crossover office will run MS office, the Adobe creative suite, and so forth very, very well. I no longer use MS Office at all, but I do use Photoshop and Illustrator on occasion, and I use esword on Linux all the time. The only things I cannot run that I need on Linux are embroidery applications (need "real" USB support for the machine) and I cannot run some games. At the office I can't run Quickbooks on Linux.
Many proprietary commercial apps DO run on Linux through WINE or one of the commercial variants.
How the heck do they find volunteers for this kind of thing? Does it go like this:
"Hey kid, let us inject you with 'weak' HIV virus concoctions and then treat you to the hooker of your choice. Oh, and here's some heroin to shoot yourself up with. Have a blast!"
Seriously though; who the heck would willingly subject themselves to any strain of HIV? A vaccine is designed to give you a mild form of the disease that you're trying to prevent. A "mild" case of AIDS doesn't sound much better than a full-blown case - and what about that tiny percentage which already has a compromised immune system and develops the full-blown infection? This can and does happen with vaccines.
AIDS is relatively easy to prevent. Don't be a slut, don't do drugs, etc. and the chances of contracting it are miniscule. The only drawback to that (abstinence) is being a good samaritan is scary - if someone is in a bad car accident and you're trained in first aid, do you help or don't you? Your conscience says yes, but your self-preservation instincts kick in and you think to yourself "I wonder if this person has HIV or hepatitis." Oh and another one: what if your dentist or doctor or tattoo artist or hairdresser or whoever is infected? Vaccines are good for those situations I suppose, but is it worth the risk of a vaccine giving you the full-blown disease?
Most slashdotters won't have anything to worry about either way. Playing warcraft and evercrack while stuffing your cheese hole with doritos, cheetos, and coke all night every night is a great preventative measure against major HIV risk factors.;)
Starting with Vista, and continuing with Windows 7, the menu bar is going away," notes Mozilla in its plans for revamping the Firefox user interface. "[It will] be replaced with things like the Windows Explorer contextual strip,
Just what Firefox needs; a context-switching toolbar when the one context that's needed is web browsing!
Seriously though, if I had any say in the matter, I'd vote donotwant. It's unnecessary with the stock toolbar; I always want back, forward, home, stop, new tab, location, and search to be visible regardless of what might be displaying in the browser. I do not want to have to go digging for those. Also, I especially want the menubar to always, always, always display. I like English labels on features, not pictographs done by a non-artistic, nearly-autistic developer.
Now, when it comes to third-party toolbars it might make some sense, but again: I want the google toolbar to always be visible (I use google's bookmark feature rather than the browser's), and when I have the web developer toolbar enabled, I always want it visible, not buried somewhere.
Whenever I have to work at a Windows system and use MSIE, the first thing I do is hit alt, go into the options and turn the menus back on. Ditto for Windows Explorer.
The ribbon interface in Firefox is one of those things where it's not necessary; developers are doing it "because we can" and because it is always more fun to develop new features than it is to fix architectural issues. (Well, not always - I generally liked to dive in and track down difficult-to-reproduce-and-debug defects)
If you MUST put in a ribbon, at least make it optional. Disabling that shit will be the first thing I do when I deploy Firefox.
It was mechanically coupled to the styrofoam enclosure, so there is a good deal of surface area to respond to sound waves. Most of the sound at that altitude seems from the enclosure anyhow - that would be picked up by the non-isolated mic even in a vacuum with that setup.
Just in case anyone slamming Microsoft here doesn't know:
Tax avoidance = avoiding incurring tax liability. That is, conducting business in such a way that you legally AVOID doing things which result in taxable actions.
Tax evasion: incurring tax liability but hiding it or simply refusing to pay.
Examples:
Tax avoidance: you live in Massachusetts but drive to New Hampshire to purchase a nice shiny new 52" television or liquor for your party. You have legally avoided incurring tax liability on that purchase. MA would like to claim otherwise, but thankfully the Federal government has the sole right to regulate interstate commerce, not the state of Taxachusetts. You are engaging in tax avoidance, a lawful/legal activity.
