So he can get one device with no cables or router that does everything he needs and is easy to learn.
Sorry, but he can't. The iPads require connecting to iTunes before they'll do anything. It's the first thing they prompt you to do out of the box. Also, if there are ever any problems that require an update, a restore, or anything else, he'll also need that computer with iTunes to have any hope of fixing them.
The form factor and design of the hardware was beautiful, the remote was fantastic to use and to show off, and the player fit in my bag while the remote clipped to my bag's strap. Watching iPod users dig out their players and hold the (seemingly) giant rectangle in front of their face for a couple minutes to pick new music seemed ridiculous at the time.
That's something I really miss about the 3rd generation (possibly as late as 4th) iPods -- the included remote control. It was just a little wired thing, but it was vastly superior to the total lack of remote that plagued several generations of iPods, and the poor remote control usable with the current generations. My 3rd gen iPod was originally used when I was back in a private school with uniforms, and it clipped perfectly to the blazer or vest I wore. Out of the way, yet usable without digging out the iPod.
What, a 15% increase in focus on actual outcomes rather imputed intent based on extremely abstract (and in fact utterly impossible) hypothetical situations? What would that be useful for, exactly?
One nice thing about bacon, particularly if you like it crispy, is that you can cook a good chunk of the fat out of it. Sure, it's not great for you, but crispy bacon in moderation isn't too bad.
The attitude of the original poster ("Soon nobody will want to come to America") is just wishful thinking at best, truly ignorant at worst.
It is hyperbole. Not wishful thinking, and certainly not ignorant.
There are a significant number of people who have made the conscious decision to either never visit the USA again, or to never visit it in the first place. I'm one of them. While "nobody" wanting to visit is not a likely outcome, it is not blatantly false -- just an overestimation of numbers, seemingly for dramatic effect.
I always thought the point of being nostalgic about the 'old usenet' was that the conversations could actually be worth having. The 'new usenet' strikes me as far more similar to 4chan and other sites of that ilk, particularly considering the often-similar content of those sites and alt.binaries.*.
The only time I notice it is if I need to go back/forward several pages, then the slow refresh is frustrating since you have to wait for a page to display before you can move to the next one.
On some readers (definitely Sony, dunno about others), press-and-hold on the back/forward buttons will make it start going through pages without doing a full page refresh.
So anyone who promotes any proprietary software from a major company (since all of them have patents on anything they can), is a lover of software patents and Microsoft apologist?
Sorry, but that's insane. Some of us use or suggest others use proprietary software because it can be the best tool for the job. Practicality actually does trump idealism in some cases for some people. Shocking, I know.
I like how Apple's handling OSX and their computer lines right now -- I agree with everything you've said there.
As far as seeing the iPods and iPhones as consumer electronic devices, I can accept the traditional iPods (classic, nano, shuffle) being locked down to a fair extent. They act and are marketed solely as consumer devices -- essentially, "Look, these play all your music/media on-the-go!". The iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads, however, are being marketed as some form of computer -- for example, "There's an app for that.".
You're absolutely right that Apple has gotten more controlling and demanding over the past few years -- specifically, it seems to be since the introduction of the iPhone (or, more conservatively, since the introduction of the App Store). Also, I'm fairly certain Steve Jobs himself has said or implied that Apple is more of a "mobile device company" than a "computer" company now. One of the few good things to come out of that declaration seems to be Jobs leaving the computer/OSX divisions a little more up to their own devices, and only heavily meddling in the 'mobile device' production.
I do currently have an iPod touch, admittedly, but I don't believe I'll be buying another one. I'll likely either be going for one of the classic iPods or something entirely non-Apple, next time I need a new MP3 player. Or just a larger micro-SD card for my phone, with how (surprisingly) well it plays music.
Apple supports Theora in exactly the same way Firefox (in theory, I think) supports H.264. Plugins.
Download and install the XiphQT components, and HTML5 ogg/vorbis/theora video will play perfectly in Safari. If the installation doesn't seem user-friendly enough to you (involves dragging and dropping to a system folder), I imagine anyone could package up a neater, easier-to-use version if there was motivation.
