Is this the same Telefonica that's currently about to be fined ~100M Euro by the European Commission (biggest telco fine yet) for anticompetitive behavior in the broadband market? Them getting the deal would make me wonder what criteria is Apple using when picking partners. First AT&T...
Look, how much manufacturing cost difference is there between fitting 4GB and 8GB in the phone? the parts cost difference is estimated at $20 yet the retail prices differ by is $100. It looks to me a hell of a lot like the extra $80 are money in the bank for Apple. To which I say, good for them. Their target market can bear this, why shouldn't they pocket the cash? Especially since some of it will go towards coming up with a cheaper version of the phone.
However, looking at this particular difference, it does suggest that Apple is making a neat profit off the phone regardless of how much manufacturing and other logistics end up costing. So while you have a point about this being only parts it's not as strong an argument as you'd like, especially since Apple uses cheap Asian production. I'd be surprised if they don't make in excess of 30% profit for the 4GB model alone.
To get this out of the way, I'll say that while I don't necessarily approve this program as the answer, I agree that privacy concerns exist with the currently-embedded metadata. Now, to your post.
2. I bought the damn tune, but someday I may want to sell it (hey, how is it more stupid that selling old CDs ?).
It's not "more stupid" than anything. And since Apple is the first entity that's even allowing this possibility at all with mainstream music from mainstream labels on any meaningful scale, I guess I must not recognize your gratitude.
To quote your previous line - utterly irrelevant to the argument. WTF has gratitude to do with privacy here? FWIW I think this is one of the places were his list makes something of a point and by an interesting coincidence you're being disingenuous about it. Perchance it's more difficult to refute than the dumb arguments? [In more detail, in case you were actually honest about trying to refute the point, let's expand on it: second sale doctrine allows resale; DRM made the resale worthless, which is OK with SSD, but no-DRM changed that. Now, assuming I do resell - pennies for a dollar is good enough for some - I no longer have control over what the new owner does with the track. Assume they have the 6yr-old step-sister that puts it on p2p and lawsuit-happy RIAA finds it and sues me. Now, I might prevail if I get to prove that I no longer own the track, but that will be tedious at best. And since the case can be viewed as a honest one, I doubt I'd get them to pay attorney fees. So it makes sense to try and prevent such a development, don't you think? Here's 2 that says you would have had a better argument questioning the legality of selling the anonymized version of the file instead of the original.]
4. How the heck do I know it's not gonna be shared on P2P networks by my 6 year old step sister???
How do you know the reason the name and email address is there is for tracking file sharers? How do you even know that would stand up in court? Why does everyone assume that's the reason it's there? Has it occurred to you that this might have been a concession to the labels to make them "feel good", or any number of other reasons? Has it occurred to you that since name and email address have always been included in all purchases from the iTunes store that, uh, maybe nothing has changed?
Well, you certainly look like you have an agenda here. While I don't agree with this argument from the "she did it, her guardian is responsible for not explaining things to her" perspective I don't see you making a valid argument either. Who cares what the 'official' reason is? could be "so that faerie pixies know where to come and make it sound better when you listen to the file" for all I care. If past behavior shows anything is that a system that can be used for a corporation's profit will be. Any argument that a RIAA lawyer can bring to court will be brought - why, look at what they used so far, something like "metadata says you purchased this song" is positively incriminating by comparison. And again, what changed is that a 'stolen' track now can be actually useful for whoever steals it without any reprocessing (which would have stripped most of metadata anyway) so the risk of your info making it on p2p is higher. And about standing up in court, you seem to conveniently forget that the likes of RIAA don't much care how valid their argument in court is if they can threaten you with an expensive lawsuit that in itself will make you settle. Please wake up to the 21st century paradigm shift in lawsuit strategy - you don't need a valid argument to win, only enough money compared to the other guy. Reminds me of the winning strategy for coin-flipping games, actually.
I won't repeat the argument for your 'rebuttal' to the Gartner analyst quote. You should have gotten the drill by now - and if not it would be pointless repetition anyway. What I would like is some link to back up your claim that no steganography is used - for a guy who revels in placing links all over his posts that one is conspicuously absent. Mind you, I'm not asserting it's untrue, but I will beg to be excused if I won't take only your word for it.
