Apple tries to produce good products (even though they fail a lot at that), but generally honors the warranty.
They also try to produce products that are extremely difficult for a consumer to service or repair themselves.
Apple was the first to fully adopt industry standards like USB and Thunderbolt, while creating their own industry standards like IEEE1394 (FireWire) and OpenCL.
Show me an iPhone with micro-USB connector. Apple actually voluntarily agreed to conform to the new EU standard that all phones should be chargeable by micro-USB, then "conformed" by releasing a micro-USB to 30-pin adapter (available as a separate purchase, of course).
They were the first cellphone maker to use the 3.5mm audio connector.
See Motorola ROKR, released 2006 - and I don't cite that as the first phone to use a 3.5mm connector, just one example which pre-dates the iPhone by over a year. I'm quite sure there are earlier examples.
I've often drawn parallels between Sony and Apple, and as others have already said here, I think what Sony is going through now is only foreshadowing what will happen to Apple.
Linksys being a brand much more likely to be found in your average home, for those who want to protest with their wallets - an act which I highly encourage in this case.
I have a Citi card and found out about this (though not the scale of it) a few days ago when I received a letter with a new card saying my data had been compromised. The irony of this is that while I stopped using the physical card a few years ago, I've kept my Citi account open solely for purpose of using their Virtual Account Numbers service. I've been going through all this extra trouble to protect myself using disposable card numbers only to have the "real" account number compromised at the source.
My only question now is whether I close my account to send them a message, yet at the loss of a useful service which may protect me elsewhere online. Fortunately, I do have a Discover card which also has a virtual account number service, but Discover isn't always accepted where Visa and MasterCard are.
While I personally keep my router closed and secure, to address the poster's question, the white list idea is the best suggestion I've seen in all the comments, and I think it could use more commentary.
If the original posted setup a white list which provided access to essentials like email, map, news and weather sites, maybe wikipedia, maybe facebook... they could possibly feel fulfilled in providing a helpful, free public service while not having to worry too much about illegal drive-by downloaders or having their bandwidth sucked up by streaming video or even legitimate torrents. It would just be enough to save the ass of any neighbors when their internet goes down (assuming they use one of the allowed email services) and allow them to get by until their service was restored. Likewise it would be restricted enough that anyone spending significant time on the net would quickly realize they need to get their own connection.
I know that DD-WRT supports white lists through IP tables, but I'm sure someone else here has much more to say about that than I can.
I can't believe that of all the comments I've read, this is the only one mentioning this fact. This is just AT&T admitting what everyone already knew in very poor attempt to justify elimination of competition to better control the market for even more profits.
I'm a former AT&T customer, now T-Mobile customer for the past 5 years. I need to use GSM devices because of international travel (and I'd rather not juggle between two separate devices, thank you). If this deal goes through, my solution is to move to another country - partially because I don't want to give AT&T any of my money, but more so because this deal going through would just be one more sign that the US is truly ruled by corporations, and no one in government has the principles to do what is actually right, i.e. telling AT&T, "this is bullshit - go spend your billions in profits on upgrading (or one might say "maintaining") your existing network like you should have been doing all along."
I've often thought that chess should be taught in schools, as I think it's a game everyone should know (and I'm not even close to a chess fanatic), for the following reasons:
1. It teaches people to think about the greater consequences of their actions. Young people in particular can use all the help they can get learning that what may seem like a great idea in the moment could turn out very bad for them in the future.
2. It's probably the most well-known game in the world. When sitting down with a foreigner at some cafe, if there's one game you both know and can be found on the nearby shelves, it's probably chess. You don't even need to speak the same language to play the game.
It doesn't surprise me that this is happening in Armenia, which has a reputation for having some of the most business-savvy people in Europe if I'm not mistaken.
7. Education - Policy has Math and Science as the Red Headed step child of education. Every High School Grad should have at least Pre-Calc and taken Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Geology. Anyone with a B.A. or B.S. Degree should have up to Calc II (and non of that lets call it Calc but teach algebra class), and 2 additional Natural Science classes.
