A diet of 99% sugar and water has much to recommend it.
Where does the sugar come from? Militant vegans would point out that it comes from either destroying a sugar cane plant or a sugar beet plant. Corn syrup comes from the seeds of the maize plant, so none for you.
Leaving Beans, Nuts, and Fruits as the only source for your diet
You left out eggs. milk and honey.
Eggs may or may not count depending on your point of view about protecting the unborn/unhatched, but I have yet to find someone both strongly anti-abortion and insanely vegan. Never mind the fact that most eggs in the store aren't fertilized anyway. But then, if eggs are out, then so are strawberries and pomegranates.
But milk and honey are truly the only foods that you could truly say can be obtained from the plant and animal kingdom without harming a plant or animal or impinging on its reproduction. It is, however, counting on the animals in question to overproduce for their own needs to supply yours. In other words, living purely on milk and honey puts you in the same category as a leech.
No, the only meat eaters that are acceptable to militant vegans are scavengers.
Me? I'd rather eat militant vegans. Long pig. The other white meat.
I don't have a specific example for Linux, but back in the day I used to work for Specialix (they've since then been acquired). They had a multi-head serial port card that was supported by the si driver in the FreeBSD kernel.
The card had an embedded coprocessor on it and RAM that was shared between the coprocessor and the host. The first thing the driver did was copy a chunk of code for the coprocessor over to the RAM and reset the coprocessor. The binary code chunk was in the form of a const char[] = { 0x1, 0x2.....}; with a license that allowed free redistribution in binary form (that file was considered a binary form even though it was actually C source code per se), with an embargo on decompilation or reverse engineering.
The actual host driver was in C and had a BSD license. The result of compiling it was either that it was part of the entire kernel, or a loadable.ko module.
Are you sure we really want to spend that much money?
Given that the spectrum license fees for that much spectrum might be as much as 10 times that, um, yeah.
Over-the-air television doesn't cost the government anything
In fact, it makes money for the government because they charge the stations fees for their licenses. But the question is whether the public is best served by that spectrum being used as it is, or perhaps in some other way.
Today, it's probably good the way it is, but for how much longer?
But the cost of that convenience is around $50 a month
Today. I've had a cell phone since the mid 90s, and the cost:benefit ratio has maybe not been following Moore's law, but phones and service have been getting cheaper and their capabilities have been growing at remarkable rates.
Because OP asked how they were different. He asked, I answered.
I could name a few other differences too
Excellent. The list has grown. However, I would say that the list I gave had more significant differences between the two.
But the next question OP asked was how those differences allowed one company to be judged differently than the other, and my reply questioned that assertion that it followed that they should.
Once again, go back and read carefully what I said. I don't think that you yet have.
Everyone who has chimed in has made the fundamental mistake that my list of differences between the two somehow justify a difference in how both companies should be judged for their behavior.
Go back and read carefully what I said again.
Apart from suggesting that Apple's products are better than Microsoft's (and I stand behind that assertion), where did I say anything that suggested that Apple was either better than or more deserving of a pass than Microsoft?
I have run windows xp and several different linuxes on my laptops and desktops, as well as having used Mac OS pretty extensively. Windows XP wins hands down every single time.
snigger. Ok. Whatever.
Courts are now the deciders for quality of tech?
No. But it is a fact that Microsoft is a convicted monopolist and Apple is not. That's all I said.
Apple's monopoly power is also in the hardware-that-is-allowed-to-run-Mac-OSX department
That is not a market. That is a distinction that you have drawn solely for the purpose of your argument. Microsoft's share of the desktop operating system market is in excess of 90%. Hence, they have monopoly power.
Apple's share of the portable music market is something like 70%, so it is a far bigger stretch to suggest that they have monopoly power in that market, but I have conceded the point for the sake of my prior post.
How, seriously, is Apple any better than anything else?
The OP didn't say better, he said different. I gave a list. QED.
Why? So he can tell us again that the Earth revolves around the Sun?
People often posit that famous thinkers of the past, if reconstituted in today's world might lend their genius to contemporary problems. But who's to say that genius is measurable outside of its own context?
Hitting the genetic lottery by itself doesn't lead to greatness.
Hubble's Law says that every point is, indeed, the center of expansion of the universe, since every other point in the universe is retreating at a distance proportional to its distance.
As for Genesis, it said nothing even about the earth even being round, much less being the center of anything. Assorted fruitcakes have been arguing against that notion even hundreds of years after the earth was circumnavigated which (invoking Occam's razor) leads you to the conclusion that the earth is round (never mind the fact that several hundred human beings have actually seen the round Earth with their own eyes from outside its atmosphere and have essentially testified to its appearance the same way).