I've seen some articles and forum posts written by self-proclaimed audiophiles (see HydrogenAudio for some of it) that indicates a significant number of people, no matter how high quality the equipment they're using, have trouble differentiating between anything over about 192kbps Vorbis/AAC (those two being higher quality for the same bitrate than MP3). 256kbps AAC should, in theory, be all you'll need until mainstream music goes for surround sound.
It's also amusing to see people from 2004 talking about "probably having a 1TB iPod in five years".
We'll see in a few years. If copyright terms are extended around 2015-2018 (2018 being when works from post-1923 should start expiring again), then the pattern will definitely hold true.
I do understand the difference between the three quite well. The references to patents and trademarks were intended to be in passing, as they have had lobbying groups pushing for changes in the past, very similarly to how copyright law has.
I also realised that sentence worked poorly shortly after I posted it. The parentheses should start with "major copyright extensions..." Does that make you feel better?
Standard IANAL disclaimer. Just an interested amateur.
Copyright is life of the author + 70 OR 95 years from publication OR 120 years from creation (in the United States). Life+70 is only used in some cases (non-anonymous, non-pseudonymous, non-work-for-hire) -- most works are under the flat 95 years from publication (or 120 years from creation for anything not published). But other countries have different laws -- Canada is life+50 instead of life+70, for example.
What the GP was referring to, however, was how essentially nothing becomes public domain these days, due to *constant* lobbying by large corporations to extend and restrict copyright, patents, and trademarks (major extensions in the USA happening in 1976 and 1998 -- life+50/70 in 1976 and life+70/95 in 1998, both of these commonly believed to have been passed specifically as a result of Disney lobbying to 'protect' Mickey Mouse). That and the complexities of copyright law and revisions to those laws that make it nearly impossible to tell if a work is covered by copyright or not unless it was published prior to 1923 (which means it's definitely not).
Once past 1923 (but before 1976), it depends on if a work was ever registered and renewed or not -- and by god, there are massive disputes over many works from this period (were they registered, who renewed them, were they renewed, who had the rights to renew them at the time, etc...). If published, registered, and renewed, it's 95 years from publication for any works between 1923 and 1976. If not published (but registered and renewed -- I don't think many, if any, works fit this), it would be 120 years. Once you hit 1976, it depends on if the work is covered under the life+70 or the flat 95. If the work has a non-anonymous, non-psuedonoymous author, and was not a work-for-hire, then you have to find out the date of death for the original author and add 70 years. If the work was anonymous, pseudonymous, or a work-for-hire, then the flat 95 applies. Unless that work was unpublished, in which case it's 120 years instead (and don't ask me what the barrier for 'publication' is, I have no idea). I also have no idea which does/doesn't apply if there are multiple authors or anything else vaguely unusual about a work's authorship.
Anyway, this applies for works in the USA. International copyright probably gets even more nasty with the varied treaties/extradition/etc. Basic rule of thumb, currently, is that the USA has the longest copyright and anything before 1923 is therefore safe. Anything after that, you'd need to do a lot of research on who does/doesn't hold the rights. Or take a gamble that no one will care/notice -- but that's probably not smart.
Oh yes, it definitely hits a large number of false positives, presumably also 'fixed' within 30 seconds. For every one that goes reported (including the hundreds or thousands of archived reports), there must be many that go unreported, by 'non-Wikipedians' who edited a page with an error, and then went on their way. Or by people who didn't stick around to 'watch' that their edit doesn't get 'fixed' by an automated process...
It's useful because now I have a device with a new function -- warding off the 'cell phones cause cancer!' crazies. Just wave my 9700 at them, and they'll run screaming for their tinfoil-insulated houses (which keep out the pain-causing wifi signals, of course).
It's a little weird that the low-end iPod touches, all the Nanos/shuffles, and the low-end iPads have less storage space than the first iPod I ever owned -- a third generation plain old iPod (back when 'plain old iPod' was the only sort), with a 20GB hard drive.
Unfortunately, Apple is just targeting the 'adult' content. Not the spammy-content.
