So, yeah, sure, sell me a fatter cheaper pipe Verizon. If all you can do with a modest degree of competence is sell pipes, do that.
Well, that's the problem, isn't it? Read the article:
The Federal Communications Commission plans to allow the Bells to invest in fiber without requiring them to share their infrastructure with third parties, as is the case with copper wire networks. For many years, the Bells have protested that the line-sharing rules on copper wire networks are unfair, because cable companies are not required to share their lines.
Verizon hates Blarg, et al, and now they don't have to deal with them. DSL is dead, has been dead for years, and fiber is the future. Verizon has known this, but they waited until they could get this out of the FCC before putting any money into it. Welcome to the future!
No, FTTP now means Fiber To The Premise and it is exactly how it sounds: a fiber-optic cable all the way to your house, business, or MDU. The difference from FTTH is just the last two, i.e. the greasy marketing weasel realized FTTH was unnecessarily limiting their market.
FTTH has become FTTP, because we are delivering fiber to multi-use buildings, not just homes.
Generally, with a multi-dwelling unit, you would use a special CPE (customer premise equipment) made for that. Fiber is great for point-to-point links, but it isn't made for local distribution. For that, you use whatever existing infrastructure there is and CAT5. With FTTP, the fiber connection goes to a CPE at the building and then services are broken out from there. They could have an Ethernet port for Internet, a coax socket for TV, and a couple lines for POTS. For an MDU, the CPE would have multiple Ethernet ports for multiple subscribers. Each subscriber could get a 30MB connection (except if they did, the equipment would probably need to be upgraded).
(Current) cablemodem service won't be competitive (MSOs have been pushing fiber deeper and deeper into their networks; this will force them to get much closer to the home). Fiber is the future, but Verizon was only willing to do this after forcing the FCC to allow them to close their infrastructure to anyone else. Expect round two of the great telco monopolies in the next decade. I think the only solution is publicly-owned infrastructure, like the roads, with multiple service providers competing over it.
I don't know about your Afghanistan claims, but I haven't seen that criticism echoed anywhere else. Perhaps you could be more specific, like actually citing something from the movie?
As far as the White House being responsible for evacuating Saudis and Bin Ladins: who do you think Richard Clarke was working for? As he himself said: "It was a conscious decision with complete review at the highest levels of the State Department and the FBI and the White House." Testimony of Richard Clarke, Former Counterterrorism Chief, National Security Council, before the Senate Judiciary Committee, September 3, 2003.
And your link is to...Saudi-US-Relations.org!? Who the hell do you think funds that? That article is a mess. First it has this:
"The request came to me, and I refused to approve it," Clarke testified. "I suggested that it be routed to the FBI and that the FBI look at the names of the individuals who were going to be on the passenger manifest and that they approve it or not. I spoke with the - at the time - No. 2 person in the FBI, Dale Watson, and asked him to deal with this issue. The FBI then approved the flight."
Which makes it sounds like Clarke's claim of responsibility for the decision contradicts his testimony. Then it has this:
"I believe after the FBI came back and said it was all right with them, we ran it through the decision process for all these decisions that we were making in those hours, which was the interagency Crisis Management Group on the video conference," Clarke testified. "I was making or coordinating a lot of the decisions on 9-11 in the days immediately after. And I would love to be able to tell you who did it, who brought this proposal to me, but I don't know. The two - since you press me, the two possibilities that are most likely are either the Department of State or the White House chief of staff's office."
So it sounds to me that after refusing to approve it until the FBI had looked at it, the FBI approved the list and it came back to Clarke. He got buy off from who ever else he needed it and made the decisions. But he can't recall who pushed the decision forward to begin with. I don't see any contradiction.
And then there is your critique on Moore's film style and a letter about the president acting presidential some other time.
Then you ask "how did such simple things get past Moore's fact checkers"!? What facts did he get wrong? You haven't shown any. Is this your example of research and critical thinking?
Here is the full transcript of Michael Moore's talk with Rep. Mark Kennedy:
CONGRESSMAN KENNEDY How are you doing?
MM: I'm trying to get members of congress to get their kids to enlist in the army and go over to Iraq. Is there any way you could help me with that?
CONGRESSMAN KENNEDY: How would I help you?
MM: Pass it out to other members of congress.
CONGRESSMAN KENNEDY: I'd be happy to. Especially those who voted for the war.
