Yes, so clearly there are PC users who are cool (according to these ads).
"cool PC users" are like "fish out of water".
If I claim fish are water users and you point at a poor fish flopping around on land, about to expire, you can't legitimately say "clearly there are fish who are land users". That's absurd, the fish in question may in fact be on land, but it belongs in the water.
(yes I'm aware there are some fish that cope just fine on land... but those ones aren't flopping around in desperation, and I'm talking about one that is.)
That cool yoga instructor is our poor gasping fish; she's clearly not in her element. She may in fact be struggling to "use a PC", but she doesn't belong there, she belongs on a Mac. She's not any more a "PC user" than a gasping floundering fish is a "land creature".
She was a businesswoman and a yoga instructor who was frustrated with her computer, and the "entire message" was that she would be less frustrated if she had chosen to use a Mac.
Just as a gasping fish would be less frustrated if it was put into water, where it belonged.
On the contrary, I think the message of the ads are that no users are suited to Windows,
Sort of. The ads suggest that cheap-suit nerdy petty cubicle dwellers are suited to windows. But that effectively says to everyone individually that "YOU are not suited to windows" because no one is supposed to self-identify as a 'user suited to windows' by the above definition. So even if you you happen to be using windows, you aren't really a windows user, and that's why you are so miserable. You are a fish out of water, come in and swim free.
You sound like you're very sensitive about your choice in computers.
Not sure what that is supposed to mean.
Yeah, I guess it's true that *every* product is trying to create some kind of a subconscious association.
Many products don't try and link "be cool = use our products". Most Coke commercials for example, contrary to what you claimed, generally carry a different message. (The Polar Bear campaign, for example...) They are trying to build subconscious mental associations... but its not usualy "If you drink Coke, you'll be happy and cool and have lots of friends." (That would be true of Pepsi or most beer ads...)
And even of the companies that do link "cool = use our products" most most of them that do only do the positive half: "be cool/have fun = use our product"
Apple is one of the few that directly do the "be cool = use our product AND be lame = use other product" (Pepsi springs to mind, but that's about it)
On the other hand, it's very clear to anyone with even half a brain that the characters represent the computers themselves, and not the people using those computers.
I agree. The characters clearly represent the computers. However, I think its equally clear to anyone with half a brain that the stereotype extends to the users, and that you are supposed to think "I'm cool like Mac, I should use a Mac."
In the only depiction of a user I can think of, they have a yoga instructor being a dissatisfied PC user.
And? Clearly, according to the ad she was using the wrong type of computer. She was cool like a Mac, all flexible and colorful and free thinking -- she didn't belong in the world of cheap suits and cubicles and was unhappy there -- she should have been using a Mac. That was the entire message.
So no, the subtext isn't that PC users are uptight businessmen, but rather that Windows users are dissatisfied with their dysfunctional PCs....in large part because these Windows users aren't uptight businessmen; because these Windows users don't belong in cheap suits crammed into cubicles. They are like a fish out of water, they belong with Mac's, where things are open and colorful and fun.
I agree that the characters are clearly literally the computers not the users, but you'd have to be pretty close minded not to agree that the characters are also metaphor for the type of users suited to each OS too.
Right. John Hodgman does not represent a stereotypical PC user and Justin Long is not intended to represent a stereotypical Mac user. If you pay any attention to the ad, you'll realize that they represent personifications of a Mac and a PC. So that's why they say "I'm a Mac," and "I'm a PC."
Correct. But really, its almost an irrelevant distinction.
The message is one of association: "if you want to be cool and do cool things, use a cool computer like a Mac. If you want to be boring and inept and do boring and inept things use a PC."
And you take away the same stereotypes: cool people use macs, boring people use pcs.
I disagree. If Charlie Brown started repeatedly kicking Lucy in the head in a fit of long-suppressed rage, we might sympathize, but I'm guessing readership would probably drop off a bit.
Probably. But that's going psycho, not a 'bit of vindication'. I'm sure the readership would have appreciated a bit of irony... like if Charlie had put glue on the football so that Lucy couldn't let go of it, and then anticipating her jerking it out of the way, didn't commit to the kick.
Microsoft just failed on an epic scale. They didn't take the time to understand the Apple ads, so now they're lashing back at thin air.
And in my opinion Apple has failed on an epic scale too, by not understanding their own ads.
The purpose of John Hodgman was not to "stereotype" PC users. The purpose was to provide a boring image of PCs themselves through the comedy of John Hodgman. The idea was that the more artistic nature of Macs should appeal to users of all walks of life. Microsoft obviously didn't get that.
