Don't look now, but your moderation score is slipping fast. Not sure if that proves anything other than how foolhardy it is to crow about one's score prematurely....
Face it. These people (a lot of them) buying the new HP book are buying it because everyone says they have to and to get a preview of the next movie.
Uh, the Harry Potter book that will be the basis for the next movie came out years ago. The fact is that the Harry Potter series was a children's literature sensation before even the first movie. I'm sure the movies have contributed the popularity of the subsequent books, but the first movie was highly anticpated because of the books.
Yes, the books sell largely on word of mouth. And the word of mouth is so positive because a lot of people, young and old, have found the books enjoyable. And people, young and old, seem to be actually reading it, all 870 pages. In the week after release, I couldn't go anywhere without seeing somebody toting the book.
When thirty percent of all adult Americans believe that the US have found WMD, and that the Iraqis used them against you in the recent war, statements like "most people are not fools and victims of hype" become so absurd it's not even funny.
Perhaps. But at least some of us know that it is improper to put quote marks around something that isn't a quote.
Professional wrestlers are incredible stunt men. I personally don't much care for the scenery-chewing soap opera or scenery chewing, although some of them do seem to have some real acting talent. But the stunt work is amazing. I'm impressed to see these huge men carrying out these acrobatic maneuvers and big falls week after week, often well into their 40's. And many of the wrestling moves are real, albeit highly choreographed and modified for safety.
Most people who beieve this are very unperceptive.
Things are popular for a reason, and that reason is not that most people are fools and victims of hype. It may not be to your particular taste, but if you don't understand it's virtues, then you are missing something.
I'm not surprised that the Harry Potter books are selling better to a modern audience. And the Harry Potter books have a lot to offer. The Narnia series gets heavy very quickly, and are deadly serious. The Harry Potter books sugar coat everything in whimsy, and use it to slip in serious themes. This sucks the kids in, and I think that the contrast is a big part of the adult appeal.
In a literary sense, HP certainly not as well-written as the Lewis books in a literary sense (Tolkien aside, not much is), but they are nevertheless brilliantly crafted. Rowling has a very acute sense of how children think and feel, and has created some very strong characters. Harry, in particular, is very successful as a character who is heroic, but far from perfect, with much to learn.
It sounds like a good idea, but most TiVo users who wanted to have more space or convert their collection to DVD have already figured out how to do so with minimal investment (TiVoNet, DVD-R, hard drive) -- much less than the price of this new TiVo.
The target audience for this product is clearly not current TiVo users--it is people who basically want a DVD recorder whom TiVo hopes to seduce into shelling out another few hundred bucks (or sign up for a monthly plan) to get access to the full set of TiVo features. Existing TiVo owners would be more likely to just buy a bare-bones DVD recorder and hook it up to their current TiVo.
I wonder if TiVo will offer their $100 Home Media Option to owners of the DVD/TiVo unit. This would make it very attractive to me. I wouldn't be willing to shell out $300 (or pay a monthly fee) for the full service package plus another $100 for HMO. But just the HMO would make this unit very attractive. I could have it in another room, transfer programs that I want to record to it over my home network from my existing TiVo, and also use it to listen to music and view photos from my computer.
And TVs don't go wrong very often. Adding the inconvenience of external devices is a bigger problem.
No, TVs don't go wrong nearly as often as items with mechanical components, such as VCRs, DVD players, etc. (haven't had TiVo long enough to judge). But the more stuff you incorporate, the more opportunity there is for something to break. Combo TV/VCRs never sold very well, so it seems like the convenience of a simpler hookup doesn't make up for the inherent inconvenience of an all-in-one unit.
It should be possible to design something that doesn't require a subscription.
Of course it is possible; just more expensive. The appeal of a subscription is that it spreads the cost over time, so that the upfront cost can be less and still yield a reasonable profit to the company. But if you don't want to pay a monthly subscription, you can buy a TiVo with subscription-free service today. The catch is that it costs about double the price of a TiVo without service.
Personally, I avoid all TV's with other video components built into them. A TV is a large, heavy item, and repairing it is a big production. Not to mention the fact that I can't watch TV at all until it gets back from the shop. I want my TV to be a simple and trouble-free as possible, and all ancilliary components to be in separate, small boxes.
Assume I need to compile & run a big application on the system, and your newest system doesn't have very good compilers. Do you seriously mean it is "unfair" that a 6-month old system runs the code faster?