If they were going after all variants of this sort of 'app spam' equally, I imagine there'd be much less controversy over it from the consumers and non-spammy developers.
I've actually had a red liquid sensor turn back to white on one occasion... No idea why. I even got the device (an iPod touch) replaced under warranty some months after the sensor was originally tripped (for a probably, though I can't say for certain, unrelated problem with the speaker) -- they even looked straight down the headphone port (after I'd checked it myself, verifying that I'd have an easy time getting it fixed/replaced).
A better way for the browsers to make things like this secure would be to remember the first SSL they received from the site and notify once that changes - similar to SSH.
Good idea, but it won't help much, overall. You'd either have users complaining that "My favourite site just broke!" (when it didn't) every one to three years (on average -- when the current certificate expires), or you'd have to implement it in such an unobtrusive way that the average user wouldn't even notice.
If it did what Firefox currently does for an invalid certificate, for example, it would confuse and scare users to have them load up PayPal this coming April 1st (yes, that's really the expiry date for their current certificate) and suddenly be presented by the massive, refuses-to-load-the-page warning message. Even a simple dialog box (like many other browsers) wouldn't help much -- the user would either be scared/confused, or would just get (re)trained to click through all warnings.
A slightly better (but still not very good) alternative would be to remember the root certificate in the certificate chain for each site (instead of the SSL certificate for the site itself), and only notify when that changes. It still would present problems if a website ever changed certificate providers, however, going straight back to "My favourite site just broke!".
All in all, the best option is probably still just to pick your SSL roots carefully. I can't comment on whether this Chinese root certificate is safe to include or not, since I'm not very familiar with the situation.
Slashdot Mirror
Good luck, however, reading your Kindle in the dark.
I know, right? How worthless this book reader is, not even emulating the backlighting features of paper.
(PS: Backlit screen in a dark room equals eye strain, particularly a small screen at a close distance for a significant length of time.)
So he can get one device with no cables or router that does everything he needs and is easy to learn.
Sorry, but he can't. The iPads require connecting to iTunes before they'll do anything. It's the first thing they prompt you to do out of the box. Also, if there are ever any problems that require an update, a restore, or anything else, he'll also need that computer with iTunes to have any hope of fixing them.
The form factor and design of the hardware was beautiful, the remote was fantastic to use and to show off, and the player fit in my bag while the remote clipped to my bag's strap. Watching iPod users dig out their players and hold the (seemingly) giant rectangle in front of their face for a couple minutes to pick new music seemed ridiculous at the time.
That's something I really miss about the 3rd generation (possibly as late as 4th) iPods -- the included remote control. It was just a little wired thing, but it was vastly superior to the total lack of remote that plagued several generations of iPods, and the poor remote control usable with the current generations. My 3rd gen iPod was originally used when I was back in a private school with uniforms, and it clipped perfectly to the blazer or vest I wore. Out of the way, yet usable without digging out the iPod.
What, a 15% increase in focus on actual outcomes rather imputed intent based on extremely abstract (and in fact utterly impossible) hypothetical situations? What would that be useful for, exactly?
Soldiers.
One nice thing about bacon, particularly if you like it crispy, is that you can cook a good chunk of the fat out of it. Sure, it's not great for you, but crispy bacon in moderation isn't too bad.
Oh yeah, he'll just get that rainstorm that knocked out his internet to give him a warning next time.
The attitude of the original poster ("Soon nobody will want to come to America") is just wishful thinking at best, truly ignorant at worst.
It is hyperbole. Not wishful thinking, and certainly not ignorant.
There are a significant number of people who have made the conscious decision to either never visit the USA again, or to never visit it in the first place. I'm one of them. While "nobody" wanting to visit is not a likely outcome, it is not blatantly false -- just an overestimation of numbers, seemingly for dramatic effect.
what else is left that's like the old usenet?
I always thought the point of being nostalgic about the 'old usenet' was that the conversations could actually be worth having. The 'new usenet' strikes me as far more similar to 4chan and other sites of that ilk, particularly considering the often-similar content of those sites and alt.binaries.*.
