Hi, I'm the original poster who wrote that... (and also a longtime F@H contributer)
I actually debated that phrase a bit before submitting it, but it turns out that (according to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercomputer#The_fas test_supercomputers_today) a supercomputer completed 2 months ago (the MDGRAPE-3) clocks in a 1 petaflop. Some people say it "doesn't count" because it has specialized hardware to compute "molecular dynamics simulations," but then F@H would more or less fall into that category as well, especially since they use assembly code to optimize their very specific form of calculations. So, based on that, F@H would have to break 1 petaflop before becoming the fastest supercomputer in the world.
Also, you seem to have forgotten about the BOINC distributed computing network, which currently clocks in at about 420 teraflops.
So by my calculations, F@H is currently the world's fourth fastest supercomputer if you count distributed computing systems like itself, and would become the fastest after breaking 1 petaflop. So I guess I should have said "at the middle end of that target"...
Actually, it is easy to copy songs from the iPod to Windows. You just have to show hidden files when browsing the iPod. Granted, it is organized pretty weirdly, but that's how it's stored internally. I copied 8GB of music from my friend's iPod a couple years ago...
What about N's extended range? That might be more valuable. Though I have tried N in my home, and it still doesn't reach all the rooms... and no, I don't have a big house, just a 2-floor apartment...
Well I am using IE 6 and I had an error as well. I tried to save a test document as a Word file and got an error message. However, I tried again and it worked for all the formats I tried. So it may well be that the error was Writely's - you write (no pun intended) as if a beta version that was just launched (today?) will obviously not have any bugs, when clearly it will.
If you use Gmail, Google already has all of the information they could ever want from you. They can read your email. Do they even need to see your search history to have you totally pinned down? Doubtful.
WHAT ON EARTH WERE YOU THINKING? MAYBE YOU SHOULD REREAD YOUR SUBMISSION AND REALIZE HOW STUPID IT SOUNDS. I LIKE MY CAPS LOCK KEY JUST FINE, THANKS, AND REALLY DON'T NEED YOUR MEDDLING WITH THE KEYBOARD ON MY **PERSONAL** COMPUTER. ALSO, I CAN'T BELIEVE SLASHDOT WAS LAME ENOUGH TO POST THIS STORY. THAT UPSETS ME TOO. I REALLY NEED EVERYBODY TO UNDERSTAND JUST HOW UPSET I AM, AND I HOPE I AM COMMUNICATING THAT EFFECTIVELY THROUGH MY INTELLIGENT USE OF THE CAPS LOCK KEY. THANK YOU.
***
Lol, I tried to post the above as a joke and encountered Slashdot's "Lameness filter," which told me the following:
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
That in itself is sort of a meta-commentary on what I was trying to get across by the above joke. The caps-lock key is almost always abused. When I want to write in all caps, I just hold down the Shift key with my pinky and type like usual. I just have to let up when I want to do quotes. In fact, the bit at the top was accomplished by holding down the Shift key, not with the Caps Lock.
Anyway, hopefully this extended discussion below will enable me to evade the Lameness Filter...
The blurb at the top suggests that this will replace Intel's Core 2's. I think not, because this will be used in the server market and Intel's Core 2's are for the desktop/notebook market. So I'm pretty sure they will both go about their sweet business without needing to worry about each other.
So people who weren't actually terrorists managed to generate an 85% positive rate? That would suggest that this can be easily triggered by overall nervousness (or in this case, people inducing nervousness in themselves as part of the role-playing). What is the difference between the mindset of "I need to be nervous so that I will act like a terrorist in accordance with my role" and "Oh my god, why does this TSA official think I'm a terrorist"? It's not real clear to me.
A real lie-detector test (like the polygraph) ought to be able to tell the difference between nervousness and an actual sense of having told a lie. Otherwise this is worthless.
The blog seems to be down. It was up yesterday, but it got linked to by the Drudge Report (think: Slashdot effect times 100) and seems to have gone down from that. I went there yesterday and got the real blog, but it couldn't load the content from the database because there were too many connections. Since then they seem to have taken it down entirely.
