Every single President, Vice President, Senator, Congressman, soldier, police officer and Raytheon investor who thinks this is a great new "tool" for crowd control should be strapped to a table and subjected to a mandatory 60 second blast from this fucking thing. Let them fully understand, in the most visceral of terms, what this abomination means.
Seriously. This thing scares me more than nuclear weapons. At least with a nuke, you would be turned to your constituent atoms quicker than your nerves could react. With this "pain ray" Corporations and governments could exert complete control over their populations. Dipshit "America firsters" will try to get this set up on the borders to keep out all the "brown people"
Then there is the little matter that these are most likely considerably easier to create than nukes. Something a well financed terrorist could conceivably come up with in a couple of years and you have the perfect terror weapon. They wouldn't need to do it to people in Times Square. They could just camp out a half a mile from the runway of any major airport and cook the pilots when the planes are taking off. Presto! Instant coordinated air distasters at every major airport in the U.S simultaneously.
The humunculi who think up and fund these things should just be loaded into a space ship blasted into the fucking sun.
Knowing the military, that thing probably costs $10 million and, from the looks of it, it would be trivial to defeat.
Method 1:
Recruit kids with spray cans to blind it by painting all its cameras.
What soldier is going to kill a kid to save a robot? It would spark an international outrage.
(and rightfully so)
Method 2:
In urban settings, just string a bunch of ropes or cables between buildings at around camera mast height.
The operator would see them but it wouldn't matter the robot couldn't proceed.
Method 3
Tip it over
High tech stupidity designed to line some campaign contributer's pockets and we get to foot the bill. Oh joy.
There are many fundamental programming tools that don't require math above the level of addition, subtraction multiplication and division.
For example:
- Searching
- Trees
- Conditional tests
- Program flow
- etc...
As for the brain, I think it's a virtual certainty that the brain doesn't use any math whatsoever. Where would mathematical knowlege reside? Neurons have no need for it, they communicate chemically and electrically. Brain chemicals have no need for math, they "communicate" by way of attraction, repulsion and exchange/sharing of elctrons. Atoms have no need of math as their interaction with their world is built in. Subatomic particles have no need of math for the same reasons. In fact, it's far more intriguing that the brain (and the world at large) accomplishes all that it does without any knowlege of (or need for) math at all.
We've grown accustomed to using math to describe how parts of the world interrelate, but math is the map, not the territory and likely plays no role at all in the actual workings of brains, cells, molecules atoms, planets and stars. Taking programming "to the next level" may indeed require moving beyond mathematical understanding.
Visual voicemail is cool but, it hardly justifies such an odius 5 year AT&T lock-in. I'd would gladly give up visual voicemail for an iPhone that could be used with any provider. Think about that. Apple can't sell an iPhone that works with any other provider FOR THE NEXT FIVE YEARS. That's an eternity in the tech industry and in 5 years, you better believe that all other major phone manufacturers will have easily surpassed the iPhone in terms of elegance and ease of use.
Apple isn't going to sit on their thumbs for the next five years but they showed other phone manufacturers how to make a simple elegant device. They gave away the store with this AT&T deal.
I've had the opposite experience. I bought my first Mac in 1999, a first gen 350 MHZ G4 which I sold to a friend last year (who still uses it for web surfing and email).
My second Apple purchase was a first gen TiBook in 2000 which traveled with me on a six month trip in Mexico. That puppy took a beating travelling in "chicken buses" "combis" and getting irreverently tossed into a beat up backpack. I still use it for development. The only things wrong with it are a few cracked keys that are held together with tape and the firewire port gave up the ghost about a year ago.
My third Apple computer was a MacBook Pro I picked up a year ago and so far it's worked flawlessly.
The fourth and final Apple product I own is a 2003 iPod which I still use all the time.
The only problems I've ever had are batteries that loose their charge after about 1.5 to 2 years and one trip to the shop to get my MacBook Pro cleaned after spilling half a can of Pepsi on the keyboard. Nothing shorted out it's just that the pepsi goop under the keys made them stick in the down position and it got rather annoying. After the cleaning though, it was good as new.
Maybe someday Apple will get back to actually creating something 'new'
By this logic:
- When are cellphone companies going to come up with something "new." Walkie talkies were invented in the 30's. Cellphones are just glorified walkie talkies with a longer range. What's up with that?
- And what's all the marketing hype over phones that show video? TV technology has been around since the 40's. You'd think they could think of something "new" instead of copying a 60 year old idea.
- And what about Intel and AMD and those transistor thingies. They were invented in the 40's. When are they going to actually "invent" something?
Point being. There are very few radically new ideas almost everything is a refinement or combining of things that already exist.
right now their best 'new' thing is an OS based on 1989 Next concepts.