It is not a matter of fair or unfair, it is a matter of what the object of the test is. If you want to test how well a system will perform in actual with current software, then it doesn't make sense to use SPEC at all--the logical approach is to use some representative combination of application-based tests, as Apple did with Photoshop, Mathematica, and video applications. On the other hand, if you want to test the performance of a new processor, and get some idea of how it can be expected to perform relative to others, all things being equal, then you want to use an approach that is not biased toward older processors, where developers have had more time to figure out how to tweak the compiler for that processor. So you try to find a "generic" compiler that is as similar as possible between the two systems, with only the "basic" optimizations. Neither approach is perfect, of course; the application approach is going to underestimate how well a new system will perform once developers have a little more time to learn how to optimize for it, while the latter approach makes the assumption that fancy compiler tweaks are not, in the long run, going to materially alter the relative standing of the two processors. But the combination of both approaches should be reasonably predictive.
That's why using the best compiler on the platform is beneficial.
However, this will always bias the test in favor of the older system, because compiler developers will have had more time to work out optimizations. So if you want to compare processor power, it is probably best to use the most generic compiler that is available for both systems.
The fact that everyone is nitpicking these benchmarks shows how close the performance is.
I think it just illustrates the depths of Mac envy. A lot of people have clearly been consoling themselves with the notion that Macs are underpowered/overpriced.
You guys are still all wrong about that. The serifs were used in print in an attempt to replicate the carved stone lettering that adorned buildings and stone-cut signs. And the reason why those serifs appeared (on stone-cut signs) was because the stone was often very brittle and would crumble at the corners of the letters.
This is all true, but it is really a historical footnote. Yes, the serifs were added to stone because it was hard to cut clean 90 degree corners. And they were added to printed text because they looked cool (because those stonecutters were artists who knew how to turn a handicap into a virtue). And we keep them today, even though modern stonecutting technology handles sans-serif fonts with ease, because they make text easier to read.
don't know about you, but it is normal for me to be doing several things at once on my computer. Listening to music, downloading email, munging video, plus about a hundred background tasks. The OS itself balances these separate tasks between the processors, so there is a very real and significant advantage to the dual processor even if the individual programs don't take advantage.
I can attest that in routine use, a dual processor 450 MHz G4 "feels" faster than a single-processor 800 MHz G4.
Apple turned off hyperthreading in the Dell precision machines, and disabled SSE2. These are modifications you're gonna notice using photoshop, so those benchmarks say nothing.
And how do you imagine Apple did that? Recompiled Photoshop from Adobe's source code (as if Adobe would share that with Apple)? I think that you are confusing the compiler options for the SPEC tests with the application tests. However, considering how little time Adobe has had to optimize Photoshop for the G5, and how little economic incentive they have to do so, I wouldn't be surprised if the Photoshop tests understate the advantage of the G5.
The thing is, they used GCC. GCC sucks at the really high performance stuff on Intel. GCC has been tweaked out by Apple for the PPC. To be fair they need to use the tweaked out Intel compiler like on the SPEC website. Then you will see Apple lags behind.
Tweaked for the new 64-bit PPCs already? Seems unlikely. And it is notable that the new Apple systems had a similar margin on the Photoshop tests.
Re:This will be another solid update
on
Jaguar is Over
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· Score: 1
Don't forget about all the software that requires 10.2, like Safari. Those of us who haven't spent the $130 for Jaguar can't run Safari
Yes, that is the point. The incentive to buy the latest OS is to obtain new features from Apple, like Safari. But aside from Apple's software that is linked to new OS editions, there is very little that requires 10.2. For example, you don't need 10.2 to run the latest versions of Camino or Mozilla, because Apple does indeed make it simple for developers to write their code once and have it run on all their system versions. Apple has been remarkably good about this. Very little application software has broken over the years (utilities, which are heavily tied to system specifics, tend to be another matter). Indeed, most application software from system 6, which ran on an entirely different processor, still runs fine under OSX.
This is very much true. My dual 450 MHz desktop "feels" considerably faster than my 800 MHz laptop. It's not that it is faster for any inidividual function (it's probably slower), but you can start something going in one application (loading web pages, copying files, importing a CD into iTunes), switch to another, and hardly ever notice a performance hit.
I doubt if Bill Gates personally concerns himself with the individual grant recipents, but that doesn't mean that he didn't play a role in formulating the awards program. While the Microsoft grant supposedly doesn't require a particular platform, it is easy to imagine that the particular mix of computers in a school could influence the likelihood of getting such awards.
One is tempted to suspect money under the table from Microsoft, but it is probably simpler: The school's IT people don't know anything about UNIX, and are too lazy to learn. But they don't want to lose their jobs, so rather than arguing "We're too lazy to learn another system," they say "It's too expensive to support two different systems." And the school board wasn't technically sophisticated enough to realize that they were being taken.
Isn't something just wrong with the very concept of people really doing nothing but thinking up of obscure concepts or ideas and getting money off of them when an individual or company, with genuine intent to create a working product, wants to create a product that happens to be covered by their patent?
