Are you looking forward to your nuclear-powered car? More to the point, what do you think of a China spending 5 times as much energy as the US does, all nuclear? Where will the waste go, and where will the Uranium come from?
As it turns out nuclear power as utilized today does not quite solve all problems, neither is it as cheap and as easy to make run as it sounds. It is still dangerous, still produces vast amounts of waste no one knows exactly what to do with and is a proliferating technology.
In other words nuclear is not the be all and end all. As oil becomes more expensive quickly, expect price hikes on all commodities, economic stagnation, unemployment, and wars. It will not be pleasant, and most likely we will all witness it in the next few decades at the latest.
If humanity survives the present millenium, this era might be remembered as the era of thoughtless waste and devastation.
According to TFA the software industry now expect a patent for every $500k spent in R&D.
That may sound like a lot of money but it's not, compared with other industries where they cost on the order of 10x as much at least, potentially a lot more for the pharmaceutical industry.
Hence software patents are on the average not based on much research or development, i.e. are not worth that much in terms of efforts.
Provably optimal is not as impressive as it sounds. For example Huffman coding is provably optimal for some definition of optimal. Yet arithmetic coding is often in practice more efficient, and Huffman coding is seldom used in practice (except with JPEG) because of the dictionnary problem.
To prove something optimal you have to spell out the conditions. In Huffman's case on of the assumptions is you can't compress any datum with anything less than a single bit. In fact you can ; and arithmetic coding can achieve that (arithmetic coding can compress whole groups of data with very few bytes, hence each datum can is on average compressed to less than a it).
Moreover, many problem don't have an optimal solution that is computable in reasonable time. Think NP-complete problems. Unless P=NP this is not going to change soon.
In the font hinting case I thought I read somewhere that there was no point in enabling the patented technique in Xft because the default technique works as well or better anyway.
The problem might be somewhere else altogether, like in the font design themselves.
I bought a 12" iBook a year ago, it had a 1.07GHz CPU, but other than that was nearly identical to the brand new model. Mind you I'm glad my little notebook is not obsolete and that I have nothing to drool over, but how can this be good for Apple's bottom line?
What is wrong with Apple? a 25% increase in speed in 12 month (far less if you think of the 1.2GHz CPU of the following October) is simply pitiful. No increase in VRAM, no increase in pixel count even for the 14" model, 25% more in HD space doesn't make for a sexy machine. There is *still* no option for a DVD writer on the 12" model. That bluetooth is included by default now is good, but still this is not enough.
Very disappointing, especially after the rumours of a widescreen design.
Thanks for the reply, it's hardly a surprise that pushing back a window is rarely performed amongst the userbase of both Windows and Mac/OS, since this action is impossible.
I fail to see why a way to push back (or lower) a window would be confusing, as it is the symmetric of clicking on a window frame to raise it. Without the ability to lower a window, one usually has to leave two or more windows one wishes to swap between often in such a way that neither completely overlaps the other(s).
How do you cope with multiple full-screen applications ? on Linux/X11 it can be very simple and fast without any expose trick, just cycle through the *windows* on the current virtual screen via a shortcut that raises/lowers them.
On Windows you have to go through the Alt-Tab list (which can be very long) and on Macs you have to use either Alt-tab or expose. Alt-tab has a linear list and lists all the applications, not just the ones on the current virtual screen. Switching can be painful.
On Linux I typically have many dozens of windows open (multiple terminals on many machines, editors, multiple browsers, mail, vmware or VNC sessions, etc). With virtual screens and the ability to raise and lower windows there is no problem. The same feat is hard on Windows and Mac/OS.
Personally I find expose an expensive, slow and showy way to push a window behind other windows, something X11 has been able to do since days one (with twm even), but neither Windows or OS/X seem to be able to pull off.
Re:Quantum Consciousness, Not Size, Counts
on
Humanoid Robot HR-2
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Please note that the Penrose-Hameroff hypothesis is at this stage only an hypothesis, and it most certainly does not explain what consciousness is or how to reproduce it. In fact no one knows if the brain performs quantum computations of any kind, or if such computations are required for consciousness. Some AI luminaries think consciousness is in fact very simple, nothing more than memory.
