No, however I do think that a computer mainly targeted at creative professionals should keep up with the software. It isn't like most people are buying a Mac to run Office. Most Mac users at least want to play with video editing, 3D graphics, high dynamic range photo editing, multitrack audio mixing, and all those sorts of things that really do benefit from 64-bit computing. In fact, you would be amazed what a difference it makes. My SGI lasted for years longer than it should have, simply because when it came to manipulating large amounts of video, or rendering really complex 3D scenes, 32-bit computers just couldn't handle it. It wasn't until AMD started coming out with really fast 64-Bit chips that there was anything out there that could handle my most complicated work without throwing all sorts of memory exceptions on render.
I fully expect that at some point Apple will go back to 64-bit. I think I even said that when they do, Vista will probably install just fine. However, I just don't see the logic for even making a brief stop in IA-32 land. Seriously, I am no fan of the NetBurst architecture, but expecting your software vendors to first move to OSX 32-bit PowerPC, then move to 64-bit PowerPC, then move to IA-32 then move to EM64T is a lot to ask when even your most loyal vendor (Adobe) is only getting 15% of their sales from your platform. It is no wonder there is a smaller software market for the Mac!
Wow, are you an Intel sales rep, or just ignorant of the PC market? I go to Dell's site, and sure, I see notebooks using, mainly Pentium 4 M processors, and one mid-ranged unit using the new Core Duo chip. I go to Lenovo, and they are mostly Core Duo, with some Pentium 4 Ms. I go to Fujitsu, and I see Pentium 4 Ms, and Turion 64s. I go to Alienware's site, and I see some Celerons, some Pentium 4s, some Athlons, some Athlon X2s, and even an Opteron. That is hardly the "all of them" you attribute to the Core Duo chip.
None the less, those are all notebooks. Not many people install an OS on their notebook other than what came with it. When Vista comes out, let's see what chip they are running. Meanwhile look at desktops (where people will be upgrading to Vista), and you are going to see a lot of Pentium EEs, Athlon 64s, and Athlon X2s. On the server front, it is almost all Opterons and Xeons these days. You know, there are computers other than notebooks, right?
As far as you comment about how unnecessary 64-bit is for most people, let me point out a few thing in which 64-bit has a major advantage. Rigid body physics simulations, video encoding/decoding, High Dynamic Range light simulation, ray tracing, multipoint acoustic modeling, fluid dynamics simulations, soft body simulations, and particle dynamics. Now, those all happen to be a big part of a hobby a few people in the computer world have, called gaming. Now gaming has a rather large following, some might even call it mainstream, but gaming isn't why I brought those things up. I brought those things up because they all have another use, one that is a bit more relevant to why it was a bad idea for Apple to go with 32-bit chips. You see, a large segment of Apple's market does something called video/film production, and all of those things I listed are a pretty integral part of modern video/film production. So, on the mainstream market, gamers really can benefit from 64-bit processing, and on the specialty market that Apple services, users NEED 64-bit processing.
It is great and all to say "Apple dropped the PowerPC because it had no portable future," but that doesn't explain why they dropped their entire OS back to a 32-bit OS, and put 32-bit processors in their desktop machines. Sure, I bet at some point they will come out with a 64-bit machine again, then have to go back up to a 64-bit OS again, then have to get their software vendors to do another port of the software optimized for whatever Intel chip they choose, but that is a long way to go after just making an entire platform transition.
The only Core Duo machine I have seen, other than a Mac, used a BIOS, not EFI. At present Intel itself is still using BIOS on many of their MBs. I know that over the course of 2006, they plan to transition completely to EFI, but they have not yet. I have yet to see a 32-bit MB, even from Intel. You know, every computer that has a Core Duo chip, isn't required to use EFI.
No, Intel has plenty of 64-bit chips already on the market, and has for quite a while now! If there is any "fault" here, it lies with Apple for basically getting talked into putting 32-bit processors designed for mobile applications, into their desktop machines.
Re:Macs with windows, blah! Windows with Mac OS!
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No EFI Support for Vista
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Ok, really quickly, here we go:
A) Have you looked at all the chips Intel makes? Their roadmap is more complicated than a Los Angeles freeway! I assure you, testing on the Core Duo and Core Solo processors they are curently using is by no means a an indication that there won't be any problems with any other Intel chips. First off, those are 32-bit chips, and Intel has a couple different flavors of 64-bit chip out there. Then there are all the extra features of the various chips that at the OS level can cause real problems if you don't properly compile and optimize. And this isn't even getting into the AMD products!
B) Ignoring for a moment the "MS steal from it all the time" troll, the kernel of OSX has been around for quite a while, and most of it was not written by Apple. It is basically BSD. A LOT of the features of OSX are very new (in OS terms), and have really never been tested in the sense of the kind of abuse features in Windows get with hundreds of millions of people banging on them all the time.
C) Apple never made their own chip! The used off the shelf Motorola chips, then they used off the shelf IBM chips, now they use off the shelf Intel chips. Apple never made their own harddrives, or video cards, or much of anything. At least not for over a decade. Everything Apple has been doing since the move to PowerPC is following standards set by consortiums. That hasn't really changed.
Yes, the rewards are huge, but many a company have tried to market their OS as software, and many a company have failed. Solaris, OS2, NextStep, BeOS, AT&T UNIX, BSD, Linux, and some others I am sure I have forgotten have all made a run at the boxed software market, and not many of them are around anymore.
By the way, no OSX is not based on Linux, it is based on NextStep, which in turn was based on BSD, both of which had their own run at the PC market, and both of which didn't even get as far as Linux has.
Funny, my Athlon X2 with SLI Quadro cards, a Wacom tablet, two monitors, 4GB of RAM, 1TB RAID, color printer, and 7.1 audio, seems to work just fine with Combustion, Maya, and Macromedia Studio 8 on XP 64. In fact, the install went smoother than trying to install XP 32 on the same configuration. I haven't had any driver problems at all, and not a single crash in the month I've been running it. Of course I bought all high-end, brand-name components, so maybe that is why all my hardware is supported.