CONGRESSMAN KENNEDY: I have a nephew on his way to Afghanistan.
MM: Because there is only one member who has a kid over there in Iraq. This is Corporal Henderson, he is helping me out here.
CONGRESSMAN KENNEDY: How are you, good to see you.
MM: There it is, it's just a basic recruitment thing. Encourage especially those who were in favor of the war to send their kids. I appreciate it.
CONGRESSMAN KENNEDY: Okay, bye.
The footage in the movie doesn't have any of Rep. Kennedy's remarks in it. How is that a lie or even a distortion? Michael Moore is asking about the children of members of Congress going to Iraq, the point being that only one had a child in Iraq. Just because someone says something, doesn't mean you have to put it in your film, especially when it is beside the point. A nephew going to Afghanistan after the war there is hardly the same.
Re:Double spin example. Bin Laden and Saudi flight
on
Fahrenheit 9/11 Discussion
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Wrong. The movie says after 9/13 and they were assisted by our government. Here is what the movie says (from MicahaelMoore.com):
What the movie says is this: "It turns out that the White House approved planes to pick up the bin Ladens and numerous other Saudis. At least six private jets and nearly two dozen commercial planes carried the Saudis and the bin Ladens out of the U.S. after September 13th. In all, 142 Saudis, including 24 members of the bin Laden family, were allowed to leave the country."
These facts are based entirely on the findings contained in the 9/11 commission draft report, which states, "After the airspace reopened, six chartered flights with 142 people, mostly Saudi Arabian nationals, departed from the United States between September 14 and 24. One flight, the so-called Bin Ladin flight, departed the United States on September 20 with 26 passengers, most of them relatives of Usama Bin Ladin." National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Threats and Responses in 2001, Staff Statement No. 10, The Saudi Flights, p. 12;
Also on that site, this from Craig Unger:
In fact, as I reported in House of Bush, House of Saud, the first flight took place on September 13, when restrictions on private planes were still in place. According to the St. Petersburg Times, that flight has since been corroborated by authorities at Tampa International Airport.
And this:
The St. Petersberg Times article to which Unger refers also states, "The 9/11 Commission, which has said the flights out of the United States were handled appropriately by the FBI, appears concerned with the handling of the Tampa flight... Most of the aircraft allowed to fly in U.S. airspace on Sept. 13 were empty airliners being ferried from the airports where they made quick landings on Sept. 11. The reopening of the airspace included paid charter flights, but not private, nonrevenue flights."
Jean Heller, TIA now verifies flight of Saudis; The government has long denied that two days after the 9/11 attacks, the three were allowed to fly.
St. Petersburg Times, June 9, 2004.
And finally:
Former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke has testified that he approved these flights, stating that "it was a conscious decision with complete review at the highest levels of the State Department and the FBI and the White House."
The film says the 14th and later, but Craig Unger and the St. Petersburg Times say that the first flight was actually on the 13th. And Richard Clarke says that this was reviewed at the highest levels of the State Department, FBI, and the White House. He has also said that he approved the flights, but we still don't know who initiated the decision. That is the truth (as we know it now).
The biggest issue isn't whether or not they were allowed to fly when no one else could, is that they were allowed to fly out of the country at all. Fifteen of the hijackers were Saudis. According to the 9/11 Commission (Staff Statement No. 10), of the 142 Saudis that flew out of the country, only 30 were interviewed by the FBI. And how extensive do you think those interviews were?
Now, I'm not saying that all Saudis were suspects or that they should never have been allowed to leave the country. But why the rush? Especially given that we know there were ties between the terrorists and the Saudi government, ties that our government is doing its best to cover up (remember those 25 or so blacked out pages?). Why do the Saudi government any favors?
Even worse, won't Microsoft be notified by responsible hackers about the security holes before anyone else? Don't security companies usually give vulnerable developers a month or two before making an exploit public? So it seems like that information, obtained because they make the OS, would give them an anticompetitive advantage over other A/V developers.
You are confusing your cable modem with the cable system. Current HFC systems (Hybrid Fiber Coax, the cable infrastructure) get about 6.8Gbps of bandwidth and they are expected to max out around 10Gbps. However, that is broadcast, one-way bandwidth. Everybody gets the same thing. For interactive services, like cable modems, the cable companies install equipment further down the line. In the case of cable modems, this equipment usually has its own fiber feed and will serve hundreds or thousands of homes. I don't know what the data rates will max out at for cable modems, but probably not very high. The systems are designed for bursty traffic and the current 3Mbps connections being advertised won't hold up to downloading a few ISOs.
