My other issue with Apple is not with them itself, but primarily with the fact that most people I know who use Macs are self-obsessed, arrogant arseholes that want to shove a Mac down your throat if you don't use one.
And how are apple zealots in any way different from linux zealots or freebsd zealots? And this coming from a linux user of 8 years. I'd encounter all the superior freebsd'rs say how lame and crappy linux was. I'd also see the linux freaks smirk at windows users, or even talk condescendingly to them. Why are you holding apple users to a higher standard?
of Apple buying Palm? Other than perhaps gaining control of Palm's PDA patents?
I mean, IMHO, PalmOS and Grafiti ain't that great, why would Apple want to buy this intellectual property?
In related news, Apple's website announced they're looking for a handwriting recognition engineer, so maybe they'll be releasing their own PDA sometime soon.
My cousin, sometime in elementary school, had to do a report on animal. The teacher gave all students a different animal to study and encouraged them to use the internet to find useful information. My cousin happens to be assigned the beaver. Well, he goes to a search engine and puts in 'beaver' and, well, you can imagine what happened.
Part of me thinks "what the hell was the teacher thinking, giving the kid a report on the beaver and tells him to go to the net." But another part of me wonders whether it's fair to remove useful study of the beaver simply because it's slang for something else.
While your post is obviously very tongue-in-cheek, I do hope that the ease in which Windows programs will run on the new Macs won't mean the demise of OS X (Of course that wouldn't happen anytime in the next few years though). OS X is the primary reason I'm a new Mac fan (I was primary linux user for 8 years, until my GF got a Mac Mini).
On one hand, allowing Win XP apps to run on Intel Macs will ease the transition of more people to Macs. Many people have that one critical app that is holding them back from transfering. And like in City Slickers, that one app depends on you.
But I'm a bit worried that software developers might not develop native versions for OS X, if they assume people can just run their windows version virtually. Of course this mandates that the Mac user in question buy a copy of XP, so of course not everyone will have that option.
But still, I really hope that this move increases development share for OS X, and doesn't serve to decrease it.
As a result GPL-ing is not an option. Your codebase is heavily dependant on somebody's else's codebase which is BSD.
Dumb question, but if you can take BSD-licensed open-source code and put it in closed-source code, why can't you take the same code and GPL it (maybe make slight trivial modifications to make the software unique before GPL'ing)? I mean, it would most likely piss the BSD team off if someone did this, but legally speaking, is there a reason it cannot be done?
The Finder is the most prolific and outrageous example of this, and anybody who's ever lost a network connection while a network share was mounted knows what I'm talking about (the system virtually hangs for 45 seconds until the connection times out. awful. simply awful)
Hopefully you won't need to wait too much longer. As reported on Mac Rumors , as of at least Jan. 26, Apple has been seeking a "Finder Software Engineer". Hopefully we can see a better Finder out in Leopard.
The job requirements were listed as
Participate in all of the various stages of feature development from design brainstorms, through feature development, all the way to fixing that last critical elusive bug under a tight release deadline.
You will be required to produce clear designs, excellent implementation and tight code.
Deliver tight, well implemented features, fix bugs and develop Finder into the best file browser on the planet.
Work on performance and responsiveness of the Finder, making it feel lightweight, fast, snappy and pleasant to use.
People in the past century lived pretty long because they used primarily organic farming (didn't have non-organic methods yet) and also had more physically active jobs.
I wonder how the life span of baby-boomers and gen Xers will be comparitively. I mean, we are more likely to have desk jobs, and our food just has lots of processed crap, like unsaturated fats, hydrogenated oils, high-fructose corn syrup, remnants of growth enzymes from meat and dairy, etc. And we also have alot more plastics, especially plastic-coated cookware, which probably isn't good for us either.
So while our technology is getting better, our societal progress may be pushing us backwards in terms of life span and general health. It'll be interesting (and probably sad) to see what happens in the next decade or two.
I like Jon Stewart's take on that, via the Daily Show. He said something like Bill Clinton's whole impeachment could have been avoided if he just stamped his wang with the word "Classified". That would have stopped any further investigations, as per Bush's standard operating procedure.
Yeah, it's not like Linux or FreeBSD has any obnoxious crazy-zealot users.
But that's the best reason I've heard yet for not using a Mac. Because some of its users are annoying.
No, direct fusion-powered heating and cooling systems have been around for quite some time now. I mean, getting energy from fusion is pretty old hat these days.
And if you consider intermediary methods of storing energy, fusion power for home heating goes back much further.
