Doesn't it defeat the purpose of running OS X on an arbitrary machine if you have to obtain said arbitrary machine from a dedicated vendor that charges you a premium, or requires at least as much time-money as the premium the vendor you're trying to avoid charges you.
Seems like a case of freedom being nothing left to lose.
I must say, I've been sitting at this PostgreSQL machine at this contract web design gig, and I don't know what all of you Postgres people are talking about! I started this 100 row SELECT statement 20 minutes ago, and it STILL hasn't finished. MySQL has it's problems, but seriously, guys!
Always look over your head for joke before replying. I wish I could find a link to the original post.
I don't think this is a First Sale issues, since, clearly, the discs are at no time sold. They send them promotionally to people in the recording, film, and media industries for review, evaluation etc. I get them all the time because some random label hopes I'll tell a director to put in these "hot new tracks" (or not). They got a big sticker on them that says, essentially, "NFR". I don't think they're the property of the label, strictly, but the labels and the media endpoints that consume the NFR discs both benefit from having them. Maybe selling them is de jure legal, but it's really dickish.
Any developers wanna opine on how they'd feel if some software reviewer at cnet started selling their NFR copies of pre-release software?
But thats the point, his movies are like Dead Souls, and he's Chichikov. His movies don't have to make a dime in the theaters because he makes a profit off of the very act of making the movie, without regard for selling the movie or entertaining anyone.
All that money came from the German taxpayer to make German cinema, to give it artistic license. As I said, I'm not against people working, but imagine if the money for Bloodrayne was spent on The Lives of Others.
As someone who actually works in the film industry, I'm not too quick to complain, since all of his films generally result in people working....
But on the other hand, his films are some of the most cynically exploitive junk you've ever seen. He uses a provision in the German tax code to get tax credits and free money, and uses those to bootstrap foreign distribution pre-sales and video-game tie in deals. In effect, he's made money before he even starts rolling the camera, and so the quality of his film itself is irrelevant as long as it cuts a good trailer, will have a good poster, and has enough "bankable" stars in the project to stimulate box office. It's essentially the Roger Corman model, just without the class and punk authenticity.
Personally I think this is a good thing. Better to spend money to do things the tried and true way than to experiment with a "hi-tech" solution that may or may not have exploitable weaknesses in it.
While you are absolutely correct that science is based on faith we do not have any other belief system that comes close to the usefullness of science.
I think one should make a better effort to distinguish between faith in a human-looking omnipotent being that intervenes in human affairs and a faith that is held in the face of Cartesian doubt. "Faith in science" so to speak, is the latter, and while it is faith, it requires little more than to assert that a person is capable of knowing anything to be true. Other faiths require a bit more confession than that.
The entire text of the sermon can be read here. The worst bits, the ones that get all the play, are essentially Wright quoting someone else, inside a parenthetical aside from his main disquisition, using an essentially "devil's advocate" voice. Jerry Falwell's comments, even in context, on the same topic were far worse.
When discussing evolution, natural selection, abiogenesis, cosmology, climatology etc. just don't be jerks. Speak with a level head and a personable tone. Speak to what you can prove scientifcally, and don't make things personal by introducing subjectivity. Keep in mind who you are speaking to.
I think the problem transcends the delivery; it think the message itself is a little broken. Scientists know what science is, they know the scientific method, they could write you a ten-page paper on the meaning of the word evidence. When they speak to lay people, it's clear that alot of lay people would be interested in what they have to say, but they don't know what science is; they just know scientists use big words and swing facts around like their pastors swing truths around. People aren't ignorant, and very few of them are religious zealots, and if you have superior knowledge you can talk down to most people without too much trouble (worked for centuries, after all), but scientists and lay people speak a different language.
Ask a hundred lay people what "falsifiable" means, or "fact", or "reasonable doubt" (important in many contexts), or "rationality". People aren't ignorant of science, they're ignorant of what it means to think abstractly and know something to be "true if and only if x".
Why would it be in the interest of science to point out possible conflicts with non-scientific views?
Most of the present conflicts that the AAAS is considering are not science versus non-science, but science versus a belief system wedded to scientism. I think they know they've really dropped the ball -- the real problem isn't that people don't know what acids and bases are, it's that they don't know why and they assume any system with big terminology and internal consistency is science, too.