To this day I have never needed anything I was taught in calculus. I would swap your Calc II requirement for something like "Interpersonal Communication Skills II" in a heartbeat.
i'm looking at 'A' and 'Y' on my keyboard. nope. maybe a mistake like enemu or enemt. but you had to write enema on purpose. which is odd, as your post seems serious
On German keyboards the 'Y' is below the 'A'. Just a possible explanation.
Fair point, but there are a couple significant differences:
1. Typing on mobile devices is still relatively new to many people, and doing so with the QWERTY keyboard layout can be difficult. I'm a touch typist, but I do find typing on a Blackberry's hardware keyboard cumbersome enough to want an alternative. You simply can't touch type on such a small keyboard.
2. Alternative keyboard layouts were hardware solutions. This is a software solution which, assuming it's free, people can try with no commitment, and know that they can always switch back to the "standard" method. It's kind of like if the early typewriters had an instantly changeable keyboard layouts to try. In time you might come to realize that one layout works better for you than others.
I'm not saying this approach will succeed, just that QWERTY on mobile devices doesn't have anywhere near the strong foothold it has on full-size hardware keyboards.
Load 50 tabs in Firefox 3.6, say 6 windows with about 8 tabs each (typically product pages in my case). Exit and restart Firefox. Watch your system and broadband connection slow to a crawl from the result of 50 webpages loading simultaneously. If I'm listening to internet radio with Foobar, it will kill the music for a few seconds. This is on a Thinkpad T400, 2.4GHz Core2Duo, 4GB RAM, Windows 7 and using Adblock Plus and NoScript in Firefox (and maybe 2 other plugins). Throw in the fact that one site I use requires an Apache login for access, which Firefox (nor any other browser I've used) can't store the username and password for, thus requiring manual login every time I start. Having to restart gets old fast.
If I just accept that having to restart the browser is a fact of internet life, then this is another area where Chromium shines, as it loads those ~50 tabs in about half the time as Firefox 3.6.
I would actually be fine with Firefox using 700MB of RAM, even twice that, if it actually stayed fast instead of slowing to a crawl. I've even tried setting up Firefox's cache to run on a RAM drive in hopes of speeding things up. Unfortunately it seems like that excessive memory footprint is the problem, and even going through and closing tabs I don't need anymore doesn't seem to do much to reduce Firefox's memory usage, so the only solution is to restart.
Chromium isn't perfect but for now it's an improvement. Maybe I'll try Opera again and see how it fares.
2nd that. I recently started using Chromium on a trial basis because Firefox's memory problems got out of control (Win7, 4GB RAM) requiring me to restart the browser every day. If Firefox's memory problems aren't fixed with 4.0, I feel pretty certain the switch will be permanent. The main thing keeping me on Firefox was Adblock Plus, but I've found that Adblock for Chrome does nearly as well.
If anyone can recommend a better browser with ad-blocking that handles 40-50 tabs open over time without becoming sluggish, I'd love to hear about it. This problem has definitely gotten me interested in the idea behind Chrome OS: that the browser needs to be more tightly integrated with the operating system. Having to restart Firefox every day and wait for it to reload all my tabs reminds me the days of having to restart Windows 95/98 just to fix unexplained sluggishness.
I'm not a 2012 doomsday believer nor have I read a single book on Mayan calendars, but I do remember learning in intro astronomy that the Mayans made incredibly accurate astronomical observations and predications, including of solar eclipses well in the future. I find it pretty hard to believe that they could do this (I'd love to see anyone here predict an eclipse without using a computer), yet be unaware of the cycle which we call the solar year. From some brief research online it seems that in Mayan culture, Venus had more significance than the sun, and the 260-day period you mentioned was tied to the gestation period of women. Point being, it seems misguided to suggest that they were idiots (as you more or less do) when the Mayans were quite aware of what was happening in the skies, and when considering the fact that they must have choose the cycles they did based upon what was important within their culture.
