Microsoft is struggling to get features into Vista that Mac OS X has had from the beginning.
Apple steals as many ideas from Microsoft as the latter from the former. Neither of them invents anything, they just become first to market ideas from 3rd parties.
Microsoft has taken advantage of Apple's innovation before and thrived in doing so. I think it's prudent for Apple to keep its guard up and its kernel safely locked away until it has enough momentum and market share to make it a smart move.
I don't think MS was ever planning to steal from the OSX kernel; if they had, Windows would have turned into Unix variant a long time ago. Most of what MS might steal is in the GUI - the way the system interacts with users and the things it offers them. The hard part about innovation for companies like this is the idea, not implementation. Stealing an idea is safe because it's often not illegal (even with patents), but stealing code is very dangerous, and you can't expect MS to do this when given access to the OSX kernel.
I imagine that Microsoft's first look at a MacBook made them feel like Apple felt when it got its first look at Windows 98; "Holy shit!"
Is that good or bad? The only interest MS would have in the MacBook would be that it is capable of running Windows. Otherwise it offers no direct competition to them.
Their "Think Different" campaign included famous progressive thinkers, and the phrase "Think Different" implies progressive thought by definition. Steve Jobs has always portrayed himself and his company as hippies, proudly branding their devices "Designed in Cupertino, California" to go along with that ideal (California has been the center of American progressive thought for a long time). People buy from Apple because they see it as a hip company, and "hip" and "progressive" go hand-in-hand. Their image is indeed one of the most important aspects of the company's current-day success.
If you want the PS3 to thrive, cut the price in half and let the lower-end model use Dual-Layer discs.
This isn't an option for Sony. The primary purpose of having Blu-Ray on the PS3 is to get the format into consumers' hands. Without the monopoly of Blu-Ray on the PS3, the head start HD-DVD has on it will make it all but impossible for Sony to get anywhere with Blu-Ray. Even if they drop Blu-Ray from only the cheaper PS3, they might as well officially raise the white flag in the next-gen DVD format wars.
Re:I hope Slashdot makes it into the "silver packa
on
Net Neutrality or Not?
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· Score: 1
You are much better off exclusivley watching fox news, reading free republic, and listening to Rush.
In an industry greatly influenced by massive hype machines Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo has mastered the art of the underhype. In some ways they've become the Apple of gaming: the old classic that has continuously kept the larger companies in check by reminding them what gaming is supposed to be. Much like Apple they don't hype raw numbers, but rather the greater experience. They make weak claims about power without sounding presumptuous, and rather than saying "we know better than you and you don't need power" as many companies might, they're saying "we'll show you that you don't want power". It's that sort of soft language that represents underhype.
Thus, they're simultaneously lowering expectations about power while building anticipation for something completely subjective (fun), rather than something mechanised and unaffected by opinion, like polygon counts or megahertz. Thus, when they finally release the Wii and it actually does turn out to be a reasonably powerful machine that also seems to make gaming fun again (if people want to believe this, they will), Nintendo can say "Gaming is fun again! Oh yeah, and it's powerful too". Nintendo wins.
Deep down, people want to believe that gaming is more than just graphics, and if the Wii gets it right, we'll all believe them. Everyone wins (except Sony and MS).
Re:We'll Be Prepared for the Rarest of Events
on
Back to the Bunker
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· Score: 1
I know you're being sarcastic, but think how many people across the country will feel this way. As a poor college student, I know that I'm not currently doing much to keep things running, but as long as we're thinking forward, I'd like to think that I'll be one of those people in the future. My point is that some of the most important people are not the ones who seem to be in charge, and likewise many people currently in charge won't really be that important post-nuclear holocaust.
We'll Be Prepared for the Rarest of Events
on
Back to the Bunker
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I, for one, feel that my money could be going to much more useful places, like developing alternative fuels to oil or cures for common lethal diseses. Frankly, if these bunkers became necessary, I'd probably be pretty offended that they don't consider me valuable enough to warrant a place in one. I hope they're also reserving space for scientists, physicists, doctors, civil engineers, electrical engineers, computer engineers, etc. etc. However I have a feeling that these bunkers will be filled with politicians who will have no purpose, after arising from nuclear holocaust, but to attempt to get surviving mutant population to vote for more defense programs while they struggle to find food.
It's good to know we will be able to handle an occurrence that has killed less than 1000 people each year. I wonder if we'll be prepared for another realistic disaster like Katrina or Rita, or if we'll be prepared for the millions who die of heart disease. Hurry to the bunkers!
It makes you wonder what their real goal was, given the guise of "we think it might have been a bomb". If you really think something in a mysterious (to you) box is a bomb, why on earth would you pry it open and start pulling things apart, clearly with no real understanding about electronic devices?
