And I'd really hate to tell you how many good books you haven't read for just that reason.
With the self publishing opportunities currently in place, why not? I've stumbled upon a couple of excellent self published reads on Amazon.
If I had taken the time to write a novel, I sure as heck would want people to read it. Even if I can only reach a potential 6% of the market by self publishing for the Kindle, that's still a whole lot of people.
As long as most people can say "I love HTC phones," and not realize they are in fact talking about a brand that sells phones with a handful of different operating systems, Android isn't going to be a label to dilute.
And that's how most of my acquaintances are. They'll tell me how happy they are with a new phone, not having any idea what OS it runs. It's just too new a concept for them.
If they see a cool feature on a friend's phone, they'll buy _that model_, they won't figure out what OS it runs and start looking for phones with that OS expecting it to have that particular feature.
Personally, I'm with the "it's all good" brigade on this one. I don't want "Android" to be the new "iPhone", where you have exactly 1 choice and virtually no ability to customize. I want carriers to be able to develop stuff like HTC Sense. I think it's a strength, not a weakness.
Where I live 400Mbit is about $1000/month (that has to be adjusted for the fact that the price and salary levels here are generally a fair bit above the US, but still). The 1000 Mbit option is "call us for price". I think you'd better be sitting down if making that call for a quote.
The only consolation is that we don't oversubscribe over here. You get what you pay for. But boy, do you ever pay.
Based on the results of this initial test, we’ll evaluate rolling out the platform more broadly to our partners worldwide.
Note how it states "partners" not "consumers" or "users". It doesn't look to me like there's any immediate intent to make this a generally available streaming service.
If I'm wrong... it may never be safe to visit YouTube again.
Bear in mind that the post I replied to talked about needing three new batteries in as many years, with the batteries being down to lasting 5 minutes (this happened to the first and only iPod I ever bought, incidentally). Compared to that, retaining 80% after three years is freakin' stellar.
The original endurance of that PMP, when playing video, was 6 hours. At 80% capacity that's more in the area of 5 hours.
Whether that's noticeable or not is down to usage pattern. If I routinely used it for a 5.5 hour flight, it would be very noticeable. I don't, so the difference between 5 and 6 hours is not noticeable to me. It's still "more than I need".
At this rate it'll still be usable to me in another three years time. As far as batteries go, that's pretty decent in my book. We all know they ain't gonna last forever.
I have a 3 year old laptop with no discernible difference in battery duration between now and when I bought it. Not saying there is none, from what I know there's no real way there couldn't be degradation, but it isn't yet enough to be noticeable on the odd occasion I do allow it to run until empty on battery.
I have a netbook that's a couple of years old, same thing. No discernible change in battery longevity.
I have an MP3/video player, bought in November 2007, no noticeable degradation. On a hunch, I'd say I'm getting at least 80% of original capacity.
I have a mobile phone that's so old the plastic bits on the battery that kept it attacked to the phone finally broke off. The battery still held a charge that lasted for days (it's the phone I used to bring with if I wanted to be reachable for more than a day, but not wanting to bring a charger along).
It seems to me that what's been killing laptop batteries is heat more than anything. Previously they kept on trickle charging. Today they reach 100%, then allow the battery to drop to 90% or so before topping it up again in case you want to pick it up and go. There's no constant trickle charge keeping the battery warm and thus wearing it down.
The most annoying thing about laptop and cellphone batteries, is that by the time you want or need a replacement, the bloody things can't be bought anymore. Try finding an original battery for a 4 year old phone, I dare you. On the one hand I realize that it's probably not profitable to keep producing batteries for old items like that, insufficient market, but still. Considering what we know of li-ion degradation over time, it's little use hoarding a few at the same time you buy the laptop/phone either.
and I am updated about what new friends my friends have. Why on earth should I know this? It is utterly pointless
No it isn't. Many of my FB friends were added by noticing a common friend via one of my existing ones. Apart from an original handful, that's actually how almost all of mine got added.
The Places functionality seems like a non-issue. Looks like you'll only check in at a location if you click the "Check In" button within a separate area of the application. In other words, you have _so_ opted in. There is an option for others to check-in on your behalf, and it has an ambiguous default setting (not enabled or disabled, but select one). But apart from that the default settings seem fine to me.
Wave has existed for three months or so. That's roughly how long it's been fast, stable and available to everyone. Just what did Google expect to happen in such a short time?