At this stage physicists are trying to build very simple quantum computers, which could be used for accelerating some very specific computations. Some other people have proven that even quantum computing would not be the panacea that many think it would be. For a start it doesn't give any new insight on how to perform specific calculations that would lead to consciousness. All computations possible on a QC would also be possible on a classical one, albeit usually much slower (but it wouldnt' matter that much, at least in theory).
In other words the Penrose/Hameroff hypothesis doesn't really help in any significant way. It is just saying that the brain somehow performs some magic quantum thingy, and that thingy would somehow be the basis for consciousness. It doesn't say what this thingy is exactly, and most crucially doesn't say how to reproduce it in any way.
the P/H hypothesis is basically just saying "we can't have true AI with the current batch of computers, something else is required", but doesn't say what.
Needless to says this is not very helpful, and might be false entirely.
Serial interface on a printer in 1997 ? Are you serious ? I bought my Apple laserwriter in 1992 and it already had a parallel interface. I have used it for over 10 years.
There have been Centronics-parallel/USB cables now. If it hadn't died a few years ago I'm sure I would still be able to use it today.
Why do people assume the next big thing is video-on-the-move? a.k.a son-of-iPod.
Who wants to watch movies on itty-bitty 5" screens? Whereas you can jog, work, eat & commute (not all at the same time) while listening to music, watching a movie is best done at home on a big screen.
Good luck to Microsoft, if they are in charge, at least the first iteration of any upcoming product will be an excellent lesson on how not to do things, if history is any guide.
The world is full of very smart people who never got particularly rich. Einstein might be a very good example but many are not nearly as well known.
On the other hand the world is also full of very rich people who are not in any way particularly intelligent. I'm sure you have your favourite, perhaps Paris Hilton?
Perhaps rich people are more greedy and driven than particularly smart, but also they are often born in already rich families. Bill Gates is no exception BTW.
OTOH some smart people might want to spend their life doing something intellectually challenging and rewarding than tirelessly amassing more wealth and power. There are only so much you can do in a day.
As it turns out I learned in this post that Boost is able to pretty much do what was wanted through overloading of the comma operator, but what was suggested in the GP was to make vectors first-class types. That does prevent anybody from supplying their own vectors, short of also supplying the compiler.
In this case the plaintiff probably has a leg to stand on, perhaps unfortunately.
Publishing something on a web site does not authorize anybody to make a copy for later redistribution. The internet archive is in some kind of grey area here.
For those who wonder, of course a web page is by default copyrighted work.
However the public archive is performing a public service here, and is not for profit, so the decent and civilised thing to do would be to politely ask for the IA to take down the offending pages.
Each time you see one of these viruses making a few victims, you read these incredible estimates of time and money lost, ranging in the billions of dollars usually.
How are these estimates computed ? Are they using some kind of RIAA/MPAA math ?
At any rate virus makers keep anti-virus companies in business, they help justify alternative OSes like OS/X and Linux and force Microsoft to be a little bit more serious about security. Viruses are only a small part of system security, so overall perhaps virus makers have a positive influence on software developers forcing them to write more robust software. Does that come into the wildy inflated estimates we constantly hear about ?
At any rate I'm having a hard time taking the article referenced seriously. The mere fact that one can read such drivel in the NYT is a bit of a worry for me. How about calling for a class action against Microsoft for being so careless in the way they wrote their software, paving the way for script kiddies to wreak some havoc? That might have some positive influence.
There is such a thing as international criminal law and as due process, and international terrorists have been and continue to be captured, judged and sent to prison. Look at how Germany coped with terrorism in the 1970s and 80s (remember the Munich Olympics?). All the terrorists of that era are now in prison, purging long sentences and seeing their "work" turn irrelevant. Who remembers the Rote Armee Fraktion?
