Having replaced batteries more than 1 or 2 times for a single, still useful laptop. Even if their claims are true the machine will outlast the battery.
Dude, seriously, if you are on that long of a flight, you should take some time to relax, have a few drinks and take a nap. Nobody should be expected to "work" on a plane the whole time. Unless if you are a chronic workaholic with no life, you should not be working through the flight and your employer should understand that.
That, my friend, would be why you are using an Apple, whereas serious business users use PCs. Because you think that it is up to you to tell consumers what they need and how they will use it, instead of the other way around.
1) Buy a new battery. Even their claimed 2-3x industry standard isn't more than a year or two if you use your laptop every day. I'm still using a three year old laptop which is perfectly fine even for software development.
2) Not having to send your laptop to Apple when they inevitably recall the battery
3) A long flight is much more than 8 hours. Try going to Australia or Hong Kong.
If Apple really can't make a removable battery without a 40% overhead in space, then they aren't really the geniuses that you all think they are, are they? Really, connectors and a metal or plastic shell increase the size by almost half again? They should probably take a cue from some of the technological design marvels you can find in, say, a typical AA battery. What BS.
In the end, it's fairly irrelevant, because any serious business user won't be considering Apple products.
Following up on my previous post that this has only to do with the demographics of voters, since the hand-counted votes in NH were predominantly from small towns:
I couldn't find data for Iowa broken down by large vs. small town, but here you can see by county. So I picked Des Moines (obviously, containing a big city) and Taylor (in the middle of nowhere).
Des Moines County: 40% Barak Obama, 29% Hillary Taylor County: 35% Hillary Clinton, 20% Obama
Sorry, folks. There is no scandal. People in smaller, more rural areas prefer Hillary (surprised? she's white). People in larger, more urban areas prefer Obama.
Look at the data. In smaller towns, votes are predominantly hand counted. In larger towns and cities, votes are predominantly machine counted.
All this tells us is that voters in larger towns prefer Obama vs. Clinton. Is it at all surprising that there are demographic variations in candidate preference? I can almost guarantee you that if you did an analysis of small towns vs. cities in Iowa, you'd see a similar trend.
There are two major concerns here. Telephone or backup service, and competition for internet access.
As far as telephone service goes, most people I know don't even use the copper lines that may (or may not) come into their house. I haven't had a land line in years. Every household usually has at least two mobile phones, which more and more people are using for their primary telephone service anyway. Copper-based phone service is dying anyway, and frankly I don't see much reason to save it.
As far as competition goes, there are so many other ways to get internet access (not the least of which is leeching from your neighbor, and other wireless solutions) that I hardly see this as a monopoly. This seems like a lot of hullaboo about nothing.
So verizon wants to pay to put in infrastructure for a cool new technology? And you bitch, because that little wire that used to provide you with unreliable and dial-up is being cut? So what? There won't even be any technologies that use it in a few years.
I've had three mobile phones in my life, each of them for about 4 years. I have never replaced a battery in any of them.
Obviously, you have never owned a RAZR. After six months, I was lucky to get 12 hours of standby and 30 minutes of talk time. That is pretty much the norm for that phone, from what I've heard.
The real question is.. why NOT allow the battery to be replaceable? And this thing isn't just a phone - it's a music player too. It's going to go through a lot more recharge cycles and have a lot more continuous high-power operation than just a cell phone. The typical iPod battery seems to be good for a year or so, now you've got one device that will (in theory) be used as much as both your phone and your ipod.
I'm guessing 9 months from now, Apple begins offering a $150-$200 battery replacement program, just like the iPod. But for that money, most people will probably just upgrade to the iPhone v2 that will be released then. If the battery were user-replaceable, a lot of people would just buy one for 20 bucks and go on their merry way. Once again, anti-consumer design for apple's benefit.
