At no time did Steve or any other Apple representative suggest which models would be available with Intel processors first. Watch the Keynote.
There have been rumors to that effect, practically since the beginning. Obviously, the focus on "low power" suggests laptops and small-form-factor machines like the Mini, and the relative strength of the G5 compared to the G4 suggests G4-based models would be replaced first. But never have any public announcements or statements from Apple corroborated this.
The student allegedly called the professor a "cockmaster" and posited that he would be better suited to teaching infants and children. That isn't libel. It's one disgruntled student's opinion.
If I were to publish a blog in which I wrote, "Professor John Smith has absolutely no teaching ability whatsoever" I would be expressing a personal opinion.
On the other hand, if I were to write "Professor John Smith has falsified his teaching credentials" then I am making an allegation. The difference here is that I have made a specific charge which, if true, would significantly affect the professor's standing and livelihood.
Legally speaking, libel must almost always be an allegation of fact. Opinions, however audacious or critical they may be, are not libelous and are protected speech. Calling a man a "cockmaster" does not constitute a libelous allegation.
Answer me this: If fleet sales are so profitable, then why don't the import manufacturers try for a piece of the action? Toyota, Honda, Hyundai etc. aren't exactly shy when it comes to entering market segments. If there was even a slight chance that a profit could be made in the market for fleet vehicles, the Japanese and Koreans would be all over them.
GM, Ford, and Chrysler sell to fleets largely to get rid of surpluses. All of the domestic car companies have excess production capacity; hence the recent plant closing announcements. Fleet sales are a quick way to get large quantities of stale inventory off of the books. Governments and rental car agencies buy from the lowest bidder, and the lowest bidder is whichever company is most desperate to clear out its channel.
1. Free Markets vs. Socialism is not a binary choice anywhere except economics textbooks.
2. I wouldn't mind at all if the pace of hardware improvement slowed down a bit. It might keep software bloat in check for once, and it would certainly reduce the amount I have to spend to keep my hardware current.
3. "poorer people that are able to afford more goods and live better lives because they can afford cheaper goods." Because quality of life is directly proportional to goods consumed?
Car makers would manufacture only for fleet buyers. Arms manufacturers would only market to military sales. Food processing plants would only sell to volume buyers (fast food chains, etc..) Toy and clothes manufactureres would only sell to Wal Mart.
Honda-Acura, BMW, VW-Audi, Toyota-Lexus, and virtually all "import" automobile manufacturers, do not have a fleet sales program. On the other hand, GM and Ford, which sell 1/3 or more of their production to fleet customers, are in the midst of major financial crises.
Fast food outlets do big business in ground beef, chicken breasts, processed cheese, Iceberg lettuce, and potatoes. That's pretty much all they buy. Stroll the aisles of a grocer (or better yet, a Whole Foods type place) and you'll find half the shelves are full of foods made exclusively for retail.
Most "big name" clothing producers simply do not do business with Wal-Mart, due to the price pressures that would involve, and the resulting degradation of their premium brands. They prefer to sell to upscale department stores, or in their own retail stores and catalogs.
Selling your product in bulk is beneficial only in a commodity market. It drives down profit margins and favors efficient production with minimal emphasis on product development or marketing. In the computer market, Dell is the darling of the corporate world, but Apple and Sony sell almost exclusively to the home PC market.
The Russian space tourism program is not commercial at all.
If anything, it's a system of legal bribery: an individual gives money to a government to receive special treatment that is not offered to ordinary citizens.
And as another poster said, Virgin Galactic, which is an actual commercial venture, will be launching from New Mexico, USA. Which would put it squarely within the jurisdiction of the FAA.
There was a time, many years ago, when "Beta" versions were exclusively for internal testing.
"Alpha" versions were builds created for professional testers, who would formally evaluate the software against the criteria for which it was developed.
"Beta" builds were tested by a pre-selected group of end users who were deemed representative of the user base.
Microsoft first came up with the idea of selling beta versions, and the idea has caught on to the point where ordinary end users regularly accept beta software. (Half of Google's products are supposedly beta-versions.) At one time, the idea of using beta software on a production machine was unheard of. Perhaps in another decade or so, people such as yourself will be running totally untested alpha versions routinely.
HD-DVD discs will contain the HD data but they will also contain the non HD dvd which older players will still read as a normal DVD, so no one is forced to upgrade hardware.
