Another Amen to that...
You can't count on the next version being compatible with ANYTHING though Android is the FIRST OPEN phone OS that has offered free upgrades as deeply back into the earlier hardware that I can recall...
OTOH, older handsets are only as obsolete as the programs YOU NEED that they won't run... making even the early Android phones fairly usable...
Palm, come to think of it, came out with some updates IIRC, but for the latest and greatest hardware only...
I'll defer to the Apple/iOS fanboys and admit that with a closed hardware/closed OS model they've kept backwards compatibility... One line of products from one vendor... and until recently available only on a network with marginal coverage... Rah!
No sense arguing the benefits of Open Source other than to comment on all the Manufacturers names making 'droid' phones, and networks that Android gear works on...
Frankly, I've been amazed that we've gotten as many improvements as we have... my old Droid (original MOTO Droid) is still fairly up to date and running 99% of what's out there...
The next upgrade I'm planning on is a Droid RAZR (from my current "X") and that's for the low power consumption OLED screen, and screaming dual core processor... WHICH come to think of it will probably cancel one another out
I've never yet bought a phone with the expectation of any upgrade that wasn't in the pipeline when I made the purchase (yes that IS a purchasing factor)... and I'm NOT counting on getting every OS upgrade from there on either... compared to "Computer Years" those "Phone Years" are FAST!!!
I can't recommend their customer service, but when my Toshiba C655 hard drive died I grabbed another and installed Ubuntu 11.4
The only function that isn't working perfectly is the multi-touch pad... and it was driving me crazy when I bumped it using Win7
Toshiba, BTW, won't take back their hard drive for replacement unless I ship the whole laptop back... Not happening till I've got another netbook/pad/something to take over my mobile needs while it's gone...
Aside from moving my Win32 Audible program to running under WINE the transition has been pretty tame... I'd LIKE Netflix to work on Linux, but understand the economics of supporting a system that isn't mainstream on Lap/Desktop systems...
My kids are a bit jealous since their high tech laptops have webcams, HDMI ports and a host of goodies... mine, OTOH, merely had massive RAM and a fairly fast dual core AMD processor... which, added to Linux, smokes their Acer and HP systems for sheer speed
The FBI probably doesn't realize that it doesn't have to be a "Group" to take parallel or even coordinated action
It could just be a movement comprised of people who generally agree that the FedGov is the biggest threat to freedom on the US... and have the skilz to expose some of the facts that confirm it...
Sometimes people just agree about what "just ain't right" and that's all it takes for a movement to begin...
I can't remember a state in which I lived (or foreign country for that matter) where putting any part of one's body in contact with another person's genitalia without permission wasn't sufficient for a rape charge... much LESS actual penetration...
It's really time to end this charade and issue every passenger a five inch steak knife as they board!!!
It may be irrelevant, but when I was teaching "Intro to Computers" (COBOL) as a sub... the class got weirded out when I had them move to the boards in the classroom and start writing programs OFF the computer...
The whole class got to discuss four students work at the same time... and it only took a couple of class sessions till they remembered to leave the computers off till the lesson and it's review on the boards was done...
I was just a sub, and unfortunately had no written guidance so I took it slow and easy, making sure that the students "got it" before moving on...
It seemed slow paced to me anyway, but I made sure they knew the current stuff before we added things... Really it's the only way I know to teach...
Before the end of my time there some of the students just kept up and some were using ASCII art, colors, and sounds...(BEL)
Some didn't get it at all (and I wondered WHY they picked a computer class) some needed both the lectures, examples, and cross feed of other students helping them improve their code (which wasn't gonna happen on a PC) and some would have had to be chased from the classroom with a stick to KEEP them from learning so I concentrated on the middle group...
When the regular teacher got back to work they kept me on for another week to get her up to speed on where I'd taken her classes (this one and Systems Analysis 4XX)
Her only gripe was that I'd covered the whole semester's in a little over a month...
