Well, I would first off repost that I am not aware of what is written in the big book of "How Things Are Supposed To Be" so I really can't even begin to say what is negative, positive, or neutral. Those are arbitrary value assessments made on some way you imagine things are supposed to go in some ideal world. You think you are talking about some objective sense of good or bad, when in fact all you are really doing is stating your own sense of aesthetics as some sort of objectivism.
Do human actions have an effect on the environment as a whole? Sure, but then so do frog actions, horse actions, and bird actions. It is a large and complex system where everything effects everything else. You are making some moral (a very human way of looking at the universe) judgment that says what is or isn't beneficial to the climate of the earth.
The climate of the earth is a system, of which we are a part. What we do, is what we do. It is that simple. If (and it is a very big if) a climactic shift causes an environment that makes it impossible for us to survive, then we cease to survive. The planet does not cease to exist, life on the planet does not cease to exist, the entire atmosphere of the planet doesn't cease to exist, we are just gone.
It is your self-aggrandizing hubris that makes you assume that is some horrible crime against nature. The simple truth of the matter is that you are just playing a big game of "what if" and then taking a presumed moral high ground based on the results of your game. Greenhouse gasses are produced by forest fires, greenhouse gasses are produced by every living animal on earth, and greenhouse gasses are produced by geological events. Dramatic climatic change can be produced by a number of factors that range from shifts in the biomass of the planet, all the way to astronomical events.
You (and many others of the same moralistic and philosophical stripe) have concocted a fairy tale where free of the 'unnatural' intervention of man, the entire planet is a perfectly balanced, self-regulating system, that would always seek a garden of Eden like equilibrium point that would always sustain life, and where no species would ever become overpopulated, or extinct. However, there is nothing that can ever happen in the natural world that is 'unnatural.' Mankind is not some supernatural blight on this poor unsuspecting planet. We are just another little mite crawling on the surface of a ball of rock and dirt.
Secondly, instead of just replying with rote attacks, you might want to actually read what is being written by the person you are responding to, instead of your imaginary evil foe. I take the bus everywhere, so it doesn't really make much sense to ask me why I don't take the bus to work.
Any reputable scientist of any discipline will have no problem in telling you that when you are talking about a complex system, that has been in operation for billions of years, a sampling of measurements over the past couple hundred years is nowhere near enough to KNOW how the system behaves to a particular factor over any meaningful span.
Yet, that doesn't stop people from coming right out and saying that all scientists agree, that people are causing a catastrophic climactic change with environmental pollution.
Why?
Because global warming is the modern, secular, version of original sin. People just know that there has to be some horrible price to pay for eating from the tree of knowledge, and destroying all life on the planet sounds just about right to them as the price we have to pay. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that we surely must be killing the very planet in order to live our comfy lives.
The problem with this theory, is that it is pure conjecture, mixed with no small amount of hubris. Sure, everyone has heard that one major volcanic eruption vents more carbon dioxide than all the cars ever constructed by man combined, but that can't really be right, because we are more important than some stupid volcano. Surely we the tax of our vices must be higher than some random venting of gas. Besides, if the temperature of the entire planet is rising due to factors that have nothing to do with us, that means we can't stop it, which can't be right. We are the most important thing on the planet, and obviously there isn't anything that we can't do. If we are destroying the planet, then all we need to do is renounce our evil ways, and we can save the planet. That makes much more sense. That is how the universe really works. If we want to destroy a planet, then we can, and likewise if we want to save a planet, then we can do that too. We aren't just a bunch of insignificant specs crawling around the surface of some giant system totally beyond our control. We are the center of everything, and all that matters is what we choose to do. Yeah, that sounds much better.
The simple fact is that there has been a very slight rise in temperatures globally over the past blink of a global eye that we call a century. If anyone knew why, they could probably also reliably tell you if it was going to rain tomorrow, where the next tsunami will hit, and what day the next big earthquake would hit California. They can't tell you any of those things because there are actually some things that are so complex that the human brain can't properly model them, even with the help of all the fancy supercomputers in the world.
I know, I know, this has to be just a load of crap. Obviously it is the Republicans, and Americans with SUVs causing all of this, because we can change that with a vote and some laws, and there is nothing more important to the world than politics. If Mother Nature is so powerful, why have I never seen her name on a ballot, right?
By the way, just to head off any political partisan attacks, let me say that as far as being a good green citizen, I probably have more "street cred'" than you, seeing as how I spent 10 years going everywhere on a bicycle, haven't driven (or even owned) a car in over 7 years, and now go everywhere either by walking, or riding on the largest fleet of clean air busses in America. I am hardly the gas-guzzling, big-business loving, neo-conservative republican you might like to think is the mold of every person on earth who disagrees with you.
Yeah, I know what you mean! Of course most of the idiots writing these things are probably loosers still using Windows XCVIII. They could at least upgrade to Windows MM! Personally, I think that if you have to use Windows, then Windows TenP is the only one that makes sense.
Personally, I could never use a Mac, because I could never get the hang of the keyboard. A lot of people seem to have problems with the layout, since I see so many Mac users making typos like Windoze, M$, and Micro$oft. It appears that some of the keys are too close together as well, since it seems really hard to type the "I" in Intel, without accidently hitting the "W" as well, though I understand that will be fixed on their new computers.
Oh well, it is almost II in the morning, so I better go to sleep. I have a very busy Dies Martis planned.
First, let me say that I'm not trying to defend Dell as some sort of high water mark of a computer company. You literally couldn't pay me to own a Dell. I should make it clear, that I'm really not any more down on Apple than I am HP, or Gateway or Dell. You couldn't pay me to have any factory-built computer, with the possible exception of some of the actually high-end products like Boxx, Sun, or (in it's day) SGI.
My point is that I think Apple gets way too much credit that they don't really deserve. You talk about how much time and hard work Apple puts into designing the "user experience" as though they are the only company in the world to ever do this. Every company, for better or worse, puts a lot of time and hard work into that. Apple is just the company in the computer industry that markets it the most. I assure you that there has never been a single software program made, where the developers said "now what is the most obtuse and confusing way we could possibly do this?" The difference is while, say, Avid is busy marketing their application based on the features and capabilities, Apple is marketing their competing application around what a "perfect user experience" it has. When it really comes down to it, you can find plenty of people who will take the Avid UI over Final Cut any day of the week, but no one talks about all the time and hard work Avid put into "designing their user experience" because that isn't what they are marketing.
I mean just look at your language:
Arguably Dell needs there to be an Apple in the world, so that they have an outside R & D company to show them what to commoditize next.
This is a prime example of the sort of a priori credit Apple is given for no reason. The reality of the situation is that Apple replaced ADB with USB, NuBus with PCI and AGP, SCSI gave way to IDE, they just released PCI-E, they are switching to Intel, Firewire is slowly being replaced with USB 2.0, and their biggest product is an MP3 player, which is an entire market pretty much started by PC sound card manufacturers. I mean even the new video in iTunes is just a more successful version of what Real was trying to do from the start. Come on, it isn't like NeXT Step and Solaris weren't available for x86 systems LONG before OSX was even a glimmer in Job's bank account! If anything, it is Apple using the PC industry for their outside R&D, and then putting it in a pretty case, with a shiny UI, and selling the idea of thinking different.
By this time next year, the only hardware difference between an Apple computer and a Dell will be the case. I hardly think it makes much sense to say that Dell needs Apple to tell it how to make a computer, when Apple is scrambling to be more like Dell every day. However, that is exactly how Apple's marketing works. They switch to PCI-E a couple years after the rest of the computer industry, and the day they do it they immediately say "Most powerful PCI-E graphics card in the world available for Mac!" Never mind that it has been out for 6 months for the PC, and you can put two of them in your PC, as opposed to one in your Mac. Never mind that it is the first professional graphics card that has ever been available under OSX in all these years. It is heralded as proof of the graphics superiority of Apple computers, as opposed to a sad statement of how far behind Apple is on graphics. Thus, failure becomes victory, because the marketing department decided to call a disadvantage "innovation."
We could argue forever about the effect Apple has had on the history of computing, and most of it would probably come down to personal interpretation of the possible effect of various products on the market, without any real resolution. However, my position is that pretty much since the introduction of the PowerMac, and definitely since the introduction of OSX, Apple has just been marketing pretty generic products with their particular design style, that appeals to a particular audience. Sure, the window mana
Sorry, that last post was all nicely formatted and everything, but then I selected the wrong formatting option when I hit submit. I really need to rmember to preview my posts.
1) Every lifestyle company has a story about how they were first. Harley might not have invented the motorcycle, but they will sure sell their products as the defining feature of American biker culture. IKEA didn't invent furniture, but they will certainly have you believe that they were the first company to bring affordable design and quality materials to the masses. Apple didn't invent the computer, or the GUI, but they will without a doubt market the idea that they were instrumental to them gaining acceptance. By the way, you can't tell me that the initial Mac ad campaign wasn't entirely centered around developing exactly the story I laid out. Some of these claims might be true, some of them might not. It doesn't really matter, because the company with the biggest marketing budget, and the best tailored story, will convince the bulk of their target demographic that it is true, and that is all that matters.