Tax evasion: You own a business and have a resale certificate. You go to Costco or Micro Center IN-state and purchase a 52" flat screen TV for your home. You consume it yourself; you are not selling it or using it as a component in a manufactured product. You have incurred the legal liability to pay that tax but illegally used your resale certificate to get around paying the tax, and in your monthly/quarterly/etc. remission you do not state that liability and do not pay the 6.25% sales tax on that item. You are committing tax evasion, which is illegal.
Now, a lot of us here hate, hate, HATE Microsoft, mostly for how they engage in unethical business practices. However, tax avoidance is neither unethical nor is it illegal. Washington might try to claim otherwise but if they try to engage in interfering with interstate commerce they are overstepping their bounds and may find them running afoul of constitutional limits.
It not only can run Crysis, but it can run Crysis-on-Vista pretty well. with this supercomputer, maybe now 2009 can be the year Windows Vista will be ready for the desktop!
In the beginning, the earth was void of a good free hobbiest UNIX for homes. Having seen Minix and that it wouldn't fit, Linus didst declare "thy kernel shall be monolithic, and monolithic thy kernel shalt be" and his disciples didst rejoice, and sacrificed Microsoft Windows floppies on the altar.;)
Seriously though, if he is complaining about bloat in the kernel, it's his own fault; he had the opportunity to declare that Linux could be a microkernel and be far more modular but decided sticking with the monolithic design (with drivers optionally being modules) should be the way to go. If he thinks the kernel is bloated, perhaps it is time for him to acquiesce and schedule the Linux kernel to become a microkernel in 3.0.
They (macintoshes and the iPhone) ARE commodity goods. They are not works for hire; they are mass produced. Now, they're not "commodities" in the sense of trading on exchanges, but they are commodity goods in the legal sense, and when it comes to the first sale doctrine, copyright, and DMCA, that is the definition which matters. Sometimes words have multiple definitions, and you have to discern from the context which definition is being used.;)
if you want unbiased news check out a financial news source such as the wall street journal. Investors just want the facts and are not going to trust a source with a political bias in their reporting. Granted, you'll see only news which impacts economics, but at least you will see some objective reporting!
(...they took tethering away...) I don't think that this has as much to do with Apple as with AT&T, whose network is simply not up to the task of having computers downloading gigabytes of data through the iPhone. If the network is overloaded, it would impact normal iPhone users who don't care about tethering.
Go back and read the article on this a few days ago: this is the case with officially unlocked phones Apple sold that are not tied to any carrier, as well as carrier-locked phones. AT&T is not part of the equation on this situation. The fact is Apple sold the functionality, and then withdrew it. it is a bait & switch with the upgrade to 3.1. If it were such an issue, then they could have yanked tethering on a carrier-by-carrier basis, not for everyone. Apple is smart enough to code iTunes such that it knows an AT&T phone from a Mobisys phone from an officially-unlocked one. They could deliver the proper upgrades to the proper phones then everyone would be happy. It's the people who paid a premium for an unlocked phone and for those who have foreign carriers who allow tethering but can't be bothered to make the config files who are getting screwed on this. So for now at least, if you tether, locked or unlocked phone, you are best off either avoiding 3.1 or jailbreaking your phone, which is looking more and more like the more attractive option.
The key to success in the corporate world is NOT about high quality of work nor how much you produce. It is all about PERCEPTION.. How do people PERCEIVE your work and your productivity? You can be a slacker and come out head and shoulders above others when it comes to reviews and bonuses. You can do a lot of hard work, and shun socializing crap like company christmas parties, baseball game outings, etc. - just show up, do your job, maybe put in a few hours a week extra to get a jump on projects, but if you don't toot your own horn but have braggarts in your department who are slackers, they will come out ahead in terms of visibility.
Now, I HATE company christmas parties (I don't do christmas. I'm not a scrooge, I just don't think it's biblical or even noteworthy), and I HATE baseball outings (I don't care much for watching baseball), and I like to have a social life with friends, not sucking up at the office,
So the question is this: without your job revolving around work and making it your idol, how do you achieve visibility without sucking up? If you have leadership skills, take up a leadership role. This doesn't mean step on your boss's toes. This means when difficult problems come up (be it design, implementation, etc.) then volunteer to take the lead on it. Be active in organizing meetings, communicating between teams, and so forth. Use lunch to socialize with coworkers a couple of times a week. That way, your quality of work is perceived as good as it (presumably) is, and you'll even up or surpass the slackers who focus only on sucking up. The slackers are always discovered sooner or later. Sometimes sooner, sometimes later.Just make sure YOU do good work, and do what you can do toot your own horn without bragging, because the slackers are relying on ONLY that. If your boss doesn't perceive you are doing good work, then it doesn't matter what quality your output is; you may have well been doing nothing all year.