But maybe the next one is real.
The only time I notice it is if I need to go back/forward several pages, then the slow refresh is frustrating since you have to wait for a page to display before you can move to the next one.
On some readers (definitely Sony, dunno about others), press-and-hold on the back/forward buttons will make it start going through pages without doing a full page refresh.
The guy installed a CPU [...]
Worse than that, he just had to install a heatsink/fan assembly. The CPU was already in there...
So anyone who promotes any proprietary software from a major company (since all of them have patents on anything they can), is a lover of software patents and Microsoft apologist?
Sorry, but that's insane. Some of us use or suggest others use proprietary software because it can be the best tool for the job. Practicality actually does trump idealism in some cases for some people. Shocking, I know.
I like how Apple's handling OSX and their computer lines right now -- I agree with everything you've said there.
As far as seeing the iPods and iPhones as consumer electronic devices, I can accept the traditional iPods (classic, nano, shuffle) being locked down to a fair extent. They act and are marketed solely as consumer devices -- essentially, "Look, these play all your music/media on-the-go!". The iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads, however, are being marketed as some form of computer -- for example, "There's an app for that.".
You're absolutely right that Apple has gotten more controlling and demanding over the past few years -- specifically, it seems to be since the introduction of the iPhone (or, more conservatively, since the introduction of the App Store). Also, I'm fairly certain Steve Jobs himself has said or implied that Apple is more of a "mobile device company" than a "computer" company now. One of the few good things to come out of that declaration seems to be Jobs leaving the computer/OSX divisions a little more up to their own devices, and only heavily meddling in the 'mobile device' production.
I do currently have an iPod touch, admittedly, but I don't believe I'll be buying another one. I'll likely either be going for one of the classic iPods or something entirely non-Apple, next time I need a new MP3 player. Or just a larger micro-SD card for my phone, with how (surprisingly) well it plays music.
Apple supports Theora in exactly the same way Firefox (in theory, I think) supports H.264. Plugins.
Download and install the XiphQT components, and HTML5 ogg/vorbis/theora video will play perfectly in Safari. If the installation doesn't seem user-friendly enough to you (involves dragging and dropping to a system folder), I imagine anyone could package up a neater, easier-to-use version if there was motivation.
I've seen some articles and forum posts written by self-proclaimed audiophiles (see HydrogenAudio for some of it) that indicates a significant number of people, no matter how high quality the equipment they're using, have trouble differentiating between anything over about 192kbps Vorbis/AAC (those two being higher quality for the same bitrate than MP3). 256kbps AAC should, in theory, be all you'll need until mainstream music goes for surround sound.
It's also amusing to see people from 2004 talking about "probably having a 1TB iPod in five years".
We'll see in a few years. If copyright terms are extended around 2015-2018 (2018 being when works from post-1923 should start expiring again), then the pattern will definitely hold true.
I do understand the difference between the three quite well. The references to patents and trademarks were intended to be in passing, as they have had lobbying groups pushing for changes in the past, very similarly to how copyright law has.
I also realised that sentence worked poorly shortly after I posted it. The parentheses should start with "major copyright extensions..." Does that make you feel better?
Standard IANAL disclaimer. Just an interested amateur.
Copyright is life of the author + 70 OR 95 years from publication OR 120 years from creation (in the United States). Life+70 is only used in some cases (non-anonymous, non-pseudonymous, non-work-for-hire) -- most works are under the flat 95 years from publication (or 120 years from creation for anything not published). But other countries have different laws -- Canada is life+50 instead of life+70, for example.
What the GP was referring to, however, was how essentially nothing becomes public domain these days, due to *constant* lobbying by large corporations to extend and restrict copyright, patents, and trademarks (major extensions in the USA happening in 1976 and 1998 -- life+50/70 in 1976 and life+70/95 in 1998, both of these commonly believed to have been passed specifically as a result of Disney lobbying to 'protect' Mickey Mouse). That and the complexities of copyright law and revisions to those laws that make it nearly impossible to tell if a work is covered by copyright or not unless it was published prior to 1923 (which means it's definitely not).