Wanting to commit crimes is in itself not a crime, at worst in some jurisdiction you can be indicted for incitation to hatred, but this is it. Clinton was right, in 1996 nothing could have been done against OBL. Notice that nothing was done at all, that there is widespread evidence that the GWB administration knew about OBL very well but chose to do nothing as well.
20/20 hindsight is very useful. If you wanted to arrest everybody who wanted to commit crimes against the US, you'd have to stop a very large number of people, the vast majority of whom would never go on to commit any actual crime.
The worry is that by invading Iraq like the US did, all for the wrong reason, will not help the fight against terrorism. I believe that instead it will foster it.
There is no 'clean' way to wage a war. That's why countries should not attack each other wantonly. Japan forgot this in 1941 and received a harsh lesson. It surely cured Japan from extreme militarism, which was a ruling ideology at the time in Japan.
I perfectly agree. Now who is going to cure the US from extreme militarism, which is a ruling ideology today in the US?
Your list is very interesting. Iraq was actually a US ally up to the point when they invaded Kuwait in 1991, and even then, Sadam Hussein had told the US embassy of his plans and alledgedly had received no "cease and desist" order from the US.
I run AMD64 FC3 Linux at home and a host of things simply don't work, at the source level. For instance simply compiling a KDE application on this platform is a black art.
Tell Microsoft they only had to recompile windows for it to work on AMD64 and Itanium. Right. Take a look at how long it took and at how well it works, how many drivers are available, etc.
Tell Apple they only had to convince supplier to recompile their code for the G5. Hint: it doesn't work that way.
New chip, new chipset, new platform = more work to do and more testing. It costs money, vendors only do it if they see a sizeable return.
There is essentially no return on Itanium today outside of a few server apps.
Ok, but then all sorts of problems creep up. All of a sudden you'd like to be able to do that with lists, maps, etc. Where do you stop ?
Then there is too much coupling between the language and the library. You wouldn't be able to change the STL that comes with your compiler with Fair Dinkum's for example.
C++ is strong partly because your language components can come from various sources.
I found the MacOS/X eye candy is nice but takes up too much CPU, and that the Mach/BSD scheduler truly sucks.
I found that only a tiny subsample of the kind of hardware that is supported and works well on Linux is also supported on Macs. Case in point : webcam, DVD writers (unless you buy additional non-free software). Also, if something is not very well supported, I have no recourse. Case in point: my broadband modem. Not supported by manufacturer, nothing I can do. It works fine with Linux.
I found that the CPU of my iBooks sucks, to a degree that I wasn't expecting. Compiling anything on that machine is a painful experience, whereas compiling and generally developing on a DELL laptop running Linux is more than fine and has been for years. According to various benchmarks, the fastest Mac is only about 2.5 faster than this notebook. I pity the people who use them. No wonder Apple is going for Intel.
I found that there is very little Free software for macs. Everybody wants my money for the littliest utilities. Consequently there is also a nasty little pirate underculture. If I ask for help online just about anything, someone will point out which shareware solves the problem, and where to find an appropriate illegal key. So now I'm both stuck and tempted to do the wrong thing!
I found that even though I do enjoy accelerated 3D on my laptop, the Apple OpenGL implementation is very slow, and that therefore even 5 year-old games run at an awful pace (and I had to pay as-new, full price for them too!)
I found that everything is more expensive on a Mac and doesn't really run better than under Linux. Even though I spend a great deal of time looking for "better" alternatives, I came back to the trusty terminal and the vi/emacs/gnu tools for productive work.
I find that I'm discouraged to try out new software because, yes, it needs to be compiled and have the right libraries installed, and my machine basically cannot cope with it. Fink is nice but like Debian carries last year's software, which for Free Software is like prehistory.
I still like my little 12" iBook because of its autonomy and size, but I wish it ran better than it does. I'm always looking at the newer offering, and saying "what, $2.5k for something that will be 50% faster than I have, no way!"
So amazingly, for serious stuff (not web browsing or email) I use my iBook as an xterm to my desktop Linux box. An already obsolete Athlon64 3000+ which doesn't take ages to copy files around and compiles *fast*, and does have fast enough OpenGL to play doom3 if I wanted to, and a decent kernel which may not be a nice microkernel architecture but doesn't spend 30% of its CPU in firefox at idle.
