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Absolutely correct. It is irrelevant because it is unknowable so let's not pretend or imagine or try to know the unknowable. Let's live our lives in peace.

This takes responsibility away from what God would want, to what we think is right. I believe this to be a more realistic approach.

I certainly feel that most atheists are what I would call agnostic atheists. They lack belief in a god but leave the question of such a being existing either open and yet to be proved or unknowable and, therefore, pointless to contemplate. Only a so-called gnostic atheist would say they have seen sufficient evidence to convince them there is no god and I have not seen to many of them in my travels. It's more likely that they have yet to see sufficient evidence so, while they do not specifically believe in his existence, they cannot categorically deny it either. The blurry line between atheism and agnosticism is fairly crowded, I think.

It's easy "don't believe" as contrast to "don't know". I think it's a very important distinction for some Atheists who go beyond the "unknown" position into a more definitive negative view regarding deities. The problem as I see it is it is not so much that a deity may exist, it's all the purported rules and regs associated with said deity that makes it easy to cast doubt.

You've just made good points, Huntn. I'm sure that many, maybe even most, people have much the same knee-jerk reaction you have. I pointed out som distinctions, though, because nowadays, when many think unclearly, the ignore those distinctions. Each time I hear someone say "I feel" when he should say "I believe" or "I think," the phrase "I feel" reminds me of subjectivism.

Someone here, Lord Blackadder, I think, told me that I didn't understand the "pluralistic society" idea. I do understand it, and I know that many people disagree with me on many topics. I'm willing to learn from others. I even suspect that my false beliefs outnumber my true ones. But if disagreement among people proves anything, it proves that some people hold some false beliefs. If I believe that there's a God and you believe that there's no God, one of us is wrong. Today too many talk as though the freedom to believe what one wants to believe is more important than the truth.

Sure, it's often better to say "I don't know" rather than "I don't believe" because most people probably haven't learned the distinctions I've described. On the other hand, although knowing that a belief is true implies believing that it's true, believing that it's true doesn't imply knowing that it's true. If believing always implied knowing, everyone would be all-knowing.

Say I've deluded myself into believing that my honorary Brian is still living when he is, in fact, already dead. No one is helping me by saying that "Brian is still alive" is true for Bill but not for Brian's family." If I were deluded, the longer my delusion lasted, the more painful my disillusionment would be. I want to know the truth, even if it's unpleasant.

The problem is that the concept of God is subjective. And if any God exists, then 1)It is a horrible communicator or 2) It does not really care because if it did, it would rely on more than ancient scripts, and it would take more care to ensure those scripts were accurate. (They don't appear accurate to me).

We exist, there may be an afterlife. I really do hope there is a spiritual plane where consciousness may continue. And there maybe judgement but these are huge IFs mostly based on our desire that there is more to life than our meager existence on this planet.

For fun please judge this statement: God can't prove its existence. If anyone disagrees, what real proof would be required? I'm not talking about those very subjective "feelings". ;)

Originally posted by javajedi
I gave you what you asked for, a fair and balanced benchmark, one even created by a Mac user. You guys have seen the code to the simple floating point and integer benchmarks

It would be interesting to see the code generated for the loops - it won't change the answers but it might give some of us a bit more understanding on the perfomance differences.

Except the big difference between Microsoft's Media Center and Apple's, is that Microsoft's new Vista version will be able to record encrypted digital and HD television via a CableCARD, and Apple has no plans for that at the moment. And it's not the type of functionality that will just show up, Microsoft has been working on getting a CableCARD device certified for years.

I'm not sure about tv programmes in hd, but bluray/hddvd discs will be protected and you will only be able to watch them if everything in the chain supports the protection - the disc, the drive, the processor, the video card and the tv. Otherwise it falls back to a lower quality output and you're back to square one.