A good friend of mine in Berlin had her MacBook stolen over a year ago. In May, she received a Facebook message from a woman in Tunisia who had bought the notebook, found my friend's personal data and wondered if it had been stolen. Originally the plan was to simply send the personal data, since my friend had already purchased a new notebook, but in the end the woman decided to ship the notebook to my friend in Germany without any compensation (my friend paid the shipping costs on delivery). The woman was apparently overjoyed at recently giving birth to twins, and simply wanted to do the right thing. I personally witnessed the arrival and unboxing of the returned laptop.
There are good people in the world. Whether you choose to be one of them is up to you.
This might make people drive a bit more slowly and safely on the highways. Of course, holding the traditional funeral ceremony could be a bit of a problem...
From my limited experience traveling in India, trying to get a new power adapter for my laptop and being told "Yes, no problem, we'll have it on Tuesday!" only to call on Wenesday and be told "Yes, it's on the way, we'll have it on Monday!" and then never getting said power adapter (this same experience happening more than once), all I can say is I'll believe it when I see it - and I'm not expecting to see it.
Chances are you will be tired and sitting in your hotel room for several hours a day, either from jet-lag (when it's 3am there your body will think it's 7pm and you'll likely be wide awake) or from being exhausted at the end of the day. Personally, I can only deal with watching TV for so long, which is one reason I always travel with my laptop.
You almost definitely won't need to change any regional settings for your laptop. The only differences between Wi-Fi here and there are that they might have channels 12 and 13, but they're rarely used - especially in any place serving tourists.
The better question is whether you want to pay the high prices of hotel Wi-Fi. Britain and the rest of the world in general have much better options for settings up prepaid phone and data service. If you have a GSM mobile device that supports 3G, which is likely if you're an AT&T or T-Mobile customer, you can check the device specs and see if it supports the 2100MHz 3G band used in Europe. If it does and your device is unlocked, you can buy a prepaid SIM card with a prepaid data package and tether your phone to your laptop to get online. Or, buy a USB 3G stick when there and it still might cost less than a week's worth of hotel Wi-Fi (and then you get a USB 3G stick out of it). See here for more info about using your mobile device overseas, and here to find a prepaid voice/data provider in the UK.
As for power, your laptop, mobile and most other devices should only need a simple US to UK plug adapter, as they can automatically sense and function on the higher voltage. Check each device to see if it reads (100V-240V) in the specs, often right below the plugs on wall-wart chargers, and if it does you're fine. If it says (100V-120V), only then would you need a voltage converter, and often times the weight and cost of one are not worth it. A power strip may be overkill for size/weight and if it has surge protection it won't work on 230V, so a simple plug splitter is a better option if you need it.
If you plan on using the Tube to get around, which I definitely recommend if you want to keep costs down, get an Oyster card as soon as you arrive. The rates for getting around are much cheaper if you use an Oyster card.
On the getting around note, always, always, always have a map when you go out. The layout of London's streets are like nothing you've ever experienced in the US because they precede the idea of city planning, so if you head off in one direction thinking "I think it's this way" you will almost surely get yourself lost. Now, sometimes getting lost in a city is a great experience, but if you want that experience, do it during the day. If you don't want to look like a like tourist pulling their map out and making yourself a target, put a map of where you'll be exploring on your mobile phone so that when you stop on the street, it just looks like you're reading an SMS message. Same goes for a map of the Tube if you'll be using it.
Finally, if appeals to you, make sure you enjoy the experience of walking down the street while drinking a beer. Public drinking is allowed in the UK, and it's a simple freedom that I miss when in the US. Just remember that when people say "cheers" they're probably saying "thanks" - not asking you to lift your glass.
For giving me such a clear-cut example which I can use to educate others as to why I will not buy your products.
It's ironic to think how many people might be shopping for a "crappy old phone" right now just to regain the ability to tether.
`Dikpati's forecast puts Solar Max at 2012. Hathaway believes it will arrive sooner, in 2010 or 2011.` Dr. Hathaway? Are you wearing makeup?
(The second Real Genius reference, for those counting.)
Slashdot Mirror
Apple tries to produce good products (even though they fail a lot at that), but generally honors the warranty.