Which leads me to believe that we might be doing better for the next generation just TEACHING a subject well than throwing all the expensive toys in the world at it...
Hard to hand code OO projects in high level languages when they depend on a GUI to put it all together... but understanding the BASICS first has gotta help!!!
FWIW, ten years ago I lived in a house built in the 50s... The sleepy little housing development it sat in was STILL being served by the original PAPER INSULATED CABLES installed when the place was new...
After a good rainstorm you could pick up the phone, hit any number to kill the dial tone, and listen to a half dozen conversations leaking across the wet paper...
The telephone and cable companies will drag their feet for as long as consumers let them...
MY Internet connection is on a point-point radio since the nearest fiber optic/DSL branch is about five miles short of getting here...
Graphene detectors will be nice... someday.... but we could do SO MUCH MORE with infrastructure RIGHT NOW!!!
Having gone through a couple of different strains of measles, mumps just before puberty, and was missed by the polio epidemic before the vaccine was available while kids I knew were crippled... I appreciate the danger that they present a little differently than younger folks might...
The minor danger involved in vaccinations for all of the above doesn't begin to approach the real world effects of the disease...
The local school district (with just one campus k-12) doesn't let kids without vaccinations enroll... the cold and flue effects on attendance are quite bad enough...
My kids got their vaccinations on time with my complete blessing, with the exception of hepatitis vaccine that the clinic gave my youngest before asking...
Unlike most other vaccinations today, that on has potential side effects that scared the pants off me...
I had just spent several weeks deciding whether or not the risk TO MY KIDS from MY taking it was worth the potential benefits... and the technician at the clinic just poked the three month old little guy without a second's concern...
None of us has turned into a "Typhoid Mary" with a permanent case of infectious hepatitis so me missed that potential side effect....
It is a Very Good Thing that the creator of the pseudoscience putting so many kids at risk is being prosecuted to the full extent of the law...
When you can't refute the science going after the reputation of the writer is almost always the next desperation move...
None of the current computer "models" are capable of taking data up to, say, 1975 and giving predictions of 1980 weather using KNOWN results as a test... OR at least no one had demonstrated that ability to date...
The "ASSUMPTIONS" included in them discount (or consider constant) the effects of H2O... known to be the most influential of "Greenhouse Gasses", ESTIMATE CO2 effects that haven't been proven, and, in many cases, are still using data sets that have proven inaccuracies (or worse yet data that can't be duplicated as it was lost, sources forgotten, or other interesting, but non scientific excuses resembling "the dog ate my homework")
Out of the 5,000 some weather stations used to measure "average temperatures" about 2/3 of them are in the most urban areas of the Northern Hemisphere... Growing nations where urban sprawl has surrounded existing "reference" sites with increasing heat sources...
I challenge the reader to find out what their nearest urban weather station adds/subtracts as a "correction factor" that supposedly accounts for the surrounding air conditioning, heating, industry, and traffic patterns... (hint: this is considered a "constant" to account for dynamic conditions, is that a problem for anyone???)
AGW may well exist in some form... but the arguments used to "prove" that it threatens the world ignore the fact that we're looking at increased crop yields with longer growing seasons, and might even get to see what the English vintages of wine taste like... Something that hasn't existed since the Medieval Warm when Roman tax records show vintners producing in their northern most territory...
Finally, for the non-scientists like myself... look at the solar output charts with a handy copy of the "Global Temperature" trends... you might observe an interesting correlation independent of ANY other factors... Something that gets less noticed than it probably ought to be...
After all, if it is all just the sun's influence and can't be affected by human efforts... how would anyone change society into their own image, gain power over people's lives, and divert billions of dollars toward the agenda of those 'believers" (had to get a disparaging word in at least once) who will determine what happens to the rest of us as a consequence of this "threat"
Looks like it's time for the crew at Truecrypt to add a burn, pillage, plow, & salt password to their program...
I'd rather lose decades of journals, notes, quotes, manuscripts, and personal history than to be FORCED to allow anyone to see any of it...