Only partially correct: They can only refuse to service those modified systems (they still have to honor warranties on the ignition module, or the A/C or radio for example), and they can only refuse service if those mods were DIRECTLY responsible for the failures. For example: by stroking the engine, the piston moves further (obviously) so if you put in a stroker crank and changed a non-interference engine into an interference engine, the timing belt snaps and the pistons hit the valves and trash the heads, they are not obligated to repair or replace the heads for you.
I currently own a Saab - I am going to be upgrading the turbocharger, intercooler dump valve, and ECM (mine is not an Aero, unfortunately so I need more than an ECM flash; I have the low-pressure turbo system). The Saab warranty will still be intact after I do so. In fact, there is a factory-authorised third-party upgrade vendor I can go to in order to have the OEM AND the upgrade parts honored by the Saab warranty. However, even if I go through a different third party supplier for the parts, the Saab warranty will remain in effect unless the third-party turbocharger is directly responsible for a failure in factory parts.
Because the iPhone has a closed marketplace. You can't buy the commodity good known as the iPhone and then go to say, Walmart or Newegg or Micro Center or Amazon to buy software for it. You can't even program your own software for it without buying signing rights from Apple. They have leveraged the product to TIE the store to the popularity of that market, and they are deciding what you and I can or cannot buy.
In addition, if you look back a few days, they took tethering away; one of the most heavily touted features on their web site, and in the last few days added fine print to the web site. Now, it's fine that they no longer wish to order it, but at the time of the 3.1 release they did not have that fine print. Even unlocked phones are having tethering removed for folks who are downloading the 3.1 update, all while Apple is touting the tethering feature. On top of that, they have been pretty heavily censoring a thread about that on their messageboard (I've had a post deleted twice now, and I've seen other messages from other posters disappear - the last time I reposted I promised to find other Apple-related sites to make more people aware of the issue).
In other words, Apple have been becoming increasingly abusive toward iPhone customers and developers alike since the iPhone gained critical mass. Blocking Google Voice isn't the only thing they're doing.
On the other hand, it's like they are saying "we've made enough money, let's give other, more open smartphone makers opportunity for huge profits." It's as if they want to give Android-based phones and the Palm Pre huge advantages in the market now. It's pretty darn nice of them, actually!;)
In my experience Core 2 Duo runtimes on notebooks are just fine unless doing something heavy like video transcoding, compiling, or watching movies on Linux. Doing things like impress slides, esword, etc. gives me 3-5 hours runtime. That's about what should be expected on a reasonable-weight 15" notebook with a real OS.
If you're getting short runtimes on a Core 2 notebook, either you're doing it wrong (trying to run heavy CPU-and-RAM-and-disk-intensive tasks), you don't have your notebook configured correctly (install any required drivers and enable speedstep), or your batteries are defective or worn out.
If you really need 4 cores and a long runtime, check out the Dell Precision line and buy a notebook that has an available "power slice" (external clip-on 12-cell battery - it clips on to the dock slots)
"Turbo Boost" brings back memories of the "turbo" button on old PC-AT clones; where the button was actually an under-clocking button, not a button to speed the processor up.
This feature has a really idiotic name. It sounds like it came straight out of really bad '80s television (Knight Rider) and is a term that would cater to the 12-year-old PC buying market. Last time I checked, 12-year-olds don't make many purchase decisions aside from maybe bubble gum and video games.
Anyway this feature seems to be the exact opposite of Speedstep. I wonder why they did it this way? It would be better if the high speed were the default speed, so that OS support for full processor speed would be present regardless of drivers, allowing the processor to be throttled most of the time when the "turbo boost[sic]" drivers are installed.
With the way this is implemented, I wonder how OS X, Linux, BSD, Haiku, and so forth will be affected. Will they be able to take advantage of the full speed of the processor as they are, or are kernel patches required across the board for this to happen? Is Windows gaining an unfair advantage here?