Actually vibrational modes (phonons) are usually detrimental to electronic circuits
Not always, for example look up Surface acoustic waves . A lab I used to work at was able to replace a few entire racks of electronics with a single SAW filter that could fit in the palm of your hand!
My point regarding the phonon modes is that they may couple to electrons differently, just like SURFACE acoustic waves vs interior phonons, and may possibly be exploited for interesting effects.
CNT's have much more appeal beyond their ability to act as 1-D ballistic conductors.
The really important part is, you know, experimental evidence that may provide insight into the unification of relativity and quantum mechanics.
Not to nitpick, but quantum mechanics and Special Relativity have been merged for decades, through the well-developed field of Quantum Electrodynamics.
What still needs to be done is come up with a quanum field theory of gravity, which would essentially merge quantum mechanics with General Relativity. There has been alot of work done already to this ends, you can see some of this here .
What about differently structured nano-tubes? They're not all six-sided, are they?
No, a graphene plane is the hexagonal arrangement of carbon atoms. All nanotubes are made up of this graphene plane.
Carbon nanotubes occur if you take a SINGLE graphene plane and roll it up, connecting it on the ends. Now you are correct there are multiple geometries. You can have wide or narrow tubes. You can also add chirality, by rolling the graphene plane along different directional vectors. And this creates tubes (zigzag vs armchair) with different properties. They can be insulating or metallic, depending on this chirality.
Multi-wall tubes are when you get a small-diameter nanotube inside a larger diameter nanotube.
Yes, the vibrational modes will depend on length, diameter, but also chirality. A tube with 100 atoms will have 100 distinct oscillating modes. The lowest-energy modes probably look similar to windchimes, where the structure of the carbon atoms cannot be resolved. At high frequences the individual atoms themselves move differently than their neighbors, and you get a rich spectra. You can have 'breathing modes' where the whole diameter increases or decreases. You can have ripple modes travel around the diameter. And of course standing wave modes down the length of the tube.
Since nanotubes carry current along the outer surface of the tube, could it be that multiple nanotubes cause the electrical quanta along the surface of each tube to interfere and degrade the signal?
A carbon nanotube (CNT) is a rolled graphene plane (ie, carbon atoms in a hexagonal structure). So of course all current will be on the 'outside' of the tube, as the tube itself really only consists of the outside.
IBM was probaby comparing single-wall nanotubes to multi-wall nanotubes. Multiwall nanotubes are composites of a bunch of concentric single-wall nanotubes. Their better results in the single-wall variety are probably due to less scattering between the graphene planes. A single CNT has a well-defined crystal structure, and is actually quite interesting. The graphene plane itself is sometimes referred to as a 'zero-bandgap insulator', where the density of states linearly goes to zero at the fermi energy (unlike an insulator or semiconductor which has a energy gap at the fermi energy, and hence cannot conduct decently like a metal).
However through changes to the nanotube material, the performance of the nanotube may be impreved.
They probably can get to higher frequencies. I mean, even the vibrational phonon modes of a single nanotube can be in the GHz range or higher (ie, these are the various modes of vibration that the nanotube would exhibit if you struck it, kind of like a wind chime). I don't know specifics, but I don't see why the nanotube couldn't support electronic channels with bandwidths into the GHz or even higher as well.
Although nanotubes do have interesting characteristics different from typical metals and semiconductors. Ie, the electron-phonon interaction goes as 1/T, instead of 1/T^5 (where T is temperature). So at low temperatures there might be useful ways to couple electronic channels to vibrational modes not possible in conventional materials. Or vice versa, the phonon modes might more easily kill off electronic signals. There's alot of interesting work being done with nanotubes, and I'm sure some clever physicists and engineers will exploit these characteristics well in the near future.
So what you are saying, then, is that all aerospace engineers by trade are "head-up-butt" types that sit in comfy chairs, and that John Carmack is willing to learn. And therefore he is expected to surpass all other aerospace engineers? okay, i see where you're coming from now.
I don't quite agree. I've found (in many different things) that working with limited choices often increases your creative processes. The older hardware (eg Atari 2600 and NES) were certainly very limited compared to today's standards, and many of the designers of those classic games really did come up with some very clever ideas.
As for me, I got bored of FPS games pretty quickly, and to me they all seem pretty much the same now. Whether I kill guys on a space station, monsters in some kind of labyrinth, etc. Of course I could just be a grumpy old man now, looking through the spectacles of youth. But the NES, IMHO, really had a much different 'feel' and 'soul' than today's games.