The ideal name would be the "Oops!" key
"Oh darn, LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!!!"
The Easter Egg could be a full transcript of the US Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Federalist Papers appearing in place of the data!!!!
I added up the cost of repairing my HP "Entertainment" laptop and decided I could just about get a Netbook for what it would cost for parts...
Went shopping and discovered that none of the available systems had more than 1GB, they all ran the Win7 "Starter" edition, except for one WinXP model that was in a back room and needed to be ''activated" as a data connection before it could be used... and didn't include WiFi or Bluetooth...
After a long day's hunt, I ended up spending an extra hundred dollars over the Netbook that was closest to a usable PC in power...
That got me 16" screen, 104 key KBD, 4GB RAM, a dual core 2.2GHz AMD processor, and 320GB of drive space... ($445 out the door with a new {pricey} case)
Netbooks ARE a step up from most of the tablets that cost double the price.. at least in terms of screen size, RAM and processor power... but you can get a real desktop replacement laptop PC for only a little more...
For the user that needs no more than e-mail and a browser they're a terrific match, for most anyone who can find/. not so much...
Bottom Line: They're going to have to either lower the prices, or double the speed, RAM, and cores to stay minimally competitive as faster, easier to use, tablets, and low cost PC power the laptop form factor run away from them as value for the money...
It has to be a whoosh. Audiophiles are fanatics about sound, not stupid.
I just read a "review" today about some high dollar "speaker cables" (as opposed to mere speaker wire) a friend pointed it out as something that might amuse me...
The poster replaced his old worn out wires, let the new ones burn in overnight (with a tuner input) and was waxing rhapsodic about the increase in audio quality...
Apparently the company making this magic wire has at least two or three different quality levels suitably priced for those who desire better sound...
ALL are fanatics... some are just plain gullible...
I've never seen a vinyl record or and 8 track cassette.
That's kinda hard to imagine when vinyl records are the audiophiles preferred medium, they're still being made... it's sort of sad really.
FWIW, you can actually still find working reel-to-reel recorders, wire recorders, vinyl dictation machines, and Edison cylinder players without too much trouble... that is if you are actually interested in the technology and not just making a point of your lack of experience in the world of sound...
The history of audio and video recording is a fascinating study... But we're discussing books versus electronic substitutes...
Books are a wonderful medium for carrying information.... you can mark a dozen places in a single book, have a pile of books with passages marked, and seamlessly transition from one to another while researching...
I move to two screens and a half dozen or more open windows when I'm seriously digging for information... but laying out books actually works better when I'm doing a paper (I do input my quotes with a scanner... Retyping books when that's so easy is just silly)
For entertainment paper books are portable, require no power or batteries, work at most any temperature, are easier to see in bright light than almost any other display medium... you never have the information come at you faster than you can absorb, you can easily rewind and review a confusing chapter, or good scene, AND if they're lost you're only out a few dollars... 1/10 the cost of a reasonably good "reader" device...
Compared with audiobooks, or movies, reading is an active process that imprints information, at least in my opinion, a little deeper in memory than passively absorbing a video or audio presentation... I suppose that you could actively listen and view and get the same effect, but I notice that people tend to go into an auditing mode where the information goes right through them...
I suspect that the demise of books is being announced prematurely... the managed forests owned by produce the raw materials for books at an easily sustainable rate for current needs... if books become a connoisseur product that will certainly DROP the cost of the raw materials (though the economy of scale might be less)
I doubt anyone reading this will outlive the publishing industry even if the basic model moves from physical media to electronic texts...
Well Duh!
This technical wizard seems to have scored the device based on the "Apple Experience" table...
No iTunes and a completely open OS is SCARY for some of these folks... having to actually understand just a little about how the device works is way over their heads...
Apparently he didn't understand that you just can't compare Oranges and Apples
This is merely the entirely human failing of "reaching for low hanging fruit"
Child porn laws are so badly written that things NEVER having to do with any actual child, or images of adults that APPEAR to be underaged can get a conviction in the courts...
