We don't need conversions explained, its just the pedants jerking it to an imperfect approximation in a public-facing article. Starting in elementary school, you are taught both imperial and metric in the US, and 99% of rulers have two sides with both systems. However, most non-scientific things are still displayed in imperial and their sizes fit imperial units (construction materials, household items, baking). Ounces, cups, gallons, 1/4'', feet, yard, etc, are all seen daily by even the starving artist who failed algebra 1. The world isn't going to come to an end by not converting so who cares.
We know that 3 feet equals a yard, and a yard is slightly shorter than a meter, so that's where the summary base approximation came from. Its good enough to get a mental image of it, since a 1 sq m tile isn't that much bigger visually than a 1 sq yd tile.
Try sitting like that for 15 minutes, with your fingertips resting on a hard surface. One advantage of a mouse is that it transfers the pressure that would be on your fingertips to the palm areas of your hand. I personally find it very agitating to the tips of my fingers to rest them on such a hard surface for such a long period of time.
Flash sways iPhone/iPad purchases because people beleive they should be able to think for themselves. The "think different" line is definitely no longer accurate.
You never know what they're going to decide for you next.
Why in the hell are you arguing OS choice under my post? My post had nothing to do with OSes and everything to do with PHB CYA mentality, PR, and shareholder furor. You may have responded to the wrong person.
Liability. Its kind of hard to say "we tried to be as secure as possible but got owned anyway" when you're using an outdated OS out of its support cycle. Now they can shift the blame back on Microsoft's swiss-cheese.
Could you imagine the damage done if said company makes headlines for losing tons of sensitive customer data, and then has a follow-up headline showing their security practices?
As much as I think Kotick is a loon, I have to disagree with the idea that previously failed markets always mean that it will be a failed market in the future.
Let's take tablets for example. Its not necessarily Apple's doing that they are a sought-after item today, its simply that the technology now fits into a tablet-sized computer that doesn't suck. Same can be said about touch-screen smartphones, or electric cars (battery density/fuel economy improvements).
TV-PCs have failed in the past not simply because of poor implementation, but because they didn't fit into the expected form factor allowed by most home entertainment systems. Hardware has advanced to the point where it wouldn't be unreasonable to fit a PC stronger than the XBOX 360 into the space of your cable box. Previously, you'd need to use your subwoofer compartment in your $5000 entertainment center to house the monstrosity necessary to play new PC games on a TV. Oh, and it'd be loud as hell.
All that said, I wouldn't want that spawn of satan company Activision anywhere near it. Its amazing how fast Blizzard's image and trust has declined since that merger.
Rail cars are probably not cost-effective. Surprisingly, they are very much in-demand. Old cars from big cities get recycled and refurbished for smaller cities' new rail lines, and they also make great coral reef restoration base points. I see them shipped around frequently in my line of work.
I hear this trumpeted time and time again, and it fails to take into account one major factor: the human element. Employees who care about their jobs and enjoy working for a company produce better results. The easiest way to have people care is providing a good working environement and being as ethical as possible. I've seen this time and time again as I've worked for different companies.
It is in a companies' best interest to make money while at the same time being ethical and providing a good working environment for its employees. Among competing companies, the company that does the right thing (tm) reap rewards that can't be directly measured on the P&L, but are certainly there.
Well, I'm sure he could make that money back off of this, easily. There are some rich fanatics out there that commision people to make stuff like this, he could fetch quite a price for it. Oh, and its also some nice advertising for his work.
There may not be a "right" answer, but there is a "wrong" answer. The wrong answer is dictating that something is not art. Trying to paint the subject of art (no pun intended) with a black and white brush shows a lack of understanding on the topic.
I can't recall as I didn't finish that degree, and now work in both Ops & Finance. I only have basic knowledge from designing planar antennae for Wifi & PCS ranges in Engi 102. I'm just going by the base numbers from AnandTech's article:
To give you perspective, for a UMTS "3G" plant, -51 dBm is the best reported signal you can get - it's quite literally standing next to, or under a block away from a tower. At the other extreme, -113 dBm is the worst possible signal you can have before disconnecting entirely.
