The very fact that they have got people to call them macs rather than just computers really annoys me. You don't see PC people going "I'll just do it on my Windows/Linux" or something
No, they say, "my PC". While you're right that the terms may not be ideal, they are "Mac" and "PC".
I generally use the term "my computer" in order to not come across as being snobbish or whatever, but you bring up a good point. From now on I'm going to call it what it is, which is a Mac. Life is too damned short to spend any of it engaged in self-censorship and tiptoeing around facts to avoid offending people with your point of view.
I'm pretty sure you didn't quite understand it correctly then.
No, I understand it completely. The OP stated that "no matter how you swing it, it is cheaper to buy your phone outright". He is wrong.
When the original iPhone was launched, the data plan was $20/month. When the 3G launched, it jumped to $30/month. No change when the 3GS hit the shelves.
That's because the data service is different. 2G/EDGE was $20/month, 3G is $30/month.
I've been paying $15/month for unlimited data on AT&T for years now.
Actually, Tmobile's new unlimited plans do provide a break to those who pay up front. Their plans are $10/mo more with a subsidized phone with a 2 year contract compared to paying for the phone and having a month-to-month plan. If you look at their phones and the amount of the downpayment with a subsidized plan, it's clearly a better deal to just buy the phone and go MTM.
Of course this is T-Mobile, not AT&T, so no iPhone, but using the same math on AT&T, the iPhone is subsidized for $400. $10/month x 2 years is only $240.
No matter how you swing it, it is cheaper to buy your phone outright.
No it's not. If I want an iPhone, and I want to use it completely like an iPhone, I have to use AT&T and pay for their iPhone plan. This is true whether I buy their subsidized iPhone, or buy an unlocked one and just sign up with it on AT&T without a contract (if that's even an option). And as I understand it, unlimited data is actually cheaper on the iPhone than on other phones (at least, at the time of the launch) due to the fact that the iPhone really needs it and Apple demanded it.
What's more, I could just buy the iPhone, buyout my contract immediately, and still come out spending less than an unsubsidized iPhone. But then I'll still have to buy the service, which costs the same either way.
Unless I'm happy just using some generic plan, which I'm not. That's why I bought the iPhone in the first place. If I wanted generic, I'd just have a simple phone and an iPod touch.
This is true. Google is an internet services provider. Unfortunately, they also make a browser now, which means they can pretend to be a browser maker when giving their opinions to W3C on the video tag.
Likewise, it is true for Apple, who are a hardware/online retail company. Again, they also happen to make a browser, so can again pretend to be a browser company when talking to W3C.
How are Apple and Google "pretending" to be "browser companies"? They actually make real browsers. Chrome and Safari aren't artifices intended to meet some sort of technicality for influence over the W3C.
Firefox doesn't ship with Flash support, either, yet it works just fine.
If there's some reason (which is *entirely* of Mozilla's own choosing) that they can't include native h.264 support, or use system APIs, they can simply let the user download a plugin (easily created using the existing x.264 project), problem solved.
Google is putting Firefox in a position where it is either encumbered with patents therefore losing the status of "pure" open source project
'"Pure" open source project'?
1. See Iceweasel 2. They have financial deals with Google for search placement and default home page[*] 3. See the multitudes of other '"pure" open source projects' which support h.264 4. Pass h.264 on to the OS or some other plugin. It's not like Firefox doesn't already make use of close-source OS functions.
So I really don't know what this is all about except for Firefox attempting to *push* the technologically inferior theora codec for political reasons. While I appreciate the anti-patent stance, I'm perfectly fine with using h.264 and AAC. I want my media to be high quality, not ideologically pure.
[*] I'm not opposed to this deal, just that it doesn't exactly shout "pure open source ideology". It shows a certain comfort level with pragmatic compromises, such as accepting money in exchange for a default search engine and home page.
On a social analogy, is a thief always a thief, even when he shows remorse and changed his ways?
The thief will have always done the thieving, regardless of what he does later in life. In order for the thief to regain trust, he'll have to admit to that. Has Microsoft done that?
Microsoft hasn't "shown remorse and changed their ways". And this is all assuming one accepts the premise that corporations deserve forgiveness or a second chance in the same way a human does. I'm not convinced they do. Not so readily or so easily, at least.