Monorails are efficient and sparkly shiny but are almost universally inappropriate except for certain very limited transportation scenarios (airport people-movers, theme parks, etc). They require alot of service and very expensive infrastructure. The old honda just needs a road, works on your schedule and is comparatively inexpensive to maintain on a per capita basis.
Until I got my first Amiga of course. 68000 assembly language reads like a great literary work.
...
there were also machines called "macs" which were identifiable by the fact that they used completely different hardware than a PC (stuff made by Motorola.. pfft..
This is just one data point in a rather big history. At least they didn't confuse feet-per-second with meters-per-second; at least they didn't cause their CPU to thrash due to a radar being left on and overloading the interrupts. Also, this is the same organization that managed to put two quite-autonomous rovers on Mars and keep them rolling for, what is it now?, 4 years. When one of the rovers did have a software failure, and a really bad mission-killing one, they were able to debug it and update firmware OTA from light-minutes distance, on a machine that was only intermittently alive.
They screw things up, but they seem to do very well at fault-tolerance and recovery, and I think if I were in automated systems, I'd wanna be at NASA over anywhere else, period.
As for interpreted languages - Apple isn't going to stop you from using Python to make your application, so long as your application cannot run arbitrary Python code.
Are you so sure about that? That'd mean Apple would have to go thru your source and make sure you never called eval(), or if you did you never ran it on tainted strings (which would sortof defeat the purpose of calling eval). It'd probably be easier if Apple just shipped a python interpreter on the platform, but cut out all the eval() and system()-type functions.
I must agree. One of the reasons I never bothered writing an app for my Treo (a timecode calculator in this case) was on account of the copious amounts of "IR Beaming" piracy of titles. I knew only about one in a few hundred users of my program would ever pay me. At least on the iPhone platform, I can be assured that every user has to pay it, thus I can charge a very low price.
Cell phone companies make a tidy bit of change selling apps to kids on their sidekicks and corporate people who want the Good suite on their mobiles, why would Apple's situation be any different.
30% off the top isn't great, but it also doesn't require hosting, fulfillment, or anything else. Just ship them a binary and they send you a check in the mail each month until people stop buying (or an ABI change breaks your binary). I don't know how refunds are handled (or allowed at all), or documentation or support either, really.
Apple also will allow you to notify your purchasers and update your apps on their handsets through an automated system tied into the store; this was something that was really lacking on Palm IMHO. A new version would come out of some little helper widget and you'd never know since you'd never visit the site again.
The app store is news, as it the 70/30 split, but what about these submissions:
SDK features:
Cocoa Touch: Multi-touch events, Multi-touch controls, Acceleromter, View Hierarchy, Localization, Alerts, Web View, People Picker, Image Picker, Camera
Media: Core Audio, OpenAL, Audio Mixing, Audio Recording, Video Playback, JPG, PNG, TIFF, PDS Quartz, Core Animation, Embedded OpenGL
Core Services: Collections, Address Book, Networking, File access, SQLite, Core Location, Net Services Threading, Preferences, URL utilities
Core OS: OS X Kernel, BSD TCP/IP, Sockets, Power Management, Keychain, Certificates, File System, Lib System, Security, Bonjour
OpenGL Games:
Stoked about the little SDK that was announced today? Apparently, so was Apple, as it's already starting to announce the first games to go along with it. For starters, we've got Touch Fighter and Spore (!!!), the first of which was somehow thrown together in two weeks, the latter of which won't be available until September. Also, users can expect Super Monkey Ball, which was hailed being a notch above your average "cellphone game." Simmer on that for a second, we'll keep updating as we get more in.
MS Exchange:
Apple announced that it has licensed Exhange ActiveSync protocol from Microsoft, which will make it easier for business customers to get their email on an iPhone.
Or mine:
Apple has just wrapped up their iPhone development roadmap and here are the features to be presented with version 2.0, due in June: Push email and contacts, ActiveSync supporting Exchange, remote wipe. Several video games were demoed using the iPhone accelerometer and OpenGL on the iPhone, such as Spore and Super Monkeyball. SDK with development in Xcode was announced, performance suite and remote debugging of iPhone apps over the sync cable. Apple will sell apps through an iTunes-style store, that will work OTA from the iPhone or with the host computer.