Great response from Bruce, but I'm not sure why you bothered posting it. Bruce is right, his piece wasn't intended to be a "creative and possibly convincing argument against the use of nuclear power." He certainly never advertised it as such. Take it for what it is, some light-hearted jabs at the current embracing of nuclear power as the deus ex machina for all of our energy problems. Did you expect Shrek 2 to be "a creative and possibly convincing argument against using Happily Ever After potions"? Take it for what it is. Hope you are still a fan.
How that big server-level database of yours supposed to work?
Uhh, how do you get any mail that he doesn't? The data would be stored in one of the user's mail folders, just like an attachment. You completely misunderstood the parent poster. He accesses the same IMAP account from multiple different machines, but he has to train each one of his clients FOR THE SAME ACCOUNT. So he gets 10 messages to homer@doh.com and his machine at work filters out message 1 and 2. He gets home, and his client filters out message 7. His laptop filters out message 9. They've each been trained to recognize some of the spam, but their training is incomplete because only one of the 3 clients is trained for each message that comes in. The only way to make it consistent would be to move all of the junk message back into the Inbox and select them as junk in each mail client. Pretty crappy. And it gets unsalvageable when you mark a message as Not Junk on client 2 that client 1 marked as Junk. I have the same issue. I just leave me home client running most of the time, so it handles all of the filtering as new messages come in and then mark the ones it missed when I get home. But the parent is right, Mail should just store it on the IMAP server.
Which brings up an interesting point. I tend to store all of my notes on my personal IMAP server as drafts, so I can get to it anywhere. Why don't any programs use IMAP to store data? Can you not access them at a byte level, but only as whole messages? I haven't looked at the IMAP protocol. Could it be combined with WebDAV for a unified data store? I would love to have a server that allowed me to keep all of my e-mail, documents, contacts, etc. in one place that I could access from anywhere.
I note that first big Internet-wide worm attack affected mostly BSD machines.
And what year was that? And where was Windows at that time? That is the line that obviously marks you as a troll.
How do you expect to take advantage of that knowledge if you don't understand it? That is the whole point, that the short-term product development (most companies' "R&D") is all based off of longer-term basic research. If we don't control the basic research, we won't control the products in 10 or 20 years.
Huh? This must be a troll, but it has a score of 3, so I'll reply.
Why not just put the virus in place of the JMP instruction? It doesn't matter, because for it to work, you would have to RUN it. How does it get executed? That is the whole trick with viruses, etc. If you don't got that, you got nothing.
I love the Appleseed and GitS (original; I still haven't read GitSII and I'm a little afraid to) mangas. They are very layered and nuanced. I always picked up something new reading through them the first couple of times. He did deliver, but never followed through on fulfilling his potential (as I saw it; it sounds like he is rich and doing fine).
Unfortunately, with the aptly named Intron Depot, Shirow jumped the shark. I assume this is what you are referring to and not any of the manga. I wish he would finish Appleseed (he has been talking about 5 forever), but I am almost afraid of him doing so now. Sigh.
On the other hand, Intron is now what I name any Windows machine I have to use. I have yet to find a Windows admin who gets either reference.
BTW, if you haven't already, do yourself a favor and check out GitS: Stand Alone Complex. I really disliked the movie, but I loved the series. It reminded me completely of the manga. A little more serialized, but all of the complexity and layers are there.
The automatic software updates feature is the perfect distribution system for some buggy code, it seems.
How is it any different, logically, from any other form of distribution, such as a CD? It is much faster, but it is simply a means of distribution, not a code development process. Whether or not it will distribute buggy code is wholly dependent on the process in place to generate that code, not on how it is distributed.
If anything, because of the more immediate feedback and staggered distribution inherent in Software Update (Apple can get feedback from early adopters before most people have downloaded an update), it has helped more people get less buggy code. No matter how good your software development processes are, with current software development methodologies you can't test every single possibility. Code isn't perfect, testing isn't perfect, and at some point something will slip through. Apple has been able to pull updates with bad code before the majority of its users get it thanks to Software Update. If Apple were distributing updates with CDs or even as files over the Internet (with multiple sites hosting them), they would have a much harder time stopping the spread of bad code.