Once past 1923 (but before 1976), it depends on if a work was ever registered and renewed or not -- and by god, there are massive disputes over many works from this period (were they registered, who renewed them, were they renewed, who had the rights to renew them at the time, etc...). If published, registered, and renewed, it's 95 years from publication for any works between 1923 and 1976. If not published (but registered and renewed -- I don't think many, if any, works fit this), it would be 120 years. Once you hit 1976, it depends on if the work is covered under the life+70 or the flat 95. If the work has a non-anonymous, non-psuedonoymous author, and was not a work-for-hire, then you have to find out the date of death for the original author and add 70 years. If the work was anonymous, pseudonymous, or a work-for-hire, then the flat 95 applies. Unless that work was unpublished, in which case it's 120 years instead (and don't ask me what the barrier for 'publication' is, I have no idea). I also have no idea which does/doesn't apply if there are multiple authors or anything else vaguely unusual about a work's authorship.
Anyway, this applies for works in the USA. International copyright probably gets even more nasty with the varied treaties/extradition/etc. Basic rule of thumb, currently, is that the USA has the longest copyright and anything before 1923 is therefore safe. Anything after that, you'd need to do a lot of research on who does/doesn't hold the rights. Or take a gamble that no one will care/notice -- but that's probably not smart.
Oh yes, it definitely hits a large number of false positives, presumably also 'fixed' within 30 seconds. For every one that goes reported (including the hundreds or thousands of archived reports), there must be many that go unreported, by 'non-Wikipedians' who edited a page with an error, and then went on their way. Or by people who didn't stick around to 'watch' that their edit doesn't get 'fixed' by an automated process...
I'm assuming it's also known to revert good edits in under 30 seconds?
Just thinking out loud here, but is raw speed of reversion really what should be bragged about, as opposed to accuracy?
It's useful because now I have a device with a new function -- warding off the 'cell phones cause cancer!' crazies. Just wave my 9700 at them, and they'll run screaming for their tinfoil-insulated houses (which keep out the pain-causing wifi signals, of course).
Less space than a nomad too.
In the base models, yes, actually.
It's a little weird that the low-end iPod touches, all the Nanos/shuffles, and the low-end iPads have less storage space than the first iPod I ever owned -- a third generation plain old iPod (back when 'plain old iPod' was the only sort), with a 20GB hard drive.
Unfortunately, Apple is just targeting the 'adult' content. Not the spammy-content.
If they were going after all variants of this sort of 'app spam' equally, I imagine there'd be much less controversy over it from the consumers and non-spammy developers.
I've actually had a red liquid sensor turn back to white on one occasion... No idea why. I even got the device (an iPod touch) replaced under warranty some months after the sensor was originally tripped (for a probably, though I can't say for certain, unrelated problem with the speaker) -- they even looked straight down the headphone port (after I'd checked it myself, verifying that I'd have an easy time getting it fixed/replaced).
A better way for the browsers to make things like this secure would be to remember the first SSL they received from the site and notify once that changes - similar to SSH.
Good idea, but it won't help much, overall. You'd either have users complaining that "My favourite site just broke!" (when it didn't) every one to three years (on average -- when the current certificate expires), or you'd have to implement it in such an unobtrusive way that the average user wouldn't even notice.
If it did what Firefox currently does for an invalid certificate, for example, it would confuse and scare users to have them load up PayPal this coming April 1st (yes, that's really the expiry date for their current certificate) and suddenly be presented by the massive, refuses-to-load-the-page warning message. Even a simple dialog box (like many other browsers) wouldn't help much -- the user would either be scared/confused, or would just get (re)trained to click through all warnings.
A slightly better (but still not very good) alternative would be to remember the root certificate in the certificate chain for each site (instead of the SSL certificate for the site itself), and only notify when that changes. It still would present problems if a website ever changed certificate providers, however, going straight back to "My favourite site just broke!".
All in all, the best option is probably still just to pick your SSL roots carefully. I can't comment on whether this Chinese root certificate is safe to include or not, since I'm not very familiar with the situation.