2) Your right, but that also doesn't mean it IS different or better either.
3) Give me a break! Grew up in LA, and I work in Hollywood as a graphics artist. I probably have met more Mac users than even you. Hell, it would be a LOT easier for me to give you a list of the people I know who DON'T use Macs than those who do. I would guess about 80% of the people I know have never owned a PC, and probably never would. I get really sick of this immediate assumption that anyone who has anything bad to say about Apple is somehow "traumatized" or "bashing" the Mac. Did it ever occur to you that that perhaps I might be a Mac user myself? No, your immediate assumption is that I am some rabid anti-Apple troll. In reality, while I would never spend my own money on a Mac, my first graphics job was at an all Mac studio, my last graphics job was at an all Mac studio, and I would say between those two, I have probably worked with more Mac shops over the years than I have PC or Unix shops, though that is starting to change these days.
4) Sure, the Apple ][ played a big role in the history of the personal computer. The original Mac was also quite a different take on the personal computer, but then so was the Amiga. However, Compaq, EA and Dell had more to do with the popularization of computers in mainstream America than Apple ever did.
Of course Apple and Dell are different companies, just like Honda and Dodge are different companies! I don't think anyone was actually trying to argue that Apple was a clone of Dell or anything. All the stuff about how Apple is solely responsible for the GUI and incredibly influential on the entire market, however, is rubbish. They didn't invent, the mouse, they didn't invent the GUI, they didn't even invent the desktop metaphor, or the windowing environment. There is very little evidence to support the idea that the modern GUI owes its existence to Apple, anymore than it owes its existence to XeroX PARC, or AT&T Graphics Software Lab, or Autodesk, or Aldus, or Lotus, or any other of a number of companies who were experimenting with graphic presentation layers at the same time.
What Apple is very good at, is seeing where things are going, getting out a product that caters to the current trend, and then claiming credit for the fact that it went that way.
Something still being defined? A User Experience Company? Please! Apple is just another lifestyle brand like IKEA, MTV, Dodge, Hot Topic, Harley Davidson, or Nike. There is nothing new or even clever about it. You pick an aesthetic you know has a market, and build products that fit that aesthetic, then provide a retail experience that reinforces the self-image that target demographic desires.
It really is a mindless form of marketing, but quite an effective one. You make up a story about who your company is (and by proxy who your customers are), and then you design your products around that story. It is very effective, because by pandering to a specific core demographic, you ensure that you will get maximum exposure. For example, Dodge's story is that they make tough, manly, rugged vehicles for badasses who do serious work, and need a serious vehicle. It thus follows that anyone who doesn't think a Dodge is a good truck, is either too much of a wimp to do real work, or otherwise less than real man. The story works, because if you want to know where to get a rugged truck, you aren't going to ask your wife, or the artist guy down the street, you are going to ask some manly guy who is a construction worker, and would rather be dead than be confused with some limp-wristed, minivan-driving, suburban wimp. It doesn't matter how Consumer Reports rates the vehicle, because you have already decided you are not looking for some econobox to take the kids to school, you are looking for a real truck, for a real man, and those reviews don't take into account all the little things that make a Dodge so rugged.
Apple's story is that they make hip, elegant, sophisticated, computer products, for design conscious, tech-savvy creative types, who appreciate the finer things in life. It follows that anyone who doesn't like them, is obviously some Dodge-driving philistine, who has no talent, and wouldn't know good design if it fell on them. This works because if you want to know a good computer to use for video editing, you are going to ask the guy in the AV department at your company who is always wearing the black turtleneck, not the construction worker down the street, and the hip, sophisticated, design conscious AV guy would rather be dead than be confused with some knuckle-dragging, NASCAR-watching, Dell-using Wal-Mart shopper. It doesn't matter how all the magazines rate the product, because you have already decided that you are part of that elite group that "gets it," and everyone else just doesn't have the 'eye' to notice all the intangibles that make Apple such a perfect user experience.
The problem with this particular marketing strategy is that you can easily paint yourself into a corner if you aren't careful. If the SUV fad dies tomorrow, and people start wanting small, fuel-efficient, cute econoboxes, then Dodge is in real trouble. By the same token, that is why Apple has been in almost a perpetual state of trouble right up until the iPod fad took off. When the iPod fad dies down, Apple will still find itself with somewhere around 2-5% of the computer market, because the number of people working in the AV department at your company is a lot lower than the number of secretaries at your company.
The other problem with this particular strategy is that it has absolutely nothing to do with the actual quality of the products involved. Does Harley actually make the best bikes in the world? I don't know, but don't even think about trying to tell anyone who owns a Harley that they don't! They will promptly explain to you how Harley makes the ONLY real bikes on the market, and anyone who drives anything else, isn't a real biker. Are Dodges the best trucks? I really don't know, but don't try explaining to some Dodge owner how your Honda Ridgeline is better than his Ram! you will probably just get called some kind of commie. And Apple? Well, even Adobe will tell you that they recommend XP for doing graphic work over OSX, and they have the benchmarks to prove it. For God's sake don't say that within 100' of someon
I agree that in the case of SGI, working with MS played a big role, as did working with Intel, in their eventual demise. However, I don't agree with your generalization as a whole that working with MS is never a good thing. Adobe, Macromedia, and Avid have all grown exponentially in the years they have been working with MS as opposed to just Apple. Even Apple has been helped out several times over the years by influxes of money from MS. For that matter, while porting Maya to Windows was a huge mistake for SGI, it has been quite a boon for Alias.
I think what the real mistake would be working with MS on one side of the company, while trying to compete with them on the other. That pretty much seems to be a disaster, just look at Apple. They are making more money than they have ever made before, all off of a product that has nothing to do with computers, and doesn't directly compete with MS on any front, and in fact supports Windows. Meanwhile, their ever-languishing computer market share has less and less to do with the health of the company, to the point that they pretty much just offer a computer line out of vanity.
You are either very young, or very naive. The HyperTransport Technology Consortium was founded in what, late 2001-early 2002? It's charter members included AMD, NVIDIA, and SGI, as well as several other companies like Apple, Cisco and Sun. SGI came to the table already having the crossbar architecture, which they had been using in the late '90s, and which they got from Cray when they acquired them. NVIDIA already had most of SGI's engineering staff by the time the consortium was formed, and while ATI might well be a member of the consortium today, they certainly weren't one of the charter members, and certainly didn't have any HyperTransport products out back in 2002.
You know, just because a company says "we invented that" on their webpage doesn't mean they really did, or every computer advancement ever would have been done by Microsoft. I hate to step on the image you have of your heroes over at AMD, but I have worked with people at AMD, I have trained with people over at AMD, and I have had a lot of friends who worked at AMD over the years. I assure you, no one at AMD woke up one day in 2001 and said "hey, I have a completely new idea for how to design system architecture. Let's start a consortium and make this an industry standard." Someone at NVIDIA said "hey, we have these guys from SGI who have this really neat architecture, and SGI says they are cool with us using it, so why don't we start up a working group and figure out how to get this to work with a PCI bus."
My memory is neither faulty, nor are any of the people I know at AMD idiots. The name HyperTransport might well have been 100% AMD, but the technology isn't.
Did the O2 not have the crossbar? Right, it had something they called UMA, that was kind of like the crossbar, but somehow different. It was a long time ago now. Their NT boxes used a version of the crossbar, didn't they, or was it the same UMA as the O2? And then there was that short-lived upgraded O2 (I can't remember what it was called, maybe something stupid like O2+) that was right before their current Fule and Tezro systems. I think that might have been the one that had a crossbar.
The first time I ever heard about Hypertransport (long before it was available on any motherboards) it was from a friend of mine who works on drivers at AMD. His exact words were "you are going to be happy, the upcoming Nvidia motherboard is going to use the same architecture as your O2."
I asked him "they are putting a crossbar in a PC motherboard?"
He responded "they are calling it hypertransport, but it is the exact same thing. We have been working with them on it, and it is going to be the center of their new Nforce boards."
All press releases aside, AMD was well aware of the SGI crossbar, and Nvidia had the rights to the technology to make it happen on a PC.
As far as the Nvidia cards go, of course they are original designs. I'm not saying they aren't. However, they are original cards being designed by ex-SGI engineers, with access to over a decade of SGI graphics research. Just look at the huge difference between the TNT line of cards (before they acquired SGI's resources) and the Geforce/Quadro line of cards (after they acquired SGI's resources).