As you quoted, the parent post is referring to "buggy code", so the writer is referring to defects that the programmers put in themselves, not to a third-party using the architecture to distribute trojans. Your comment is irrelevant to that argument.
If any moderators think this is relevant, mark down the parent post instead of marking this one up.
Setting the rest of your post aside, I am going to take issue with your slipping in "the single mouse button" argument. Macs support multiple button mice quite well. While I think they should ship a multiple button mouse with their Pro machines (the PowerMacs), there are valid reasons for shipping a mouse with a single button. I constantly deal with "average" computer users, and a lot of them (especially older ones) have a really hard time using multiple buttons. While double-click or click-and-hold seem to come fairly easy to them, left-click and right-click don't. I usually end up mapping both mouse buttons to a left-click. In fact, I helped a friend do this for his grandpa, because his grandpa wanted a scroll wheel but still didn't get left- and right-clicking. So we got a mouse with a scroll wheel and mapped all the other buttons to a left-click.
I think that Apple could ship a multi-button mouse with all of their computers at this point and just map all of the buttons to a left-click by default so that power users don't have to add the cost of a new mouse to their Mac purchase. But there are still valid reasons for having a one-button mouse beyond simply arrogance.
Are you an idiot? Amnesty is criticizing Microsoft because they are giving tools to the Chinese government that the Chinese government uses to violate human rights. It should be obvious that they are also critical of those committing the human rights violations, not just those providing the tools. But if you need a specific example, try here. Just because every press release doesn't explicitly say "China is bad" (again, it should be implicit in this one), doesn't mean they are soft on China.
The reason they calling public attention to Microsoft is that we Westerners can have a much greater direct impact on Microsoft than we can on China. And if we can get Western companies to stop providing tools to the Chinese government, we can limit the effectiveness with which they can violate their citizens' human rights.
And, BTW, the only people that believe the Chinese government is leftist are people who wish to smear the left. You will be hard pressed to find someone on the left who would identify them as such (take Amnesty International as an example, as they are often identified as a "leftist" organization). Brutal regimes who slaughter their own people have traditionally been called rightwing regimes.
Your argument is a non-sequitur. The iPod is popular with Windows users, so Apple will be pressured to port iMovie to Windows? Huh? The iPod has no connection to iMovie, Garageband, or any of the rest of iLife. It would seem that it will place the same amount of pressure on them as it would to port OS X to Intel.
How will not porting the iApps negatively affect their iPod sales? I can't see any reason it would. People won't be able to buy iPhoto for Windows so they won't get an iPod out of spite?
How would porting them over positively affect their iPod sales? Again, it wouldn't (except for perhaps a miniscule bounce because of greater brand recognition amongst PC users).
And who can afford a > $300 music player but can't afford a Mac? I can afford a Mac, but I can't afford an iPod. I guess it is a matter of priorities.
It is interesting that Apple is developing a customer base of Windows users, but that puts no pressure on them to change what they have been doing. If the bulk of Ford's tiny car sales come from Japan, should they start selling F150s and their entire product line over there? The fact is, iPod sales are a tiny percentage of Apple's revenues and always will be. Taking away a major reason for buying a Mac just to sell a couple more iPods would be a colossally dumb move, and probably why they haven't done it.
The clones were a different proposition. The whole idea with the clones was that they *would* undercut Apple, building cheap machines and killing each other with commodity pricing. They would expand the Mac market and sell into markets Apple wouldn't make enough profit in to deign it worth their effort while Apple would continue to rake it fat profits on the high-end workstation and pro machines, up-selling some of the new converts to boot. Apple wanted to have its cake and eat it too and they arrogantly assumed that no one could make a Mac as well as Apple (hence leaving the high-end to them). Unfortunately, they were wrong and it has turned into one of their classic blunders. Luckily, they learned from it and moved on (or rather, Jobs moved in). Or something like that.
How is this different? First, they aren't going to be allowing HP to innovate on these products like they did with the clones (and Palm did with its clones, a very similar situation). There won't be any features on the HP iPod that the normal iPod won't have (well, nothing major, anyway; they probably need some differentiation). HP is basically going to be a glorified reseller of Apple iPods.