They also try to produce products that are extremely difficult for a consumer to service or repair themselves.
Apple was the first to fully adopt industry standards like USB and Thunderbolt, while creating their own industry standards like IEEE1394 (FireWire) and OpenCL.
Show me an iPhone with micro-USB connector. Apple actually voluntarily agreed to conform to the new EU standard that all phones should be chargeable by micro-USB, then "conformed" by releasing a micro-USB to 30-pin adapter (available as a separate purchase, of course).
They were the first cellphone maker to use the 3.5mm audio connector.
See Motorola ROKR, released 2006 - and I don't cite that as the first phone to use a 3.5mm connector, just one example which pre-dates the iPhone by over a year. I'm quite sure there are earlier examples.
I've often drawn parallels between Sony and Apple, and as others have already said here, I think what Sony is going through now is only foreshadowing what will happen to Apple.
Humankind, there may be hope for you yet.
Linksys being a brand much more likely to be found in your average home, for those who want to protest with their wallets - an act which I highly encourage in this case.
I have a Citi card and found out about this (though not the scale of it) a few days ago when I received a letter with a new card saying my data had been compromised. The irony of this is that while I stopped using the physical card a few years ago, I've kept my Citi account open solely for purpose of using their Virtual Account Numbers service. I've been going through all this extra trouble to protect myself using disposable card numbers only to have the "real" account number compromised at the source.
My story about the matter here.
My only question now is whether I close my account to send them a message, yet at the loss of a useful service which may protect me elsewhere online. Fortunately, I do have a Discover card which also has a virtual account number service, but Discover isn't always accepted where Visa and MasterCard are.
While I personally keep my router closed and secure, to address the poster's question, the white list idea is the best suggestion I've seen in all the comments, and I think it could use more commentary.
If the original posted setup a white list which provided access to essentials like email, map, news and weather sites, maybe wikipedia, maybe facebook... they could possibly feel fulfilled in providing a helpful, free public service while not having to worry too much about illegal drive-by downloaders or having their bandwidth sucked up by streaming video or even legitimate torrents. It would just be enough to save the ass of any neighbors when their internet goes down (assuming they use one of the allowed email services) and allow them to get by until their service was restored. Likewise it would be restricted enough that anyone spending significant time on the net would quickly realize they need to get their own connection.
I know that DD-WRT supports white lists through IP tables, but I'm sure someone else here has much more to say about that than I can.
I can't believe that of all the comments I've read, this is the only one mentioning this fact. This is just AT&T admitting what everyone already knew in very poor attempt to justify elimination of competition to better control the market for even more profits.
I'm a former AT&T customer, now T-Mobile customer for the past 5 years. I need to use GSM devices because of international travel (and I'd rather not juggle between two separate devices, thank you). If this deal goes through, my solution is to move to another country - partially because I don't want to give AT&T any of my money, but more so because this deal going through would just be one more sign that the US is truly ruled by corporations, and no one in government has the principles to do what is actually right, i.e. telling AT&T, "this is bullshit - go spend your billions in profits on upgrading (or one might say "maintaining") your existing network like you should have been doing all along."
I've often thought that chess should be taught in schools, as I think it's a game everyone should know (and I'm not even close to a chess fanatic), for the following reasons:
1. It teaches people to think about the greater consequences of their actions. Young people in particular can use all the help they can get learning that what may seem like a great idea in the moment could turn out very bad for them in the future.
2. It's probably the most well-known game in the world. When sitting down with a foreigner at some cafe, if there's one game you both know and can be found on the nearby shelves, it's probably chess. You don't even need to speak the same language to play the game.
It doesn't surprise me that this is happening in Armenia, which has a reputation for having some of the most business-savvy people in Europe if I'm not mistaken.
7. Education - Policy has Math and Science as the Red Headed step child of education. Every High School Grad should have at least Pre-Calc and taken Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Geology. Anyone with a B.A. or B.S. Degree should have up to Calc II (and non of that lets call it Calc but teach algebra class), and 2 additional Natural Science classes.
