lebha - Slashdot User

The Apple Paradox, Closed Culture & Free-Thinking Fans 945

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday January 25, 2010 @10:03AM from the don't-question-jesus dept.

waderoush writes "The secrecy surrounding the expected Apple tablet computer is only the latest example of the company's famously closed and controlling culture. Yet millions of designers, musicians, and other creative professionals love their Apple products, and the Apple brand is almost synonymous with free-thinking creativity. How can a company whose philosophy of information sharing is so at odds with that of most of its customers be so successful? This Xconomy essay explores three possible explanations. 1) Closed innovation, overseen by a guiding genius like Steve Jobs, may be the only way to build such coherent, compelling products. 2) Apple's hardware turns out to be more 'open' than the company intended — Jobs originally wanted to keep third-party apps off the iPhone, for example. 3) Related to #1: customers are pragmatic about quality, and the open source and free software movements haven't produced anything remotely as useful as Mac OS X and the iPhone."

"Dark Flow" Outside Observable Universe 583

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday September 24, 2008 @01:47AM from the here-comes-galactus dept.

DynaSoar writes "NASA astrophysicists have discovered what they claim is something outside the observable universe exerting an effect on the observable. The material is pulling clusters of galaxies towards a region of space known not to contain sufficient matter to create the effect. They can only speculate on what the material is and how space might differ there: 'In these regions, space-time might be very different, and likely doesn't contain stars and galaxies (which only formed because of the particular density pattern of mass in our bubble). It could include giant, massive structures much larger than anything in our own observable universe. These structures are what researchers suspect are tugging on the galaxy clusters, causing the dark flow.'"

SpaceX's Fourth Launch Attempt RSN 71

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday September 23, 2008 @05:01PM from the houston-we-have-a-boredom dept.

jcgam69 writes "SpaceX's Falcon 1 is on the pad in the South Pacific Kwajalein Atoll ready for its fourth launch attempt, according to a blog post over the weekend from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. The countdown is scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 23, between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. PDT, though the launch window will extend through Thursday if need be."

Bringing Giant Tortoises Back From Extinction 125

Posted by timothy on Tuesday September 23, 2008 @10:11AM from the reviving-the-turtle-hegemony dept.

fizzysister writes "The BBC reports that scientists at Yale are intending to resurrect an extinct species of Galapagos tortoise, the Geochelone elephantopus. Unfortunately, not in the style of Jurassic Park, so no tortoise-based theme parks just yet. They will, however, be using genetic profiling of living tortoises that carry some of the elephantopus genes, to select the most appropriate of these to mate and thus eventually (after a century or more) create a generation of 'pure' Geochelone elephantopus individuals."

Comment Re:All research welcome (Score 1) 189

by lebha on Thursday November 20, 2003 @07:58AM (#7518670) Attached to: NASA Installs Linux Supercomputer

But the meteorogists say that the superwarm summers and supercold winters fit in "normal variation". Whom to believe in when your gut reaction combined with the flood of information about the greenhouse effect and global warming make you feel like "this is it, climate change in action" and the scientists say otherwise?

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