Why is it sad? I mean, is there any reason a priori to expect a guy that excelled in programming FPS games to do better than another guy that set up an online banking/payment system?
I mean, it's a whole different ballpark, aerospace. Whereas Carmack can change a few lines of code and recompile while at ID, it takes only a few minutes and is basically free. At Armidillo, if he tests his rocket and it doesn't perform right, then he has to rebuild the thing, it can take months and cost hundreds of thousands. Why would you expect him to be necessrily better at aerospace? Because he knows how to optimize 3D rotation matrices to make a 3D first-person game?
Strange, MSFT execs just offered me a soft drink, fortified with hints of "fresh oxytocin", and after whispering some words in my ear suddenly I just trust windows to run all my own webservers.
One other thing - you missed my whole point entirely.
The original poster apparently enjoys the embargo because it keeps Americans off his vacation island. I don't give a shit how typical Americans act, nobody except a snobbish elitist pompous asshole would want to deprive an entire country of medical supplies and everyday necessities just to keep that island 'mostly' free of Americans.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like hyperbole to me!Yeah, I have real reason to make up a story about my cousin searching for beaver here on slashdot.
And how are apple zealots in any way different from linux zealots or freebsd zealots? And this coming from a linux user of 8 years. I'd encounter all the superior freebsd'rs say how lame and crappy linux was. I'd also see the linux freaks smirk at windows users, or even talk condescendingly to them. Why are you holding apple users to a higher standard?
In related news, Apple's website announced they're looking for a handwriting recognition engineer, so maybe they'll be releasing their own PDA sometime soon.
what they tried to do to my uncle Jimmy Pepper, after he was promoted to Sergeant in the army.
Part of me thinks "what the hell was the teacher thinking, giving the kid a report on the beaver and tells him to go to the net." But another part of me wonders whether it's fair to remove useful study of the beaver simply because it's slang for something else.
On one hand, allowing Win XP apps to run on Intel Macs will ease the transition of more people to Macs. Many people have that one critical app that is holding them back from transfering. And like in City Slickers, that one app depends on you.
But I'm a bit worried that software developers might not develop native versions for OS X, if they assume people can just run their windows version virtually. Of course this mandates that the Mac user in question buy a copy of XP, so of course not everyone will have that option.
But still, I really hope that this move increases development share for OS X, and doesn't serve to decrease it.
Dumb question, but if you can take BSD-licensed open-source code and put it in closed-source code, why can't you take the same code and GPL it (maybe make slight trivial modifications to make the software unique before GPL'ing)? I mean, it would most likely piss the BSD team off if someone did this, but legally speaking, is there a reason it cannot be done?
Hopefully you won't need to wait too much longer. As reported on Mac Rumors , as of at least Jan. 26, Apple has been seeking a "Finder Software Engineer". Hopefully we can see a better Finder out in Leopard.
The job requirements were listed as
People in the past century lived pretty long because they used primarily organic farming (didn't have non-organic methods yet) and also had more physically active jobs.
I wonder how the life span of baby-boomers and gen Xers will be comparitively. I mean, we are more likely to have desk jobs, and our food just has lots of processed crap, like unsaturated fats, hydrogenated oils, high-fructose corn syrup, remnants of growth enzymes from meat and dairy, etc. And we also have alot more plastics, especially plastic-coated cookware, which probably isn't good for us either.
So while our technology is getting better, our societal progress may be pushing us backwards in terms of life span and general health. It'll be interesting (and probably sad) to see what happens in the next decade or two.
I like Jon Stewart's take on that, via the Daily Show. He said something like Bill Clinton's whole impeachment could have been avoided if he just stamped his wang with the word "Classified". That would have stopped any further investigations, as per Bush's standard operating procedure.
Yeah, it's not like Linux or FreeBSD has any obnoxious crazy-zealot users. But that's the best reason I've heard yet for not using a Mac. Because some of its users are annoying.
And if you consider intermediary methods of storing energy, fusion power for home heating goes back much further.
[slaps forehead]. Thanks, that's what I get for thinking in terms of 1D transport for too long! haha.
Not always, for example look up Surface acoustic waves . A lab I used to work at was able to replace a few entire racks of electronics with a single SAW filter that could fit in the palm of your hand!
My point regarding the phonon modes is that they may couple to electrons differently, just like SURFACE acoustic waves vs interior phonons, and may possibly be exploited for interesting effects.
CNT's have much more appeal beyond their ability to act as 1-D ballistic conductors.