You are certainly right about the level of incompetence, but in some ways it even goes beyond incompetence, to what almost seemed like a willful destruction of the company by Richard E. Belluzzo. During his tenure at the helm of SGI, they made several decisions that doomed the company to ultimate failure. The first and foremost being that Silicon Graphics would change its name to SGI, stop focusing on graphics, and focus on internet and database servers. The next suicidal decision was that SGI would dump a lot of money into porting their flagship software graphics software (Maya) to Windows. The most crippling blow was that since they were no longer focusing on graphics, they would actively lobby a PC card manufacturer (Nvidia) to hire their engineering staff, and sell them their IP. Then they decided that they would abandon their own OS, and instead make components of their OS available to the Open Source community and put out machines with Linux and Windows. By the time SGI workstations were just PCs running Windows, using Nvidia graphics cards, it was clear the company was dead.
Of course, after making all these ruinous decisions, Belluzzo immediately quit to take a job at Microsoft. I have never been able to figure out if his job at MS was his reward for scuttling SGI, or if after what he did at SGI, MS was the only company that would hire him! Either way, it was SGI itself (under Belluzzo's leadership) that opened the door for Microsoft to walk into the high-end 3D market. Before Maya was ported to Windows, and before Nvidia came out with their Quadro cards, the idea of doing film-quality animation on a PC (while possible) was not taken seriously by anyone in the industry. 90% of the production tools were SGI-only programs written for Irix.
All in all, I think the market is probably better for it, since now you can buy a $100 motherboard using SGI's crossbar architecture (now called the Nvidia Hypertransport), and $300 graphics cards using SGI graphics processors, instead of having to shell out $10,000 for a workstation. None the less, it is a coffin SGI made for itself.
In the TV space, I have a 34" CRT HDTV from Toshiba, because I am really picky about color and image quality, and while you can calibrate the color on a CRT TV, you are pretty much out of luck on an LCD. I compared just about every TV on the market when I bought this one about two years ago, and at the time there was nothing, plasma or LCD, that could compete on HD image quality with a really good direct-view CRT.
As far as computer monitors go, I am putting together a new computer, and really wanted to go with dual CRTs. Unfortunately, a lot of companies have recently discontinued their high-end CRTs in favor of the more popular LCDs. This leaves a big hole in the market where the only CRTs are either low-end models for a couple of hundred dollars, or ultra-high-end models costing thousands. As a result, I was forced to go LCD, which is really a pain, since I do graphics, and it really does cause some color problems. At least the newer LCDs don't have the ghosting problems the older one do. That is a plus.
No one in this conversation seems stupid, so it escapes me how standards can be so inconsistently applied. I'm sorry, but just about every major problem Windows has (security or otherwise) comes down to a really bad default configuration, or poor out-of-the-box support. If you are willing to go into the registry and change settings, and download a couple third party utilities, you can pretty quickly get an XP system that is quite reliable. It is certainly true that most users never touch their registry, and probably haven't installed much more than Office, or some games, but that doesn't mean it isn't possible to improve the default Windows setup.
I mention this, because every time I see a discussion about Linux as a desktop OS, I see criticism leveled against Windows assuming that the average Windows user is incapable of touching the register, and unwilling to install utilities. That is all well and good, until you get into a discussion about how "easy" any particular Linux distro is to install. Suddenly, it is considered trivial for a user to edit config files, download libraries, and practice version control on OS components. The simple fact is that if you were to put half as much work into configuring XP, as it takes to play an audio file in Linux, then you would probably never see a single computer crash in Windows. The problem is that people take the rhetorically disingenuous position of assuming the worst of users when making their case for Windows, then assume the best of users when making their case for Linux.
Sure, editing a config file, or searching the web to find out the right version of a library is no big task, but then neither is tweaking a couple of settings in your registry, or installing a third party firewall. The truth is that if you are not willing to lift a finger to tweak your system, then with Windows you will get a buggy, insecure system, that hangs and crashes often, but with Linux you won't even get that far. If you are willing to put the time into a little research and tweaking, then they can both be decent OSs.
This was in Austin Texas back during the internet boom, when there was something obscene like 300 people a day moving into town, apartments were literally at a 99% occupancy rate, and they were selling new houses faster than they could build them.
As I said in the other branch of this thread, his problem was that he had no FICO score at all. My fiancé had better credit than he did, even with $20,000 in outstanding student loans, because he had no credit at all.
As far as co-signing, you assume my credit is good enough to co-sign for anyone. I had to pay a $1,000 deposit just to get an apartment myself back then.
I really could care less about ads on web pages, yet I block them all at the root domain of internet advertisers. Why, because before I blocked ads, I use to get about 50 data-miners a month on my computer, that I had to clean out with Adaware every few weeks. I started blocking ads at the root domain, and suddenly I have had no data-miners on my system for several months. I suppose I could put more work into my filtering and find a way to get the ads without the spyware, but why?
If online advertisers would just be happy to show me the ad and be done with it, I would never have blocked a single one. However, they want to track cookies telling them where I've been, where I saw the ad, how long I watched the ad, and all other sorts of stuff. Magazines don't do that, television doesn't do that, billboards don't do that, and thus I could care less about them. I understand that the online advertisers feel they need to do all this stuff to make sure they are paying appropriately for the ad space, but it is just too intrusive. If they want me to ever see their ad, then they need to do what every other advertiser in the world does, and just trust that they chose their venue properly, and hope I am interested in enough in the ad to check it out.
Their are a few ads that make it through my blocking, and I am fine with that because they have never loaded any data-mining cookies or other software on my computer. As long as it stays that way, I'm fine with the ad. The day I find a cookie from that domain, is the day it goes on my blocked list.
That is a great platitude, but the simple fact is that living on the streets, and surfing couches isn't a very balanced choice for just not wanting to owe anyone anything. It cracks me up how people like you are so caught up in today's debtor society that you actually believe there should be consequences for someone doing the right thing, and going their whole life never buying anything they can't afford to pay cash for. By the way, no, it wasn't that he didn't want to leave a paper trail, he was just raised to believe that it was bad to owe anyone anything. The reason he didn't have a bank account, was because he didn't see any reason to pay someone to hold his money for him. There was never any conscious decision on his part to try and skirt or circumvent anything, he just believed that a man should pay his own way, and not borrow money when he didn't need to. Humorously enough, this attitude is all but illegal these days. You can't buy a car in cash, without getting reported to the FBI, DEA, IRS, and Homeland Security. Many banks will refuse to cash a check over $10,000, and it is flat-out impossible to buy a house with cash, even if you have the full asking price.
Personally, I admire people who stand on their own two feet, instead of living beyond their means and being constantly in debt. I wish I could do it, and I think they should be rewarded, not punished by society. Unfortunately, we as a society have decided that being different automatically makes you a bad person, and if everyone else can't manage to live within their means, then you must be some kind of freak if you actually manage to do it, and therefore should be punished.
Back to the original point of this discussion, that is why I don't really think it is paranoid to be worried about this level of consumer tracking. The simple fact is that it promotes a certain lifestyle, and if you live outside that lifestyle, it punishes you. It doesn't matter why you live outside that lifestyle, just that you are different, therefore are to be shunned by society. I personally have this naive belief that people should be allowed to live their life as they choose, as long as they don't hurt anyone. Of course, that is just a quaint anachronism, since it is easier to sell products if you force everyone to live the same lifestyle, and selling product is what is really important in the world, isn't it?
Certainly, anyone who invents something hopes to be able to profit from the invention, else they wouldn't have patented it in the first place. The problem with your suggestion, is that it completely shafts the lone inventor that is completely shut out of the market for whatever reason. If you say that the only people who are allowed to patent something, are the ones with the ability to produce and market said invention, then you have effectively erased any impetus for any company to ever license any patent from anyone who isn't a company, since they can invalidate the patent just by making sure the inventor never is able to get his product to market.
I remember a story some years ago about a guy who invented the intermittent windshield wiper relay. He went to all the big auto manufacturers, and was told across the board that they had no interest in licensing his design, because their customers had no interest in such a thing. Years went by, and eventually every major auto manufacturer was offering intermittent wipers as a feature of their new-model cars. This guy took them all to court, and years later it was found that not one of the intermittent wiper systems differed substantially from the relay he had patented. He was awarded quite a bit of money by the courts because it was found that all the major auto manufacturers were knowingly infringing on his patent. That is an example of the patent system doing exactly what it is supposed to do, and I would hate to see companies be given another loophole where they could get together and shut out the little guy, by all just refusing to buy anything, and then turning around and stealing the design.
Actually, the irregularities were that he was in his 30s, had a good job, had money, yet had never had a bank account, had never had any form of credit, had never financed anything, had never had any kind of debt, yet spent money, and bought things. It was a situation so odd that none of the credit services could even asses a score to his credit. I cannot really speak for the people who denied him a place to live, but I suspect they wouldn't rent to him because they thought there was something illegal going on.