It would appear the slashdot editor simply went with the submission with the most "Apple is teh EEEEVILL" slant.
m ake films costing a bit less and stop paying that much for "above the line talent"
If you don't pay them, they'll go somewhere else, and people go to movies based on who's in them. Jumper is atrocious, and the critics told everyone so, but put Hayden Christianson and Sam Jackson on the poster, and you'll still open at number 1; it may not turn much of a profit, but now the videogame has a good launch, and Jumper 2 is assured boffo pre-tracking.
there are films that are make most of their income from ticket sales, and there are films that seem to be loss leaders in all of their markets and only generate bad publicity for the studio.:-S
Even really big, successful, good-press films lose money; remember that stars and directors and producers cut most of the gross box-office receipts up front, in such a way that films like Forrest Gump and Hook STILL haven't turned a profit, despite grossing several multiples of their budget on screens, because such a huge percentage of the gross is redirected to the above-the-line talent. The guild deals on royalties and residuals for writers and actors also are at their most dis-advantageous for the studio for theatrical; the DVD is much better for the studios and distributors in terms of their deal.
I challenge you seriously, to find any film this side ofReservoir Dogs that made more profit in theaters than on the shelf at Amazon and Wal*mart.
Slashdot Mirror
Doesn't it defeat the purpose of running OS X on an arbitrary machine if you have to obtain said arbitrary machine from a dedicated vendor that charges you a premium, or requires at least as much time-money as the premium the vendor you're trying to avoid charges you.
Seems like a case of freedom being nothing left to lose.
I must say, I've been sitting at this PostgreSQL machine at this contract web design gig, and I don't know what all of you Postgres people are talking about! I started this 100 row SELECT statement 20 minutes ago, and it STILL hasn't finished. MySQL has it's problems, but seriously, guys!
Always look over your head for joke before replying. I wish I could find a link to the original post.
I don't think this is a First Sale issues, since, clearly, the discs are at no time sold. They send them promotionally to people in the recording, film, and media industries for review, evaluation etc. I get them all the time because some random label hopes I'll tell a director to put in these "hot new tracks" (or not). They got a big sticker on them that says, essentially, "NFR". I don't think they're the property of the label, strictly, but the labels and the media endpoints that consume the NFR discs both benefit from having them. Maybe selling them is de jure legal, but it's really dickish.
Any developers wanna opine on how they'd feel if some software reviewer at cnet started selling their NFR copies of pre-release software?
But thats the point, his movies are like Dead Souls, and he's Chichikov. His movies don't have to make a dime in the theaters because he makes a profit off of the very act of making the movie, without regard for selling the movie or entertaining anyone.
All that money came from the German taxpayer to make German cinema, to give it artistic license. As I said, I'm not against people working, but imagine if the money for Bloodrayne was spent on The Lives of Others.
As someone who actually works in the film industry, I'm not too quick to complain, since all of his films generally result in people working....
But on the other hand, his films are some of the most cynically exploitive junk you've ever seen. He uses a provision in the German tax code to get tax credits and free money, and uses those to bootstrap foreign distribution pre-sales and video-game tie in deals. In effect, he's made money before he even starts rolling the camera, and so the quality of his film itself is irrelevant as long as it cuts a good trailer, will have a good poster, and has enough "bankable" stars in the project to stimulate box office. It's essentially the Roger Corman model, just without the class and punk authenticity.
I'm coming to take your computer back.
Yours truly,
Shade of Herman Hollerith.
Add FibreChannel to that list, though technically you can run IP and HIPPI over FC as well, SCSI seems to be the most popular.
I think one should make a better effort to distinguish between faith in a human-looking omnipotent being that intervenes in human affairs and a faith that is held in the face of Cartesian doubt. "Faith in science" so to speak, is the latter, and while it is faith, it requires little more than to assert that a person is capable of knowing anything to be true. Other faiths require a bit more confession than that.
The entire text of the sermon can be read here. The worst bits, the ones that get all the play, are essentially Wright quoting someone else, inside a parenthetical aside from his main disquisition, using an essentially "devil's advocate" voice. Jerry Falwell's comments, even in context, on the same topic were far worse.
Just burning up the comment threads on this one.