Not to nitpick, but quantum mechanics and Special Relativity have been merged for decades, through the well-developed field of Quantum Electrodynamics.
What still needs to be done is come up with a quanum field theory of gravity, which would essentially merge quantum mechanics with General Relativity. There has been alot of work done already to this ends, you can see some of this here .
No, a graphene plane is the hexagonal arrangement of carbon atoms. All nanotubes are made up of this graphene plane.
Carbon nanotubes occur if you take a SINGLE graphene plane and roll it up, connecting it on the ends. Now you are correct there are multiple geometries. You can have wide or narrow tubes. You can also add chirality, by rolling the graphene plane along different directional vectors. And this creates tubes (zigzag vs armchair) with different properties. They can be insulating or metallic, depending on this chirality. Multi-wall tubes are when you get a small-diameter nanotube inside a larger diameter nanotube.
Yes, the vibrational modes will depend on length, diameter, but also chirality. A tube with 100 atoms will have 100 distinct oscillating modes. The lowest-energy modes probably look similar to windchimes, where the structure of the carbon atoms cannot be resolved. At high frequences the individual atoms themselves move differently than their neighbors, and you get a rich spectra. You can have 'breathing modes' where the whole diameter increases or decreases. You can have ripple modes travel around the diameter. And of course standing wave modes down the length of the tube.
The phonon modes (ie, vibrational modes) of the nanotube are in the GHz range, and might be exploited to further increase the frequecy.
A carbon nanotube (CNT) is a rolled graphene plane (ie, carbon atoms in a hexagonal structure). So of course all current will be on the 'outside' of the tube, as the tube itself really only consists of the outside.
IBM was probaby comparing single-wall nanotubes to multi-wall nanotubes. Multiwall nanotubes are composites of a bunch of concentric single-wall nanotubes. Their better results in the single-wall variety are probably due to less scattering between the graphene planes. A single CNT has a well-defined crystal structure, and is actually quite interesting. The graphene plane itself is sometimes referred to as a 'zero-bandgap insulator', where the density of states linearly goes to zero at the fermi energy (unlike an insulator or semiconductor which has a energy gap at the fermi energy, and hence cannot conduct decently like a metal).
However through changes to the nanotube material, the performance of the nanotube may be impreved.
They probably can get to higher frequencies. I mean, even the vibrational phonon modes of a single nanotube can be in the GHz range or higher (ie, these are the various modes of vibration that the nanotube would exhibit if you struck it, kind of like a wind chime). I don't know specifics, but I don't see why the nanotube couldn't support electronic channels with bandwidths into the GHz or even higher as well.
Although nanotubes do have interesting characteristics different from typical metals and semiconductors. Ie, the electron-phonon interaction goes as 1/T, instead of 1/T^5 (where T is temperature). So at low temperatures there might be useful ways to couple electronic channels to vibrational modes not possible in conventional materials. Or vice versa, the phonon modes might more easily kill off electronic signals. There's alot of interesting work being done with nanotubes, and I'm sure some clever physicists and engineers will exploit these characteristics well in the near future.
So what you are saying, then, is that all aerospace engineers by trade are "head-up-butt" types that sit in comfy chairs, and that John Carmack is willing to learn. And therefore he is expected to surpass all other aerospace engineers? okay, i see where you're coming from now.
As for me, I got bored of FPS games pretty quickly, and to me they all seem pretty much the same now. Whether I kill guys on a space station, monsters in some kind of labyrinth, etc. Of course I could just be a grumpy old man now, looking through the spectacles of youth. But the NES, IMHO, really had a much different 'feel' and 'soul' than today's games.
I mean, it's a whole different ballpark, aerospace. Whereas Carmack can change a few lines of code and recompile while at ID, it takes only a few minutes and is basically free. At Armidillo, if he tests his rocket and it doesn't perform right, then he has to rebuild the thing, it can take months and cost hundreds of thousands. Why would you expect him to be necessrily better at aerospace? Because he knows how to optimize 3D rotation matrices to make a 3D first-person game?
Yeah, Here are some of those toys.
What, you weren't talking about theorists?
Strange, MSFT execs just offered me a soft drink, fortified with hints of "fresh oxytocin", and after whispering some words in my ear suddenly I just trust windows to run all my own webservers.
Out of curiosity what were the other three novels you put down?
The original poster apparently enjoys the embargo because it keeps Americans off his vacation island. I don't give a shit how typical Americans act, nobody except a snobbish elitist pompous asshole would want to deprive an entire country of medical supplies and everyday necessities just to keep that island 'mostly' free of Americans.