Apple's products are vastly superior to Microsoft's. Microsoft has been convicted of anti-trust violations in federal court. Apple has not. Apple's monopoly power is in the portable music market. Microsoft's is in the desktop operating system market.
Advances are being made in ATSC receiver technology that improve performance in multipath environments
I agree, for static multipath, but dynamic multipath is going to be nearly impossible to fix for 8VSB. ATSC is, in fact, working on an add-on to support mobile device reception to make up for the inability for 8VSB to stand up to dynamic multipath and doppler.
The populace has been working hard to reverse one part of that state of affairs, buying cellular phones.
Well, they've been working hard to reverse the other one as well, by signing up for cable and satellite TV.
a wire where it belongs
Well, an alternative to a wire is to move it upwards in frequency to SHF... like satellites have done. Higher frequencies have a much higher penalty for mobile use relative to their utility in point-to-multipoint line-of-sight linking (which is precisely what TV broadcasting involves).
I know something about this. I am one of the vanishingly small number of people who have set up an ATSC transmitter other than under FCC part 70 rules.
The sad reality is that 85% of people get their TV from cable or satellite, meaning that TVBDs will have zero impact on them (the cable and satellite companies either get their feeds over fiber or will have no trouble hunting down any source of interference that keeps the head-end from getting a signal, given their budget as compared to the average homeowner).
One of the big time losers in the switch to digital broadcasting are mobile/portable receivers. I have an Insignia 7" LCD ATSC TV, and unless you plug it into a proper TV antenna mounted on top of a building, it's digital tuner is deaf as a post. Insignia stopped making them, probably because as portable devices, they're practically useless. And that's not Insignia's fault. It's simply the nature of the cliff effect. Portable receivers used to get by because they could display a less-than-perfect signal. But digital receivers get perfect reception or none at all. Mobile reception is out because the Doppler effect and dynamic multipath can totally wreck 8VSB reception.
So what's left are people either too cheap or too poor for cable or satellite, or who (like me) are RF hobbyists.
How low does that 15% figure have to go before it's simply cheaper for the government to subsidize lifeline access rates for the poor and auction the rest of the broadcast TV bands off? For how much longer is the public interest better served by broadcast TV rather than, oh I don't know, how about really, really high speed mobile IP (the sort of thing you can get when you set aside a 300 MHz band for the purpose)?
TVBDs that cause interference will be impossible for the average broadcast TV viewer to diagnose. Their receiver will simply go blue-screen. In the past, there were visual clues in the picture condition to diagnose reception problems. But with the switch to digital, it would take a spectrum analyzer to do the same job. The fact that the FCC would countenance such a situation speaks volumes about how important they perceive broadcast television to be.
The upcoming J.J. Abrams-helmed installment represents [...] a reboot of the franchise, [...]
followed by
It should prove interesting to see how Abrams' writing staff (Cloverfield, Lost, Alias) tackles the Star Trek universe and all the continuity and baggage that comes with it.
If it were a reboot, then there would be no such baggage.
It's conceivable we are replaceable whether we're alone *right now* or not. That is, if we get wiped out, there's nothing to say that some other technological society won't be formed after us.
we are the only way the universe can say "who cares?"
My point exactly.
therefore we have value
You can't say that the value of the U.S. dollar is one U.S. dollar.
I put it to you that if we are alone and irreplaceable, then our external value is NaN.
The value of humanity depends on the probability of there being other intelligent life in the universe.
How?
Let's say, for the moment, that there is other intelligent life. Given the postulate that they don't know we exist (since we don't know they exist), what benefit is it to them that we continue to exist?
If there is other intelligent life, and they are aware of us, then, to paraphrase Joe Pesci, are we just here to fuckin' amuse them?
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A diet of 99% sugar and water has much to recommend it.
Where does the sugar come from? Militant vegans would point out that it comes from either destroying a sugar cane plant or a sugar beet plant. Corn syrup comes from the seeds of the maize plant, so none for you.
Leaving Beans, Nuts, and Fruits as the only source for your diet
You left out eggs. milk and honey.
Eggs may or may not count depending on your point of view about protecting the unborn/unhatched, but I have yet to find someone both strongly anti-abortion and insanely vegan. Never mind the fact that most eggs in the store aren't fertilized anyway. But then, if eggs are out, then so are strawberries and pomegranates.
But milk and honey are truly the only foods that you could truly say can be obtained from the plant and animal kingdom without harming a plant or animal or impinging on its reproduction. It is, however, counting on the animals in question to overproduce for their own needs to supply yours. In other words, living purely on milk and honey puts you in the same category as a leech.
No, the only meat eaters that are acceptable to militant vegans are scavengers.