As hard as it might be to believe in today's corporate, debt-driven society, it actually is possible to live a cash only lifestyle. Or at least it was until very recently when credit reports started being used as a judge of how good a person you are.
The main reason I can see NOT to do this, is because it would make it next to impossible for any innovation to occur outside a corporate environment. I think that if an academic, or even just some guy in his garage, comes up with some clever new thing, they should have every right to patent it. I already think the high filing fees, and necessary legal involvement make patents prohibitive enough to all but the most wealthy individuals, but what you are suggesting would pretty much make it impossible to patent anything unless you were a company planning to produce a product.
You would be surprised who would care. Many businesses ask for permission to run a credit report on applicants before hiring them. They will then pay a fair amount of money to get a fairly detailed report that tells them a lot more about you than you might be comfortable with them knowing. By the same token, once they have that permission, they never need to ask for it again. Performance at work dropping off? Let's run another detailed report and see what's going on in his life outside of work, before we decide how to approach this. I have even known (particularly unpleasant) women who would run a detailed credit report on a guy before deciding if they wanted to get serious with him!
I also know several people who rent properties they own, and you would be amazed at the detail they can (and do) get before deciding if they want to rent you a house. I have a friend who lived at my apartment for quite some time, simply because a good job, plenty of money, and a clean-cut appearance wasn't enough to get him over some irregularities on his credit report. He couldn't rent an apartment in any decent part of town, he couldn't buy a house, he couldn't stay in a hotel (no credit card for them to hold). He was a grown man forced for years to live with friends, simply because of his credit report. If that isn't ruining someone's life, then I don't know what is.
Sure, if you own a house in the suburbs, never plan on moving, have a stable job, and plenty of money in the bank, I suppose you can be cavalier about how everyone is being paranoid. But if your life is at all out of the norm, then the amount of information being tracked about up can actually cause some very real problems in a society that is evermore leaning towards treating a credit score as an indication of how good a person you are.
So the iPod only has a 3-5% market share? Funny, I thought it was more successful than that.
You know, at the time they were ruled as a monopoly, Microsoft only had 3-5% of the PDA market, so how could they be a monopoly? For that matter, IBM has always had a 0% share of the home video game console market, yet they operated under an anti-trust decree for many years. I wonder why that is? Oh, right, because a monopoly is decided on a per-market basis! It may come as a surprise to you, but I think that a company with over 90% of the DAP market, just might be in contention for investigation as a monopoly in the DAP market, regardless of their dismal performance in the desktop OS market.
By the way, I love how on/. Apple is an unstoppable juggernaught, constantly gaining desktop market share, right up until it is convenient for the current argument for them to be the beleaguered underdog, at which point their market share drops to the very low single digits.
Well, I am not investigating the case, nor do I have any special knowledge about it. Of course by the sound of your post neither do you. I would, however, like to point out a possible scenario where there could be legitimate anti-trust concerns from the point of the South Korean government.
South Korea just happens to be the place where the iPod has the smallest share of the DAP market, mainly because so many of the competing products are made there. Now imagine a meeting between several people at Apple where the idea came about to buy up as much as they possibly could of the available flash memory in the nation of South Korea, thus driving up the price due to limited availability. This would most likely force South Korean manufactures to buy memory from Malaysian, Taiwanese, Chinese, or Japanese manufactures, where they would not get as good a price, and give Apple a market edge in South Korea, where they had previously had none.
Now, this is an entirely hypothetical proposition, and might not have anything at all to do with what has happened. However, this is exactly what several Japanese companies tried to do in the '80s with US steel, to give Japanese cars an edge in the US market, and the US government stepped in to stop it. This is also what some Saudi Arabian companies tried to do with Texas oil in the '70s, and the US government stepped in. This sort of tactic is also EXACTLY why in this country we have special protections for small farmers, so that they can not be put out of business by large aribusiness who has the power and financial muscle to over-buy supplies at prices that make it impossible for the little guy to stay in business. Does this practice constitute an "unfair business practice" or just "good capitalism?" I suppose that would depend on the government and market in question. All I know for sure, is that faced with similar threats to US businesses by foreign competitors, our government stepped in and protected domestic companies as best they could. Why shouldn't the South Korean government be allowed to do the same?
I don't know why I bother posting at all, but every so often I come across a bunch of supposedly rouge individuals, who are all sitting around telling each other how right they are, as long as they all tow the rouge individual party line, and I have to stop and make a comment.
I love this. Microsoft seems to be the one company left on earth selling an OS that isn't an open source copy of UNIX, and everybody gets incensed at the mere suggestion that perhaps they have made some innovation to the market. "No" everyone says, it takes a true innovator like Apple who can come up with earth shattering inventions like an MP3 player in 2001 to advance the state of the art! "No" everyone says, real innovation comes in the form of a pretty shell, and a shiny case wrapped around a free old version of UNIX, cobbled together with some development tools from the early '90s. "No" everyone says, a cobbled together open source copy of Photoshop has more innovation in its pinky than the evil M$ empire will ever have!
Come on people! Why don't we all change the entire world for once, exhale, let go of our childish brand loyalties, and personality cults, and look at the world in some semblance of how it really is, instead of spending our lives trotting out the same old clichés, and regurgitating the same old information.
First off, I would think that of all people,/. people would know that graphic user interfaces were not invented by Apple, Microsoft, or even Xerox PARC. Most of the elements of graphic user interfaces had already appeared in Lisp machines, CAD programs, and even games, long before the Mac ever came out. Xerox PARC didn't invent the graphical user interface; they invented the term GUI, and some of the ideas that shaped how it was applied to an OS. Apple and Microsoft both saw those ideas, and went about developing them in different ways, at different paces, towards different markets. Any of the usual crap about how Microsoft stole the whole idea of the GUI from Apple, might as well be applied right back at Apple these days. How many years did fans of Mac computers rant and rave about how Windows was crap because it was just a GUI presentation layer on top of what was just a command line OS? Doesn't that pretty well describe the current Mac OS? Does that mean Apple stole the idea of a command line interface with a GUI on top of it from MS? No, of course not! Gee, I guess it isn't all so cut and dry.
By the same token, how much of OSX is really all that new? Most of the "innovation" really comes out of Nextstep, which was really in large part Steve Jobs' rip-off of IRIX. Aqua you say? From a technological standpoint (as opposed to the "look, it's shiny and pretty" standpoint), how different is it really from DirectX (Direct Draw, Direct Show, Direct Whatever) and WinG before it, or the presentation layer of BeOS? For that matter, doesn't the whole advanced graphics subsystem, unified graphics library concept really come back to SGI OpenGL and IRIX again?
Look, whether you call them Microsoft or M$, you are walking through the world with blinders on if you don't think they have done anything that has changed the way people use computers, and moved forward the state of the art. Some of the systems they have come up with for how to allow any program to interface with any hardware are really quite clever. You can say all you want about the "plug and play" capabilities of other systems, but the actual plugging and playing was dependent on carefully picking a piece of hardware off a limited list of supported hardware. Before Microsoft, there was no way you could go grab any MB, slap a processor in it, pick up any old RAM from any manufacturer, and then hook up whatever HD you wanted, and then expect it to all work. Sure, that is expected from any modern OS (unless it is made by Apple), but that sure wasn't the case even 15 years ago. Did you ever try to tell HP support "yeah, I saw a special on RAM down at the local computer shop, and was thinking about putting it in
You are confusing what happened to the programs, with what happened to the companies. Yes, Wavefront and TDI were killed off. However as far as the products go, before the SGI/Alias/Wavefront merger, both Explore and Advanced Visualizer were already scheduled to be reach the end of their product life as soon as both companies finished the joint product. That joint product is 90% of the core functionality of Maya. On the other hand, Alias Power Animator was scheduled to have future developments which at the time had nothing to do with the structure of Maya. MEL is an obvious outgrowth of Wavefront's previous scripting language, not Alias's SDL. Alias dropped their particle simulation system in favor of Dynamation. Alias dropped their IK solution in favor of Kinemation. The modeling tools in Maya came out of 3Design, not Studio Tools or Power Animator. Alias even admits that newer features like fluids started in the Paris office, and then were further developed by Alias in Canada once the Paris office was closed. Alias's contributions to the early versions of Maya are really just the great brush tools (Artisan), and some interface redesign.
There is no doubt that as soon as the merger took place, Alias took the reigns, but the first several versions of Maya continued in the planned direction, with very little change to the core, and most of the changes Alias made being in the form of new MEL scripts. Meanwhile, Power Animator was killed off, along with Advanced Visualizer, and Explore.
By the same token, I have no doubt that Alias management will be gutted, and Autodesk will run the show (they did buy the company after all). I am just pointing out, that the management and the product are not the same thing. Just like Alias killed off Power Animator in favor of tools developed mostly by TDI and Wavefront, Autodesk might decide to kill off Max in favor of tools developed by Alias.
