Greenpeace: Apple won't tell us how they're helping the environment, so we'll bitch about them.
Jobs: We don't usually tell what we're doing because we do, not say. However, we'll change that policy and tell you.
Greenpeace: Haha ownt! They changed their environmental policies. But dude.. there's still the question of motives here.. I mean, Greenpeace doesn't stand to make a profit by bugging Apple or from any of the publicity this generates. Apple at the very minimum protects profit margins by not having to change processes. That's why it isn't enough for Apple to say "we do, not say" -- anybody can say that.
Now, most people who subscribe to this "movement" are doing it as a joke, or because they are rationalizing the fact that they don't have kids. But some of them really seem to be arguing honestly for self-extinction of the human race. But even if some of them *are* honestly arguing for self-extinction of the human race, that just makes *them* kooks -- it has no bearing on Greenpeace until Greenpeace actually endorses/associates itself with/starts backing their views.
Intel and AMD (and two more companies, can't remember which) have cross-licensing agreements on x86 and derivative architectures that are so tangled that nobody can tell who owns what anymore. AFAIK, the current status is that either company is free to implement any instructions/extensions to x86 arch. (amd64 counts) that are created by the other company. The only restriction is that they can't use the same name for the new set. So EM64t should be 1:1 interchangeable with amd64 with possible some implementation-specific differences that would for the most part only affect the compiler teams.
i.e. this change probably causes work items for the compiler and hardware design teams, but isn't really a big/difficult change.
But a bigger question would be: why do it at all? From Apple's perspective they are far better off keeping out of the CPU business, keeping their platform amd64/em64t capable, and just using whichever processor/chipset/gpu combination rules the roost at any point in time.
Actually, it's closer to sudo than you might think (and even closer than previous posts might have indicated)
and the rights stick around for a while so you're not constantly typing in passwords. http://www.sudo.ws/sudo/intro.html -- see the third bullet point. The sudo guys (wisely and honestly) acknowledge that this 'session' is basically a security risk for say, an unattended machine (there are other scenarios too, but this is the most obvious). They wisely left this timeout configurable so that the risk can be eliminated by setting it to zero. So UAC's lack of a 'session' isn't really a flaw - its good design.
Of course, its not wise to ever leave a machine unattended -- you should ideally lock it anytime you aren't using it. Which is why the password prompt in sudo is IMHO not really necessary. I think that confuses two different issues: Authentication vs. Elevation of Privileges. I can easily picture a scenario in which a command line utility/installer/something in linux shows you a fake sudo prompt, the result of which is that the malicious code now has your password. Even if an application tries to mimic a UAC prompt, clicking 'allow' on that prompt does nothing since it isn't the actual UAC prompt.
I'm sure there are scenarios I'm missing etc., but my point is just that I don't think UAC is all bad; it's just a victim of our perception that passwords are always necessary for security. I've been using Vista roughly since launch now, and I can't recall the last time I saw a UAC prompt. Basically when you setup a machine, it might take a couple of weeks before you've got everything just exactly the way you want it, and then after that UAC prompts are going to be very rare - I don't think the average user will really get conditioned to blindly hitting 'allow' each time.
DRM protection in itself won't tie the content to a platform. Previous links have already mentioned that BBC will make an OS-X player a priority. There's no technical reason why the same DRM scheme can't work on both (any/all) platforms.
Of course, I expect everyone on/. to yell bloody murder at the very mention of DRM, but IMHO this isn't unreasonable on BBC's part.
I'm no expert, but for a new "revolutionary" product that the whole Windows world is expected to adopt... not so good. You clearly enjoy playing word games, don't you? Putting the word revolutionary in quotes gave the whole thing a new spin, didn't it?
Dude -- you know as well as anyone on/. that with the current installed base, and XPs being viewed by most as being 'good enough', 30% growth is quite impressive. Quit whining. Use your Mac or linux pc if that's what you prefer -- that's your choice -- but quit whining.
The Gates foundation has also funded The Discovery Institute, the main group preaching intelligent design lies. http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/08/26 /gatesfoundation/index.html/
Man, I tell you./. is getting filled by the minute with people willing to say just about anything anti-MS. Hate BG for technology reason? Fine. Hate Gates for trying to do something positive for the world? Poor taste. Don't give me that tired crap about how he got his wealth etc. As much as MS tactics might suck, he's clearly a brilliant strategist -- the world's most desperate people need someone like him batting on their side.
If a foreign power had damaged US productivity and parasitically drained off as much capital from US businesses as Microsoft has, it would be construed as an act of war. Microsoft helps America only in the sense that it helps itself to lots of American money it could not access if American regulators still gave a shit about competition. This is what gets my goat about/.
Blind hatred of MS is so rampant that people can say anything negative that comes to their mind and go unchallenged. I call BS.
Obviously I have to put in a disclaimer here so that, god forbid, I'm not mistaken for a MS flunky. But my point is a bit broader than MS-bashing. There's a bunch of other trends where the/. community seems to be completely brainwashed into a single homogeneous position that they repeat often enough to convince themselves that its true. DRM being just one such example. Whatever happened to intelligent geeks evaluating stuff at merit?
You know its a touchy topic when just two replies get modded 'funny'...