Lets see.
- Steve Jobs started Apple (With the very important technical contributions of Steve Wozniak)
- Steve Jobs gets kicked out of Apple, goes on to Start Next Computer.
- Apple buys OpenStep (all that remains of Next) right around the time Steve Jobs returns to Apple.
Seems more like the continuation of a vision rather than "stealing" the ideas from Next.
Face it. Jobs really is an innovator. He was the key to both companies. If you live to be 500 you'll never have anywhere near the impact on the world that Jobs has.
And the UI paradigm from the 1989 Next still outclasses OSX.
Heh.
"The AP is reporting on a cop who has found a way to get caffeine into donuts...
Thats better
Guess they'll have to ban Nokia phones next...
on
Norway Outlaws iTunes
·
· Score: 0, Troll
From a quick Google search:
Experience Nokia Nseries multimedia smartphones, featuring exclusive content from cutting-edge designers, artists and generally mobile people.
We Americans measure our bacteria as fractions of an inch so the sponge fires were no doubt caused when people, in their germ kill potential calculations, screwed up while converting centimeter length microwaves to inches.
Honest mistake.
In the demo Jobs specifically mentioned CoreAnimation and from the photo resizing performance, I suspect that CoreImage is thrown in there as well. Since they use Safari, they must include WebKit. It may not be the full blown set of frameworks and language support (C, Ruby, Python etc) but it seems like there is certainly enough there to create user interfaces and web connect stuff which would be fine for third party developers.
The Google map portion of the iPhone demo showed off the double-tap and "pinch zoom" if I recall correctly. These scaling methods may have required some tweaks on Google's end. One thing that was clear from the demo is that Google Maps had it's own button on the home screen so there could also be some handshaking/connection code specific to the iPhone.
I think Phil Schiller, while not quite the rock star Jobs is, would be a good replacement. He knows the Apple way, is an integral part of all Jobs's presentations and plays his part well. I'm certain he has the same commitment to quality that Jobs has and he's a pretty good showman in his own right.
I think he'd be able to fill Jobs's shoes pretty well
"So, why does the OS need to be locked to the hardware? Is it perhaps because the average Mac user, given the chance, would abandon the imaginary benefits of integration in a flash, in favor of being able to buy the hardware he really wants and needs?"
I think too many on slashdot, view as prissy, any preference for a nicely designed computer. I'm sure, given the time and energy, I could buy a bunch of top notch components, epoxy them to a piece of diamond plate steel, load some uber-geek version of Linux and have a computer that would wipe the floor with a Mac. But just as important to me as raw stats, is that it has a nice "look and feel" to it.
Internally, Macs have many of the same components but the whole package is just a nice, dependable, easy to use computer that requires almost no maintainence. The only PC that even tempts me is the Acer Ferrari. Not because I'm a slave to status symbols or flashy logos (I'm not) but because it looks like quality. It's laid out well with great attention to detail, same as Macs.
As for buying hardware users really want, I don't think Apple wants or needs to cover every conceivable base. They are trying to produce good computers that do what most users need done and to do it with a bit of style.
The combination of OS X and a lineup of well desined computers is why Apple is still alive and kicking. OS X isn't a commodity OS and Apple computers aren't commodity computers. If they break the interdependency, they would become just another computer maker or just another OS maker. It's the software/hardware dependency that has allowed them to survive in an otherwise completely commoditized PC world. It's a business strategy that works well for them at this point in time.
I don't see this happening at all. I bought a MacBook Pro about 6 months ago specifically so I could run Windows for Web 2.0 compatibility testing and, except for the initial cool factor of running Windows on a Mac, I really have no use for Windows. It has literally nothing I actually *need* I haven't fired up Parallels in over 2 months as there's just nothing at all compelling requiring me to use Windows.
As for gaming, who cares? After people turn 30 or so, the appeal drops dramatically. Sure, the occasional "first person shooter" is fun once in awhile, but I don't know anyone over 30 who actually games on a regular basis and certainly no one in that age group who actually factors in gaming when buying a computer.
Hard core 30+ year old gamers are like 30+ year old pot heads. They definitely exist, but they aren't the mainstream
If there is any danger to Apple, in the OS arena, I think it comes from Web 2.0. not Linux or Windows. All major OSes need to rethink their relevance in a Web 2.0 world.
Web 2.0 isn't there yet in terms of allowing greater use of system resources, programming language etc, but that is where the future lies. If Apple can get ahead in this area, for example providing free libraries developers (on any OS) can use to do powerful data, image and animation processing through a browser, (opening up Core Data, Core Image, Core Animation as Web standards) they could really have a shot at creating the first compelling and powerful Web OS.