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Well, I would first off repost that I am not aware of what is written in the big book of "How Things Are Supposed To Be" so I really can't even begin to say what is negative, positive, or neutral. Those are arbitrary value assessments made on some way you imagine things are supposed to go in some ideal world. You think you are talking about some objective sense of good or bad, when in fact all you are really doing is stating your own sense of aesthetics as some sort of objectivism.
Do human actions have an effect on the environment as a whole? Sure, but then so do frog actions, horse actions, and bird actions. It is a large and complex system where everything effects everything else. You are making some moral (a very human way of looking at the universe) judgment that says what is or isn't beneficial to the climate of the earth.
The climate of the earth is a system, of which we are a part. What we do, is what we do. It is that simple. If (and it is a very big if) a climactic shift causes an environment that makes it impossible for us to survive, then we cease to survive. The planet does not cease to exist, life on the planet does not cease to exist, the entire atmosphere of the planet doesn't cease to exist, we are just gone.
It is your self-aggrandizing hubris that makes you assume that is some horrible crime against nature. The simple truth of the matter is that you are just playing a big game of "what if" and then taking a presumed moral high ground based on the results of your game. Greenhouse gasses are produced by forest fires, greenhouse gasses are produced by every living animal on earth, and greenhouse gasses are produced by geological events. Dramatic climatic change can be produced by a number of factors that range from shifts in the biomass of the planet, all the way to astronomical events.
You (and many others of the same moralistic and philosophical stripe) have concocted a fairy tale where free of the 'unnatural' intervention of man, the entire planet is a perfectly balanced, self-regulating system, that would always seek a garden of Eden like equilibrium point that would always sustain life, and where no species would ever become overpopulated, or extinct. However, there is nothing that can ever happen in the natural world that is 'unnatural.' Mankind is not some supernatural blight on this poor unsuspecting planet. We are just another little mite crawling on the surface of a ball of rock and dirt.
Secondly, instead of just replying with rote attacks, you might want to actually read what is being written by the person you are responding to, instead of your imaginary evil foe. I take the bus everywhere, so it doesn't really make much sense to ask me why I don't take the bus to work.
I just love global warming debates!
Any reputable scientist of any discipline will have no problem in telling you that when you are talking about a complex system, that has been in operation for billions of years, a sampling of measurements over the past couple hundred years is nowhere near enough to KNOW how the system behaves to a particular factor over any meaningful span.
Yet, that doesn't stop people from coming right out and saying that all scientists agree, that people are causing a catastrophic climactic change with environmental pollution.
Why?
Because global warming is the modern, secular, version of original sin. People just know that there has to be some horrible price to pay for eating from the tree of knowledge, and destroying all life on the planet sounds just about right to them as the price we have to pay. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that we surely must be killing the very planet in order to live our comfy lives.
The problem with this theory, is that it is pure conjecture, mixed with no small amount of hubris. Sure, everyone has heard that one major volcanic eruption vents more carbon dioxide than all the cars ever constructed by man combined, but that can't really be right, because we are more important than some stupid volcano. Surely we the tax of our vices must be higher than some random venting of gas. Besides, if the temperature of the entire planet is rising due to factors that have nothing to do with us, that means we can't stop it, which can't be right. We are the most important thing on the planet, and obviously there isn't anything that we can't do. If we are destroying the planet, then all we need to do is renounce our evil ways, and we can save the planet. That makes much more sense. That is how the universe really works. If we want to destroy a planet, then we can, and likewise if we want to save a planet, then we can do that too. We aren't just a bunch of insignificant specs crawling around the surface of some giant system totally beyond our control. We are the center of everything, and all that matters is what we choose to do. Yeah, that sounds much better.
The simple fact is that there has been a very slight rise in temperatures globally over the past blink of a global eye that we call a century. If anyone knew why, they could probably also reliably tell you if it was going to rain tomorrow, where the next tsunami will hit, and what day the next big earthquake would hit California. They can't tell you any of those things because there are actually some things that are so complex that the human brain can't properly model them, even with the help of all the fancy supercomputers in the world.
I know, I know, this has to be just a load of crap. Obviously it is the Republicans, and Americans with SUVs causing all of this, because we can change that with a vote and some laws, and there is nothing more important to the world than politics. If Mother Nature is so powerful, why have I never seen her name on a ballot, right?
By the way, just to head off any political partisan attacks, let me say that as far as being a good green citizen, I probably have more "street cred'" than you, seeing as how I spent 10 years going everywhere on a bicycle, haven't driven (or even owned) a car in over 7 years, and now go everywhere either by walking, or riding on the largest fleet of clean air busses in America. I am hardly the gas-guzzling, big-business loving, neo-conservative republican you might like to think is the mold of every person on earth who disagrees with you.
Yeah, I know what you mean! Of course most of the idiots writing these things are probably loosers still using Windows XCVIII. They could at least upgrade to Windows MM! Personally, I think that if you have to use Windows, then Windows TenP is the only one that makes sense.
Personally, I could never use a Mac, because I could never get the hang of the keyboard. A lot of people seem to have problems with the layout, since I see so many Mac users making typos like Windoze, M$, and Micro$oft. It appears that some of the keys are too close together as well, since it seems really hard to type the "I" in Intel, without accidently hitting the "W" as well, though I understand that will be fixed on their new computers.
Oh well, it is almost II in the morning, so I better go to sleep. I have a very busy Dies Martis planned.
First, let me say that I'm not trying to defend Dell as some sort of high water mark of a computer company. You literally couldn't pay me to own a Dell. I should make it clear, that I'm really not any more down on Apple than I am HP, or Gateway or Dell. You couldn't pay me to have any factory-built computer, with the possible exception of some of the actually high-end products like Boxx, Sun, or (in it's day) SGI.
My point is that I think Apple gets way too much credit that they don't really deserve. You talk about how much time and hard work Apple puts into designing the "user experience" as though they are the only company in the world to ever do this. Every company, for better or worse, puts a lot of time and hard work into that. Apple is just the company in the computer industry that markets it the most. I assure you that there has never been a single software program made, where the developers said "now what is the most obtuse and confusing way we could possibly do this?" The difference is while, say, Avid is busy marketing their application based on the features and capabilities, Apple is marketing their competing application around what a "perfect user experience" it has. When it really comes down to it, you can find plenty of people who will take the Avid UI over Final Cut any day of the week, but no one talks about all the time and hard work Avid put into "designing their user experience" because that isn't what they are marketing.
I mean just look at your language:
This is a prime example of the sort of a priori credit Apple is given for no reason. The reality of the situation is that Apple replaced ADB with USB, NuBus with PCI and AGP, SCSI gave way to IDE, they just released PCI-E, they are switching to Intel, Firewire is slowly being replaced with USB 2.0, and their biggest product is an MP3 player, which is an entire market pretty much started by PC sound card manufacturers. I mean even the new video in iTunes is just a more successful version of what Real was trying to do from the start. Come on, it isn't like NeXT Step and Solaris weren't available for x86 systems LONG before OSX was even a glimmer in Job's bank account! If anything, it is Apple using the PC industry for their outside R&D, and then putting it in a pretty case, with a shiny UI, and selling the idea of thinking different.
By this time next year, the only hardware difference between an Apple computer and a Dell will be the case. I hardly think it makes much sense to say that Dell needs Apple to tell it how to make a computer, when Apple is scrambling to be more like Dell every day. However, that is exactly how Apple's marketing works. They switch to PCI-E a couple years after the rest of the computer industry, and the day they do it they immediately say "Most powerful PCI-E graphics card in the world available for Mac!" Never mind that it has been out for 6 months for the PC, and you can put two of them in your PC, as opposed to one in your Mac. Never mind that it is the first professional graphics card that has ever been available under OSX in all these years. It is heralded as proof of the graphics superiority of Apple computers, as opposed to a sad statement of how far behind Apple is on graphics. Thus, failure becomes victory, because the marketing department decided to call a disadvantage "innovation."
We could argue forever about the effect Apple has had on the history of computing, and most of it would probably come down to personal interpretation of the possible effect of various products on the market, without any real resolution. However, my position is that pretty much since the introduction of the PowerMac, and definitely since the introduction of OSX, Apple has just been marketing pretty generic products with their particular design style, that appeals to a particular audience. Sure, the window mana
Sorry, that last post was all nicely formatted and everything, but then I selected the wrong formatting option when I hit submit. I really need to rmember to preview my posts.