So a 24 dbm drop equates to almost 50% of the allowable signal.
I think the lawsuit is intended as discovery to determine whether or not the company knew of this problem beforehand, and skimped on insulative coating or a solution maliciously so it could sell more cases. Selling a defective product knowingly, and selling a solution afterward for more money, is punishable.
Anandtech just popped out a fantastic writeup on this issue in their iPhone 4 review. Check it out, its very informative for those who don't have basic antenna design knowledge from EE in college. To paraphrase, it reduces signal by up to 27 dbm, which is almost 50% of normal signal range. (50 to 113 dbm). This will not effect you or show on your bars if you get a better signal than ~75 dbm on a normal basis.
Pretty much anyone who has had an introductory course in EE should have forseen this after the keynote...including their employees. It is a case of gross engineering negligence. Yes, interference does happen with all phones, but the effect is much more pronounced with the iPhone 4 due to an exposed antenna and lack of spending to fix / spot the issue.
In short, your anecdote doesn't address the problem because you are in a good coverage area, and the signal degredation doesn't ruin your reception.
This is why its bad to give zero authority to the peons at the bottom of your organization. In an effort to restrict decisions to higher-ups and make low-level decisions 95% predictable, you get bit in the ass with bad PR that can cost millions in damages, only because the first two or three people closest to the customer aren't allowed to make braindead obvious decisions.
You can almost always tell a corporate culture by calling their customer support.
I'm curious who they are employing to design this stuff. I learned about this crap in EE 102, my first year of college. Also, if they had anyone with long-term experience in the company, they'd remember what happened with early 90's cell phones with the retractable antenna.
I honestly think that there's a case here of someone without knowledge in middle management overriding engineer's recommendations.
Form over function has been Apple's M.O. when it comes to certain design choices with their devices, something like this shouldn't be surprising. Its also the reason a lot of people buy their devices.
Its not exactly the same, but I remember enjoying SimCopter a lot because I could take SimCity 2000 maps and load them up in SimCopter and fly around them in 3D. The nostalgia feeling of loading my best cities and being able to play in them was fantastic. I could see people not wanting to lose their custom maps in Civ4, and this is an excellent solution.
I loved loading up a SC2000 map with the army base and stealing the army chopper. This was the closest thing you could get to 3D GTA at the time.
The point is every business user has different needs, and an organization can contain hundreds of different subsets of "needs." It may be multiple ways to get the same thing done, but what works for one may not work for another.
Apple is used to telling its users what they want, but that won't fly with the corporate market. The business market already has many other options willing to take it in the ass for a contract. Anecdotal evidence on usage means nothing.
I think there's a bit more to it, and one major physical hurdle to bypass. Gasoline, as a liquid by itself, is fairly harmless. When subjected to the functions of a car engine and combusted, its very dangerous. However, not much gasoline is ever in a place where it can combust into a huge fireball at one time (tank vs. engine). How is one going to accomplish this with batteries, which are by and large solids requiring close contact? Unless you can guarantee 100% that the massive casing for the battery won't be damage in a 100mph crash, another solution must be found.
If someone could invent a delivery system for a split battery similar to the fuel injection system, it would greatly reduce the dangers...but I can't think of a physically possible way to make that happen with a solid.
People like to bring this out, but it isn't always that simple. Time is money. The most aggrivating thing to me when I was a kid was my dad driving 6 miles out of his way to get gas for 10c/gallon cheaper. So you drove 12 miles, consuming half a gallon, costing you 50c at $1.00/gallon. You saved $1.50, netting you $1.00. You also wasted 15 mins....do you like working for $4.00/hr on weekends? I'll change my own brakes/shocks and save $100-$200 for 2 hours of work, THAT is worth my time.
I know this is completely different, but my point is that if its difficult to use/install then it may not even be net neutral when factoring in time.