Wave needed at least another _year_ or two to gain traction, not a few weeks. I somehow suspect the cost of running it was too high compared to any perceived way of monetizing it in the short term, and they pulled the plug.
I suppose the good thing about it is that nobody's had time to become too dependent on it just yet. We do use it where I work, but so far we've held off on making ourselves dependent on it; wise choice it would seem. We did have plans in that direction though, wrongly assuming that since Google added it to Apps it was here to stay.
I for one will miss it quite a lot, it made some activities so much easier than the alternatives, but I'll live.
I'm not sure why the iPad is ever talked about in the context of e-book reading. It's a tablet, not a book reader. Sure, you _can_ read books on it, just like you _can_ read books on your phone. Doesn't mean they're any good at it.
Even if the iPad could get a month or more out of a single charge like the Kindle does (with wireless off), it doesn't make up for its enormous size/weight and horrible (for e-book reading) display.
I don't think there can be much doubt about convergence in this area. It looks pretty inevitable. Display tech will improve, tablets will shrink, and that's all there's to it. But, for now, they're different worlds. And I think it'll stay that way for a few more years at least.
Personally, I think the convenience of global wireless access to new books is worth the price premium, but I also think launching a lower cost model with just WiFi was good business sense. There's a market for both.
Same thing goes for the DX versus the regular size Kindle. I already own a DX, but have a Kindle3 preordered. The DX is fantastic around the house, but I want a smaller one for when I need to carry it around. I do wish they had done even more to cut the size (those damn keys still appear to take up way too much space), but they did enough to finally warrant the purchase in my case.
As for the Kindle as tablet... I dunno. Personally, I don't see _why_. E-readers and tablets are separate devices in my mind. But once they can squeeze enough processing grunt into the form factor of a Kindle, and add responsive color screens without glare or killing battery life, I don't see any way around feature creep.
One can always hope that with half of Windows 7 installations being 64 bit, malicious software readily bypassing the protection will force Microsoft to finally implement a sufficient API for sandboxing.
Considering how trivial it is to implement the installer fetching the decryption key from a server, I don't follow your logic. We're barely talking a few lines of code, and nothing the installer could do would make the decryption key pop up on that server any sooner. Simple to implement, and unbreakable for all practical purposes.
I believe Valve has done it like this for years for their own titles, and I can't remember any of those preloads being cracked (note that I'm talking about the preloads made available through Steam, not leaked press copies and what not).
No. But I do remember 205 895 0028. I couldn't remember precisely what it was, but a Google sorted that (NASA Spacelink). Can't believe I still remember that. Must be more than 15 years since I last dialed that number. And, international rates being what they were, I didn't use it all that often back then either.
Google has demonstrated that, beyond Froyo, they will add the ability to browse the Android Market and have your phone to install a given app right from the Market by triggering an intent via push message.
How is it shocking that this intent exists prior to the functionality being fully implemented?
I didn't intend to evangelize or start a Wave vs. insert-other-technology-here competition. Log on and test it out if you're curious. It's there, it's free, and should be of enough interest for any self respecting geek to spend at least an hour or two fiddling with.
If you can't see a reason for using it, you either don't understand how it works, or don't have a use for it. Both are valid reasons.
I use it a lot at work myself, and absolutely love it. For example, instead of sending an email to 5 people, each of them replying with different bits of information that I then have to collate myself, we use a wave.
Instead of sending the boss email updates on critical on-going tasks, I keep them in a wave the boss has access to and update that as I go along.
Perhaps this varies by region. I tend to get plenty of "proper" review sites in the top 10 results. More than enough to get the information I need, at least.
As the web gets older and older there is more and more out of date information that I have to dig through.
Google does have an option to filter by age. But I'm a bit puzzled by your examples. Reviews, code samples, error messages, none of which seem to me to be terribly date dependent.
Reviews are typically for a specific product or version of product. Code snippets don't expire on date. Neither do error messages.
What can I say, I don't share your experience. Google typically hands me highly relevant results. It's very rare I need to venture past the first result page.
I'm sorry, you're way past my "too anal for there to be any point discussing with" threshold. Not to mention confrontational. I don't discuss religion either, for the same reason: It's a waste of everybody's time.
I feel no need to spend inordinate amounts of time in order to feel I've "won" an argument on the internet. So, congratulations, victory's all yours.
Slashdot Mirror
With the self publishing opportunities currently in place, why not? I've stumbled upon a couple of excellent self published reads on Amazon.
