They clocked the speed he was driving at because the tires were a different size? There's some mysterious huge downhill on the new jersey turnpike that caused him to hit 80 despite setting his cruise control to 54? Really? Is that the best he can come up with?
So how much difference does 2 inches make? Broder says the standard wheel size for the car is 21 inches, but they gave him a car with 19 inch all-weather tires. I haven't seen anybody run the numbers, so I did for fun:
19 inch diameter * pi = 59.7 inch circumference
21 inch diameter * pi = 66.0 inch circumference
59.7 / 66.0 = 0.9 ratio
We don't know what data was recorded or used to create the charts, but if it was the black box wheel revolution data, that data has to be interpreted using a specific wheel size. So if you interpreted it assuming a 21 inch wheel, but the car actually had 19 inch wheels you would end up with:
* For every 100 miles on the chart, the car would have only gone 90.
* When the chart shows 60 mph, the car would have actually been going 54 mph.
* The short blip of 80 mph would actually be 72 mph. (7 mph over the 65 mph limit, which is fairly reserved for the NJ Turnpike.)
So this would pretty much explain how you could get those charts without Broder lying about the details on his trip.
And since he claims Tesla told him the batteries would warm up, I have no reason to believe Tesla didn't when they previously told Consumer Reports the exact same thing:
As a small developer, I would love if Apple took a smaller percentage of app purchases (which as others have pointed out isn't really 30% when you factor in referral fees, retail markups on iTunes gift cards and the credit card processing fees they pay out), but it's great that by enforcing rules they are effectively taking a step toward leveling the playing field for the small guys. (Instead of giving sweetheart deals to fellow big guys.)
But in this case, we're not talking about app purchases-- we're talking about transactions that occur in an app, and this has always been a questionable rule. It a straight tax on transactions. It's in the same vein as Verizon demanding Google pay them because Verizon customers are accessing Google "through their pipes."
And it's more inconsistent than people realize... I routinely place orders for food in the Delivery.com and the SeamlessWeb apps and because I have no credit card on file with either, I enter my credit card info for payment instead of using an iTunes account. So no 30% goes to Apple for my burrito, but DropBox leaves a link to their website in their SDK and suddenly all hell breaks loose. But Apple has a DropBox competitor and doesn't currently offer burritos I guess...
Yes, this is an attack on Google, and has little to do with being "pro-consumer".
I keep seeing this presented as an attack on Google, but it seems to me that it would help Google more than it would hurt it. Consider this: If you're logged into a Google service they can (and will) still track you. With Google's new privacy policy it doesn't matter which service you're logged in to. So if you use Google Docs, Gmail, YouTube, etc. and don't log out every time you do a Google search you'll be getting tracked regardless. Hell, a lot of people have to be logged in to Google services just to get work done now.
So who's going to end up not tracking you with this setting? Ad networks that don't have the sticky-apps that Google does. Will Google lose some data? Yes. But the other guys will lose more and Google's ads (relatively speaking) will perform better as a result.
Microsoft has managed to weather several OS flops (Windows Me anyone?) thanks to their domination of the market, but with Android gadgets and iPhones becoming pervasive can they pull it off again?
In a world where gadgets replace personal computers does Windows 8 or 9 even matter? Wouldn't Windows Phone be the relevant operating system? It's not like if Windows 9 is suddenly amazing, people are going to start shoving laptops in their pockets.
They have to be aware that 3D is failing in the marketplace around the rest of the world (looking at 3D movie attendance, Nintendo 3DS sales numbers, 3D TV sales figures, etc.), so my question is: Why are they jumping on this ship now?
It's tough to be the middleman... Netflix stands between the consumers and the content providers, but streaming video is rapidly becoming a commodity, so no doubt the content providers will get greedy and decide they want to own the whole thing end to end. I'm sure they'll ignore the amazing feat Netflix has accomplished (namely getting people to pay for streaming content online) and attempt to set up their own sites with onerous terms (pay-per-view with 24 hours to start) and high monthly rates, then be all surprised when no one signs up and start claiming piracy is destroying their business.
So there have been a number of articles about how the 3DS (with an actual 3D screen) is having a hard time competing against the iPhone. Sony's entry? Basically the same specs as an iPhone 4. Yeah the Vita has a faster cpu and hardware buttons, but it also has a lower resolution screen and the games will be more expensive. Needless to say all the rumors point to a new iPhone being released in the next few weeks which would probably close the gap on the cpu. Are hardware controls really going to sell $40 games?
