Like it or not, Apple has the golden touch of style that Nokia never had, and it seems that Nokia has really gone off the deep end with some of their recent phones (lets not even talk about the DOA N-gage).
Specifics? This thing has a joystick, 4 buttons around it (like my clunky T610), a play/pause, forward, back, stop, and (im guessing) a popout-button to shift the playpad down to get the number pad. I'm not going to go into all the possible confusion, but it looks busy.
As if that weren't all.. the color seems to aim for the stylish/classy 20-30s market, but the features (cameraphone, music) seem to really gear towards a younger market (think teens - 20s).
I wish them well, but from just looking at it, it seems a bit misguided.
Apple is reacting to an unauthorized publication about Jobs?
Jobs is their CEO, and consequently, part of their branding. Having the word "iCon" next to his name was probably not viewed as very positive for the company's image. When the publisher/author disagreed to change the content, they retaliated. I'm still not sure it's not a publicity stunt either... take a look at another egotistic CEO, his method is to be "bad cop" so the company can blame it's bad moves on him, but since he's by far the largest shareholder, he'll pretty much never leave or be "punished".
Sorry, won't work. The US Federal government has the right to use any patent it wishes, royalty-free.
Well, it might work... assuming the current government motto of "outsource everything" comes into play. Take for example, Private Military Companies. If the army wants to sidestep Geneva conventions and public oversight by outsourcing the ugly parts to corporations, then someone should be able to patent something important to effectively toss a sabot into the machinery.
Left as an exercise to reader: After declaring your patent and filing suit to prevent infringement, try to stay alive long enough to see the trial to closure.
What's more than the cheapness of this offering is the inexpensive "lower-bandwidth" offerings (all of which are much less than my $45/mo comcast 4Mbs/384kbs):
HKBN Premium bb1000 service is being offered on the same metro Ethernet infrastructure that delivers the company's Mass Market bb100 (symmetric 100 Mbps for US$34/month) and Entry Point bb10 (symmetric 10 Mbps for US$16/month) services.
http://www.ctinets.com/
I live near a large chinese community, and I think the reason it's so low is that Chinese are very price-sensitive shoppers. ie, they don't shell out if the they don't feel they can afford it, or if the quality of the item is suspect. contrast this with your average american who will pay $$$ for pretty much everything.
There's this fictitious line between social/fiscal/political that is just rediculous. See, fiscal policy impacts people, and is therefore to some extent, social policy. Same with political policy.
The biggest canard, however, is the belief that corporations don't already impact social policy... that's historical revisionism of the grandest scale. Things like HR policies, work environments makes a big difference for the many people who work for the corporations, not to mention their families and relatives.
I'm not saying it's Microsoft's responsibility to support or oppose certain legislation, but to say that corporations should stay out of certain areas because "they shouldn't impact social policy" is bullshit. The reality of today's situation flies in the face of that idealist view.
Some of the newer arcade video games accept select brands of USB memory cards.
In order to find out WTF you were talking about, I googled your text... and got zilch. So what did you mean? And how can you identify a USB device in a video game... and why would they do this?
Paul Allen may be the second largest shareholder at Microsoft...
That's it. End. Finito. It doesn't matter what else he does, he's inextricably tied to Microsoft. Large shareholders (often large investment institutions) exert lots of influence over the long term strategy of a company.
In this case, Microsoft easily would love for software patents to exist, and this EU Commissioner is influential in making that happen... this is clearly a conflict of interest.
Now to continue "if it was a pure accident (as such things happen) well it is what it is", see this shows that accidents happen and nobody is at fault. Such things could happen from glitches in the tracking system, mother nature, vandals/thieves, etc. While a company should try and minimize negative effects to their clients, bad things happen even when people take proper precautions.
Bullshit. If BAD STUFF HAPPENS, even if it's an accident, then someone should be held liable (Think Exxon Valdez... they had to clean up the mess). Sad fact of matter is that there is no real liability for Ameritrade's in this case. If there was, you'd bet your ass that either they would have a policy in place to prevent it from happening or to carefully vet their 3rd party shippers to prevent this kind of loss.
People like to scream, shout and vent. Shit happens. If someone was grossly at fault they should be flayed, if it was a pure accident (as such things happen) well it is what it is.