It might be the best quality, but hd is a long way off from becoming mainstream. Its good that Microsoft are supporting it in Vista but I really don't think it will be a show stopper for most people. For most people the Apple media centre functionality will be more than acceptable, when it isn't I'm sure that Apple will come out with something new and improved that is.

OK, so I now know what the potential capabilities of the new machines will have. If I look at the Apple Store and see the 3 current base options & price, when the release occurs, what is the speculation of choices & prices?

I am also wanting to know that if I have decided that the current 2.66 GHz meets my needs, should I hold off because they may bump the speed, lower the price, etc., etc. I also understand that everything is pure speculation. I am also not wanting to shoot myself because something else happens to the current line up.

I appreciate the thorough & in-depth responses. It helps.

I think it's a great convenience. I'm just saying that the inevitable wrath-of-God response from Apple is somewhat unwarranted.

It's a great convenience until the RIAA gets pissed and either changes their mind about downloadable music or tells Apple to hike their prices.

We shouldn't worry though, Apple will defeat this in no time.

it's such a progressive issue, you'd think Apple would be all over it. I mean, AMD is making good marketing use of being energy efficient. It seems smart of them and makes them appear more cutting edge. Certainly Apple would do great to embrace this issue and make their products more eco-friendly. But you think about how the shell of your Mac can't really be reused to house new major computer components (such as mb, etc...). This seems wasteful. Think of all the packaging that is just being wasted. It's actually kind of shameful.

My point is that Greenpeace would be far better served educating the public how to help. They get even 10% of the world's population to make some radical changes in their lives and the changes to the planet would be amazing.

I agree corporations need to set examples and do teh best they can. I don't think its where environmentalists should be pointing fingers.

You , me and everyone else are the biggest polluters.

I'm as guilty as teh next guy. Nothing stopping me from peddling a mile up the street to Trader Joe's tonight for my dinner. Except laziness. :D

It's definitely true that educating people how to (and actually convincing them to) make a difference is incredibly important. And I'm not a huge fan of Greenpeace, but if the figures are true, Apple (along with a lot of other companies could do better, and should.

However, I think environmentalists should be pointing fingers everywhere. At the same time. In my opinion, half the reason we're in this state is people saying "Well, big compainies pollute, so why should I care", "Well, other countries pollute, so there's no point in me bothering", "Well, the supermarket's easier to shop at, so it's not my fault", etc. If we all just got on with it, at the same time, without worrying about whether so and so was better or worse, we'd be a hell of a lot better off.

My only concern at this point is every iMovie user now thinking they can be a pro editor with no training and very little cost. Even a 10 year old kid will be using FCP. This is going to affect the editing job market and make editors a dime a dozen. Sure talent still matters but it is going to be harder for companies to sift through 5000 demo reels trying to find that talent. Apple has pretty much turned editing into Wal-Mart.


Wow. I don't know if it's possible to be more condescending.

The speculation from my general area is that Apple will never (never say never, right..) make a DVR. It's not in their interest to make a DVR. There are several companies that are doing the DVR thing for Macs (el gato and Migila) and IMO, Apple shouldn't tread those waters.

As for a Tivo killer, there's too much going against it for Apple to do. First of all, to do a DVR right, it's going to cost the end user a ton of money. The Tivo Series 3 will cost $800 (less with rebates) plus the monthly fees. Tivo's going to have a tough time convincing people to buy the S3 when the cablecos have an option available for $10/month.

Here's what I would like Apple to do. Open up Front Row so that companies like el gato can integrate their eyeTV software into the Front Row system. That way, I can have a Mac sitting in the office with an eyeTV box to record HD programming off of cable. Then, I could have an iTV in my living room to play the recorded material onto my 46" LCD HDTV (which I haven't bought yet).

If I want, I could initiate a purchase of a movie from iTMS (provided the quality of the movies are good) from the iTV itself so that it downloads onto the Mac in the office. A rental plan would be even better. That way, I could completely isolate myself from the real world.

ft
Good to see some people around here "get it".