That's great, too bad that machine is a weak piece of junk, according to Steve Jobs who says that the crappy Intel chips they are selling now beat anything out there. I don't really get your argument here. You are saying your computer is really old, and you have had a 64-bit OS for a while. Great, my SGI from '97 was a 64-bit machine running a 64-bit OS too. It sits in my closet collecting dust as a file server now. SGI was selling 64-bit machines more than a decade ago. The Alpha was 64-bit in '92, and there was a 64-bit version of Windows NT for the Alpha in '93. What is your point?
None of this changes the fact that all of Apple's computers are 32-bit machines, running a 32-bit OS, and a modern PC is 64-bit, running a 64-bit OS.
That makes perfect sense for laptops, but is anyone really that concerned about the power consumption of their desktop?
Re:Macs with windows, blah! Windows with Mac OS!
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No EFI Support for Vista
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Steve Jobs actually tried this with NextStep, and learned a painful lesson. While NextStep was heralded for its stability and features on the Next hardware, as soon as it was "out in the wild" on commodity hardware, it was pretty much panned as a buggy, slow, cumbersome piece of garbage that never really sold or gained any major following.
There were a few reasons for this.
First off, the people who went out of their way to buy a Next box, much like macheads, had already decided that it was a wonderful machine before they ever turned it on, so were a bit more forgiving than someone just trying out the OS alongside others.
Secondly, it is a lot easier to develop an OS that only needs to run on one or two motherboards, with one or two chips, and one or two graphics systems, than it is to develop something that has to work with everything.
Thirdly, if you have complete control of the hardware, you can cheat on a lot of things. For example, if you know a feature crashes horribly on anything under a certain amount of RAM, then you can hold back that feature on any system that doesn't have enough RAM to handle it. When the user has control of the hardware, all you can do is make recommendations, and hope they abide by them, which almost without doubt, some won't.
Lastly, the number of bugs and problems you have to fix is limited to the number of users that have problems. Every piece of software as complex as an OS has bugs, if you have a few thousand users, the chances of them running across all the bugs is a lot smaller than if you have tens of thousands of users.
All of this, at the very least, taught Steve Jobs that trying to be Microsoft is harder than it looks. I think that Apple would probably make a ton of money if they could release their OS as a software product for commodity PCs, and would probably put a HUGE dent in the Linux market. However, I don't know if the company is really up to handling that, and I am quite sure that from his Next experience Jobs realizes the danger of trying to make that move when you aren't ready for it.
Re:Motherboard manufacturers would sway this...
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No EFI Support for Vista
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The problem with this idea, is that the MB manufacturers would have to license EFI from Intel. Intel developed EFI, and at present is the only one using EFI. So, the only way you end up with EFI right now is if you have an Intel MB. As far as all the MB manufacturers are concerned, EFI adds nothing substantial of value to a desktop machine, so why pay a competitor like Intel to license their technology, when Award makes a fine BIOS that does everything a desktop user would need, and then some?
If it weren't for macheads wanting to install Vista on their machines, this wouldn't even be a news story. Intel is more than capable of writing the code Vista needs to boot in whatever way Intel wants it to. If Intel had convinced any OEM but Apple to go EFI with 32-bit chips, then Intel would just hand over the code to MS, and the whole problem would be solved. Besides, every EFI MB out there has a BIOS compatibility mode, which Apple decided they didn't need. This truly is a lot of FUD that only effects Apple. The issue here is that MS doesn't want to put in extra work just to get Vista to boot on a Mac, Intel apparently doesn't either (or has been asked not to by Apple) and Apple sure as hell doesn't want to, which is the whole reason they went with EFI without a compatibility mode to begin with. Right now, EFI only exists in some 64-bit systems, and Macs. I guarantee you, that if tomorrow Intel talked Dell into going EFI with 32-bit CPUs, Vista would support it in whatever configuration Dell needed.
I hate to rain on you MS-trashing party, but Microsoft already DOES support EFI. EFI is, after all, a PC technology, developed for the Itanium, not something Apple designed for their systems. The summary of the article is quite simply wrong. Vista will support EFI in the 64-bit version, for 64-bit chips, this being a technology designed for a 64-bit processor. In fact 64-bit XP and 2003 ALREADY support EFI. What will not be supported is EFI on 32-bit chips, since no one is doing that except Apple.
Could you at least TRY to get the story right?
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No EFI Support for Vista
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This is ridiculous! The story is, the crippled (I am amazed they are even releasing it) 32-bit version of Vista won't support the odd mac-only combination of 32-bit chips, and EFI. The 64-bit version of Vista, will support the standard configuration of 64-bit chips, and EFI, just like XP 64 already does.
I love all the comments about how far behind Apple MS is, as proven by the fact that they can't even get EFI working. No, they have it working, just on modern 64-bit systems. Apple is the only company on earth that decided to go with a brand new technology like EFI, and then stick 32-bit chips on a 32-bit OS in their system! If Apple actually comes out with a 64-bit machine (like most modern PCs), I'm sure 64-bit Vista will boot on it just fine. This is one of those cases where the problem isn't how far behind MS is on their support for EFI, but how far behind Apple is on their choice of x86 chips. I have no idea why Apple let itself get talked into dumping a 64-bit architecture, just to get what basically amounts to some fast dual-core P3s, but they did.
Is this a SCSI RAID array? I know I have booted Windows on SCSI arrays with massive storage before (more than 2TB, but I can't remeber if it was more than 4TB). I could see the problem you are describing on a SATA array, but if you have an application that needs 4TB of RAID, why would you use SATA?