Apple's offering is for people who play with their computer and who enjoy doing that, fair enough. Not for people who do serious work on them, at least not on their notebook offering.
The Slashdot blurb is misleading. The article advises moderation. I don't recall anybody in recent years saying Sun exposure in moderate amount was bad. What else is news ?
Remember that while normally very rare, melanoma is the 4th most frequently diagnosed type of cancer in Australia, and rising.
Even if people there stopped going outside right now the incidence would probably continue to rise for many years, because of the delayed exposure.
More power to the author of the talk, definitely, however, personally I think most of the shareware scene on macs is completely out of control. Most shareware authors expect people to pay something like $40 for a thin wrapper over some fundamental system tweak, like a firewall wrapper, some way to tweak the kernel priorities and whatnot.
In the case of the author, he expect people to pay the same $40 for something that will index their personal library (books, videos, etc). Sure it is very cool with an impressive GUI, barcode support using a video camera, and all that, but it is not something you couldn't do with a spreadsheet, at its most basic.
And evidently people pay. He says he's making a small fortune with this. Well great, excellent for him (nice car BTW).
People may say his software is innovative, sure. To me however if he stopped making his delicious library for some reason I wouldn't care, whereas if the people who are writing Scribus, Sodipodi and the Gimp (for example !) stopped tomorrow that would be terribly sad.
Anyway this might explain why the Mac isn't really my platform (event though I do own an iBook and use it every day) and I like Linux better. Perhaps the people who work tring to make Linux better aren't so much interested in making up fluff that will sell.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you looking forward to your nuclear-powered car? More to the point, what do you think of a China spending 5 times as much energy as the US does, all nuclear? Where will the waste go, and where will the Uranium come from?
As it turns out nuclear power as utilized today does not quite solve all problems, neither is it as cheap and as easy to make run as it sounds. It is still dangerous, still produces vast amounts of waste no one knows exactly what to do with and is a proliferating technology.
In other words nuclear is not the be all and end all. As oil becomes more expensive quickly, expect price hikes on all commodities, economic stagnation, unemployment, and wars. It will not be pleasant, and most likely we will all witness it in the next few decades at the latest.
If humanity survives the present millenium, this era might be remembered as the era of thoughtless waste and devastation.
According to TFA the software industry now expect a patent for every $500k spent in R&D.
That may sound like a lot of money but it's not, compared with other industries where they cost on the order of 10x as much at least, potentially a lot more for the pharmaceutical industry.
Hence software patents are on the average not based on much research or development, i.e. are not worth that much in terms of efforts.
Hello,
Provably optimal is not as impressive as it sounds. For example Huffman coding is provably optimal for some definition of optimal. Yet arithmetic coding is often in practice more efficient, and Huffman coding is seldom used in practice (except with JPEG) because of the dictionnary problem.
To prove something optimal you have to spell out the conditions. In Huffman's case on of the assumptions is you can't compress any datum with anything less than a single bit. In fact you can ; and arithmetic coding can achieve that (arithmetic coding can compress whole groups of data with very few bytes, hence each datum can is on average compressed to less than a it).
Moreover, many problem don't have an optimal solution that is computable in reasonable time. Think NP-complete problems. Unless P=NP this is not going to change soon.
In the font hinting case I thought I read somewhere that there was no point in enabling the patented technique in Xft because the default technique works as well or better anyway.
The problem might be somewhere else altogether, like in the font design themselves.
I bought a 12" iBook a year ago, it had a 1.07GHz CPU, but other than that was nearly identical to the brand new model. Mind you I'm glad my little notebook is not obsolete and that I have nothing to drool over, but how can this be good for Apple's bottom line?
What is wrong with Apple? a 25% increase in speed in 12 month (far less if you think of the 1.2GHz CPU of the following October) is simply pitiful. No increase in VRAM, no increase in pixel count even for the 14" model, 25% more in HD space doesn't make for a sexy machine. There is *still* no option for a DVD writer on the 12" model. That bluetooth is included by default now is good, but still this is not enough.
