I think the best solution for students and to resolve budget issues, is to extend the school year more days but reduce the time per day that students spend in school. This has multiple benefits:
1) Students won't get flooded with hours of info each day and be given more time to absorb what they learn on a daily basis.
2) Students will have more time for after school studying which is equally important
3) Students will have more time for extra-curricular activities outside of school. More time to get out there and do sports and stuff so they don't get fat
4) The number of hours per year for school teachers would remain fairly unchanged since we'd be stretching what we already have out more. Which means budget concerns would be mostly alleviated.
The only downside I see to such a change would be parents wouldn't be able to use school as a substitute for daycare as much anymore. And honestly, while I know for some families that *is* a legitimately hard thing to do with both spouses working or single parents, it is very much a trend we need to be getting away from. Instead, we need parents more active in their children's lives and development, and such a school system change would allow for that too.
It's worth noting, as well, that starting with Snow Leopard, OS X archive and installs by default through the installer. The only other option is erase and install which has been moved to the disk utility application off the install disk in order to prevent accidental erasure.
It's part of the natural life cycle of anti-virus software. Anti-virus software gets really good -> geeks and techies jump on the bandwagon -> they spread this to their non-techie friends -> AV software gets bloated/crappy over time -> geeks abandon it slowly over time -> regular consumers continue to use it forever until a geek comes along to force them to use the current hotness.
Yes you can get a withdrawal headache and feel a little tired. But two days or so and you're golden. Never mind that all you need to do is pop a Tylenol or other headache reliever and you won't even notice that part of the withdrawal.
Even trying to put "caffeine addiction" on the same level as Nicotine and other drug addictions is insulting to those trying to quit substances with serious drug addiction and withdrawal symptoms.
More or less a matter of market share I'd imagine. Google has wanted maximum exposure for its beta phase, which still means windows. For OS X, at least, the transition should be fairly simple(comparatively anyway) since Safari, like Google Chrome, is based around webkit. Which means its more about translating the shell of the browser.
- Turning green
- developing more animalistic tendencies and features
- flying through the air in a rolled up ball
- and an uncontrollable urge to participate in fighting tournaments
Should one or more of these symptoms occur, please see a medical professional or martial arts trainer immediately.
They'll still need to shuttle boxes of paper clips and rubber bands to the moon so they can make most of the items they need. Thankfully, both are relatively light weight, durable, and don't take up much space.
Well, there is little doubt by any reputable scientist that it was some form of extra-terrestrial impact, what has remained in contention for a long time was what exactly impacted at Tunguska.
One side insists it was an Asteroid, but the material that would normally be present at an asteroid impact just isn't there. Others argue it was a comet, but analysis of comets in the last decade or so has put some real doubt into that theory as well.
At this point they pretty much have almost everything else worked out, from the velocity whatever it was had, where it traveled, where it likely went kaboom. They just don't know what the make-up of the object was. This report goes a long way towards proving exactly what the celestial object was.
Miyamoto is actually on yet another level from those guys. Don't get me wrong, all of them are insanely talented in game design, equal too, or in some areas, beyond Miyamoto. But, Miyamoto has two things that set him apart from that group:
First, he's been at it a bit longer than most of them. A few started up not too long after him, but he's kind of got the "first" award.
Second, and more importantly, Miyamoto doesn't just design games, he designs hardware. In fact, his degree is in industrial design, not software design. He has had direct involvement in almost every piece of hardware designed by Nintendo in the last 20+ years. Some systems more than others mind you, but he definitely plays a big role in, if nothing else, the concepts behind the hardware designs. In fact, the Wii is very much Miyamoto's baby as he has a huge influence on its design and direction.
The fact that he's been at it for so long, and does hardware and software so equally well, really puts him a step above the others.
BSD and the *nixes were designed to be simple, effective, modular operating systems. As long as you have the drivers and know how, you can easily port them over and install them on a variety of hardware. Then, thanks to their modular nature, you can then plug in all the extra bells and whistles you need for your particular system and go to town.