Originally posted by MacCoaster

javajedi's Java and Cocoa/Objective-C code has been available here (http://members.ij.net/javajedi) for a couple of days. My C# port is available for examination if you e-mail me.

I was thinking of the x86 and PPC assembler produced for the core loops. I could bung the C through GCC and get some assembler on my windy tunnels, true, but I'm not geared up to do the Windows side of things.

Because we are smart intellectual people who believe in science and it's God given power :)

They can detect in a lot of way, for instance since you can't use flash on an iphone or iPad, if they see lots of flash stuff they you are probably tethering, also certain popular sites detect mobile devices and send the mobile version of the site if you are loading the full versions of those sites they could detect tethering, these are only a couple of simple things but there are plenty more, so I don't think this is going to be limited to the latest iOS.

Just my thought on the matter.

Easiest way is for them to sniff the network traffic and look at the packets, the origination machines MAC address is listed. If the MAC address is not in the Apple iPhone list of MAC addresses then it is obviously coming from a tethered machine.

If this is all iTV is going to offer for $249 then forget it.

I'll just use a cable to hook my laptop to my TV.

Voila! I just replaced iTV for less than $5.00.

FCP has been plagued with FUNDAMENTAL problems since it's creation. And initial peaks seems to suggest that instead of building on it's basis and creating a stronger, leaner, more professional tool Apple has once again decided to ditch it's professional (and there must be a distinction) users for the prosumer crowd.

We aren't talking about those video hobbyists making montage reels of Johnny's 2011 soccer season, we are talking about those of us cutting high-profile commercials and films you see on television and in theaters. And this update has us worried that we've WASTED the last decade at the lunch table arguing with the Avid dinosaurs, "Oh I know FCP could be better in this respect and that respect, but, but, but just wait for FCP8 it's going to be SO much better." Now skip to FCPX. I wanted to see them release FCP8 for GOD'S SAKE! You can see where this is going, Shake anyone?

Many questions remain and yet it seems they have obviously sold their pro users down stream:

What of better TRIM? SOURCE RECORD TIMELINE EDITING? What about a COLLABORATIVE PROJECT ENVIRONMENT? SERVER BASED TECHNOLOGY? And MEDIA MANAGEMENT? Weakest parts of FCP I can tell you first hand, the lack of media management. It's an assistant�s nightmare. We deal with it on a daily basis.

Oh but it will sync the sound for you. Have you seen what it can do with iChat?

If none of this made any sense to you then you are probably not a pro-user, so I guess you're excited to get the new FCPX. But what you should really be saying to yourself is, "Isn't it so awesome they're releasing iMovie Pro in June!?"

Alex, thank you for setting the record straight. I am so sick and tired of hearing the over and over highly fallacious arguments. In many ways these ppl are worse than Windows bigots. They *think* they are educated but aren't; at least Windows bigots don't pretend.

I can personally vouch for the miserable performance on double-precision floating point: The Java test I made is a simple timing comparison of a double-loop of 200,000,000 type double fp ops (multiply,square root, and addition).

Lower scores are better:

G4 800: 104251
P4 2.6: 5890

*VIA C3 Ezra: 103043


Incidentally I ran the test on my linux "cube" box. Actually more of a rectangle- but hey? :) Looks like this http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2001q4/shuttle-sv24/index.x?pg=1

Anyways, I put in a VIA C3 processor. 800 mhz, runs very cool, no fan required. The chip is extremely reasonable.. I paid $29 for it 3 months ago. In my benchmark this low end, elcheapo $29 chip outperformed/equaled my $3500 PowerBook.

Jesus Jumping Christ ppl.. wake up and listen to what alex is saying; he is *NOT* arbitrarily pulling this out of his ass.