I definitely side with Gates on this. Let's be clear: the "I can't compete with someone from India earning 20% less even if I produce 5 times more" cliches don't apply here. Anyone who has interviewed at Microsoft (or Amazon/Google/Apple/Intel/...) knows that if you didn't get the job, well, money wasn't the reason -- all these companies live by the "we pay whatever it takes to hire the best" mantra, and do an extraordinary amount of recruiting. (There will be exceptions; job interviews aren't an exact science.)
Another thing he's said in the past (as near as I can remember it): Companies like MS, Google, Intel, have the entire world as their customer. They make many billions every year from sales outside the US. Considering that, its perfectly reasonable for them to have employees from all over the world as well. Just extend the basic diversity training you got at whichever company you work for: diversity at the workplace makes good business sense, and multi-national diversity is no exception. The revenue from international markets will far outweigh the payroll costs of their H1-B workforce.
In other words, the opportunity to do business across the globe comes with the responsibility of providing jobs for people across the globe.
If anything, he's been extremely consistent on the issue and he's got the guts to tell it like it is, however unpopular his viewpoint might be.
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Jobs: We don't usually tell what we're doing because we do, not say. However, we'll change that policy and tell you.
Greenpeace: Haha ownt! They changed their environmental policies. But dude.. there's still the question of motives here.. I mean, Greenpeace doesn't stand to make a profit by bugging Apple or from any of the publicity this generates. Apple at the very minimum protects profit margins by not having to change processes. That's why it isn't enough for Apple to say "we do, not say" -- anybody can say that.
Intel and AMD (and two more companies, can't remember which) have cross-licensing agreements on x86 and derivative architectures that are so tangled that nobody can tell who owns what anymore. AFAIK, the current status is that either company is free to implement any instructions/extensions to x86 arch. (amd64 counts) that are created by the other company. The only restriction is that they can't use the same name for the new set. So EM64t should be 1:1 interchangeable with amd64 with possible some implementation-specific differences that would for the most part only affect the compiler teams.
i.e. this change probably causes work items for the compiler and hardware design teams, but isn't really a big/difficult change.
But a bigger question would be: why do it at all? From Apple's perspective they are far better off keeping out of the CPU business, keeping their platform amd64/em64t capable, and just using whichever processor/chipset/gpu combination rules the roost at any point in time.
and the rights stick around for a while so you're not constantly typing in passwords. http://www.sudo.ws/sudo/intro.html -- see the third bullet point. The sudo guys (wisely and honestly) acknowledge that this 'session' is basically a security risk for say, an unattended machine (there are other scenarios too, but this is the most obvious). They wisely left this timeout configurable so that the risk can be eliminated by setting it to zero. So UAC's lack of a 'session' isn't really a flaw - its good design.
Of course, its not wise to ever leave a machine unattended -- you should ideally lock it anytime you aren't using it. Which is why the password prompt in sudo is IMHO not really necessary. I think that confuses two different issues: Authentication vs. Elevation of Privileges. I can easily picture a scenario in which a command line utility/installer/something in linux shows you a fake sudo prompt, the result of which is that the malicious code now has your password. Even if an application tries to mimic a UAC prompt, clicking 'allow' on that prompt does nothing since it isn't the actual UAC prompt.
I'm sure there are scenarios I'm missing etc., but my point is just that I don't think UAC is all bad; it's just a victim of our perception that passwords are always necessary for security. I've been using Vista roughly since launch now, and I can't recall the last time I saw a UAC prompt. Basically when you setup a machine, it might take a couple of weeks before you've got everything just exactly the way you want it, and then after that UAC prompts are going to be very rare - I don't think the average user will really get conditioned to blindly hitting 'allow' each time.
DRM protection in itself won't tie the content to a platform. Previous links have already mentioned that BBC will make an OS-X player a priority. There's no technical reason why the same DRM scheme can't work on both (any/all) platforms.
/. to yell bloody murder at the very mention of DRM, but IMHO this isn't unreasonable on BBC's part.
Of course, I expect everyone on
Dude -- you know as well as anyone on
You know its a touchy topic when just two replies get modded 'funny'...
I definitely side with Gates on this. Let's be clear: the "I can't compete with someone from India earning 20% less even if I produce 5 times more" cliches don't apply here. Anyone who has interviewed at Microsoft (or Amazon/Google/Apple/Intel/...) knows that if you didn't get the job, well, money wasn't the reason -- all these companies live by the "we pay whatever it takes to hire the best" mantra, and do an extraordinary amount of recruiting. (There will be exceptions; job interviews aren't an exact science.)
Another thing he's said in the past (as near as I can remember it): Companies like MS, Google, Intel, have the entire world as their customer. They make many billions every year from sales outside the US. Considering that, its perfectly reasonable for them to have employees from all over the world as well. Just extend the basic diversity training you got at whichever company you work for: diversity at the workplace makes good business sense, and multi-national diversity is no exception. The revenue from international markets will far outweigh the payroll costs of their H1-B workforce.
In other words, the opportunity to do business across the globe comes with the responsibility of providing jobs for people across the globe.
If anything, he's been extremely consistent on the issue and he's got the guts to tell it like it is, however unpopular his viewpoint might be.