1) Every lifestyle company has a story about how they were first. Harley might not have invented the motorcycle, but they will sure sell their products as the defining feature of American biker culture. IKEA didn't invent furniture, but they will certainly have you believe that they were the first company to bring affordable design and quality materials to the masses. Apple didn't invent the computer, or the GUI, but they will without a doubt market the idea that they were instrumental to them gaining acceptance. By the way, you can't tell me that the initial Mac ad campaign wasn't entirely centered around developing exactly the story I laid out. Some of these claims might be true, some of them might not. It doesn't really matter, because the company with the biggest marketing budget, and the best tailored story, will convince the bulk of their target demographic that it is true, and that is all that matters. 2) Your right, but that also doesn't mean it IS different or better either. 3) Give me a break! Grew up in LA, and I work in Hollywood as a graphics artist. I probably have met more Mac users than even you. Hell, it would be a LOT easier for me to give you a list of the people I know who DON'T use Macs than those who do. I would guess about 80% of the people I know have never owned a PC, and probably never would. I get really sick of this immediate assumption that anyone who has anything bad to say about Apple is somehow "traumatized" or "bashing" the Mac. Did it ever occur to you that that perhaps I might be a Mac user myself? No, your immediate assumption is that I am some rabid anti-Apple troll. In reality, while I would never spend my own money on a Mac, my first graphics job was at an all Mac studio, my last graphics job was at an all Mac studio, and I would say between those two, I have probably worked with more Mac shops over the years than I have PC or Unix shops, though that is starting to change these days. 4) Sure, the Apple ][ played a big role in the history of the personal computer. The original Mac was also quite a different take on the personal computer, but then so was the Amiga. However, Compaq, EA and Dell had more to do with the popularization of computers in mainstream America than Apple ever did. Of course Apple and Dell are different companies, just like Honda and Dodge are different companies! I don't think anyone was actually trying to argue that Apple was a clone of Dell or anything. All the stuff about how Apple is solely responsible for the GUI and incredibly influential on the entire market, however, is rubbish. They didn't invent, the mouse, they didn't invent the GUI, they didn't even invent the desktop metaphor, or the windowing environment. There is very little evidence to support the idea that the modern GUI owes its existence to Apple, anymore than it owes its existence to XeroX PARC, or AT&T Graphics Software Lab, or Autodesk, or Aldus, or Lotus, or any other of a number of companies who were experimenting with graphic presentation layers at the same time. What Apple is very good at, is seeing where things are going, getting out a product that caters to the current trend, and then claiming credit for the fact that it went that way.
Something still being defined? A User Experience Company?
Please! Apple is just another lifestyle brand like IKEA, MTV, Dodge, Hot Topic, Harley Davidson, or Nike. There is nothing new or even clever about it. You pick an aesthetic you know has a market, and build products that fit that aesthetic, then provide a retail experience that reinforces the self-image that target demographic desires.
It really is a mindless form of marketing, but quite an effective one. You make up a story about who your company is (and by proxy who your customers are), and then you design your products around that story. It is very effective, because by pandering to a specific core demographic, you ensure that you will get maximum exposure. For example, Dodge's story is that they make tough, manly, rugged vehicles for badasses who do serious work, and need a serious vehicle. It thus follows that anyone who doesn't think a Dodge is a good truck, is either too much of a wimp to do real work, or otherwise less than real man. The story works, because if you want to know where to get a rugged truck, you aren't going to ask your wife, or the artist guy down the street, you are going to ask some manly guy who is a construction worker, and would rather be dead than be confused with some limp-wristed, minivan-driving, suburban wimp. It doesn't matter how Consumer Reports rates the vehicle, because you have already decided you are not looking for some econobox to take the kids to school, you are looking for a real truck, for a real man, and those reviews don't take into account all the little things that make a Dodge so rugged.
Apple's story is that they make hip, elegant, sophisticated, computer products, for design conscious, tech-savvy creative types, who appreciate the finer things in life. It follows that anyone who doesn't like them, is obviously some Dodge-driving philistine, who has no talent, and wouldn't know good design if it fell on them. This works because if you want to know a good computer to use for video editing, you are going to ask the guy in the AV department at your company who is always wearing the black turtleneck, not the construction worker down the street, and the hip, sophisticated, design conscious AV guy would rather be dead than be confused with some knuckle-dragging, NASCAR-watching, Dell-using Wal-Mart shopper. It doesn't matter how all the magazines rate the product, because you have already decided that you are part of that elite group that "gets it," and everyone else just doesn't have the 'eye' to notice all the intangibles that make Apple such a perfect user experience.
The problem with this particular marketing strategy is that you can easily paint yourself into a corner if you aren't careful. If the SUV fad dies tomorrow, and people start wanting small, fuel-efficient, cute econoboxes, then Dodge is in real trouble. By the same token, that is why Apple has been in almost a perpetual state of trouble right up until the iPod fad took off. When the iPod fad dies down, Apple will still find itself with somewhere around 2-5% of the computer market, because the number of people working in the AV department at your company is a lot lower than the number of secretaries at your company.
The other problem with this particular strategy is that it has absolutely nothing to do with the actual quality of the products involved. Does Harley actually make the best bikes in the world? I don't know, but don't even think about trying to tell anyone who owns a Harley that they don't! They will promptly explain to you how Harley makes the ONLY real bikes on the market, and anyone who drives anything else, isn't a real biker. Are Dodges the best trucks? I really don't know, but don't try explaining to some Dodge owner how your Honda Ridgeline is better than his Ram! you will probably just get called some kind of commie. And Apple? Well, even Adobe will tell you that they recommend XP for doing graphic work over OSX, and they have the benchmarks to prove it. For God's sake don't say that within 100' of someon
I agree that in the case of SGI, working with MS played a big role, as did working with Intel, in their eventual demise. However, I don't agree with your generalization as a whole that working with MS is never a good thing. Adobe, Macromedia, and Avid have all grown exponentially in the years they have been working with MS as opposed to just Apple. Even Apple has been helped out several times over the years by influxes of money from MS. For that matter, while porting Maya to Windows was a huge mistake for SGI, it has been quite a boon for Alias.
I think what the real mistake would be working with MS on one side of the company, while trying to compete with them on the other. That pretty much seems to be a disaster, just look at Apple. They are making more money than they have ever made before, all off of a product that has nothing to do with computers, and doesn't directly compete with MS on any front, and in fact supports Windows. Meanwhile, their ever-languishing computer market share has less and less to do with the health of the company, to the point that they pretty much just offer a computer line out of vanity.
You are either very young, or very naive. The HyperTransport Technology Consortium was founded in what, late 2001-early 2002? It's charter members included AMD, NVIDIA, and SGI, as well as several other companies like Apple, Cisco and Sun. SGI came to the table already having the crossbar architecture, which they had been using in the late '90s, and which they got from Cray when they acquired them. NVIDIA already had most of SGI's engineering staff by the time the consortium was formed, and while ATI might well be a member of the consortium today, they certainly weren't one of the charter members, and certainly didn't have any HyperTransport products out back in 2002. You know, just because a company says "we invented that" on their webpage doesn't mean they really did, or every computer advancement ever would have been done by Microsoft. I hate to step on the image you have of your heroes over at AMD, but I have worked with people at AMD, I have trained with people over at AMD, and I have had a lot of friends who worked at AMD over the years. I assure you, no one at AMD woke up one day in 2001 and said "hey, I have a completely new idea for how to design system architecture. Let's start a consortium and make this an industry standard." Someone at NVIDIA said "hey, we have these guys from SGI who have this really neat architecture, and SGI says they are cool with us using it, so why don't we start up a working group and figure out how to get this to work with a PCI bus." My memory is neither faulty, nor are any of the people I know at AMD idiots. The name HyperTransport might well have been 100% AMD, but the technology isn't.
Did the O2 not have the crossbar? Right, it had something they called UMA, that was kind of like the crossbar, but somehow different. It was a long time ago now. Their NT boxes used a version of the crossbar, didn't they, or was it the same UMA as the O2? And then there was that short-lived upgraded O2 (I can't remember what it was called, maybe something stupid like O2+) that was right before their current Fule and Tezro systems. I think that might have been the one that had a crossbar.
The first time I ever heard about Hypertransport (long before it was available on any motherboards) it was from a friend of mine who works on drivers at AMD. His exact words were "you are going to be happy, the upcoming Nvidia motherboard is going to use the same architecture as your O2."
I asked him "they are putting a crossbar in a PC motherboard?"
He responded "they are calling it hypertransport, but it is the exact same thing. We have been working with them on it, and it is going to be the center of their new Nforce boards."
All press releases aside, AMD was well aware of the SGI crossbar, and Nvidia had the rights to the technology to make it happen on a PC.
As far as the Nvidia cards go, of course they are original designs. I'm not saying they aren't. However, they are original cards being designed by ex-SGI engineers, with access to over a decade of SGI graphics research. Just look at the huge difference between the TNT line of cards (before they acquired SGI's resources) and the Geforce/Quadro line of cards (after they acquired SGI's resources).
