You may be right that better things are coming along - I've just been waiting for something that would fit my needs and the iPad does it. I just went looking for a link to the bluetooth keyboard and found that it's not listed today (it was yesterday). Actually, if I really wanted to put a real keyboard on it, I'd choose the keyboard dock. Here's a link to the current accessory list: http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_ipad/ipad_accessories
But if you need a keyboard for it then I think you're probably missing the whole point. It's not a general purpose computer, it's a "tablet shaped" device that allows you to read books, watch movies, listen to music, read email, browse the web - all of those "useful" things we'd like to do when we're kicked back in the easy chair. You can operate it completely with nothing more than your fingers; that's one of its strengths, not a limitation. Comparisons with other "tablets" aren't all that enlightening; it's quite different from the "laptop with no keyboard" stuff that's been around for a few years.
I'm not sure what the "horrible, closed" attitude that goes on around this thing is about. Sure, we're all used to having to go to extreme measures to get a PC to play a particular video or audio file and we're all pretty good at editing a registry to fix a blown up install - so the idea of not being able to tweak the innards may be unsettling. And many here are developers and have more than one machine; one to mess around with and another that actually works right. That's what the iPad is going to be for me: the one that always works right. Sure, I'll probably install a VNC client on it so I can mess with a server but it's going to almost totally be for "play".
Oh well; I'm sure there's more and different stuff coming along and maybe the perfect piece of hardware is just around the corner. But I'd bet that it's going to be a long wait and in the meantime I'll be sitting in my comfy chair reading a book - and occasionally switching over to check my email or check a web page. I won't give up my Wintel laptop or desktop; it's not a replacement for them. That's fine - they don't do what this thing does very well so it all works out.
The biggest factor for me is that the iPad is designed from the ground up to be operated by touch. That, and Apple's insistence on making their UI as attractive and intuitive as possible makes for a huge difference in usability.
If you've spent any time with one of their previous touchscreen products (iPhone, iPod Touch) then you know what I mean. As far as missing features - I suppose that depends on your needs. Really, if an iPad won't do it for you then you need a laptop. The other Windows based tablets are just plain awful - all the weight and power consumption of a laptop and a UI that isn't usable without a mouse or keyboard. Netbooks are - well, I think they're an answer to a question that hasn't been asked.
You mentioned bluetooth keyboard - the iPad supports that out of the box. Same with WiFi, it's built in and after you set it up to use your network you'll want to kick the folks at Microsoft. If you need 3G then get the 3G model; the service isn't on a contract and you can buy it by the month when you need it. If what you want is something infinitely configurable then you'd be happier with something else. But if you just want the darned thing to work - you'd probably like the iPad. I've got an iPod Touch - first generation, I was just after the early adopters. After three years the only reboots were when the OS was updated and once when I ran the battery all the way down. It's been a year or so since it was rebooted last and it's running 24/7 - let's see you do that with a Windows device of any kind.
But here's the real point: imagine you're sitting down in your comfy chair to read the latest from your favorite author. Which device would you prefer to read it on? There's a lot to be said about thin and light...
Let me start by saying that the only Apple device I own right now is an Ipod touch. I'm typing this on a Windows notebook and my big machine is a Windows desktop. I don't have any love for Apple or their policies - they do some things right and some things very, very wrong.
That said, there's some changes in "books" coming. We've had Kindle and Sony reader for a while and now others are jumping on the bandwagon. As limited as those devices are, they're selling in very large numbers. Kindle is Amazon's number one selling product - that says something, right? As the number of e-readers becomes larger and larger there's more incentive for the publishing houses to make their books available electronically. Between that and the large public domain book libraries available online there's a strong case for electronic books.
But sitting in a chair at a desktop computer to read books online is awkward - and trying to do it on a notebook is even worse. The Ipod touch is a little better but the screen is too darned small. We like to be able to hold the book and sit / slouch / lay wherever so a tablet-like e-reader is probably the best solution. Unfortunately, the attempts at tablet machines up to this point have been ill-conceived botches. Windows isn't made to be a tablet operating system - its touchscreen support is primitive and incomplete. This and the need of designers to add just one more feature has resulted in fragile yet heavy machines with short battery life - not worth their price.
Some say that the Ipad is limited - but if what I do is read email, browse the web and play an occasional game or two then it does 99.9% of what I need. Add in music and videos and that slick multi-touch interface and it meets my needs very well. Yes, I know - and when I need to do some serious typing, write some code, etc. I'll sit down at that Windows desktop and go to work. Apple did one more very nice thing - they made a case for the Ipad that opens like a book. This allows you to hold it like a book; same approximate size and weight, just like you're used to.
I've been watching this electronic book stuff for a while now - and I feel it's time for me to jump. I'll give away / donate my home library (thousands of dusty books) and replace them with an Ipad. Even if it did nothing else it'd be worth the price for just this one function.
Clearly you haven't looked into what it actually takes for that legal process to succeed.
Under the current immigration laws it's very expensive - every filing has a fee attached and it runs into many thousands of dollars before you even qualify to try to gain citizenship. But that's only if you fit into certain classifications and there's a visa available for you in the first place. Here's something for you to ponder: if you're trying to come to the USA from - let's say the Philippines - then the current wait time for a visa number is over NINE YEARS. You're going to need that before you do anything else here and it just gets harder, more time consuming, and more expensive as you go along.
Saying that there are legal ways that allow foreigners to become American citizens overlooks the simple facts: most Americans couldn't afford to pay their way to citizenship. Those illegal immigrants you're howling about don't even dream of having that much money. They don't qualify for a visa, they can't pay the fees, they absolutely can not obtain that citizenship or even a visa that allows them to work here.
