Well, this might be a good test of the open source community. Will an open source project meet the challenge of carrying something forward after its creator/lead passes, or will the project die due to developer natural selection. If it isn't that good, or better than a competing project, will it continue to live after something like this plays out to the negative? I would like to believe that if a project shows even the potential of being something useful and beneficial, it will draw a good support base and go forward.
For additional reference, I'm using my original G1 iPod 5GB with its original battery from October 2001 (5 year birthday coming up). It lasts for five to six hours on a full charge and is still going strong.
The reason the iPod is maintaining its dominance in the market is because Apple is selling more of them than any other player. The follow on question of "Why?" has many answers. Certainly, the DRM is one of the why's for those that are technically savvy and/or care about such things, but so is its market dominance (The "Why did you buy a Windows PC over a Mac?" or "Why did you buy VHS over Beta?"; "Because everybody has one", answer.), its style and ease of use are also factors, and its ability to be used as a general purpose storage device along with every other feature that you could possibly mention that is supported by the iPod. People make buying decisions for many reasons. Dominant buying behavior for devices of this type (personal entertainment items) is driven by style, features, price, and market dominance; usually in that order. People buy personal entertainment items because they look cool, perform well, are reasonably priced, and their friends have one. Business Psychology 101.
The iPod has only been around for five years! Even in technological time (accounting for Moore's Law, etc.) that's not an overly long time for a product to dominate a market. Market forces always swarm early in a new product's life cycle, especially for dominant products that do what the iPod did to the portable digital music player market. The dominance of the product will level off and it will either become a commodity (i.e., a useful or valuable thing, such as water or time) or be toppled by a better product, or replaced by a newer technology and outmoded. Only time will tell. Most of the points in the article about why the iPod *WON'T* die are a bit shallow. "It's cool" Yeah, so was the Sony Walkman....GONE! Basically, everything said about the iPod is almost EXACTLY what people said about the Sony Walkman in the 1980s; well, except for price. Those bitches were WAY more expensive per inflation adjusted dollar. They also raised almost the same copyright stinks as the iPod and music swapping are doing now. I remember the guy in the car stereo shop telling my Dad about not copying music to tape to play in the car because it was "illegal". This was late 1970s, early 1980s.
Ummm...have you seen video on the iPod screen? It's pretty nice. If you think about the relative size of a 27" screen being six feet away from you (which is where most people sit from their TVs), it's about the same viewing size with the iPod at about 18" from your face. It's surprisingly not bad. Not as good as a 17" wide laptop on a plane, but it does have better battery life.
Let me just say as someone who is a bit of an audiophile and audio engineer that pro-quality and affordable are no longer mutually exclusive terms. In the past ten years in particular, I've seen gear that would have cost you $10k+ drop to less than $500. Many technological advances have attributed to this; better A/D technology, better DSPs, USB, Firewire, faster desktop systems, better drivers!, etc. So, the recording gear, i.e., the A/D boxes, the HD recorders, etc. has gotten better and cheaper on a much steeper curve than most realize. Your real cost these days comes into play with the analog devices both on the input and output side. Those mics, cables, monitors, etc. have not improved as much as the recording devices (mostly because they haven't had to) and consequently they are still AMAZINGLY expensive. But, in the world of mics, cables, and other analog gear you often get what you pay for. Cheap crap is just that, crap, although, I've bought some high-end mics that sucked too!