This is not necessarily true. HD-DVD can support dual-sided (SD on one side, HD on the obverse) discs, but this is not inherent in the spec (and would significantly increase the cost of producing a disc, which is supposedly the big advantage of HD-DVD over BluRay.)
One Blu-Ray manufacturer also developed a hybrid BluRay disc that will have another layer (same side) playable on SD players. So far, this is not in the BluRay spec, either.
I have a huge DVD collection and I want complete backwards compatibility dammit! (and playing my old dvds on a bluray player isnt backwards compatible, i want to continue buying movies in whatever format and not have to buy new hardware)
The BluRay backers "recommend" that all BluRay players be made backward-compatible with ordinary DVDs. The products available so far (in Japan) are DVD-compatible.
Broderbund and Software MacKiev have quite a bit of fairly good quality children's software for the Mac. (KidPix 3X is a gem.) You can occasionally turn up something else on Amazon as well. As a last resort, choose "Mac OS X Software" from the Apple menu; Apple's own database is sometimes out of date and doesn't distinguish marketing hype froom reality.
Someone else mentioned Versiontracker and MacUpdate, the major Mac shareware sites. Shareware was never unique to DOS or Windows. CompuServe and many BBS's had Mac shareware areas, too.
And it never hurts to Google for "mac WindowsSoftwareTitle"; you may not find an actual Mac version, but you just might find an equivalent.
No, the quantity will never match that of The Dominant Platform, but the quality is often as good or better than anything for Windows. The developers that do target the Mac are usually more established players with offerings that have proven themselves in the marketplace. Mac users aren't tolerant of low-quality ports; Microsoft learned this the hard way a few years back. I'm not sure I'd want hordes of Visual Basic programmers rushing into the Mac marketplace; it would probably result in a lot of disappointed users and almost as many disappointed developers. Writing Mac software that is successful requires a lot of attention; many popular Windows titles (WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 in the early '90s, CorelDraw more recently) flopped on the Mac.
Well there isn't, officially...it's still in beta.
No, not Google Beta(TM) , but real, still-experimental, not-yet-stable, we'll-release-it-when-we're-done-with-it beta. Some people appear to have violated an NDA, but there really is a version of Google Earth for Mac floating around. Whether or not it's wise to run it is up to you.
It's not Apple Computer, Sun Microsystems, or Novell that I feel sorry for when I decry Microsoft's practices.
I pity the consumers who have so little choice in the market as a result of Microsoft's scorched-earth business practices. The millions of people who feel its perfectly normal to have to run antivirus and antispyware software twice a week. Who are "locked in" to proprietary formats. Who are, as a result of questionable practices, left with almost no say in who gets their software dollars.
It is possible to do right by your shareholders and customers at the same time.
Only very recently has Apple's "resurgence" manifested itself in higher-than-market sales growth. The Ars article apparently doesn't include that data.
I'm oversimplifying and I know it, but in that case you could store six times as much error-correcting information in the same physical space. (Or the ultimate form of error correction...six copies of every bit, arranged in different regions around the disk.)
The strange thing is, since the mid-1970s, both Japan and Germany--the nations most heavily and thoroughly devastated by the war-- have been major economic powers, especially in manufacturing. They were able to achieve this because they were able to rebuild their manufacturing base "from scratch" after WWII (with no small amount of initial help from the US.)
One of the things that war does is wipe the slate clean. Many cities have arguably benefitted from being destroyed by fire and having to be rebuilt. (Including accidental fires (Chicago, 1871) and natural disasters (San Francisco, 1906) The initial setback is eventually surpassed by the modern infrastructure built afterward.
'The week after next we will meet Sony's Stringer and we will [shake hands and] look down and see if he surreptitiously sticks something up our asses.' - Bill Gates
The problem is, greater demand for software won't necessarily translate into more software jobs. Even if the number of internet users were to double in the next year, the software they'd need can be created simply by stamping out more CDs. Unlike transportation, medicine, manufacturing...virtually any other industry...increased demand for software can be met with little need for an increased headcount.
With regards to the downturn...its unlikely that there will be a big hiring boom anytime soon. Experienced professionals can find work, but good luck getting a job fresh out of college. If you have student loans to pay off, you may find yourself in a tight spot.
Except for the "Slashdot crowd," portable music devices are iPods. People who don't have computers know what iPods are. To most people, "MP3 player" sounds like a genericism, like "correction fluid" or "polystyrene foam."