If I had taken the time to write a novel, I sure as heck would want people to read it. Even if I can only reach a potential 6% of the market by self publishing for the Kindle, that's still a whole lot of people.
Based on what do you come to the conclusion that the one discovering/disseminating the key, has used said knowledge to infringe on copyright?
As long as most people can say "I love HTC phones," and not realize they are in fact talking about a brand that sells phones with a handful of different operating systems, Android isn't going to be a label to dilute.
And that's how most of my acquaintances are. They'll tell me how happy they are with a new phone, not having any idea what OS it runs. It's just too new a concept for them.
If they see a cool feature on a friend's phone, they'll buy _that model_, they won't figure out what OS it runs and start looking for phones with that OS expecting it to have that particular feature.
Personally, I'm with the "it's all good" brigade on this one. I don't want "Android" to be the new "iPhone", where you have exactly 1 choice and virtually no ability to customize. I want carriers to be able to develop stuff like HTC Sense. I think it's a strength, not a weakness.
Where I live 400Mbit is about $1000/month (that has to be adjusted for the fact that the price and salary levels here are generally a fair bit above the US, but still). The 1000 Mbit option is "call us for price". I think you'd better be sitting down if making that call for a quote.
The only consolation is that we don't oversubscribe over here. You get what you pay for. But boy, do you ever pay.
Note how it states "partners" not "consumers" or "users". It doesn't look to me like there's any immediate intent to make this a generally available streaming service.
If I'm wrong... it may never be safe to visit YouTube again.
Bear in mind that the post I replied to talked about needing three new batteries in as many years, with the batteries being down to lasting 5 minutes (this happened to the first and only iPod I ever bought, incidentally). Compared to that, retaining 80% after three years is freakin' stellar.
The original endurance of that PMP, when playing video, was 6 hours. At 80% capacity that's more in the area of 5 hours.
Whether that's noticeable or not is down to usage pattern. If I routinely used it for a 5.5 hour flight, it would be very noticeable. I don't, so the difference between 5 and 6 hours is not noticeable to me. It's still "more than I need".
At this rate it'll still be usable to me in another three years time. As far as batteries go, that's pretty decent in my book. We all know they ain't gonna last forever.
I have a 3 year old laptop with no discernible difference in battery duration between now and when I bought it. Not saying there is none, from what I know there's no real way there couldn't be degradation, but it isn't yet enough to be noticeable on the odd occasion I do allow it to run until empty on battery.
I have a netbook that's a couple of years old, same thing. No discernible change in battery longevity.
I have an MP3/video player, bought in November 2007, no noticeable degradation. On a hunch, I'd say I'm getting at least 80% of original capacity.
I have a mobile phone that's so old the plastic bits on the battery that kept it attacked to the phone finally broke off. The battery still held a charge that lasted for days (it's the phone I used to bring with if I wanted to be reachable for more than a day, but not wanting to bring a charger along).
It seems to me that what's been killing laptop batteries is heat more than anything. Previously they kept on trickle charging. Today they reach 100%, then allow the battery to drop to 90% or so before topping it up again in case you want to pick it up and go. There's no constant trickle charge keeping the battery warm and thus wearing it down.
The most annoying thing about laptop and cellphone batteries, is that by the time you want or need a replacement, the bloody things can't be bought anymore. Try finding an original battery for a 4 year old phone, I dare you. On the one hand I realize that it's probably not profitable to keep producing batteries for old items like that, insufficient market, but still. Considering what we know of li-ion degradation over time, it's little use hoarding a few at the same time you buy the laptop/phone either.
No it isn't. Many of my FB friends were added by noticing a common friend via one of my existing ones. Apart from an original handful, that's actually how almost all of mine got added.
The Places functionality seems like a non-issue. Looks like you'll only check in at a location if you click the "Check In" button within a separate area of the application. In other words, you have _so_ opted in. There is an option for others to check-in on your behalf, and it has an ambiguous default setting (not enabled or disabled, but select one). But apart from that the default settings seem fine to me.
Wave has existed for three months or so. That's roughly how long it's been fast, stable and available to everyone. Just what did Google expect to happen in such a short time?
Wave needed at least another _year_ or two to gain traction, not a few weeks. I somehow suspect the cost of running it was too high compared to any perceived way of monetizing it in the short term, and they pulled the plug.