Let's tell the truth about this for a change: that "legal process" that would allow your average Mexican laborer to become an Amnerican citizen DOES NOT EXIST IN THE REAL WORLD. The choices they have if they want to come to the USA to make a better living for themselves and their family back home are limited. They could enter using a visitor visa (very hard to obtain) and "forget" to leave. Or they can sneak across the border - the sneak in option is preferable because the INS doesn't have a record of your name, fingerprints, etc.
I'm not saying that entering this country illegally in any way is a good thing. But if we're going to discuss this issue, let's consider the truth instead of some glib talking points that obscure rather than enlighten.
There are everyday situations where having the caller ID number be other than the actual phone number is a good thing. Most companies do this - they'll have dozens or hundreds of phone lines and all of them show the "master" number for the company as their caller ID.
Or for VOIP users like me - my phone lines show the POTS number you should call to reach me, not the "hidden" number of the VOIP line. In both of these situations (and probably others) "spoofing" makes the caller ID information more useful. The option to configure the outgoing caller ID information is built into almost all telephone switching equipment for just this reason.
The misuse of this ability is the problem, not the ability itself. Laws like this one are likely to cause more harm than good; the current situation where some bad guys spoof their caller ID information isn't totally bad - they almost always choose obviously incorrect numbers. That makes it easy for me to just look at the phone and if it's a call from 000-000-0000 then it's not going to be answered.
If the government actually took violations of the "do not call" list seriously - and if various stores (on and off line) didn't sell your name and phone number to anyone with the price - then these problems would be greatly minimized. The telephone company has the actual phone numbers for every phone call - that data is accurate and not the same as the caller ID information. Maybe even the phone company could block calls with invalid caller ID information? There are things that could be done that would really be useful.
But this kind of political grandstanding where they want to tinker with a system that they don't understand - this is stupid. But that's nothing new these days...
Fast moving exploits blow right past these security products. The whole industry is based on "identify new threats, develop a detection routine, include it in the next update". So from the time the "assault" starts there's the time it takes for someone to find it and report it to the security product company. Then there's the time it takes for that company to analyse the threat and code a detection - and then there's another delay while customers wait for the next update cycle to come along.
That's easily ten or more days during which the exploit gets spread far and wide. The bad guys know this and carefully craft their exploits to spread quickly so they can be widely installed before the firewalls and virus scanners start blocking them - and they make their programs hard to detect and harder to remove. Even after the security vendors have the threat "neutralized", the exploit continues to spread behind the firewalls and to the companies with lazy admins who haven't patched recently.
What really needs to be done if we're ever going to make a significant dent in the flood of malware and viruses is to put an end to the various forms of remote execution that some ill-advised software companies have included in their products. Any software that automatically installs or opens files from the web provides an entry for attackers. Things like Flash, ActiveX, etc. - an operating system that permits "drive-by downloads" just isn't suitable for a connected world. Fix those glaring flaws and the number of problems would go way down.
Of course this isn't likely to happen any time soon. Advertisers love those blinky, colorful, dancing, and music playing advertisements. They insist on more and more of these and that's led to more and more viruses being installed by innocent looking ads on some reputable site's webpage. And it's all due to some idiot thinking it was a great idea to have your computer download and open an executable file automatically.
So now we're using ad-blocking software to protect our systems from this kind of danger - and the advertisers are starting to howl. They don't see that they're providing almost universal access to those black hat programmers - or they do see this and don't care because they're making money. We can't have things both ways - if you allow remote execution then you're going to have security breaches. If you don't allow it, the web would be a quieter and less "content rich" place.
After a quick email exchange with the folks at Ars Technica I've made my decision.
I've considered the balance between their need to show ads and my need to protect my computer. So I'm going to change the configuration of my ad blocker - I'm going to add their whole domain to the block list. They can be self-important all they want but they can do it without me watching.
Did you ever try to use one of those? We tried using them at a previous employer and got nothing but complaints from the people evaluating them. The battery life was miserable (90 minutes if you're lucky) and the flimsy casing started shedding flaps and doors as soon as you unpacked it. But the biggest problems was that they were a little too heavy and quite difficult to hold and use while walking around - leading to frequent drops to the floor which was murder on hard drives and screens. Even if they would have been more durable that short run time on battery prevented them from being used for the purpose they were intended for. Batteries usually lasted an hour and the charger took four hours to recharge it. So for an eight hour shift you'd need a bunch of battery packs and standalone chargers to support each one.
The price was reasonable for the time; back then a good laptop cost that much or more. I think the biggest flaw in their design was that they tried to minimize the size and weight by using extra-thin plastic for the casings. A hand-held tablet needs to be somewhat rugged and those were very, very fragile. If you used it as a fancy laptop then it'd hold up OK - in the field the life expectancy was measured in single-digit days.
These folks don't seem to have thought their cunning plan all the way through. No matter how they try to dress it up, they're vigilantes in pursuit of their idea of justice and there are some legal issues that they are going to have to deal with.
I'll let someone like NYCL describe those issues in detail - and I don't have any of anyone else's material online but it might be fun to do so, collect a DMCA complaint from these clowns - then sue them and watch them try to dance for the judge.
I'm waiting for the "convertible" laptop / netbook that has the electronics package behind the screen and all that's in the keyboard part is the keyboard and maybe an optical drive or two. With the two pieces together it'd be just like what we have now - or you could detach the screen and use it as a fully featured tablet. Best of both worlds - but there's some engineering to do before this can become a real product.
The only real justification for a dedicated e-reader device is that it can be locked to a company's book service. If the device is "open", it'll contain many more functions (free or very minimal cost) and look more like a laptop or iPad.