You are certainly right about the level of incompetence, but in some ways it even goes beyond incompetence, to what almost seemed like a willful destruction of the company by Richard E. Belluzzo. During his tenure at the helm of SGI, they made several decisions that doomed the company to ultimate failure. The first and foremost being that Silicon Graphics would change its name to SGI, stop focusing on graphics, and focus on internet and database servers. The next suicidal decision was that SGI would dump a lot of money into porting their flagship software graphics software (Maya) to Windows. The most crippling blow was that since they were no longer focusing on graphics, they would actively lobby a PC card manufacturer (Nvidia) to hire their engineering staff, and sell them their IP. Then they decided that they would abandon their own OS, and instead make components of their OS available to the Open Source community and put out machines with Linux and Windows. By the time SGI workstations were just PCs running Windows, using Nvidia graphics cards, it was clear the company was dead.
Of course, after making all these ruinous decisions, Belluzzo immediately quit to take a job at Microsoft. I have never been able to figure out if his job at MS was his reward for scuttling SGI, or if after what he did at SGI, MS was the only company that would hire him! Either way, it was SGI itself (under Belluzzo's leadership) that opened the door for Microsoft to walk into the high-end 3D market. Before Maya was ported to Windows, and before Nvidia came out with their Quadro cards, the idea of doing film-quality animation on a PC (while possible) was not taken seriously by anyone in the industry. 90% of the production tools were SGI-only programs written for Irix.
All in all, I think the market is probably better for it, since now you can buy a $100 motherboard using SGI's crossbar architecture (now called the Nvidia Hypertransport), and $300 graphics cards using SGI graphics processors, instead of having to shell out $10,000 for a workstation. None the less, it is a coffin SGI made for itself.
In the TV space, I have a 34" CRT HDTV from Toshiba, because I am really picky about color and image quality, and while you can calibrate the color on a CRT TV, you are pretty much out of luck on an LCD. I compared just about every TV on the market when I bought this one about two years ago, and at the time there was nothing, plasma or LCD, that could compete on HD image quality with a really good direct-view CRT.
As far as computer monitors go, I am putting together a new computer, and really wanted to go with dual CRTs. Unfortunately, a lot of companies have recently discontinued their high-end CRTs in favor of the more popular LCDs. This leaves a big hole in the market where the only CRTs are either low-end models for a couple of hundred dollars, or ultra-high-end models costing thousands. As a result, I was forced to go LCD, which is really a pain, since I do graphics, and it really does cause some color problems. At least the newer LCDs don't have the ghosting problems the older one do. That is a plus.
No one in this conversation seems stupid, so it escapes me how standards can be so inconsistently applied. I'm sorry, but just about every major problem Windows has (security or otherwise) comes down to a really bad default configuration, or poor out-of-the-box support. If you are willing to go into the registry and change settings, and download a couple third party utilities, you can pretty quickly get an XP system that is quite reliable. It is certainly true that most users never touch their registry, and probably haven't installed much more than Office, or some games, but that doesn't mean it isn't possible to improve the default Windows setup.
I mention this, because every time I see a discussion about Linux as a desktop OS, I see criticism leveled against Windows assuming that the average Windows user is incapable of touching the register, and unwilling to install utilities. That is all well and good, until you get into a discussion about how "easy" any particular Linux distro is to install. Suddenly, it is considered trivial for a user to edit config files, download libraries, and practice version control on OS components. The simple fact is that if you were to put half as much work into configuring XP, as it takes to play an audio file in Linux, then you would probably never see a single computer crash in Windows. The problem is that people take the rhetorically disingenuous position of assuming the worst of users when making their case for Windows, then assume the best of users when making their case for Linux.
Sure, editing a config file, or searching the web to find out the right version of a library is no big task, but then neither is tweaking a couple of settings in your registry, or installing a third party firewall. The truth is that if you are not willing to lift a finger to tweak your system, then with Windows you will get a buggy, insecure system, that hangs and crashes often, but with Linux you won't even get that far. If you are willing to put the time into a little research and tweaking, then they can both be decent OSs.
This was in Austin Texas back during the internet boom, when there was something obscene like 300 people a day moving into town, apartments were literally at a 99% occupancy rate, and they were selling new houses faster than they could build them.
As I said in the other branch of this thread, his problem was that he had no FICO score at all. My fiancé had better credit than he did, even with $20,000 in outstanding student loans, because he had no credit at all.
As far as co-signing, you assume my credit is good enough to co-sign for anyone. I had to pay a $1,000 deposit just to get an apartment myself back then.
I really could care less about ads on web pages, yet I block them all at the root domain of internet advertisers. Why, because before I blocked ads, I use to get about 50 data-miners a month on my computer, that I had to clean out with Adaware every few weeks. I started blocking ads at the root domain, and suddenly I have had no data-miners on my system for several months. I suppose I could put more work into my filtering and find a way to get the ads without the spyware, but why?
If online advertisers would just be happy to show me the ad and be done with it, I would never have blocked a single one. However, they want to track cookies telling them where I've been, where I saw the ad, how long I watched the ad, and all other sorts of stuff. Magazines don't do that, television doesn't do that, billboards don't do that, and thus I could care less about them. I understand that the online advertisers feel they need to do all this stuff to make sure they are paying appropriately for the ad space, but it is just too intrusive. If they want me to ever see their ad, then they need to do what every other advertiser in the world does, and just trust that they chose their venue properly, and hope I am interested in enough in the ad to check it out.
Their are a few ads that make it through my blocking, and I am fine with that because they have never loaded any data-mining cookies or other software on my computer. As long as it stays that way, I'm fine with the ad. The day I find a cookie from that domain, is the day it goes on my blocked list.
That is a great platitude, but the simple fact is that living on the streets, and surfing couches isn't a very balanced choice for just not wanting to owe anyone anything. It cracks me up how people like you are so caught up in today's debtor society that you actually believe there should be consequences for someone doing the right thing, and going their whole life never buying anything they can't afford to pay cash for. By the way, no, it wasn't that he didn't want to leave a paper trail, he was just raised to believe that it was bad to owe anyone anything. The reason he didn't have a bank account, was because he didn't see any reason to pay someone to hold his money for him. There was never any conscious decision on his part to try and skirt or circumvent anything, he just believed that a man should pay his own way, and not borrow money when he didn't need to. Humorously enough, this attitude is all but illegal these days. You can't buy a car in cash, without getting reported to the FBI, DEA, IRS, and Homeland Security. Many banks will refuse to cash a check over $10,000, and it is flat-out impossible to buy a house with cash, even if you have the full asking price.
Personally, I admire people who stand on their own two feet, instead of living beyond their means and being constantly in debt. I wish I could do it, and I think they should be rewarded, not punished by society. Unfortunately, we as a society have decided that being different automatically makes you a bad person, and if everyone else can't manage to live within their means, then you must be some kind of freak if you actually manage to do it, and therefore should be punished.
Back to the original point of this discussion, that is why I don't really think it is paranoid to be worried about this level of consumer tracking. The simple fact is that it promotes a certain lifestyle, and if you live outside that lifestyle, it punishes you. It doesn't matter why you live outside that lifestyle, just that you are different, therefore are to be shunned by society. I personally have this naive belief that people should be allowed to live their life as they choose, as long as they don't hurt anyone. Of course, that is just a quaint anachronism, since it is easier to sell products if you force everyone to live the same lifestyle, and selling product is what is really important in the world, isn't it?
Certainly, anyone who invents something hopes to be able to profit from the invention, else they wouldn't have patented it in the first place. The problem with your suggestion, is that it completely shafts the lone inventor that is completely shut out of the market for whatever reason. If you say that the only people who are allowed to patent something, are the ones with the ability to produce and market said invention, then you have effectively erased any impetus for any company to ever license any patent from anyone who isn't a company, since they can invalidate the patent just by making sure the inventor never is able to get his product to market. I remember a story some years ago about a guy who invented the intermittent windshield wiper relay. He went to all the big auto manufacturers, and was told across the board that they had no interest in licensing his design, because their customers had no interest in such a thing. Years went by, and eventually every major auto manufacturer was offering intermittent wipers as a feature of their new-model cars. This guy took them all to court, and years later it was found that not one of the intermittent wiper systems differed substantially from the relay he had patented. He was awarded quite a bit of money by the courts because it was found that all the major auto manufacturers were knowingly infringing on his patent. That is an example of the patent system doing exactly what it is supposed to do, and I would hate to see companies be given another loophole where they could get together and shut out the little guy, by all just refusing to buy anything, and then turning around and stealing the design.
Actually, the irregularities were that he was in his 30s, had a good job, had money, yet had never had a bank account, had never had any form of credit, had never financed anything, had never had any kind of debt, yet spent money, and bought things. It was a situation so odd that none of the credit services could even asses a score to his credit. I cannot really speak for the people who denied him a place to live, but I suspect they wouldn't rent to him because they thought there was something illegal going on.