If you don't want to wait, though, you can have more fun at www.president.ir...
Yeah - my post wasn't intended as a joke. Thanks for the explanation too.
The comment about the illusion was basically in reference to the fact that FLOAT and DOUBLE values are often stored and displayed with more decimal numbers than are actually accurate. It would be better if they could somehow self-check for precision and only store the remaining decimals that are accurate. We can dream, can't we?
This is why I use DECIMAL and not FLOAT in MySQL. Problem solved. I'm not a big fan of floats, the extreme precision that they seem to have is mostly an illusion.
One of the problems mentioned above is the difficulty of making decisions. But another problem is deciding who gets paid. If people can join and leave willy-nilly, how do you make sure that people who are working hard get paid for their work, and people who only join to get a share of the profits are thwarted? It is hard enough to deal with employee leeches in a real company (think of the perpetual spare employee who leeches off of everybody else). Having an "open source company" would be a nightmare for this reason.
Anyway, the analogy doesn't even work here, since you are talking about free collaboration in companies, whereas open source is more of an issue of free information and supposedly-beneficial consumer rights.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the wording of the bill is restricted to unsolicited mail. It seems to address all mail, solicited or not. That's the #1 problem with this bill. The #2 problem with the bill is that people have to pay to ensure (required) compliance, which amounts to an email tax. The #3 problem is that this only deals with a specific subset of mail considered to be most objectionable - an anti-spam bill need to address all spam, because it's not like Rolex spam is any less bad for one's inbox.
Take away those problems and you will have a good bill. The problem is that this bill seems to be less targeted towards spam as towards protecting children from bad content. So it's not even a true anti-spam bill.
Or you could just block cookies from Google.com. How hard is that? They can't track you if you block cookies and also have a dynamic IP. I suppose there are only a limited number of IP addresses that you could have with most ISP's, but it will be divided enough to make tracking impossible unless Google teamed up with your ISP, which is doubtful.
I also wanted to say that the main thing that FSF needs to do is address the fears of basic programmers, especially those in startup companies, who have little legal knowledge and are frankly a bit scared by the whole GPL thing. People on Slashdot always complain when somebody comes on here and posts a comment that demonstrates their lack of understanding of the GPL and its limitations, but that should be a sign that there remains a huge lack of understanding out there.
What is *really* lacking from the GPLv3 (and also GPLv2) is a clear description of the circumstances under which you *do* retain proprietary rights to your own work, and control over the license. While not legally necessary, inclusion of such a description would go a long way toward mollifying the fears of people who are worried about losing the ability to profit from their own work. In a nutshell, the primary barrier toward greater enthusiasm for the GPL is the (accurate) perception that FSF and the GPL do not have a profit- or business-friendly attitude.
This will not happen because the FSF does not want to encourage people to have any sort of control over their own intellectual property. Whatever control is retained under the GPL (e.g. the ability to keep source secret if you don't distribute it, the ability to retain a copyright on your work even if you cannot enforce it) is granted grudgingly, and usually by omission of an explicit restriction, rather than willingly. That attitude is a major turnoff to a lot of people.
My question is, why can't these issues be taken care of using existing antitrust laws? Why do we need extra laws that are effectively "antitrust for the Internet"? Our existing antitrust laws were initially created in the late 19th century to address similar abuses on the part of the railroad companies, who used their monopolies to extract lots of extra money from Midwestern farmers who usually had to rely on a single railroad company to provide all of their shipping to the East. In many ways it was the same issue that we are now dealing with from the ISP's (supposedly - I would contend the problem is exaggerated).
Seriously - if an ISP is favoring their own services over other services, that is an anticompetitive and monopolistic practice that clearly falls under existing antitrust laws. If the complaints are legitimate, they can be prosecuted as such. Why does nobody realize this?
If our Congressmembers do not learn history, they are destined to make bad decisions. (I will not say they are destined to repeat it, because here the mistake would be in the needless repetition.)