They would have to work to find spys, track down phishing exploiters, and/or actually make a difference in the cyber security of the average Citizen...
How would THAT get them noticed and promoted???
And because our FCC decided to "let the market decide" instead of creating a standard...
IMHO, that's actually the right way to do it in a Capitalistic Society...
BUT, that's why the market is fragmented, each company did what they wanted...
Iraq nearly got caught in the mess... when their Cellular Infrastructure was rebuilt our CongressCritters attempted to grease the wheels and get an US CDMA system installed... Someone (I believe from the State Department) realized that Iraq was surrounded by countries that ALL used a GSM standard....
It's the CONSUMER that is driving the fragmentation in the US... if people quite buying phones that weren't usable around the world, that's what would be on the shelves...
ALL our consumers care about here in the US is "can I call another phone" or "can I get on the Internet" and ALL of our multiple standards can satisfy that need...
That lack of knowledge is why we are where we are now...
This should have been intuitively obvious from the very beginning of general programming languages...
NOTHING can be done in any language without using the "prior art" that was involved in developing the language....
Software written in a general programming language should never have been allowed a patent...
Copyright covers software code, and gives the holder a much longer span of time in which they can control the use of their specific code...
It would be nice to think that the US Patent Office would get on board with this.. but they've been wrong before, and I'm pretty sure that a good lawyer could tie them up by claiming if they did it once, they MUST continue to issued patents wrongly...
I'd suggest you take your 90+ WPM and enjoy life... you're typing faster than most folks will ever be able to match.
Something to consider though, is that the QWERTY keyboard is DESIGNED to slow the typist down... The early mechanical typewriters had a finite time lag between keypress, the strike of the key against the ribbon and the spring assisted recovery of the mechanical linkage...
Putting up several keys at once by typing faster than the mechanism could jam up the typewriter and delay the typist while they untangled the mess...
The key assignment in the QWERTY keyboard is designed to put the most commonly used letters EATION SHRDLU in positions that help maintain a good rhythm within those mechanical limitations.
The fact that some typists manage in excess of 200 WPM despite that original design criteria is nothing short of amazing...
My advice... keep doing what you're doing... the rest of us are lucky if we hit 60 WPM on a good day Best I ever tested was 65.... My cruising speed is more in the 25-35 WPM range when I'm composing as I go...
Open Source doesn't have to mean unprotected... a "free" DRM standard would work well for everyone but those with a vested interest in selling software...
It could mean that folks interested in On-Line publishing can put up their material without paying a $50K start up fee to some huge software house... and keep ALL their profits...
Regarding Amazon's royalties; though...
Writers typically get $2-$4 a copy royalties from the big publishers, after their advance is paid back... Amazon keeping 70% gives the writer $3 a download... if my math is up to par...
Pretty much in the ballpark I'd say...
I think an economist is the perfect person to evaluate the data.
And there are 31,000 other scientists that agree with him on just ONE petition (of many)
They say: "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."
Of course only 9,000 of them are PHDs, 7,153 MS, with a minimal qualification of a BS...
Just counting PHDs there are 15 times as many scientists as there were working on the IPCC report...http://www.petitionproject.org/
Back when this first was used as a common shareware "feature" many programs (depending on the platform) WERE the OS...
Commercial software of all sorts have been distributed with features disabled until they were unlocked (after a suitable exchange of currency)
Microsoft is making a distinction without a difference by pretending that the OS isn't just another piece of software...
More patent run amok nonsense... and the examiners at the Patent Office will probably rubber stamp this one too...
Slashdot Mirror
Another Amen to that... You can't count on the next version being compatible with ANYTHING though Android is the FIRST OPEN phone OS that has offered free upgrades as deeply back into the earlier hardware that I can recall...
OTOH, older handsets are only as obsolete as the programs YOU NEED that they won't run... making even the early Android phones fairly usable...
Palm, come to think of it, came out with some updates IIRC, but for the latest and greatest hardware only...
