"If the goal of giving these laptops away is to move these people forward in a technological society, it's far more important for them to understand the technology than just be able to go through the motions."
I think it would be far better to move these people forward in terms of learning economics, history, Enlightenment thinking on human rights, sanitation, etc.
Those would make a difference that would last, even if every computer on earth stopped working in a decade.
Ephemeral technical no-how just really isn't very important in the grand scheme of things.
That's what I never see anyone ask: How long do I have to drive an SUV for it to pay for itself, or at least for the bloated price which gives the manufacturer their crack-like fat profit margin.
Of course, the answer is: never. It never pays for itself. An SUV is a money sink, everyone knows that, so people discreetly ignore this.
Meanwhile, they pose the question about hybrids, and play it up as if it's some kind of 'gotcha'.
"Bottom line is, Apple wants to keep its hardware prices high and doesn't want Dell to undersell them."
You're assuming Apple won't cut their prices to some degree.
When they move to Intel, they won't be able to cloak their pricing in a fog of 'CPU difference uncertainty'. Buyers and reviewers might cut Apple some slack on pricing because of the difference between CPUs making the value proposition a bit hard to pin down.
With the machines running x86 CPUs, that uncertainty will be gone, and buyers and reviewers will cut Apple less slack for higher pricing.
So Apple will probably cut their x86 prices to some degree. Not to bargain-basement prices, but they'll be in the ballpark of, say, higher-end Sony Vaios.
"Will Apple companies to make hardware that Apple has approved but also works for other x86 platforms? "
Lots of hardware already works on Macs and PCs, even without being specifically marked as being Mac-compatible. I have a PCI USB 2 card in my Mac G4 which I ordered from NewEgg. Hard disks work fine, of course.
The main exception is video cards, which means that selection sucks on the Mac side.
" My point is that sometimes, if you don't put up fences, you will attract fewer unwelcome visitors than if you do. We are hard-wired to "push the envelope", to attempt the unthinkable, however it may manifest itself. This is an instinctive behaviour, as much a natural function as having sex or going to the toilet, and any attempt to pretend the contrary will surely be doomed to abject failure."
I'm sorry, but this just comes of as a sorry effort at excusing the behavior of crackers. "We're just at the mercy of our primate urges! We deserve pity and sympathy! We know not what we do!"
Yet it's also an effort at self-mythologizing: "attempting the unthinkable". Wow, that's heavy. As if shoplifting is made 'unthinkable' by the existence of security cameras.
The same argument could be tried by rapists "Women shouldn't try to deny men sex, because that just drives us to take it by any means necessary".
It's bollocks for rapists, it's bollocks for shoplifters, and it's bollocks for crackers.
But, running the sugar on the cake will be very hard without Apple ID-ed CPUs (and hence, motherboard) without actually using an Apple-issued motherboard.
Right, but I think this patent is about making it harder for someone to use a different OS on Apple hardware as a tool for cracking the protections on OS X itself.
The IDed CPU protection wouldn't last long if someone could install Linux on an x86 Mac, develop a VM that pretends to be an x86 Mac (using the actual hardware for the security calls), run OS X in that VM, and thus figure out how OS X interacts with the security hardware and therefore how to crack the OS.
If the patent were just about OS X an the IDed hardware, there'd be no need to mention other operating systems in the patent.
You'll still be able to run Linux or Windows on your Mac, but there'll be some kind of functionality going on to prevent funnybusiness. Maybe it'll only allow reading the Apple-specific security information when OS X is running on the hardware.
"The difference is that all the others pointed out the more interesting aspect of the new patents: You can select, from MacOS X, Windows, and Linux a primary OS and secondary OS."
How is this interesting?
I used to run OS X's parent, OpenStep, on an x86 box, with other partitions running Windows and Linux. And I could install SoftPC and run Windows in an OpenStep window.
Yawn. People are getting their panties in a twist because Apple is going to put a freaking bootloader on their machine. Yawn.
The interesting part is the part about making it cracker-resistant. Doing that is a bit more difficult when you allow other operating systems on your hardware, because crackers can do more probing and peeking from an OS you don't control.
I'd frankly like to see the President get a one-consecutive-term limit, two terms overall. He'd be free to do his job for four years. Let the VP be the presumptive candidate next time; he can spend four years campaigning, which will keep the VP from having spare time to lobby the Congress for torture and wars and all that rot.
"This will go on until someone who is presented with a "national security letter" says, "Fuck you, get a warrant", and is preparted to fight the case all the way to the supreme court."