Liked this post and just wanted to add (to the OP, not this one), What do you define as "pro audio"? Today's high-end systems are 24-bit, 192kHz; to me, that's pro audio. There aren't a lot of vendors out there making USB or Firewire equipment that operates in this realm, and the ones that do have really big price tags. I do a lot of live and studio recording for musician buddies of mine. Haven't done anything for money for a while, but do work for beer! If this person is only going to be doing voice recording, an everyday 16-bit, 44 or 48 kHz solution could be all they need. If you're talking about doing audio production where instruments, foley, and other audio is going to be recorded and mixed, then a higher-end system is a better choice. I also agree that your audio quality is GREATLY affected by, not only your recording hardware/software, but by the microphone(s) you use. I can make a 24/192 recording device sound worse than 16/44 if I use a crappy microphone. If you're doing voice (this is to the orignal post again), spend the money on really nice cardio-condenser mics and good cables, and get a decent M-audio or Lexicon USB input device. MusiciansFriend.com has decent prices, but shop around (Sweetwater, etc.). You should spend more money on your mic(s) than you do on the input box. Rode, Shure, AKG, Neumann, are some good mic brands.
I thought you were talking about someone like yourself, with older hardware, that wants a stripped down version of an OS to run on it? Isn't that what you said was "doable" by Apple, in your case with a G3? Well, it was done. Why are you throwing Linux and the "average end user" into the mix? Has nothing to do with what you said you wanted, and what really exists. For those that want such a stripped down version of Mac OS X, there is one and it's called Darwin. Yes, it is "yet another unix clone with a strange filesystem layout", but so is every other unix variant based on System V R4. What's your point? It's not difficult at all to load Darwin and then Fink onto just about any Mac. Fink will give you access to XFree (or whatever it's called these days) and the Gnome desktop, if you want a GUI. Beyond that, there are many popular Linux packages that have been ported to Fink, so I'm not sure how much different it would be. And, Darwin *IS* Mac OS X, everything but the GUI, which I believe was what you wanted to strip down to make the OS perform better, was it not?
Actually, I was using widgets in Oracle Media Objects in the mid-1990s to develop UIs for multimedia presentations. Before that, widgets were just code and UI pieces that one could use to build things quickly in whatever language/IDE you were using to build apps. Widgets are not new, at all. I just wish people would comment and go away from the topic, like I'm going to do now. If you don't have a history of widgets, then they are new to you...goodie for you. For the rest of us that have been in the dev world for some time, we all know and understand what widgets are. They're not that special, they're everywhere, and who cares what they're called!
Ok, after reading the article and the PDF "theory paper" I'm curious as to why the data from his 450 or so tests wasn't published along with the paper? Not saying that it doesn't work, but being in an academic environment and seeing scores of published engineering works, I'm a bit suspicious of someone making a claim like this without publishing the data. Sure, the mathematics might be clean (not a mathematician nor an engineer personally, so I can't really say), but where's the data? The intellectual property portion he's published in the form of the mathematics and schematics of the device (although also crude), so trade secrecy is certainly not at stake. Bottom line, "Where's the beef?"
I'm still stuck on "flagging". What exactly is a "flagging effort"? Didn't know flag could be used as an adjective. I guess it's an effort that just blows around in the breeze at the whim of the administration.
From Oxford English Dictionary:
flag
noun
1 a piece of cloth or similar material, typically oblong or square, attachable by one edge to a pole or rope and used as the symbol or emblem of a country or institution or as a decoration during public festivities : the American flag. used in reference to the country to which a person has allegiance : the private's heroism served as an example for every soldier under the flag. a ship's country of registry. a small piece of cloth, typically attached at one edge to a pole, used as a marker or signal in various sports : jumped the starter's flag, did he? the ensign carried by a flagship as an emblem of an admiral's rank.
2 a device, symbol, or drawing typically resembling a flag, used as a marker : golf courses are indicated by a numbered flag on the map. Computing a variable used to indicate a particular property of the data in a record.
3 a hook attached to the stem of a musical note, determining the rhythmic value of the note.
verb ( flagged , flagging ) [ trans. ]
1 (often be flagged) mark (an item) for attention or treatment in a specified way : "greatfully" would be flagged as a misspelling of "gratefully." Football charge (a player) with a penalty by dropping a penalty flag : a play in which he was flagged for being offside. figurative draw attention to : problems often flag the need for organizational change.
