Nwallins

Given two systems, do you prefer the closed or open one?

This article is well-meaning but totally misses the point:

It doesn't matter if your POS is built on open source technology if someone has the ability to install new software onto it.

i.e. UltraSecureAwesomeClosedSourceOS is just as vulnerable to having new (rogue) software installed onto the device as any other OS. The hardware or firmware should have controls in place to prevent this or make it extremely difficult, regardless of what is running on top.

> ... that hardly means the value of content approaches zero. To the contrary, if you're able to search vast amounts of content for what is most interesting to you, the value you receive from that content increases ...

The value of which Mr. Adams speaks is economic -- i.e. what is exchanged for the content:

> And so, as our ability to search for media content improves, the economic value of that content will approach zero.

Please excuse me for noting how apologetic the tone is, says the proud owner of an HTC Hero (Sprint v2.1)

I upvoted by accident. You should invest where you see value. Otherwise you just sound envious and bitter.

> True, and grapes are 2.99 a pound at the local grocery store.

Yes, and by the pound is how bulk MJ is bought and sold at a wholesale level.

> Doesn't seem to explain why a good dinner table wine can be upwards of $100 a bottle.

This has been post-processed, aged, and blended by masters whose work is more art than science. I'm not sure there is a good analogue in MJ world except perhaps hashish or hash oil. Hashish is relatively easy to produce and may be aged. It is certainly refined to a greater potency than bulk MJ.

So it will cost more per weight unit than bulk MJ.

You have to root the phone.

I would like to make an outlandish suggestion: 10 years of pension / retirement / paid healthcare. Take it whenever you want after the admittedly arbitrary age of 30. After that, you're on your own.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KA-BAR for those interested...

I really like http://lesswrong.com -- a spinoff of http://overcomingbias.com

Their 'stacked' view of threaded comments makes a lot of sense to me. It might be really nice for a code editor too -- the minimal indent width can be smaller, and context is clearer.

Just the FAQs, ma'am

Yes, it screams for a wrapper library. Might take all of 10 minutes to design the API.

> IIS, Apache, Microsoft Word, Excel, Photoshop

I can see the enterprise use case for all of those except perhaps the last. I doubt 98% of enterprises rely on Photoshop.

What is the enterprise use case for Flash again?

There are constant references to the etched-glass aesthetic with no examples or explanation, and while I am pretty familiar with iPad reviews and whatnot, I have no idea what this means.

> That's like saying that because we've already debunked alchemy and astrology, being asked to debunk evolution as well is just nitpicking.

Well, yes. Scientists around the world agree that every scientific topic should be debunked. The ones that are left -- the ones that survive an attempt at debunking -- should be taken as fact, presumably until they are debunked and replaced with something more valid.

> If you asked someone at the Harvard divinity school what the most compelling arguments in favor of religion were today, they'd probably talk about Thor ... -- not at all

Sure, because choosing what to believe in, without a scientific basis, is essentially fashion. And believe me -- Thor is _way_ out of fashion.

I don't know what a dilantant is, but in order for a human to maintain a high speed, he is pushing -- nay, driving -- his feet into the running surface. Water does not provide this level of resistance for something with a high psi such as a human foot.

OS X for sure has network booting. I believe it is referred to as 'netboot'. http://www.google.com/search?q=os+x+netboot

Absolutely. The comment was very much tongue-in-cheek. :)

I hereby suggest that we pronounce these things as memri-stors rather than mem-ristors.

> Negligent melodiousness

Malodorousness, perhaps?

Also, babushka is pronounced like "Bob is good." not ba-BUSH-ka.

Matryoshka is, however, pronounced more-or-less like "ma-TROYSH-ka".

Well, so says my US-ian ear.

> I think it's more likely that it's a practical reason

> They are establishing Adobe's track record of keeping current on underlying platform enhancements.

None of that refutes whether or not Apple considers using the Cocoa API exclusively as a norm. I think it's quite clear that they do. Are you really suggesting otherwise?

I think it's clear that a norm of using the Cocoa API is implied here:

> Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago

I was thinking specifically of the Cocoa norm -- which iTunes apparently does not meet -- I should have made that more clear.

How much more open is H.264 than SWF and FLV, anyway?

> Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe

Assuming Jobs is not declaring an obvious tautology, he is omitting FOSS efforts such as Gnash and Swfdec.

Is it not hypocritical to hold others to higher standards than one demonstrates?

I see a normative claim:

    Software systems should do X, Y, and Z

Software systems that do not meet the norm are penalized or disallowed by Apple's platform(s). However, Apple's own software does not meet this norm either, even on Apple's own platform.

It sure seems like hypocrisy to me, even if it is defensible.

I found it odd and jarring that for the first 2 graphs, KVM is blue and Xen is green, while for the CPU graph, Xen is blue and KVM is green. For all subsequent 3-way comparisons, KVM is back to blue and Xen is back to green.

> Blaming a whole generation is silly.

Is anyone really doing that? I see Trophy Kids (btw, new term for me, and I am one, I suppose) as a characterization rather than blame. There is no doubt the term is pejorative, but if I think canned green beans taste like crap, am I blaming the beans, the can, the producer, or am I not placing any blame at all?

FWIW, I do agree that parents are largely responsible for their children's behavior.

> Has it really worked well in PCs? The average PC manufacturer is hardly rolling in money, unlike Apple.

Assuming we are segmenting the Mac market from the PC market, it is much better to be in the PC market whether you are consumer or a producer. For manufacturers, it sucks to be in Apple's market if you are not Apple (PsyStar?). For consumers, they get a wider selection of products at lower price points, though they do not get the design cachet.

To make a belabored car analogy, would you rather be in the market for Italian supercars or that of the rest of the world? Both producers and consumers tend to choose the latter.

noatime is a great counterexample to your 'ricing' claim. I run this mount option on nearly every filesystem under my command. relatime is also a viable option if you need things like mutt.

From http://kerneltrap.org/node/14148 (which discusses relatime, a less-drastic version of noatime that keeps mutt working)

> Ingo Molnar stressed the significance of fixing this performance issue, "I cannot over-emphasize how much of a deal it is in practice. Atime updates are by far the biggest IO performance deficiency that Linux has today. Getting rid of atime updates would give us more everyday Linux performance than all the pagecache speedups of the past 10 years, _combined_."

> "It's also perhaps the most stupid Unix design idea of all times. Unix is really nice and well done, but think about this a bit: 'For every file that is read from the disk, lets do a ... write to the disk! And, for every file that is already cached and which we read from the cache ... do a write to the disk!'"

> Cost of the best smartphones in 2010: <= $200

You should use the unsubsidized cost. Like if you need to replace an iPhone or buying a Nexus One. More like $600.

I think by real world, he meant meatspace.