Back to the name: at least they didn't call it "wonder twins power" on the dual core models. "Turbo Boost" - it may be bad, but believe it or not, it could be worse!
FWIW, Turbochargers ARE superchargers; they are just turbine-driven. Turbine-driven superchargers are far more efficient than gear or belt-driven superchargers; they use waste energy to compress the air and aside from variable-vane/variable nozzle turbines, turbochargers' efficiency are usually confinued to a narrow exhaust CFM (in essence, RPM) range.
The reason "superchargers" (referring to mechanically-driven) are preferred for some applications is that they are directly coupled to the engine's speed, so there is no lag time. If a turbocharger were used in say, top fuel racing, the size requirements and the turbo lag would make turbochargers woefully impractical. With mechanically-driven superchargers the crew chief and engineers will know EXACTLY when boost will come on despite atmospheric pressure, temperature, and so forth, and there is near-zero lag. Also, the torque curve can be much broader/less peaky than a turbocharger.
They (mechanically-driven superchargers) are grossly inefficient because some superchargers used in, say, top fuel, require over 700hp just to turn them, but at the scale that those engines operate (over 6500hp now) 700hp isn't much of a concern. On the street is is a higher concern, such that some cars which have had superchargers over the years were actually clutched (such as the Mk1 MR2) so they weren't creating parasitic drag during normal driving conditions.
Turbochargers do not have much parasitic drag under normal driving conditions so they are more practical for the street since CAFE and emissions regulations are a concern. Also, there are some street-legal C4 and C5 Corvettes with 800-1200hp; what kind of supercharging do the highest-output tuner cars have? Turbochargers, be the cars from Lingenfelter, Hennessey, or some others. There are some other create tuners that do only mechanically-driven superchargers and the torque curve may come on much earlier, but on average their advertised peak power output is much lower.
That would be great because every track sold = publishing fees going to ASCAP. By people's not buying tracks because they cannot hear the sample first, they'll lose out on the publishing fees. Everybody wins!
Slashdot Mirror
crossover office will run MS office, the Adobe creative suite, and so forth very, very well. I no longer use MS Office at all, but I do use Photoshop and Illustrator on occasion, and I use esword on Linux all the time. The only things I cannot run that I need on Linux are embroidery applications (need "real" USB support for the machine) and I cannot run some games. At the office I can't run Quickbooks on Linux.
Many proprietary commercial apps DO run on Linux through WINE or one of the commercial variants.
How the heck do they find volunteers for this kind of thing? Does it go like this:
"Hey kid, let us inject you with 'weak' HIV virus concoctions and then treat you to the hooker of your choice. Oh, and here's some heroin to shoot yourself up with. Have a blast!"
Seriously though; who the heck would willingly subject themselves to any strain of HIV? A vaccine is designed to give you a mild form of the disease that you're trying to prevent. A "mild" case of AIDS doesn't sound much better than a full-blown case - and what about that tiny percentage which already has a compromised immune system and develops the full-blown infection? This can and does happen with vaccines.
AIDS is relatively easy to prevent. Don't be a slut, don't do drugs, etc. and the chances of contracting it are miniscule. The only drawback to that (abstinence) is being a good samaritan is scary - if someone is in a bad car accident and you're trained in first aid, do you help or don't you? Your conscience says yes, but your self-preservation instincts kick in and you think to yourself "I wonder if this person has HIV or hepatitis." Oh and another one: what if your dentist or doctor or tattoo artist or hairdresser or whoever is infected? Vaccines are good for those situations I suppose, but is it worth the risk of a vaccine giving you the full-blown disease?
Most slashdotters won't have anything to worry about either way. Playing warcraft and evercrack while stuffing your cheese hole with doritos, cheetos, and coke all night every night is a great preventative measure against major HIV risk factors. ;)
. . . which is why one should run Firefox, konqueror, Mozilla, or Opera on Linux, Solaris, or BSD instead.
Just what Firefox needs; a context-switching toolbar when the one context that's needed is web browsing!
Seriously though, if I had any say in the matter, I'd vote donotwant. It's unnecessary with the stock toolbar; I always want back, forward, home, stop, new tab, location, and search to be visible regardless of what might be displaying in the browser. I do not want to have to go digging for those. Also, I especially want the menubar to always, always, always display. I like English labels on features, not pictographs done by a non-artistic, nearly-autistic developer.