The trouble is Apple doesn't get it either. John Hodgman's "PC" over time has developed a sympathetic cachet; everyone I know loves the apple ads, but we are all rooting for the poor PC who just keeps taking the hits.
Mark my words: These ads will preach to the choir (the people who already hate the Mac commercials) but will do nothing to asuage those commericals. If anything, Microsoft has just drawn MORE attention to Apple.
To everyone that's already seen the Mac commercials but isn't a rabid fanboi. The new MS ad actually appeals to them, its a little vindication for 'poor PC'.
This case will almost certainly come to a question of "good faith registration," and the fact that the registrant registered a large number of likely Olympic sites followed by Olympic years
To me all that implies is that he evidently intended to run a site related to those olympics, and like the rest of us has no idea where the olympics will be. That's not bad faith; that's common sense.
The fact that he's used the particular pattern the olympics has favored recently is the ONLY issue. But, frankly I'm not satisfied that city-year as a PATTERN is specific enough to assert trademark over.
After all, Expo uses it too... Zaragoza2008.com, as does the Canadian Ultimate Championships (Calgary2008.com), as does the World Science Fiction Convention (Denver2008.com)...
Jakarta2008.com is being used for some massive religious convention...
Washington2008.com belongs to the Barack Obama campaign.
Plus the innumerable cities that own their own name-year domains that redirect to their page of current events. And nevermind the dogpile of domains used by those pointless advertising directories.
I just don't think the olympics can claim they own a trademark on the pattern here.
A message from gov.palin@yahoo.com to someone else in government might not raise any eyebrows unless they were really paying attention. Sending messages from gp44321@yahoo.com might.
Anyone can tell you that its often easiest to hide in plain sight, or to mix your lies with a bit of truth.
Perhaps, she found it convenient to have web-based email capabilities, just like everyone else in the world.
Yes, but she is the Governor of Alaska not a high school student.
When you are in a position of power and trust, you have a responsibility to put up with a bit of inconvenience in the name of security.
Lots of you here have to log in to our email through a VPN, or using one of those dongles that has passcode that changes every 30 seconds... do you really think someone at Palin's level is justified in using a Yahoo account to work around the inconvenience of accessing her secured official address?
But, if she is sending emails to them, then the emails are going into the public record, because they are going to an official server....
True.
But we can't retreive Palin correspondance except by looking it up by the address; if we don't know about an address we can't look it up.
But if I were to request everything sent to or from palin@alaska.gov I would not receive copies of anything to or from gov.palin@yahoo.ca. And so while it would be in the archive, I'd be unlikely to ever find it.
If I submit and FOIA request for all messages to or from palin@alaska.gov, messages to and from gov.palin@yahoo.com won't be returned to me. How am I supposed to know to ask for gov.palin@yahoo.ca?
If she were conducting government business between personal email accounts, there might be an issue.
True. That would be completely off the radar. That might be occurring as well. We don't really know what she sent from 'gov.palin@yahoo.com', we may never know.
It just doesn't hold that believing in some crazy religious BS entails being stupid in other areas.
Agreed. However, someone who believes the literal origin of man is in the bible is likely inclined its literal end is similiarly foretold. They also beleive God is very much an interventialist.
Such a person would be more inclined to think things ranging from 'God will intervene and shield me, his righteous soldier, from a retaliatory strike' to 'It is my manifest destiny to launch the apocalypse...' to 'this isn't how the world ends in the bible, so launching the nukes can't possibly bring about the end of the world.'
So far only two emails, some personal photos, a contact list and some inbox screenshots have been posted. Nothing incriminating.
Depends how you define "incriminating".
Work email goes to and from work accounts. Personal email goes to and from personal accounts. That's a policy common in corporations and in government, and is increasingly strictly adhered to the higher up the ranks you go.
As a member of public office, she is accountable to the public, and her email pertaining to her office is a matter of the public record, and subject to things like the Freedom-of-Information-Act (FOIA). Using a personal Yahoo account to conduct government business would be hugely inappropriate for a multitude of reasons; not least of which is undermines her accountability to FOIA.
In Palin's case its evident that a number of her contacts are @alaska.gov... meaning she was corresponding as 'personal palin' to other public officials using their office-accounts.
While perhaps not incriminating, it is hugely inappropriate. Either she was sending them personal messages -- which is inappropriate; she should have sent those to their personal accounts, or she was sending or receiving work related messages which is completely unacceptable.
Palin clearly didn't adhere to this separation of work and personal (hell, her "personal" account is 'gov.palin' which is itself inapprorpiate) and while I'm sure many many people are guilty of it, its still inappropriate, and most of us aren't angling to be 2nd in line to the presidency, so the scrutiny on her is warranted. It would be nice if we could unmask the other canditates personal accounts too, to have a more balanced exposee, but that's beside the point.