Apple is a great company, but they are not large enough to build their own search engine, advertising platform, and back end services to run them.
Apple is one of the largest companies on the planet. If they don't have what it takes to build a search engine, it's not for want of size or cash. It's only because search is so entirely incongruous with the rest of the company.
This is very much, in fact, like search is for Microsoft. The single most important factor in MS's ability to compete in search at all is the fact that Bing is the default search engine in the default web browser in Windows (as well as a few other partners, like Qwest's relationship with MSN (I imagine it will be moving over to Windows Live if it hasn't already)). I'm not saying Bing is bad, I'm just describing how it fits within the market.
but if Apple is going to be in bed with a competitor, its much better that it be Microsoft rather than google
This is pretty much *never* true, unless you mean it's better for MS. Few companies partner with MS unscathed, and aside from PC makers and Xbox partners, I can think of none. Perhaps Ford?
I for one am sick of hearing about the apple tablet... either come out with it or dont but stop the crap
I think it's safe to assume that there are a lot of people who are not sick of hearing about the Apple tablet. I also do not think your command to for Slashdot to stop posting about it is going to be heeded.
Do you also post to auto sites asking them to stop posting about new car rumors? Or gaming sites to stop posting about SC2 or whatever? Would doing so even make any sense?
This guy should distribute this as a VirtualBox machine or so.
Why? Isn't Chrome available for your OS? ChromiumOS in a vm seems like a lot of work to just run Chrome/Chromium.
Do I really want to *boot* into something that is just a browser without an OS and without apps?
Apparently not. Fortunately, no one is demanding you do so.
Gimme something to use and to play with on the side and I may have fun with it.
Just run Chrome. If you find playing around with alternative OSs (including something as limited as ChromiumOS), I'm sure you won't have trouble installing it in virtualbox yourself.
Pulling my teeth would be more fun than booting into Chrome on a real machine, sorry.
No need to be sorry. Chromium isn't meant for "real machines" (whatever that really means anyway). It's directed at netbooks. I'm unaware of anyone suggesting it's suitable for your "real machine".
Those "artificial" limitations are the whole *point* of ChromeOS. If you remove them, what do you have except yet another Linux distro?
The point here is that if you want a slimmed down, web-centric/web-only OS, there's no better choice than ChromeOS. If you want a Google Linux, just pick a distro and install Chrome.
It sounds like this won't appeal to you, fair enough. But it's a mistake to think that it needs fixing, and further, that that fixing is to simply make it into a clone of your OS of choice.
Personally, I think ChromeOS would make for a great netbook OS. The origin of the term "netbook" goes a long way in explaining why.
ChromeOS is a web dumb terminal. To bypass the built-in restrictions (they aren't "artificial", they are a integral to the design) would be just as misguided as turning an old-fashioned dumb terminal into a standalone workstation. There are already better solutions for that.
I find it decidedly scary that people are so happy to conduct critical (e.g. banking) transactions via a device which by its highly stealable nature (if nothing else) is so obviously not secure.
Stealing a phone does not also steal your bank password. And the iPhone (for example) has end-user secure remote wipe functionality.
I have no objection to being able to call up the occasional map or wikipedia entry on my phone (which I can), but I prefer to use a "real" computer, since I don't care for straining my comparatively poor eyesight on handheld devices or dealing with poor text entry methods.
Yes, poor eyesight, or lack of hands, etc., tend to make using a phone difficult. But for everyone else...?
I have yet to be convinced that the "there's an app for that" gimmmick will stand the test of time.
Oh, that's adorable. Over 3 billion apps have been downloaded for the iPhone (both paid and free, but this does not count updates). I don't foresee a mechanism whereby people will suddenly decide that they no longer want portable apps. Well, unless our eyes all go at once or something.
The process could be really fast or not-so-fast! We don't really know exactly yet, though, so it's somewhere around either fast or not fast. Full story at 11.
It's worse than that. This hemming and hawing is based on the misguided notion that we need to know how things are going to turn out before rolling it out. Nobody knew how the Internet itself would evolve. Sometimes you have to just put things out there, and let the people work it out. Even worse-case, it's not like this is going to cause the Internet to collapse, or cause a spike in road deaths or armed robberies or anything. At worst, it might mean there are even more domains that no one uses, and at best, it means a much more vibrant internet.