Why sonny, count yer blessings. Them acorn-based computers crashed only once a year. We didn't have no acorns so we had to make do with bundles of straw - upright was 1 and tumbled was 0. And the memory bus was rock-based - we threw rocks to flip them bits, and let me tell ya, it was SLOW to flip 'em back to 1. Then rain would get the straw all soggy and zero 'em bits so we'd have to hack'em open and spred 'em in the sun to dry. And we'd have to rebuild them computers daily anyway, 'cause in the morning sheep would pass through the field and the blasted rams would eat at the memory.
I'd still use one even now, for ol'times' sake, 'cause my lawn gets so little rain these days, but the damn kids are worse than the rams. And I thought about using them kids instead, but my son's lawyer advised me against it. So I have to make do with flipping 'em the bird instead.
yes. The policies you're talking about (in file_contexts) are for policy installation purposes. Unless you need to relabel the full tree again (which you shouldn't) they won't matter. And if you do, it is expected that any customizations that you made in the tree without putting them in the default contexts of the policy will have to be redone. Same thing as overwriting httpd.conf with the distro default and having to recreate your changes, really. And about as unlikely to be necessary, too.
There is no need to be abusive. Especially when you're wrong.
The apache webserver was designed so that if I want to move docroot, I edit a setting in httpd.conf. THAT ADMINISTRATOR ACTION IS WHAT TELLS THE SYSTEM THAT APACHE IS NOW ALLOWED TO ACCESS THE FILES IN THE NEW LOCATION.
No, editing httpd.conf is what tels apache that its docroot has a new location. The -a flag for copy was your attempt to tell the system that apache has the required rights to access the new location, by preserving the ownership of the tree. However, for SELinux you need to also preserve file metadata, which cp does not do by default. Feel free to do --preserve=all if you don't want to care about extra flags though.
Here's the thing, cp -a implies -p or --preserve=context as you put it. So the parent was doing just as you described.
Here's the thing, straight from the horse's mouth... err... man (that is, man cp)
-p same as --preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps
--preserve[=ATTR_LIST]
preserve the specified attributes (default: mode,ownership,timestamps), if possible additional
attributes: links, all
So -p does not preserve contexts; -c does. Hint: backwards compatibility.
You must have missed Intel's marketing campaign after the C2D launch - CPU die pics were in every other subway in Manhattan. At least AMD only sticks them in press releases for now.
I think it's even worse than that. IIRC they need a minimum of some million units sold to break even. If Intel comes along whispering "hold on until our better vapourware comes along" to the governments that already were interested in OLPC (I'd like to see Intel's "alternative" survive in being carried in Nigeria's weather, nevermind survive Nigerian children) then Negroponte's design might not even get the chance to prove its worth. And that would be unfair stifling. Case to the point: Intel's laptop has nothing in terms of weatherproofing, battery life (and out-in-the-fields option), wireless networking, or security that even comes close to OLPC. It would be interesting to see how they compare by giving each laptop to a test group of kids and seeing which one is still better-suited for its purpose after one semester (if not which one is still working) but I strongly doubt Intel would like such a test.
No kidding. Some choice bits for discerning palates:
"That's the dirty little secret. When I talk to open source developers, at least half are talking about Windows, from SugarCRM, MySQL, PHP. Every single one," he said.
So 'at least a half' now means 'every single one'... I wonder how many fingers he counted that one on. And speaking of representative samples, I'd not bet on this one being it. But what do I know, maybe open source devs at IBM, Sun, RedHat, Novell, etc. really do beaver away at Vista ports. I hear they'll have the RC1 of linux.exe ready for Vista compatibility testing any day, too.
"I've seen this first hand, and it's complete science fiction. He looks at the computer screen and uses his fingers (in the air) instead of a keyboard or a mouse. Brilliant guy with a PhD in optical science, truly creating the next input device. But when I ask him how he would make this a standard and work with Linux, he replies to me, 'no idea.' [...]" he said.