I'll defer to the Apple/iOS fanboys and admit that with a closed hardware/closed OS model they've kept backwards compatibility... One line of products from one vendor... and until recently available only on a network with marginal coverage... Rah!
No sense arguing the benefits of Open Source other than to comment on all the Manufacturers names making 'droid' phones, and networks that Android gear works on...
Frankly, I've been amazed that we've gotten as many improvements as we have... my old Droid (original MOTO Droid) is still fairly up to date and running 99% of what's out there... The next upgrade I'm planning on is a Droid RAZR (from my current "X") and that's for the low power consumption OLED screen, and screaming dual core processor... WHICH come to think of it will probably cancel one another out
I've never yet bought a phone with the expectation of any upgrade that wasn't in the pipeline when I made the purchase (yes that IS a purchasing factor)... and I'm NOT counting on getting every OS upgrade from there on either... compared to "Computer Years" those "Phone Years" are FAST!!!
I can't recommend their customer service, but when my Toshiba C655 hard drive died I grabbed another and installed Ubuntu 11.4
The only function that isn't working perfectly is the multi-touch pad... and it was driving me crazy when I bumped it using Win7
Toshiba, BTW, won't take back their hard drive for replacement unless I ship the whole laptop back... Not happening till I've got another netbook/pad/something to take over my mobile needs while it's gone...
Aside from moving my Win32 Audible program to running under WINE the transition has been pretty tame... I'd LIKE Netflix to work on Linux, but understand the economics of supporting a system that isn't mainstream on Lap/Desktop systems...
My kids are a bit jealous since their high tech laptops have webcams, HDMI ports and a host of goodies... mine, OTOH, merely had massive RAM and a fairly fast dual core AMD processor... which, added to Linux, smokes their Acer and HP systems for sheer speed
My reloaded .270 Winchester ammo runs about 30 cents a shot...
3-5 shots per drive at 100 meters and not only do you have the platters shattered to bits, but it's good target practice...
A dozen drives would be a pleasant afternoon's plinking session...
Seriously, get a decent BT earpiece and use the built in voice dialing... forget the layout of the keys...
The FBI probably doesn't realize that it doesn't have to be a "Group" to take parallel or even coordinated action
It could just be a movement comprised of people who generally agree that the FedGov is the biggest threat to freedom on the US... and have the skilz to expose some of the facts that confirm it...
Sometimes people just agree about what "just ain't right" and that's all it takes for a movement to begin...
I call BS on this one...
Anyone who has a television and a phone line will be subject to licensing fees...
I think this qualifies as Prior Art Big Time!
My WWII vet dad and I watched the taking of Baghdad from opposite ends of the country via "virtual entertainment"
I can't remember a state in which I lived (or foreign country for that matter) where putting any part of one's body in contact with another person's genitalia without permission wasn't sufficient for a rape charge... much LESS actual penetration...
It's really time to end this charade and issue every passenger a five inch steak knife as they board!!!
In Capitalism, Man exploits Man.
In Communism, it's the other way around.
If I had any points today you'd have gotten them for the most insightful comment ever made on this issue
It may be irrelevant, but when I was teaching "Intro to Computers" (COBOL) as a sub... the class got weirded out when I had them move to the boards in the classroom and start writing programs OFF the computer...
The whole class got to discuss four students work at the same time... and it only took a couple of class sessions till they remembered to leave the computers off till the lesson and it's review on the boards was done...
I was just a sub, and unfortunately had no written guidance so I took it slow and easy, making sure that the students "got it" before moving on...
It seemed slow paced to me anyway, but I made sure they knew the current stuff before we added things... Really it's the only way I know to teach...