If your job is to open things up and find bombs, then what's stopping you from simply opening up everything, even if every common sense bone in your body says "this is a legitimate product, not a bomb"? After all, this is just some traveller's crap, not mine. The whole thing reaks of undertrained staff who are not properly overseen and managed, and who have no deterrent from their superiors against unnecessary searches.
Then again I think it's possible that they do this sort of thing as retaliation against travellers who confuse them; as punishment for people who try to travel with devices that they can't understand. They're subtly saying "if you want to be different, which makes our job more complicated, we're going to make your life more complicated. This guy thinks he's hot snot and probably makes more than me - I'll show him."
The President will over-reach, Congress will express holy indignation
This isn't going to happen as long as the same party owns all three branches. The only way the government functions fairly is when more than one party is in power, so that the feelings and needs of the minority are upheld. It's clear from the election of 2004 (and this NSA poll) that I'm in the minority, so this is important to me. Honestly, I preferred when they were deadlocked; at least then the status quo was maintained.
For 50 people or less, this service is called Waste, and it was originated by Justin Frankel of Nullsoft several years ago. He built it, released the source code on Nullsoft's site, and AOL pulled the code within days. He knew what he was doing though, and the source code made it into the open under GPL, to be further developed by others. Waste is somewhat unrefined and development has stagnated, but it's fully encrypted and each network is restricted to known clients, and it seems to work quite well apart from a few minor inconveniences.
"That it fell flat on the audience because they don't like being made fun of is of no concern."
I don't think it fell as flat as it seemed. CSPAN's audio mixing put considerably less emphasis on the audience than is typical during a comedy act. When we're used to hearing crowd reaction, it can be weird not to hear it, and I'd bet the laughter (and groaning) was stronger than we heard in the video.
Part of the "illusion" of minimal crowd reaction was likely due to CSpan's audio configuration, which leaned heavily on the speaker and very little on the crowd. Since most comedy shows mic the crowd for cheering and laughter, it's somewhat strange to watch a comic when you can't hear that live reaction. I think that this is the case here, and I'm guessing the laughter was quite a bit stronger than it seems in the video.
I meant that the front-page header for the article was bright red, as opposed to green like everything else. I think I just loaded the page at the exact time it was posted and I guess I got the subscriber pre-release color, or something. I thought/. was trying to bring extra emphasis to this particular article.
That's somewhat valuable, but unfortunately it doesn't provide very usable results if the processed images look poor, as you suggest. When you use a RAW converter that comes with the camera, like Canon's Digital Photo Professional, the software includes camera-specific profiles that allow it to compensate for the weaknesses of each camera in distinct ways (noise reduction is a very big part of this). Adobe has done a decent job mimicking these algorithms for each camera's RAW files (not a small task), though I personally prefer the "prettying-up" that DPP does. It's good for Aperture to offer the unprocessed or "faithful" version of each RAW file, but ultimately they will need to incorporate a sense of "style" into the profile for each camera so that it does the same "cleanup" that the other RAW converters do, and offer that method of processing as well.
Remember that even the camera itself does quite a bit of processing to clean each image before saving it as a JPEG, so it could be argued applying those same algorithms to the RAW version of the image would be a different version of "faithful". Sometimes a computer can truly make an image look better without sacrificing detail and without being unfaithful to the original image.
Slashdot Mirror
Er, it's nice that it's free, but can't we have a standard format available like HTML or PDF? It's a nuisance to read a book as fixed images.
Apple steals as many ideas from Microsoft as the latter from the former. Neither of them invents anything, they just become first to market ideas from 3rd parties.
I don't think MS was ever planning to steal from the OSX kernel; if they had, Windows would have turned into Unix variant a long time ago. Most of what MS might steal is in the GUI - the way the system interacts with users and the things it offers them. The hard part about innovation for companies like this is the idea, not implementation. Stealing an idea is safe because it's often not illegal (even with patents), but stealing code is very dangerous, and you can't expect MS to do this when given access to the OSX kernel.
Is that good or bad? The only interest MS would have in the MacBook would be that it is capable of running Windows. Otherwise it offers no direct competition to them.
Instead of using the Print Screen key, just point your trusty Digital Rebel at the screen and voila ... real photo.
Where might one get one of these "cheap iPods" of which you speak?
Their "Think Different" campaign included famous progressive thinkers, and the phrase "Think Different" implies progressive thought by definition. Steve Jobs has always portrayed himself and his company as hippies, proudly branding their devices "Designed in Cupertino, California" to go along with that ideal (California has been the center of American progressive thought for a long time). People buy from Apple because they see it as a hip company, and "hip" and "progressive" go hand-in-hand. Their image is indeed one of the most important aspects of the company's current-day success.
