Wednesday, January 26th, 2005
Eye of Science: Life in a Microcosmic World
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posted to channel: Web
updated: 2005-01-27 23:26:43
Monday, January 24th, 2005
That Apple’s market share has dropped to a small fraction of Wintel’s is old news. But there’s a new explanation.
Paul Murphy of LinuxInsider points out that Apple’s unit sales have been increasing over the years. That seems like a conflict: if Apple is selling more machines than before, why isn’t the Mac gaining market share? Is the rest of the world buying that many more Wintel boxes?
Yes, but not for the reason you might expect: this is not about rapid adoption of Wintel by new computer users. Murphy argues, instead, that all those additional Wintel unit sales are upgrades.
Apple’s declining relative market share measured in dollars has been due more to the expense of Wintel product churn than to a fall-off of interest among Mac users. Over the longer term, Apple’s unit sales have consistently increased; what caused the decline in Apple’s annual share of market dollars has been growth in revenue to the PC sellers.
It’s Wintel’s rapid upgrade cycle that’s been getting progressively more and more out of line with norms for industrial or retail electronics products, and therefore not falling interest in the Mac, that’s behind the numbers. Think about this for a minute: If PCs remained usable as long as Macs do, industrywide total revenues (aka customer costs) would be nearly two-thirds lower.
Murphy’s editorial segues into the tale of a Wintel bigot, who in spite of repeated and obvious failures of his chosen OS continues to denigrate alternatives. It’s just another proof that the human organism is hardwired for fraud — to quote George Lakoff, “people think in terms of frames and metaphors … when the facts don’t fit the frames, the frames are kept and the facts ignored.”
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posted to channel: Personal
updated: 2005-01-24 16:25:20
Sunday, January 23rd, 2005
Nobody needs that much root beer.
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posted to channel: Food & Cooking
updated: 2005-01-30 07:22:01
Thursday, January 20th, 2005
It’s poetry, it’s art, it’s disturbing as hell: SimpleLife.com’s Pesticide Statistics
between World War II and 1980: 1 every 5 years.
Average number of serious pesticide-related accidents
between 1980 and the present: 2 every year.
Increase in cancer rates between 1950 and 1986: 37%.
Number of people in the U.S. who die each year
from cancer related to pesticides: 10,400.
Number of people in the U.S. killed each year by assault rifles: 250.
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posted to channel: Conservation
updated: 2005-01-21 22:12:26
Tuesday, January 18th, 2005
The guitar was a Fender Stratocaster played through a Marshall head and a 4x10 Marshall cabinet. Two mics were pointed at the same speaker. The following excerpt demonstrates the difference in sound between the two mics.
No effects or EQ have been applied; these are the raw guitar sounds.
Ode To Soup — Guitar Sounds (4 bars SM-57, 4 bars M-380, 4 bars mixed, repeat)
The most startling effect is the width of the stereo image as compared to either solo mic. I think the SM-57 sound is good on its own, but I like the stereo version better.
Tags: sm57,, recording,, guitar,, m380
posted to channel: Music
updated: 2008-05-06 03:24:02