I think the problem transcends the delivery; it think the message itself is a little broken. Scientists know what science is, they know the scientific method, they could write you a ten-page paper on the meaning of the word evidence. When they speak to lay people, it's clear that alot of lay people would be interested in what they have to say, but they don't know what science is; they just know scientists use big words and swing facts around like their pastors swing truths around. People aren't ignorant, and very few of them are religious zealots, and if you have superior knowledge you can talk down to most people without too much trouble (worked for centuries, after all), but scientists and lay people speak a different language.
Ask a hundred lay people what "falsifiable" means, or "fact", or "reasonable doubt" (important in many contexts), or "rationality". People aren't ignorant of science, they're ignorant of what it means to think abstractly and know something to be "true if and only if x".
Most of the present conflicts that the AAAS is considering are not science versus non-science, but science versus a belief system wedded to scientism. I think they know they've really dropped the ball -- the real problem isn't that people don't know what acids and bases are, it's that they don't know why and they assume any system with big terminology and internal consistency is science, too.
The general populace votes. This is valid unless one does not accept that science has a role to play in public policy, of course.
Also, people need to be prepared for when the lizard people come and try to take over the Earth. The lizard people will lock up the scientists first.
Monorails are efficient and sparkly shiny but are almost universally inappropriate except for certain very limited transportation scenarios (airport people-movers, theme parks, etc). They require alot of service and very expensive infrastructure. The old honda just needs a road, works on your schedule and is comparatively inexpensive to maintain on a per capita basis.
Just sayin.
I know the slant of the passage is humorous, but Motorola made the 680xx line of CPUs.
This is just one data point in a rather big history. At least they didn't confuse feet-per-second with meters-per-second; at least they didn't cause their CPU to thrash due to a radar being left on and overloading the interrupts. Also, this is the same organization that managed to put two quite-autonomous rovers on Mars and keep them rolling for, what is it now?, 4 years. When one of the rovers did have a software failure, and a really bad mission-killing one, they were able to debug it and update firmware OTA from light-minutes distance, on a machine that was only intermittently alive.
They screw things up, but they seem to do very well at fault-tolerance and recovery, and I think if I were in automated systems, I'd wanna be at NASA over anywhere else, period.
Are you so sure about that? That'd mean Apple would have to go thru your source and make sure you never called eval(), or if you did you never ran it on tainted strings (which would sortof defeat the purpose of calling eval). It'd probably be easier if Apple just shipped a python interpreter on the platform, but cut out all the eval() and system()-type functions.
I must agree. One of the reasons I never bothered writing an app for my Treo (a timecode calculator in this case) was on account of the copious amounts of "IR Beaming" piracy of titles. I knew only about one in a few hundred users of my program would ever pay me. At least on the iPhone platform, I can be assured that every user has to pay it, thus I can charge a very low price.
Cell phone companies make a tidy bit of change selling apps to kids on their sidekicks and corporate people who want the Good suite on their mobiles, why would Apple's situation be any different.
thanks!
Most everyone uses Sparkle, which I frankly think works better than Software Update.
Apple also will allow you to notify your purchasers and update your apps on their handsets through an automated system tied into the store; this was something that was really lacking on Palm IMHO. A new version would come out of some little helper widget and you'd never know since you'd never visit the site again.
The app store is news, as it the 70/30 split, but what about these submissions:
SDK features:
OpenGL Games:
MS Exchange:
Or mine:
It would appear the slashdot editor simply went with the submission with the most "Apple is teh EEEEVILL" slant.
They cost more than they bring in at the box office, thus studios sell DVDs. That's the point.
If you don't pay them, they'll go somewhere else, and people go to movies based on who's in them. Jumper is atrocious, and the critics told everyone so, but put Hayden Christianson and Sam Jackson on the poster, and you'll still open at number 1; it may not turn much of a profit, but now the videogame has a good launch, and Jumper 2 is assured boffo pre-tracking.
Even really big, successful, good-press films lose money; remember that stars and directors and producers cut most of the gross box-office receipts up front, in such a way that films like Forrest Gump and Hook STILL haven't turned a profit, despite grossing several multiples of their budget on screens, because such a huge percentage of the gross is redirected to the above-the-line talent. The guild deals on royalties and residuals for writers and actors also are at their most dis-advantageous for the studio for theatrical; the DVD is much better for the studios and distributors in terms of their deal.
I challenge you seriously, to find any film this side ofReservoir Dogs that made more profit in theaters than on the shelf at Amazon and Wal*mart.