Right now you can download text versions of thousands of books - and Notepad is all you need to read them. If I'm going to have a special device just for reading books it's going to have to be a lot more functional and a lot less expensive than anything they're even speculating about now.
Those corporate types that think that $400 is a good price for an e-reader and books should cost $25 each are setting the stage for their extinction. That kind of pricing will create a "pirate" market for digital books; this and the low sales rate (due to the pricing) will kill their market in short order./P
That's what us old-timers call fraud. It's not OK, no matter how the apologists here may try to spin it. Yes, sometimes it's not cheap or easy to comply with the law - but that doesn't make complying with the law optional no matter how much you wish it was.
Sometimes I wonder if the people who post here think about what they're saying - or if they just scan the article enough to formulate a (weak) opposing point and rush to post it. There's only one thing worse than a patent troll and that's corporations trolling with patents they don't own. If corporations can destroy people for violating their patents, what do you think should be the proper punishment for claiming patents that you don't own?
If you truly want to protect and increase your profits then you're barking up the wrong tree. I'm one of your ex-customers - after my experience with Bioshock I won't buy anything from your company again. Consider that your customers expect to receive what they purchase and not some promise of function that is nullified by a one-sided EULA.
I'm talking about finishing the code - and testing it - and fixing the bugs before you ship it. The DRM on Bioshock wasn't my problem - it was the poorly written and apparently untested code. You talk about millions of dollars and several years making a game - but when your "flagship" product (Bioshock) can only be successfully run in a window and crashes frequently when run full screen; well, that looks like something built by a couple of teenagers in their spare time. And it was so nice of you to make "run full screen" the default setting. Did anyone actually test this product before you started shipping?
You talk about how Ubisoft should or shouldn't treat users of your product like criminals. Do you have any clue as to how arrogant that makes your company sound? Especially when it comes from a company that will take people's money for products that do not work then refuse to fix them or give a refund. Who is the "criminal" here, anyway? You can talk piracy all you want, but it's the frauds you perpetrate that are causing your sales to fall.
Sigh; I suspect that none of this is making any sense to you. You're blind to your shoddy products and lack of useful support for them. It's much easier to ignore your own fatal flaws and blame "the pirates" for your loss of business. What's really funny about all of that is that when your shipping product doesn't work, but some kids working in their basement can produce a torrent of it that works flawlessly - what does that say about the quality and value of your product?
Here's another clue for you: much of the "piracy" is really people trying your product before buying it. They've heard the stories about your code and support so they're going to make sure it actually works before they buy it from you. How many of those "pirates" will convert to paying customers? It depends on the quality of your code and the way you treat your customers. You're not doing too good on either of those topics these days...
Microsoft got caught taking unwarranted action against a well known website. Now they're claiming that they never intended to do that and that the information in question isn't really protected.
Anyone who believes that this means Microsoft has turned over a new leaf needs to go back to the school of hard knocks and learn about "spin", "doublespeak" and "marketing". If you think that they would back off like this if the general public DID NOT know what transpired then don your pointy hat and go sit in the corner. The history of Microsoft should be well known in these parts and years of bad behavior by that company should provide more than sufficient reason to doubt them now.
The way it was done - by the domain registrar re-directing their domain name to NULL was not a mistake - it was because a MS "enforcer" decided to teach Cryptome a lesson and used Microsoft's influence with NetSol to make it happen. You don't think NetSol makes a regular practice of this kind of stuff, do you? What's really interesting this time is they got caught with dirty hands - and decided a "whoops, my bad" would make it OK. That wouldn't work if there weren't so many who are ready to argue for the bad guy just because it gives them a soap box to speak from.
Sure, there's a few Microsoft shills who monitor this site and post / mod accordingly. Their behavior is bad but expected - but the rest of you... Really, read TFA and think about it for a few minutes before you hit that "reply" button. It's not only a good idea, it'll also make you a better Slashdotter.
Why is it that the unfortunate comparison between the iPad and a netbook keeps being made? The iPad isn't trying to be a netbook - and a netbook doesn't try to be an iPad - that's not where the iPad is really targeted.
To become more clueful, visit Amazon and right there on the main page they're promoting their "number one selling item". Review the specifications and then take a look at their "bigger" model. Review those specifications and check the price. That should produce a state of understanding in even the typical Slashdotter.
There's also Barnes and Noble's weak offering in the brand new (and very rapidly growing) e-reader market. And let's not forget Sony's offering - once again, check the features and pricing. In that market, the iPad is a very, very strong entry. The music playing and video watching and email (etc. etc.) is just icing on the cake.
I've got an iPod Touch, a notebook, and a netbook here at home. Each does what it was designed to do and I like all of them except the netbook - that hateful little thing should never have been built. The writing is on the wall (so to speak) and digital books are going to be just as important as digital music. So what are you going to use to read your digital books? You can disagree with Mr. Jobs all you want - but he usually knows what he's doing. These will sell like hotcakes.
There's a lot of electrons wasted talking about how "piracy" harms society. What nobody seems to recognize is how bad law and industry cartels harm society. I'll try to show some non-imaginary harms to society that result directly from the activities of the RIAA and it's member companies.
First is the distortion of law that's taken place at the behest of the RIAA and other media cartels. The balance of interests that copyright was based upon has been forgotten - we allowed creators exclusive use of their works for a time in exchange for those works being released to the public domain. In this way, not only the copyright holder but society at large would benefit. The benefit to society is almost (if not completely) eliminated - Walt Disney has been dead for many, many years but Mickey Mouse is still under copyright. Any benefit to the creator is exhausted and society still can not make use of that material.