Now, when it comes to third-party toolbars it might make some sense, but again: I want the google toolbar to always be visible (I use google's bookmark feature rather than the browser's), and when I have the web developer toolbar enabled, I always want it visible, not buried somewhere.
Whenever I have to work at a Windows system and use MSIE, the first thing I do is hit alt, go into the options and turn the menus back on. Ditto for Windows Explorer.
The ribbon interface in Firefox is one of those things where it's not necessary; developers are doing it "because we can" and because it is always more fun to develop new features than it is to fix architectural issues. (Well, not always - I generally liked to dive in and track down difficult-to-reproduce-and-debug defects)
If you MUST put in a ribbon, at least make it optional. Disabling that shit will be the first thing I do when I deploy Firefox.
It was mechanically coupled to the styrofoam enclosure, so there is a good deal of surface area to respond to sound waves. Most of the sound at that altitude seems from the enclosure anyhow - that would be picked up by the non-isolated mic even in a vacuum with that setup.
Just in case anyone slamming Microsoft here doesn't know:
Tax avoidance = avoiding incurring tax liability. That is, conducting business in such a way that you legally AVOID doing things which result in taxable actions.
Tax evasion: incurring tax liability but hiding it or simply refusing to pay.
Examples:
Tax avoidance: you live in Massachusetts but drive to New Hampshire to purchase a nice shiny new 52" television or liquor for your party. You have legally avoided incurring tax liability on that purchase. MA would like to claim otherwise, but thankfully the Federal government has the sole right to regulate interstate commerce, not the state of Taxachusetts. You are engaging in tax avoidance, a lawful/legal activity.
Tax evasion: You own a business and have a resale certificate. You go to Costco or Micro Center IN-state and purchase a 52" flat screen TV for your home. You consume it yourself; you are not selling it or using it as a component in a manufactured product. You have incurred the legal liability to pay that tax but illegally used your resale certificate to get around paying the tax, and in your monthly/quarterly/etc. remission you do not state that liability and do not pay the 6.25% sales tax on that item. You are committing tax evasion, which is illegal.
Now, a lot of us here hate, hate, HATE Microsoft, mostly for how they engage in unethical business practices. However, tax avoidance is neither unethical nor is it illegal. Washington might try to claim otherwise but if they try to engage in interfering with interstate commerce they are overstepping their bounds and may find them running afoul of constitutional limits.
It not only can run Crysis, but it can run Crysis-on-Vista pretty well. with this supercomputer, maybe now 2009 can be the year Windows Vista will be ready for the desktop!
Without drivers a system isn't very useful.
In the beginning, the earth was void of a good free hobbiest UNIX for homes. Having seen Minix and that it wouldn't fit, Linus didst declare "thy kernel shall be monolithic, and monolithic thy kernel shalt be" and his disciples didst rejoice, and sacrificed Microsoft Windows floppies on the altar. ;)
Seriously though, if he is complaining about bloat in the kernel, it's his own fault; he had the opportunity to declare that Linux could be a microkernel and be far more modular but decided sticking with the monolithic design (with drivers optionally being modules) should be the way to go. If he thinks the kernel is bloated, perhaps it is time for him to acquiesce and schedule the Linux kernel to become a microkernel in 3.0.
http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10246&cs_id=1024603
http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10246&cs_id=1024604
They (macintoshes and the iPhone) ARE commodity goods. They are not works for hire; they are mass produced. Now, they're not "commodities" in the sense of trading on exchanges, but they are commodity goods in the legal sense, and when it comes to the first sale doctrine, copyright, and DMCA, that is the definition which matters. Sometimes words have multiple definitions, and you have to discern from the context which definition is being used. ;)
Perhaps but Hebrew calligraphy is beautiful! :)
if you want unbiased news check out a financial news source such as the wall street journal. Investors just want the facts and are not going to trust a source with a political bias in their reporting. Granted, you'll see only news which impacts economics, but at least you will see some objective reporting!
Easy solution: if you're left handed, write in an RTL language such as Hebrew, then you can use your fountain pen. Problem solved! ;)
(...they took tethering away...)
I don't think that this has as much to do with Apple as with AT&T, whose network is simply not up to the task of having computers downloading gigabytes of data through the iPhone. If the network is overloaded, it would impact normal iPhone users who don't care about tethering.