Second, and this is the real difference, Apple is bargaining from a position of strength. The clone initiative was an act of desperation from a company that had seen its market share plummet over several years and been plagued with all kinds of management and production problems. It was the last gasp of the old Apple before it died and NeXT was reborn in its stead. With the iPod, they don't need HP. They are going to sell whether HP gets a piece of the action or not. This is simply a strategic move to broaden their base and stop a potentially troublesome competitor. And I'm sure HP is happy to let Apple take on Dell in this battle.
That isn't there aren't dangers. Palm was almost killed by clones and licensing as well. But if Apple isn't blinded by their arrogance, they should come out just fine.
You are wrong about web browsers. I am pretty sure NCSA Mosaic has always been open source and it has always had an X-Windows build. Web browsers started on Unix (which I will group Linux under; I don't know when the first build of Mosaic was available for Linux but I'm sure it wasn't too long).
Office suites is a good point, but allow me to clarify my argument. When I said desktop, I was thinking "home desktop" rather than "business desktop". It was my mistake for not clarifying those, but that is what I was thinking. The business desktop is very different from the home desktop and it is a much more viable market for Linux (as it is currently) than the home market. And I would still argue that Open Office covers a much narrower scope than iLife, although that is debatable.
You obviously haven't used Cocoa. : )
I said cheap comparatively. I was simply pointing out the heavy-lifting for this program had already been done by Emagic and Soundtrack. Even most of the design is borrowed.
Nobody playing in the desktop Linux space has the capital to develop an iLife. (Who's left anyway? The Kompany?) This didn't just spring up over night. Apple bought Soundjam for iTunes, they bought some software for iDVD, they bought Final Cut Pro from Macromedia (and I think that is where iMovie came from), and they bought Emagic for the technology for GarageBand (I'm not sure where iPhoto came from). Then they spent a bunch of time and money turning them into iLife apps. Who else can do software development on this scale? And not in terms of developers, which I understand are surprisingly few, but in scope. Microsoft and maybe a couple of others are it.
I just can't believe this, it's gotta be a strategy to sell more Macs because the technology behind GarageBand (and its $99 add-on) is NOT cheap.
No, but the development of GarageBand was super-cheap (comparatively). Lest you forget, Apple bought Emagic in late 2002. The GarageBand name was registered as a trademark in early 2003, so this was probably one of the main benefits in buying Emagic, along with Soundtrack. This just leverages the already existing technology from Logic in a completely different market segment, bringing it to the masses.
So, Logic and Soundtrack pay for the technology, GarageBand leverages it. A pretty sweet acquisition for Apple.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, that's the problem, isn't it? Read the article: Verizon hates Blarg, et al, and now they don't have to deal with them. DSL is dead, has been dead for years, and fiber is the future. Verizon has known this, but they waited until they could get this out of the FCC before putting any money into it. Welcome to the future!
No, FTTP now means Fiber To The Premise and it is exactly how it sounds: a fiber-optic cable all the way to your house, business, or MDU. The difference from FTTH is just the last two, i.e. the greasy marketing weasel realized FTTH was unnecessarily limiting their market.
FTTH has become FTTP, because we are delivering fiber to multi-use buildings, not just homes.
Generally, with a multi-dwelling unit, you would use a special CPE (customer premise equipment) made for that. Fiber is great for point-to-point links, but it isn't made for local distribution. For that, you use whatever existing infrastructure there is and CAT5. With FTTP, the fiber connection goes to a CPE at the building and then services are broken out from there. They could have an Ethernet port for Internet, a coax socket for TV, and a couple lines for POTS. For an MDU, the CPE would have multiple Ethernet ports for multiple subscribers. Each subscriber could get a 30MB connection (except if they did, the equipment would probably need to be upgraded).
(Current) cablemodem service won't be competitive (MSOs have been pushing fiber deeper and deeper into their networks; this will force them to get much closer to the home). Fiber is the future, but Verizon was only willing to do this after forcing the FCC to allow them to close their infrastructure to anyone else. Expect round two of the great telco monopolies in the next decade. I think the only solution is publicly-owned infrastructure, like the roads, with multiple service providers competing over it.
As far as the White House being responsible for evacuating Saudis and Bin Ladins: who do you think Richard Clarke was working for? As he himself said: "It was a conscious decision with complete review at the highest levels of the State Department and the FBI and the White House." Testimony of Richard Clarke, Former Counterterrorism Chief, National Security Council, before the Senate Judiciary Committee, September 3, 2003. And your link is to...Saudi-US-Relations.org!? Who the hell do you think funds that? That article is a mess. First it has this: Which makes it sounds like Clarke's claim of responsibility for the decision contradicts his testimony. Then it has this: So it sounds to me that after refusing to approve it until the FBI had looked at it, the FBI approved the list and it came back to Clarke. He got buy off from who ever else he needed it and made the decisions. But he can't recall who pushed the decision forward to begin with. I don't see any contradiction.
