollbar moving along beneath the "live" video!
I also thought it was dumb how they made the movie politically correct by making the girl the computer genius and the boy unknowledgable, versus the boy being the one with the knowledge like it was in the book. Realistically, the boy was the more likely candidate for computer know-how anyway .
well, they could if you install it (there's MkLinux or PPC, I've heard PPC is better) but I don't know of anyone who sells Linux PowerBooks. My guess is you'd have to do it yourself. I don't know how PowerBook prices compare to similar notebooks from PC makers. If it's overpriced (like the Apple desktops) then maybe you'd want to go for a PC notebook. But if not, the PowerBooks are supposedly pretty good (never used one, myself).