To this day I have never needed anything I was taught in calculus. I would swap your Calc II requirement for something like "Interpersonal Communication Skills II" in a heartbeat.
i'm looking at 'A' and 'Y' on my keyboard. nope. maybe a mistake like enemu or enemt. but you had to write enema on purpose. which is odd, as your post seems serious
On German keyboards the 'Y' is below the 'A'. Just a possible explanation.
"Popcorn!"
Fair point, but there are a couple significant differences:
1. Typing on mobile devices is still relatively new to many people, and doing so with the QWERTY keyboard layout can be difficult. I'm a touch typist, but I do find typing on a Blackberry's hardware keyboard cumbersome enough to want an alternative. You simply can't touch type on such a small keyboard.
2. Alternative keyboard layouts were hardware solutions. This is a software solution which, assuming it's free, people can try with no commitment, and know that they can always switch back to the "standard" method. It's kind of like if the early typewriters had an instantly changeable keyboard layouts to try. In time you might come to realize that one layout works better for you than others.
I'm not saying this approach will succeed, just that QWERTY on mobile devices doesn't have anywhere near the strong foothold it has on full-size hardware keyboards.
Load 50 tabs in Firefox 3.6, say 6 windows with about 8 tabs each (typically product pages in my case). Exit and restart Firefox. Watch your system and broadband connection slow to a crawl from the result of 50 webpages loading simultaneously. If I'm listening to internet radio with Foobar, it will kill the music for a few seconds. This is on a Thinkpad T400, 2.4GHz Core2Duo, 4GB RAM, Windows 7 and using Adblock Plus and NoScript in Firefox (and maybe 2 other plugins). Throw in the fact that one site I use requires an Apache login for access, which Firefox (nor any other browser I've used) can't store the username and password for, thus requiring manual login every time I start. Having to restart gets old fast.
If I just accept that having to restart the browser is a fact of internet life, then this is another area where Chromium shines, as it loads those ~50 tabs in about half the time as Firefox 3.6.
I would actually be fine with Firefox using 700MB of RAM, even twice that, if it actually stayed fast instead of slowing to a crawl. I've even tried setting up Firefox's cache to run on a RAM drive in hopes of speeding things up. Unfortunately it seems like that excessive memory footprint is the problem, and even going through and closing tabs I don't need anymore doesn't seem to do much to reduce Firefox's memory usage, so the only solution is to restart.
Chromium isn't perfect but for now it's an improvement. Maybe I'll try Opera again and see how it fares.
2nd that. I recently started using Chromium on a trial basis because Firefox's memory problems got out of control (Win7, 4GB RAM) requiring me to restart the browser every day. If Firefox's memory problems aren't fixed with 4.0, I feel pretty certain the switch will be permanent. The main thing keeping me on Firefox was Adblock Plus, but I've found that Adblock for Chrome does nearly as well. If anyone can recommend a better browser with ad-blocking that handles 40-50 tabs open over time without becoming sluggish, I'd love to hear about it. This problem has definitely gotten me interested in the idea behind Chrome OS: that the browser needs to be more tightly integrated with the operating system. Having to restart Firefox every day and wait for it to reload all my tabs reminds me the days of having to restart Windows 95/98 just to fix unexplained sluggishness.
I'm not a 2012 doomsday believer nor have I read a single book on Mayan calendars, but I do remember learning in intro astronomy that the Mayans made incredibly accurate astronomical observations and predications, including of solar eclipses well in the future. I find it pretty hard to believe that they could do this (I'd love to see anyone here predict an eclipse without using a computer), yet be unaware of the cycle which we call the solar year. From some brief research online it seems that in Mayan culture, Venus had more significance than the sun, and the 260-day period you mentioned was tied to the gestation period of women. Point being, it seems misguided to suggest that they were idiots (as you more or less do) when the Mayans were quite aware of what was happening in the skies, and when considering the fact that they must have choose the cycles they did based upon what was important within their culture.