Of course for that matter, I don't really know why anyone would want to put Windows on the same drive or array as their data, due to all the fragmentation issues. Personally, on Windows I try to keep my system drive and data array separate, just for performance.
See, this is what drives me crazy about Democrats! I hate just about everything the Republican party stands for these days. I am no fan of Big Business, I am not a Christian, and I can't really come up with a single policy the Republican party backs that I agree with. However, to my mind things can only ever get so bad in our society, as long as we have two things: the freedom to express ourselves, and an armed citizenry. As long as those two thing exist, there is only so much that can go wrong at the governmental level.
This is where the Democrats lose me every time. I really want to support Democrats, if for no other reason than the fact that they aren't Republicans. However, whatever good policies Democrats might have, a large portion of them always come back to the idea that freedom of expression and an armed populace are too dangerous to be left unchecked. That leaves me in the awful position of voting for a party that I disagree with, or a party that wants to take away my right to disagree! As such, I always end up having to support lost-cause third party candidates.
I just wish the Democrats would realize that freedom is a risky thing, and you just have to live with it. You can't just protect people's rights to do and say the things with which you agree. If you only allow people to do the things you think are ok, then you are no different than the religious zealots that want to make everybody live by the words in the Bible.
I don't care if video games are potentially incredibly harmful to children (which I don't think they are in any way). Climbing a tree is potentially fatal to a child, as is taking them to school in a car. These are risks we accept all the time, because they are considered private matters left up to the parent. The same should be true of video games, movies, music, books, and quite a few other matters of rasing a child in which the government meddles.
You know, it is funny. I have spent hours searching the web, and I can not find a single instance of this claim that NTP sent 30,000 claims to the patent office, that doesn't come directly from some employee of RIM. The original claim comes from an article in the Wall Street Journal, written by the CEO of RIM. Every other instance of the claim, is either a quote from that article, or a different quote from other RIM employees. I have yet to see any confirmation of this claim from any court or the patent office. As RIM proved quite definitively in the court case, they have no problem lying, and practicing fraud to discredit NTP. As such, I am at the very least skeptical of this claim when it is being made solely by the management of RIM, when they clearly have a vested interest in making up whatever they need to in order to support their side of the case.
As far as your 'argument' goes, it is pure sophistry. The rules that govern patents are the rules of the patent office. Hundreds of thousands of patents are handled by these rules every year, and there is an established system for resolving disputes exactly like this. RIM did not like the result of that system, so unlike every other company that works with patents on a daily basis, decided to step outside the system, and bring political pressure onto a system that is supposed to be removed from politics by its very nature and design. They even went as far as trying to use the events of September 11th as leverage to get themselves excluded from the same process which every other company has to abide. The very system they have used repetedly to pressure, or even close down their competition.
Now you might think it is just fine to sweep all the pieces off the board when you are losing a game, because it is your board, and therefore you can legally do whatever you like with it, but most people would say that is at best unseemly, and at worst unethical. If you pay off the right people, you can get the law changed (at least for a short time) to say pretty much anything you want (just ask Jack Abramoff). That technically makes it legal. That doesn't make it ethical, just, or even right, just legal. It used to be legal to lynch black people, or stone your wife to death if she disobeyed you, did that make it right? By your argument, sure it did. All that matters is what's legal. Ethics, morals, and justice are just lame fairy tales for poor chumps who can't afford to buy whatever legislation they want. As I said, I think that is not only disgusting, but a betrayal of everything this country was supposed to stand for.
Umm.... let me think... This whole case is stupid because everyone knows that Apple is going to be the first company to ever do wireless email when they release their iPhone at some point in the future!
There, it that better, and more/. friendly?
How about... RIM uses M$ servers, and only works with Windoze, so they sux!!
What a corporate tool attitude! I guess I was just raised at the wrong time in American history. You see the way I learned my sense of fair play, is that you set up the rules, and those rules protected everyone equally. As long as you follow the established rules, you have the right to expect fair treatment, whether you were some guy working out of your garage, or a multinational company. NTP followed the rules. RIM threw around a lot of money and influence, and got the rules changed to attempt to benefit their corporate bottom line.
I am well aware of the fact that many people (like you apparently) think that it is admirable that corporate fiefdoms can change the rules anytime they want, provided they just throw enough money at the problem. I, however, think that is disgusting, and a betrayal of everything that previously constituted the American way of life. I am glad to see that once in a while the little guy can still get a little justice. I cannot understand for the life of me why people like you are so eager to just worship at the feet of your corporate masters, and hand over all your rights to anyone with enough money to buy them. I suppose it is just a natural progression of our newest religion, capitalism.
Providing free BlackBerry devices and service to members of the House and Senate. Hiring high-powered lobbying firms to try and get their devices classified as "vital to national defense." Hiring two former Canadian ambassadors to lobby both the Canadian and U.S. governments to consider the NTP patent case as an international issue. Having the House and Senate put pressure on the patent office (which is supposed to be an independent agency free of political pressure) to reconsider the NTP patents on an accelerated schedule.
All in all RIM did everything short of breaking the law to get these patents thrown out. They brought to bear a level of political pressure that certainly wasn't available to any of the companies they sued for breaking RIM patents. I am not saying that they committed any crimes, just that they stepped way outside the normal patent resolution process, to force the result they wanted, in a way that few other companies have ever done short of defense contractors.
I love how the big company always gets the benefit of the doubt in today's corporate-loving world.
The founder of NTP had many years of wireless experience, and developed many technologies that moved wireless messaging forward. When RIM showed up on the scene, he sent them (as well as some other companies) a few letters to inform them that they were infringing on his patents. RIM ignored the letters, and continued doing business as though they had never heard of this guy. He didn't sue, he just chalked it up to a losing battle that there was nothing he could do anything about.
Then he saw a story about how RIM was suing other companies out of existence using patents that were infringing on HIS patents. At that point he figured it was time to try and get a big law firm involved, and went after RIM. He died of cancer before this whole court case was ever finished, but I am glad to hear his family will be well off.