Well, I guess I did. I read the whole thread actually, and it was not at all clear to me that you weren't actually arguing that freezing wouldn't work anyway, since I suspect most people actually would intuitively think that food won't last forever even in the freezer. I guess the irony was just too deep for my monday mind. Apologies.
Um, no. Sure, biological processes preserve the body - but freezing stops both those processes, AND the processes that cause decay - also biological processes.
This application was entered by Epson. The application is also extremely detailed. I am not sure what the point of this "freepatentsonline" web site is, since you can just search the USPTO's web site for free and get the COMPLETE information about a patent or patent application, and not just a summary.
Anyway, here's the link. Methinks this is a non-story. This application seems very specific.
Another corporation decides that saving a few dollars is more important than creating a stable work environment. I am sure CC will defend their actions by saying they need to be competitive, just like Wal-Mart in their similar policy of salary-capping their "associates" (which basically has the same effect as CC's action, the idea being workers will move on voluntarily once they hit the cap).
Why is it, then, that Costco is kicking Wal-Mart's (and Sam's Club's) in growth and profitibility? Costco pays their workers on average almost twice as much as Wal-Mart, and has generally employee-friendly benefits and policies. And they're making a ton of cash, too. Maybe, just maybe, it is actually GOOD for business to create a positive working environment, retain staff, and have good morale.
"I can't see a way this can be implemented without DRM. Otherwise you haven't rented it, you now own the file"
No, you rented it. If you borrow a book from the library, you don't own it. If you rent a video from Netflix, you don't own it. If you borrow a CD from your friend, you don't own it. In each of these cases, I can do whatever the heck I want with it once it's in my house - make a photocopy of a book, burn a CD or DVD copy, whatever. You have always been able to violate the law if you choose to. But the bittorrent downloads have FEWER features than these things - I can't play it on my DVD player, I have to use my computer. And apparently even that doesn't work very well.
As an analogy, I can also drive over 70 miles per hour, do you think cars should be electronically limited to that speed? There's no road in this country with a higher speed limit.
DRM is trying to ensure that people cannot break the law. The problem is, whenever you do that, you don't stop the TRUE lawbreakers, and you punish the regular guy. If we decided (as a society) to electronically limit our cars to the speed limit, well, apart from the obvious awful congestion that would result from nobody being able to pass on the highway, the people who were going to speed a lot anyway would find a hack to remove the limiter. So the scofflaws still do whatever the heck they want, while those of us just trying to be good citizens suffer awfully because we can't exceed the speed limit for a few seconds once in a while to pass a slower moving vehicle in a reasonable amount of time.
Actually, this could be a brilliant move. Millions of people will suddenly know the name of a relatively obscure, dead piano player. The CDs will become collector's items, and her husband, who owns thousands of unsold editions, will begin dribbling them out to ebay at exorbitant prices. The RIAA, meanwhile, will reissue her legitimate works (should there be any). Everyone wins.
The perpetrator of this fraud (presumably, her husband, who produced the albums) should have hired a two-bit geek to help him. I can't think of anything easier than at the very minimum retracking the forgery to avoid such an obvious pitfall.
Well, I guess it just reinforces the basic issue with the vast majority of crooks: if they aren't smart enough to make it within the law, then they probably aren't smart enough to be a good crook either.
Apple's products are generally of a much higher quality than those of Microsoft which gives them a pass from most geeks.
I think you mean "Apple's products are generally much more simplistic than those of Microsoft which gives them a pass from most geeks.". I don't know a single geek that uses a Mac. I know lots of computer-illiterate people who do, though.
That's all well and good; obviously there's a market for dumbed-down, minimally-configurable products. But I've learned that whenever one of my Mac friends has a problem, despite using all manner of computers for over 20 years, I usually can't fix it. Ironically, the first hardware problem I've had in a long time on my PC was getting it to recognized my new iPod. It didn't "just work" and Apple's support page included such genius ideas as "reinstalling windows".