As hard as it might be to believe in today's corporate, debt-driven society, it actually is possible to live a cash only lifestyle. Or at least it was until very recently when credit reports started being used as a judge of how good a person you are.
The main reason I can see NOT to do this, is because it would make it next to impossible for any innovation to occur outside a corporate environment. I think that if an academic, or even just some guy in his garage, comes up with some clever new thing, they should have every right to patent it. I already think the high filing fees, and necessary legal involvement make patents prohibitive enough to all but the most wealthy individuals, but what you are suggesting would pretty much make it impossible to patent anything unless you were a company planning to produce a product.
You would be surprised who would care. Many businesses ask for permission to run a credit report on applicants before hiring them. They will then pay a fair amount of money to get a fairly detailed report that tells them a lot more about you than you might be comfortable with them knowing. By the same token, once they have that permission, they never need to ask for it again. Performance at work dropping off? Let's run another detailed report and see what's going on in his life outside of work, before we decide how to approach this. I have even known (particularly unpleasant) women who would run a detailed credit report on a guy before deciding if they wanted to get serious with him! I also know several people who rent properties they own, and you would be amazed at the detail they can (and do) get before deciding if they want to rent you a house. I have a friend who lived at my apartment for quite some time, simply because a good job, plenty of money, and a clean-cut appearance wasn't enough to get him over some irregularities on his credit report. He couldn't rent an apartment in any decent part of town, he couldn't buy a house, he couldn't stay in a hotel (no credit card for them to hold). He was a grown man forced for years to live with friends, simply because of his credit report. If that isn't ruining someone's life, then I don't know what is. Sure, if you own a house in the suburbs, never plan on moving, have a stable job, and plenty of money in the bank, I suppose you can be cavalier about how everyone is being paranoid. But if your life is at all out of the norm, then the amount of information being tracked about up can actually cause some very real problems in a society that is evermore leaning towards treating a credit score as an indication of how good a person you are.
So the iPod only has a 3-5% market share? Funny, I thought it was more successful than that.
You know, at the time they were ruled as a monopoly, Microsoft only had 3-5% of the PDA market, so how could they be a monopoly? For that matter, IBM has always had a 0% share of the home video game console market, yet they operated under an anti-trust decree for many years. I wonder why that is? Oh, right, because a monopoly is decided on a per-market basis! It may come as a surprise to you, but I think that a company with over 90% of the DAP market, just might be in contention for investigation as a monopoly in the DAP market, regardless of their dismal performance in the desktop OS market.
By the way, I love how on /. Apple is an unstoppable juggernaught, constantly gaining desktop market share, right up until it is convenient for the current argument for them to be the beleaguered underdog, at which point their market share drops to the very low single digits.
Well, I am not investigating the case, nor do I have any special knowledge about it. Of course by the sound of your post neither do you. I would, however, like to point out a possible scenario where there could be legitimate anti-trust concerns from the point of the South Korean government.
South Korea just happens to be the place where the iPod has the smallest share of the DAP market, mainly because so many of the competing products are made there. Now imagine a meeting between several people at Apple where the idea came about to buy up as much as they possibly could of the available flash memory in the nation of South Korea, thus driving up the price due to limited availability. This would most likely force South Korean manufactures to buy memory from Malaysian, Taiwanese, Chinese, or Japanese manufactures, where they would not get as good a price, and give Apple a market edge in South Korea, where they had previously had none.
Now, this is an entirely hypothetical proposition, and might not have anything at all to do with what has happened. However, this is exactly what several Japanese companies tried to do in the '80s with US steel, to give Japanese cars an edge in the US market, and the US government stepped in to stop it. This is also what some Saudi Arabian companies tried to do with Texas oil in the '70s, and the US government stepped in. This sort of tactic is also EXACTLY why in this country we have special protections for small farmers, so that they can not be put out of business by large aribusiness who has the power and financial muscle to over-buy supplies at prices that make it impossible for the little guy to stay in business. Does this practice constitute an "unfair business practice" or just "good capitalism?" I suppose that would depend on the government and market in question. All I know for sure, is that faced with similar threats to US businesses by foreign competitors, our government stepped in and protected domestic companies as best they could. Why shouldn't the South Korean government be allowed to do the same?
I don't know why I bother posting at all, but every so often I come across a bunch of supposedly rouge individuals, who are all sitting around telling each other how right they are, as long as they all tow the rouge individual party line, and I have to stop and make a comment.
I love this. Microsoft seems to be the one company left on earth selling an OS that isn't an open source copy of UNIX, and everybody gets incensed at the mere suggestion that perhaps they have made some innovation to the market. "No" everyone says, it takes a true innovator like Apple who can come up with earth shattering inventions like an MP3 player in 2001 to advance the state of the art! "No" everyone says, real innovation comes in the form of a pretty shell, and a shiny case wrapped around a free old version of UNIX, cobbled together with some development tools from the early '90s. "No" everyone says, a cobbled together open source copy of Photoshop has more innovation in its pinky than the evil M$ empire will ever have!
Come on people! Why don't we all change the entire world for once, exhale, let go of our childish brand loyalties, and personality cults, and look at the world in some semblance of how it really is, instead of spending our lives trotting out the same old clichés, and regurgitating the same old information.
First off, I would think that of all people, /. people would know that graphic user interfaces were not invented by Apple, Microsoft, or even Xerox PARC. Most of the elements of graphic user interfaces had already appeared in Lisp machines, CAD programs, and even games, long before the Mac ever came out. Xerox PARC didn't invent the graphical user interface; they invented the term GUI, and some of the ideas that shaped how it was applied to an OS. Apple and Microsoft both saw those ideas, and went about developing them in different ways, at different paces, towards different markets. Any of the usual crap about how Microsoft stole the whole idea of the GUI from Apple, might as well be applied right back at Apple these days. How many years did fans of Mac computers rant and rave about how Windows was crap because it was just a GUI presentation layer on top of what was just a command line OS? Doesn't that pretty well describe the current Mac OS? Does that mean Apple stole the idea of a command line interface with a GUI on top of it from MS? No, of course not! Gee, I guess it isn't all so cut and dry.
By the same token, how much of OSX is really all that new? Most of the "innovation" really comes out of Nextstep, which was really in large part Steve Jobs' rip-off of IRIX. Aqua you say? From a technological standpoint (as opposed to the "look, it's shiny and pretty" standpoint), how different is it really from DirectX (Direct Draw, Direct Show, Direct Whatever) and WinG before it, or the presentation layer of BeOS? For that matter, doesn't the whole advanced graphics subsystem, unified graphics library concept really come back to SGI OpenGL and IRIX again?
Look, whether you call them Microsoft or M$, you are walking through the world with blinders on if you don't think they have done anything that has changed the way people use computers, and moved forward the state of the art. Some of the systems they have come up with for how to allow any program to interface with any hardware are really quite clever. You can say all you want about the "plug and play" capabilities of other systems, but the actual plugging and playing was dependent on carefully picking a piece of hardware off a limited list of supported hardware. Before Microsoft, there was no way you could go grab any MB, slap a processor in it, pick up any old RAM from any manufacturer, and then hook up whatever HD you wanted, and then expect it to all work. Sure, that is expected from any modern OS (unless it is made by Apple), but that sure wasn't the case even 15 years ago. Did you ever try to tell HP support "yeah, I saw a special on RAM down at the local computer shop, and was thinking about putting it in
You are confusing what happened to the programs, with what happened to the companies. Yes, Wavefront and TDI were killed off. However as far as the products go, before the SGI/Alias/Wavefront merger, both Explore and Advanced Visualizer were already scheduled to be reach the end of their product life as soon as both companies finished the joint product. That joint product is 90% of the core functionality of Maya. On the other hand, Alias Power Animator was scheduled to have future developments which at the time had nothing to do with the structure of Maya. MEL is an obvious outgrowth of Wavefront's previous scripting language, not Alias's SDL. Alias dropped their particle simulation system in favor of Dynamation. Alias dropped their IK solution in favor of Kinemation. The modeling tools in Maya came out of 3Design, not Studio Tools or Power Animator. Alias even admits that newer features like fluids started in the Paris office, and then were further developed by Alias in Canada once the Paris office was closed. Alias's contributions to the early versions of Maya are really just the great brush tools (Artisan), and some interface redesign.
There is no doubt that as soon as the merger took place, Alias took the reigns, but the first several versions of Maya continued in the planned direction, with very little change to the core, and most of the changes Alias made being in the form of new MEL scripts. Meanwhile, Power Animator was killed off, along with Advanced Visualizer, and Explore.
By the same token, I have no doubt that Alias management will be gutted, and Autodesk will run the show (they did buy the company after all). I am just pointing out, that the management and the product are not the same thing. Just like Alias killed off Power Animator in favor of tools developed mostly by TDI and Wavefront, Autodesk might decide to kill off Max in favor of tools developed by Alias.