That is why they are still around and still popular. They are K.I.S.S., work as they are supposed to, and the modular code that is plugged into them can just be sloughed away when it becomes out dated, and newer, better code plugged in to modernize the OS as you go.
That's also why Windows has had so many problems over the years. Windows was designed to be everything you need in a single package. That means everything is all tied up together. So, unlike BSD and the *nixes, when part of the OS becomes out dated, MS can't just unplug the old stuff and plug in new stuff. It's all interlinked from the ground up. That means a large portion of development time getting is spent fixing bugs caused by new additions, which then cause even more problems down the line when you go to update again. It also makes it bloated as legacy code ends up stuck in the mix because without it the patched together additions wouldn't function right.
And, unfortunately for MS, their market dominance is based on the windows "feel" being familiar and backwards compatibility. If they could, I'm sure they'd re-write windows from the ground up, but now they are in a catch 22 where doing so might significantly kill their market share.
I'm guessing Bill and company sometimes look back and kick themselves for not having the guts to go for broke and re-do the OS from the ground up for Windows XP. Because, back then MS was still king, Apple was at its low point with a very small and stagnant market share, and the *nixes were still primarily a hard core enthusiast hobby. Today, if MS were to completely change Windows, they'd probably lose a significant amount of market share to a variety of alternatives.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for improving the emission situation, but there are two major problems with the approaches by lawmakers. First, as others have stated, cars only account for a very small portion of the emission problem, but they are also the most visable. Thus, cars are frequently targeted by lawmakers to make it appear like they are doing something about the problem, when in fact they are really doing very little at all.
The second problem is there is *no* real solution to the emission situation unless we change the fuel source we use to power our vehicles. No solution at all. Why? Because improving emissions on vehicles results in either: A) a reduction in performance by a vehicle, which results in higher fuel consumption, which makes the majority of the changes moot. Or B) Improving fuel efficiency, which results in people driving more often because it's cheaper. Again making the majority of the changes moot.
Quite frankly, outside of a massive investment by this country on the scale of projects like the interstate system and electrifying everyone's homes, or a sudden and surprising leap forward in technology, nothing is going to change significantly for some time to come. Money spent on improving emissions in the short term would be better spent on educating the populace so they make more informed decisions/alter their habits, and serious investment in long term alternatives like Fuel Cell technology.
It's also worth noting that a number of people in the desktop market who are interested in Macs are in a holding pattern right now waiting for the major iMac refresh to hit sometime within the next month or so. Likewise, others are waiting until Leopard's release this October before buying a Mac.
Finally, starting this month through December, Apple is rolling out new mini-apple stores inside of 1/3 of the US's Best Buy stores(over 300 stores in total), which is dramatically going to increase their market exposure. Anyway, I agree, it's silly to compare the two because at no time in the near to foreseeable future is Apple going to post higher marketshare numbers than Windows. That said, I'd expect between this august and the first part of next year to see a steady, if not dramatic, increase in Mac marketshare.
Honestly, given the browser market on the PC right now, I highly doubt Apple designed Safari for Windows to give PC users a taste of OS X. More likely it is being released as a market test, and to give mac users who use safari regularly on their macs access to their browser when they are on Windows.
It's worth noting that, while Sony is certainly to blame to a certain extent in regards to the Acer laptop problem, Acer laptops themselves are such horrid cheap pieces of garbage that I cringe whenever I see one. The only reason companies usually sell Acer laptops/desktops is because they have a large profit margin because of the cheapness of the components used.
The majority of the security holes patched are ones where you would have to be in a very unusual situation for someone to use them to any real effect. That doesn't lessen the fact that these are holes being patched up mind you. But, if you look closely at what was patched, you'll see a lot of the patches focus on the foundation that OSX is built on(BSD and its respective tools), and most are relatively harmless/hard to use to your advantage flaws.
As others have said, no operating system is bullet proof by any means. All of them are going to require security updates from time to time because it's impossible to catch everything, and security needs change over time as methods of attack change. But, this patch is more like monthly house cleaning than "seriously critical flaw fixing" like you get with the large majority of Windows security patches.