Before the end of my time there some of the students just kept up and some were using ASCII art, colors, and sounds...(BEL)
Some didn't get it at all (and I wondered WHY they picked a computer class) some needed both the lectures, examples, and cross feed of other students helping them improve their code (which wasn't gonna happen on a PC) and some would have had to be chased from the classroom with a stick to KEEP them from learning so I concentrated on the middle group... When the regular teacher got back to work they kept me on for another week to get her up to speed on where I'd taken her classes (this one and Systems Analysis 4XX)
Her only gripe was that I'd covered the whole semester's in a little over a month...
Which leads me to believe that we might be doing better for the next generation just TEACHING a subject well than throwing all the expensive toys in the world at it...
Hard to hand code OO projects in high level languages when they depend on a GUI to put it all together... but understanding the BASICS first has gotta help!!!
FWIW, ten years ago I lived in a house built in the 50s... The sleepy little housing development it sat in was STILL being served by the original PAPER INSULATED CABLES installed when the place was new...
After a good rainstorm you could pick up the phone, hit any number to kill the dial tone, and listen to a half dozen conversations leaking across the wet paper...
The telephone and cable companies will drag their feet for as long as consumers let them...
MY Internet connection is on a point-point radio since the nearest fiber optic/DSL branch is about five miles short of getting here...
Graphene detectors will be nice... someday.... but we could do SO MUCH MORE with infrastructure RIGHT NOW!!!
Having gone through a couple of different strains of measles, mumps just before puberty, and was missed by the polio epidemic before the vaccine was available while kids I knew were crippled... I appreciate the danger that they present a little differently than younger folks might...
The minor danger involved in vaccinations for all of the above doesn't begin to approach the real world effects of the disease...
The local school district (with just one campus k-12) doesn't let kids without vaccinations enroll... the cold and flue effects on attendance are quite bad enough...
My kids got their vaccinations on time with my complete blessing, with the exception of hepatitis vaccine that the clinic gave my youngest before asking...
Unlike most other vaccinations today, that on has potential side effects that scared the pants off me...
I had just spent several weeks deciding whether or not the risk TO MY KIDS from MY taking it was worth the potential benefits... and the technician at the clinic just poked the three month old little guy without a second's concern...
None of us has turned into a "Typhoid Mary" with a permanent case of infectious hepatitis so me missed that potential side effect....
It is a Very Good Thing that the creator of the pseudoscience putting so many kids at risk is being prosecuted to the full extent of the law...
When you can't refute the science going after the reputation of the writer is almost always the next desperation move...
None of the current computer "models" are capable of taking data up to, say, 1975 and giving predictions of 1980 weather using KNOWN results as a test... OR at least no one had demonstrated that ability to date...
The "ASSUMPTIONS" included in them discount (or consider constant) the effects of H2O... known to be the most influential of "Greenhouse Gasses", ESTIMATE CO2 effects that haven't been proven, and, in many cases, are still using data sets that have proven inaccuracies (or worse yet data that can't be duplicated as it was lost, sources forgotten, or other interesting, but non scientific excuses resembling "the dog ate my homework")
Out of the 5,000 some weather stations used to measure "average temperatures" about 2/3 of them are in the most urban areas of the Northern Hemisphere... Growing nations where urban sprawl has surrounded existing "reference" sites with increasing heat sources...
I challenge the reader to find out what their nearest urban weather station adds/subtracts as a "correction factor" that supposedly accounts for the surrounding air conditioning, heating, industry, and traffic patterns... (hint: this is considered a "constant" to account for dynamic conditions, is that a problem for anyone???)
AGW may well exist in some form... but the arguments used to "prove" that it threatens the world ignore the fact that we're looking at increased crop yields with longer growing seasons, and might even get to see what the English vintages of wine taste like... Something that hasn't existed since the Medieval Warm when Roman tax records show vintners producing in their northern most territory...
Finally, for the non-scientists like myself... look at the solar output charts with a handy copy of the "Global Temperature" trends... you might observe an interesting correlation independent of ANY other factors... Something that gets less noticed than it probably ought to be...