Left a job six months ago, and my access still hasn't been cut off. (I know this because my eMail client on my home machine still checks that account, because I'm too lazy to turn it off, and the connection still goes through every time. I've even gotten a few send-to-everyone memos from the place.)
It was an amicable split on both sides, and I still have friends there. My position wasn't exactly security-sensitive. I'm not exactly sure what damage I could possibly do, if I were so inclined. Probably nothing more than deleting files I'd worked on, most of which could probably be restored from backup if anyone cared.
This reminds me of the 80's when everyone was saying how bad butter is, and to switch to margarine or die of a heart attack. 10 years later, researchers said margarine is unhealthy and butter is better
Actually, nobody ever said that butter is better for you than margarine. It went something like this:
Scientist: We've discovered that margarine contains a type of fat which makes it less healthy than previously thought. It mimics the effects of the saturated fat in butter. For optimal nutrition, people should strive to reduce the amount of margarine or butter in their diets.
Press Release: Margarine almost as bad as butter!
Media: Margarine bad! Butter good!
The egg-cholesterol thing was pretty much the same thing.
Moral: Be glad your grandma doesn't distribute her advice through press releases and the mainstream media.
Why does it have to be magical?
on
Antispyware Shootout
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Why does there have to be some "magical" (or technically rigorous) reason for the lack of malware on Unix-type systems?
There is a certain myopia among technically-minded individuals that makes it seem that only a technical solution can solve a technical problem. This is not necessarily the case. Moving to a Unix-type system is the electronic equivalent of moving from a blighted inner-city ghetto to an upperclass suburban neighborhood. There's no technical reason why it should be any safer or cleaner--but it is. You might think that this is a "head in the sand" approach. But as far as I'm concerned, it's taking advantage of reality.
Slashdot Mirror
At no time did Steve or any other Apple representative suggest which models would be available with Intel processors first. Watch the Keynote.
There have been rumors to that effect, practically since the beginning. Obviously, the focus on "low power" suggests laptops and small-form-factor machines like the Mini, and the relative strength of the G5 compared to the G4 suggests G4-based models would be replaced first. But never have any public announcements or statements from Apple corroborated this.
The student allegedly called the professor a "cockmaster" and posited that he would be better suited to teaching infants and children. That isn't libel. It's one disgruntled student's opinion.
If I were to publish a blog in which I wrote, "Professor John Smith has absolutely no teaching ability whatsoever" I would be expressing a personal opinion.
On the other hand, if I were to write "Professor John Smith has falsified his teaching credentials" then I am making an allegation. The difference here is that I have made a specific charge which, if true, would significantly affect the professor's standing and livelihood.
Legally speaking, libel must almost always be an allegation of fact. Opinions, however audacious or critical they may be, are not libelous and are protected speech. Calling a man a "cockmaster" does not constitute a libelous allegation.
Answer me this: If fleet sales are so profitable, then why don't the import manufacturers try for a piece of the action? Toyota, Honda, Hyundai etc. aren't exactly shy when it comes to entering market segments. If there was even a slight chance that a profit could be made in the market for fleet vehicles, the Japanese and Koreans would be all over them.
GM, Ford, and Chrysler sell to fleets largely to get rid of surpluses. All of the domestic car companies have excess production capacity; hence the recent plant closing announcements. Fleet sales are a quick way to get large quantities of stale inventory off of the books. Governments and rental car agencies buy from the lowest bidder, and the lowest bidder is whichever company is most desperate to clear out its channel.
1. Free Markets vs. Socialism is not a binary choice anywhere except economics textbooks.
2. I wouldn't mind at all if the pace of hardware improvement slowed down a bit. It might keep software bloat in check for once, and it would certainly reduce the amount I have to spend to keep my hardware current.
3. "poorer people that are able to afford more goods and live better lives because they can afford cheaper goods." Because quality of life is directly proportional to goods consumed?
Car makers would manufacture only for fleet buyers.
Arms manufacturers would only market to military sales.
Food processing plants would only sell to volume buyers (fast food chains, etc..)
Toy and clothes manufactureres would only sell to Wal Mart.
Honda-Acura, BMW, VW-Audi, Toyota-Lexus, and virtually all "import" automobile manufacturers, do not have a fleet sales program. On the other hand, GM and Ford, which sell 1/3 or more of their production to fleet customers, are in the midst of major financial crises.