Unless he decides to re-negotiate his contract(although all indications seem to be he doesn't plan to), this is Trent's last album under his contract with Interscope. This, of course, means that it's the last album his label and the RIAA will have their current level of control over, because certainly he is going to keep total conrol over his music whereever he goes next. Keeping that in mind, I wouldn't be surprised at all if a lot of this scrambling by the RIAA is an attempt to lock down the songs from this album so they can squeeze as much money as possible out of it.
i fuly expect to see a ton of best of albums done with little or none of Trent's consent in the future as well, as his current label and the RIAA tries to milk every dollar they can. A good example of this happened recently, in fact. When PJ quit Epic they went independant. While they did release their next album through Sony, it was more or less a matter of distribution convenience, they held complete control over the music. As soon as PJ quit Epic, the first thing that hit the market was a "Best of" Pearl Jam album, released by Epic in order to cash in on the songs they did hold rights to.
Anyway, I'm sure Trent's current contract status is playing a large role in the RIAA's motives right now.
Lithium Ion batteries, quite frankly, are notorious for generating extreme heat/exploding if they are charged or discharged rapidly enough. The "sony battery recall" was initiated because Sony's batteries did not meet the safety minimum. *Not* because they could explode, but because they were more likely to explode.
For example, talk to any Radio Controlled Plane hobbiest about Lithium Ion batteries, and most will tell you about the clay pots they sell to place the batteries in to try and contain explosions when they do happen(RC planes charge and discharge at rates even more rapid than laptops, thus are even more succeptable). My father is one of those RC plane fliers, in fact. In the last year one member of his flying club lost his garage and another lost his van, and in both cases it was due to a Lithium-Ion battery explosion.
Basically, it's time for new battery technologies. Lithium-Ion batteries are nice, but we've finally reached the point where our demands for power are straining them too much.
I must admit I really do like the ability in Vista to plug in a flash drive and use it as expanded swap memory for processing/booting the computer. However, beyond that one neat, but likely to be little used, feature Mac OS X wins in every category except
1) Windows has more software, especially in the gaming department.
2) Mac OS X is technically only allowed to be used on a set of proprietary hardware that, for the most part, is upgrade limited.
In other words, Mac OS X itself is superior to Vista in every respect, but only loses out due to software support and a marketing decision by Apple, not because of any failing in OS X itself.
Awhile back my friend and former roommate decided he was willing to be a test guinea pig and use Windows Vista as his main OS. He's you're typical Average Joe computer user. He knows a little bit just because he uses computers a lot, but he doesn't really know any in depth advanced stuff.
About a week ago I got a call from him saying that his computer was really hosed and he needed my help to try and fix it. Turns out he had gotten infected with Zlob and 5 other viruses along with about 200 spyware infections. All this while using the supposed "secure" IE7, Windows Vista, Trend Micro Anti Virus for Vista, and having the system setup to auto update, virus scan, etc on a regular basis.
Not only did he still get infected, he had even worse problems because, thanks to compatability issues, a number of the spyware/software installed by his virus infections corrupted the system files themselves. To make matters worse, a number of cleaning utilities I have been using for years either won't work in Vista at all, or won't work in Safe mode due to compatability layer problems.
In the end, I managed to force a system restore during a 10 second window between Windows Explorer crashing, and rolled back the system to before the system files got hosed. From there I was able to clean out any trace of the viruses, etc. In short, while Vista is certainly more secure, and the automated systems great for your average Joe user to keep their system in better shape, Vista can still get viruses just like XP. And, in some cases the infections may be worse than XP when suddenly a relatively harmless XP virus/spyware causes major damage to Vista due to compatability differences.
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I think the best solution for students and to resolve budget issues, is to extend the school year more days but reduce the time per day that students spend in school. This has multiple benefits:
1) Students won't get flooded with hours of info each day and be given more time to absorb what they learn on a daily basis.