Assuming, of course, the President hasn't stacked the court with statists. (Or, worse, YOUNG statists who'll squat on the court for 40 years.)
In which case, the victim loses the case, the abuses go on, and the government is emboldened to yet more restrictions on our rights.
"Sounds like Jesus if you ask me. He lived and died just like a non-omnipotent/omniscient human, right?"
Er, yeah that was Jesus. However, we're talking about the guy who created the universe. The Father, you know, not the Son.
(It's not *my* fault you guys want to play in poly- AND mono- theism. )
It's understandable why people would prefer Jesus, he being after all the Good Cop, compared to the Father's Bad Cop. But Jesus wasn't the one involved with Creation. When talking creation, I'm going to go with the Jewish version, not the complicated Gentile retcon which is right up there with "Greedo shot first". The Jews got it first-hand, but Jesus was all about the cheese makers.
"If blind-spots, appendixes, male nippes and menstrual cycles promote critical thinking in mankind and give natural unbelievers a real fair chance to believe or not (instead of it being obvious) then its all been well worthwhile."
Given that appendixes are prone to infection and can burst, with fatal results; and the way that childbirth carries a significant risk of death for child and mother for a variety of reasons including the mother being unable to accommodate the head of the child during birth, I wouldn't care much for a deity who fucks us up in order to score petty points.
That's a worse argument than "God hid fake dinosaurs in this 6,000 year-old world in order to test our faith" used by young-earth creationists, which posits that God is a liar.
"It's kind of a practical example of "Could God create a rock he couldn't lift?" as the idea of us having free will would indicate that God could not accurately predict the future"
Except that He necessarily exists outside of time as we know it. For an entity in that state, seeing the future is as easy as seeing the exit of a cornfield labyrinth when you're looking down from above. We don't have that advantage, we're inside of time, just like someone inside the labyrinth can only see a small amount at a time, and must explore different paths on foot to find the way through.
It seems like a lot of ID/Creationist supporters - especially the hardcore - prefer a weak, limited God, whose limitations are not unlike their own.
"Personally, I believe God designed us by method of nudging along evolutionary changes. "
This implies one or more of the following:
a. God makes mistakes and needs to go by trial-and-error. b. God doesn't know where evolution will end up. c. God is in a hurry and needs to rush things.
None of these seem appropriate for a God who exists outside of space and time, who created the universe in some fashion.
God having to tweak and nudge evolution along is like a pool hall trick shot artist who has to move the balls by hand step by step, rather than just knocking the cue ball once and letting physics take care of the rest, in the ways the player intended.
"companies like Comcast, Disney, SBC, and Verizon will have the opportunity to"
See, this creates the impression that they've already got contracts with Comcast, Disney, SBC, and Verizon.
But they don't. They're just saying companies *like* those, who decide to buy in but have not yet done so will be able to do the promised things...
It's like if I write a web page saying "through placing my personal ad on Craigslist, women like Elle Macpherson, Angelina Jolie, the Spice Girls, Christina Aguilera, Audrey Tautou, and Jennifer Love-Hewitt will have the opportunity to meet me for casual sex, possibly all at once. So the rest of you ladies can see I'm a hot property! Better act fast!."
"While I ponder what you mean by the word, let me interject my views here. Yes, Apple has turned down a path of trying to sell innovation... but only sort of. Apple is more in the buisness of selling "little and cute.""
In market segments where this makes sense, you are correct.
However, I wouldn't call the G5 towers, the XServes, or the XServe RAID boxes "little and cute". Attractively designed, yes, but not in the sense of the iPod and iMac.
And the XServe RAID boxes have gotten good reviews in venues that are more interested in price/performance than in fashion sense, who generally don't even look at Apple hardware.
"Obviously, Apple is still going to be implementing new functionality (exposed via new APIs), and they'll fix bugs, which may break some apps. But there was a definite commitment to improved backward compatibility."
Actually, it might have been an effort to reassure developers who are already worried about the PPC -> Intel port.
If the APIs are stable, then developers don't have to worry about handling the port, supporting 2 architectures, *and* dealing with some future API shift which could be a major fork between PPC and Intel software.
Slashdot Mirror
"If the goal of giving these laptops away is to move these people forward in a technological society, it's far more important for them to understand the technology than just be able to go through the motions."
I think it would be far better to move these people forward in terms of learning economics, history, Enlightenment thinking on human rights, sanitation, etc.
Those would make a difference that would last, even if every computer on earth stopped working in a decade.
Ephemeral technical no-how just really isn't very important in the grand scheme of things.