Yes but FPU functionality is a very desirable generic functionality that almost every application may need, because the FPU unlike the CPU is made to work with REAL numbers, the numbers real world uses.
I know what a floating point number is.;)
It is not like FPU is hardwired to operate some highly specialized pipeline and that only, the way modern GPUs are. Modern GPUs are like lollipop factories, churning out wrapped candy by billions, about as fast as you could ever do that with a machine, but that's all they can do as factories.
Not quite. 1) GPU's are becoming rather like generic processors. I'm sure you've heard of the folding@home GPU edition, or the mersenne prime GPU edition -- efforts to use the GPU for highly parallel processing. (And successful ones at that, often significantly faster than the CPU based versions.)
GPUs as they've advanced and become increasingly more programmable are useful for performing common and somewhat generic tasks; audio/video encoding/decoding, compression/decompression, encryption/decryption.
2) In the not too distant future EVERYONE will be running a fully 3d desktop environment; not in the literal sense where you can move around in it first-person style; but in the sense that the 2D desktop metaphor will be rendered as a 3d-space. We already see it now with windows that cast shadows and have transparency, you see it in OSX's expose where dragging a gadget causes ripples, or windows Vista's flip-3d task switcher, or Compiz's rotating cube to move between workspaces.
Some of this stuff is just gratuitous shiny eye-candy and ultimately distracting or ineffective, but over time we'll refine it, and get it to the point where its natural and clean and each effect genuinely enhances the usability of the OS.
OSX has already made video acceleration an official requirement of the OS. Vista is practically there. Linux will probably always have it as an "option", but the modern desktop environments will certainly use it.
An FPU is a calculator, and calculators are a pretty generic tool that is used in all natural sciences. An FPU is a necessity for any modern computer, because it is among the very few examples of GENERAL PURPOSE DEDICATED hardware.
A GPU is pretty well a necessity for any modern desktop computer too. A server can get away without one, but that's about it. But if GPUs get integrated into the CPU and software can use them easily using a consistent instruction set and can count on them being there, the then we'll see them get used for encryption/decryption and other tasks for which that sort of parallel architecture is suitable and they will be perhaps even more important on a server than on the desktop.
Which was, and is my point, its the one type of research the corporation can't afford: the type that isn't profitable: basic research.
I'm not arguing that drug companies are acting charitably, they aren't.
Of course.
But the way you stated it, it seems like tax payers are paying for most of the costs of drug development only to have big-pharma snatch up the almost finished product, patent it, and make huge profits. That simply isn't the case.
That's just it though, we don't "need" corporations to fund it, if we wanted to, the public COULD fund it; its not like the government is short on credit. Besides, in theory it wouldn't even cost anything because it actually is profitable and could at least pay for itself.
Thus there is NO type of research that only a corporation can afford, and at least one type of research a corporation can't afford. That's really ALL I'm saying.
How long has audio been around? Have you ever seen an audio chip integrated into the CPU? Most of them are done by onboard chips, not on the CPU.
They've moved from being standalone cards to being predominantly integrated into the mainboard and using the cpu for processing... rather like HSP modems, really.
Drug companies perform very careful risk assessment and only choose to do the R&D on drugs which have the very highest probability of success, or where a success will be most profitable. They are a business after all, first and foremost.
And at the end of the day, the sector is generally profitable.
The main aspect of a corporation is that it can take on larger scale projects, but they are still risk averse, and can't afford to research drugs that won't payoff. A drug that fails trials is the last thing a corporation wants.
Publicly funded research CAN afford to explore those avenues, and a drug that does 'bad things' is often as valuable as a success in terms of the general advance it represents in bio-chemistry, and may lead to something that does good things. The corps can't afford to do this, they only pick up the ball once a something with a high likelihood of good things has been identified.
Only the public is able to afford to sink money year after year, without producing something profitable to directly pay for it all.
No, that can't be it. Know why? Because...why would you put more processing and thus more heat in one place that already has problems with that?
You mean how floating point units used to in a separate coprocessor? Or how L2 cache used to be on external chips? (And in some cases was even upgradable.) Or how modems used to have their own signal processors? But now most use the CPU. Or how we're moving the memory controller into the CPU right now.
Hell, we've even stuck the majority of complete additional CPUs into the the CPU with our modern dual and quad core chips.
Apparently the author doesn't know much about computers.
Apparently you don't know much about computers either.