Another loss to society is the creators of musical (and other works) are also being exploited by the RIAA companies and many, many works are not being released. Why bother when you'll never see a penny from your creation? I personally know of many composers who continue to write music but archive their works for a future date when they can find (hopefully) a chance of having some control over their creation and make some money from it, too.
As the well funded media cartels (funded by the work of the artists who don't get paid) work to distort law to support their anti-social activities, they set an example for other corporations. Put rootkits on a few hundred thousand CDs? Naughty Sony, pay a small (to them) fine and don't do that again. Now people here are complaining about games that die when there is no network connection, or operating systems that assume you're a "pirate" when they don't get to check in with the mothership. These excesses are a direct result of the DMCA (that's what "self help" means) and they're just getting started. It'll keep getting worse and worse until society as a whole says "enough" - but our "elected" representatives aren't listening to us because those media company dollars are so nice and so easy to collect.
Will the legal system finally make the "shake down the general public" lawsuit machine no longer workable? Maybe it will eventually - but those cartels won't go away so easily and they'll be lobbying hard for an even more draconian "solution".
According to TFA their plan is to make the body panels act as one plate of a huge capacitor. I can't even begin to list all the technical flaws in their proposal; just reading it made my head hurt. They really should run their promotional pieces past a real engineer before spreading them all over the net.
The fiction that a corporation is a person - combined with the legal precedent that says that the executives can be sued if they do something that reduces profits - makes for some pretty well defined behavior by the corporation. It is solely concerned with maximizing its own revenue and any other concern is incidental or done to "look good".
If the corporation were a real person and was evaluated by a psychologist it would be likely be diagnosed as a psychopath (sociopath).
Consider this when you parrot the "Do No Evil" marketing slogan; Google is a corporation and isn't capable of making the distinction between good and evil. At least not by the same standards we common folk do. Don't be surprised when they violate your personal privacy in every possible way so that they can increase their profits - and never forget that for the corporation, the need to increase profits is paramount. Any other consideration takes a distant second place. Even for Google.
They say that they can disable the car's electronic systems - but what they really mean is DESTROY those systems. Any vehicle targeted by this technology will require thousands of dollars in repairs before it can be driven again.
That might prevent the technology from widespread use - it would be a field day for attorneys as police destroyed people's cars (and other property) while they were chasing a criminal. I'm sure that the vendor also says they can target one car specifically while they disable it - but it's not going to work that way in the real world. Their EMP pulse will spread as a spherical field and any electronics within range will get fried.
There's lots of talk here about how machines are not as "good" as humans. That is certainly true on an overall basis - but for specific well defined tasks, a machine can outperform a human by an order of magnitude or more.
Recognize a human being by IR? No problem. Aim a weapon at the head? No problem. Bang, one shot and one kill. Repeat times N where N is the size of the machine's ammo supply or the number of targets (whichever is less). The whole cycle would take a fraction of a second and if you were one of the targets you'd probably be dead before you discovered your peril. The fact that such machines are well within our capability to mass produce right now isn't what scares me - it's the sad fact that there are people in high places that think that doing this would be a good idea.
There are unwritten rules to wars - the general concept is duke it out until one side or the other gives up or can't continue. This "agreement" would break down when the killbots started mowing down the enemy and things would get very ugly in a hurry. Do you think nukes are the "big scary?" Wait until you see what's coming if we head down this path.
Somehow the management types got the notion that this kind of work was like working on an assembly line. So they observe what goes on for a while, see that there's X failures per month and each tech can fix Y failures - then they do the math and reduce the headcount to just enough to keep up with the status quo.
That works well until it's time to roll out some new servers - or some new virus / worm raises hell in the server farm. Then there's not enough warm bodies to respond adequately and it's a mess. Of course, its those overworked IT drones that get the blame.
If management could see that IT people aren't "productive" as much as reactive - and that when you really need them they're worth their pay thousands of times over - then maybe they'd see that having "too many" people isn't such a bad idea.
I'm not expecting it to change any time soon - too many managers took the same stupid classes earning their MBA and they're not likely to be able to see that you prepare NOW for the disaster that's coming. It's not if, it's when..
Hi, I'm an American. One of the first families, in fact. That said, I'd like to say that I do not approve of what's been going on over the recent past in regard to "preventing terrorist attacks." If the "dividing line" is the 9/11 attack on New York by those Saudi Arabian criminals then it's worth noting that there have been exactly as many attacks on American soil since then "thanks to the increased security" as there were in all the years of air travel preceding this awful day.
Unfortunately, our elected leaders don't see the insanity. They don't see that they're doing the terrorist's job more effectively than the terrorists ever imagined. They don't see how many airline and TSA employees are using this as an excuse to lie and steal. They have the right to go through your baggage - but you don't have the right to keep your personal property if they want to take it. Do they have rules and regulations to follow? Don't ask - it's none of your business, citizen. Do these people know how foolish they look? No.
I've taken every opportunity to vote for people who said they would not perpetuate this nonsense - but there doesn't seem to be any way for a simple American citizen to stop this lunacy. I know that I do NOT want to travel on any airline these days - and if I have to, I know not to take a laptop or IPod along - or anything else that the watchers may find suspicious or desirable.
What I'd really like to tell them: Hey, I'm an American citizen - who gave you the right to harass the citizens of this country? But they won't answer and it seems that our so-called representative government is more concerned with preserving and improving the status quo than doing the job they were elected to do.
Sheesh; Bush was a disaster and Obama promised to undo the extremes and provide more transparency. Yeah, right - so Obama lied to us and is following the Bush plan. As a citizen, I'd like to apologize to those in other countries for the behavior of our government. We didn't ask them to act this way and we can't seem to find a way to get them to stop.