The fact of the matter is, this never would have even happened if RIM hadn't started the whole thing by employing predatory practices with their dubious patents to drive competition out of business in the first place. I have no sympathy for RIM at all. They flat out lied in court, and were busted for it, they used some pretty questionable lobbying practices to get NTP patents invalidated, and they have practiced far more dubious patent extortion than NTP ever did. I don't think this is a case of a fine, upstanding company getting a shakedown by a troll. This is a case of pretty sweet karma in action!
Except for this one little problem that everyone likes to overlook. It is illegal (by Japanese law) for a foreign company to buy a Japanese company! It can't happen. The Japanese government won't let it happen.
Also, I think if you check any stock exchange other than the N.Y. stock exchange, you will find that Sony's value is much higher than Apple's. Wall Street presently has a fascination with Apple (leading to an overvaluation of the stock), that is not quite so enthusiastically shared by other markets around the world. If you were going to try and buy control of Sony's stock, you would have to do it on the Japanese market, since less than half of their stock is on the international market, with the rest being held in Japan. Last time I checked, the Japanese price for Sony stock (after the exchange rate) is almost $20 per share higher than it trades in the U.S. making it quite a bit more expensive than it would appear from NYSE figures.
You macheads are just flat-out batshit crazy! I normally try to be a bit more diplomatic about this, but on this particular topic, you are just in some kind of brand-inspired psychosis. It is amazing to me the number of cold, hard facts you have to blithely ignore to even begin a conversation like this.
There are millions of Xbox 360s already in homes, already hooked up to televisions, and every one of those acts as a media extender, and is HD capable.
The number of XP media center PCs shipped last year, exceeds the total number of computers Apple sold last year.
The PS3 will have HD output, online connectivity, LocationFree TV support, media hub functionality, and will be selling in quantities an order of magnitude larger than any product Apple has ever sold (and that is even if it doesn't do very well).
The single largest set-top box manufacturer is now owned by the single largest network equipment vendor.
All of these are facts, and yet you say that the first product to ever bring digital media into the living room is a Mac Mini with a remote control? That is just insane! Apple doesn't even have the manufacturing capacity to compete in this market at the moment, much less the resources to dominate it. Apple has shortages just trying to get a million computers out the door in a year. Yet you think that they are the only player in the market, and they are going to outproduce Microsoft, Sony and Cisco?
I'm sure that Apple (just like every other tech company in the past five years) sees the living room as a place they want to get their products. I'm also sure that having a rabid bunch of fanatics who don't think a category of product exists until their favorite brand makes one, won't hurt their sales. However, they need to get up to the point where they can even compete with the number of Media Center PCs, before you can even start talking about how they are going to compete with things like the 360 and PS3, much less Scientific Atlanta boxes.
Every time I hear this argument from Macheads I have to shake my head. Even iPods (a fairly easy to design and manufacture product) have not reached anywhere near the kind units that the PS2 or Scientific Atlanta cable boxes do. There is a BIG difference between what you would like to see happen, and what a company is physically capable of doing. Just ask Microsoft about that one, and the shortages they've been having with the 360. Producing tens of millions of complicated boxes with numerous components from numerous vendors is something only a few companies can pull off, and Apple is not one of those companies. Apple's production has been strained to the breaking point many times just keeping up with the iPod. Scaling that up to a more complicated products, selling in the tens of millions isn't something you can just make happen because you want to.
There are a lot of video surveillance systems out there that have a lot of solid field testing. Many of these systems are used in incredibly sensitive applications where security is literally a life and death issue. Honestly, if security is your biggest issue, then going with proven systems from companies who cater to mission critical video surveillance is you best way to go, no matter what OS they happen to use.
This whole post smacks to me of trying to prove something can be done on a non-windows platform, just to prove it, and not because it in any way benefits the customer. There is an entire industry that does nothing but make cameras and servers for mission critical video, and to my knowledge they almost all use either Windows, or proprietary analog systems. If you really want to serve your customer, talk to those companies, and find out what they can do to service your contract. Don't get on/. and fish around for people to tell you the whole thing can be done with some webcams and an Apache server. You will just end up making a very large headache for yourself and your customer.
Also, if you close all the ports (except the ones the video streams need), move the video streams over to non-standard ports, and make sure no one runs any software other than the video software, then you will not get viruses on the machine, and are highly unlikely to get any worms. It is that simple. All the Windows vulnerabilities in the world won't be able to magically let traffic in through a closed port on your firewall. If the video server won't let you change the communication ports, you can always setup port forwarding at both ends of the connection, so that to the outside world you will be using different ports.
All of this said, have you tried talking to CoVi Technologies? Their system is Windows based, but I have worked with them in the past, and they are some pretty smart guys, with a good background in network distributed video, focused specifically on sensitive digital video applications.
It is an interesting theory. Honestly, however, I think susceptibility to 'mind control' if anything would be a function of how introspective, and how prone to procrastination the person in question is. If you have a very decisive person who is accustom to making split-second decisions, then acting on them, I imagine they would be fairly susceptible to the sort of manipulation you posit. On the other hand, a person prone to 'over-analyzing' situations, and slow to take action, would most likely be more immune.
If you are the sort of person who spends hours, days, or even weeks weighing all your options before taking any action, I can't imagine simple emotional weighting being enough to sway your decision. Of course I can't imagine you getting much done either.
Last I checked, it is actually illegal (under Japanese law) for a foreign company to own a Japanese company.
All speculation about pride, attitudes, finances and tradition aside, the closest Cisco could do, is sign an exclusive distribution and production deal with Nintendo, much like Disney did with Studio Ghibli. Any attempt to outright buy Nintendo would be blocked by the Japanese government.