Great, next time I lose some important info that could compromise someone else's credit security, I'll just claim it's an "accident" and that "Shit happens".
Seriously, people would care if they
knew what data had been lost (were they SSN/name combos? Trade information? Bank routing info for transfer?)
Whether their had been affected
But they don't (currently) know... so of course they don't care... it's not clear what the impact is. And Ameritrade has every incentive to hide or destroy any evidence that reveals this. And, of course, the corporate media has no real incentive to reveal Ameritrade's fuckup either.
Maybe I'm wandering into tinfoil-hat territory here, but what's with this recent spate of customerdata loss? I mean, holy hell.. there's been something like several millions of records of customer data being reported as "lost" or "stolen" lately... is someone trying to collect data on everyone surreptitiously?
I mean, it's probably more likely that some law got passed in the past few years that's forcing companies to highlight all these incidents of compromised data, but it seems pretty spooky that we just recently hear about all these stories...
You erase a folder now and you (should) know exactly what's in it. With the system they're talking about, you'd just lose a bunch of random files and you'd be coming across stuff you didn't even know you'd lost years after the fact
Open your mind, and embrace the future, pal. Here's a hint: Don't erase random folders!. If you're low on space, just search for stuff that is either
large
old or
in a smart folder of stuff you no longer care about
I already do this in windows... I just search for files > 10K, and pick and choose the ones that I know are no longer needed (it'd be better if I could search in windows for folders that contain things > some size...).
I can see either Windows or OSX having some "cleanup space" tool that helped them do the above.
Adobe is using this to reinforce their stance on the issue; whereas the black hat Skylarov could break the encryption, did so, and released it (illegally according to US law), Adobe takes the white hat stance, saying they *could* break and release the encryption, but do not because it is wrong.
They just didn't want to incur the costs of a lawsuit. I hardly think that's "white hat" territory.
Besides I don't really think it's fair to call Dmitry a blackhat... if that's the case, you probably think DeCSS Jon should be behind bars, non?
You missed the point of the poster. He wasn't unhappy about the article being critical, but being very BIASED and critical. You know, it'd be like saying that Democrats/Liberals should listen to Bill O'Riley... as if he listens to the other side.
What I hate the worst is not those who are biased, but those who claim to be things like "Fair and Balanced" when it's clear they're not.
Take for example this nice strawman argument that Mr. Langa puts forth:
It's a very appealing concept, and has become part of computing's conventional wisdom: Non-Microsoft = More Secure.
Which he then cuts down systematically, as if his misposed argument had any value:
Trouble is, that's a falsehood based on a common error: Failure to adjust for the effects of the installed base.
I can tell when people use Conversational Terrorism, and I know then that they're highly partial and unreasonable to argue with.
For example, the communications do not have to be asynchronous and doesn't actually need to have anything to do with XML.
Uh... the core part of AJAX is the XMLhttpRequest function, therefore the XML in AJAX. Also the link defines XMLhttpRequest as being asynchronous, I have no idea if that is necessarily the case... but if it were, then the (A)synchronous would make sense.
From your definition JASC is somewhat different from AJAX, in the implication that you don't need to use Javascript or XMLhttpRequest. I think that those two are used solely due to installed support for the two (instead of relying on a JRE or other method).
Slightly offtopic, but... it seems to me that the MIT $100 Laptop is really a way of trying to prove or validate Stephenson's theory in Diamond Age... Namely the idea that knowledge embodies class/culturual values and if that knowledge can be transferred, it expands the in-group.
On of the key points glossed over in the novel is that computing hardware and bandwidth (which were part and parcel of the same thing... the primer.. in the book) are really seperate things in our world. Cheap hardware and access to inexpensive bandwidth would be absolutely critical to such a device.
Norton Internet Security does actually download DATs for adblocking, and the 2003 release had this fully functional long before Adblock came along. Are people outraged by a free tool but not a commercial one?
Of course the "people" (read: advertising firms and their bitches, aka websites and the media) like commercial tools... beacause they can be subverted and bought and bargained with (consider: perhaps there is even an incestuous relationship a la companies that put out the ill and sell the cure). Those goodie-two-shoes free software "projects" can't be subverted... thus the "outrage" from the "people".