2) Students will have more time for after school studying which is equally important
3) Students will have more time for extra-curricular activities outside of school. More time to get out there and do sports and stuff so they don't get fat
4) The number of hours per year for school teachers would remain fairly unchanged since we'd be stretching what we already have out more. Which means budget concerns would be mostly alleviated.
The only downside I see to such a change would be parents wouldn't be able to use school as a substitute for daycare as much anymore. And honestly, while I know for some families that *is* a legitimately hard thing to do with both spouses working or single parents, it is very much a trend we need to be getting away from. Instead, we need parents more active in their children's lives and development, and such a school system change would allow for that too.
It's worth noting, as well, that starting with Snow Leopard, OS X archive and installs by default through the installer. The only other option is erase and install which has been moved to the disk utility application off the install disk in order to prevent accidental erasure.
It's part of the natural life cycle of anti-virus software. Anti-virus software gets really good -> geeks and techies jump on the bandwagon -> they spread this to their non-techie friends -> AV software gets bloated/crappy over time -> geeks abandon it slowly over time -> regular consumers continue to use it forever until a geek comes along to force them to use the current hotness.
It's actually, apparently, all well explained. Including other stuff like the Enterprise being built on the ground instead of in space.
Luckily most serious caffeine addicts just sit in front of their computers 24/7 and have no muscle definition what-so-ever to worry about.
Yes you can get a withdrawal headache and feel a little tired. But two days or so and you're golden. Never mind that all you need to do is pop a Tylenol or other headache reliever and you won't even notice that part of the withdrawal.
Even trying to put "caffeine addiction" on the same level as Nicotine and other drug addictions is insulting to those trying to quit substances with serious drug addiction and withdrawal symptoms.
I mean that's exactly what you said about the iphone 3 months ago, that it needed to be open since closed systems are things of the past....
Queue expected sarcastic eye roll.
Best part is there is a darksucker born every minute.
More or less a matter of market share I'd imagine. Google has wanted maximum exposure for its beta phase, which still means windows. For OS X, at least, the transition should be fairly simple(comparatively anyway) since Safari, like Google Chrome, is based around webkit. Which means its more about translating the shell of the browser.
- Turning green
- developing more animalistic tendencies and features
- flying through the air in a rolled up ball
- and an uncontrollable urge to participate in fighting tournaments
Should one or more of these symptoms occur, please see a medical professional or martial arts trainer immediately.
They'll still need to shuttle boxes of paper clips and rubber bands to the moon so they can make most of the items they need. Thankfully, both are relatively light weight, durable, and don't take up much space.
Well, there is little doubt by any reputable scientist that it was some form of extra-terrestrial impact, what has remained in contention for a long time was what exactly impacted at Tunguska.
One side insists it was an Asteroid, but the material that would normally be present at an asteroid impact just isn't there. Others argue it was a comet, but analysis of comets in the last decade or so has put some real doubt into that theory as well.
At this point they pretty much have almost everything else worked out, from the velocity whatever it was had, where it traveled, where it likely went kaboom. They just don't know what the make-up of the object was. This report goes a long way towards proving exactly what the celestial object was.
Miyamoto is actually on yet another level from those guys. Don't get me wrong, all of them are insanely talented in game design, equal too, or in some areas, beyond Miyamoto. But, Miyamoto has two things that set him apart from that group:
First, he's been at it a bit longer than most of them. A few started up not too long after him, but he's kind of got the "first" award.
Second, and more importantly, Miyamoto doesn't just design games, he designs hardware. In fact, his degree is in industrial design, not software design. He has had direct involvement in almost every piece of hardware designed by Nintendo in the last 20+ years. Some systems more than others mind you, but he definitely plays a big role in, if nothing else, the concepts behind the hardware designs. In fact, the Wii is very much Miyamoto's baby as he has a huge influence on its design and direction.
The fact that he's been at it for so long, and does hardware and software so equally well, really puts him a step above the others.
Of course.
