Just means they moved on from that issue _for that moment_. Never does it say they never returned to it. This is pretty normal in any group debate. You fight for a while about an issue... then you move on to try to find some common ground somewhere else... the COME BACK to the first issue much later to make a decision.

I really think these quotes are being taken out of context.

Well... for a report that is a little more balanced see this CNN article:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57500358-37/exclusive-apple-samsung-juror-speaks-out/

What is this world coming to when we want to "invalidate" the findings of a jury? What is the purpose of law and trials and jury if we're just going to "overturn" any ruling that is unpopular?

Why did it need to take _days_ for the jury to find in this case? This isn't a murder trial without a murder weapon. Nor is it some complicated manslaughter case involving cell-phone use while driving... or any other type of "grey area" type case with dire consequences of getting it wrong.

The jurors sat there for _weeks_ listening to this stuff. Do you not think that in that time they were able to form an opinion and when it came time to make a decision there was a bit of heated debate until everyone agreed and then they ruled? What exactly were they supposed to talk about for so long? The considered all the evidence (and had been considering it for weeks... this is ALL they were doing for _weeks_) and came to a conclusion.

Quit letting your own personal biases against patents and closed source / closed ecosystems get in the way of believing that a jury of, by all accounts very capable, people could rule in favor of Apple. The law is the law... this group of people think the law is in favor of Apple. That is all. Nothing more...

lol - well... I have work in the area but my wife is going with me to see some parts of the UK we haven't seen yet. I don't know that Preston would have been our first choice for going back to the UK... but the decision was made for us.

Thanks for the info on 3!

Thanks for the pointers... it's looking like 3 is the way to go. They have a £10 pay as you go plan that comes with 500MB of data. Sounds perfect for a couple of weeks and it looks like they have decent coverage where I'll be...

Anyone have specific experience with 3 in the Preston/Blackpool area?

I'm headed to England soon for vacation and need some advice on prepaid SIMs. I'm going to be mostly in the Blackpool/Preston/Manchester area... I'm going to have my first gen iPad with me which I successfully ran on a 3G prepaid SIM in Australia last year and I'd like to do that again.

Anyone have some advice on what service to go with in that area of England? I don't need anything crazy... just a couple of gigabytes total will work.

Thanks!

Very well said. This is how I feel on a daily basis. But what in the world to do about it?

I truly believe that there is just no hope.

The self-interest that has set itself into the people of this country will be our ultimate undoing. As people clamor for the government to give _them_ more everyone will turn a blind eye toward what would actually be good for the _whole country_.

50% of people don't pay taxes any more. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that this group of non-taxpaying citizens can just continue to vote themselves "more" until the whole thing collapses in on itself.

My only hope: That it doesn't happen in my lifetime....

Thanks for putting together a truly thoughtful and well written post on this subject!

It is interesting to watch the responses to this article. Really good arguments on both sides... but one thing that is continually striking me lately is why people are so quick to trust the Government over Corporations.

I think that people have some misguided understanding of what really goes on here. They think that since they get to cast a vote that somehow the politicians are all working in our best interest and that we have "control" over them. While "Corporations" aren't beholden to the people at all. That couldn't be further from the truth.

The only thing that we have control over is our money. It takes money to get people elected and fund the projects the government runs and it takes money to keep companies running. The only way to "vote" is with dollars.

With that in mind... I actually prefer the Corporation over Government. The Corporation can't just _demand_ you give them money while Governments can just create laws to take as much as they like.

Even in the case of "monopolies" like local ISPs... you do still have the choice of not using the internet at all. Yes, that's not much of a choice... but at least it's not _law_ that you have to give them money and you won't be going to jail if you don't sign up for internet access.

If the US government _were_ actually a Corporation... it would have failed a long time ago and would have had to file for bankruptcy and a new government would have had to be brought up to take its place... hopefully with better fiscal responsibility so that it could stay alive longer.

Listen up people: Quit thinking that the Government is the answer! I currently work for the government and have been for the last 8 years or so... and let me tell you that giving this inefficient beast _more_ power is a TERRIBLE idea...

"So now, real-world projects that use C++ for the useful things it does provide have to maintain coding guidelines to avoid shooting themselves in the foot too often."

How is that not the case for _any_ modern language? Anyone write terrible code in any language. I've seen some Python that made me want to rip my eyeballs out (used tons of esoteric functionality... coupled with a design that made me question the person's sanity).

Coding guidelines are a good idea no matter the language. Keep everything consistent and make sure that the code remains maintainable into the future...

C++ is great for numerical libraries.

When you really need speed AND you want OOP there is nothing better than C++.

It turns out that operator overloading is quite useful in these situations as well (like A*b doing a matrix vector multiply).

However, I would love to have speed AND some of the features of Objective-C that you point out here. Generally when I want things like add members at run-time or swizzling I generally turn to Python instead of Objective-C... but I will say that that kind of stuff doesn't come up much in my day-to-day numerical library work...

Disclaimer: I maintain and develop several largish C++ numerical libraries as my day job ;-)

that's a fantastic fantasy you have there. that's why all those hard working african kids starving to death in the desert deserve what they got, right?

It is happening in some places. A friend of mine has a daughter in elementary school. He can log in and review her homework scores, grades and quiz scores (even seeing the answers) any time he wishes. He can log in during the day and literally see the scores for the quiz she just took.

This is all in a fairly small town in Idaho...

bullshit. large percentages of these installations have monitoring equipment built in. a 20% yearly degradation would be front page news on every oil friendly publication in the world and people would be storming congress in hordes to stop the subsidies if that claim were anything but BS.

If you are trying to heat, you can just store hot water directly or heat it with the PV. the tank isn't that big. lasts for a long time. very little maintenance or development required.

Firstly, it's cool and all that you built your own boxes... that's a great way to go if you can (ie you have the time and expertise to support the group when things go wrong) but it isn't really relevant to the discussion about the price of OEM workstations (that come with warranties and support, etc). Your group might not need that stuff, but for people that do, building it yourself isn't an option. Not to dog on you or anything... just that different groups have different needs.

Ok... with that out of the way... I'm _not_ off base on the price.

Go here:

http://boxxtech.com/products/3DBOXX/8550.asp?prodid=8550

Click "Configure a Boxx System"... put in your email.

Select the "WS DUAL XEON X5650 2.66GHz, 12MB cache, 1333 MHz, 6.4 GT/s QPI (Six-Core) " processor (because that's what the starting Dual-core Mac Pro has in it).

Click Update Total: $6,659.00

Now go here: http://store.apple.com/us/configure/Z0M4?

Select 12GB of RAM. Total: $5,449.00

Now. There are some inequities (graphics cards aren't the same, better HD in the Boxx workstation, etc).... but it's pretty clear that Apple isn't "Overpriced".

Why do we have to keep discussing this every single damn time Mac Pros are brought up???

If you don't want to assemble your own workstations and you really do need WORKSTATION class components... a Mac Pro is a great workstation and falls in line with all the other high-end workstations on the market in terms of price.

I run a scientific computing group at a national laboratory... we have over 30 people developing massively parallel, multiphysics, simulation tools.... all with Mac Pro workstations and Mac laptops.

Macs are UNIX workstations with a good GUI and they don't break every time you do an OS update (like the one Ubuntu box we keep just for testing did just this morning).

We can do all of our development in a great environment and still be able to throw our code out on our supercomputers when the problems get large.

You sir, are wrong.

And for everyone saying Mac Pros are expensive... they are not. They are priced similarly to their competition (which is, gasp!, other workstations!) like these: http://www.boxxtech.com/products/3DBOXX/8920.asp?prodid=8920