Whoever wrote this article obviously has the rather charming and provincial attitude that American companies can do whatever they want. The problem is, there are these things called governments that sometimes get in their way.
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No, however I do think that a computer mainly targeted at creative professionals should keep up with the software. It isn't like most people are buying a Mac to run Office. Most Mac users at least want to play with video editing, 3D graphics, high dynamic range photo editing, multitrack audio mixing, and all those sorts of things that really do benefit from 64-bit computing. In fact, you would be amazed what a difference it makes. My SGI lasted for years longer than it should have, simply because when it came to manipulating large amounts of video, or rendering really complex 3D scenes, 32-bit computers just couldn't handle it. It wasn't until AMD started coming out with really fast 64-Bit chips that there was anything out there that could handle my most complicated work without throwing all sorts of memory exceptions on render.
Ok, how does NetBurst make a chip not 64-bit?
I fully expect that at some point Apple will go back to 64-bit. I think I even said that when they do, Vista will probably install just fine. However, I just don't see the logic for even making a brief stop in IA-32 land. Seriously, I am no fan of the NetBurst architecture, but expecting your software vendors to first move to OSX 32-bit PowerPC, then move to 64-bit PowerPC, then move to IA-32 then move to EM64T is a lot to ask when even your most loyal vendor (Adobe) is only getting 15% of their sales from your platform. It is no wonder there is a smaller software market for the Mac!
Wow, are you an Intel sales rep, or just ignorant of the PC market? I go to Dell's site, and sure, I see notebooks using, mainly Pentium 4 M processors, and one mid-ranged unit using the new Core Duo chip. I go to Lenovo, and they are mostly Core Duo, with some Pentium 4 Ms. I go to Fujitsu, and I see Pentium 4 Ms, and Turion 64s. I go to Alienware's site, and I see some Celerons, some Pentium 4s, some Athlons, some Athlon X2s, and even an Opteron. That is hardly the "all of them" you attribute to the Core Duo chip.
None the less, those are all notebooks. Not many people install an OS on their notebook other than what came with it. When Vista comes out, let's see what chip they are running. Meanwhile look at desktops (where people will be upgrading to Vista), and you are going to see a lot of Pentium EEs, Athlon 64s, and Athlon X2s. On the server front, it is almost all Opterons and Xeons these days. You know, there are computers other than notebooks, right?
As far as you comment about how unnecessary 64-bit is for most people, let me point out a few thing in which 64-bit has a major advantage. Rigid body physics simulations, video encoding/decoding, High Dynamic Range light simulation, ray tracing, multipoint acoustic modeling, fluid dynamics simulations, soft body simulations, and particle dynamics. Now, those all happen to be a big part of a hobby a few people in the computer world have, called gaming. Now gaming has a rather large following, some might even call it mainstream, but gaming isn't why I brought those things up. I brought those things up because they all have another use, one that is a bit more relevant to why it was a bad idea for Apple to go with 32-bit chips. You see, a large segment of Apple's market does something called video/film production, and all of those things I listed are a pretty integral part of modern video/film production. So, on the mainstream market, gamers really can benefit from 64-bit processing, and on the specialty market that Apple services, users NEED 64-bit processing.
It is great and all to say "Apple dropped the PowerPC because it had no portable future," but that doesn't explain why they dropped their entire OS back to a 32-bit OS, and put 32-bit processors in their desktop machines. Sure, I bet at some point they will come out with a 64-bit machine again, then have to go back up to a 64-bit OS again, then have to get their software vendors to do another port of the software optimized for whatever Intel chip they choose, but that is a long way to go after just making an entire platform transition.
The only Core Duo machine I have seen, other than a Mac, used a BIOS, not EFI. At present Intel itself is still using BIOS on many of their MBs. I know that over the course of 2006, they plan to transition completely to EFI, but they have not yet. I have yet to see a 32-bit MB, even from Intel. You know, every computer that has a Core Duo chip, isn't required to use EFI.
No, Intel has plenty of 64-bit chips already on the market, and has for quite a while now! If there is any "fault" here, it lies with Apple for basically getting talked into putting 32-bit processors designed for mobile applications, into their desktop machines.
Ok, really quickly, here we go:
A) Have you looked at all the chips Intel makes? Their roadmap is more complicated than a Los Angeles freeway! I assure you, testing on the Core Duo and Core Solo processors they are curently using is by no means a an indication that there won't be any problems with any other Intel chips. First off, those are 32-bit chips, and Intel has a couple different flavors of 64-bit chip out there. Then there are all the extra features of the various chips that at the OS level can cause real problems if you don't properly compile and optimize. And this isn't even getting into the AMD products!
B) Ignoring for a moment the "MS steal from it all the time" troll, the kernel of OSX has been around for quite a while, and most of it was not written by Apple. It is basically BSD. A LOT of the features of OSX are very new (in OS terms), and have really never been tested in the sense of the kind of abuse features in Windows get with hundreds of millions of people banging on them all the time.
C) Apple never made their own chip! The used off the shelf Motorola chips, then they used off the shelf IBM chips, now they use off the shelf Intel chips. Apple never made their own harddrives, or video cards, or much of anything. At least not for over a decade. Everything Apple has been doing since the move to PowerPC is following standards set by consortiums. That hasn't really changed.
Yes, the rewards are huge, but many a company have tried to market their OS as software, and many a company have failed. Solaris, OS2, NextStep, BeOS, AT&T UNIX, BSD, Linux, and some others I am sure I have forgotten have all made a run at the boxed software market, and not many of them are around anymore.
By the way, no OSX is not based on Linux, it is based on NextStep, which in turn was based on BSD, both of which had their own run at the PC market, and both of which didn't even get as far as Linux has.
Really?