BSD and the *nixes were designed to be simple, effective, modular operating systems. As long as you have the drivers and know how, you can easily port them over and install them on a variety of hardware. Then, thanks to their modular nature, you can then plug in all the extra bells and whistles you need for your particular system and go to town.
That is why they are still around and still popular. They are K.I.S.S., work as they are supposed to, and the modular code that is plugged into them can just be sloughed away when it becomes out dated, and newer, better code plugged in to modernize the OS as you go.
That's also why Windows has had so many problems over the years. Windows was designed to be everything you need in a single package. That means everything is all tied up together. So, unlike BSD and the *nixes, when part of the OS becomes out dated, MS can't just unplug the old stuff and plug in new stuff. It's all interlinked from the ground up. That means a large portion of development time getting is spent fixing bugs caused by new additions, which then cause even more problems down the line when you go to update again. It also makes it bloated as legacy code ends up stuck in the mix because without it the patched together additions wouldn't function right.
And, unfortunately for MS, their market dominance is based on the windows "feel" being familiar and backwards compatibility. If they could, I'm sure they'd re-write windows from the ground up, but now they are in a catch 22 where doing so might significantly kill their market share.
I'm guessing Bill and company sometimes look back and kick themselves for not having the guts to go for broke and re-do the OS from the ground up for Windows XP. Because, back then MS was still king, Apple was at its low point with a very small and stagnant market share, and the *nixes were still primarily a hard core enthusiast hobby. Today, if MS were to completely change Windows, they'd probably lose a significant amount of market share to a variety of alternatives.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for improving the emission situation, but there are two major problems with the approaches by lawmakers. First, as others have stated, cars only account for a very small portion of the emission problem, but they are also the most visable. Thus, cars are frequently targeted by lawmakers to make it appear like they are doing something about the problem, when in fact they are really doing very little at all.
The second problem is there is *no* real solution to the emission situation unless we change the fuel source we use to power our vehicles. No solution at all. Why? Because improving emissions on vehicles results in either: A) a reduction in performance by a vehicle, which results in higher fuel consumption, which makes the majority of the changes moot. Or B) Improving fuel efficiency, which results in people driving more often because it's cheaper. Again making the majority of the changes moot.
Quite frankly, outside of a massive investment by this country on the scale of projects like the interstate system and electrifying everyone's homes, or a sudden and surprising leap forward in technology, nothing is going to change significantly for some time to come. Money spent on improving emissions in the short term would be better spent on educating the populace so they make more informed decisions/alter their habits, and serious investment in long term alternatives like Fuel Cell technology.
It's also worth noting that a number of people in the desktop market who are interested in Macs are in a holding pattern right now waiting for the major iMac refresh to hit sometime within the next month or so. Likewise, others are waiting until Leopard's release this October before buying a Mac.
Finally, starting this month through December, Apple is rolling out new mini-apple stores inside of 1/3 of the US's Best Buy stores(over 300 stores in total), which is dramatically going to increase their market exposure. Anyway, I agree, it's silly to compare the two because at no time in the near to foreseeable future is Apple going to post higher marketshare numbers than Windows. That said, I'd expect between this august and the first part of next year to see a steady, if not dramatic, increase in Mac marketshare.
Honestly, given the browser market on the PC right now, I highly doubt Apple designed Safari for Windows to give PC users a taste of OS X. More likely it is being released as a market test, and to give mac users who use safari regularly on their macs access to their browser when they are on Windows.
It's worth noting that, while Sony is certainly to blame to a certain extent in regards to the Acer laptop problem, Acer laptops themselves are such horrid cheap pieces of garbage that I cringe whenever I see one. The only reason companies usually sell Acer laptops/desktops is because they have a large profit margin because of the cheapness of the components used.
The majority of the security holes patched are ones where you would have to be in a very unusual situation for someone to use them to any real effect. That doesn't lessen the fact that these are holes being patched up mind you. But, if you look closely at what was patched, you'll see a lot of the patches focus on the foundation that OSX is built on(BSD and its respective tools), and most are relatively harmless/hard to use to your advantage flaws.