But really, TLD's need to go away altogether. Or at least be supplemented with a namespace that is more open. Why can't Apple have an actual.mac, or MS a.ms. Or even.apple,.microsoft,.sony, etc.? It's not like the.com means anything much more than "this is the end of the domain name" anymore anyways. And.net just means, "I was too late to buy.com", and.org just means "I don't want to sound like a business and/or I was too late for.com"..info?.biz? Lame attempts to guess at what people want. Just let them *buy* what they want. This is a *much* better way to solve something as complex as the Internet.
No one has gone through the effort because, despite what you may believe, the great masses don't care if their sound system can play to another computer since PulseAudio still makes doing so tricky.
I'm at a loss to find anything in your post that is correct.
Here are some highlights of where you've got things wrong:
- Someone *has* gone through the effort. One such example is called Airfoil. - You clearly don't have a handle on what I "may believe". - No one said anything about the "great masses". - They *do* want something like this, hence the AirPort Express. - But even if they didn't, that doesn't preclude someone from creating such a system (AirFoil, Roku, PS3 and Xbox360 streaming).
Philosophically, your main errors are that just because something isn't built-into Windows, that doesn't mean people don't want to do it, and just because something's "tricky" on Linux, that doesn't mean it has to be tricky elsewhere.
You're muddling the distinction between the concept of exact measurement with exact model.
No i'm not, because I'm not addressing it. I was addressing the notion that "That's one funny thing about math, "close doesn't count", until you get to a certain advanced point. Then we say "this works for all but a few special cases... close enough."".
When we say that Newtonian physics is "about" right
Which isn't exact, it's just close. Which is exactly my point. *I'm* the one saying close, or "about right" is perfectly fine. *I'm* the one debunking the notion that things have to be exact. You are replying to the wrong person.
When we say that the speed of light is "about" 3 x 10^8 m/s, everybody but the most retarded physics students know that it's not exactly that, but that that number is close enough that it's usable.
Hmm... "Close enough". That sounds familiar. OH YEAH, THAT'S EXACTLY MY POINT! Close enough *does* count.
All you've done is reiterated my point.
Don't mix these two concepts, a model can be 100% accurate even if we are incapable of measuring fully, and vice versa.
No, it can't. Not under present understanding of the universe, at least. Specifically, it is presently *absolutely impossible* to devise a model that will perfectly describe the path of even a single photon through empty space. No model can tell you when the photon is going to just randomly decide to jump halfway across the universe.
But more to the point (and other parts of your post show you understand this, making your closing statement even more strange than it inherently is), science doesn't deal with exact theories or exact models. Well, the theories and models themselves are exact, but they don't have to exactly match the real world, they just have to approximate it better than the previous model, or they can even be less accurate, but simpler (like using Newtonian physics, which are less exact than Relativity, but on the scales we deal with them, the error is not important).
Rather than post completely uninformed comments on the subject, leave that to people in the field.
A million times, NO. Science is for everyone. That doesn't mean everyone is right, or everyone should be listened to, but *EVERYONE* has the right to talk about science, and even be wrong about science.
If instead, everyone was posting comments on the paper as part of the peer-review process, I'd agree. We want to weed out the comments there to those that sufficiently grasp the concepts involved. Hence the term, peer-review. Slashdot is not, however, peer-review. It's a news and social site for nerds. As such, it's entirely out of line to tell people not to comment on a story unless they are "people in the field".
Indeed. The truth is, it is all a dream. My dream, in fact. It all emanates from me, I designed it all based on what you know as mathematical principles.
That assertion can also never be proved wrong, and it is mathematically sound.
Well, we can scan your brain to see if you are dreaming, or through more permanent means, ensure you aren't dreaming, which would fairly conclusively debunk your assertion.
Slashdot Mirror
The very fact that they have got people to call them macs rather than just computers really annoys me. You don't see PC people going "I'll just do it on my Windows/Linux" or something
No, they say, "my PC". While you're right that the terms may not be ideal, they are "Mac" and "PC".
I generally use the term "my computer" in order to not come across as being snobbish or whatever, but you bring up a good point. From now on I'm going to call it what it is, which is a Mac. Life is too damned short to spend any of it engaged in self-censorship and tiptoeing around facts to avoid offending people with your point of view.