2 [ trans. ] direct (someone) to go in the specified direction by waving a flag or using hand signals : have him flagged off the course. ( flag someone/something down) signal to a vehicle or driver to stop, esp. by waving one's arm : she flagged down a patrol car. [ intrans. ] (of an official in football, soccer, and other sports) raise or throw a flag to indicate a breach of the rules : the rookie cornerback managed to get flagged for three penalties in one game.
3 provide or decorate with a flag or flags. register (a vessel) in a specific country, under whose flag it then sails : the flagging out of much of the fleet to flags of convenience.
It is close to 90 millionths of a second and the ratio of the observed and predicted values is 1.0001 +/- 0.0005 - a precision of 0.05%.
1.0001 is *NOT* a ratio! Ratios have two numbers represented as Value X:Value Y, or Value X/Value Y. 1.0001 could be the quotient resultant of a ratio, but of what two numbers? The assumption in this case is that the ratio is 1.0001:1 based on the percentage value given by the precision of variance in the calculation, but not everyone is going to know that, especially school age children doing science papers and the like. Sloppy, really sloppy. And people wonder why we're getting worse at mathematics.
That's a great test... if you are hiring people to solve crosswords.
Or, for their vocabulary, or sheer volume of useless facts in their heads with little relevance to applied problem solving. I didn't get the crossword thing either. There must be something deeper to crosswords that I've missed. Yeah, it's a puzzle, but it's a puzzle based on vocabulary and relevant experience with the specific crossword puzzle theme. I've done my fair share of crosswords, usually while doing laundry, but I don't get how completing a crossword in under twelve minutes would make you good at anything but EXTREMELY basic thematic or referential cryptography. I know some pretty mathematically challenged people, including some autistics (no kidding), that can whiz through a crossword puzzle but can't do simple algebra!
Replace "Windows" with "The Mac" or "Mac OS X" in your post and you'll know what Mac folks have been going through for the last five years! BTW, I find it interesting that those saying that Windows XP is rock solid seem to all be from a similar point of view, i.e. an office/administrative computing power-user or sysadmin background. There are many, many instances where I've had trouble with WinXP crashes. A lot of it, in my case, has to do with bad drivers for third-party hardware. Some of it is poorly written code, by third-parties. BUT, and this is a BIG BUT, who supplies these third parties with APIs and tools to write these drivers and applications? Wouldn't that be Microsoft? So to blame the OS crashing on a third-party, isn't entirely correct. Yes, poor coding practices are somewhat to blame, but let's not take the blame away from those that allow poor code to be compiled and executed, or used for drivers, on their platform(s). The bottom line, there is no "perfect" OS out there, and there never will be. Vista, has a lot of work to be done before it ships, period. So does Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) in server form. The client is coming along nicely, though. Linux is what Linux is right now. If you aren't a hardcore technical person, it's not for you. It is stable and reliable in some configurations. In others, it's as squirrely as a pig on ice, or deaf, dumb, and blind as a post! But, it is coming along and I hope it gets a lot better. I use all OSes in my shop, with the exceptions of Solaris, HP-UX and IRIX at the moment. Linux is great for servers, so is Mac OS X. Windows has some server merit, but it's a lot more difficult to manage and maintain (in my experience). All have application on the desktop depending on what your application goals are.
If you EVER want to see this show resurrected (I certainly would), then PVR recording the marathon is not the way to go. Buy the DVDs!!! They're not that expensive, you get all the shows, plus a few extra goodies, and the studio execs get a reason to talk to Joss Whedon about bringing it back! Money talks, PVR-ing just puts another coffin nail in.
Have quizzes in class every day, that count as much all totaled for points, if not more, of the overall grade in the class than the final. Typically, a final can't be worth more than 50% of a grade. That might vary by institution, but the reason being so it can't HURT someone's (a good student's) grade as much as it could help another's (a not so good student's). The instructor would also be an idiot for not figuring out a way to make the system work, along with the students for their grade. It's not that hard to figure out once you do it the first time. Remember, negative feedback is the best teacher!