Social Contract, per definition, is between people. Therefore, the closest adblock could come is to being a "social contract infringement tool". However, it doesn't really capitalize on this (ie, there's no centralized adblock-blacklist server), and it's fairly obtuse to use (ie, my wife doesn't grok it completely)... so I doubt you could say that it intentionally infringes.
What gets me is that arguably, social cotract was first violated by offending websites and ad-server ppl in general, with things like popups, glaringly bad animation (ie, flashing colors, etc). Not to mention the EVIL doubleclick and their "we will track your ass... try and avoid us, punk" attitude. Which is what I believe the adblock authors were trying to control/avoid/defeat.
I won't adblock a server/ad that's generally nice or doesn't get in the way of my browsing... think google or other text-based adverts, or even non-animated, "non-epilepsy inducing" image ads. THATs a real social contract... because google/etc know that their revenue relies on their good behavior. I respect that.
Finally, on a dialup (like at my parents place), adblock SIGNIFICANTLY improves performance. I think removal of bloat is impressively important for non-broadband folks, and that's another case of advertisers "messing with social contract". I especially hated it when the page would load fast, but the ad at the top woudl sit there and hold up the entire page from rendering. WTF.
The best way to summarize my attitude about Apple (as an owner of almost 8 Macs now, starting with the LC) is "love the product, hate the company". Namely, service and support- which are the worst in the industry, and always have been.
That's funny, they must have paid off ConsumerReports then. Note: the links require subscription, I can't find articles that are free-reg.
Here's a summary of what the articles say:
For Desktops (3/05):
"Quick Picks
For reliability and support:
12 Apple (built-in 17-inch LCD display) $1,675
Apple provides top-notch reliability and support. Its computers are currently less vulnerable to viruses and spyware than Windows-based models. On the downside, however, the Apple has limited internal expandability. If you add an extra hard drive, it must be an external one."
For laptops 3/05:
"For reliability and support:
18 Apple $1,300
Apple has been a reliable brand and has the best record for tech support."
Dude, I'm not denying your experience, but sadly that is probably better than par-for-the-course in the industry. My sister had issues with her iBook (her long fingernails scrached off the lettering on the keyboard) which AppleCare refused to fix... but would she switch to another laptop? Doubtful.
These features are not Service Pack level features, and if they were, God bless em, Microsoft would have ripped them off and crammed them into XP by now.
I think the sad truth is that the reviewer is buttering up the audience to Microsoft's shift in strategy... ie, they *were* planned to release as features of Longhorn, but many of those features will now be included in XPSP3 or something (since MS can't afford to wait until Longhorn releases... too many customers will have switched either to Firefox, Google Desktop Search, or god forbid, OSX).
Never doubt for once that revisionist history isn't beyond the scope of businesses (monopolies and governments in particular).
I'm sure this was a report sponsored in part by Apple in an attempt to boos the stock price back up soon after Apple's stock got hammered by the Street...
Uh... but this article clearly states that the Music Industry is scared of Apple's potential stranglehold with online music sales (iTunes). I *seriously* doubt that a paid-for puff piece (even a one that was engineered to look neutral) would put the Apple-Music Industry relationship in doubt. That, as an investor, would get me worried about Apple's stock price (ie, LOTS of their current price has nothing to do with OSX or even the iPod. It's all about how iTMS and possibly, iMovieVideoStore will use the good relationship with the industry to keep the growth alive and market booming).
Joel Spolsky of http://www.joelonsoftware.com/ and the rest of the sane world would disagree. iPod is ahead because it is "hip". The actual functionality of the iPod has been sorely lacking compared to competitive players (microphone??? FM radio?!?!).
s/hip/usable/
Seriously... the usability of an iPod (in addition to it's "hipness") is what keeps people using it. Not talking about forward/back/shuffle buttons... most players do that well. I'm talking about iTunes (and sync). Ironically, Apple's hardware sells because it's software is so good. Why do people even care about the iMac? Because of OSX.
As a proud owner of a mac, I'll tell you right now it's boot time sucks compared to my Windows box
But my wife's powerbook resumes about 10-15x faster than my P4 space heater laptop.... and the airport is already connected up, ready to channel firefox.