Funny, my Athlon X2 with SLI Quadro cards, a Wacom tablet, two monitors, 4GB of RAM, 1TB RAID, color printer, and 7.1 audio, seems to work just fine with Combustion, Maya, and Macromedia Studio 8 on XP 64. In fact, the install went smoother than trying to install XP 32 on the same configuration. I haven't had any driver problems at all, and not a single crash in the month I've been running it. Of course I bought all high-end, brand-name components, so maybe that is why all my hardware is supported.
That's great, too bad that machine is a weak piece of junk, according to Steve Jobs who says that the crappy Intel chips they are selling now beat anything out there. I don't really get your argument here. You are saying your computer is really old, and you have had a 64-bit OS for a while. Great, my SGI from '97 was a 64-bit machine running a 64-bit OS too. It sits in my closet collecting dust as a file server now. SGI was selling 64-bit machines more than a decade ago. The Alpha was 64-bit in '92, and there was a 64-bit version of Windows NT for the Alpha in '93. What is your point?
None of this changes the fact that all of Apple's computers are 32-bit machines, running a 32-bit OS, and a modern PC is 64-bit, running a 64-bit OS.
That makes perfect sense for laptops, but is anyone really that concerned about the power consumption of their desktop?
Steve Jobs actually tried this with NextStep, and learned a painful lesson. While NextStep was heralded for its stability and features on the Next hardware, as soon as it was "out in the wild" on commodity hardware, it was pretty much panned as a buggy, slow, cumbersome piece of garbage that never really sold or gained any major following.
There were a few reasons for this.
First off, the people who went out of their way to buy a Next box, much like macheads, had already decided that it was a wonderful machine before they ever turned it on, so were a bit more forgiving than someone just trying out the OS alongside others.
Secondly, it is a lot easier to develop an OS that only needs to run on one or two motherboards, with one or two chips, and one or two graphics systems, than it is to develop something that has to work with everything.
Thirdly, if you have complete control of the hardware, you can cheat on a lot of things. For example, if you know a feature crashes horribly on anything under a certain amount of RAM, then you can hold back that feature on any system that doesn't have enough RAM to handle it. When the user has control of the hardware, all you can do is make recommendations, and hope they abide by them, which almost without doubt, some won't.
Lastly, the number of bugs and problems you have to fix is limited to the number of users that have problems. Every piece of software as complex as an OS has bugs, if you have a few thousand users, the chances of them running across all the bugs is a lot smaller than if you have tens of thousands of users.
All of this, at the very least, taught Steve Jobs that trying to be Microsoft is harder than it looks. I think that Apple would probably make a ton of money if they could release their OS as a software product for commodity PCs, and would probably put a HUGE dent in the Linux market. However, I don't know if the company is really up to handling that, and I am quite sure that from his Next experience Jobs realizes the danger of trying to make that move when you aren't ready for it.
The problem with this idea, is that the MB manufacturers would have to license EFI from Intel. Intel developed EFI, and at present is the only one using EFI. So, the only way you end up with EFI right now is if you have an Intel MB. As far as all the MB manufacturers are concerned, EFI adds nothing substantial of value to a desktop machine, so why pay a competitor like Intel to license their technology, when Award makes a fine BIOS that does everything a desktop user would need, and then some?
If it weren't for macheads wanting to install Vista on their machines, this wouldn't even be a news story. Intel is more than capable of writing the code Vista needs to boot in whatever way Intel wants it to. If Intel had convinced any OEM but Apple to go EFI with 32-bit chips, then Intel would just hand over the code to MS, and the whole problem would be solved. Besides, every EFI MB out there has a BIOS compatibility mode, which Apple decided they didn't need. This truly is a lot of FUD that only effects Apple. The issue here is that MS doesn't want to put in extra work just to get Vista to boot on a Mac, Intel apparently doesn't either (or has been asked not to by Apple) and Apple sure as hell doesn't want to, which is the whole reason they went with EFI without a compatibility mode to begin with. Right now, EFI only exists in some 64-bit systems, and Macs. I guarantee you, that if tomorrow Intel talked Dell into going EFI with 32-bit CPUs, Vista would support it in whatever configuration Dell needed.
I hate to rain on you MS-trashing party, but Microsoft already DOES support EFI. EFI is, after all, a PC technology, developed for the Itanium, not something Apple designed for their systems. The summary of the article is quite simply wrong. Vista will support EFI in the 64-bit version, for 64-bit chips, this being a technology designed for a 64-bit processor. In fact 64-bit XP and 2003 ALREADY support EFI. What will not be supported is EFI on 32-bit chips, since no one is doing that except Apple.
This is ridiculous! The story is, the crippled (I am amazed they are even releasing it) 32-bit version of Vista won't support the odd mac-only combination of 32-bit chips, and EFI. The 64-bit version of Vista, will support the standard configuration of 64-bit chips, and EFI, just like XP 64 already does.
I love all the comments about how far behind Apple MS is, as proven by the fact that they can't even get EFI working. No, they have it working, just on modern 64-bit systems. Apple is the only company on earth that decided to go with a brand new technology like EFI, and then stick 32-bit chips on a 32-bit OS in their system! If Apple actually comes out with a 64-bit machine (like most modern PCs), I'm sure 64-bit Vista will boot on it just fine. This is one of those cases where the problem isn't how far behind MS is on their support for EFI, but how far behind Apple is on their choice of x86 chips. I have no idea why Apple let itself get talked into dumping a 64-bit architecture, just to get what basically amounts to some fast dual-core P3s, but they did.
Talk about the very definition of FUD!
Is this a SCSI RAID array? I know I have booted Windows on SCSI arrays with massive storage before (more than 2TB, but I can't remeber if it was more than 4TB). I could see the problem you are describing on a SATA array, but if you have an application that needs 4TB of RAID, why would you use SATA?
Of course for that matter, I don't really know why anyone would want to put Windows on the same drive or array as their data, due to all the fragmentation issues. Personally, on Windows I try to keep my system drive and data array separate, just for performance.