I suppose the good thing about it is that nobody's had time to become too dependent on it just yet. We do use it where I work, but so far we've held off on making ourselves dependent on it; wise choice it would seem. We did have plans in that direction though, wrongly assuming that since Google added it to Apps it was here to stay.
I for one will miss it quite a lot, it made some activities so much easier than the alternatives, but I'll live.
I'm not sure why the iPad is ever talked about in the context of e-book reading. It's a tablet, not a book reader. Sure, you _can_ read books on it, just like you _can_ read books on your phone. Doesn't mean they're any good at it.
Even if the iPad could get a month or more out of a single charge like the Kindle does (with wireless off), it doesn't make up for its enormous size/weight and horrible (for e-book reading) display.
I don't think there can be much doubt about convergence in this area. It looks pretty inevitable. Display tech will improve, tablets will shrink, and that's all there's to it. But, for now, they're different worlds. And I think it'll stay that way for a few more years at least.
Personally, I think the convenience of global wireless access to new books is worth the price premium, but I also think launching a lower cost model with just WiFi was good business sense. There's a market for both.
Same thing goes for the DX versus the regular size Kindle. I already own a DX, but have a Kindle3 preordered. The DX is fantastic around the house, but I want a smaller one for when I need to carry it around. I do wish they had done even more to cut the size (those damn keys still appear to take up way too much space), but they did enough to finally warrant the purchase in my case.
As for the Kindle as tablet... I dunno. Personally, I don't see _why_. E-readers and tablets are separate devices in my mind. But once they can squeeze enough processing grunt into the form factor of a Kindle, and add responsive color screens without glare or killing battery life, I don't see any way around feature creep.
One can always hope that with half of Windows 7 installations being 64 bit, malicious software readily bypassing the protection will force Microsoft to finally implement a sufficient API for sandboxing.
Considering how trivial it is to implement the installer fetching the decryption key from a server, I don't follow your logic. We're barely talking a few lines of code, and nothing the installer could do would make the decryption key pop up on that server any sooner. Simple to implement, and unbreakable for all practical purposes.
I believe Valve has done it like this for years for their own titles, and I can't remember any of those preloads being cracked (note that I'm talking about the preloads made available through Steam, not leaked press copies and what not).
No. But I do remember 205 895 0028. I couldn't remember precisely what it was, but a Google sorted that (NASA Spacelink). Can't believe I still remember that. Must be more than 15 years since I last dialed that number. And, international rates being what they were, I didn't use it all that often back then either.
I hope you don't have a job that requires an eye for detail.
Unless the links really did go to the same URL at the time of your posting, that is.
Google has demonstrated that, beyond Froyo, they will add the ability to browse the Android Market and have your phone to install a given app right from the Market by triggering an intent via push message.
How is it shocking that this intent exists prior to the functionality being fully implemented?
At about 31 minutes in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY3U2GXhz44&feature=channel
I didn't intend to evangelize or start a Wave vs. insert-other-technology-here competition. Log on and test it out if you're curious. It's there, it's free, and should be of enough interest for any self respecting geek to spend at least an hour or two fiddling with.
If you can't see a reason for using it, you either don't understand how it works, or don't have a use for it. Both are valid reasons.
I use it a lot at work myself, and absolutely love it. For example, instead of sending an email to 5 people, each of them replying with different bits of information that I then have to collate myself, we use a wave.
Instead of sending the boss email updates on critical on-going tasks, I keep them in a wave the boss has access to and update that as I go along.
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/gmail-leaves-beta-launches-back-to-beta.html
Gmail went out of beta July last year.
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/gmail-leaves-beta-launches-back-to-beta.html
Perhaps this varies by region. I tend to get plenty of "proper" review sites in the top 10 results. More than enough to get the information I need, at least.
Did you read that "does" as "does not", by any chance?
Google does have an option to filter by age. But I'm a bit puzzled by your examples. Reviews, code samples, error messages, none of which seem to me to be terribly date dependent.
Reviews are typically for a specific product or version of product. Code snippets don't expire on date. Neither do error messages.
What can I say, I don't share your experience. Google typically hands me highly relevant results. It's very rare I need to venture past the first result page.
I'm sorry, you're way past my "too anal for there to be any point discussing with" threshold. Not to mention confrontational. I don't discuss religion either, for the same reason: It's a waste of everybody's time.
I feel no need to spend inordinate amounts of time in order to feel I've "won" an argument on the internet. So, congratulations, victory's all yours.
Brush up on your reading comprehension.