Slashdot Mirror
- Interface
- Style
- Marketing
Like it or not, Apple has the golden touch of style that Nokia never had, and it seems that Nokia has really gone off the deep end with some of their recent phones (lets not even talk about the DOA N-gage).Specifics? This thing has a joystick, 4 buttons around it (like my clunky T610), a play/pause, forward, back, stop, and (im guessing) a popout-button to shift the playpad down to get the number pad. I'm not going to go into all the possible confusion, but it looks busy.
As if that weren't all.. the color seems to aim for the stylish/classy 20-30s market, but the features (cameraphone, music) seem to really gear towards a younger market (think teens - 20s).
I wish them well, but from just looking at it, it seems a bit misguided.
Jobs is their CEO, and consequently, part of their branding. Having the word "iCon" next to his name was probably not viewed as very positive for the company's image. When the publisher/author disagreed to change the content, they retaliated. I'm still not sure it's not a publicity stunt either... take a look at another egotistic CEO, his method is to be "bad cop" so the company can blame it's bad moves on him, but since he's by far the largest shareholder, he'll pretty much never leave or be "punished".
Well, it might work... assuming the current government motto of "outsource everything" comes into play. Take for example, Private Military Companies. If the army wants to sidestep Geneva conventions and public oversight by outsourcing the ugly parts to corporations, then someone should be able to patent something important to effectively toss a sabot into the machinery.
Left as an exercise to reader: After declaring your patent and filing suit to prevent infringement, try to stay alive long enough to see the trial to closure.
Semantics.
There's this fictitious line between social/fiscal/political that is just rediculous. See, fiscal policy impacts people, and is therefore to some extent, social policy. Same with political policy.
The biggest canard, however, is the belief that corporations don't already impact social policy... that's historical revisionism of the grandest scale. Things like HR policies, work environments makes a big difference for the many people who work for the corporations, not to mention their families and relatives.
I'm not saying it's Microsoft's responsibility to support or oppose certain legislation, but to say that corporations should stay out of certain areas because "they shouldn't impact social policy" is bullshit. The reality of today's situation flies in the face of that idealist view.
In order to find out WTF you were talking about, I googled your text... and got zilch. So what did you mean? And how can you identify a USB device in a video game... and why would they do this?
That's it. End. Finito. It doesn't matter what else he does, he's inextricably tied to Microsoft. Large shareholders (often large investment institutions) exert lots of influence over the long term strategy of a company.
In this case, Microsoft easily would love for software patents to exist, and this EU Commissioner is influential in making that happen... this is clearly a conflict of interest.
Bullshit. If BAD STUFF HAPPENS, even if it's an accident, then someone should be held liable (Think Exxon Valdez... they had to clean up the mess). Sad fact of matter is that there is no real liability for Ameritrade's in this case. If there was, you'd bet your ass that either they would have a policy in place to prevent it from happening or to carefully vet their 3rd party shippers to prevent this kind of loss.
Great, next time I lose some important info that could compromise someone else's credit security, I'll just claim it's an "accident" and that "Shit happens".
Seriously, people would care if they
- knew what data had been lost (were they SSN/name combos? Trade information? Bank routing info for transfer?)
- Whether their had been affected
But they don't (currently) know... so of course they don't care... it's not clear what the impact is. And Ameritrade has every incentive to hide or destroy any evidence that reveals this. And, of course, the corporate media has no real incentive to reveal Ameritrade's fuckup either.I mean, it's probably more likely that some law got passed in the past few years that's forcing companies to highlight all these incidents of compromised data, but it seems pretty spooky that we just recently hear about all these stories...
Dude, I know Apple is popular, but I don't think it's quite made the status of media outlet yet...
Open your mind, and embrace the future, pal. Here's a hint: Don't erase random folders!. If you're low on space, just search for stuff that is either
or
I already do this in windows... I just search for files > 10K, and pick and choose the ones that I know are no longer needed (it'd be better if I could search in windows for folders that contain things > some size...).
I can see either Windows or OSX having some "cleanup space" tool that helped them do the above.
They just didn't want to incur the costs of a lawsuit. I hardly think that's "white hat" territory.
Besides I don't really think it's fair to call Dmitry a blackhat... if that's the case, you probably think DeCSS Jon should be behind bars, non?
So I wonder if Adobe feels there's a lesson to be learned here... In other news, Dmitry chuckles softly.