They might have refuted Linus's criticism, but his criticism is still there. The reality is that this little feud between Linus and FSF matters less as a logical debate and more as a practical issue. If Linus is unhappy with GPLv3 and decides not to adopt it for the Linux kernel, that will be a major blow for GPLv3 no matter how you cut it, because it will have a domino effect in which it is not adopted as a new standard.
It may be that the other GNU project tools like gcc are indispensible parts of the Linux operating system. I don't know enough to know for sure. But the Linux kernel is also an indispensible part, and if you start having the operating system split between GPLv2 and GPLv3, new projects will justified in following the Linux kernel's lead and sticking with GPLv2.
Another issue here that may not be fully appreciated is that many people already think that GPLv2 already goes too far. By going even farther, GPLv3 is going to turn off even more people to the GPL project. It may be that the goals it establishes are justified. But if even Linus Torvalds is turned off by this, I wonder what corporate users of Linux will say...?
Also - one theory I'd like to just throw out there is the possibility that while current replacements for many of the GNU tools may be lacking, if they adopt GPLv3 and corporate customers like Google and Sun don't like them because of restrictions on usage, they may spearhead the development of replacements.
Likewise, any GPL version that places clear requirements on web applications developed using programs under that version (e.g. you must GPL those web applications) will never see adoption by Google etc. Assuming this is where FSF is going, the GPL will ultimately destroy itself by becoming too extreme.
Actually, women in general can get laid with no effort. There is always a man willing to go for it, and usually a woman who is looking for sex only can find a more attractive mate than a man looking for sex only. Or at least, so says Stephen Pinker's "The Human Mind." Interesting take.
Actually, the bigger objection I would have to the statement about average IQ's increasing is that IQ is a function of education. With all of the word comparisons and math problems on supposed "IQ tests," how could it be otherwise?
What's their source on that statement? Actually, nevermind - it's irrelevant.
The rest of the article looks interesting though. I am somewhat surprised, given the added stress we face and added pollutants. But maybe extra exercise and healthier eating make up for it?
Another thing I would add to my previous post is that the irony is that the traffic alleviated by the Big Dig will come back within 5-7 years. The bottleneck for the Central Artery is the part where it actually goes underneath a skyscraper (technically it does this twice, but the other part isn't as crowded). They can't make it any wider there because it would eliminate the foundation of the skyscraper enough that the whole thing could collapse. This limits the size of the entire Central Artery and will eventually force the city to develop ways for people to get in and out and around using completely different traffic patterns.
The one major improvement to traffic that the Big Dig accomplished was diverting traffic going to the Airport through a separate tunnel (the one that just had part of the roof collapse). That reduced traffic in the Central Artery by something like 50%. Ironically, that was also the least expensive part of the Big Dig.
As a Boston resident I've been following this semi-closely, and it seems that the main problem is not so much the engineering itself, but the way in which the overall planning occurred. This project was started in the late 1980's, and was supposed to cost something like $3 billion and take a few years. Now it has taken more than 16 years and cost tens of billions of dollars.
It wasn't just a bad estimate - it was that they gradually expanded the scope of the project and added new goals once the project was underway. As a result it took longer and cost more money. Then came the double-whammy - because it took so much time, and occurred at a time when people were moving back into the city making overall traffic worse, they had to revise the project again to make it even more ambitious. Otherwise, when it was done the traffic would still be bad and people would wonder why they spent so much time on a project that didn't solve the problem. So the Big Dig has always been in a race with time, which paradoxically has caused them to take more time than they otherwise would.
Most of the problems that have happened with the Big Dig have been due not to poor engineering, but use of the wrong materials and deliberate corner-cutting by the contractors. The woman who was killed a couple of weeks ago when the ceiling fell on her car died not because of poor engineering, but because the ceiling part was held up with substandard materials. They actually realized that this was a problem and changed the materials, but not before that part was built, and they never went back and fixed it.