So how is it working with whatever environment they have now? (no, he didn't say Windows either - was that also a 'no idea'?) Pixy dust? Or we can have a contest of asking the most stupid 'how will this work with X?' question to a research guy. My candidate is Duke Nukem Forever on a tricorder. (for the Hilf fans out there that missed the sarcasm - calculate the probability of getting the 'no idea' answer when asking someone developing tech A on the platform X how would it make it work on platform Y that he knows nothing about)
People do not want ODF (Open Document Format), but they want a way to control the information they create, he claimed.
Nice one. All he did was forget to put "necessarily" between "not" and "want" - that, and admitting that without the ODF push OOXML would have been a pipe dream, and we all know how much control one has on information stored on pre-XML MSOffice formats. Also, notice that he didn't say or imply that people want OOXML - they do, though, if you chose your sample carefully enough, such as around Redmond. So if I remove marketing-sprache, I end up with "People do not necessarily want ODF, they want a way to control the information they create. We wouldn't give them control, so other malicious entities came up with this ODF thing to fit the bill, since plain html could not. Now, we didn't want to be left out in the cold, especially after the ODF people got their pet format through OASIS and ISO and we stood to lose lucrative government contracts, hence he brought you OOXML, all in the name of choice. [*Ballmer voice-over* Our choice, of course - and we chose to fight back tooth and nail. By the way, I heard a rumor that our auditing division would like to help you make sure your Microsoft Products Licenses are all in order. You see, we're always glad to look after the customer's best interests.]"
"It's not for us to be Flash, but it's for a million people to develop WPF-E applications," he said.
Wow, fighting words from a yet non-existing tech in terms of market share. You'll probably have to wait for WPF-E to finally clear single-digit penetration to hear Hilf pronounce Flash dead, so don't hold your breath just yet for that particular line.
Ontologically, QM is useless because as the great physicicsts that use it have stated, it is beyond comprehension. (e.g. it defies common sense.)
The problem with the Universe is that it's not built by human common sense, so the more you strive to describe it, the less 'common sense'-y it looks. Or, if you like, our common sense is based on a narrow view of the world that was needed for day-to-day survival during the (relatively short) history of the human race. Common sense will look a whole lot differently from your idea of it in 10000 years, if humans survive that far.
Further, the reality QM describes is not terribly useful to most folks on a day to day basic.[sic!] Pragmatists, therefor, would have no particular use for that type of 'truth' outside a classroom.
Should I assume that you posted to/. using smoke signals?
SSE4? Please, don't get distracted over little things like whether or not I can cook!
SSE4? I'm not buyin' either AMD or Intel until they're at least at SSE256. What's that? It'll take a while? That's OK, I don't have the monies to get them now anyway. <sarcasm/>
For my type of workloads, straight SSE2 is still just fine. I'll take an improvement on that now instead of, say, waiting for the x86 world to match AltiVec instruction-per-instruction. But i would go for a wider ISA - give me 4x64bit registers with the ability to do 2x128 long double calculations in parallel and I'll be all over it. Heck, even long double on the current 128bit SSE registers would be a treat. SSE4? Fits some folks' needs, but it's mostly meh! for me.
So yeah, I would say MS crap. BTW, TFDetectionRoutine barfed at Firefox w/ UA changed to IE6, but accepted the same for Konqueror (hence the script info).
They've already moved 27 armies into Kamchatka and surrounding territories... Now they find out that they need to create an actual line connecting to Alaska to enable their attack.
Microsoft OTOH developed incompatible protocols after there were perfectly good ones in use, and then forced them onto the world using illegal tactics.
According to the expert named by MS for this investigation, the documentation for which they demand royalties has hardly any innovation - typical MS embrace & extend of existing, open protocols. This is the reason for EU's rejection of proposed royalties. So I wouldn't put too much emphasis on MS' "developing" protocols. I agree with the second half of your sentence though.
Well if you coat yourself with a conductive material, you would become in theory a sphere and thus have no electricity on the inside of the sphere.
Wrong. A conductor shell would screen you from (relatively long-wavelength, depending on your setup) external variations of electrostatic potential. Whatever variations are generated inside the shell are not affected - turn a flashlight on inside a Faraday cage and it will still work.
In order to 'have no electricity on the inside of the sphere' you'd have to have the enclosed volume conductor in the first place, hence no need for a conductive coating. Not to mention that it's a static equilibrium that you're describing.