I'm pretty sure you didn't quite understand it correctly then.
No, I understand it completely. The OP stated that "no matter how you swing it, it is cheaper to buy your phone outright". He is wrong.
When the original iPhone was launched, the data plan was $20/month. When the 3G launched, it jumped to $30/month. No change when the 3GS hit the shelves.
That's because the data service is different. 2G/EDGE was $20/month, 3G is $30/month.
I've been paying $15/month for unlimited data on AT&T for years now.
Grandfathered? On a smart phone? On an iPhone?
Actually, Tmobile's new unlimited plans do provide a break to those who pay up front. Their plans are $10/mo more with a subsidized phone with a 2 year contract compared to paying for the phone and having a month-to-month plan. If you look at their phones and the amount of the downpayment with a subsidized plan, it's clearly a better deal to just buy the phone and go MTM.
Of course this is T-Mobile, not AT&T, so no iPhone, but using the same math on AT&T, the iPhone is subsidized for $400. $10/month x 2 years is only $240.
No matter how you swing it, it is cheaper to buy your phone outright.
No it's not. If I want an iPhone, and I want to use it completely like an iPhone, I have to use AT&T and pay for their iPhone plan. This is true whether I buy their subsidized iPhone, or buy an unlocked one and just sign up with it on AT&T without a contract (if that's even an option). And as I understand it, unlimited data is actually cheaper on the iPhone than on other phones (at least, at the time of the launch) due to the fact that the iPhone really needs it and Apple demanded it.
What's more, I could just buy the iPhone, buyout my contract immediately, and still come out spending less than an unsubsidized iPhone. But then I'll still have to buy the service, which costs the same either way.
Unless I'm happy just using some generic plan, which I'm not. That's why I bought the iPhone in the first place. If I wanted generic, I'd just have a simple phone and an iPod touch.
This is true. Google is an internet services provider. Unfortunately, they also make a browser now, which means they can pretend to be a browser maker when giving their opinions to W3C on the video tag.
Likewise, it is true for Apple, who are a hardware/online retail company. Again, they also happen to make a browser, so can again pretend to be a browser company when talking to W3C.
How are Apple and Google "pretending" to be "browser companies"? They actually make real browsers. Chrome and Safari aren't artifices intended to meet some sort of technicality for influence over the W3C.
I said "threatened with lawsuits". H.264 is a patented format with participation fees that websites who use H.264 are expected to pay.
I don't think this is true. The encoders need to be licensed, and maybe the decoders do, but simply hosting an h.264 file does not require a license.
Firefox doesn't ship with Flash support, either, yet it works just fine.
If there's some reason (which is *entirely* of Mozilla's own choosing) that they can't include native h.264 support, or use system APIs, they can simply let the user download a plugin (easily created using the existing x.264 project), problem solved.
Google is putting Firefox in a position where it is either encumbered with patents therefore losing the status of "pure" open source project
'"Pure" open source project'?
1. See Iceweasel
2. They have financial deals with Google for search placement and default home page[*]
3. See the multitudes of other '"pure" open source projects' which support h.264
4. Pass h.264 on to the OS or some other plugin. It's not like Firefox doesn't already make use of close-source OS functions.
So I really don't know what this is all about except for Firefox attempting to *push* the technologically inferior theora codec for political reasons. While I appreciate the anti-patent stance, I'm perfectly fine with using h.264 and AAC. I want my media to be high quality, not ideologically pure.
[*] I'm not opposed to this deal, just that it doesn't exactly shout "pure open source ideology". It shows a certain comfort level with pragmatic compromises, such as accepting money in exchange for a default search engine and home page.
On a social analogy, is a thief always a thief, even when he shows remorse and changed his ways?
The thief will have always done the thieving, regardless of what he does later in life. In order for the thief to regain trust, he'll have to admit to that. Has Microsoft done that?
Microsoft hasn't "shown remorse and changed their ways". And this is all assuming one accepts the premise that corporations deserve forgiveness or a second chance in the same way a human does. I'm not convinced they do. Not so readily or so easily, at least.
Hey moderator: WHOOOOSH! ^^
Well, to be fair, you *are* a hurricane...
If it's based on Wine, why not just put their energy into Wine?
Because it's *their* energy to put where they want.
I wasn't referring to a distinction between hardware and software.