Go back and read the article on this a few days ago: this is the case with officially unlocked phones Apple sold that are not tied to any carrier, as well as carrier-locked phones. AT&T is not part of the equation on this situation. The fact is Apple sold the functionality, and then withdrew it. it is a bait & switch with the upgrade to 3.1. If it were such an issue, then they could have yanked tethering on a carrier-by-carrier basis, not for everyone. Apple is smart enough to code iTunes such that it knows an AT&T phone from a Mobisys phone from an officially-unlocked one. They could deliver the proper upgrades to the proper phones then everyone would be happy. It's the people who paid a premium for an unlocked phone and for those who have foreign carriers who allow tethering but can't be bothered to make the config files who are getting screwed on this. So for now at least, if you tether, locked or unlocked phone, you are best off either avoiding 3.1 or jailbreaking your phone, which is looking more and more like the more attractive option.
The key to success in the corporate world is NOT about high quality of work nor how much you produce. It is all about PERCEPTION.. How do people PERCEIVE your work and your productivity? You can be a slacker and come out head and shoulders above others when it comes to reviews and bonuses. You can do a lot of hard work, and shun socializing crap like company christmas parties, baseball game outings, etc. - just show up, do your job, maybe put in a few hours a week extra to get a jump on projects, but if you don't toot your own horn but have braggarts in your department who are slackers, they will come out ahead in terms of visibility.
Now, I HATE company christmas parties (I don't do christmas. I'm not a scrooge, I just don't think it's biblical or even noteworthy), and I HATE baseball outings (I don't care much for watching baseball), and I like to have a social life with friends, not sucking up at the office,
So the question is this: without your job revolving around work and making it your idol, how do you achieve visibility without sucking up? If you have leadership skills, take up a leadership role. This doesn't mean step on your boss's toes. This means when difficult problems come up (be it design, implementation, etc.) then volunteer to take the lead on it. Be active in organizing meetings, communicating between teams, and so forth. Use lunch to socialize with coworkers a couple of times a week. That way, your quality of work is perceived as good as it (presumably) is, and you'll even up or surpass the slackers who focus only on sucking up. The slackers are always discovered sooner or later. Sometimes sooner, sometimes later.Just make sure YOU do good work, and do what you can do toot your own horn without bragging, because the slackers are relying on ONLY that. If your boss doesn't perceive you are doing good work, then it doesn't matter what quality your output is; you may have well been doing nothing all year.
Only partially correct: They can only refuse to service those modified systems (they still have to honor warranties on the ignition module, or the A/C or radio for example), and they can only refuse service if those mods were DIRECTLY responsible for the failures. For example: by stroking the engine, the piston moves further (obviously) so if you put in a stroker crank and changed a non-interference engine into an interference engine, the timing belt snaps and the pistons hit the valves and trash the heads, they are not obligated to repair or replace the heads for you.
I currently own a Saab - I am going to be upgrading the turbocharger, intercooler dump valve, and ECM (mine is not an Aero, unfortunately so I need more than an ECM flash; I have the low-pressure turbo system). The Saab warranty will still be intact after I do so. In fact, there is a factory-authorised third-party upgrade vendor I can go to in order to have the OEM AND the upgrade parts honored by the Saab warranty. However, even if I go through a different third party supplier for the parts, the Saab warranty will remain in effect unless the third-party turbocharger is directly responsible for a failure in factory parts.
and yet, Apple likes to tie users down. So, I guess is Apple is purely dominant in BDSM situations? ;)
Why?
Because the iPhone has a closed marketplace. You can't buy the commodity good known as the iPhone and then go to say, Walmart or Newegg or Micro Center or Amazon to buy software for it. You can't even program your own software for it without buying signing rights from Apple. They have leveraged the product to TIE the store to the popularity of that market, and they are deciding what you and I can or cannot buy.
In addition, if you look back a few days, they took tethering away; one of the most heavily touted features on their web site, and in the last few days added fine print to the web site. Now, it's fine that they no longer wish to order it, but at the time of the 3.1 release they did not have that fine print. Even unlocked phones are having tethering removed for folks who are downloading the 3.1 update, all while Apple is touting the tethering feature. On top of that, they have been pretty heavily censoring a thread about that on their messageboard (I've had a post deleted twice now, and I've seen other messages from other posters disappear - the last time I reposted I promised to find other Apple-related sites to make more people aware of the issue).