Anyway, people love Apple computers because "they just work". The problem is, even Macs don't work sometimes, and there's no "Advanced" button on any configuration screen.
This fact is what makes Job's article so hypocritical. If he's so anxious to embrace non-DRM music distribution as soon as the major labels will let him, why won't he sell unrestricted music now from the indies who DON'T require it?
The whole thing is PR, of course. Saying that he'll readily embrace MP3 downloads when the majors will let him, is like saying "I'll gladly lower the prices at my gas station as soon as another gas station opens up in town." Of course he will. He'll have competition, all of the sudden.
From yesterday's Wall Street Journal, entitled "Is Jobs Playing A New Tune?" Article not available for free online, but the important comment is:
"To BusinessWeek, Mr. Jobs has gone "from controversy to PR coup in a matter of words" with a "dramatic about-face that could recast Apple's role" in the debate over copyright protection. But "Thoughts on Music" may to some sound less like a true cry for change than a part of Apple's long-running and successful campaign to cast itself as one of the good guys -- by adopting an already ascendant idea"
A competitor? He doesn't make computers, he fixes them.
Sure. We don't know the reliability of the source. But as unknown sources goes, this one has a few things going for him.
1) He works in a computer shop
2) He is technically knowledgeable
3) He has reproduced the problem in more than one machine
Sure, it's possible he's making the whole thing up. Who knows. But I find his story and credibility to be better than average for these reasons. If he wasn't credible at all, would we even be discussing it?
Did you read the comments that the individual put online, as referenced in the original story?
The guy owns a computer shop. He has tested THREE of them and found the same problem in each laptop. I'd say that the source is at least more reliable than some disgruntled clown, and finding the same problem in all three machines he's tested qualifies as a trend.
Its hard to believe that just 3% of the music on the average iPod is enough to lock users into buying only iPods in the future.
BS. Who wants to just gratuitiously spend money, again, for something they already own? It doesn't matter if it's only 22 songs on average. That's 30 bucks more on average out of pocket to buy a non-ipod, not to mention the hassle of re-buying the music, if those songs are even available somewhere other than iTunes.
The most serious problem is that licensing a DRM involves disclosing some of its secrets to many people in many companies, and history tells us that inevitably these secrets will leak
BS. As Steve himself noted, pirates routinely hack the existing system. What possible additional threat could come from a legitimate company, when the system is far from secure already? A single, centrally managed DRM system would be far more secure than many different systems.
If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.
That's pretty much a bald-faced lie, since Apple presently encrypts ALL music they sell on iTunes, even when the copyright holder sells it elsewhere without encryption. (For example: They Might Be Giants and some other non-major-label bands).
Apple has NOTHING to gain, and a lot to lose, if DRM goes away. They are crapping in their pants. This is all PR designed to blame the music industry for their anti-consumer business model. But I can't think of a single proprietary standard in history that didn't go the way of the dinosaur before too long, and obviously the backlash is starting to swell.
Yes, I got schooled already. Since then I've changed my mind completely: google is not just irresponsible, but pretty stupid for allowing this to happen at all. Why include ANY part of the query string at all? A reference to a phishing web site ought to end with the "?" in the URL.
I would think the "algorithm" would just be "ditch anything after the actual location." Even if it didn't occur to them that there might be personal data in the query-string part of the URL, there's no reason to keep any of it in the first place. This just makes the reference to the site more unique and therefore less likely to be matched when someone uses the database.
Slashdot Mirror
This is clearly a joke, albeit a pretty dry one. You can't buy one, and the "stories" are actually quite hilarious.
You are basing this on what? Idle speculation?
Having replaced batteries more than 1 or 2 times for a single, still useful laptop. Even if their claims are true the machine will outlast the battery.
Speculation?
History. https://support.apple.com/ibook_powerbook/batteryexchange/
Dude, seriously, if you are on that long of a flight, you should take some time to relax, have a few drinks and take a nap. Nobody should be expected to "work" on a plane the whole time. Unless if you are a chronic workaholic with no life, you should not be working through the flight and your employer should understand that.