Fast food outlets do big business in ground beef, chicken breasts, processed cheese, Iceberg lettuce, and potatoes. That's pretty much all they buy. Stroll the aisles of a grocer (or better yet, a Whole Foods type place) and you'll find half the shelves are full of foods made exclusively for retail.
Most "big name" clothing producers simply do not do business with Wal-Mart, due to the price pressures that would involve, and the resulting degradation of their premium brands. They prefer to sell to upscale department stores, or in their own retail stores and catalogs.
Selling your product in bulk is beneficial only in a commodity market. It drives down profit margins and favors efficient production with minimal emphasis on product development or marketing. In the computer market, Dell is the darling of the corporate world, but Apple and Sony sell almost exclusively to the home PC market.
The Russian space tourism program is not commercial at all.
If anything, it's a system of legal bribery: an individual gives money to a government to receive special treatment that is not offered to ordinary citizens.
And as another poster said, Virgin Galactic, which is an actual commercial venture, will be launching from New Mexico, USA. Which would put it squarely within the jurisdiction of the FAA.
There was a time, many years ago, when "Beta" versions were exclusively for internal testing.
"Alpha" versions were builds created for professional testers, who would formally evaluate the software against the criteria for which it was developed.
"Beta" builds were tested by a pre-selected group of end users who were deemed representative of the user base.
Microsoft first came up with the idea of selling beta versions, and the idea has caught on to the point where ordinary end users regularly accept beta software. (Half of Google's products are supposedly beta-versions.) At one time, the idea of using beta software on a production machine was unheard of. Perhaps in another decade or so, people such as yourself will be running totally untested alpha versions routinely.
HD-DVD discs will contain the HD data but they will also contain the non HD dvd which older players will still read as a normal DVD, so no one is forced to upgrade hardware.
This is not necessarily true. HD-DVD can support dual-sided (SD on one side, HD on the obverse) discs, but this is not inherent in the spec (and would significantly increase the cost of producing a disc, which is supposedly the big advantage of HD-DVD over BluRay.)
One Blu-Ray manufacturer also developed a hybrid BluRay disc that will have another layer (same side) playable on SD players. So far, this is not in the BluRay spec, either.
I have a huge DVD collection and I want complete backwards compatibility dammit! (and playing my old dvds on a bluray player isnt backwards compatible, i want to continue buying movies in whatever format and not have to buy new hardware)
The BluRay backers "recommend" that all BluRay players be made backward-compatible with ordinary DVDs. The products available so far (in Japan) are DVD-compatible.
Broderbund and Software MacKiev have quite a bit of fairly good quality children's software for the Mac. (KidPix 3X is a gem.) You can occasionally turn up something else on Amazon as well. As a last resort, choose "Mac OS X Software" from the Apple menu; Apple's own database is sometimes out of date and doesn't distinguish marketing hype froom reality.
Someone else mentioned Versiontracker and MacUpdate, the major Mac shareware sites. Shareware was never unique to DOS or Windows. CompuServe and many BBS's had Mac shareware areas, too.
And it never hurts to Google for "mac WindowsSoftwareTitle"; you may not find an actual Mac version, but you just might find an equivalent.
No, the quantity will never match that of The Dominant Platform, but the quality is often as good or better than anything for Windows. The developers that do target the Mac are usually more established players with offerings that have proven themselves in the marketplace. Mac users aren't tolerant of low-quality ports; Microsoft learned this the hard way a few years back. I'm not sure I'd want hordes of Visual Basic programmers rushing into the Mac marketplace; it would probably result in a lot of disappointed users and almost as many disappointed developers. Writing Mac software that is successful requires a lot of attention; many popular Windows titles (WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 in the early '90s, CorelDraw more recently) flopped on the Mac.
Well there isn't, officially...it's still in beta.
No, not Google Beta(TM) , but real, still-experimental, not-yet-stable, we'll-release-it-when-we're-done-with-it beta. Some people appear to have violated an NDA, but there really is a version of Google Earth for Mac floating around. Whether or not it's wise to run it is up to you.
Though I would suppose that the tires and/or wheel bearings in the landing gear might very well burst into flame and cause the gear to collapse first.
It's not Apple Computer, Sun Microsystems, or Novell that I feel sorry for when I decry Microsoft's practices.