The better question to ask is: "Are targeted searches effective in keeping everyone safe?" And the answer to that is also, no. Why? Because somebody with a brain and criminal intentions figured out the system long before this guy McPhee would have. Let's hope that at least now they'll change something!
Or, would he be more credible as a leader and visionary if he could spell, or at least use spellchecker! "Comprimise" ??? No! Compromise, not such a hot idea either.
I will agree with your assessment to a degree and would like to add that the 680x0 transition to the PPC wasn't exactly error free either. I seem to remember a lot of complaints about the 6100 when it came out. Now, there were also numerous problems with the first few generations of the PPC-based PowerBooks as well. This is nothing new to Apple, or any major shift in a manufacturing process. There are always bumps. The original Pentium wasn't exactly flawless either; 2.5 + 2.5 = 5.2 [snicker] The MacBook and MacBook Pro are really PowerBook and iBook enclosures with the Intel guts shoehorned in there. Same for most of the rest of the product line. Some products have benefitted from a longer transition cycle, PowerMac and Xserve, so they had longer to deal with the issues associated with the new hardware. I'm not making excuses. There is no excuse for inferior products caused by bad design, or bad manufacturing processes. I hope Apple deals with these issues as best they can and gets back to producing quality products. The G5 PowerMacs and Xserves were really well built. Had a few bad eggs out of 1100 (60-65 PowerMacs; 45 or so Xserves), but most have been rock solid since the initial 90 days. They have certainly held up better than some other vendors' products that we've purchased of late. *cough* Dell *cough*
Slashdot Mirror
... can you copy and paste, "Acoustic Models to be used by Speech Recognition Engines"?
Sorry, someone was excited about "Acoustic Models to be used by Speech Recognition Engines". [giggle]
Well, this might be a good test of the open source community. Will an open source project meet the challenge of carrying something forward after its creator/lead passes, or will the project die due to developer natural selection. If it isn't that good, or better than a competing project, will it continue to live after something like this plays out to the negative? I would like to believe that if a project shows even the potential of being something useful and beneficial, it will draw a good support base and go forward.
So now we can add money laundering as well as monopolistic practices to MS's rap sheet. Nice!
For additional reference, I'm using my original G1 iPod 5GB with its original battery from October 2001 (5 year birthday coming up). It lasts for five to six hours on a full charge and is still going strong.
The reason the iPod is maintaining its dominance in the market is because Apple is selling more of them than any other player. The follow on question of "Why?" has many answers. Certainly, the DRM is one of the why's for those that are technically savvy and/or care about such things, but so is its market dominance (The "Why did you buy a Windows PC over a Mac?" or "Why did you buy VHS over Beta?"; "Because everybody has one", answer.), its style and ease of use are also factors, and its ability to be used as a general purpose storage device along with every other feature that you could possibly mention that is supported by the iPod. People make buying decisions for many reasons. Dominant buying behavior for devices of this type (personal entertainment items) is driven by style, features, price, and market dominance; usually in that order. People buy personal entertainment items because they look cool, perform well, are reasonably priced, and their friends have one. Business Psychology 101.
The iPod has only been around for five years! Even in technological time (accounting for Moore's Law, etc.) that's not an overly long time for a product to dominate a market. Market forces always swarm early in a new product's life cycle, especially for dominant products that do what the iPod did to the portable digital music player market. The dominance of the product will level off and it will either become a commodity (i.e., a useful or valuable thing, such as water or time) or be toppled by a better product, or replaced by a newer technology and outmoded. Only time will tell. Most of the points in the article about why the iPod *WON'T* die are a bit shallow. "It's cool" Yeah, so was the Sony Walkman....GONE! Basically, everything said about the iPod is almost EXACTLY what people said about the Sony Walkman in the 1980s; well, except for price. Those bitches were WAY more expensive per inflation adjusted dollar. They also raised almost the same copyright stinks as the iPod and music swapping are doing now. I remember the guy in the car stereo shop telling my Dad about not copying music to tape to play in the car because it was "illegal". This was late 1970s, early 1980s.