That, my friend, would be why you are using an Apple, whereas serious business users use PCs. Because you think that it is up to you to tell consumers what they need and how they will use it, instead of the other way around.
Seriously? Here are a few:
1) Buy a new battery. Even their claimed 2-3x industry standard isn't more than a year or two if you use your laptop every day. I'm still using a three year old laptop which is perfectly fine even for software development.
2) Not having to send your laptop to Apple when they inevitably recall the battery
3) A long flight is much more than 8 hours. Try going to Australia or Hong Kong.
If Apple really can't make a removable battery without a 40% overhead in space, then they aren't really the geniuses that you all think they are, are they? Really, connectors and a metal or plastic shell increase the size by almost half again? They should probably take a cue from some of the technological design marvels you can find in, say, a typical AA battery. What BS.
In the end, it's fairly irrelevant, because any serious business user won't be considering Apple products.
Following up on my previous post that this has only to do with the demographics of voters, since the hand-counted votes in NH were predominantly from small towns:
I couldn't find data for Iowa broken down by large vs. small town, but here
you can see by county. So I picked Des Moines (obviously, containing a big city) and Taylor (in the middle of nowhere).
Des Moines County: 40% Barak Obama, 29% Hillary
Taylor County: 35% Hillary Clinton, 20% Obama
Sorry, folks. There is no scandal. People in smaller, more rural areas prefer Hillary (surprised? she's white). People in larger, more urban areas prefer Obama.
Look at the data. In smaller towns, votes are predominantly hand counted. In larger towns and cities, votes are predominantly machine counted. All this tells us is that voters in larger towns prefer Obama vs. Clinton. Is it at all surprising that there are demographic variations in candidate preference? I can almost guarantee you that if you did an analysis of small towns vs. cities in Iowa, you'd see a similar trend.
People already fall in love with cars and boats, a robot seems a no brainer.
Nah, you got it wrong.
British -> Dude
Transport -> Car
Footballer -> Dude
Tube -> Car
Burgle -> Get
See? Much compressed.
There are two major concerns here. Telephone or backup service, and competition for internet access. As far as telephone service goes, most people I know don't even use the copper lines that may (or may not) come into their house. I haven't had a land line in years. Every household usually has at least two mobile phones, which more and more people are using for their primary telephone service anyway. Copper-based phone service is dying anyway, and frankly I don't see much reason to save it. As far as competition goes, there are so many other ways to get internet access (not the least of which is leeching from your neighbor, and other wireless solutions) that I hardly see this as a monopoly. This seems like a lot of hullaboo about nothing. So verizon wants to pay to put in infrastructure for a cool new technology? And you bitch, because that little wire that used to provide you with unreliable and dial-up is being cut? So what? There won't even be any technologies that use it in a few years.
I've had three mobile phones in my life, each of them for about 4 years. I have never replaced a battery in any of them.
Obviously, you have never owned a RAZR. After six months, I was lucky to get 12 hours of standby and 30 minutes of talk time. That is pretty much the norm for that phone, from what I've heard.
The real question is.. why NOT allow the battery to be replaceable? And this thing isn't just a phone - it's a music player too. It's going to go through a lot more recharge cycles and have a lot more continuous high-power operation than just a cell phone. The typical iPod battery seems to be good for a year or so, now you've got one device that will (in theory) be used as much as both your phone and your ipod.
I'm guessing 9 months from now, Apple begins offering a $150-$200 battery replacement program, just like the iPod. But for that money, most people will probably just upgrade to the iPhone v2 that will be released then. If the battery were user-replaceable, a lot of people would just buy one for 20 bucks and go on their merry way. Once again, anti-consumer design for apple's benefit.