The entire history of the personal computer is been one long slide of functionality moving towards the CPU. Sure every now and then something new comes along being done by an add-on processor - like the numeric coprocessor for example.
Sure before the coprocessor you could accomplish the functionality of what a coprocessor does with an 'integer cpu', but a hardware optimized numerica coprocessor was a new feature, one that added tremendous floating point performance in dediated hardware. Within a couple CPU generations the coprocessor had been completely absorbed into the CPU.
The author is speculating that the GPU will see the same fate eventually. And he's probably right.
And why install an overkill graphics processing unit inside the processor if most people won't use it anyway?
Once upon a time people said that about numeric coprocessors. "Only a research scientist would need that!"
I really just take issue with the OP's comment that "corporations are a necessary evil because they are the only ones who can fund big R&D". They aren't the only ones. I'm not saying they are irrelevant. I agree if corporations weren't doing R&D, then total R&D would go down significantly.
I've seen a lot of people talk about how patents are bad for this and that, and I can't say I disagree, but no one I have ever seen commenting on it has ever presented any sort of reasonable model by which initial research costs can be recouped. And that is why both the companies and the political candidates support both patents and DRM. Its also why I cannot take calls for the end of patents as seriously as I would like to.
I think we need to abolish patents 'as we know them'.
Patent licenses should automatically be granted to anyone who wants them under some pricing model that is affected by:
1) The real cost of developing patent in that 'class of patent'. A patent medicine costs millions to bring through to successfully passing human trials, and must also cover all the medicines that failed to pass. The license to the patent -should- cost a significant amount until it expires. While the patent on a one-click online shopping cart or scroll-bar should be negligible to patent.
2) Whether or not the patent owner actually makes anything that uses the patent and whether what it makes is in the same market.
3) The price of the product or service that uses the patent. If I use your patent, and charge a gazillion bucks for it, you get a proportionally larger royalty. If I use your patent, and put it in OSS software that I distribute for free, you get nothing.
If your business model is based on developing and selling 'patented' algorithms and you fear competition from OSS, then, yes, patents won't help you keep out competition. Find a new business model.
But seriously, if you are delivering a software product with a polished interface, and bug free implementation, and you are continually improving it, you don't really have much to fear from OSS in the vast majority of situations. (And you still have copyright over your code.)
Granted, this amounts to artificial price regulation by government, but I don't have a problem with that since its regulating artificial monopolies that were granted by government in the first place.
As for DRM, it should be abolished. In a world where everyone can make copies for nothing, a business model designed to extract royalties where copies are made is as silly as trying to collect import duties and taxes at an arbitrary national border in a world where everyone can teleport.
Find another way, and change the business model charge for public performance/broadcasting rights, charge a bounty to create it/release it, charge for merchandise, charge for services to manage it or store it, or give you remote access to it, sell the rights to use it in video games and movies...
Oil drilling and extraction and production. Pharma research (take out profit motive for THAT and watch more garbage happen). Defense R&D (to a point). Growing food. Making stuff.
Oil drilling, extraction, and production, growng food, and making stuff aren't R&D.
Pharma research takes anything promising from publicly funded basic research and runs the last mile to a commericial product. (I'm not saying that last mile is 'cheap', but its not more expensive than the basic research they are building on.)
And defense R&D by corporations is almost directly funded by the public.
My point was that the public is on top. The public "can afford" research that even corporations can't. Its true that corporations can afford research that small businesses and individual can't.
You should look into Amazon's mp3 downloads. less than a buck a song, and totally DRM free. I get 99% of my music this way
As is 'itunes plus' music. I recognize that a minority of itms music is the drm free 'plus' kind, but still... I think its the direction even apple is moving. They have to.
Not only that, but there are certain types of R&D that only those "big heartless corporations" can afford to do
What type would that be? From what I've seen, the its the public that sits atop the research totem pole, funding the basic research that even corporations "can't afford".
Corporations can only "afford" to do the kind of R&D that's likely to lead directly to commercial products. Clearly the public can afford that kind of R&D. But its (seemingly) more efficient to let the corporations do it.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're afraid that you can't afford adequate health care for your children, you'll want socialized medicine.
Whereas if your a rich republican, you're afraid they will take some of your money to help care for poor children?? Oh the horror!!
Yes, so clearly there are PC users who are cool (according to these ads).
"cool PC users" are like "fish out of water".
If I claim fish are water users and you point at a poor fish flopping around on land, about to expire, you can't legitimately say "clearly there are fish who are land users". That's absurd, the fish in question may in fact be on land, but it belongs in the water.
(yes I'm aware there are some fish that cope just fine on land... but those ones aren't flopping around in desperation, and I'm talking about one that is.)