Ummm...have you seen video on the iPod screen? It's pretty nice. If you think about the relative size of a 27" screen being six feet away from you (which is where most people sit from their TVs), it's about the same viewing size with the iPod at about 18" from your face. It's surprisingly not bad. Not as good as a 17" wide laptop on a plane, but it does have better battery life.
Let me just say as someone who is a bit of an audiophile and audio engineer that pro-quality and affordable are no longer mutually exclusive terms. In the past ten years in particular, I've seen gear that would have cost you $10k+ drop to less than $500. Many technological advances have attributed to this; better A/D technology, better DSPs, USB, Firewire, faster desktop systems, better drivers!, etc. So, the recording gear, i.e., the A/D boxes, the HD recorders, etc. has gotten better and cheaper on a much steeper curve than most realize. Your real cost these days comes into play with the analog devices both on the input and output side. Those mics, cables, monitors, etc. have not improved as much as the recording devices (mostly because they haven't had to) and consequently they are still AMAZINGLY expensive. But, in the world of mics, cables, and other analog gear you often get what you pay for. Cheap crap is just that, crap, although, I've bought some high-end mics that sucked too!
Liked this post and just wanted to add (to the OP, not this one), What do you define as "pro audio"? Today's high-end systems are 24-bit, 192kHz; to me, that's pro audio. There aren't a lot of vendors out there making USB or Firewire equipment that operates in this realm, and the ones that do have really big price tags. I do a lot of live and studio recording for musician buddies of mine. Haven't done anything for money for a while, but do work for beer! If this person is only going to be doing voice recording, an everyday 16-bit, 44 or 48 kHz solution could be all they need. If you're talking about doing audio production where instruments, foley, and other audio is going to be recorded and mixed, then a higher-end system is a better choice. I also agree that your audio quality is GREATLY affected by, not only your recording hardware/software, but by the microphone(s) you use. I can make a 24/192 recording device sound worse than 16/44 if I use a crappy microphone. If you're doing voice (this is to the orignal post again), spend the money on really nice cardio-condenser mics and good cables, and get a decent M-audio or Lexicon USB input device. MusiciansFriend.com has decent prices, but shop around (Sweetwater, etc.). You should spend more money on your mic(s) than you do on the input box. Rode, Shure, AKG, Neumann, are some good mic brands.
I thought you were talking about someone like yourself, with older hardware, that wants a stripped down version of an OS to run on it? Isn't that what you said was "doable" by Apple, in your case with a G3? Well, it was done. Why are you throwing Linux and the "average end user" into the mix? Has nothing to do with what you said you wanted, and what really exists. For those that want such a stripped down version of Mac OS X, there is one and it's called Darwin. Yes, it is "yet another unix clone with a strange filesystem layout", but so is every other unix variant based on System V R4. What's your point? It's not difficult at all to load Darwin and then Fink onto just about any Mac. Fink will give you access to XFree (or whatever it's called these days) and the Gnome desktop, if you want a GUI. Beyond that, there are many popular Linux packages that have been ported to Fink, so I'm not sure how much different it would be. And, Darwin *IS* Mac OS X, everything but the GUI, which I believe was what you wanted to strip down to make the OS perform better, was it not?
I still think it should be doable to make a truely stripped down version for older G3 machines though.
It's called Darwin, and it's free: http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/
Actually, I was using widgets in Oracle Media Objects in the mid-1990s to develop UIs for multimedia presentations. Before that, widgets were just code and UI pieces that one could use to build things quickly in whatever language/IDE you were using to build apps. Widgets are not new, at all. I just wish people would comment and go away from the topic, like I'm going to do now. If you don't have a history of widgets, then they are new to you...goodie for you. For the rest of us that have been in the dev world for some time, we all know and understand what widgets are. They're not that special, they're everywhere, and who cares what they're called!