That's what I never see anyone ask: How long do I have to drive an SUV for it to pay for itself, or at least for the bloated price which gives the manufacturer their crack-like fat profit margin.
Of course, the answer is: never. It never pays for itself. An SUV is a money sink, everyone knows that, so people discreetly ignore this.
Meanwhile, they pose the question about hybrids, and play it up as if it's some kind of 'gotcha'.
Are those the definitions from Mao's Red Book?
The article says it's not a VPN.
Maybe a darknet is UUCP running on voice-line modems.
"Bottom line is, Apple wants to keep its hardware prices high and doesn't want Dell to undersell them."
You're assuming Apple won't cut their prices to some degree.
When they move to Intel, they won't be able to cloak their pricing in a fog of 'CPU difference uncertainty'. Buyers and reviewers might cut Apple some slack on pricing because of the difference between CPUs making the value proposition a bit hard to pin down.
With the machines running x86 CPUs, that uncertainty will be gone, and buyers and reviewers will cut Apple less slack for higher pricing.
So Apple will probably cut their x86 prices to some degree. Not to bargain-basement prices, but they'll be in the ballpark of, say, higher-end Sony Vaios.
"Will Apple companies to make hardware that Apple has approved but also works for other x86 platforms? "
Lots of hardware already works on Macs and PCs, even without being specifically marked as being Mac-compatible. I have a PCI USB 2 card in my Mac G4 which I ordered from NewEgg. Hard disks work fine, of course.
The main exception is video cards, which means that selection sucks on the Mac side.
" My point is that sometimes, if you don't put up fences, you will attract fewer unwelcome visitors than if you do. We are hard-wired to "push the envelope", to attempt the unthinkable, however it may manifest itself. This is an instinctive behaviour, as much a natural function as having sex or going to the toilet, and any attempt to pretend the contrary will surely be doomed to abject failure."
I'm sorry, but this just comes of as a sorry effort at excusing the behavior of crackers. "We're just at the mercy of our primate urges! We deserve pity and sympathy! We know not what we do!"
Yet it's also an effort at self-mythologizing: "attempting the unthinkable". Wow, that's heavy. As if shoplifting is made 'unthinkable' by the existence of security cameras.
The same argument could be tried by rapists "Women shouldn't try to deny men sex, because that just drives us to take it by any means necessary".
It's bollocks for rapists, it's bollocks for shoplifters, and it's bollocks for crackers.
"By separating it into 2 or more inert components and storing them seperately."
bingbingbing We have a winnah!
It's the same answer to "How do you store an epoxy that instantly forms a bond harder than steel?:
But, running the sugar on the cake will be very hard without Apple ID-ed CPUs (and hence, motherboard) without actually using an Apple-issued motherboard.
Right, but I think this patent is about making it harder for someone to use a different OS on Apple hardware as a tool for cracking the protections on OS X itself.
The IDed CPU protection wouldn't last long if someone could install Linux on an x86 Mac, develop a VM that pretends to be an x86 Mac (using the actual hardware for the security calls), run OS X in that VM, and thus figure out how OS X interacts with the security hardware and therefore how to crack the OS.
If the patent were just about OS X an the IDed hardware, there'd be no need to mention other operating systems in the patent.
You'll still be able to run Linux or Windows on your Mac, but there'll be some kind of functionality going on to prevent funnybusiness. Maybe it'll only allow reading the Apple-specific security information when OS X is running on the hardware.
"Whenever you put up a fence, you are encouraging people to try and climb it."
And when you put down a red carpet, you are encouraging people to walk it.
What's your point?
That office might have had lots of people who mostly work outside the Sun office.
"The difference is that all the others pointed out the more interesting aspect of the new patents: You can select, from MacOS X, Windows, and Linux a primary OS and secondary OS."
How is this interesting?
I used to run OS X's parent, OpenStep, on an x86 box, with other partitions running Windows and Linux. And I could install SoftPC and run Windows in an OpenStep window.
Yawn. People are getting their panties in a twist because Apple is going to put a freaking bootloader on their machine. Yawn.
The interesting part is the part about making it cracker-resistant. Doing that is a bit more difficult when you allow other operating systems on your hardware, because crackers can do more probing and peeking from an OS you don't control.
Well, not if it's gonna infect our computers. And how can you tell beforehand which ones do and which ones don't?
Oh, well, I use a Mac, so this isn't a concern.
If someone's that anal about the sound quality, they should have bought the CD from the start, rather than downloading it...
I guess Java really is a ghost town these days. Everyone rode the rails on out of town.