After all, if it is all just the sun's influence and can't be affected by human efforts... how would anyone change society into their own image, gain power over people's lives, and divert billions of dollars toward the agenda of those 'believers" (had to get a disparaging word in at least once) who will determine what happens to the rest of us as a consequence of this "threat"
My 1973 Olds Delta 88 Royale with a 455 CI engine got 21 MPG @ 70 MPH... I KNOW they can do better in a car that weighs 1/3 that...
Looks like it's time for the crew at Truecrypt to add a burn, pillage, plow, & salt password to their program... I'd rather lose decades of journals, notes, quotes, manuscripts, and personal history than to be FORCED to allow anyone to see any of it... The ideal name would be the "Oops!" key "Oh darn, LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!!!" The Easter Egg could be a full transcript of the US Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Federalist Papers appearing in place of the data!!!!
I added up the cost of repairing my HP "Entertainment" laptop and decided I could just about get a Netbook for what it would cost for parts... Went shopping and discovered that none of the available systems had more than 1GB, they all ran the Win7 "Starter" edition, except for one WinXP model that was in a back room and needed to be ''activated" as a data connection before it could be used... and didn't include WiFi or Bluetooth... After a long day's hunt, I ended up spending an extra hundred dollars over the Netbook that was closest to a usable PC in power... That got me 16" screen, 104 key KBD, 4GB RAM, a dual core 2.2GHz AMD processor, and 320GB of drive space... ($445 out the door with a new {pricey} case) Netbooks ARE a step up from most of the tablets that cost double the price.. at least in terms of screen size, RAM and processor power... but you can get a real desktop replacement laptop PC for only a little more... For the user that needs no more than e-mail and a browser they're a terrific match, for most anyone who can find /. not so much...
Bottom Line: They're going to have to either lower the prices, or double the speed, RAM, and cores to stay minimally competitive as faster, easier to use, tablets, and low cost PC power the laptop form factor run away from them as value for the money...
It has to be a whoosh. Audiophiles are fanatics about sound, not stupid.
I just read a "review" today about some high dollar "speaker cables" (as opposed to mere speaker wire) a friend pointed it out as something that might amuse me... The poster replaced his old worn out wires, let the new ones burn in overnight (with a tuner input) and was waxing rhapsodic about the increase in audio quality... Apparently the company making this magic wire has at least two or three different quality levels suitably priced for those who desire better sound... ALL are fanatics... some are just plain gullible...
I've never seen a vinyl record or and 8 track cassette.
That's kinda hard to imagine when vinyl records are the audiophiles preferred medium, they're still being made... it's sort of sad really. FWIW, you can actually still find working reel-to-reel recorders, wire recorders, vinyl dictation machines, and Edison cylinder players without too much trouble... that is if you are actually interested in the technology and not just making a point of your lack of experience in the world of sound... The history of audio and video recording is a fascinating study... But we're discussing books versus electronic substitutes... Books are a wonderful medium for carrying information.... you can mark a dozen places in a single book, have a pile of books with passages marked, and seamlessly transition from one to another while researching... I move to two screens and a half dozen or more open windows when I'm seriously digging for information... but laying out books actually works better when I'm doing a paper (I do input my quotes with a scanner... Retyping books when that's so easy is just silly) For entertainment paper books are portable, require no power or batteries, work at most any temperature, are easier to see in bright light than almost any other display medium... you never have the information come at you faster than you can absorb, you can easily rewind and review a confusing chapter, or good scene, AND if they're lost you're only out a few dollars... 1/10 the cost of a reasonably good "reader" device... Compared with audiobooks, or movies, reading is an active process that imprints information, at least in my opinion, a little deeper in memory than passively absorbing a video or audio presentation... I suppose that you could actively listen and view and get the same effect, but I notice that people tend to go into an auditing mode where the information goes right through them... I suspect that the demise of books is being announced prematurely... the managed forests owned by produce the raw materials for books at an easily sustainable rate for current needs... if books become a connoisseur product that will certainly DROP the cost of the raw materials (though the economy of scale might be less) I doubt anyone reading this will outlive the publishing industry even if the basic model moves from physical media to electronic texts...