Ok, after reading the article and the PDF "theory paper" I'm curious as to why the data from his 450 or so tests wasn't published along with the paper? Not saying that it doesn't work, but being in an academic environment and seeing scores of published engineering works, I'm a bit suspicious of someone making a claim like this without publishing the data. Sure, the mathematics might be clean (not a mathematician nor an engineer personally, so I can't really say), but where's the data? The intellectual property portion he's published in the form of the mathematics and schematics of the device (although also crude), so trade secrecy is certainly not at stake. Bottom line, "Where's the beef?"
I'm still stuck on "flagging". What exactly is a "flagging effort"? Didn't know flag could be used as an adjective. I guess it's an effort that just blows around in the breeze at the whim of the administration.
From Oxford English Dictionary:
flag
noun
1 a piece of cloth or similar material, typically oblong or square, attachable by one edge to a pole or rope and used as the symbol or emblem of a country or institution or as a decoration during public festivities : the American flag. used in reference to the country to which a person has allegiance : the private's heroism served as an example for every soldier under the flag. a ship's country of registry. a small piece of cloth, typically attached at one edge to a pole, used as a marker or signal in various sports : jumped the starter's flag, did he? the ensign carried by a flagship as an emblem of an admiral's rank.
2 a device, symbol, or drawing typically resembling a flag, used as a marker : golf courses are indicated by a numbered flag on the map. Computing a variable used to indicate a particular property of the data in a record.
3 a hook attached to the stem of a musical note, determining the rhythmic value of the note.
verb ( flagged , flagging ) [ trans. ]
1 (often be flagged) mark (an item) for attention or treatment in a specified way : "greatfully" would be flagged as a misspelling of "gratefully." Football charge (a player) with a penalty by dropping a penalty flag : a play in which he was flagged for being offside. figurative draw attention to : problems often flag the need for organizational change.
2 [ trans. ] direct (someone) to go in the specified direction by waving a flag or using hand signals : have him flagged off the course. ( flag someone/something down) signal to a vehicle or driver to stop, esp. by waving one's arm : she flagged down a patrol car. [ intrans. ] (of an official in football, soccer, and other sports) raise or throw a flag to indicate a breach of the rules : the rookie cornerback managed to get flagged for three penalties in one game.
3 provide or decorate with a flag or flags. register (a vessel) in a specific country, under whose flag it then sails : the flagging out of much of the fleet to flags of convenience.
It is close to 90 millionths of a second and the ratio of the observed and predicted values is 1.0001 +/- 0.0005 - a precision of 0.05%.
1.0001 is *NOT* a ratio! Ratios have two numbers represented as Value X:Value Y, or Value X/Value Y. 1.0001 could be the quotient resultant of a ratio, but of what two numbers? The assumption in this case is that the ratio is 1.0001:1 based on the percentage value given by the precision of variance in the calculation, but not everyone is going to know that, especially school age children doing science papers and the like. Sloppy, really sloppy. And people wonder why we're getting worse at mathematics.
That's a great test... if you are hiring people to solve crosswords.
Or, for their vocabulary, or sheer volume of useless facts in their heads with little relevance to applied problem solving. I didn't get the crossword thing either. There must be something deeper to crosswords that I've missed. Yeah, it's a puzzle, but it's a puzzle based on vocabulary and relevant experience with the specific crossword puzzle theme. I've done my fair share of crosswords, usually while doing laundry, but I don't get how completing a crossword in under twelve minutes would make you good at anything but EXTREMELY basic thematic or referential cryptography. I know some pretty mathematically challenged people, including some autistics (no kidding), that can whiz through a crossword puzzle but can't do simple algebra!