And then there is your critique on Moore's film style and a letter about the president acting presidential some other time.
Then you ask "how did such simple things get past Moore's fact checkers"!? What facts did he get wrong? You haven't shown any. Is this your example of research and critical thinking?
The biggest issue isn't whether or not they were allowed to fly when no one else could, is that they were allowed to fly out of the country at all. Fifteen of the hijackers were Saudis. According to the 9/11 Commission (Staff Statement No. 10), of the 142 Saudis that flew out of the country, only 30 were interviewed by the FBI. And how extensive do you think those interviews were?
Now, I'm not saying that all Saudis were suspects or that they should never have been allowed to leave the country. But why the rush? Especially given that we know there were ties between the terrorists and the Saudi government, ties that our government is doing its best to cover up (remember those 25 or so blacked out pages?). Why do the Saudi government any favors?
Even worse, won't Microsoft be notified by responsible hackers about the security holes before anyone else? Don't security companies usually give vulnerable developers a month or two before making an exploit public? So it seems like that information, obtained because they make the OS, would give them an anticompetitive advantage over other A/V developers.
This stinks in so many ways.
You are confusing your cable modem with the cable system. Current HFC systems (Hybrid Fiber Coax, the cable infrastructure) get about 6.8Gbps of bandwidth and they are expected to max out around 10Gbps. However, that is broadcast, one-way bandwidth. Everybody gets the same thing. For interactive services, like cable modems, the cable companies install equipment further down the line. In the case of cable modems, this equipment usually has its own fiber feed and will serve hundreds or thousands of homes. I don't know what the data rates will max out at for cable modems, but probably not very high. The systems are designed for bursty traffic and the current 3Mbps connections being advertised won't hold up to downloading a few ISOs.
Great response from Bruce, but I'm not sure why you bothered posting it. Bruce is right, his piece wasn't intended to be a "creative and possibly convincing argument against the use of nuclear power." He certainly never advertised it as such. Take it for what it is, some light-hearted jabs at the current embracing of nuclear power as the deus ex machina for all of our energy problems. Did you expect Shrek 2 to be "a creative and possibly convincing argument against using Happily Ever After potions"? Take it for what it is. Hope you are still a fan.
How about googling "rhetorical question"?
How that big server-level database of yours supposed to work?
Uhh, how do you get any mail that he doesn't? The data would be stored in one of the user's mail folders, just like an attachment. You completely misunderstood the parent poster. He accesses the same IMAP account from multiple different machines, but he has to train each one of his clients FOR THE SAME ACCOUNT. So he gets 10 messages to homer@doh.com and his machine at work filters out message 1 and 2. He gets home, and his client filters out message 7. His laptop filters out message 9. They've each been trained to recognize some of the spam, but their training is incomplete because only one of the 3 clients is trained for each message that comes in. The only way to make it consistent would be to move all of the junk message back into the Inbox and select them as junk in each mail client. Pretty crappy. And it gets unsalvageable when you mark a message as Not Junk on client 2 that client 1 marked as Junk. I have the same issue. I just leave me home client running most of the time, so it handles all of the filtering as new messages come in and then mark the ones it missed when I get home. But the parent is right, Mail should just store it on the IMAP server.
Which brings up an interesting point. I tend to store all of my notes on my personal IMAP server as drafts, so I can get to it anywhere. Why don't any programs use IMAP to store data? Can you not access them at a byte level, but only as whole messages? I haven't looked at the IMAP protocol. Could it be combined with WebDAV for a unified data store? I would love to have a server that allowed me to keep all of my e-mail, documents, contacts, etc. in one place that I could access from anywhere.
I note that first big Internet-wide worm attack affected mostly BSD machines. And what year was that? And where was Windows at that time? That is the line that obviously marks you as a troll.
How do you expect to take advantage of that knowledge if you don't understand it? That is the whole point, that the short-term product development (most companies' "R&D") is all based off of longer-term basic research. If we don't control the basic research, we won't control the products in 10 or 20 years.