Patents are published, and add to the body of public knowledge (which is the whole point of patents, to encourage the sharing of knowledge). So there is no reason why an inventor should necessarily be planning to produce the product himself. After all, production and distribution are very different skills than invention. Yes, there is a kind of sleazy practice of creating blocking patents, which anticipate an obvious idea that will be needed at some time in the future, but that nobody has gotten around to patenting yet. But I can't think of a reliable way of distinguishing the first kind of patent from the second. And very often, the blocking patent only has a few years to run by the time it actually becomes an issue.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't look now, but your moderation score is slipping fast. Not sure if that proves anything other than how foolhardy it is to crow about one's score prematurely....
Yes, the books sell largely on word of mouth. And the word of mouth is so positive because a lot of people, young and old, have found the books enjoyable. And people, young and old, seem to be actually reading it, all 870 pages. In the week after release, I couldn't go anywhere without seeing somebody toting the book.
Perhaps. But at least some of us know that it is improper to put quote marks around something that isn't a quote.
Professional wrestlers are incredible stunt men. I personally don't much care for the scenery-chewing soap opera or scenery chewing, although some of them do seem to have some real acting talent. But the stunt work is amazing. I'm impressed to see these huge men carrying out these acrobatic maneuvers and big falls week after week, often well into their 40's. And many of the wrestling moves are real, albeit highly choreographed and modified for safety.
Most people who beieve this are very unperceptive.
Things are popular for a reason, and that reason is not that most people are fools and victims of hype. It may not be to your particular taste, but if you don't understand it's virtues, then you are missing something.
Shhh...don't spoil the anti-spoiler
I'm not surprised that the Harry Potter books are selling better to a modern audience. And the Harry Potter books have a lot to offer. The Narnia series gets heavy very quickly, and are deadly serious. The Harry Potter books sugar coat everything in whimsy, and use it to slip in serious themes. This sucks the kids in, and I think that the contrast is a big part of the adult appeal.
In a literary sense, HP certainly not as well-written as the Lewis books in a literary sense (Tolkien aside, not much is), but they are nevertheless brilliantly crafted. Rowling has a very acute sense of how children think and feel, and has created some very strong characters. Harry, in particular, is very successful as a character who is heroic, but far from perfect, with much to learn.
The target audience for this product is clearly not current TiVo users--it is people who basically want a DVD recorder whom TiVo hopes to seduce into shelling out another few hundred bucks (or sign up for a monthly plan) to get access to the full set of TiVo features. Existing TiVo owners would be more likely to just buy a bare-bones DVD recorder and hook it up to their current TiVo.
I wonder if TiVo will offer their $100 Home Media Option to owners of the DVD/TiVo unit. This would make it very attractive to me. I wouldn't be willing to shell out $300 (or pay a monthly fee) for the full service package plus another $100 for HMO. But just the HMO would make this unit very attractive. I could have it in another room, transfer programs that I want to record to it over my home network from my existing TiVo, and also use it to listen to music and view photos from my computer.
No, TVs don't go wrong nearly as often as items with mechanical components, such as VCRs, DVD players, etc. (haven't had TiVo long enough to judge). But the more stuff you incorporate, the more opportunity there is for something to break. Combo TV/VCRs never sold very well, so it seems like the convenience of a simpler hookup doesn't make up for the inherent inconvenience of an all-in-one unit.
Personally, I avoid all TV's with other video components built into them. A TV is a large, heavy item, and repairing it is a big production. Not to mention the fact that I can't watch TV at all until it gets back from the shop. I want my TV to be a simple and trouble-free as possible, and all ancilliary components to be in separate, small boxes.
This is very much true. My dual 450 MHz desktop "feels" considerably faster than my 800 MHz laptop. It's not that it is faster for any inidividual function (it's probably slower), but you can start something going in one application (loading web pages, copying files, importing a CD into iTunes), switch to another, and hardly ever notice a performance hit.
I doubt if Bill Gates personally concerns himself with the individual grant recipents, but that doesn't mean that he didn't play a role in formulating the awards program. While the Microsoft grant supposedly doesn't require a particular platform, it is easy to imagine that the particular mix of computers in a school could influence the likelihood of getting such awards.
Their previous vigorous efforts to stop spam have been so unsuccessful?
One is tempted to suspect money under the table from Microsoft, but it is probably simpler: The school's IT people don't know anything about UNIX, and are too lazy to learn. But they don't want to lose their jobs, so rather than arguing "We're too lazy to learn another system," they say "It's too expensive to support two different systems." And the school board wasn't technically sophisticated enough to realize that they were being taken.