So the contractors cut corners to make more money than they otherwise would, sometimes illegally. But my theory is that the underlying reason why they were able to get away with it is that the ballooning costs (remember it expanded by a cost of something like 900% in money and 400% in time) made accounting that much more difficult.
Movie productions are actually investor-led enterprises, despite the fact that they are also an art form. While there are a lot of movies whose directors and actors really care about communicating an important vision or message, there are also a lot of movies that are designed solely to appeal to as many people as possible. They fill the movie with cliches and implications designed to please as many people as possible, but in appealing to everybody enough to get them to see the movie, they appeal to very few people enough to get them to actually like it.
Superman Returns is a case in point. Did you notice how that was simultaneously marketed to evangelicals with "Superman as Jesus figure" and gays with that article "Is Superman Gay?" and liberals with Lex Luthor's "bring it on" statement in the trailers? In reality the movie was none of these things, they just wanted to intrigue as many people as possible to bring them to the theaters.
Bottom line: For people trying to make the "summer blockbuster," it doesn't matter if the movie is good, as long as it sells. You make more money increasing expectations than delivering on those expectations.
This is why niche and indie movies are often better, because the primary goal of the writers, directors and actors is to present their vision. Now, I actually like a fair number of mainstream movies, but certainly not most of them.
This seems like a demotion to me. The security problems Amazon.com faces can't possibly be as big as the security problems Microsoft faces. It is relatively easy to harden a server farm, compared to making an operating system that can stay reasonably secure even when run by novices and below.
I would buy a MacBook, but I want to play games. Macs don't have good graphics processors. So even now that it dual-boots with Windows, I still am going to go with a PC for that reason when I buy a laptop once Vista launches (most likely Alienware). And as long as they lack good graphics processors, the gaming market is going to be slow to adapt to any increased Mac user base. Which in turn may hurt their user base a bit.
All that said, only a minority of people play games on computers, mostly because of the expense versus XBox, PS, etc. So they should be ok.
Slashdot Mirror
Hi, I'm the original poster who wrote that... (and also a longtime F@H contributer)
s test_supercomputers_today) a supercomputer completed 2 months ago (the MDGRAPE-3) clocks in a 1 petaflop. Some people say it "doesn't count" because it has specialized hardware to compute "molecular dynamics simulations," but then F@H would more or less fall into that category as well, especially since they use assembly code to optimize their very specific form of calculations. So, based on that, F@H would have to break 1 petaflop before becoming the fastest supercomputer in the world.
I actually debated that phrase a bit before submitting it, but it turns out that (according to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercomputer#The_fa
Also, you seem to have forgotten about the BOINC distributed computing network, which currently clocks in at about 420 teraflops.
So by my calculations, F@H is currently the world's fourth fastest supercomputer if you count distributed computing systems like itself, and would become the fastest after breaking 1 petaflop. So I guess I should have said "at the middle end of that target"...
Actually, it is easy to copy songs from the iPod to Windows. You just have to show hidden files when browsing the iPod. Granted, it is organized pretty weirdly, but that's how it's stored internally. I copied 8GB of music from my friend's iPod a couple years ago...
What about N's extended range? That might be more valuable. Though I have tried N in my home, and it still doesn't reach all the rooms... and no, I don't have a big house, just a 2-floor apartment...
Well I am using IE 6 and I had an error as well. I tried to save a test document as a Word file and got an error message. However, I tried again and it worked for all the formats I tried. So it may well be that the error was Writely's - you write (no pun intended) as if a beta version that was just launched (today?) will obviously not have any bugs, when clearly it will.
Deep irony: The website is programmed using ASP.
If you use Gmail, Google already has all of the information they could ever want from you. They can read your email. Do they even need to see your search history to have you totally pinned down? Doubtful.