Apple is a great company, but they are not large enough to build their own search engine, advertising platform, and back end services to run them.
Apple is one of the largest companies on the planet. If they don't have what it takes to build a search engine, it's not for want of size or cash. It's only because search is so entirely incongruous with the rest of the company.
This is very much, in fact, like search is for Microsoft. The single most important factor in MS's ability to compete in search at all is the fact that Bing is the default search engine in the default web browser in Windows (as well as a few other partners, like Qwest's relationship with MSN (I imagine it will be moving over to Windows Live if it hasn't already)). I'm not saying Bing is bad, I'm just describing how it fits within the market.
but if Apple is going to be in bed with a competitor, its much better that it be Microsoft rather than google
This is pretty much *never* true, unless you mean it's better for MS. Few companies partner with MS unscathed, and aside from PC makers and Xbox partners, I can think of none. Perhaps Ford?
I'd hate to work for a company that was always threatening me. I feel bad for the people who work there... what a miserable way to live.
I'm unaware of any company which openly allows their employees to disclose trade secrets, with nary a threat of termination or disciplinary action.
I for one am sick of hearing about the apple tablet... either come out with it or dont but stop the crap
I think it's safe to assume that there are a lot of people who are not sick of hearing about the Apple tablet. I also do not think your command to for Slashdot to stop posting about it is going to be heeded.
Do you also post to auto sites asking them to stop posting about new car rumors? Or gaming sites to stop posting about SC2 or whatever? Would doing so even make any sense?
Vaporware?
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
This guy should distribute this as a VirtualBox machine or so.
Why? Isn't Chrome available for your OS? ChromiumOS in a vm seems like a lot of work to just run Chrome/Chromium.
Do I really want to *boot* into something that is just a browser without an OS and without apps?
Apparently not. Fortunately, no one is demanding you do so.
Gimme something to use and to play with on the side and I may have fun with it.
Just run Chrome. If you find playing around with alternative OSs (including something as limited as ChromiumOS), I'm sure you won't have trouble installing it in virtualbox yourself.
Pulling my teeth would be more fun than booting into Chrome on a real machine, sorry.
No need to be sorry. Chromium isn't meant for "real machines" (whatever that really means anyway). It's directed at netbooks. I'm unaware of anyone suggesting it's suitable for your "real machine".
Those "artificial" limitations are the whole *point* of ChromeOS. If you remove them, what do you have except yet another Linux distro?
The point here is that if you want a slimmed down, web-centric/web-only OS, there's no better choice than ChromeOS. If you want a Google Linux, just pick a distro and install Chrome.
It sounds like this won't appeal to you, fair enough. But it's a mistake to think that it needs fixing, and further, that that fixing is to simply make it into a clone of your OS of choice.
Personally, I think ChromeOS would make for a great netbook OS. The origin of the term "netbook" goes a long way in explaining why.
ChromeOS is a web dumb terminal. To bypass the built-in restrictions (they aren't "artificial", they are a integral to the design) would be just as misguided as turning an old-fashioned dumb terminal into a standalone workstation. There are already better solutions for that.
I find it decidedly scary that people are so happy to conduct critical (e.g. banking) transactions via a device which by its highly stealable nature (if nothing else) is so obviously not secure.
Stealing a phone does not also steal your bank password. And the iPhone (for example) has end-user secure remote wipe functionality.
I have no objection to being able to call up the occasional map or wikipedia entry on my phone (which I can), but I prefer to use a "real" computer, since I don't care for straining my comparatively poor eyesight on handheld devices or dealing with poor text entry methods.
Yes, poor eyesight, or lack of hands, etc., tend to make using a phone difficult. But for everyone else...?
I have yet to be convinced that the "there's an app for that" gimmmick will stand the test of time.
Oh, that's adorable. Over 3 billion apps have been downloaded for the iPhone (both paid and free, but this does not count updates). I don't foresee a mechanism whereby people will suddenly decide that they no longer want portable apps. Well, unless our eyes all go at once or something.
The process could be really fast or not-so-fast! We don't really know exactly yet, though, so it's somewhere around either fast or not fast. Full story at 11.