See, this is what drives me crazy about Democrats! I hate just about everything the Republican party stands for these days. I am no fan of Big Business, I am not a Christian, and I can't really come up with a single policy the Republican party backs that I agree with. However, to my mind things can only ever get so bad in our society, as long as we have two things: the freedom to express ourselves, and an armed citizenry. As long as those two thing exist, there is only so much that can go wrong at the governmental level.
This is where the Democrats lose me every time. I really want to support Democrats, if for no other reason than the fact that they aren't Republicans. However, whatever good policies Democrats might have, a large portion of them always come back to the idea that freedom of expression and an armed populace are too dangerous to be left unchecked. That leaves me in the awful position of voting for a party that I disagree with, or a party that wants to take away my right to disagree! As such, I always end up having to support lost-cause third party candidates.
I just wish the Democrats would realize that freedom is a risky thing, and you just have to live with it. You can't just protect people's rights to do and say the things with which you agree. If you only allow people to do the things you think are ok, then you are no different than the religious zealots that want to make everybody live by the words in the Bible.
I don't care if video games are potentially incredibly harmful to children (which I don't think they are in any way). Climbing a tree is potentially fatal to a child, as is taking them to school in a car. These are risks we accept all the time, because they are considered private matters left up to the parent. The same should be true of video games, movies, music, books, and quite a few other matters of rasing a child in which the government meddles.
You know, it is funny. I have spent hours searching the web, and I can not find a single instance of this claim that NTP sent 30,000 claims to the patent office, that doesn't come directly from some employee of RIM. The original claim comes from an article in the Wall Street Journal, written by the CEO of RIM. Every other instance of the claim, is either a quote from that article, or a different quote from other RIM employees. I have yet to see any confirmation of this claim from any court or the patent office. As RIM proved quite definitively in the court case, they have no problem lying, and practicing fraud to discredit NTP. As such, I am at the very least skeptical of this claim when it is being made solely by the management of RIM, when they clearly have a vested interest in making up whatever they need to in order to support their side of the case.
As far as your 'argument' goes, it is pure sophistry. The rules that govern patents are the rules of the patent office. Hundreds of thousands of patents are handled by these rules every year, and there is an established system for resolving disputes exactly like this. RIM did not like the result of that system, so unlike every other company that works with patents on a daily basis, decided to step outside the system, and bring political pressure onto a system that is supposed to be removed from politics by its very nature and design. They even went as far as trying to use the events of September 11th as leverage to get themselves excluded from the same process which every other company has to abide. The very system they have used repetedly to pressure, or even close down their competition.
Now you might think it is just fine to sweep all the pieces off the board when you are losing a game, because it is your board, and therefore you can legally do whatever you like with it, but most people would say that is at best unseemly, and at worst unethical. If you pay off the right people, you can get the law changed (at least for a short time) to say pretty much anything you want (just ask Jack Abramoff). That technically makes it legal. That doesn't make it ethical, just, or even right, just legal. It used to be legal to lynch black people, or stone your wife to death if she disobeyed you, did that make it right? By your argument, sure it did. All that matters is what's legal. Ethics, morals, and justice are just lame fairy tales for poor chumps who can't afford to buy whatever legislation they want. As I said, I think that is not only disgusting, but a betrayal of everything this country was supposed to stand for.
Sorry, I'll try harder next time.
/. friendly?
Umm.... let me think... This whole case is stupid because everyone knows that Apple is going to be the first company to ever do wireless email when they release their iPhone at some point in the future!
There, it that better, and more
How about... RIM uses M$ servers, and only works with Windoze, so they sux!!
There, that should cover my bases.
What a corporate tool attitude! I guess I was just raised at the wrong time in American history. You see the way I learned my sense of fair play, is that you set up the rules, and those rules protected everyone equally. As long as you follow the established rules, you have the right to expect fair treatment, whether you were some guy working out of your garage, or a multinational company. NTP followed the rules. RIM threw around a lot of money and influence, and got the rules changed to attempt to benefit their corporate bottom line.
I am well aware of the fact that many people (like you apparently) think that it is admirable that corporate fiefdoms can change the rules anytime they want, provided they just throw enough money at the problem. I, however, think that is disgusting, and a betrayal of everything that previously constituted the American way of life. I am glad to see that once in a while the little guy can still get a little justice. I cannot understand for the life of me why people like you are so eager to just worship at the feet of your corporate masters, and hand over all your rights to anyone with enough money to buy them. I suppose it is just a natural progression of our newest religion, capitalism.
Providing free BlackBerry devices and service to members of the House and Senate. Hiring high-powered lobbying firms to try and get their devices classified as "vital to national defense." Hiring two former Canadian ambassadors to lobby both the Canadian and U.S. governments to consider the NTP patent case as an international issue. Having the House and Senate put pressure on the patent office (which is supposed to be an independent agency free of political pressure) to reconsider the NTP patents on an accelerated schedule.
All in all RIM did everything short of breaking the law to get these patents thrown out. They brought to bear a level of political pressure that certainly wasn't available to any of the companies they sued for breaking RIM patents. I am not saying that they committed any crimes, just that they stepped way outside the normal patent resolution process, to force the result they wanted, in a way that few other companies have ever done short of defense contractors.
I love how the big company always gets the benefit of the doubt in today's corporate-loving world.
The founder of NTP had many years of wireless experience, and developed many technologies that moved wireless messaging forward. When RIM showed up on the scene, he sent them (as well as some other companies) a few letters to inform them that they were infringing on his patents. RIM ignored the letters, and continued doing business as though they had never heard of this guy. He didn't sue, he just chalked it up to a losing battle that there was nothing he could do anything about.
Then he saw a story about how RIM was suing other companies out of existence using patents that were infringing on HIS patents. At that point he figured it was time to try and get a big law firm involved, and went after RIM. He died of cancer before this whole court case was ever finished, but I am glad to hear his family will be well off.