A good friend of mine in Berlin had her MacBook stolen over a year ago. In May, she received a Facebook message from a woman in Tunisia who had bought the notebook, found my friend's personal data and wondered if it had been stolen. Originally the plan was to simply send the personal data, since my friend had already purchased a new notebook, but in the end the woman decided to ship the notebook to my friend in Germany without any compensation (my friend paid the shipping costs on delivery). The woman was apparently overjoyed at recently giving birth to twins, and simply wanted to do the right thing. I personally witnessed the arrival and unboxing of the returned laptop.
There are good people in the world. Whether you choose to be one of them is up to you.
This might make people drive a bit more slowly and safely on the highways. Of course, holding the traditional funeral ceremony could be a bit of a problem...
From the BBC News article on the topic: "An earlier cheap laptop plan by the same ministry came to nothing."
From my limited experience traveling in India, trying to get a new power adapter for my laptop and being told "Yes, no problem, we'll have it on Tuesday!" only to call on Wenesday and be told "Yes, it's on the way, we'll have it on Monday!" and then never getting said power adapter (this same experience happening more than once), all I can say is I'll believe it when I see it - and I'm not expecting to see it.
You can easily find basic prepaid phones in the US for $20 or less. That said, I too am skeptical about this.
Chances are you will be tired and sitting in your hotel room for several hours a day, either from jet-lag (when it's 3am there your body will think it's 7pm and you'll likely be wide awake) or from being exhausted at the end of the day. Personally, I can only deal with watching TV for so long, which is one reason I always travel with my laptop.
You almost definitely won't need to change any regional settings for your laptop. The only differences between Wi-Fi here and there are that they might have channels 12 and 13, but they're rarely used - especially in any place serving tourists.
The better question is whether you want to pay the high prices of hotel Wi-Fi. Britain and the rest of the world in general have much better options for settings up prepaid phone and data service. If you have a GSM mobile device that supports 3G, which is likely if you're an AT&T or T-Mobile customer, you can check the device specs and see if it supports the 2100MHz 3G band used in Europe. If it does and your device is unlocked, you can buy a prepaid SIM card with a prepaid data package and tether your phone to your laptop to get online. Or, buy a USB 3G stick when there and it still might cost less than a week's worth of hotel Wi-Fi (and then you get a USB 3G stick out of it). See here for more info about using your mobile device overseas, and here to find a prepaid voice/data provider in the UK.
As for power, your laptop, mobile and most other devices should only need a simple US to UK plug adapter, as they can automatically sense and function on the higher voltage. Check each device to see if it reads (100V-240V) in the specs, often right below the plugs on wall-wart chargers, and if it does you're fine. If it says (100V-120V), only then would you need a voltage converter, and often times the weight and cost of one are not worth it. A power strip may be overkill for size/weight and if it has surge protection it won't work on 230V, so a simple plug splitter is a better option if you need it.
If you plan on using the Tube to get around, which I definitely recommend if you want to keep costs down, get an Oyster card as soon as you arrive. The rates for getting around are much cheaper if you use an Oyster card.
On the getting around note, always, always, always have a map when you go out. The layout of London's streets are like nothing you've ever experienced in the US because they precede the idea of city planning, so if you head off in one direction thinking "I think it's this way" you will almost surely get yourself lost. Now, sometimes getting lost in a city is a great experience, but if you want that experience, do it during the day. If you don't want to look like a like tourist pulling their map out and making yourself a target, put a map of where you'll be exploring on your mobile phone so that when you stop on the street, it just looks like you're reading an SMS message. Same goes for a map of the Tube if you'll be using it.
Finally, if appeals to you, make sure you enjoy the experience of walking down the street while drinking a beer. Public drinking is allowed in the UK, and it's a simple freedom that I miss when in the US. Just remember that when people say "cheers" they're probably saying "thanks" - not asking you to lift your glass.
For giving me such a clear-cut example which I can use to educate others as to why I will not buy your products. It's ironic to think how many people might be shopping for a "crappy old phone" right now just to regain the ability to tether.
According to the article it's d3o - not 3do. That was a gaming console.
Come on, geek-loving ladies. Give some input.
It was AOL who bought Time-Warner: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-235400.html
That would be 3G - not G3.