I fully agree, the article is mainly empty of information - it took words from AMD briefings and produced a meaningless salad.
Now, as far as some claims, in detangled order:
FPU boost: this seems to be based on several things - one is the obvious widening of SSE2 issues. Others are increasing instruction fetch from 16B/cycle to 32B/cycle, making the FPU scheduler 128bit, unaligned loads and a doubling of cache bandwidth.
Virtualization: Nested page tables and reduces witching times for the hypervisor.
Power: CPU and northbridge on separate power planes so they can be in different power modes (clock+voltage); apparently, voltages of different cores are independent as well, so that should give lower power consumption when not at full load (with appropriate MB support) AFAIR this is better than what Intel has, but I might be mis-remembering.
the extra cache is long overdue and one will have to see whether their way of managing it is smart enough (things like moving data from L3 to individual caches, but sometimes keeping code shared in L3)
There. More content than TFA and shamelessly copied from a 4-month old article for the benefit of all us non-RTFA people. And there's more actually.
Re:That word doesn't mean what you think it means.
on
Apple, the New Microsoft?
·
· Score: 1, Informative
No, they are the closest thing to the ultimate in coolness as you can get.
It doesn't mean what you think it does either.:-P
Cheers
Quoth Webster:
Main Entry: penultimate Pronunciation: pi-'n&l-t&-m&t Function: adjective 1 : next to the last (the penultimate chapter of a book) 2 : of or relating to a penult (a penultimate accent) - penultimately adverb
It comes from Latin (as expected) ulter, ulterior, ultimus - the last meaning 'the most distant' or 'the most extreme.' Hence the meaning for penultimate is 'next to the last/most distant' and his 'second-to-last source of coolness' is perfectly appropriate. It can mean 'second-to-best' as you would like, but 'extreme' is neutral so 'second-to-worst' can also be assumed if the context does not provide specificity (as was the case here)
If you're knowledgeable, the amount of time spent configuring Linux/*BSD is comparable with the one securing a new Windows machine. Hence free in this case is apt. Otherwise you have to climb the learning curve which requires a time investment, or contract someone to do it for you. In which case 'free' becomes one of various levels of 'cheap'. After which, the time and money saved by not having to periodically contract someone to clean up the Windows machine (we're talking non-knowledgeable owners, the average Windows user profile) is just gravy.
The only case when your quote truly applies is for someone who knows how to keep a Windows machine (relatively) safe and working yet has no experience with other operating systems. So it's a valid point, but limited in scope.
Further, note that all of the Macs are either Core or Core 2 Duos, whereas most of the cheap PCs and notebooks are hitting that $300 price point by using Centrinos. Or in other words, you get what you pay for...
You must have meant Celerons. Centrino is the [any Pentium M up to and including Core2Duo Merom]CPU+Intel chipset+Intel wireless mobile combo. So the MacBooks are, horror of horrors[*], Centrino machines!
[*] welcome to the wonderful world of Intel marketing, Apple. Enjoy your stay.
It seems Intel declared that it's not their silicon in the iPhone. Besides, they sold their xscale division and their low-power x86 cores are waaay too power hungry for the phone market, so they wouldn't even have a chip to fit the bill.
Unless Apple has crippled the design somehow, this isn't an iPod phone -- it's a Mac Mini that fits into your pocket and makes phone calls.
Will this ever stop? It runs OS X in the same sense that other phones run Linux - a heavily trimmed-down version of it. And it is not a Mac Mini. For one thing, all you will get on it is most-likely a tightly-controlled set of Apple-approved apps. That is, aside from the standard fare that comes with a smartphone (which in this case includes slimmed-down versions of Safari and iTunes). Forget even about hacking your own stuff, unless Apple puts out a SDK. This thing is not even binary-compatible with your run-of-the-mill OS X, as it most likely uses some incarnation of the ARM ISA under the hood. This is a smartphone and no more. Get over it.
As an aside, it's interesting to see the way Jobs plays with numbers. 1% of the global phone market, eh? As in phone, not smartphone? Well, considering that in 2006 the number of smartphones sold was a somewhere north of 100M, his 10M units target is somewhat less than 10% of that. Pretty optimistic, seeing that the vast majority of those were cheaper. And not locking people into 2-year contracts with the likes of Cingular. And they were sold all over the world, with significant markets (like Asia and Europe) where Apple has nowhere near as strong a presence as in the US. But hey, let's wait and see if the Steve can pull the rabbit off this particular hat. Perhaps, seeing as his estimate was for 2008, he had a cheaper refresh in mind for that timeframe.