That cool yoga instructor is our poor gasping fish; she's clearly not in her element. She may in fact be struggling to "use a PC", but she doesn't belong there, she belongs on a Mac. She's not any more a "PC user" than a gasping floundering fish is a "land creature".
She was a businesswoman and a yoga instructor who was frustrated with her computer, and the "entire message" was that she would be less frustrated if she had chosen to use a Mac.
Just as a gasping fish would be less frustrated if it was put into water, where it belonged.
On the contrary, I think the message of the ads are that no users are suited to Windows,
Sort of. The ads suggest that cheap-suit nerdy petty cubicle dwellers are suited to windows. But that effectively says to everyone individually that "YOU are not suited to windows" because no one is supposed to self-identify as a 'user suited to windows' by the above definition. So even if you you happen to be using windows, you aren't really a windows user, and that's why you are so miserable. You are a fish out of water, come in and swim free.
You sound like you're very sensitive about your choice in computers.
Not sure what that is supposed to mean.
Yeah, I guess it's true that *every* product is trying to create some kind of a subconscious association.
Many products don't try and link "be cool = use our products". Most Coke commercials for example, contrary to what you claimed, generally carry a different message. (The Polar Bear campaign, for example...) They are trying to build subconscious mental associations... but its not usualy "If you drink Coke, you'll be happy and cool and have lots of friends." (That would be true of Pepsi or most beer ads...)
And even of the companies that do link "cool = use our products" most most of them that do only do the positive half: "be cool/have fun = use our product"
Apple is one of the few that directly do the "be cool = use our product AND be lame = use other product" (Pepsi springs to mind, but that's about it)
On the other hand, it's very clear to anyone with even half a brain that the characters represent the computers themselves, and not the people using those computers.
I agree. The characters clearly represent the computers. However, I think its equally clear to anyone with half a brain that the stereotype extends to the users, and that you are supposed to think "I'm cool like Mac, I should use a Mac."
In the only depiction of a user I can think of, they have a yoga instructor being a dissatisfied PC user.
And? Clearly, according to the ad she was using the wrong type of computer. She was cool like a Mac, all flexible and colorful and free thinking -- she didn't belong in the world of cheap suits and cubicles and was unhappy there -- she should have been using a Mac. That was the entire message.
So no, the subtext isn't that PC users are uptight businessmen, but rather that Windows users are dissatisfied with their dysfunctional PCs. ...in large part because these Windows users aren't uptight businessmen; because these Windows users don't belong in cheap suits crammed into cubicles. They are like a fish out of water, they belong with Mac's, where things are open and colorful and fun.
I agree that the characters are clearly literally the computers not the users, but you'd have to be pretty close minded not to agree that the characters are also metaphor for the type of users suited to each OS too.
Right. John Hodgman does not represent a stereotypical PC user and Justin Long is not intended to represent a stereotypical Mac user. If you pay any attention to the ad, you'll realize that they represent personifications of a Mac and a PC. So that's why they say "I'm a Mac," and "I'm a PC."
Correct. But really, its almost an irrelevant distinction.
The message is one of association: "if you want to be cool and do cool things, use a cool computer like a Mac. If you want to be boring and inept and do boring and inept things use a PC."
And you take away the same stereotypes: cool people use macs, boring people use pcs.
I disagree. If Charlie Brown started repeatedly kicking Lucy in the head in a fit of long-suppressed rage, we might sympathize, but I'm guessing readership would probably drop off a bit.
Probably. But that's going psycho, not a 'bit of vindication'. I'm sure the readership would have appreciated a bit of irony... like if Charlie had put glue on the football so that Lucy couldn't let go of it, and then anticipating her jerking it out of the way, didn't commit to the kick.
Microsoft just failed on an epic scale. They didn't take the time to understand the Apple ads, so now they're lashing back at thin air.
And in my opinion Apple has failed on an epic scale too, by not understanding their own ads.
The purpose of John Hodgman was not to "stereotype" PC users. The purpose was to provide a boring image of PCs themselves through the comedy of John Hodgman. The idea was that the more artistic nature of Macs should appeal to users of all walks of life. Microsoft obviously didn't get that.
The trouble is Apple doesn't get it either. John Hodgman's "PC" over time has developed a sympathetic cachet; everyone I know loves the apple ads, but we are all rooting for the poor PC who just keeps taking the hits.
Mark my words: These ads will preach to the choir (the people who already hate the Mac commercials) but will do nothing to asuage those commericals. If anything, Microsoft has just drawn MORE attention to Apple.
To everyone that's already seen the Mac commercials but isn't a rabid fanboi. The new MS ad actually appeals to them, its a little vindication for 'poor PC'.