WHAT ON EARTH WERE YOU THINKING? MAYBE YOU SHOULD REREAD YOUR SUBMISSION AND REALIZE HOW STUPID IT SOUNDS. I LIKE MY CAPS LOCK KEY JUST FINE, THANKS, AND REALLY DON'T NEED YOUR MEDDLING WITH THE KEYBOARD ON MY **PERSONAL** COMPUTER. ALSO, I CAN'T BELIEVE SLASHDOT WAS LAME ENOUGH TO POST THIS STORY. THAT UPSETS ME TOO. I REALLY NEED EVERYBODY TO UNDERSTAND JUST HOW UPSET I AM, AND I HOPE I AM COMMUNICATING THAT EFFECTIVELY THROUGH MY INTELLIGENT USE OF THE CAPS LOCK KEY. THANK YOU.
***
Lol, I tried to post the above as a joke and encountered Slashdot's "Lameness filter," which told me the following:
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
That in itself is sort of a meta-commentary on what I was trying to get across by the above joke. The caps-lock key is almost always abused. When I want to write in all caps, I just hold down the Shift key with my pinky and type like usual. I just have to let up when I want to do quotes. In fact, the bit at the top was accomplished by holding down the Shift key, not with the Caps Lock.
Anyway, hopefully this extended discussion below will enable me to evade the Lameness Filter...
The blurb at the top suggests that this will replace Intel's Core 2's. I think not, because this will be used in the server market and Intel's Core 2's are for the desktop/notebook market. So I'm pretty sure they will both go about their sweet business without needing to worry about each other.
So people who weren't actually terrorists managed to generate an 85% positive rate? That would suggest that this can be easily triggered by overall nervousness (or in this case, people inducing nervousness in themselves as part of the role-playing). What is the difference between the mindset of "I need to be nervous so that I will act like a terrorist in accordance with my role" and "Oh my god, why does this TSA official think I'm a terrorist"? It's not real clear to me.
A real lie-detector test (like the polygraph) ought to be able to tell the difference between nervousness and an actual sense of having told a lie. Otherwise this is worthless.
The blog seems to be down. It was up yesterday, but it got linked to by the Drudge Report (think: Slashdot effect times 100) and seems to have gone down from that. I went there yesterday and got the real blog, but it couldn't load the content from the database because there were too many connections. Since then they seem to have taken it down entirely.
...
If you don't want to wait, though, you can have more fun at www.president.ir
Yeah - my post wasn't intended as a joke. Thanks for the explanation too.
The comment about the illusion was basically in reference to the fact that FLOAT and DOUBLE values are often stored and displayed with more decimal numbers than are actually accurate. It would be better if they could somehow self-check for precision and only store the remaining decimals that are accurate. We can dream, can't we?
This is why I use DECIMAL and not FLOAT in MySQL. Problem solved. I'm not a big fan of floats, the extreme precision that they seem to have is mostly an illusion.
One of the problems mentioned above is the difficulty of making decisions. But another problem is deciding who gets paid. If people can join and leave willy-nilly, how do you make sure that people who are working hard get paid for their work, and people who only join to get a share of the profits are thwarted? It is hard enough to deal with employee leeches in a real company (think of the perpetual spare employee who leeches off of everybody else). Having an "open source company" would be a nightmare for this reason.
Anyway, the analogy doesn't even work here, since you are talking about free collaboration in companies, whereas open source is more of an issue of free information and supposedly-beneficial consumer rights.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the wording of the bill is restricted to unsolicited mail. It seems to address all mail, solicited or not. That's the #1 problem with this bill. The #2 problem with the bill is that people have to pay to ensure (required) compliance, which amounts to an email tax. The #3 problem is that this only deals with a specific subset of mail considered to be most objectionable - an anti-spam bill need to address all spam, because it's not like Rolex spam is any less bad for one's inbox.
Take away those problems and you will have a good bill. The problem is that this bill seems to be less targeted towards spam as towards protecting children from bad content. So it's not even a true anti-spam bill.
Or you could just block cookies from Google.com. How hard is that? They can't track you if you block cookies and also have a dynamic IP. I suppose there are only a limited number of IP addresses that you could have with most ISP's, but it will be divided enough to make tracking impossible unless Google teamed up with your ISP, which is doubtful.