You may hear a bunch of flames from others, but not me. I for one (and many others on this board) thank you for taking the time. Regardless though, no matter what, there will always be those individuals that will not listen to logic and reason. Instead they will dismiss the truth along with anyone and everything as being �PC biased�. People need to stop treating this like religion and start being real.

Then, "burn cleanly" is a dubious concept. Even if you can clean it up, how much does that cost, how much energy dies it take to clean it up, and how much do you lose from the coal's potential energy? Industry touts clean coal, others claim the very concept is a myth, I am not sure who is closer to the practical reality of the situation.

"Clean coal" is 100% myth, marketing-speak invented by coal companies to fool people. At best, we can have "less dirty coal". Scrubbers, filters, and other "clean coal" technology reduce pollution but also efficiency, so the cost of the equipment is not the only tradeoff. The only truly "clean coal" is the stuf you don't burn.

With that being said, it is incumbent on us to use the lowest-polluting process for burning coal that is practicable, so "clean coal" technology is important in that sense. But the notion that we can some how burn coal "cleanly" is false.

I would be interested if it had PVR capabilities, a tuner, a hard disk, 2 firewire ports, and a CableCARD so I can get rid of the cable box. While it is nice as is it does not offer all it could.

Then again some of you would love it.
ZZZZZZZZZ

I'm glad you understand the nuclear is a good solution. You're a bit off base regarding drilling though...

First, the 10+ years argument is pointless. Think about it. If after 9/11 we would have started drilling, started seeking out more domestic energy, we'd be producing a ton more of it today (10 years later) and our prices would be less affected by unrest in the middle east today. We'd be more secure today. We'd have a less hawkish view of war in the midwest today. Something good taking a few years to develop is not a reason to not do it.

Second, the U.S. has HUGE untapped deposits of oil, coal, and especially natural gas. And as the facts prove, it's a VERY viable fuel source.

Third, we do in fact have the resources to provide for our own society. Expand nuclear, expand oil, expand coal, expand natural gas, expand biofuels, keep investing in promising new alternatives (private investment, not government) and we could get to energy independence in probably 10 years or less. The only reason we're not doing it is because of burdensome government regulations and the fact that other countries can produce it cheaply. As prices rise, one of those issues becomes moot... Also, for the record, just because we could do it, doesn't necessarily mean we should. The free market should determine this. IF we're willing to pay more for American fuel, then so be it. If not, we'll continue buying from others... but don't let the government manipulate the markets and destroy common sense capitalism.

First off, the past is the past on this topic. Drilling ten years ago may mean some slight impact on oil prices domestically now, but again, the infrastructure would just be finally settling into place. It's neither here nor there.

Yes this country does have massive amounts of resources...but that doesn't mean they make sense both environmentally and economically (not to mention that we simply could not meet domestic demand with what we have). Much of the natural gas is tough to get to, and we've seen the major issues techniques such as "fracking" lead to.

Our biggest untapped oil is what is called shale oil, and it is extremely energy intensive to make it even remotely usable, so thats a lost cause to begin with.

Also, I find it odd that you'd argue for more oil production here as a means to drive the price down. Oil is sold on the international market, which is what sets the cost for it. Unless you want to artificially exclude it from that market and keep and use it exclusively in the USA our oil production wouldn't effect the international prices as we have far less of it. If you are in favor of keeping and using it exclusively here on the other hand, well thats not much of a free market approach now is it.

Simply put, just because we have something on paper, doesn't mean that it is an economically, environmentally, or logistically viable.

I wonder if one of the Leopard "Top Secrets" is Core Control so we may assign how many cores for each applicaiton we know can use more than one.

That would be nice. Although, I don't think it would be too difficult to write such an app that could be controlled via a dashboard widget. I haven't dug that deep into OSX programming and XCode, but it will definitely be something I'll have to look into doing if Leopard doesn't have the ability and I've got 8 cores to manage.