Way to go, Microsoft.
Indeed.
This case will almost certainly come to a question of "good faith registration," and the fact that the registrant registered a large number of likely Olympic sites followed by Olympic years
To me all that implies is that he evidently intended to run a site related to those olympics, and like the rest of us has no idea where the olympics will be. That's not bad faith; that's common sense.
The fact that he's used the particular pattern the olympics has favored recently is the ONLY issue. But, frankly I'm not satisfied that city-year as a PATTERN is specific enough to assert trademark over.
After all, Expo uses it too... Zaragoza2008.com, as does the Canadian Ultimate Championships (Calgary2008.com), as does the World Science Fiction Convention (Denver2008.com)...
Jakarta2008.com is being used for some massive religious convention...
Washington2008.com belongs to the Barack Obama campaign.
Plus the innumerable cities that own their own name-year domains that redirect to their page of current events. And nevermind the dogpile of domains used by those pointless advertising directories.
I just don't think the olympics can claim they own a trademark on the pattern here.
Not necessarily.
A message from gov.palin@yahoo.com to someone else in government might not raise any eyebrows unless they were really paying attention. Sending messages from gp44321@yahoo.com might.
Anyone can tell you that its often easiest to hide in plain sight, or to mix your lies with a bit of truth.
Perhaps, she found it convenient to have web-based email capabilities, just like everyone else in the world.
Yes, but she is the Governor of Alaska not a high school student.
When you are in a position of power and trust, you have a responsibility to put up with a bit of inconvenience in the name of security.
Lots of you here have to log in to our email through a VPN, or using one of those dongles that has passcode that changes every 30 seconds... do you really think someone at Palin's level is justified in using a Yahoo account to work around the inconvenience of accessing her secured official address?
Sorry that's just absurd.
But, if she is sending emails to them, then the emails are going into the public record, because they are going to an official server.... True. But we can't retreive Palin correspondance except by looking it up by the address; if we don't know about an address we can't look it up. But if I were to request everything sent to or from palin@alaska.gov I would not receive copies of anything to or from gov.palin@yahoo.ca. And so while it would be in the archive, I'd be unlikely to ever find it.
FIOA is not undermined.
If I submit and FOIA request for all messages to or from palin@alaska.gov, messages to and from gov.palin@yahoo.com won't be returned to me. How am I supposed to know to ask for gov.palin@yahoo.ca?
If she were conducting government business between personal email accounts, there might be an issue.
True. That would be completely off the radar. That might be occurring as well. We don't really know what she sent from 'gov.palin@yahoo.com', we may never know.
It just doesn't hold that believing in some crazy religious BS entails being stupid in other areas.
Agreed. However, someone who believes the literal origin of man is in the bible is likely inclined its literal end is similiarly foretold. They also beleive God is very much an interventialist.
Such a person would be more inclined to think things ranging from 'God will intervene and shield me, his righteous soldier, from a retaliatory strike' to 'It is my manifest destiny to launch the apocalypse...' to 'this isn't how the world ends in the bible, so launching the nukes can't possibly bring about the end of the world.'
Holy shit. How you believe we originated really matters on whether you should have control of nuclear codes?
Presumably the connection is that a creationist clearly lacks even a modest helping of critical and independant thinking.
So far only two emails, some personal photos, a contact list and some inbox screenshots have been posted. Nothing incriminating.
Depends how you define "incriminating".
Work email goes to and from work accounts. Personal email goes to and from personal accounts. That's a policy common in corporations and in government, and is increasingly strictly adhered to the higher up the ranks you go.
As a member of public office, she is accountable to the public, and her email pertaining to her office is a matter of the public record, and subject to things like the Freedom-of-Information-Act (FOIA). Using a personal Yahoo account to conduct government business would be hugely inappropriate for a multitude of reasons; not least of which is undermines her accountability to FOIA.
In Palin's case its evident that a number of her contacts are @alaska.gov... meaning she was corresponding as 'personal palin' to other public officials using their office-accounts.
While perhaps not incriminating, it is hugely inappropriate. Either she was sending them personal messages -- which is inappropriate; she should have sent those to their personal accounts, or she was sending or receiving work related messages which is completely unacceptable.
Palin clearly didn't adhere to this separation of work and personal (hell, her "personal" account is 'gov.palin' which is itself inapprorpiate) and while I'm sure many many people are guilty of it, its still inappropriate, and most of us aren't angling to be 2nd in line to the presidency, so the scrutiny on her is warranted. It would be nice if we could unmask the other canditates personal accounts too, to have a more balanced exposee, but that's beside the point.