Microsoft reaches new heights in their attempts to remain "important." They've tried to be the only ones who can build an operating system but those "smelly long-haired" guys have turned out a very good alternative. Microsoft's attempt to take over web browsing seems to have faltered and the open-source alternative is becoming more popular every day. The "office productivity" class has resulted in a very competent and free alternative to Microsoft's overpriced package.
Maybe some day our Slashdot editors will be able to resist the urge to post a Microsoft public relations puff piece. Until then, let's keep in mind what we know about this company and not let their thinly disguised advertisements impress us.
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You may be right that better things are coming along - I've just been waiting for something that would fit my needs and the iPad does it. I just went looking for a link to the bluetooth keyboard and found that it's not listed today (it was yesterday). Actually, if I really wanted to put a real keyboard on it, I'd choose the keyboard dock. Here's a link to the current accessory list: http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_ipad/ipad_accessories
But if you need a keyboard for it then I think you're probably missing the whole point. It's not a general purpose computer, it's a "tablet shaped" device that allows you to read books, watch movies, listen to music, read email, browse the web - all of those "useful" things we'd like to do when we're kicked back in the easy chair. You can operate it completely with nothing more than your fingers; that's one of its strengths, not a limitation. Comparisons with other "tablets" aren't all that enlightening; it's quite different from the "laptop with no keyboard" stuff that's been around for a few years.
I'm not sure what the "horrible, closed" attitude that goes on around this thing is about. Sure, we're all used to having to go to extreme measures to get a PC to play a particular video or audio file and we're all pretty good at editing a registry to fix a blown up install - so the idea of not being able to tweak the innards may be unsettling. And many here are developers and have more than one machine; one to mess around with and another that actually works right. That's what the iPad is going to be for me: the one that always works right. Sure, I'll probably install a VNC client on it so I can mess with a server but it's going to almost totally be for "play".
Oh well; I'm sure there's more and different stuff coming along and maybe the perfect piece of hardware is just around the corner. But I'd bet that it's going to be a long wait and in the meantime I'll be sitting in my comfy chair reading a book - and occasionally switching over to check my email or check a web page. I won't give up my Wintel laptop or desktop; it's not a replacement for them. That's fine - they don't do what this thing does very well so it all works out.
The biggest factor for me is that the iPad is designed from the ground up to be operated by touch. That, and Apple's insistence on making their UI as attractive and intuitive as possible makes for a huge difference in usability.
If you've spent any time with one of their previous touchscreen products (iPhone, iPod Touch) then you know what I mean. As far as missing features - I suppose that depends on your needs. Really, if an iPad won't do it for you then you need a laptop. The other Windows based tablets are just plain awful - all the weight and power consumption of a laptop and a UI that isn't usable without a mouse or keyboard. Netbooks are - well, I think they're an answer to a question that hasn't been asked.
You mentioned bluetooth keyboard - the iPad supports that out of the box. Same with WiFi, it's built in and after you set it up to use your network you'll want to kick the folks at Microsoft. If you need 3G then get the 3G model; the service isn't on a contract and you can buy it by the month when you need it. If what you want is something infinitely configurable then you'd be happier with something else. But if you just want the darned thing to work - you'd probably like the iPad. I've got an iPod Touch - first generation, I was just after the early adopters. After three years the only reboots were when the OS was updated and once when I ran the battery all the way down. It's been a year or so since it was rebooted last and it's running 24/7 - let's see you do that with a Windows device of any kind.
But here's the real point: imagine you're sitting down in your comfy chair to read the latest from your favorite author. Which device would you prefer to read it on? There's a lot to be said about thin and light...
Let me start by saying that the only Apple device I own right now is an Ipod touch. I'm typing this on a Windows notebook and my big machine is a Windows desktop. I don't have any love for Apple or their policies - they do some things right and some things very, very wrong.
That said, there's some changes in "books" coming. We've had Kindle and Sony reader for a while and now others are jumping on the bandwagon. As limited as those devices are, they're selling in very large numbers. Kindle is Amazon's number one selling product - that says something, right? As the number of e-readers becomes larger and larger there's more incentive for the publishing houses to make their books available electronically. Between that and the large public domain book libraries available online there's a strong case for electronic books.
But sitting in a chair at a desktop computer to read books online is awkward - and trying to do it on a notebook is even worse. The Ipod touch is a little better but the screen is too darned small. We like to be able to hold the book and sit / slouch / lay wherever so a tablet-like e-reader is probably the best solution. Unfortunately, the attempts at tablet machines up to this point have been ill-conceived botches. Windows isn't made to be a tablet operating system - its touchscreen support is primitive and incomplete. This and the need of designers to add just one more feature has resulted in fragile yet heavy machines with short battery life - not worth their price.
Some say that the Ipad is limited - but if what I do is read email, browse the web and play an occasional game or two then it does 99.9% of what I need. Add in music and videos and that slick multi-touch interface and it meets my needs very well. Yes, I know - and when I need to do some serious typing, write some code, etc. I'll sit down at that Windows desktop and go to work. Apple did one more very nice thing - they made a case for the Ipad that opens like a book. This allows you to hold it like a book; same approximate size and weight, just like you're used to.
I've been watching this electronic book stuff for a while now - and I feel it's time for me to jump. I'll give away / donate my home library (thousands of dusty books) and replace them with an Ipad. Even if it did nothing else it'd be worth the price for just this one function.
Clearly you haven't looked into what it actually takes for that legal process to succeed.