Me? I'd rather eat militant vegans. Long pig. The other white meat.
I don't have a specific example for Linux, but back in the day I used to work for Specialix (they've since then been acquired). They had a multi-head serial port card that was supported by the si driver in the FreeBSD kernel.
The card had an embedded coprocessor on it and RAM that was shared between the coprocessor and the host. The first thing the driver did was copy a chunk of code for the coprocessor over to the RAM and reset the coprocessor. The binary code chunk was in the form of a const char[] = { 0x1, 0x2.....}; with
a license that allowed free redistribution in binary form (that file was considered a binary form even though it was actually C source code per se), with an embargo on decompilation or reverse engineering.
The actual host driver was in C and had a BSD license. The result of compiling it was either that it was part of the entire kernel, or a loadable .ko module.
This question is on a par with other weighty issues that mankind has wrestled with in the past.
Even he wasn't the first.
"War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it." -- Desiderius Erasmus.
I'm sure if I looked long enough I'd find similar quotations in Greek or Roman or perhaps even painted on a cave wall.
Oops, sorry. I had Abu Ghraib in my head somehow.
Within the context of your separate definitions of morals and ethics, you're right in your description of the Gitmo stuff.
Never mind.
The waterboarding and other torture at Gitmo was immoral; shamefully immoral, but was ethical.
Please. Show me where in the UCMJ it authorizes MPs to strip EPWs and take pictures of them.
Are you sure we really want to spend that much money?
Given that the spectrum license fees for that much spectrum might be as much as 10 times that, um, yeah.
Over-the-air television doesn't cost the government anything
In fact, it makes money for the government because they charge the stations fees for their licenses. But the question is whether the public is best served by that spectrum being used as it is, or perhaps in some other way.
Today, it's probably good the way it is, but for how much longer?
But the cost of that convenience is around $50 a month
Today. I've had a cell phone since the mid 90s, and the cost:benefit ratio has maybe not been following Moore's law, but phones and service have been getting cheaper and their capabilities have been growing at remarkable rates.
You left out rural Americans.
No, I didn't.
Those who currently live far from any metropolitan area
... are satellite TV subscribers instead of being cable subscribers.
If they're irrelevant, why list them?
Because OP asked how they were different. He asked, I answered.
I could name a few other differences too
Excellent. The list has grown. However, I would say that the list I gave had more significant differences between the two.
But the next question OP asked was how those differences allowed one company to be judged differently than the other, and my reply questioned that assertion that it followed that they should.
Once again, go back and read carefully what I said. I don't think that you yet have.
Everyone who has chimed in has made the fundamental mistake that my list of differences between the two somehow justify a difference in how both companies should be judged for their behavior.
Go back and read carefully what I said again.
Apart from suggesting that Apple's products are better than Microsoft's (and I stand behind that assertion), where did I say anything that suggested that Apple was either better than or more deserving of a pass than Microsoft?
how do you judge the Zune against the iPod? There's no objective criterion there
I'd suggest giving it the "rotten tomatoes" treatment. I've seen far more numerous poor reviews of the Zune than the iPod.
True, but irrelevant. They both engage in business tactics that screw their customers.
Nowhere have I said otherwise. The OP merely asked how Microsoft and Apple were different, and I provided a list.
I'm wondering why geeks give one a pass while they rabidly fight the other.
[citation needed]
I have run windows xp and several different linuxes on my laptops and desktops, as well as having used Mac OS pretty extensively. Windows XP wins hands down every single time.
snigger. Ok. Whatever.
Courts are now the deciders for quality of tech?
No. But it is a fact that Microsoft is a convicted monopolist and Apple is not. That's all I said.
Apple's monopoly power is also in the hardware-that-is-allowed-to-run-Mac-OSX department
That is not a market. That is a distinction that you have drawn solely for the purpose of your argument. Microsoft's share of the desktop operating system market is in excess of 90%. Hence, they have monopoly power.
Apple's share of the portable music market is something like 70%, so it is a far bigger stretch to suggest that they have monopoly power in that market, but I have conceded the point for the sake of my prior post.
How, seriously, is Apple any better than anything else?
The OP didn't say better, he said different. I gave a list. QED.
Why? So he can tell us again that the Earth revolves around the Sun?
People often posit that famous thinkers of the past, if reconstituted in today's world might lend their genius to contemporary problems. But who's to say that genius is measurable outside of its own context?
Hitting the genetic lottery by itself doesn't lead to greatness.
Every time I hide a body, it always turns up in the last place they look. That is, if it turns up.
Perhaps I've said too much.
Hubble's Law says that every point is, indeed, the center of expansion of the universe, since every other point in the universe is retreating at a distance proportional to its distance.