Yes but FPU functionality is a very desirable generic functionality that almost every application may need, because the FPU unlike the CPU is made to work with REAL numbers, the numbers real world uses.
I know what a floating point number is. ;)
It is not like FPU is hardwired to operate some highly specialized pipeline and that only, the way modern GPUs are. Modern GPUs are like lollipop factories, churning out wrapped candy by billions, about as fast as you could ever do that with a machine, but that's all they can do as factories.
Not quite.
1) GPU's are becoming rather like generic processors. I'm sure you've heard of the folding@home GPU edition, or the mersenne prime GPU edition -- efforts to use the GPU for highly parallel processing. (And successful ones at that, often significantly faster than the CPU based versions.)
GPUs as they've advanced and become increasingly more programmable are useful for performing common and somewhat generic tasks; audio/video encoding/decoding, compression/decompression, encryption/decryption.
2) In the not too distant future EVERYONE will be running a fully 3d desktop environment; not in the literal sense where you can move around in it first-person style; but in the sense that the 2D desktop metaphor will be rendered as a 3d-space. We already see it now with windows that cast shadows and have transparency, you see it in OSX's expose where dragging a gadget causes ripples, or windows Vista's flip-3d task switcher, or Compiz's rotating cube to move between workspaces.
Some of this stuff is just gratuitous shiny eye-candy and ultimately distracting or ineffective, but over time we'll refine it, and get it to the point where its natural and clean and each effect genuinely enhances the usability of the OS.
OSX has already made video acceleration an official requirement of the OS. Vista is practically there. Linux will probably always have it as an "option", but the modern desktop environments will certainly use it.
An FPU is a calculator, and calculators are a pretty generic tool that is used in all natural sciences. An FPU is a necessity for any modern computer, because it is among the very few examples of GENERAL PURPOSE DEDICATED hardware.
A GPU is pretty well a necessity for any modern desktop computer too. A server can get away without one, but that's about it. But if GPUs get integrated into the CPU and software can use them easily using a consistent instruction set and can count on them being there, the then we'll see them get used for encryption/decryption and other tasks for which that sort of parallel architecture is suitable and they will be perhaps even more important on a server than on the desktop.
Basic research is just the least profitable.
Which was, and is my point, its the one type of research the corporation can't afford: the type that isn't profitable: basic research.
I'm not arguing that drug companies are acting charitably, they aren't.
Of course.
But the way you stated it, it seems like tax payers are paying for most of the costs of drug development only to have big-pharma snatch up the almost finished product, patent it, and make huge profits. That simply isn't the case.
That's just it though, we don't "need" corporations to fund it, if we wanted to, the public COULD fund it; its not like the government is short on credit. Besides, in theory it wouldn't even cost anything because it actually is profitable and could at least pay for itself.
Thus there is NO type of research that only a corporation can afford, and at least one type of research a corporation can't afford. That's really ALL I'm saying.
How long has audio been around? Have you ever seen an audio chip integrated into the CPU? Most of them are done by onboard chips, not on the CPU.
They've moved from being standalone cards to being predominantly integrated into the mainboard and using the cpu for processing... rather like HSP modems, really.
I find that difficult to believe....
I don't dispute any of your figures.
But...
Drug companies perform very careful risk assessment and only choose to do the R&D on drugs which have the very highest probability of success, or where a success will be most profitable. They are a business after all, first and foremost.
And at the end of the day, the sector is generally profitable.
The main aspect of a corporation is that it can take on larger scale projects, but they are still risk averse, and can't afford to research drugs that won't payoff. A drug that fails trials is the last thing a corporation wants.
Publicly funded research CAN afford to explore those avenues, and a drug that does 'bad things' is often as valuable as a success in terms of the general advance it represents in bio-chemistry, and may lead to something that does good things. The corps can't afford to do this, they only pick up the ball once a something with a high likelihood of good things has been identified.
Only the public is able to afford to sink money year after year, without producing something profitable to directly pay for it all.
Anybody who uses LOL in a forum that doesn't limit responses to the length of a cellular text message is most certainly a loser.
lol, like wtf, and a few other related acronyms predate cellphone SMS, and go back to the inception of email, irc, muds, and newsgroups (usenet).
I don't have much patience for people who write:
wat r u doing? wil u plvl me?
but "lol" or "wtf" or "rtfm" or "lmao" etc don't get to me at all.
No, that can't be it. Know why? Because...why would you put more processing and thus more heat in one place that already has problems with that?
You mean how floating point units used to in a separate coprocessor?
Or how L2 cache used to be on external chips? (And in some cases was even upgradable.)