So let me get this straight... A free update makes the game look better by using new DirectX11 features, but the whole article is criticizing the game for using a hardware technology (that's only just starting to appear in game engines), in a way that isn't as optimized as they would like? Are gamers feeling that entitled these days? If you speculatively purchase a faster hardware, it's not anybody's obligation to write software to push it to the limit you know.
Why does Mozilla keep treating Firefox like it's something they need to apologize for? Firefox has the best add-ons out there, hands down. And it's been around for years. Why are they acting like Chrome and others are setting the standards now? Why do they act like they're in some kind of pissing contest with Google? Google is the one with something to prove here, not Mozilla.
I think it's really telling that in a conversation about the 3DS' lackluster performance, no one seems to be mentioning the 3D screen. That's the feature I assume Nintendo was counting on to set them apart from Apple and Sony (much like the motion control set the Wii apart). But they made that bet back when people were still happy to pay extra for 3D movies, and the tide against 3D has clearly shifted.
As a 3DS owner I usually turn the 3D effect off because it hurts my eyes, but even if you don't mind it, to most people it's obviously not even worth mentioning.
They are either punishing Samsung (the common dramatic spin I see put on the story) or maybe they are expecting to need A LOT of A6 chips. Maybe the rumors of putting them in Macs are true?
As the total cost of filmmaking becomes cheaper and cheaper, Hollywood has to focus on doing things the little guys can't. Like 3D, or CGI or pay expensive fees to give their movies recognizable names. That said, I generally am not a fan of movies based on rides, games or tv shows, but Slumdog Millionaire was a story based on the rights to 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire' and that was a amazing movie.
Sucks for the guy who signed up for PSN with my e-mail address instead of his, but I tried twice to get Sony to fix it and they didn't care.
The same thing happened to me... Someone signed up for an account with my email address and Sony never sent an email confirmation on the account. (It's not their policy to do so. =P) When I emailed and called to complain, they wouldn't change the email address because I didn't know the info for the guy who had signed up. I eventually changed his password by guessing his birthday. It's surprisingly easy to do with a script when you consider PS3 buyer demographics.
Given that only 2000 of them have been released out of 250,000 they need to be stepping up the pace dramatically if they want these cables to ever see the light of day. But the exact opposite is happening.
Regardless of how you feel about it, this would seem to be a sign the US Government's tactics are working.
I'm not saying I agree with this, but they're not trying to block porn, they're trying to make it opt-in. Buying a newspaper is definitely opt-in.
Performing a search or visiting a website seems pretty opt-in to me. If you turn on your computer and it just starts displaying porn on it's own, it's probably malware and all bets are off anyway.
And considering there are already questions of health and safety of the current machines, higher power, more complicated machines are clearly a great idea. It'll be interesting to see how the public reacts the first time someone gets a radiation burn from a broken or misconfigured machine.
This is a great security model. In fact, in order to keep my home safe I won't allow any devices in that are controlled by an outside third party either.
It seems really pretty dumb to stream media (except when on travel or sharing a few recent photos) from the smallest device you own in terms of storage space, and battery life.
That "except when on travel or sharing a few recent photos" is huge. These are mobile devices after all! Visit your parents, hit a button on your phone and you can pop a video on their TV. Go to a party with a cool song no one's heard, you can play it to the hosts speakers with no cables. AirPlay solves the problem of everyone huddling around the tiniest screen in the room. Now you can amazingly easily play and share your stuff with other people's equipment. It's a shame it's Apple device centric.
The features that have made the iPad a huge success are very consumer oriented features:
affordable everywhere internet
the complete lack of anything that requires a 3rd party to support
a really polished playful user interface
Will those benefits apply to business customers? Maybe, but none of those are things that business really cares about. In fact, some people (service providers and IT departments) have a lot to lose by recommending a device with those first two features. It's possible the only effect this will have is on how happy business users are with the equipment they're given.
Most game developers won't develop games for a pricey peripheral until Microsoft can say we've sold XXX (large number) of Kinects. Even if they're losing money on them (I've read arguments both ways) they need every sale they can get to guarantee a steam of games for it. Even if that means Joe-Linux is getting a Microsoft subsidized IR webcam.
I don't think Oracle sees it that way. I think they're more likely to take the (bad, imho) strategy of deciding that Java needs to make them money directly even on the desktop/enterprise...