Well Duh! This technical wizard seems to have scored the device based on the "Apple Experience" table... No iTunes and a completely open OS is SCARY for some of these folks... having to actually understand just a little about how the device works is way over their heads... Apparently he didn't understand that you just can't compare Oranges and Apples
This is merely the entirely human failing of "reaching for low hanging fruit" Child porn laws are so badly written that things NEVER having to do with any actual child, or images of adults that APPEAR to be underaged can get a conviction in the courts... They would have to work to find spys, track down phishing exploiters, and/or actually make a difference in the cyber security of the average Citizen... How would THAT get them noticed and promoted???
And because our FCC decided to "let the market decide" instead of creating a standard... IMHO, that's actually the right way to do it in a Capitalistic Society... BUT, that's why the market is fragmented, each company did what they wanted... Iraq nearly got caught in the mess... when their Cellular Infrastructure was rebuilt our CongressCritters attempted to grease the wheels and get an US CDMA system installed... Someone (I believe from the State Department) realized that Iraq was surrounded by countries that ALL used a GSM standard.... It's the CONSUMER that is driving the fragmentation in the US... if people quite buying phones that weren't usable around the world, that's what would be on the shelves... ALL our consumers care about here in the US is "can I call another phone" or "can I get on the Internet" and ALL of our multiple standards can satisfy that need... That lack of knowledge is why we are where we are now...
This should have been intuitively obvious from the very beginning of general programming languages... NOTHING can be done in any language without using the "prior art" that was involved in developing the language.... Software written in a general programming language should never have been allowed a patent... Copyright covers software code, and gives the holder a much longer span of time in which they can control the use of their specific code... It would be nice to think that the US Patent Office would get on board with this.. but they've been wrong before, and I'm pretty sure that a good lawyer could tie them up by claiming if they did it once, they MUST continue to issued patents wrongly...
I'd suggest you take your 90+ WPM and enjoy life... you're typing faster than most folks will ever be able to match. Something to consider though, is that the QWERTY keyboard is DESIGNED to slow the typist down... The early mechanical typewriters had a finite time lag between keypress, the strike of the key against the ribbon and the spring assisted recovery of the mechanical linkage... Putting up several keys at once by typing faster than the mechanism could jam up the typewriter and delay the typist while they untangled the mess... The key assignment in the QWERTY keyboard is designed to put the most commonly used letters EATION SHRDLU in positions that help maintain a good rhythm within those mechanical limitations. The fact that some typists manage in excess of 200 WPM despite that original design criteria is nothing short of amazing... My advice... keep doing what you're doing... the rest of us are lucky if we hit 60 WPM on a good day Best I ever tested was 65.... My cruising speed is more in the 25-35 WPM range when I'm composing as I go...
Open Source doesn't have to mean unprotected... a "free" DRM standard would work well for everyone but those with a vested interest in selling software... It could mean that folks interested in On-Line publishing can put up their material without paying a $50K start up fee to some huge software house... and keep ALL their profits... Regarding Amazon's royalties; though... Writers typically get $2-$4 a copy royalties from the big publishers, after their advance is paid back... Amazon keeping 70% gives the writer $3 a download... if my math is up to par... Pretty much in the ballpark I'd say...
I think an economist is the perfect person to evaluate the data.
And there are 31,000 other scientists that agree with him on just ONE petition (of many)
They say: "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."
Of course only 9,000 of them are PHDs, 7,153 MS, with a minimal qualification of a BS...
Just counting PHDs there are 15 times as many scientists as there were working on the IPCC report...http://www.petitionproject.org/
Back when this first was used as a common shareware "feature" many programs (depending on the platform) WERE the OS... Commercial software of all sorts have been distributed with features disabled until they were unlocked (after a suitable exchange of currency) Microsoft is making a distinction without a difference by pretending that the OS isn't just another piece of software... More patent run amok nonsense... and the examiners at the Patent Office will probably rubber stamp this one too...