I pity the consumers who have so little choice in the market as a result of Microsoft's scorched-earth business practices. The millions of people who feel its perfectly normal to have to run antivirus and antispyware software twice a week. Who are "locked in" to proprietary formats. Who are, as a result of questionable practices, left with almost no say in who gets their software dollars.
It is possible to do right by your shareholders and customers at the same time.
...wouldn't there be a significant net loss in metabolic energy recovered by re-processing older programmers to fuel the younger ones?
Only very recently has Apple's "resurgence" manifested itself in higher-than-market sales growth. The Ars article apparently doesn't include that data.
Apple desktop market share on the rise; will the Mac mini, iPod help?
I'm oversimplifying and I know it, but in that case you could store six times as much error-correcting information in the same physical space. (Or the ultimate form of error correction...six copies of every bit, arranged in different regions around the disk.)
The strange thing is, since the mid-1970s, both Japan and Germany--the nations most heavily and thoroughly devastated by the war-- have been major economic powers, especially in manufacturing. They were able to achieve this because they were able to rebuild their manufacturing base "from scratch" after WWII (with no small amount of initial help from the US.)
One of the things that war does is wipe the slate clean. Many cities have arguably benefitted from being destroyed by fire and having to be rebuilt. (Including accidental fires (Chicago, 1871) and natural disasters (San Francisco, 1906) The initial setback is eventually surpassed by the modern infrastructure built afterward.
If I were Google, I'd publicly extend a competitive offer of employment for the winner of the contest, to facilitate exactly that sort of occurrence.
'The week after next we will meet Sony's Stringer and we will [shake hands and] look down and see if he surreptitiously sticks something up our asses.' - Bill Gates
Not me, Bill. Just you.- Steve Jobs
Geez, put some line breaks in there...
The problem is, greater demand for software won't necessarily translate into more software jobs. Even if the number of internet users were to double in the next year, the software they'd need can be created simply by stamping out more CDs. Unlike transportation, medicine, manufacturing...virtually any other industry...increased demand for software can be met with little need for an increased headcount.
With regards to the downturn...its unlikely that there will be a big hiring boom anytime soon. Experienced professionals can find work, but good luck getting a job fresh out of college. If you have student loans to pay off, you may find yourself in a tight spot.
...is that like some kind of iPod?
Except for the "Slashdot crowd," portable music devices are iPods. People who don't have computers know what iPods are. To most people, "MP3 player" sounds like a genericism, like "correction fluid" or "polystyrene foam."
Left a job six months ago, and my access still hasn't been cut off. (I know this because my eMail client on my home machine still checks that account, because I'm too lazy to turn it off, and the connection still goes through every time. I've even gotten a few send-to-everyone memos from the place.)
It was an amicable split on both sides, and I still have friends there. My position wasn't exactly security-sensitive. I'm not exactly sure what damage I could possibly do, if I were so inclined. Probably nothing more than deleting files I'd worked on, most of which could probably be restored from backup if anyone cared.
I guess my point is, YMMV.
But the amount of saturated fat in butter is usually much higher than the amount of hydrogenated fats in margarine. (This site said 7g saturated fat in butter; 5g of combined saturated (2g) and trans (3g) fat in margarine.) As nasty as those fats are, I don't think a double-dose of saturated fat is any better.
This reminds me of the 80's when everyone was saying how bad butter is, and to switch to margarine or die of a heart attack. 10 years later, researchers said margarine is unhealthy and butter is better
Actually, nobody ever said that butter is better for you than margarine. It went something like this:
Scientist: We've discovered that margarine contains a type of fat which makes it less healthy than previously thought. It mimics the effects of the saturated fat in butter. For optimal nutrition, people should strive to reduce the amount of margarine or butter in their diets.
Press Release: Margarine almost as bad as butter!
Media: Margarine bad! Butter good!
The egg-cholesterol thing was pretty much the same thing.
Moral: Be glad your grandma doesn't distribute her advice through press releases and the mainstream media.
Why does there have to be some "magical" (or technically rigorous) reason for the lack of malware on Unix-type systems?
There is a certain myopia among technically-minded individuals that makes it seem that only a technical solution can solve a technical problem. This is not necessarily the case. Moving to a Unix-type system is the electronic equivalent of moving from a blighted inner-city ghetto to an upperclass suburban neighborhood. There's no technical reason why it should be any safer or cleaner--but it is. You might think that this is a "head in the sand" approach. But as far as I'm concerned, it's taking advantage of reality.