This product may be one of the most anticipated by me in my entire 22 years with Mac. I really can't wait for it to ship. Going from Two to Four Then Eight Cores in less than one year, and not just for show but for really finding a need and really needing all that additional horsepower, - only since February '06 for me - is a pretty amazing technological leaping experience. :)

Same here. Only 6 years ago, I had to have a Pentium workstation with 10 separate systems for rendering. Over the years, those numbers have fluxuated, but now we've come to a whole new way of working. A single Mac Pro with 8GB and the lowest video and HDD option (with the dual-core Woodcrest) can replace 3 of the systems on my render farm and still provide a performance increase. I'm really looking into XServe, but they're rather expensive. The preliminary reviews are making me drool, but that's a lot of money for render nodes. I'm so tempted though - 8-core XServe w/16GB RAM looks like a winner. 4 of those in my rack would render all my 3D faster than I can model and set up the scenes. ...It's only money, right? :D

My 30" Dell arrives tomorrow, Friday October 20. Whoopie! Mac Pro 8-Core Ready, Willing & Able.

Congrats! Hope you have better luck than me.. I had to refuse mine on monday because the box was mangled and crushed. Dell is shipping a new one, but I don't have tracking/delivery info yet. :( But like I said before, I have one already and love the the thing.

No, but how is that relevant anyway? An Apple fan was dissing microsoft.

No I was just saying that 'holding it wrong' is a phrase that came out first from Google.
So putting it in that context would be wrong.

:)

So if you, and everyone else will have a bit of patience, Apple will work their way out to you.
What are you a comedian? Give me a break. I expected this sort of reaction. It's very easy to say that when you're not the one being effected by this.

As for the divine wind bit...
It was a historical allusion.

If you are happy with windows stick with it. if you don't "have" to switch because you need a specifitc application, just don't do it. It's not "THAT MUCH" better as everyone wants to make you believe.
Ya know what? This is good advice. After doing a LOT of thinking about this, I realize that I'm probably best off sticking with Windows.

When it comes right down to it, I'm really just "curious" about trying a Mac. I don't actually have a particular reason, and I don't have any problems with Windows (believe it or not).

It looks like both operating systems have a few advantages and both operating systems have their share of annoyances. Truth is, I'm having a hard time finding a real advantage to switching.

If I were starting out today I'd most likely go with a Mac. But I'm an old dude, not a kid. I'm very comfortable with Windows and I really LIKE certain things about it. In fact, the first thing I'd do on a Mac is try to set it up so the Dock works just like the Start button in Windows. A rational person would have realized long ago that this is crazy. If I want a Mac to work like Windows I should just use Windows. Duh. But my curiosity along with the attractive cosmetic looks of the Mac got the best of me.

I won't lie, I'll forever be curious about "the other side"... but in my case I think I'd just be asking for a lot of headaches figuring out how to do all of these things differently than I'm used to.

Anyway...

Thanks to everyone that helped by adding your thoughts, I really appreciate it. And since I can't be the only one out there with similar feelings maybe this thread will help them too. Some will choose to switch to Mac, some will choose to stick with Windows.

And that's the way it goes. :)

This thread is getting too funny. Apple has been so far behind on power these past few years and now we get the chance to use Conroe, and suddenly that's not good enough for the Mac snobs. Conroe is an extremely fast chip (especially compared to G5), so I don't get why some people think it's a bad choice for the pro-line up. Sure, it can't do smp, but not everyone needs or want to pay for quad processing.

So, aside from the ability to do multiple processing, what advantages does Woodcrest have that make it mandatory to go in the pro-line? How much "faster" is it going to be over the Conroe? It's my understanding that they are identical in that respect.

if you don't need all the power you can get the mac pro is not for you, apple does not do a consumer tower and most likely never will, they simply must have a quad settup and if they have two configs of them (a 3GHz and a 2.66) they may as well keep the low end option on the same platform, this has been said again and again and again, conroe is not bad it just does not make sense for apple to use it in the mac pro, conroe goes in the imac.