Huh? This must be a troll, but it has a score of 3, so I'll reply.
Why not just put the virus in place of the JMP instruction? It doesn't matter, because for it to work, you would have to RUN it. How does it get executed? That is the whole trick with viruses, etc. If you don't got that, you got nothing.
I love the Appleseed and GitS (original; I still haven't read GitSII and I'm a little afraid to) mangas. They are very layered and nuanced. I always picked up something new reading through them the first couple of times. He did deliver, but never followed through on fulfilling his potential (as I saw it; it sounds like he is rich and doing fine).
Unfortunately, with the aptly named Intron Depot, Shirow jumped the shark. I assume this is what you are referring to and not any of the manga. I wish he would finish Appleseed (he has been talking about 5 forever), but I am almost afraid of him doing so now. Sigh.
On the other hand, Intron is now what I name any Windows machine I have to use. I have yet to find a Windows admin who gets either reference. BTW, if you haven't already, do yourself a favor and check out GitS: Stand Alone Complex. I really disliked the movie, but I loved the series. It reminded me completely of the manga. A little more serialized, but all of the complexity and layers are there.
The automatic software updates feature is the perfect distribution system for some buggy code, it seems.
How is it any different, logically, from any other form of distribution, such as a CD? It is much faster, but it is simply a means of distribution, not a code development process. Whether or not it will distribute buggy code is wholly dependent on the process in place to generate that code, not on how it is distributed.
If anything, because of the more immediate feedback and staggered distribution inherent in Software Update (Apple can get feedback from early adopters before most people have downloaded an update), it has helped more people get less buggy code. No matter how good your software development processes are, with current software development methodologies you can't test every single possibility. Code isn't perfect, testing isn't perfect, and at some point something will slip through. Apple has been able to pull updates with bad code before the majority of its users get it thanks to Software Update. If Apple were distributing updates with CDs or even as files over the Internet (with multiple sites hosting them), they would have a much harder time stopping the spread of bad code.
As you quoted, the parent post is referring to "buggy code", so the writer is referring to defects that the programmers put in themselves, not to a third-party using the architecture to distribute trojans. Your comment is irrelevant to that argument.
If any moderators think this is relevant, mark down the parent post instead of marking this one up.
Setting the rest of your post aside, I am going to take issue with your slipping in "the single mouse button" argument. Macs support multiple button mice quite well. While I think they should ship a multiple button mouse with their Pro machines (the PowerMacs), there are valid reasons for shipping a mouse with a single button. I constantly deal with "average" computer users, and a lot of them (especially older ones) have a really hard time using multiple buttons. While double-click or click-and-hold seem to come fairly easy to them, left-click and right-click don't. I usually end up mapping both mouse buttons to a left-click. In fact, I helped a friend do this for his grandpa, because his grandpa wanted a scroll wheel but still didn't get left- and right-clicking. So we got a mouse with a scroll wheel and mapped all the other buttons to a left-click.
I think that Apple could ship a multi-button mouse with all of their computers at this point and just map all of the buttons to a left-click by default so that power users don't have to add the cost of a new mouse to their Mac purchase. But there are still valid reasons for having a one-button mouse beyond simply arrogance.
Are you an idiot? Amnesty is criticizing Microsoft because they are giving tools to the Chinese government that the Chinese government uses to violate human rights. It should be obvious that they are also critical of those committing the human rights violations, not just those providing the tools. But if you need a specific example, try here. Just because every press release doesn't explicitly say "China is bad" (again, it should be implicit in this one), doesn't mean they are soft on China.
The reason they calling public attention to Microsoft is that we Westerners can have a much greater direct impact on Microsoft than we can on China. And if we can get Western companies to stop providing tools to the Chinese government, we can limit the effectiveness with which they can violate their citizens' human rights.
And, BTW, the only people that believe the Chinese government is leftist are people who wish to smear the left. You will be hard pressed to find someone on the left who would identify them as such (take Amnesty International as an example, as they are often identified as a "leftist" organization). Brutal regimes who slaughter their own people have traditionally been called rightwing regimes.
Your argument is a non-sequitur. The iPod is popular with Windows users, so Apple will be pressured to port iMovie to Windows? Huh? The iPod has no connection to iMovie, Garageband, or any of the rest of iLife. It would seem that it will place the same amount of pressure on them as it would to port OS X to Intel.