In other words, Apple have been becoming increasingly abusive toward iPhone customers and developers alike since the iPhone gained critical mass. Blocking Google Voice isn't the only thing they're doing.
On the other hand, it's like they are saying "we've made enough money, let's give other, more open smartphone makers opportunity for huge profits." It's as if they want to give Android-based phones and the Palm Pre huge advantages in the market now. It's pretty darn nice of them, actually! ;)
In my experience Core 2 Duo runtimes on notebooks are just fine unless doing something heavy like video transcoding, compiling, or watching movies on Linux. Doing things like impress slides, esword, etc. gives me 3-5 hours runtime. That's about what should be expected on a reasonable-weight 15" notebook with a real OS.
If you're getting short runtimes on a Core 2 notebook, either you're doing it wrong (trying to run heavy CPU-and-RAM-and-disk-intensive tasks), you don't have your notebook configured correctly (install any required drivers and enable speedstep), or your batteries are defective or worn out.
If you really need 4 cores and a long runtime, check out the Dell Precision line and buy a notebook that has an available "power slice" (external clip-on 12-cell battery - it clips on to the dock slots)
"Turbo Boost" brings back memories of the "turbo" button on old PC-AT clones; where the button was actually an under-clocking button, not a button to speed the processor up.
This feature has a really idiotic name. It sounds like it came straight out of really bad '80s television (Knight Rider) and is a term that would cater to the 12-year-old PC buying market. Last time I checked, 12-year-olds don't make many purchase decisions aside from maybe bubble gum and video games.
Anyway this feature seems to be the exact opposite of Speedstep. I wonder why they did it this way? It would be better if the high speed were the default speed, so that OS support for full processor speed would be present regardless of drivers, allowing the processor to be throttled most of the time when the "turbo boost[sic]" drivers are installed.
With the way this is implemented, I wonder how OS X, Linux, BSD, Haiku, and so forth will be affected. Will they be able to take advantage of the full speed of the processor as they are, or are kernel patches required across the board for this to happen? Is Windows gaining an unfair advantage here?
Back to the name: at least they didn't call it "wonder twins power" on the dual core models. "Turbo Boost" - it may be bad, but believe it or not, it could be worse!
Does the Linux kernel support this yet?
FWIW, Turbochargers ARE superchargers; they are just turbine-driven. Turbine-driven superchargers are far more efficient than gear or belt-driven superchargers; they use waste energy to compress the air and aside from variable-vane/variable nozzle turbines, turbochargers' efficiency are usually confinued to a narrow exhaust CFM (in essence, RPM) range.
The reason "superchargers" (referring to mechanically-driven) are preferred for some applications is that they are directly coupled to the engine's speed, so there is no lag time. If a turbocharger were used in say, top fuel racing, the size requirements and the turbo lag would make turbochargers woefully impractical. With mechanically-driven superchargers the crew chief and engineers will know EXACTLY when boost will come on despite atmospheric pressure, temperature, and so forth, and there is near-zero lag. Also, the torque curve can be much broader/less peaky than a turbocharger.
They (mechanically-driven superchargers) are grossly inefficient because some superchargers used in, say, top fuel, require over 700hp just to turn them, but at the scale that those engines operate (over 6500hp now) 700hp isn't much of a concern. On the street is is a higher concern, such that some cars which have had superchargers over the years were actually clutched (such as the Mk1 MR2) so they weren't creating parasitic drag during normal driving conditions.
Turbochargers do not have much parasitic drag under normal driving conditions so they are more practical for the street since CAFE and emissions regulations are a concern. Also, there are some street-legal C4 and C5 Corvettes with 800-1200hp; what kind of supercharging do the highest-output tuner cars have? Turbochargers, be the cars from Lingenfelter, Hennessey, or some others. There are some other create tuners that do only mechanically-driven superchargers and the torque curve may come on much earlier, but on average their advertised peak power output is much lower.
That would be great because every track sold = publishing fees going to ASCAP. By people's not buying tracks because they cannot hear the sample first, they'll lose out on the publishing fees. Everybody wins!