Or how modems used to have their own signal processors? But now most use the CPU.
Or how we're moving the memory controller into the CPU right now.
Hell, we've even stuck the majority of complete additional CPUs into the the CPU with our modern dual and quad core chips.
Apparently the author doesn't know much about computers.
Apparently you don't know much about computers either.
The entire history of the personal computer is been one long slide of functionality moving towards the CPU. Sure every now and then something new comes along being done by an add-on processor - like the numeric coprocessor for example.
Sure before the coprocessor you could accomplish the functionality of what a coprocessor does with an 'integer cpu', but a hardware optimized numerica coprocessor was a new feature, one that added tremendous floating point performance in dediated hardware. Within a couple CPU generations the coprocessor had been completely absorbed into the CPU.
The author is speculating that the GPU will see the same fate eventually. And he's probably right.
And why install an overkill graphics processing unit inside the processor if most people won't use it anyway?
Once upon a time people said that about numeric coprocessors. "Only a research scientist would need that!"
You may call that public, but its not really.
I really just take issue with the OP's comment that "corporations are a necessary evil because they are the only ones who can fund big R&D". They aren't the only ones. I'm not saying they are irrelevant. I agree if corporations weren't doing R&D, then total R&D would go down significantly.
I've seen a lot of people talk about how patents are bad for this and that, and I can't say I disagree, but no one I have ever seen commenting on it has ever presented any sort of reasonable model by which initial research costs can be recouped. And that is why both the companies and the political candidates support both patents and DRM. Its also why I cannot take calls for the end of patents as seriously as I would like to.
I think we need to abolish patents 'as we know them'.
Patent licenses should automatically be granted to anyone who wants them under some pricing model that is affected by:
1) The real cost of developing patent in that 'class of patent'. A patent medicine costs millions to bring through to successfully passing human trials, and must also cover all the medicines that failed to pass. The license to the patent -should- cost a significant amount until it expires. While the patent on a one-click online shopping cart or scroll-bar should be negligible to patent.
2) Whether or not the patent owner actually makes anything that uses the patent and whether what it makes is in the same market.
3) The price of the product or service that uses the patent. If I use your patent, and charge a gazillion bucks for it, you get a proportionally larger royalty. If I use your patent, and put it in OSS software that I distribute for free, you get nothing.
If your business model is based on developing and selling 'patented' algorithms and you fear competition from OSS, then, yes, patents won't help you keep out competition. Find a new business model.
But seriously, if you are delivering a software product with a polished interface, and bug free implementation, and you are continually improving it, you don't really have much to fear from OSS in the vast majority of situations. (And you still have copyright over your code.)
Granted, this amounts to artificial price regulation by government, but I don't have a problem with that since its regulating artificial monopolies that were granted by government in the first place.
As for DRM, it should be abolished. In a world where everyone can make copies for nothing, a business model designed to extract royalties where copies are made is as silly as trying to collect import duties and taxes at an arbitrary national border in a world where everyone can teleport.
Find another way, and change the business model charge for public performance/broadcasting rights, charge a bounty to create it/release it, charge for merchandise, charge for services to manage it or store it, or give you remote access to it, sell the rights to use it in video games and movies...
I seem to remember when itms came out with plus the songs were $1.29? More than the DRM encumbered music in any event.
You recall correctly. However, itms+ music is the same price as regular itms music now, and has been for almost a year now.
Oil drilling and extraction and production. Pharma research (take out profit motive for THAT and watch more garbage happen). Defense R&D (to a point). Growing food. Making stuff.
Oil drilling, extraction, and production, growng food, and making stuff aren't R&D.
Pharma research takes anything promising from publicly funded basic research and runs the last mile to a commericial product. (I'm not saying that last mile is 'cheap', but its not more expensive than the basic research they are building on.)
And defense R&D by corporations is almost directly funded by the public.
My point was that the public is on top. The public "can afford" research that even corporations can't. Its true that corporations can afford research that small businesses and individual can't.
You should look into Amazon's mp3 downloads. less than a buck a song, and totally DRM free. I get 99% of my music this way
As is 'itunes plus' music. I recognize that a minority of itms music is the drm free 'plus' kind, but still... I think its the direction even apple is moving. They have to.
Not only that, but there are certain types of R&D that only those "big heartless corporations" can afford to do
What type would that be? From what I've seen, the its the public that sits atop the research totem pole, funding the basic research that even corporations "can't afford".
Corporations can only "afford" to do the kind of R&D that's likely to lead directly to commercial products. Clearly the public can afford that kind of R&D. But its (seemingly) more efficient to let the corporations do it.