Basically, I think Oracle is about as likely to keep things going the smart way...
I don't know how I feel about what Oracle is doing, but when you are comparing a company who's financials looked like this (note the red in the operating income) to a company who's financials look like this (note the large numbers in black under operating income)... I have a hard time buying that Sun was doing things the smart way.
Slashdot Mirror
So how much difference does 2 inches make? Broder says the standard wheel size for the car is 21 inches, but they gave him a car with 19 inch all-weather tires. I haven't seen anybody run the numbers, so I did for fun:
19 inch diameter * pi = 59.7 inch circumference
21 inch diameter * pi = 66.0 inch circumference
59.7 / 66.0 = 0.9 ratio
We don't know what data was recorded or used to create the charts, but if it was the black box wheel revolution data, that data has to be interpreted using a specific wheel size. So if you interpreted it assuming a 21 inch wheel, but the car actually had 19 inch wheels you would end up with:
* For every 100 miles on the chart, the car would have only gone 90.
* When the chart shows 60 mph, the car would have actually been going 54 mph.
* The short blip of 80 mph would actually be 72 mph. (7 mph over the 65 mph limit, which is fairly reserved for the NJ Turnpike.)
So this would pretty much explain how you could get those charts without Broder lying about the details on his trip.
And since he claims Tesla told him the batteries would warm up, I have no reason to believe Tesla didn't when they previously told Consumer Reports the exact same thing:
http://news.consumerreports.org/cars/2013/01/rapid-charging-at-a-tesla-ev-supercharge-station.html
As a small developer, I would love if Apple took a smaller percentage of app purchases (which as others have pointed out isn't really 30% when you factor in referral fees, retail markups on iTunes gift cards and the credit card processing fees they pay out), but it's great that by enforcing rules they are effectively taking a step toward leveling the playing field for the small guys. (Instead of giving sweetheart deals to fellow big guys.)
But in this case, we're not talking about app purchases-- we're talking about transactions that occur in an app, and this has always been a questionable rule. It a straight tax on transactions. It's in the same vein as Verizon demanding Google pay them because Verizon customers are accessing Google "through their pipes."
And it's more inconsistent than people realize... I routinely place orders for food in the Delivery.com and the SeamlessWeb apps and because I have no credit card on file with either, I enter my credit card info for payment instead of using an iTunes account. So no 30% goes to Apple for my burrito, but DropBox leaves a link to their website in their SDK and suddenly all hell breaks loose. But Apple has a DropBox competitor and doesn't currently offer burritos I guess...
I keep seeing this presented as an attack on Google, but it seems to me that it would help Google more than it would hurt it. Consider this: If you're logged into a Google service they can (and will) still track you. With Google's new privacy policy it doesn't matter which service you're logged in to. So if you use Google Docs, Gmail, YouTube, etc. and don't log out every time you do a Google search you'll be getting tracked regardless. Hell, a lot of people have to be logged in to Google services just to get work done now.
So who's going to end up not tracking you with this setting? Ad networks that don't have the sticky-apps that Google does. Will Google lose some data? Yes. But the other guys will lose more and Google's ads (relatively speaking) will perform better as a result.
In a world where gadgets replace personal computers does Windows 8 or 9 even matter? Wouldn't Windows Phone be the relevant operating system? It's not like if Windows 9 is suddenly amazing, people are going to start shoving laptops in their pockets.
I'm going back to the Blackberry now that amateur hour is starting!
They have to be aware that 3D is failing in the marketplace around the rest of the world (looking at 3D movie attendance, Nintendo 3DS sales numbers, 3D TV sales figures, etc.), so my question is: Why are they jumping on this ship now?
It's tough to be the middleman... Netflix stands between the consumers and the content providers, but streaming video is rapidly becoming a commodity, so no doubt the content providers will get greedy and decide they want to own the whole thing end to end. I'm sure they'll ignore the amazing feat Netflix has accomplished (namely getting people to pay for streaming content online) and attempt to set up their own sites with onerous terms (pay-per-view with 24 hours to start) and high monthly rates, then be all surprised when no one signs up and start claiming piracy is destroying their business.
The "summary" makes it sound like a port is available now, and then throws in an iPad comparison that's nowhere in the original article. From TFA:
and my favorite...
So this is 3 guys planning a porting effort of an older version of Android. (Google hasn't released the source code to Honeycomb yet.) Also from TFA:
Really, that's not clear? You think HP might be planning major OS updates for a tablet they just fire-saled?