Well, I guess I did. I read the whole thread actually, and it was not at all clear to me that you weren't actually arguing that freezing wouldn't work anyway, since I suspect most people actually would intuitively think that food won't last forever even in the freezer. I guess the irony was just too deep for my monday mind. Apologies.
Um, no. Sure, biological processes preserve the body - but freezing stops both those processes, AND the processes that cause decay - also biological processes.
_ Planner_Text/index.asp
But to address your freezer question:
http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Fact_Sheets/2005_Hotline
"From a safety standpoint, you can keep meat or poultry in the freezer indefinitely"
This woolly mammoth was still in good shape after 23,000 years in the cooler. They even found plant matter around the frozen beast, still green.
http://rachelhyman.blogspot.com/
This application was entered by Epson. The application is also extremely detailed. I am not sure what the point of this "freepatentsonline" web site is, since you can just search the USPTO's web site for free and get the COMPLETE information about a patent or patent application, and not just a summary.
P TO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch- bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=200302087 45.PGNR.&OS=DN/20030208745&RS=DN/20030208745
Anyway, here's the link. Methinks this is a non-story. This application seems very specific.
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=
IBM invented the Three Finger Salute. We still need one more...
Another corporation decides that saving a few dollars is more important than creating a stable work environment. I am sure CC will defend their actions by saying they need to be competitive, just like Wal-Mart in their similar policy of salary-capping their "associates" (which basically has the same effect as CC's action, the idea being workers will move on voluntarily once they hit the cap).
Why is it, then, that Costco is kicking Wal-Mart's (and Sam's Club's) in growth and profitibility? Costco pays their workers on average almost twice as much as Wal-Mart, and has generally employee-friendly benefits and policies. And they're making a ton of cash, too. Maybe, just maybe, it is actually GOOD for business to create a positive working environment, retain staff, and have good morale.
The Costco Way - Business Week (couple years old but relevant)
"I can't see a way this can be implemented without DRM. Otherwise you haven't rented it, you now own the file"
No, you rented it. If you borrow a book from the library, you don't own it. If you rent a video from Netflix, you don't own it. If you borrow a CD from your friend, you don't own it. In each of these cases, I can do whatever the heck I want with it once it's in my house - make a photocopy of a book, burn a CD or DVD copy, whatever. You have always been able to violate the law if you choose to. But the bittorrent downloads have FEWER features than these things - I can't play it on my DVD player, I have to use my computer. And apparently even that doesn't work very well.
As an analogy, I can also drive over 70 miles per hour, do you think cars should be electronically limited to that speed? There's no road in this country with a higher speed limit.
DRM is trying to ensure that people cannot break the law. The problem is, whenever you do that, you don't stop the TRUE lawbreakers, and you punish the regular guy. If we decided (as a society) to electronically limit our cars to the speed limit, well, apart from the obvious awful congestion that would result from nobody being able to pass on the highway, the people who were going to speed a lot anyway would find a hack to remove the limiter. So the scofflaws still do whatever the heck they want, while those of us just trying to be good citizens suffer awfully because we can't exceed the speed limit for a few seconds once in a while to pass a slower moving vehicle in a reasonable amount of time.
Actually, this could be a brilliant move. Millions of people will suddenly know the name of a relatively obscure, dead piano player. The CDs will become collector's items, and her husband, who owns thousands of unsold editions, will begin dribbling them out to ebay at exorbitant prices. The RIAA, meanwhile, will reissue her legitimate works (should there be any). Everyone wins.
The perpetrator of this fraud (presumably, her husband, who produced the albums) should have hired a two-bit geek to help him. I can't think of anything easier than at the very minimum retracking the forgery to avoid such an obvious pitfall.
Well, I guess it just reinforces the basic issue with the vast majority of crooks: if they aren't smart enough to make it within the law, then they probably aren't smart enough to be a good crook either.
Apple's products are generally of a much higher quality than those of Microsoft which gives them a pass from most geeks.