You missed the point of the poster. He wasn't unhappy about the article being critical, but being very BIASED and critical. You know, it'd be like saying that Democrats/Liberals should listen to Bill O'Riley... as if he listens to the other side.
What I hate the worst is not those who are biased, but those who claim to be things like "Fair and Balanced" when it's clear they're not.
Take for example this nice strawman argument that Mr. Langa puts forth:
Which he then cuts down systematically, as if his misposed argument had any value:I can tell when people use Conversational Terrorism, and I know then that they're highly partial and unreasonable to argue with.Uh... the core part of AJAX is the XMLhttpRequest function, therefore the XML in AJAX. Also the link defines XMLhttpRequest as being asynchronous, I have no idea if that is necessarily the case... but if it were, then the (A)synchronous would make sense.
From your definition JASC is somewhat different from AJAX, in the implication that you don't need to use Javascript or XMLhttpRequest. I think that those two are used solely due to installed support for the two (instead of relying on a JRE or other method).
On of the key points glossed over in the novel is that computing hardware and bandwidth (which were part and parcel of the same thing... the primer.. in the book) are really seperate things in our world. Cheap hardware and access to inexpensive bandwidth would be absolutely critical to such a device.
Of course the "people" (read: advertising firms and their bitches, aka websites and the media) like commercial tools... beacause they can be subverted and bought and bargained with (consider: perhaps there is even an incestuous relationship a la companies that put out the ill and sell the cure). Those goodie-two-shoes free software "projects" can't be subverted... thus the "outrage" from the "people".
What gets me is that arguably, social cotract was first violated by offending websites and ad-server ppl in general, with things like popups, glaringly bad animation (ie, flashing colors, etc). Not to mention the EVIL doubleclick and their "we will track your ass... try and avoid us, punk" attitude. Which is what I believe the adblock authors were trying to control/avoid/defeat.
I won't adblock a server/ad that's generally nice or doesn't get in the way of my browsing... think google or other text-based adverts, or even non-animated, "non-epilepsy inducing" image ads. THATs a real social contract... because google/etc know that their revenue relies on their good behavior. I respect that.
Finally, on a dialup (like at my parents place), adblock SIGNIFICANTLY improves performance. I think removal of bloat is impressively important for non-broadband folks, and that's another case of advertisers "messing with social contract". I especially hated it when the page would load fast, but the ad at the top woudl sit there and hold up the entire page from rendering. WTF.
That's funny, they must have paid off ConsumerReports then. Note: the links require subscription, I can't find articles that are free-reg.
Here's a summary of what the articles say:
For Desktops (3/05):
For laptops 3/05: Dude, I'm not denying your experience, but sadly that is probably better than par-for-the-course in the industry. My sister had issues with her iBook (her long fingernails scrached off the lettering on the keyboard) which AppleCare refused to fix... but would she switch to another laptop? Doubtful.I think the sad truth is that the reviewer is buttering up the audience to Microsoft's shift in strategy... ie, they *were* planned to release as features of Longhorn, but many of those features will now be included in XPSP3 or something (since MS can't afford to wait until Longhorn releases... too many customers will have switched either to Firefox, Google Desktop Search, or god forbid, OSX).
Never doubt for once that revisionist history isn't beyond the scope of businesses (monopolies and governments in particular).
Uh... but this article clearly states that the Music Industry is scared of Apple's potential stranglehold with online music sales (iTunes). I *seriously* doubt that a paid-for puff piece (even a one that was engineered to look neutral) would put the Apple-Music Industry relationship in doubt. That, as an investor, would get me worried about Apple's stock price (ie, LOTS of their current price has nothing to do with OSX or even the iPod. It's all about how iTMS and possibly, iMovieVideoStore will use the good relationship with the industry to keep the growth alive and market booming).
s/shareholders/stakeholders/
s/hip/usable/
Seriously... the usability of an iPod (in addition to it's "hipness") is what keeps people using it. Not talking about forward/back/shuffle buttons... most players do that well. I'm talking about iTunes (and sync). Ironically, Apple's hardware sells because it's software is so good. Why do people even care about the iMac? Because of OSX.
But my wife's powerbook resumes about 10-15x faster than my P4 space heater laptop.... and the airport is already connected up, ready to channel firefox.