Very disappointing, especially after the rumours of a widescreen design.
There is only one true make, and that is GNU make. Works everywhere, including on VMS.
Your complaint belongs in the late 80s or so.
Thanks for the reply, it's hardly a surprise that pushing back a window is rarely performed amongst the userbase of both Windows and Mac/OS, since this action is impossible.
I fail to see why a way to push back (or lower) a window would be confusing, as it is the symmetric of clicking on a window frame to raise it. Without the ability to lower a window, one usually has to leave two or more windows one wishes to swap between often in such a way that neither completely overlaps the other(s).
How do you cope with multiple full-screen applications ? on Linux/X11 it can be very simple and fast without any expose trick, just cycle through the *windows* on the current virtual screen via a shortcut that raises/lowers them.
On Windows you have to go through the Alt-Tab list (which can be very long) and on Macs you have to use either Alt-tab or expose. Alt-tab has a linear list and lists all the applications, not just the ones on the current virtual screen. Switching can be painful.
On Linux I typically have many dozens of windows open (multiple terminals on many machines, editors, multiple browsers, mail, vmware or VNC sessions, etc). With virtual screens and the ability to raise and lower windows there is no problem. The same feat is hard on Windows and Mac/OS.
Personally I find expose an expensive, slow and showy way to push a window behind other windows, something X11 has been able to do since days one (with twm even), but neither Windows or OS/X seem to be able to pull off.
Please note that the Penrose-Hameroff hypothesis is at this stage only an hypothesis, and it most certainly does not explain what consciousness is or how to reproduce it. In fact no one knows if the brain performs quantum computations of any kind, or if such computations are required for consciousness. Some AI luminaries think consciousness is in fact very simple, nothing more than memory.
At this stage physicists are trying to build very simple quantum computers, which could be used for accelerating some very specific computations. Some other people have proven that even quantum computing would not be the panacea that many think it would be. For a start it doesn't give any new insight on how to perform specific calculations that would lead to consciousness. All computations possible on a QC would also be possible on a classical one, albeit usually much slower (but it wouldnt' matter that much, at least in theory).
In other words the Penrose/Hameroff hypothesis doesn't really help in any significant way. It is just saying that the brain somehow performs some magic quantum thingy, and that thingy would somehow be the basis for consciousness. It doesn't say what this thingy is exactly, and most crucially doesn't say how to reproduce it in any way.
the P/H hypothesis is basically just saying "we can't have true AI with the current batch of computers, something else is required", but doesn't say what.
Needless to says this is not very helpful, and might be false entirely.
Serial interface on a printer in 1997 ? Are you serious ? I bought my Apple laserwriter in 1992 and it already had a parallel interface. I have used it for over 10 years.
There have been Centronics-parallel/USB cables now. If it hadn't died a few years ago I'm sure I would still be able to use it today.
Don't forget the kill/maim bit. Still want to go through it ?
Why do people assume the next big thing is video-on-the-move? a.k.a son-of-iPod.
Who wants to watch movies on itty-bitty 5" screens? Whereas you can jog, work, eat & commute (not all at the same time) while listening to music, watching a movie is best done at home on a big screen.
Good luck to Microsoft, if they are in charge, at least the first iteration of any upcoming product will be an excellent lesson on how not to do things, if history is any guide.
The world is full of very smart people who never got particularly rich. Einstein might be a very good example but many are not nearly as well known.
On the other hand the world is also full of very rich people who are not in any way particularly intelligent. I'm sure you have your favourite, perhaps Paris Hilton?
Perhaps rich people are more greedy and driven than particularly smart, but also they are often born in already rich families. Bill Gates is no exception BTW.
OTOH some smart people might want to spend their life doing something intellectually challenging and rewarding than tirelessly amassing more wealth and power. There are only so much you can do in a day.
As it turns out I learned in this post that Boost is able to pretty much do what was wanted through overloading of the comma operator, but what was suggested in the GP was to make vectors first-class types. That does prevent anybody from supplying their own vectors, short of also supplying the compiler.