Slashdot Mirror
Is this the same Telefonica that's currently about to be fined ~100M Euro by the European Commission (biggest telco fine yet) for anticompetitive behavior in the broadband market? Them getting the deal would make me wonder what criteria is Apple using when picking partners. First AT&T ...
Look, how much manufacturing cost difference is there between fitting 4GB and 8GB in the phone? the parts cost difference is estimated at $20 yet the retail prices differ by is $100. It looks to me a hell of a lot like the extra $80 are money in the bank for Apple. To which I say, good for them. Their target market can bear this, why shouldn't they pocket the cash? Especially since some of it will go towards coming up with a cheaper version of the phone.
However, looking at this particular difference, it does suggest that Apple is making a neat profit off the phone regardless of how much manufacturing and other logistics end up costing. So while you have a point about this being only parts it's not as strong an argument as you'd like, especially since Apple uses cheap Asian production. I'd be surprised if they don't make in excess of 30% profit for the 4GB model alone.
To quote your previous line - utterly irrelevant to the argument. WTF has gratitude to do with privacy here? FWIW I think this is one of the places were his list makes something of a point and by an interesting coincidence you're being disingenuous about it. Perchance it's more difficult to refute than the dumb arguments? [In more detail, in case you were actually honest about trying to refute the point, let's expand on it: second sale doctrine allows resale; DRM made the resale worthless, which is OK with SSD, but no-DRM changed that. Now, assuming I do resell - pennies for a dollar is good enough for some - I no longer have control over what the new owner does with the track. Assume they have the 6yr-old step-sister that puts it on p2p and lawsuit-happy RIAA finds it and sues me. Now, I might prevail if I get to prove that I no longer own the track, but that will be tedious at best. And since the case can be viewed as a honest one, I doubt I'd get them to pay attorney fees. So it makes sense to try and prevent such a development, don't you think? Here's 2 that says you would have had a better argument questioning the legality of selling the anonymized version of the file instead of the original.]
Well, you certainly look like you have an agenda here. While I don't agree with this argument from the "she did it, her guardian is responsible for not explaining things to her" perspective I don't see you making a valid argument either. Who cares what the 'official' reason is? could be "so that faerie pixies know where to come and make it sound better when you listen to the file" for all I care. If past behavior shows anything is that a system that can be used for a corporation's profit will be. Any argument that a RIAA lawyer can bring to court will be brought - why, look at what they used so far, something like "metadata says you purchased this song" is positively incriminating by comparison. And again, what changed is that a 'stolen' track now can be actually useful for whoever steals it without any reprocessing (which would have stripped most of metadata anyway) so the risk of your info making it on p2p is higher. And about standing up in court, you seem to conveniently forget that the likes of RIAA don't much care how valid their argument in court is if they can threaten you with an expensive lawsuit that in itself will make you settle. Please wake up to the 21st century paradigm shift in lawsuit strategy - you don't need a valid argument to win, only enough money compared to the other guy. Reminds me of the winning strategy for coin-flipping games, actually.
I won't repeat the argument for your 'rebuttal' to the Gartner analyst quote. You should have gotten the drill by now - and if not it would be pointless repetition anyway. What I would like is some link to back up your claim that no steganography is used - for a guy who revels in placing links all over his posts that one is conspicuously absent. Mind you, I'm not asserting it's untrue, but I will beg to be excused if I won't take only your word for it.
Why sonny, count yer blessings. Them acorn-based computers crashed only once a year. We didn't have no acorns so we had to make do with bundles of straw - upright was 1 and tumbled was 0. And the memory bus was rock-based - we threw rocks to flip them bits, and let me tell ya, it was SLOW to flip 'em back to 1. Then rain would get the straw all soggy and zero 'em bits so we'd have to hack'em open and spred 'em in the sun to dry. And we'd have to rebuild them computers daily anyway, 'cause in the morning sheep would pass through the field and the blasted rams would eat at the memory.