How will not porting the iApps negatively affect their iPod sales? I can't see any reason it would. People won't be able to buy iPhoto for Windows so they won't get an iPod out of spite?
How would porting them over positively affect their iPod sales? Again, it wouldn't (except for perhaps a miniscule bounce because of greater brand recognition amongst PC users).
And who can afford a > $300 music player but can't afford a Mac? I can afford a Mac, but I can't afford an iPod. I guess it is a matter of priorities.
It is interesting that Apple is developing a customer base of Windows users, but that puts no pressure on them to change what they have been doing. If the bulk of Ford's tiny car sales come from Japan, should they start selling F150s and their entire product line over there? The fact is, iPod sales are a tiny percentage of Apple's revenues and always will be. Taking away a major reason for buying a Mac just to sell a couple more iPods would be a colossally dumb move, and probably why they haven't done it.
The clones were a different proposition. The whole idea with the clones was that they *would* undercut Apple, building cheap machines and killing each other with commodity pricing. They would expand the Mac market and sell into markets Apple wouldn't make enough profit in to deign it worth their effort while Apple would continue to rake it fat profits on the high-end workstation and pro machines, up-selling some of the new converts to boot. Apple wanted to have its cake and eat it too and they arrogantly assumed that no one could make a Mac as well as Apple (hence leaving the high-end to them).
Unfortunately, they were wrong and it has turned into one of their classic blunders. Luckily, they learned from it and moved on (or rather, Jobs moved in). Or something like that.
How is this different? First, they aren't going to be allowing HP to innovate on these products like they did with the clones (and Palm did with its clones, a very similar situation). There won't be any features on the HP iPod that the normal iPod won't have (well, nothing major, anyway; they probably need some differentiation). HP is basically going to be a glorified reseller of Apple iPods.
Second, and this is the real difference, Apple is bargaining from a position of strength. The clone initiative was an act of desperation from a company that had seen its market share plummet over several years and been plagued with all kinds of management and production problems. It was the last gasp of the old Apple before it died and NeXT was reborn in its stead. With the iPod, they don't need HP. They are going to sell whether HP gets a piece of the action or not. This is simply a strategic move to broaden their base and stop a potentially troublesome competitor. And I'm sure HP is happy to let Apple take on Dell in this battle.
That isn't there aren't dangers. Palm was almost killed by clones and licensing as well. But if Apple isn't blinded by their arrogance, they should come out just fine.
You are wrong about web browsers. I am pretty sure NCSA Mosaic has always been open source and it has always had an X-Windows build. Web browsers started on Unix (which I will group Linux under; I don't know when the first build of Mosaic was available for Linux but I'm sure it wasn't too long).
Office suites is a good point, but allow me to clarify my argument. When I said desktop, I was thinking "home desktop" rather than "business desktop". It was my mistake for not clarifying those, but that is what I was thinking. The business desktop is very different from the home desktop and it is a much more viable market for Linux (as it is currently) than the home market. And I would still argue that Open Office covers a much narrower scope than iLife, although that is debatable.
You obviously haven't used Cocoa. : )
I said cheap comparatively. I was simply pointing out the heavy-lifting for this program had already been done by Emagic and Soundtrack. Even most of the design is borrowed.
Nobody playing in the desktop Linux space has the capital to develop an iLife. (Who's left anyway? The Kompany?) This didn't just spring up over night. Apple bought Soundjam for iTunes, they bought some software for iDVD, they bought Final Cut Pro from Macromedia (and I think that is where iMovie came from), and they bought Emagic for the technology for GarageBand (I'm not sure where iPhoto came from). Then they spent a bunch of time and money turning them into iLife apps. Who else can do software development on this scale? And not in terms of developers, which I understand are surprisingly few, but in scope. Microsoft and maybe a couple of others are it.
I just can't believe this, it's gotta be a strategy to sell more Macs because the technology behind GarageBand (and its $99 add-on) is NOT cheap.
No, but the development of GarageBand was super-cheap (comparatively). Lest you forget, Apple bought Emagic in late 2002. The GarageBand name was registered as a trademark in early 2003, so this was probably one of the main benefits in buying Emagic, along with Soundtrack. This just leverages the already existing technology from Logic in a completely different market segment, bringing it to the masses.
So, Logic and Soundtrack pay for the technology, GarageBand leverages it. A pretty sweet acquisition for Apple.