As for Genesis, it said nothing even about the earth even being round, much less being the center of anything. Assorted fruitcakes have been arguing against that notion even hundreds of years after the earth was circumnavigated which (invoking Occam's razor) leads you to the conclusion that the earth is round (never mind the fact that several hundred human beings have actually seen the round Earth with their own eyes from outside its atmosphere and have essentially testified to its appearance the same way).
And how are Microsoft and Apple different again?
Here'e a list:
Apple's products are vastly superior to Microsoft's.
Microsoft has been convicted of anti-trust violations in federal court. Apple has not.
Apple's monopoly power is in the portable music market. Microsoft's is in the desktop operating system market.
How's that for starters?
And that makes it okay why?
Did anybody say it did?
Advances are being made in ATSC receiver technology that improve performance in multipath environments
I agree, for static multipath, but dynamic multipath is going to be nearly impossible to fix for 8VSB. ATSC is, in fact, working on an add-on to support mobile device reception to make up for the inability for 8VSB to stand up to dynamic multipath and doppler.
Which is exactly how it should be.
I don't disagree.
The populace has been working hard to reverse one part of that state of affairs, buying cellular phones.
Well, they've been working hard to reverse the other one as well, by signing up for cable and satellite TV.
a wire where it belongs
Well, an alternative to a wire is to move it upwards in frequency to SHF... like satellites have done. Higher frequencies have a much higher penalty for mobile use relative to their utility in point-to-multipoint line-of-sight linking (which is precisely what TV broadcasting involves).
I know something about this. I am one of the vanishingly small number of people who have set up an ATSC transmitter other than under FCC part 70 rules.
The sad reality is that 85% of people get their TV from cable or satellite, meaning that TVBDs will have zero impact on them (the cable and satellite companies either get their feeds over fiber or will have no trouble hunting down any source of interference that keeps the head-end from getting a signal, given their budget as compared to the average homeowner).
One of the big time losers in the switch to digital broadcasting are mobile/portable receivers. I have an Insignia 7" LCD ATSC TV, and unless you plug it into a proper TV antenna mounted on top of a building, it's digital tuner is deaf as a post. Insignia stopped making them, probably because as portable devices, they're practically useless. And that's not Insignia's fault. It's simply the nature of the cliff effect. Portable receivers used to get by because they could display a less-than-perfect signal. But digital receivers get perfect reception or none at all. Mobile reception is out because the Doppler effect and dynamic multipath can totally wreck 8VSB reception.
So what's left are people either too cheap or too poor for cable or satellite, or who (like me) are RF hobbyists.
How low does that 15% figure have to go before it's simply cheaper for the government to subsidize lifeline access rates for the poor and auction the rest of the broadcast TV bands off? For how much longer is the public interest better served by broadcast TV rather than, oh I don't know, how about really, really high speed mobile IP (the sort of thing you can get when you set aside a 300 MHz band for the purpose)?
TVBDs that cause interference will be impossible for the average broadcast TV viewer to diagnose. Their receiver will simply go blue-screen. In the past, there were visual clues in the picture condition to diagnose reception problems. But with the switch to digital, it would take a spectrum analyzer to do the same job. The fact that the FCC would countenance such a situation speaks volumes about how important they perceive broadcast television to be.
The upcoming J.J. Abrams-helmed installment represents [...] a reboot of the franchise, [...]
followed by
It should prove interesting to see how Abrams' writing staff (Cloverfield, Lost, Alias) tackles the Star Trek universe and all the continuity and baggage that comes with it.
If it were a reboot, then there would be no such baggage.
Vote for the "one key" Internet keyboard
This one comes close...
Finally, he'd insist on calling it a GNU/Sandwich.
Well, wouldn't that imply something about what's in the sandwich?
I wonder if it tastes like Buffalo, which is pretty much substitutable for beef.
Maybe there's a difference between a Gnu sandwich and a GNU/Sandwich (the latter probably tastes different).
It's conceivable we are replaceable whether we're alone *right now* or not. That is, if we get wiped out, there's nothing to say that some other technological society won't be formed after us.
we are the only way the universe can say "who cares?"
My point exactly.
therefore we have value
You can't say that the value of the U.S. dollar is one U.S. dollar.
I put it to you that if we are alone and irreplaceable, then our external value is NaN.
The value of humanity depends on the probability of there being other intelligent life in the universe.
How?
Let's say, for the moment, that there is other intelligent life. Given the postulate that they don't know we exist (since we don't know they exist), what benefit is it to them that we continue to exist?
If there is other intelligent life, and they are aware of us, then, to paraphrase Joe Pesci, are we just here to fuckin' amuse them?