Replace "Windows" with "The Mac" or "Mac OS X" in your post and you'll know what Mac folks have been going through for the last five years! BTW, I find it interesting that those saying that Windows XP is rock solid seem to all be from a similar point of view, i.e. an office/administrative computing power-user or sysadmin background. There are many, many instances where I've had trouble with WinXP crashes. A lot of it, in my case, has to do with bad drivers for third-party hardware. Some of it is poorly written code, by third-parties. BUT, and this is a BIG BUT, who supplies these third parties with APIs and tools to write these drivers and applications? Wouldn't that be Microsoft? So to blame the OS crashing on a third-party, isn't entirely correct. Yes, poor coding practices are somewhat to blame, but let's not take the blame away from those that allow poor code to be compiled and executed, or used for drivers, on their platform(s). The bottom line, there is no "perfect" OS out there, and there never will be. Vista, has a lot of work to be done before it ships, period. So does Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) in server form. The client is coming along nicely, though. Linux is what Linux is right now. If you aren't a hardcore technical person, it's not for you. It is stable and reliable in some configurations. In others, it's as squirrely as a pig on ice, or deaf, dumb, and blind as a post! But, it is coming along and I hope it gets a lot better. I use all OSes in my shop, with the exceptions of Solaris, HP-UX and IRIX at the moment. Linux is great for servers, so is Mac OS X. Windows has some server merit, but it's a lot more difficult to manage and maintain (in my experience). All have application on the desktop depending on what your application goals are.
If you EVER want to see this show resurrected (I certainly would), then PVR recording the marathon is not the way to go. Buy the DVDs!!! They're not that expensive, you get all the shows, plus a few extra goodies, and the studio execs get a reason to talk to Joss Whedon about bringing it back! Money talks, PVR-ing just puts another coffin nail in.
Have quizzes in class every day, that count as much all totaled for points, if not more, of the overall grade in the class than the final. Typically, a final can't be worth more than 50% of a grade. That might vary by institution, but the reason being so it can't HURT someone's (a good student's) grade as much as it could help another's (a not so good student's). The instructor would also be an idiot for not figuring out a way to make the system work, along with the students for their grade. It's not that hard to figure out once you do it the first time. Remember, negative feedback is the best teacher!
The better question to ask is: "Are targeted searches effective in keeping everyone safe?" And the answer to that is also, no. Why? Because somebody with a brain and criminal intentions figured out the system long before this guy McPhee would have. Let's hope that at least now they'll change something!
the confusion is frequently based on misreadings, rumors, secondhand accounts, and what is convenient to believe.
Huh, sounds like some peoples' ideas of the Constitution, and other state and local laws, in the United States. Go figure on that coincidence!
Or, would he be more credible as a leader and visionary if he could spell, or at least use spellchecker! "Comprimise" ??? No! Compromise, not such a hot idea either.
It doesn't spell check on my Mac, but if I right-click and do a "Look up in Dictionary", voila, there it is. Go figure.
Here's my compression of 100M of Wikipedia: "Always consult more than one source of information" Make check payable to ...
I will agree with your assessment to a degree and would like to add that the 680x0 transition to the PPC wasn't exactly error free either. I seem to remember a lot of complaints about the 6100 when it came out. Now, there were also numerous problems with the first few generations of the PPC-based PowerBooks as well. This is nothing new to Apple, or any major shift in a manufacturing process. There are always bumps. The original Pentium wasn't exactly flawless either; 2.5 + 2.5 = 5.2 [snicker] The MacBook and MacBook Pro are really PowerBook and iBook enclosures with the Intel guts shoehorned in there. Same for most of the rest of the product line. Some products have benefitted from a longer transition cycle, PowerMac and Xserve, so they had longer to deal with the issues associated with the new hardware. I'm not making excuses. There is no excuse for inferior products caused by bad design, or bad manufacturing processes. I hope Apple deals with these issues as best they can and gets back to producing quality products. The G5 PowerMacs and Xserves were really well built. Had a few bad eggs out of 1100 (60-65 PowerMacs; 45 or so Xserves), but most have been rock solid since the initial 90 days. They have certainly held up better than some other vendors' products that we've purchased of late. *cough* Dell *cough*