I don't see OS X losing to either Windows or Linux, I see all three losing to Web 2.0 (or Web 3.0)
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously. This thing scares me more than nuclear weapons. At least with a nuke, you would be turned to your constituent atoms quicker than your nerves could react. With this "pain ray" Corporations and governments could exert complete control over their populations. Dipshit "America firsters" will try to get this set up on the borders to keep out all the "brown people"
Then there is the little matter that these are most likely considerably easier to create than nukes. Something a well financed terrorist could conceivably come up with in a couple of years and you have the perfect terror weapon. They wouldn't need to do it to people in Times Square. They could just camp out a half a mile from the runway of any major airport and cook the pilots when the planes are taking off. Presto! Instant coordinated air distasters at every major airport in the U.S simultaneously.
The humunculi who think up and fund these things should just be loaded into a space ship blasted into the fucking sun.
10 terabytes of ram? You must be able to fire ceramics with the heat that puppy puts out!
Looks like you'll never own one then.
I've found this site to be pretty good for answering any math questions I have. Your question might be a little advanced but it's worth a shot http://www.physicsforums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=4
Method 1: Recruit kids with spray cans to blind it by painting all its cameras. What soldier is going to kill a kid to save a robot? It would spark an international outrage. (and rightfully so)
Method 2: In urban settings, just string a bunch of ropes or cables between buildings at around camera mast height. The operator would see them but it wouldn't matter the robot couldn't proceed.
Method 3 Tip it over
High tech stupidity designed to line some campaign contributer's pockets and we get to foot the bill. Oh joy.
Hah!
Its pink because I can't get the blood out!
For example:
- Searching
- Trees
- Conditional tests
- Program flow
- etc...
As for the brain, I think it's a virtual certainty that the brain doesn't use any math whatsoever. Where would mathematical knowlege reside? Neurons have no need for it, they communicate chemically and electrically. Brain chemicals have no need for math, they "communicate" by way of attraction, repulsion and exchange/sharing of elctrons. Atoms have no need of math as their interaction with their world is built in. Subatomic particles have no need of math for the same reasons. In fact, it's far more intriguing that the brain (and the world at large) accomplishes all that it does without any knowlege of (or need for) math at all.
We've grown accustomed to using math to describe how parts of the world interrelate, but math is the map, not the territory and likely plays no role at all in the actual workings of brains, cells, molecules atoms, planets and stars. Taking programming "to the next level" may indeed require moving beyond mathematical understanding.
Visual voicemail is cool but, it hardly justifies such an odius 5 year AT&T lock-in. I'd would gladly give up visual voicemail for an iPhone that could be used with any provider. Think about that. Apple can't sell an iPhone that works with any other provider FOR THE NEXT FIVE YEARS. That's an eternity in the tech industry and in 5 years, you better believe that all other major phone manufacturers will have easily surpassed the iPhone in terms of elegance and ease of use. Apple isn't going to sit on their thumbs for the next five years but they showed other phone manufacturers how to make a simple elegant device. They gave away the store with this AT&T deal.
Snotr! Thret Rucks! Coiffe alovr the scren! :)
Wow. You've had some bad luck!
I've had the opposite experience. I bought my first Mac in 1999, a first gen 350 MHZ G4 which I sold to a friend last year (who still uses it for web surfing and email).
My second Apple purchase was a first gen TiBook in 2000 which traveled with me on a six month trip in Mexico. That puppy took a beating travelling in "chicken buses" "combis" and getting irreverently tossed into a beat up backpack. I still use it for development. The only things wrong with it are a few cracked keys that are held together with tape and the firewire port gave up the ghost about a year ago.
My third Apple computer was a MacBook Pro I picked up a year ago and so far it's worked flawlessly.
The fourth and final Apple product I own is a 2003 iPod which I still use all the time.
The only problems I've ever had are batteries that loose their charge after about 1.5 to 2 years and one trip to the shop to get my MacBook Pro cleaned after spilling half a can of Pepsi on the keyboard. Nothing shorted out it's just that the pepsi goop under the keys made them stick in the down position and it got rather annoying. After the cleaning though, it was good as new.
That's it.
By this logic:
- When are cellphone companies going to come up with something "new." Walkie talkies were invented in the 30's. Cellphones are just glorified walkie talkies with a longer range. What's up with that?
- And what's all the marketing hype over phones that show video? TV technology has been around since the 40's. You'd think they could think of something "new" instead of copying a 60 year old idea.
- And what about Intel and AMD and those transistor thingies. They were invented in the 40's. When are they going to actually "invent" something?
Point being. There are very few radically new ideas almost everything is a refinement or combining of things that already exist.
right now their best 'new' thing is an OS based on 1989 Next concepts.
Lets see.