It's worse than that. This hemming and hawing is based on the misguided notion that we need to know how things are going to turn out before rolling it out. Nobody knew how the Internet itself would evolve. Sometimes you have to just put things out there, and let the people work it out. Even worse-case, it's not like this is going to cause the Internet to collapse, or cause a spike in road deaths or armed robberies or anything. At worst, it might mean there are even more domains that no one uses, and at best, it means a much more vibrant internet.
But really, TLD's need to go away altogether. Or at least be supplemented with a namespace that is more open. Why can't Apple have an actual .mac, or MS a .ms. Or even .apple, .microsoft, .sony, etc.? It's not like the .com means anything much more than "this is the end of the domain name" anymore anyways. And .net just means, "I was too late to buy .com", and .org just means "I don't want to sound like a business and/or I was too late for .com". .info? .biz? Lame attempts to guess at what people want. Just let them *buy* what they want. This is a *much* better way to solve something as complex as the Internet.
No one has gone through the effort because, despite what you may believe, the great masses don't care if their sound system can play to another computer since PulseAudio still makes doing so tricky.
I'm at a loss to find anything in your post that is correct.
Here are some highlights of where you've got things wrong:
- Someone *has* gone through the effort. One such example is called Airfoil.
- You clearly don't have a handle on what I "may believe".
- No one said anything about the "great masses".
- They *do* want something like this, hence the AirPort Express.
- But even if they didn't, that doesn't preclude someone from creating such a system (AirFoil, Roku, PS3 and Xbox360 streaming).
Philosophically, your main errors are that just because something isn't built-into Windows, that doesn't mean people don't want to do it, and just because something's "tricky" on Linux, that doesn't mean it has to be tricky elsewhere.
Ultimately the response to that is the same as the response to people who claim a Linux feature doesn't work.
And ultimately the response to *that* is the *same* as the response Windows users give...
The Windows driver API is open and you can code against it, why not write your own playback device that outputs over the network?
Which is, why go through all that effort when that feature already works on Linux?
You're muddling the distinction between the concept of exact measurement with exact model.
No i'm not, because I'm not addressing it. I was addressing the notion that "That's one funny thing about math, "close doesn't count", until you get to a certain advanced point. Then we say "this works for all but a few special cases... close enough."".
When we say that Newtonian physics is "about" right
Which isn't exact, it's just close. Which is exactly my point. *I'm* the one saying close, or "about right" is perfectly fine. *I'm* the one debunking the notion that things have to be exact. You are replying to the wrong person.
When we say that the speed of light is "about" 3 x 10^8 m/s, everybody but the most retarded physics students know that it's not exactly that, but that that number is close enough that it's usable.
Hmm... "Close enough". That sounds familiar. OH YEAH, THAT'S EXACTLY MY POINT! Close enough *does* count.
All you've done is reiterated my point.
Don't mix these two concepts, a model can be 100% accurate even if we are incapable of measuring fully, and vice versa.
No, it can't. Not under present understanding of the universe, at least. Specifically, it is presently *absolutely impossible* to devise a model that will perfectly describe the path of even a single photon through empty space. No model can tell you when the photon is going to just randomly decide to jump halfway across the universe.
But more to the point (and other parts of your post show you understand this, making your closing statement even more strange than it inherently is), science doesn't deal with exact theories or exact models. Well, the theories and models themselves are exact, but they don't have to exactly match the real world, they just have to approximate it better than the previous model, or they can even be less accurate, but simpler (like using Newtonian physics, which are less exact than Relativity, but on the scales we deal with them, the error is not important).
Rather than post completely uninformed comments on the subject, leave that to people in the field.
A million times, NO. Science is for everyone. That doesn't mean everyone is right, or everyone should be listened to, but *EVERYONE* has the right to talk about science, and even be wrong about science.
If instead, everyone was posting comments on the paper as part of the peer-review process, I'd agree. We want to weed out the comments there to those that sufficiently grasp the concepts involved. Hence the term, peer-review. Slashdot is not, however, peer-review. It's a news and social site for nerds. As such, it's entirely out of line to tell people not to comment on a story unless they are "people in the field".
Indeed. The truth is, it is all a dream. My dream, in fact. It all emanates from me, I designed it all based on what you know as mathematical principles.
That assertion can also never be proved wrong, and it is mathematically sound.
Well, we can scan your brain to see if you are dreaming, or through more permanent means, ensure you aren't dreaming, which would fairly conclusively debunk your assertion.