Under the current immigration laws it's very expensive - every filing has a fee attached and it runs into many thousands of dollars before you even qualify to try to gain citizenship. But that's only if you fit into certain classifications and there's a visa available for you in the first place. Here's something for you to ponder: if you're trying to come to the USA from - let's say the Philippines - then the current wait time for a visa number is over NINE YEARS. You're going to need that before you do anything else here and it just gets harder, more time consuming, and more expensive as you go along.
Saying that there are legal ways that allow foreigners to become American citizens overlooks the simple facts: most Americans couldn't afford to pay their way to citizenship. Those illegal immigrants you're howling about don't even dream of having that much money. They don't qualify for a visa, they can't pay the fees, they absolutely can not obtain that citizenship or even a visa that allows them to work here.
Let's tell the truth about this for a change: that "legal process" that would allow your average Mexican laborer to become an Amnerican citizen DOES NOT EXIST IN THE REAL WORLD. The choices they have if they want to come to the USA to make a better living for themselves and their family back home are limited. They could enter using a visitor visa (very hard to obtain) and "forget" to leave. Or they can sneak across the border - the sneak in option is preferable because the INS doesn't have a record of your name, fingerprints, etc.
I'm not saying that entering this country illegally in any way is a good thing. But if we're going to discuss this issue, let's consider the truth instead of some glib talking points that obscure rather than enlighten.
There are everyday situations where having the caller ID number be other than the actual phone number is a good thing. Most companies do this - they'll have dozens or hundreds of phone lines and all of them show the "master" number for the company as their caller ID.
Or for VOIP users like me - my phone lines show the POTS number you should call to reach me, not the "hidden" number of the VOIP line. In both of these situations (and probably others) "spoofing" makes the caller ID information more useful. The option to configure the outgoing caller ID information is built into almost all telephone switching equipment for just this reason.
The misuse of this ability is the problem, not the ability itself. Laws like this one are likely to cause more harm than good; the current situation where some bad guys spoof their caller ID information isn't totally bad - they almost always choose obviously incorrect numbers. That makes it easy for me to just look at the phone and if it's a call from 000-000-0000 then it's not going to be answered.
If the government actually took violations of the "do not call" list seriously - and if various stores (on and off line) didn't sell your name and phone number to anyone with the price - then these problems would be greatly minimized. The telephone company has the actual phone numbers for every phone call - that data is accurate and not the same as the caller ID information. Maybe even the phone company could block calls with invalid caller ID information? There are things that could be done that would really be useful.
But this kind of political grandstanding where they want to tinker with a system that they don't understand - this is stupid. But that's nothing new these days...
Fast moving exploits blow right past these security products. The whole industry is based on "identify new threats, develop a detection routine, include it in the next update". So from the time the "assault" starts there's the time it takes for someone to find it and report it to the security product company. Then there's the time it takes for that company to analyse the threat and code a detection - and then there's another delay while customers wait for the next update cycle to come along.
That's easily ten or more days during which the exploit gets spread far and wide. The bad guys know this and carefully craft their exploits to spread quickly so they can be widely installed before the firewalls and virus scanners start blocking them - and they make their programs hard to detect and harder to remove. Even after the security vendors have the threat "neutralized", the exploit continues to spread behind the firewalls and to the companies with lazy admins who haven't patched recently.
What really needs to be done if we're ever going to make a significant dent in the flood of malware and viruses is to put an end to the various forms of remote execution that some ill-advised software companies have included in their products. Any software that automatically installs or opens files from the web provides an entry for attackers. Things like Flash, ActiveX, etc. - an operating system that permits "drive-by downloads" just isn't suitable for a connected world. Fix those glaring flaws and the number of problems would go way down.
Of course this isn't likely to happen any time soon. Advertisers love those blinky, colorful, dancing, and music playing advertisements. They insist on more and more of these and that's led to more and more viruses being installed by innocent looking ads on some reputable site's webpage. And it's all due to some idiot thinking it was a great idea to have your computer download and open an executable file automatically.
So now we're using ad-blocking software to protect our systems from this kind of danger - and the advertisers are starting to howl. They don't see that they're providing almost universal access to those black hat programmers - or they do see this and don't care because they're making money. We can't have things both ways - if you allow remote execution then you're going to have security breaches. If you don't allow it, the web would be a quieter and less "content rich" place.
While your on Wikipedia, look up "halting problem". Next, fix yourself a nice dish of crow and eat up.
After a quick email exchange with the folks at Ars Technica I've made my decision.
I've considered the balance between their need to show ads and my need to protect my computer. So I'm going to change the configuration of my ad blocker - I'm going to add their whole domain to the block list. They can be self-important all they want but they can do it without me watching.
Did you ever try to use one of those? We tried using them at a previous employer and got nothing but complaints from the people evaluating them. The battery life was miserable (90 minutes if you're lucky) and the flimsy casing started shedding flaps and doors as soon as you unpacked it. But the biggest problems was that they were a little too heavy and quite difficult to hold and use while walking around - leading to frequent drops to the floor which was murder on hard drives and screens. Even if they would have been more durable that short run time on battery prevented them from being used for the purpose they were intended for. Batteries usually lasted an hour and the charger took four hours to recharge it. So for an eight hour shift you'd need a bunch of battery packs and standalone chargers to support each one.
The price was reasonable for the time; back then a good laptop cost that much or more. I think the biggest flaw in their design was that they tried to minimize the size and weight by using extra-thin plastic for the casings. A hand-held tablet needs to be somewhat rugged and those were very, very fragile. If you used it as a fancy laptop then it'd hold up OK - in the field the life expectancy was measured in single-digit days.
These folks don't seem to have thought their cunning plan all the way through. No matter how they try to dress it up, they're vigilantes in pursuit of their idea of justice and there are some legal issues that they are going to have to deal with.