- Steve Jobs started Apple (With the very important technical contributions of Steve Wozniak)
- Steve Jobs gets kicked out of Apple, goes on to Start Next Computer.
- Apple buys OpenStep (all that remains of Next) right around the time Steve Jobs returns to Apple.
Seems more like the continuation of a vision rather than "stealing" the ideas from Next.
Face it. Jobs really is an innovator. He was the key to both companies. If you live to be 500 you'll never have anywhere near the impact on the world that Jobs has.
And the UI paradigm from the 1989 Next still outclasses OSX.
Heh.
"The AP is reporting on a cop who has found a way to get caffeine into donuts... Thats better
From a quick Google search:
Experience Nokia Nseries multimedia smartphones, featuring exclusive content from cutting-edge designers, artists and generally mobile people.
We Americans measure our bacteria as fractions of an inch so the sponge fires were no doubt caused when people, in their germ kill potential calculations, screwed up while converting centimeter length microwaves to inches. Honest mistake.
In the demo Jobs specifically mentioned CoreAnimation and from the photo resizing performance, I suspect that CoreImage is thrown in there as well. Since they use Safari, they must include WebKit. It may not be the full blown set of frameworks and language support (C, Ruby, Python etc) but it seems like there is certainly enough there to create user interfaces and web connect stuff which would be fine for third party developers.
The Google map portion of the iPhone demo showed off the double-tap and "pinch zoom" if I recall correctly. These scaling methods may have required some tweaks on Google's end. One thing that was clear from the demo is that Google Maps had it's own button on the home screen so there could also be some handshaking/connection code specific to the iPhone.
All they have to do is convert their email address to metric and no one in U.S law enforcement will know how to find them.
I think Phil Schiller, while not quite the rock star Jobs is, would be a good replacement. He knows the Apple way, is an integral part of all Jobs's presentations and plays his part well. I'm certain he has the same commitment to quality that Jobs has and he's a pretty good showman in his own right. I think he'd be able to fill Jobs's shoes pretty well
"So, why does the OS need to be locked to the hardware? Is it perhaps because the average Mac user, given the chance, would abandon the imaginary benefits of integration in a flash, in favor of being able to buy the hardware he really wants and needs?"
I think too many on slashdot, view as prissy, any preference for a nicely designed computer. I'm sure, given the time and energy, I could buy a bunch of top notch components, epoxy them to a piece of diamond plate steel, load some uber-geek version of Linux and have a computer that would wipe the floor with a Mac. But just as important to me as raw stats, is that it has a nice "look and feel" to it.
Internally, Macs have many of the same components but the whole package is just a nice, dependable, easy to use computer that requires almost no maintainence. The only PC that even tempts me is the Acer Ferrari. Not because I'm a slave to status symbols or flashy logos (I'm not) but because it looks like quality. It's laid out well with great attention to detail, same as Macs.
As for buying hardware users really want, I don't think Apple wants or needs to cover every conceivable base. They are trying to produce good computers that do what most users need done and to do it with a bit of style.
The combination of OS X and a lineup of well desined computers is why Apple is still alive and kicking. OS X isn't a commodity OS and Apple computers aren't commodity computers. If they break the interdependency, they would become just another computer maker or just another OS maker. It's the software/hardware dependency that has allowed them to survive in an otherwise completely commoditized PC world. It's a business strategy that works well for them at this point in time.
I don't see this happening at all. I bought a MacBook Pro about 6 months ago specifically so I could run Windows for Web 2.0 compatibility testing and, except for the initial cool factor of running Windows on a Mac, I really have no use for Windows. It has literally nothing I actually *need* I haven't fired up Parallels in over 2 months as there's just nothing at all compelling requiring me to use Windows.
As for gaming, who cares? After people turn 30 or so, the appeal drops dramatically. Sure, the occasional "first person shooter" is fun once in awhile, but I don't know anyone over 30 who actually games on a regular basis and certainly no one in that age group who actually factors in gaming when buying a computer.
Hard core 30+ year old gamers are like 30+ year old pot heads. They definitely exist, but they aren't the mainstream
If there is any danger to Apple, in the OS arena, I think it comes from Web 2.0. not Linux or Windows. All major OSes need to rethink their relevance in a Web 2.0 world.
Web 2.0 isn't there yet in terms of allowing greater use of system resources, programming language etc, but that is where the future lies. If Apple can get ahead in this area, for example providing free libraries developers (on any OS) can use to do powerful data, image and animation processing through a browser, (opening up Core Data, Core Image, Core Animation as Web standards) they could really have a shot at creating the first compelling and powerful Web OS.
I don't see OS X losing to either Windows or Linux, I see all three losing to Web 2.0 (or Web 3.0)