I think you mean "Apple's products are generally much more simplistic than those of Microsoft which gives them a pass from most geeks.". I don't know a single geek that uses a Mac. I know lots of computer-illiterate people who do, though.
That's all well and good; obviously there's a market for dumbed-down, minimally-configurable products. But I've learned that whenever one of my Mac friends has a problem, despite using all manner of computers for over 20 years, I usually can't fix it. Ironically, the first hardware problem I've had in a long time on my PC was getting it to recognized my new iPod. It didn't "just work" and Apple's support page included such genius ideas as "reinstalling windows".
Anyway, people love Apple computers because "they just work". The problem is, even Macs don't work sometimes, and there's no "Advanced" button on any configuration screen.
This fact is what makes Job's article so hypocritical. If he's so anxious to embrace non-DRM music distribution as soon as the major labels will let him, why won't he sell unrestricted music now from the indies who DON'T require it?
The whole thing is PR, of course. Saying that he'll readily embrace MP3 downloads when the majors will let him, is like saying "I'll gladly lower the prices at my gas station as soon as another gas station opens up in town." Of course he will. He'll have competition, all of the sudden.
From yesterday's Wall Street Journal, entitled "Is Jobs Playing A New Tune?" Article not available for free online, but the important comment is:
"To BusinessWeek, Mr. Jobs has gone "from controversy to PR coup in a matter of words" with a "dramatic about-face that could recast Apple's role" in the debate over copyright protection. But "Thoughts on Music" may to some sound less like a true cry for change than a part of Apple's long-running and successful campaign to cast itself as one of the good guys -- by adopting an already ascendant idea"
A competitor? He doesn't make computers, he fixes them. Sure. We don't know the reliability of the source. But as unknown sources goes, this one has a few things going for him. 1) He works in a computer shop 2) He is technically knowledgeable 3) He has reproduced the problem in more than one machine Sure, it's possible he's making the whole thing up. Who knows. But I find his story and credibility to be better than average for these reasons. If he wasn't credible at all, would we even be discussing it?
Did you read the comments that the individual put online, as referenced in the original story? The guy owns a computer shop. He has tested THREE of them and found the same problem in each laptop. I'd say that the source is at least more reliable than some disgruntled clown, and finding the same problem in all three machines he's tested qualifies as a trend.
Its hard to believe that just 3% of the music on the average iPod is enough to lock users into buying only iPods in the future.
BS. Who wants to just gratuitiously spend money, again, for something they already own? It doesn't matter if it's only 22 songs on average. That's 30 bucks more on average out of pocket to buy a non-ipod, not to mention the hassle of re-buying the music, if those songs are even available somewhere other than iTunes.
The most serious problem is that licensing a DRM involves disclosing some of its secrets to many people in many companies, and history tells us that inevitably these secrets will leak
BS. As Steve himself noted, pirates routinely hack the existing system. What possible additional threat could come from a legitimate company, when the system is far from secure already? A single, centrally managed DRM system would be far more secure than many different systems.
If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.
That's pretty much a bald-faced lie, since Apple presently encrypts ALL music they sell on iTunes, even when the copyright holder sells it elsewhere without encryption. (For example: They Might Be Giants and some other non-major-label bands).
Apple has NOTHING to gain, and a lot to lose, if DRM goes away. They are crapping in their pants. This is all PR designed to blame the music industry for their anti-consumer business model. But I can't think of a single proprietary standard in history that didn't go the way of the dinosaur before too long, and obviously the backlash is starting to swell.
Yes, I got schooled already. Since then I've changed my mind completely: google is not just irresponsible, but pretty stupid for allowing this to happen at all. Why include ANY part of the query string at all? A reference to a phishing web site ought to end with the "?" in the URL. I would think the "algorithm" would just be "ditch anything after the actual location." Even if it didn't occur to them that there might be personal data in the query-string part of the URL, there's no reason to keep any of it in the first place. This just makes the reference to the site more unique and therefore less likely to be matched when someone uses the database.