I'll let someone like NYCL describe those issues in detail - and I don't have any of anyone else's material online but it might be fun to do so, collect a DMCA complaint from these clowns - then sue them and watch them try to dance for the judge.
I'm waiting for the "convertible" laptop / netbook that has the electronics package behind the screen and all that's in the keyboard part is the keyboard and maybe an optical drive or two. With the two pieces together it'd be just like what we have now - or you could detach the screen and use it as a fully featured tablet. Best of both worlds - but there's some engineering to do before this can become a real product.
The only real justification for a dedicated e-reader device is that it can be locked to a company's book service. If the device is "open", it'll contain many more functions (free or very minimal cost) and look more like a laptop or iPad.
Right now you can download text versions of thousands of books - and Notepad is all you need to read them. If I'm going to have a special device just for reading books it's going to have to be a lot more functional and a lot less expensive than anything they're even speculating about now.
Those corporate types that think that $400 is a good price for an e-reader and books should cost $25 each are setting the stage for their extinction. That kind of pricing will create a "pirate" market for digital books; this and the low sales rate (due to the pricing) will kill their market in short order./P
That's what us old-timers call fraud. It's not OK, no matter how the apologists here may try to spin it. Yes, sometimes it's not cheap or easy to comply with the law - but that doesn't make complying with the law optional no matter how much you wish it was.
Sometimes I wonder if the people who post here think about what they're saying - or if they just scan the article enough to formulate a (weak) opposing point and rush to post it. There's only one thing worse than a patent troll and that's corporations trolling with patents they don't own. If corporations can destroy people for violating their patents, what do you think should be the proper punishment for claiming patents that you don't own?
If you truly want to protect and increase your profits then you're barking up the wrong tree. I'm one of your ex-customers - after my experience with Bioshock I won't buy anything from your company again. Consider that your customers expect to receive what they purchase and not some promise of function that is nullified by a one-sided EULA.
I'm talking about finishing the code - and testing it - and fixing the bugs before you ship it. The DRM on Bioshock wasn't my problem - it was the poorly written and apparently untested code. You talk about millions of dollars and several years making a game - but when your "flagship" product (Bioshock) can only be successfully run in a window and crashes frequently when run full screen; well, that looks like something built by a couple of teenagers in their spare time. And it was so nice of you to make "run full screen" the default setting. Did anyone actually test this product before you started shipping?
You talk about how Ubisoft should or shouldn't treat users of your product like criminals. Do you have any clue as to how arrogant that makes your company sound? Especially when it comes from a company that will take people's money for products that do not work then refuse to fix them or give a refund. Who is the "criminal" here, anyway? You can talk piracy all you want, but it's the frauds you perpetrate that are causing your sales to fall.
Sigh; I suspect that none of this is making any sense to you. You're blind to your shoddy products and lack of useful support for them. It's much easier to ignore your own fatal flaws and blame "the pirates" for your loss of business. What's really funny about all of that is that when your shipping product doesn't work, but some kids working in their basement can produce a torrent of it that works flawlessly - what does that say about the quality and value of your product?
Here's another clue for you: much of the "piracy" is really people trying your product before buying it. They've heard the stories about your code and support so they're going to make sure it actually works before they buy it from you. How many of those "pirates" will convert to paying customers? It depends on the quality of your code and the way you treat your customers. You're not doing too good on either of those topics these days...
Microsoft got caught taking unwarranted action against a well known website. Now they're claiming that they never intended to do that and that the information in question isn't really protected.
Anyone who believes that this means Microsoft has turned over a new leaf needs to go back to the school of hard knocks and learn about "spin", "doublespeak" and "marketing". If you think that they would back off like this if the general public DID NOT know what transpired then don your pointy hat and go sit in the corner. The history of Microsoft should be well known in these parts and years of bad behavior by that company should provide more than sufficient reason to doubt them now.
The way it was done - by the domain registrar re-directing their domain name to NULL was not a mistake - it was because a MS "enforcer" decided to teach Cryptome a lesson and used Microsoft's influence with NetSol to make it happen. You don't think NetSol makes a regular practice of this kind of stuff, do you? What's really interesting this time is they got caught with dirty hands - and decided a "whoops, my bad" would make it OK. That wouldn't work if there weren't so many who are ready to argue for the bad guy just because it gives them a soap box to speak from.
Sure, there's a few Microsoft shills who monitor this site and post / mod accordingly. Their behavior is bad but expected - but the rest of you... Really, read TFA and think about it for a few minutes before you hit that "reply" button. It's not only a good idea, it'll also make you a better Slashdotter.
Why is it that the unfortunate comparison between the iPad and a netbook keeps being made? The iPad isn't trying to be a netbook - and a netbook doesn't try to be an iPad - that's not where the iPad is really targeted.
To become more clueful, visit Amazon and right there on the main page they're promoting their "number one selling item". Review the specifications and then take a look at their "bigger" model. Review those specifications and check the price. That should produce a state of understanding in even the typical Slashdotter.
There's also Barnes and Noble's weak offering in the brand new (and very rapidly growing) e-reader market. And let's not forget Sony's offering - once again, check the features and pricing. In that market, the iPad is a very, very strong entry. The music playing and video watching and email (etc. etc.) is just icing on the cake.
I've got an iPod Touch, a notebook, and a netbook here at home. Each does what it was designed to do and I like all of them except the netbook - that hateful little thing should never have been built. The writing is on the wall (so to speak) and digital books are going to be just as important as digital music. So what are you going to use to read your digital books? You can disagree with Mr. Jobs all you want - but he usually knows what he's doing. These will sell like hotcakes.