I'd still use one even now, for ol'times' sake, 'cause my lawn gets so little rain these days, but the damn kids are worse than the rams. And I thought about using them kids instead, but my son's lawyer advised me against it. So I have to make do with flipping 'em the bird instead.
yes. The policies you're talking about (in file_contexts) are for policy installation purposes. Unless you need to relabel the full tree again (which you shouldn't) they won't matter. And if you do, it is expected that any customizations that you made in the tree without putting them in the default contexts of the policy will have to be redone. Same thing as overwriting httpd.conf with the distro default and having to recreate your changes, really. And about as unlikely to be necessary, too.
No, editing httpd.conf is what tels apache that its docroot has a new location. The -a flag for copy was your attempt to tell the system that apache has the required rights to access the new location, by preserving the ownership of the tree. However, for SELinux you need to also preserve file metadata, which cp does not do by default. Feel free to do --preserve=all if you don't want to care about extra flags though.
Let me introduce you to the -c option of cp, also known as --preserve=context.
You must have missed Intel's marketing campaign after the C2D launch - CPU die pics were in every other subway in Manhattan. At least AMD only sticks them in press releases for now.
I think it's even worse than that. IIRC they need a minimum of some million units sold to break even. If Intel comes along whispering "hold on until our better vapourware comes along" to the governments that already were interested in OLPC (I'd like to see Intel's "alternative" survive in being carried in Nigeria's weather, nevermind survive Nigerian children) then Negroponte's design might not even get the chance to prove its worth. And that would be unfair stifling. Case to the point: Intel's laptop has nothing in terms of weatherproofing, battery life (and out-in-the-fields option), wireless networking, or security that even comes close to OLPC. It would be interesting to see how they compare by giving each laptop to a test group of kids and seeing which one is still better-suited for its purpose after one semester (if not which one is still working) but I strongly doubt Intel would like such a test.
So 'at least a half' now means 'every single one'
So how is it working with whatever environment they have now? (no, he didn't say Windows either - was that also a 'no idea'?) Pixy dust? Or we can have a contest of asking the most stupid 'how will this work with X?' question to a research guy. My candidate is Duke Nukem Forever on a tricorder. (for the Hilf fans out there that missed the sarcasm - calculate the probability of getting the 'no idea' answer when asking someone developing tech A on the platform X how would it make it work on platform Y that he knows nothing about)
Nice one. All he did was forget to put "necessarily" between "not" and "want" - that, and admitting that without the ODF push OOXML would have been a pipe dream, and we all know how much control one has on information stored on pre-XML MSOffice formats. Also, notice that he didn't say or imply that people want OOXML - they do, though, if you chose your sample carefully enough, such as around Redmond. So if I remove marketing-sprache, I end up with "People do not necessarily want ODF, they want a way to control the information they create. We wouldn't give them control, so other malicious entities came up with this ODF thing to fit the bill, since plain html could not. Now, we didn't want to be left out in the cold, especially after the ODF people got their pet format through OASIS and ISO and we stood to lose lucrative government contracts, hence he brought you OOXML, all in the name of choice. [*Ballmer voice-over* Our choice, of course - and we chose to fight back tooth and nail. By the way, I heard a rumor that our auditing division would like to help you make sure your Microsoft Products Licenses are all in order. You see, we're always glad to look after the customer's best interests.]"
Wow, fighting words from a yet non-existing tech in terms of market share. You'll probably have to wait for WPF-E to finally clear single-digit penetration to hear Hilf pronounce Flash dead, so don't hold your breath just yet for that particular line.
The problem with the Universe is that it's not built by human common sense, so the more you strive to describe it, the less 'common sense'-y it looks. Or, if you like, our common sense is based on a narrow view of the world that was needed for day-to-day survival during the (relatively short) history of the human race. Common sense will look a whole lot differently from your idea of it in 10000 years, if humans survive that far.
Should I assume that you posted to
Yes, but do not despair. There will be others as your species' membership increases.
SSE4? Please, don't get distracted over little things like whether or not I can cook!
SSE4? I'm not buyin' either AMD or Intel until they're at least at SSE256. What's that? It'll take a while? That's OK, I don't have the monies to get them now anyway.