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We don't need conversions explained, its just the pedants jerking it to an imperfect approximation in a public-facing article. Starting in elementary school, you are taught both imperial and metric in the US, and 99% of rulers have two sides with both systems. However, most non-scientific things are still displayed in imperial and their sizes fit imperial units (construction materials, household items, baking). Ounces, cups, gallons, 1/4'', feet, yard, etc, are all seen daily by even the starving artist who failed algebra 1. The world isn't going to come to an end by not converting so who cares.
We know that 3 feet equals a yard, and a yard is slightly shorter than a meter, so that's where the summary base approximation came from. Its good enough to get a mental image of it, since a 1 sq m tile isn't that much bigger visually than a 1 sq yd tile.
Try sitting like that for 15 minutes, with your fingertips resting on a hard surface. One advantage of a mouse is that it transfers the pressure that would be on your fingertips to the palm areas of your hand. I personally find it very agitating to the tips of my fingers to rest them on such a hard surface for such a long period of time.
Parent is correct. For a more recent example, flash 10.1 is coming to the Droid. The Droid runs a 550mhz processor.
Flash sways iPhone/iPad purchases because people beleive they should be able to think for themselves. The "think different" line is definitely no longer accurate.
You never know what they're going to decide for you next.
On that note, as a lesson to old dudes, "Awesome" never fails. Stick with it.
Why in the hell are you arguing OS choice under my post? My post had nothing to do with OSes and everything to do with PHB CYA mentality, PR, and shareholder furor. You may have responded to the wrong person.
Liability. Its kind of hard to say "we tried to be as secure as possible but got owned anyway" when you're using an outdated OS out of its support cycle. Now they can shift the blame back on Microsoft's swiss-cheese.
Could you imagine the damage done if said company makes headlines for losing tons of sensitive customer data, and then has a follow-up headline showing their security practices?
As much as I think Kotick is a loon, I have to disagree with the idea that previously failed markets always mean that it will be a failed market in the future.
Let's take tablets for example. Its not necessarily Apple's doing that they are a sought-after item today, its simply that the technology now fits into a tablet-sized computer that doesn't suck. Same can be said about touch-screen smartphones, or electric cars (battery density/fuel economy improvements).
TV-PCs have failed in the past not simply because of poor implementation, but because they didn't fit into the expected form factor allowed by most home entertainment systems. Hardware has advanced to the point where it wouldn't be unreasonable to fit a PC stronger than the XBOX 360 into the space of your cable box. Previously, you'd need to use your subwoofer compartment in your $5000 entertainment center to house the monstrosity necessary to play new PC games on a TV. Oh, and it'd be loud as hell.
All that said, I wouldn't want that spawn of satan company Activision anywhere near it. Its amazing how fast Blizzard's image and trust has declined since that merger.
Rail cars are probably not cost-effective. Surprisingly, they are very much in-demand. Old cars from big cities get recycled and refurbished for smaller cities' new rail lines, and they also make great coral reef restoration base points. I see them shipped around frequently in my line of work.
I hear this trumpeted time and time again, and it fails to take into account one major factor: the human element. Employees who care about their jobs and enjoy working for a company produce better results. The easiest way to have people care is providing a good working environement and being as ethical as possible. I've seen this time and time again as I've worked for different companies.
It is in a companies' best interest to make money while at the same time being ethical and providing a good working environment for its employees. Among competing companies, the company that does the right thing (tm) reap rewards that can't be directly measured on the P&L, but are certainly there.
Well, I'm sure he could make that money back off of this, easily. There are some rich fanatics out there that commision people to make stuff like this, he could fetch quite a price for it. Oh, and its also some nice advertising for his work.
You may have forgotten that China is currently cracking down on porn. The man can't live without his porn!
There may not be a "right" answer, but there is a "wrong" answer. The wrong answer is dictating that something is not art. Trying to paint the subject of art (no pun intended) with a black and white brush shows a lack of understanding on the topic.
Where's a link to an IT Hoarders episode when you need it? (damn work firewall)
I can't recall as I didn't finish that degree, and now work in both Ops & Finance. I only have basic knowledge from designing planar antennae for Wifi & PCS ranges in Engi 102. I'm just going by the base numbers from AnandTech's article:
To give you perspective, for a UMTS "3G" plant, -51 dBm is the best reported signal you can get - it's quite literally standing next to, or under a block away from a tower. At the other extreme, -113 dBm is the worst possible signal you can have before disconnecting entirely.