I'd frankly like to see the President get a one-consecutive-term limit, two terms overall. He'd be free to do his job for four years. Let the VP be the presumptive candidate next time; he can spend four years campaigning, which will keep the VP from having spare time to lobby the Congress for torture and wars and all that rot.
"This will go on until someone who is presented with a "national security letter" says, "Fuck you, get a warrant", and is preparted to fight the case all the way to the supreme court."
Assuming, of course, the President hasn't stacked the court with statists. (Or, worse, YOUNG statists who'll squat on the court for 40 years.)
In which case, the victim loses the case, the abuses go on, and the government is emboldened to yet more restrictions on our rights.
Oh, he has provided one, but when you try to test and examine it, its location changes!
Oh, wait..
"Sounds like Jesus if you ask me. He lived and died just like a non-omnipotent/omniscient human, right?"
Er, yeah that was Jesus. However, we're talking about the guy who created the universe. The Father, you know,
not the Son.
(It's not *my* fault you guys want to play in poly- AND mono- theism. )
It's understandable why people would prefer Jesus, he being after all the Good Cop, compared to
the Father's Bad Cop. But Jesus wasn't the one involved with Creation. When talking creation, I'm going to
go with the Jewish version, not the complicated Gentile retcon which is right up there with "Greedo shot first".
The Jews got it first-hand, but Jesus was all about the cheese makers.
"If blind-spots, appendixes, male nippes and menstrual cycles promote critical thinking in mankind and give natural unbelievers a real fair chance to believe or not (instead of it being obvious) then its all been well worthwhile."
Given that appendixes are prone to infection and can burst, with fatal results; and the way that childbirth carries a significant risk of death for child and mother for a variety of reasons including the mother being unable to accommodate the head of the child during birth, I wouldn't care much for a deity who fucks us up in order to score petty points.
That's a worse argument than "God hid fake dinosaurs in this 6,000 year-old world in order to test our faith" used by young-earth creationists, which posits that God is a liar.
"It's kind of a practical example of "Could God create a rock he couldn't lift?" as the idea of us having free will would indicate that God could not accurately predict the future"
Except that He necessarily exists outside of time as we know it. For an entity in that state, seeing the future is as easy as seeing the exit of a cornfield labyrinth when you're looking down from above. We don't have that advantage, we're inside of time, just like someone inside the labyrinth can only see a small amount at a time, and must explore different paths on foot to find the way through.
It seems like a lot of ID/Creationist supporters - especially the hardcore - prefer a weak, limited God, whose limitations are not unlike their own.
"Personally, I believe God designed us by method of nudging along evolutionary changes. "
This implies one or more of the following:
a. God makes mistakes and needs to go by trial-and-error.
b. God doesn't know where evolution will end up.
c. God is in a hurry and needs to rush things.
None of these seem appropriate for a God who exists outside of space and time, who created the universe in some fashion.
God having to tweak and nudge evolution along is like a pool hall trick shot artist who has to move the balls by hand step by step, rather than just knocking the cue ball once and letting physics take care of the rest, in the ways the player intended.
"companies like Comcast, Disney, SBC, and Verizon will have the opportunity to"
See, this creates the impression that they've already got contracts with Comcast, Disney, SBC, and Verizon.
But they don't. They're just saying companies *like* those, who decide to buy in but have not yet done so will be able to do the promised things...
It's like if I write a web page saying "through placing my personal ad on Craigslist, women like Elle Macpherson, Angelina Jolie, the Spice Girls, Christina Aguilera, Audrey Tautou, and Jennifer Love-Hewitt will have the opportunity to meet me for casual sex, possibly all at once. So the rest of you ladies can see I'm a hot property! Better act fast!."
"While I ponder what you mean by the word, let me interject my views here. Yes, Apple has turned down a path of trying to sell innovation... but only sort of. Apple is more in the buisness of selling "little and cute.""
In market segments where this makes sense, you are correct.
However, I wouldn't call the G5 towers, the XServes, or the XServe RAID boxes "little and cute". Attractively designed, yes, but not in the sense of the iPod and iMac.
And the XServe RAID boxes have gotten good reviews in venues that are more interested in price/performance than in fashion sense, who generally don't even look at Apple hardware.
"Obviously, Apple is still going to be implementing new functionality (exposed via new APIs), and they'll fix bugs, which may break some apps. But there was a definite commitment to improved backward compatibility."
Actually, it might have been an effort to reassure developers who are already worried
about the PPC -> Intel port.
If the APIs are stable, then developers don't have to worry about
handling the port, supporting 2 architectures, *and* dealing with
some future API shift which could be a major fork between
PPC and Intel software.