<sarcasm/>
For my type of workloads, straight SSE2 is still just fine. I'll take an improvement on that now instead of, say, waiting for the x86 world to match AltiVec instruction-per-instruction. But i would go for a wider ISA - give me 4x64bit registers with the ability to do 2x128 long double calculations in parallel and I'll be all over it. Heck, even long double on the current 128bit SSE registers would be a treat. SSE4? Fits some folks' needs, but it's mostly meh! for me.
To each his/her own, I guess.
Cluestick
According to the expert named by MS for this investigation, the documentation for which they demand royalties has hardly any innovation - typical MS embrace & extend of existing, open protocols. This is the reason for EU's rejection of proposed royalties. So I wouldn't put too much emphasis on MS' "developing" protocols. I agree with the second half of your sentence though.
Wrong. A conductor shell would screen you from (relatively long-wavelength, depending on your setup) external variations of electrostatic potential. Whatever variations are generated inside the shell are not affected - turn a flashlight on inside a Faraday cage and it will still work.
In order to 'have no electricity on the inside of the sphere' you'd have to have the enclosed volume conductor in the first place, hence no need for a conductive coating. Not to mention that it's a static equilibrium that you're describing.
What did you expect from a known SCO shill?
Now, as far as some claims, in detangled order:
There. More content than TFA and shamelessly copied from a 4-month old article for the benefit of all us non-RTFA people. And there's more actually.
Quoth Webster:
It comes from Latin (as expected) ulter, ulterior, ultimus - the last meaning 'the most distant' or 'the most extreme.' Hence the meaning for penultimate is 'next to the last/most distant' and his 'second-to-last source of coolness' is perfectly appropriate. It can mean 'second-to-best' as you would like, but 'extreme' is neutral so 'second-to-worst' can also be assumed if the context does not provide specificity (as was the case here)
If you're knowledgeable, the amount of time spent configuring Linux/*BSD is comparable with the one securing a new Windows machine. Hence free in this case is apt. Otherwise you have to climb the learning curve which requires a time investment, or contract someone to do it for you. In which case 'free' becomes one of various levels of 'cheap'. After which, the time and money saved by not having to periodically contract someone to clean up the Windows machine (we're talking non-knowledgeable owners, the average Windows user profile) is just gravy.
The only case when your quote truly applies is for someone who knows how to keep a Windows machine (relatively) safe and working yet has no experience with other operating systems. So it's a valid point, but limited in scope.
You must have meant Celerons. Centrino is the [any Pentium M up to and including Core2Duo Merom]CPU+Intel chipset+Intel wireless mobile combo. So the MacBooks are, horror of horrors[*], Centrino machines!
[*] welcome to the wonderful world of Intel marketing, Apple. Enjoy your stay.
It seems Intel declared that it's not their silicon in the iPhone. Besides, they sold their xscale division and their low-power x86 cores are waaay too power hungry for the phone market, so they wouldn't even have a chip to fit the bill.
Will this ever stop? It runs OS X in the same sense that other phones run Linux - a heavily trimmed-down version of it. And it is not a Mac Mini. For one thing, all you will get on it is most-likely a tightly-controlled set of Apple-approved apps. That is, aside from the standard fare that comes with a smartphone (which in this case includes slimmed-down versions of Safari and iTunes). Forget even about hacking your own stuff, unless Apple puts out a SDK. This thing is not even binary-compatible with your run-of-the-mill OS X, as it most likely uses some incarnation of the ARM ISA under the hood. This is a smartphone and no more. Get over it.
As an aside, it's interesting to see the way Jobs plays with numbers. 1% of the global phone market, eh? As in phone, not smartphone? Well, considering that in 2006 the number of smartphones sold was a somewhere north of 100M, his 10M units target is somewhat less than 10% of that. Pretty optimistic, seeing that the vast majority of those were cheaper. And not locking people into 2-year contracts with the likes of Cingular. And they were sold all over the world, with significant markets (like Asia and Europe) where Apple has nowhere near as strong a presence as in the US. But hey, let's wait and see if the Steve can pull the rabbit off this particular hat. Perhaps, seeing as his estimate was for 2008, he had a cheaper refresh in mind for that timeframe.