So there have been a number of articles about how the 3DS (with an actual 3D screen) is having a hard time competing against the iPhone. Sony's entry? Basically the same specs as an iPhone 4. Yeah the Vita has a faster cpu and hardware buttons, but it also has a lower resolution screen and the games will be more expensive. Needless to say all the rumors point to a new iPhone being released in the next few weeks which would probably close the gap on the cpu. Are hardware controls really going to sell $40 games?
So let me get this straight... A free update makes the game look better by using new DirectX11 features, but the whole article is criticizing the game for using a hardware technology (that's only just starting to appear in game engines), in a way that isn't as optimized as they would like? Are gamers feeling that entitled these days? If you speculatively purchase a faster hardware, it's not anybody's obligation to write software to push it to the limit you know.
Maybe because 85% of Mozilla's funding comes from Google.
I think it's really telling that in a conversation about the 3DS' lackluster performance, no one seems to be mentioning the 3D screen. That's the feature I assume Nintendo was counting on to set them apart from Apple and Sony (much like the motion control set the Wii apart). But they made that bet back when people were still happy to pay extra for 3D movies, and the tide against 3D has clearly shifted.
As a 3DS owner I usually turn the 3D effect off because it hurts my eyes, but even if you don't mind it, to most people it's obviously not even worth mentioning.
That just by posting this comment, Randy Pitchfork considers me a journalist!
They are either punishing Samsung (the common dramatic spin I see put on the story) or maybe they are expecting to need A LOT of A6 chips. Maybe the rumors of putting them in Macs are true?
As the total cost of filmmaking becomes cheaper and cheaper, Hollywood has to focus on doing things the little guys can't. Like 3D, or CGI or pay expensive fees to give their movies recognizable names. That said, I generally am not a fan of movies based on rides, games or tv shows, but Slumdog Millionaire was a story based on the rights to 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire' and that was a amazing movie.
The same thing happened to me... Someone signed up for an account with my email address and Sony never sent an email confirmation on the account. (It's not their policy to do so. =P) When I emailed and called to complain, they wouldn't change the email address because I didn't know the info for the guy who had signed up. I eventually changed his password by guessing his birthday. It's surprisingly easy to do with a script when you consider PS3 buyer demographics.
Regardless of how you feel about it, this would seem to be a sign the US Government's tactics are working.
Performing a search or visiting a website seems pretty opt-in to me. If you turn on your computer and it just starts displaying porn on it's own, it's probably malware and all bets are off anyway.
It's like a dream come true! I'll finally be able to find the sluttiest girl in the room with the compass on my phone!
And considering there are already questions of health and safety of the current machines, higher power, more complicated machines are clearly a great idea. It'll be interesting to see how the public reacts the first time someone gets a radiation burn from a broken or misconfigured machine.
This is a great security model. In fact, in order to keep my home safe I won't allow any devices in that are controlled by an outside third party either.
That "except when on travel or sharing a few recent photos" is huge. These are mobile devices after all! Visit your parents, hit a button on your phone and you can pop a video on their TV. Go to a party with a cool song no one's heard, you can play it to the hosts speakers with no cables. AirPlay solves the problem of everyone huddling around the tiniest screen in the room. Now you can amazingly easily play and share your stuff with other people's equipment. It's a shame it's Apple device centric.
The features that have made the iPad a huge success are very consumer oriented features:
Will those benefits apply to business customers? Maybe, but none of those are things that business really cares about. In fact, some people (service providers and IT departments) have a lot to lose by recommending a device with those first two features. It's possible the only effect this will have is on how happy business users are with the equipment they're given.
Most game developers won't develop games for a pricey peripheral until Microsoft can say we've sold XXX (large number) of Kinects. Even if they're losing money on them (I've read arguments both ways) they need every sale they can get to guarantee a steam of games for it. Even if that means Joe-Linux is getting a Microsoft subsidized IR webcam.
I think Sun saw it that way.
I don't think Oracle sees it that way. I think they're more likely to take the (bad, imho) strategy of deciding that Java needs to make them money directly even on the desktop/enterprise ...
Basically, I think Oracle is about as likely to keep things going the smart way ...
I don't know how I feel about what Oracle is doing, but when you are comparing a company who's financials looked like this (note the red in the operating income) to a company who's financials look like this (note the large numbers in black under operating income)... I have a hard time buying that Sun was doing things the smart way.