I also wanted to say that the main thing that FSF needs to do is address the fears of basic programmers, especially those in startup companies, who have little legal knowledge and are frankly a bit scared by the whole GPL thing. People on Slashdot always complain when somebody comes on here and posts a comment that demonstrates their lack of understanding of the GPL and its limitations, but that should be a sign that there remains a huge lack of understanding out there.
What is *really* lacking from the GPLv3 (and also GPLv2) is a clear description of the circumstances under which you *do* retain proprietary rights to your own work, and control over the license. While not legally necessary, inclusion of such a description would go a long way toward mollifying the fears of people who are worried about losing the ability to profit from their own work. In a nutshell, the primary barrier toward greater enthusiasm for the GPL is the (accurate) perception that FSF and the GPL do not have a profit- or business-friendly attitude.
This will not happen because the FSF does not want to encourage people to have any sort of control over their own intellectual property. Whatever control is retained under the GPL (e.g. the ability to keep source secret if you don't distribute it, the ability to retain a copyright on your work even if you cannot enforce it) is granted grudgingly, and usually by omission of an explicit restriction, rather than willingly. That attitude is a major turnoff to a lot of people.
My question is, why can't these issues be taken care of using existing antitrust laws? Why do we need extra laws that are effectively "antitrust for the Internet"? Our existing antitrust laws were initially created in the late 19th century to address similar abuses on the part of the railroad companies, who used their monopolies to extract lots of extra money from Midwestern farmers who usually had to rely on a single railroad company to provide all of their shipping to the East. In many ways it was the same issue that we are now dealing with from the ISP's (supposedly - I would contend the problem is exaggerated).
Seriously - if an ISP is favoring their own services over other services, that is an anticompetitive and monopolistic practice that clearly falls under existing antitrust laws. If the complaints are legitimate, they can be prosecuted as such. Why does nobody realize this?
If our Congressmembers do not learn history, they are destined to make bad decisions. (I will not say they are destined to repeat it, because here the mistake would be in the needless repetition.)
They might have refuted Linus's criticism, but his criticism is still there. The reality is that this little feud between Linus and FSF matters less as a logical debate and more as a practical issue. If Linus is unhappy with GPLv3 and decides not to adopt it for the Linux kernel, that will be a major blow for GPLv3 no matter how you cut it, because it will have a domino effect in which it is not adopted as a new standard.
It may be that the other GNU project tools like gcc are indispensible parts of the Linux operating system. I don't know enough to know for sure. But the Linux kernel is also an indispensible part, and if you start having the operating system split between GPLv2 and GPLv3, new projects will justified in following the Linux kernel's lead and sticking with GPLv2.
Another issue here that may not be fully appreciated is that many people already think that GPLv2 already goes too far. By going even farther, GPLv3 is going to turn off even more people to the GPL project. It may be that the goals it establishes are justified. But if even Linus Torvalds is turned off by this, I wonder what corporate users of Linux will say...?
Also - one theory I'd like to just throw out there is the possibility that while current replacements for many of the GNU tools may be lacking, if they adopt GPLv3 and corporate customers like Google and Sun don't like them because of restrictions on usage, they may spearhead the development of replacements.
Likewise, any GPL version that places clear requirements on web applications developed using programs under that version (e.g. you must GPL those web applications) will never see adoption by Google etc. Assuming this is where FSF is going, the GPL will ultimately destroy itself by becoming too extreme.
This sounds like a job for... Larry Summers!
Actually, women in general can get laid with no effort. There is always a man willing to go for it, and usually a woman who is looking for sex only can find a more attractive mate than a man looking for sex only. Or at least, so says Stephen Pinker's "The Human Mind." Interesting take.
Actually, the bigger objection I would have to the statement about average IQ's increasing is that IQ is a function of education. With all of the word comparisons and math problems on supposed "IQ tests," how could it be otherwise?
What's their source on that statement? Actually, nevermind - it's irrelevant.