There's a lot of electrons wasted talking about how "piracy" harms society. What nobody seems to recognize is how bad law and industry cartels harm society. I'll try to show some non-imaginary harms to society that result directly from the activities of the RIAA and it's member companies.
First is the distortion of law that's taken place at the behest of the RIAA and other media cartels. The balance of interests that copyright was based upon has been forgotten - we allowed creators exclusive use of their works for a time in exchange for those works being released to the public domain. In this way, not only the copyright holder but society at large would benefit. The benefit to society is almost (if not completely) eliminated - Walt Disney has been dead for many, many years but Mickey Mouse is still under copyright. Any benefit to the creator is exhausted and society still can not make use of that material.
Another loss to society is the creators of musical (and other works) are also being exploited by the RIAA companies and many, many works are not being released. Why bother when you'll never see a penny from your creation? I personally know of many composers who continue to write music but archive their works for a future date when they can find (hopefully) a chance of having some control over their creation and make some money from it, too.
As the well funded media cartels (funded by the work of the artists who don't get paid) work to distort law to support their anti-social activities, they set an example for other corporations. Put rootkits on a few hundred thousand CDs? Naughty Sony, pay a small (to them) fine and don't do that again. Now people here are complaining about games that die when there is no network connection, or operating systems that assume you're a "pirate" when they don't get to check in with the mothership. These excesses are a direct result of the DMCA (that's what "self help" means) and they're just getting started. It'll keep getting worse and worse until society as a whole says "enough" - but our "elected" representatives aren't listening to us because those media company dollars are so nice and so easy to collect.
Will the legal system finally make the "shake down the general public" lawsuit machine no longer workable? Maybe it will eventually - but those cartels won't go away so easily and they'll be lobbying hard for an even more draconian "solution".
According to TFA their plan is to make the body panels act as one plate of a huge capacitor. I can't even begin to list all the technical flaws in their proposal; just reading it made my head hurt. They really should run their promotional pieces past a real engineer before spreading them all over the net.
The fiction that a corporation is a person - combined with the legal precedent that says that the executives can be sued if they do something that reduces profits - makes for some pretty well defined behavior by the corporation. It is solely concerned with maximizing its own revenue and any other concern is incidental or done to "look good". If the corporation were a real person and was evaluated by a psychologist it would be likely be diagnosed as a psychopath (sociopath).
Consider this when you parrot the "Do No Evil" marketing slogan; Google is a corporation and isn't capable of making the distinction between good and evil. At least not by the same standards we common folk do. Don't be surprised when they violate your personal privacy in every possible way so that they can increase their profits - and never forget that for the corporation, the need to increase profits is paramount. Any other consideration takes a distant second place. Even for Google.
That might prevent the technology from widespread use - it would be a field day for attorneys as police destroyed people's cars (and other property) while they were chasing a criminal. I'm sure that the vendor also says they can target one car specifically while they disable it - but it's not going to work that way in the real world. Their EMP pulse will spread as a spherical field and any electronics within range will get fried.
Recognize a human being by IR? No problem. Aim a weapon at the head? No problem. Bang, one shot and one kill. Repeat times N where N is the size of the machine's ammo supply or the number of targets (whichever is less). The whole cycle would take a fraction of a second and if you were one of the targets you'd probably be dead before you discovered your peril. The fact that such machines are well within our capability to mass produce right now isn't what scares me - it's the sad fact that there are people in high places that think that doing this would be a good idea.
There are unwritten rules to wars - the general concept is duke it out until one side or the other gives up or can't continue. This "agreement" would break down when the killbots started mowing down the enemy and things would get very ugly in a hurry. Do you think nukes are the "big scary?" Wait until you see what's coming if we head down this path.
How many of you logged in and voted? Out of those, how many looked at the address bar to determine if you were on a Google site?
That works well until it's time to roll out some new servers - or some new virus / worm raises hell in the server farm. Then there's not enough warm bodies to respond adequately and it's a mess. Of course, its those overworked IT drones that get the blame.
If management could see that IT people aren't "productive" as much as reactive - and that when you really need them they're worth their pay thousands of times over - then maybe they'd see that having "too many" people isn't such a bad idea.
I'm not expecting it to change any time soon - too many managers took the same stupid classes earning their MBA and they're not likely to be able to see that you prepare NOW for the disaster that's coming. It's not if, it's when..
Unfortunately, our elected leaders don't see the insanity. They don't see that they're doing the terrorist's job more effectively than the terrorists ever imagined. They don't see how many airline and TSA employees are using this as an excuse to lie and steal. They have the right to go through your baggage - but you don't have the right to keep your personal property if they want to take it. Do they have rules and regulations to follow? Don't ask - it's none of your business, citizen. Do these people know how foolish they look? No.
I've taken every opportunity to vote for people who said they would not perpetuate this nonsense - but there doesn't seem to be any way for a simple American citizen to stop this lunacy. I know that I do NOT want to travel on any airline these days - and if I have to, I know not to take a laptop or IPod along - or anything else that the watchers may find suspicious or desirable.
What I'd really like to tell them: Hey, I'm an American citizen - who gave you the right to harass the citizens of this country? But they won't answer and it seems that our so-called representative government is more concerned with preserving and improving the status quo than doing the job they were elected to do.
Sheesh; Bush was a disaster and Obama promised to undo the extremes and provide more transparency. Yeah, right - so Obama lied to us and is following the Bush plan. As a citizen, I'd like to apologize to those in other countries for the behavior of our government. We didn't ask them to act this way and we can't seem to find a way to get them to stop.
Maybe some day our Slashdot editors will be able to resist the urge to post a Microsoft public relations puff piece. Until then, let's keep in mind what we know about this company and not let their thinly disguised advertisements impress us.