The fact of the matter is, this never would have even happened if RIM hadn't started the whole thing by employing predatory practices with their dubious patents to drive competition out of business in the first place. I have no sympathy for RIM at all. They flat out lied in court, and were busted for it, they used some pretty questionable lobbying practices to get NTP patents invalidated, and they have practiced far more dubious patent extortion than NTP ever did. I don't think this is a case of a fine, upstanding company getting a shakedown by a troll. This is a case of pretty sweet karma in action!
Except for this one little problem that everyone likes to overlook. It is illegal (by Japanese law) for a foreign company to buy a Japanese company! It can't happen. The Japanese government won't let it happen.
Also, I think if you check any stock exchange other than the N.Y. stock exchange, you will find that Sony's value is much higher than Apple's. Wall Street presently has a fascination with Apple (leading to an overvaluation of the stock), that is not quite so enthusiastically shared by other markets around the world. If you were going to try and buy control of Sony's stock, you would have to do it on the Japanese market, since less than half of their stock is on the international market, with the rest being held in Japan. Last time I checked, the Japanese price for Sony stock (after the exchange rate) is almost $20 per share higher than it trades in the U.S. making it quite a bit more expensive than it would appear from NYSE figures.
You macheads are just flat-out batshit crazy! I normally try to be a bit more diplomatic about this, but on this particular topic, you are just in some kind of brand-inspired psychosis. It is amazing to me the number of cold, hard facts you have to blithely ignore to even begin a conversation like this.
There are millions of Xbox 360s already in homes, already hooked up to televisions, and every one of those acts as a media extender, and is HD capable.
The number of XP media center PCs shipped last year, exceeds the total number of computers Apple sold last year.
The PS3 will have HD output, online connectivity, LocationFree TV support, media hub functionality, and will be selling in quantities an order of magnitude larger than any product Apple has ever sold (and that is even if it doesn't do very well).
The single largest set-top box manufacturer is now owned by the single largest network equipment vendor.
All of these are facts, and yet you say that the first product to ever bring digital media into the living room is a Mac Mini with a remote control? That is just insane! Apple doesn't even have the manufacturing capacity to compete in this market at the moment, much less the resources to dominate it. Apple has shortages just trying to get a million computers out the door in a year. Yet you think that they are the only player in the market, and they are going to outproduce Microsoft, Sony and Cisco?
I'm sure that Apple (just like every other tech company in the past five years) sees the living room as a place they want to get their products. I'm also sure that having a rabid bunch of fanatics who don't think a category of product exists until their favorite brand makes one, won't hurt their sales. However, they need to get up to the point where they can even compete with the number of Media Center PCs, before you can even start talking about how they are going to compete with things like the 360 and PS3, much less Scientific Atlanta boxes.
Every time I hear this argument from Macheads I have to shake my head. Even iPods (a fairly easy to design and manufacture product) have not reached anywhere near the kind units that the PS2 or Scientific Atlanta cable boxes do. There is a BIG difference between what you would like to see happen, and what a company is physically capable of doing. Just ask Microsoft about that one, and the shortages they've been having with the 360. Producing tens of millions of complicated boxes with numerous components from numerous vendors is something only a few companies can pull off, and Apple is not one of those companies. Apple's production has been strained to the breaking point many times just keeping up with the iPod. Scaling that up to a more complicated products, selling in the tens of millions isn't something you can just make happen because you want to.
There are a lot of video surveillance systems out there that have a lot of solid field testing. Many of these systems are used in incredibly sensitive applications where security is literally a life and death issue. Honestly, if security is your biggest issue, then going with proven systems from companies who cater to mission critical video surveillance is you best way to go, no matter what OS they happen to use.
/. and fish around for people to tell you the whole thing can be done with some webcams and an Apache server. You will just end up making a very large headache for yourself and your customer.
This whole post smacks to me of trying to prove something can be done on a non-windows platform, just to prove it, and not because it in any way benefits the customer. There is an entire industry that does nothing but make cameras and servers for mission critical video, and to my knowledge they almost all use either Windows, or proprietary analog systems. If you really want to serve your customer, talk to those companies, and find out what they can do to service your contract. Don't get on
Also, if you close all the ports (except the ones the video streams need), move the video streams over to non-standard ports, and make sure no one runs any software other than the video software, then you will not get viruses on the machine, and are highly unlikely to get any worms. It is that simple. All the Windows vulnerabilities in the world won't be able to magically let traffic in through a closed port on your firewall. If the video server won't let you change the communication ports, you can always setup port forwarding at both ends of the connection, so that to the outside world you will be using different ports.
All of this said, have you tried talking to CoVi Technologies? Their system is Windows based, but I have worked with them in the past, and they are some pretty smart guys, with a good background in network distributed video, focused specifically on sensitive digital video applications.
It is an interesting theory. Honestly, however, I think susceptibility to 'mind control' if anything would be a function of how introspective, and how prone to procrastination the person in question is. If you have a very decisive person who is accustom to making split-second decisions, then acting on them, I imagine they would be fairly susceptible to the sort of manipulation you posit. On the other hand, a person prone to 'over-analyzing' situations, and slow to take action, would most likely be more immune.
If you are the sort of person who spends hours, days, or even weeks weighing all your options before taking any action, I can't imagine simple emotional weighting being enough to sway your decision. Of course I can't imagine you getting much done either.
Last I checked, it is actually illegal (under Japanese law) for a foreign company to own a Japanese company.
All speculation about pride, attitudes, finances and tradition aside, the closest Cisco could do, is sign an exclusive distribution and production deal with Nintendo, much like Disney did with Studio Ghibli. Any attempt to outright buy Nintendo would be blocked by the Japanese government.
Whoever wrote this article obviously has the rather charming and provincial attitude that American companies can do whatever they want. The problem is, there are these things called governments that sometimes get in their way.