So a 24 dbm drop equates to almost 50% of the allowable signal.
I think the lawsuit is intended as discovery to determine whether or not the company knew of this problem beforehand, and skimped on insulative coating or a solution maliciously so it could sell more cases. Selling a defective product knowingly, and selling a solution afterward for more money, is punishable.
Anandtech just popped out a fantastic writeup on this issue in their iPhone 4 review. Check it out, its very informative for those who don't have basic antenna design knowledge from EE in college. To paraphrase, it reduces signal by up to 27 dbm, which is almost 50% of normal signal range. (50 to 113 dbm). This will not effect you or show on your bars if you get a better signal than ~75 dbm on a normal basis.
Pretty much anyone who has had an introductory course in EE should have forseen this after the keynote...including their employees. It is a case of gross engineering negligence. Yes, interference does happen with all phones, but the effect is much more pronounced with the iPhone 4 due to an exposed antenna and lack of spending to fix / spot the issue.
In short, your anecdote doesn't address the problem because you are in a good coverage area, and the signal degredation doesn't ruin your reception.
It looks to me like he's been watching too many Bing commercials. DVR, man!
This is why its bad to give zero authority to the peons at the bottom of your organization. In an effort to restrict decisions to higher-ups and make low-level decisions 95% predictable, you get bit in the ass with bad PR that can cost millions in damages, only because the first two or three people closest to the customer aren't allowed to make braindead obvious decisions.
You can almost always tell a corporate culture by calling their customer support.
I'm curious who they are employing to design this stuff. I learned about this crap in EE 102, my first year of college. Also, if they had anyone with long-term experience in the company, they'd remember what happened with early 90's cell phones with the retractable antenna.
I honestly think that there's a case here of someone without knowledge in middle management overriding engineer's recommendations.
Form over function has been Apple's M.O. when it comes to certain design choices with their devices, something like this shouldn't be surprising. Its also the reason a lot of people buy their devices.
Apple sells Shiny, and this is a result.
Its not exactly the same, but I remember enjoying SimCopter a lot because I could take SimCity 2000 maps and load them up in SimCopter and fly around them in 3D. The nostalgia feeling of loading my best cities and being able to play in them was fantastic. I could see people not wanting to lose their custom maps in Civ4, and this is an excellent solution.
I loved loading up a SC2000 map with the army base and stealing the army chopper. This was the closest thing you could get to 3D GTA at the time.
The point is every business user has different needs, and an organization can contain hundreds of different subsets of "needs." It may be multiple ways to get the same thing done, but what works for one may not work for another.
Apple is used to telling its users what they want, but that won't fly with the corporate market. The business market already has many other options willing to take it in the ass for a contract. Anecdotal evidence on usage means nothing.
I think there's a bit more to it, and one major physical hurdle to bypass. Gasoline, as a liquid by itself, is fairly harmless. When subjected to the functions of a car engine and combusted, its very dangerous. However, not much gasoline is ever in a place where it can combust into a huge fireball at one time (tank vs. engine). How is one going to accomplish this with batteries, which are by and large solids requiring close contact? Unless you can guarantee 100% that the massive casing for the battery won't be damage in a 100mph crash, another solution must be found.
If someone could invent a delivery system for a split battery similar to the fuel injection system, it would greatly reduce the dangers...but I can't think of a physically possible way to make that happen with a solid.
People like to bring this out, but it isn't always that simple. Time is money. The most aggrivating thing to me when I was a kid was my dad driving 6 miles out of his way to get gas for 10c/gallon cheaper. So you drove 12 miles, consuming half a gallon, costing you 50c at $1.00/gallon. You saved $1.50, netting you $1.00. You also wasted 15 mins....do you like working for $4.00/hr on weekends? I'll change my own brakes/shocks and save $100-$200 for 2 hours of work, THAT is worth my time.
I know this is completely different, but my point is that if its difficult to use/install then it may not even be net neutral when factoring in time.