In this case the plaintiff probably has a leg to stand on, perhaps unfortunately.
Publishing something on a web site does not authorize anybody to make a copy for later redistribution. The internet archive is in some kind of grey area here.
For those who wonder, of course a web page is by default copyrighted work.
However the public archive is performing a public service here, and is not for profit, so the decent and civilised thing to do would be to politely ask for the IA to take down the offending pages.
Each time you see one of these viruses making a few victims, you read these incredible estimates of time and money lost, ranging in the billions of dollars usually.
How are these estimates computed ? Are they using some kind of RIAA/MPAA math ?
At any rate virus makers keep anti-virus companies in business, they help justify alternative OSes like OS/X and Linux and force Microsoft to be a little bit more serious about security. Viruses are only a small part of system security, so overall perhaps virus makers have a positive influence on software developers forcing them to write more robust software. Does that come into the wildy inflated estimates we constantly hear about ?
At any rate I'm having a hard time taking the article referenced seriously. The mere fact that one can read such drivel in the NYT is a bit of a worry for me. How about calling for a class action against Microsoft for being so careless in the way they wrote their software, paving the way for script kiddies to wreak some havoc? That might have some positive influence.
Where does my ignorance show?
There is such a thing as international criminal law and as due process, and international terrorists have been and continue to be captured, judged and sent to prison. Look at how Germany coped with terrorism in the 1970s and 80s (remember the Munich Olympics?). All the terrorists of that era are now in prison, purging long sentences and seeing their "work" turn irrelevant. Who remembers the Rote Armee Fraktion?
Wanting to commit crimes is in itself not a crime, at worst in some jurisdiction you can be indicted for incitation to hatred, but this is it. Clinton was right, in 1996 nothing could have been done against OBL. Notice that nothing was done at all, that there is widespread evidence that the GWB administration knew about OBL very well but chose to do nothing as well.
20/20 hindsight is very useful. If you wanted to arrest everybody who wanted to commit crimes against the US, you'd have to stop a very large number of people, the vast majority of whom would never go on to commit any actual crime.
The worry is that by invading Iraq like the US did, all for the wrong reason, will not help the fight against terrorism. I believe that instead it will foster it.
I perfectly agree. Now who is going to cure the US from extreme militarism, which is a ruling ideology today in the US?
Your list is very interesting. Iraq was actually a US ally up to the point when they invaded Kuwait in 1991, and even then, Sadam Hussein had told the US embassy of his plans and alledgedly had received no "cease and desist" order from the US.
Iraq was not involved in 9/11 in any way.
Well yes it is a huge, enormous deal.
I run AMD64 FC3 Linux at home and a host of things simply don't work, at the source level. For instance simply compiling a KDE application on this platform is a black art.
Tell Microsoft they only had to recompile windows for it to work on AMD64 and Itanium. Right. Take a look at how long it took and at how well it works, how many drivers are available, etc.
Tell Apple they only had to convince supplier to recompile their code for the G5. Hint: it doesn't work that way.
New chip, new chipset, new platform = more work to do and more testing. It costs money, vendors only do it if they see a sizeable return.
There is essentially no return on Itanium today outside of a few server apps.
Ok, but then all sorts of problems creep up. All of a sudden you'd like to be able to do that with lists, maps, etc. Where do you stop ?
Then there is too much coupling between the language and the library. You wouldn't be able to change the STL that comes with your compiler with Fair Dinkum's for example.
C++ is strong partly because your language components can come from various sources.
You fight terrorists with the Law.
You treat terrorists as criminals. You hunt masterminds with Interpol. You capture them, and give them a fair trial.
It worked with Libia and the Lockerbie disaster, which before 9/11 was the worst act of terrorism perpetrated on americans (nearly 200 died).
Note that Libia and colonel Khadafi have renounced terrorism and appear to be genuine so far.
It worked very well with IRA terrorism in Ireland and England. Note that the IRA hasn't been detonating bombs in a long time.
You have to be prepared to be patient and persistent. You don't have to bomb or invade anybody.