As others have said, no operating system is bullet proof by any means. All of them are going to require security updates from time to time because it's impossible to catch everything, and security needs change over time as methods of attack change. But, this patch is more like monthly house cleaning than "seriously critical flaw fixing" like you get with the large majority of Windows security patches.
Unless he decides to re-negotiate his contract(although all indications seem to be he doesn't plan to), this is Trent's last album under his contract with Interscope. This, of course, means that it's the last album his label and the RIAA will have their current level of control over, because certainly he is going to keep total conrol over his music whereever he goes next. Keeping that in mind, I wouldn't be surprised at all if a lot of this scrambling by the RIAA is an attempt to lock down the songs from this album so they can squeeze as much money as possible out of it.
i fuly expect to see a ton of best of albums done with little or none of Trent's consent in the future as well, as his current label and the RIAA tries to milk every dollar they can. A good example of this happened recently, in fact. When PJ quit Epic they went independant. While they did release their next album through Sony, it was more or less a matter of distribution convenience, they held complete control over the music. As soon as PJ quit Epic, the first thing that hit the market was a "Best of" Pearl Jam album, released by Epic in order to cash in on the songs they did hold rights to.
Anyway, I'm sure Trent's current contract status is playing a large role in the RIAA's motives right now.
Lithium Ion batteries, quite frankly, are notorious for generating extreme heat/exploding if they are charged or discharged rapidly enough. The "sony battery recall" was initiated because Sony's batteries did not meet the safety minimum. *Not* because they could explode, but because they were more likely to explode.
For example, talk to any Radio Controlled Plane hobbiest about Lithium Ion batteries, and most will tell you about the clay pots they sell to place the batteries in to try and contain explosions when they do happen(RC planes charge and discharge at rates even more rapid than laptops, thus are even more succeptable). My father is one of those RC plane fliers, in fact. In the last year one member of his flying club lost his garage and another lost his van, and in both cases it was due to a Lithium-Ion battery explosion.
Basically, it's time for new battery technologies. Lithium-Ion batteries are nice, but we've finally reached the point where our demands for power are straining them too much.
I must admit I really do like the ability in Vista to plug in a flash drive and use it as expanded swap memory for processing/booting the computer. However, beyond that one neat, but likely to be little used, feature Mac OS X wins in every category except
1) Windows has more software, especially in the gaming department.
2) Mac OS X is technically only allowed to be used on a set of proprietary hardware that, for the most part, is upgrade limited.
In other words, Mac OS X itself is superior to Vista in every respect, but only loses out due to software support and a marketing decision by Apple, not because of any failing in OS X itself.
Awhile back my friend and former roommate decided he was willing to be a test guinea pig and use Windows Vista as his main OS. He's you're typical Average Joe computer user. He knows a little bit just because he uses computers a lot, but he doesn't really know any in depth advanced stuff.
About a week ago I got a call from him saying that his computer was really hosed and he needed my help to try and fix it. Turns out he had gotten infected with Zlob and 5 other viruses along with about 200 spyware infections. All this while using the supposed "secure" IE7, Windows Vista, Trend Micro Anti Virus for Vista, and having the system setup to auto update, virus scan, etc on a regular basis.
Not only did he still get infected, he had even worse problems because, thanks to compatability issues, a number of the spyware/software installed by his virus infections corrupted the system files themselves. To make matters worse, a number of cleaning utilities I have been using for years either won't work in Vista at all, or won't work in Safe mode due to compatability layer problems.
In the end, I managed to force a system restore during a 10 second window between Windows Explorer crashing, and rolled back the system to before the system files got hosed. From there I was able to clean out any trace of the viruses, etc. In short, while Vista is certainly more secure, and the automated systems great for your average Joe user to keep their system in better shape, Vista can still get viruses just like XP. And, in some cases the infections may be worse than XP when suddenly a relatively harmless XP virus/spyware causes major damage to Vista due to compatability differences.
Just remember, there can be only one.