The rest of the article looks interesting though. I am somewhat surprised, given the added stress we face and added pollutants. But maybe extra exercise and healthier eating make up for it?
Another thing I would add to my previous post is that the irony is that the traffic alleviated by the Big Dig will come back within 5-7 years. The bottleneck for the Central Artery is the part where it actually goes underneath a skyscraper (technically it does this twice, but the other part isn't as crowded). They can't make it any wider there because it would eliminate the foundation of the skyscraper enough that the whole thing could collapse. This limits the size of the entire Central Artery and will eventually force the city to develop ways for people to get in and out and around using completely different traffic patterns.
The one major improvement to traffic that the Big Dig accomplished was diverting traffic going to the Airport through a separate tunnel (the one that just had part of the roof collapse). That reduced traffic in the Central Artery by something like 50%. Ironically, that was also the least expensive part of the Big Dig.
As a Boston resident I've been following this semi-closely, and it seems that the main problem is not so much the engineering itself, but the way in which the overall planning occurred. This project was started in the late 1980's, and was supposed to cost something like $3 billion and take a few years. Now it has taken more than 16 years and cost tens of billions of dollars.
It wasn't just a bad estimate - it was that they gradually expanded the scope of the project and added new goals once the project was underway. As a result it took longer and cost more money. Then came the double-whammy - because it took so much time, and occurred at a time when people were moving back into the city making overall traffic worse, they had to revise the project again to make it even more ambitious. Otherwise, when it was done the traffic would still be bad and people would wonder why they spent so much time on a project that didn't solve the problem. So the Big Dig has always been in a race with time, which paradoxically has caused them to take more time than they otherwise would.
Most of the problems that have happened with the Big Dig have been due not to poor engineering, but use of the wrong materials and deliberate corner-cutting by the contractors. The woman who was killed a couple of weeks ago when the ceiling fell on her car died not because of poor engineering, but because the ceiling part was held up with substandard materials. They actually realized that this was a problem and changed the materials, but not before that part was built, and they never went back and fixed it.
So the contractors cut corners to make more money than they otherwise would, sometimes illegally. But my theory is that the underlying reason why they were able to get away with it is that the ballooning costs (remember it expanded by a cost of something like 900% in money and 400% in time) made accounting that much more difficult.
Movie productions are actually investor-led enterprises, despite the fact that they are also an art form. While there are a lot of movies whose directors and actors really care about communicating an important vision or message, there are also a lot of movies that are designed solely to appeal to as many people as possible. They fill the movie with cliches and implications designed to please as many people as possible, but in appealing to everybody enough to get them to see the movie, they appeal to very few people enough to get them to actually like it.
Superman Returns is a case in point. Did you notice how that was simultaneously marketed to evangelicals with "Superman as Jesus figure" and gays with that article "Is Superman Gay?" and liberals with Lex Luthor's "bring it on" statement in the trailers? In reality the movie was none of these things, they just wanted to intrigue as many people as possible to bring them to the theaters.
Bottom line: For people trying to make the "summer blockbuster," it doesn't matter if the movie is good, as long as it sells. You make more money increasing expectations than delivering on those expectations.
This is why niche and indie movies are often better, because the primary goal of the writers, directors and actors is to present their vision. Now, I actually like a fair number of mainstream movies, but certainly not most of them.
This seems like a demotion to me. The security problems Amazon.com faces can't possibly be as big as the security problems Microsoft faces. It is relatively easy to harden a server farm, compared to making an operating system that can stay reasonably secure even when run by novices and below.
I would buy a MacBook, but I want to play games. Macs don't have good graphics processors. So even now that it dual-boots with Windows, I still am going to go with a PC for that reason when I buy a laptop once Vista launches (most likely Alienware). And as long as they lack good graphics processors, the gaming market is going to be slow to adapt to any increased Mac user base. Which in turn may hurt their user base a bit.
All that said, only a minority of people play games on computers, mostly because of the expense versus XBox, PS, etc. So they should be ok.