Actually it would be indeed hard to do with Excel, I agree.
However I know plenty of people who organize their video library with Excel, of even a text file. Is it fun to do ? probably not.
My experience with Macs is not the same as yours.
I found the MacOS/X eye candy is nice but takes up too much CPU, and that the Mach/BSD scheduler truly sucks.
I found that only a tiny subsample of the kind of hardware that is supported and works well on Linux is also supported on Macs. Case in point : webcam, DVD writers (unless you buy additional non-free software). Also, if something is not very well supported, I have no recourse. Case in point: my broadband modem. Not supported by manufacturer, nothing I can do. It works fine with Linux.
I found that the CPU of my iBooks sucks, to a degree that I wasn't expecting. Compiling anything on that machine is a painful experience, whereas compiling and generally developing on a DELL laptop running Linux is more than fine and has been for years. According to various benchmarks, the fastest Mac is only about 2.5 faster than this notebook. I pity the people who use them. No wonder Apple is going for Intel.
I found that there is very little Free software for macs. Everybody wants my money for the littliest utilities. Consequently there is also a nasty little pirate underculture. If I ask for help online just about anything, someone will point out which shareware solves the problem, and where to find an appropriate illegal key. So now I'm both stuck and tempted to do the wrong thing!
I found that even though I do enjoy accelerated 3D on my laptop, the Apple OpenGL implementation is very slow, and that therefore even 5 year-old games run at an awful pace (and I had to pay as-new, full price for them too!)
I found that everything is more expensive on a Mac and doesn't really run better than under Linux. Even though I spend a great deal of time looking for "better" alternatives, I came back to the trusty terminal and the vi/emacs/gnu tools for productive work.
I find that I'm discouraged to try out new software because, yes, it needs to be compiled and have the right libraries installed, and my machine basically cannot cope with it. Fink is nice but like Debian carries last year's software, which for Free Software is like prehistory.
I still like my little 12" iBook because of its autonomy and size, but I wish it ran better than it does. I'm always looking at the newer offering, and saying "what, $2.5k for something that will be 50% faster than I have, no way!"
So amazingly, for serious stuff (not web browsing or email) I use my iBook as an xterm to my desktop Linux box. An already obsolete Athlon64 3000+ which doesn't take ages to copy files around and compiles *fast*, and does have fast enough OpenGL to play doom3 if I wanted to, and a decent kernel which may not be a nice microkernel architecture but doesn't spend 30% of its CPU in firefox at idle.
Apple's offering is for people who play with their computer and who enjoy doing that, fair enough. Not for people who do serious work on them, at least not on their notebook offering.
The Slashdot blurb is misleading. The article advises moderation. I don't recall anybody in recent years saying Sun exposure in moderate amount was bad. What else is news ?
Remember that while normally very rare, melanoma is the 4th most frequently diagnosed type of cancer in Australia, and rising.
Even if people there stopped going outside right now the incidence would probably continue to rise for many years, because of the delayed exposure.
It is highly curable but not good for you.
More power to the author of the talk, definitely, however, personally I think most of the shareware scene on macs is completely out of control. Most shareware authors expect people to pay something like $40 for a thin wrapper over some fundamental system tweak, like a firewall wrapper, some way to tweak the kernel priorities and whatnot.
In the case of the author, he expect people to pay the same $40 for something that will index their personal library (books, videos, etc). Sure it is very cool with an impressive GUI, barcode support using a video camera, and all that, but it is not something you couldn't do with a spreadsheet, at its most basic.
And evidently people pay. He says he's making a small fortune with this. Well great, excellent for him (nice car BTW).
People may say his software is innovative, sure. To me however if he stopped making his delicious library for some reason I wouldn't care, whereas if the people who are writing Scribus, Sodipodi and the Gimp (for example !) stopped tomorrow that would be terribly sad.
Anyway this might explain why the Mac isn't really my platform (event though I do own an iBook and use it every day) and I like Linux better. Perhaps the people who work tring to make Linux better aren't so much interested in making up fluff that will sell.