This isn't an option for Sony. The primary purpose of having Blu-Ray on the PS3 is to get the format into consumers' hands. Without the monopoly of Blu-Ray on the PS3, the head start HD-DVD has on it will make it all but impossible for Sony to get anywhere with Blu-Ray. Even if they drop Blu-Ray from only the cheaper PS3, they might as well officially raise the white flag in the next-gen DVD format wars.
But I love their music!
That's okay, no one meta moderates anyway.
Thus, they're simultaneously lowering expectations about power while building anticipation for something completely subjective (fun), rather than something mechanised and unaffected by opinion, like polygon counts or megahertz. Thus, when they finally release the Wii and it actually does turn out to be a reasonably powerful machine that also seems to make gaming fun again (if people want to believe this, they will), Nintendo can say "Gaming is fun again! Oh yeah, and it's powerful too". Nintendo wins.
Deep down, people want to believe that gaming is more than just graphics, and if the Wii gets it right, we'll all believe them. Everyone wins (except Sony and MS).
I know you're being sarcastic, but think how many people across the country will feel this way. As a poor college student, I know that I'm not currently doing much to keep things running, but as long as we're thinking forward, I'd like to think that I'll be one of those people in the future. My point is that some of the most important people are not the ones who seem to be in charge, and likewise many people currently in charge won't really be that important post-nuclear holocaust.
It's good to know we will be able to handle an occurrence that has killed less than 1000 people each year. I wonder if we'll be prepared for another realistic disaster like Katrina or Rita, or if we'll be prepared for the millions who die of heart disease. Hurry to the bunkers!
If your job is to open things up and find bombs, then what's stopping you from simply opening up everything, even if every common sense bone in your body says "this is a legitimate product, not a bomb"? After all, this is just some traveller's crap, not mine. The whole thing reaks of undertrained staff who are not properly overseen and managed, and who have no deterrent from their superiors against unnecessary searches.
Then again I think it's possible that they do this sort of thing as retaliation against travellers who confuse them; as punishment for people who try to travel with devices that they can't understand. They're subtly saying "if you want to be different, which makes our job more complicated, we're going to make your life more complicated. This guy thinks he's hot snot and probably makes more than me - I'll show him."
Native wifi support for only $100? It's about time! Toss the laptop and keep the OS!
Agreed, but you forgot the music industry. They've been seriously hurting artists and customers for decades, and the market still hasn't corrected.
It's a good thing that, as an American citizen, I don't have to worry about these violations of my privacy.
This isn't going to happen as long as the same party owns all three branches. The only way the government functions fairly is when more than one party is in power, so that the feelings and needs of the minority are upheld. It's clear from the election of 2004 (and this NSA poll) that I'm in the minority, so this is important to me. Honestly, I preferred when they were deadlocked; at least then the status quo was maintained.
Actually, it's moved: http://cdn.sfgate.com/gate/av/movies/2006/04/30/je tbugv2_m4.mp4
That's curious - a few years ago, I bet you would have said "PC" means "a machine running on the x86 architecture".
For 50 people or less, this service is called Waste, and it was originated by Justin Frankel of Nullsoft several years ago. He built it, released the source code on Nullsoft's site, and AOL pulled the code within days. He knew what he was doing though, and the source code made it into the open under GPL, to be further developed by others. Waste is somewhat unrefined and development has stagnated, but it's fully encrypted and each network is restricted to known clients, and it seems to work quite well apart from a few minor inconveniences.
I don't think it fell as flat as it seemed. CSPAN's audio mixing put considerably less emphasis on the audience than is typical during a comedy act. When we're used to hearing crowd reaction, it can be weird not to hear it, and I'd bet the laughter (and groaning) was stronger than we heard in the video.
Part of the "illusion" of minimal crowd reaction was likely due to CSpan's audio configuration, which leaned heavily on the speaker and very little on the crowd. Since most comedy shows mic the crowd for cheering and laughter, it's somewhat strange to watch a comic when you can't hear that live reaction. I think that this is the case here, and I'm guessing the laughter was quite a bit stronger than it seems in the video.
I meant that the front-page header for the article was bright red, as opposed to green like everything else. I think I just loaded the page at the exact time it was posted and I guess I got the subscriber pre-release color, or something. I thought /. was trying to bring extra emphasis to this particular article.
Oops, not red anymore ... I guess I experienced a glitch in the Matrix.
Why is this red? It seems like there are many posts worthy of being red.
Remember that even the camera itself does quite a bit of processing to clean each image before saving it as a JPEG, so it could be argued applying those same algorithms to the RAW version of the image would be a different version of "faithful". Sometimes a computer can truly make an image look better without sacrificing detail and without being unfaithful to the original image.