I would never buy a Mac for myself for a number of reasons, but my work-issued laptop is an MBP. I'm on my second or third. The keyboard has _always_ sucked - even the 2012/3 models we started with. I noticed my colleagues were slowing their typing down because the keyboard was shit even compared to the cheap and cheerful Dell keyboards we had prior. A triumph of form over function.
There is a reason I use an external keyboard as much as possible. A Happy Hacking Keyboard to be honest, but even Microsoft's TypeCover keyboard is considerably better than that on Mac Books.
And a few have mentioned it. Yes, it is paying for Youtube Premium.
Originally, I signed up to explicitly get rid of the ads. But almost immediately I got offered the Youtube Music app and I love it. And I didn't have to teach it what music I liked because it already knew as I'd been Liking the music videos I love for years. Subtle advantage over other music services: Youtube usually has the music video, too.:)
Reading just the linked article, it sounds like Tesla are indeed heading down the road of "breaking their neck looking the other way". It sounds to me a very Tesla thing to do. They just needed a little prodding.
There are Bluetooth dongles for receiving audio and using your existing headphones. They have been aiming at people with high-end headphones, so their DACs are really good. But you can use whatever you like with them. An EarStudio is the one I use, but there are others.
Can't address the first items, but there are Bluetooth dongles for receiving audio that you can plug in whatever headphones you like. They tend to target people with high-end headphones and as such have very good DACs of their own, but you can use them however you like. Even with cheap off-brand earbuds.
You know, the one they wanted you to buy. It still does conversion, but downloading has been downloaded and it won't download from youtube at all anymore.
I think my last 5 phones have had FM receivers, but I don't use it because I don't like any of the stations here. I basically stopped listening to FM radio years ago when I had had enough of the narcissistic hosts. Plus I lost my taste in pop music.
The music station I do listen to now is available on DAB, though. But that hasn't taken off as a smartphone trick yet. It doesn't help that DAB coverage is way worse than FM. Especially in things like building penetration or train tunnels (where it completely fails). And leave the big city and there's _no_ DAB.
Advertising content puts tracking cookies in your browser. Due to how cookies work, they are associated with the advertiser, not the website you're looking at. This means that the advertiser will see the *same* tracking ID whenever their content appears regardless of the site they're advertising on. Since they know what sites they're advertising on, they can match that with the tracking ID they've dropped on you to assemble a history of what sites you're browsing through. Including giving you the same ads.
This is the "forgotten" reason why people run ad-blockers: to nix the tracking data across websites!
But sometimes merchants don't like the unusual domain name. I had a credit card purchase go into an odd "hold" state because they didn't know my domain name. Required a phone call (fortunately to a local number!) to fix.
That has a Precision Touchpad in it with the secondary advantage that every once in a blue moon, a Windows update includes a firmware update for the TypeCover. And I have been impressed to see that Windows updates have improved the touch responsiveness over time and now I know why.
And the TypeCover is also a better keyboard than Apple put in their Mac Book Pros (work PC).
A lot of the "suck" effect of particular versions was dependant on the underlying hardware. In my experience, Windows ME on a laptop that was properly supported by OEM drivers was actually quite a dream. Similarly, Windows 3.x on a VLB machine was very stable. It was on a PCI box that it was considerably less than glorious.
I had to change from a Linux desktop to a MacBookPro for work. It really only confirmed why I had never been interested in buying one for myself.
There are UI features in OS X which are clearly "Apple has always done things this way and we don't understand how you could want things different". The Unix-underneath is pretty good, but the BSD-ish toolchain is annoyingly out-of-date. The hardware support is (of course) excellent, but the keyboard is sadly a triumph of form over function - I use an external keyboard whenever I can.
No, even VHS records them separately. It's just that S-VHS decks not only have better comb filters but provide access to the separated signal paths (S-video).
DropBox expects an internet connection - it simply doesn't work _at all_ without that. Or at least, it did when I looked at it for my WiFi-only tablet. This was not a good user experience.
Ubuntu One does not expect an Internet connection. Instead it caches all the meta-data; you only need an Internet connection to actually get a file or send an update. Much better user experience.
DropBox, by design, expects an internet connection to work. Ubuntu One does not, except to actually transfer an update, because it caches the meta data. This is a _major_ usability improvement on a tablet that is WiFi-only, for instance.
It's cheaper for Apple to change that law than to provide repairs. It's more profitable for the lawmakers to change that law than to force Apple to provide repairs.
Therefore, the law will be changed.
Capitalist Oligarchy 101.
Apple is far from the only company affected by stronger consumer protection laws. I doubt they are even the largest company. And it is an area of law they cannot ignore because the regulator has teeth, which is what the top story is all about. Consumer advocate groups have been campaigning for a long time about these rights. If Apple tried to Make Them Go Away, they would find themselves in quite a lot more hot water.
The correct solution, of course, is for them to make sure their products are actually made to last the typical lifetime people expect from them. Which is exactly what the latest consumer protection laws are designed to encourage.
Indeed. I don't know what they'll be using in Australia, but here in the US, 8-vsb transmits 1 error correction bit for every 2 data bits. I live in a small town in a valley that's 30 miles from the nearest television transmitter.
Australia uses DVB-T which has different propagation characteristics than 8VSB. DVB-T makes it easier to do SFN (single frequency network) because it resists multi-path interference (ghosting in the analogue world) better whilst 8VSB has a better power dispersal profile, which means larger coverage areas from one antenna.
Adobe's Integrated Runtime. Putting aside the problem that Adobe was behind it, this was actually a truly good platform. Apps could be written with any mix of HTML, JS, CSS and/or Flash (put aside your complaints about that, too, for the moment). And best of all: it was genuinely cross-platform. The.air file for an app would run absolutely flawlessly in any of the three environments. They even had a Linux version for a while.
Of course, the sheer problem that it was Adobe behind it served to undermine its power. I reckon Google are right on the edge of that problem with Chrome. For one thing, it actually doesn't have very many options for controlling privacy. For another, it encourages people to sign-in to their Google account. And Google's own websites are targetted for Chrome first and fixed for other browsers later (maybe). Yet they have spurred on significant advances in browser developments. And there are still a lot of programmers who would like to build a local app but only know browser-based programming.
Old samplers are rather a victim of that. The hardware is often fine and can still crank out some awesome sounds, but they are often diskette based and storage technology has moved on hundreds of times faster than synthesizor technology.
The Ensoniq scene has almost abandoned the EPS series because they used double-density drives and DD 3½" floppies haven't been made for years - and HD floppies aren't reliable in DD drives. Nowadays even HD diskettes are losing their stored bits. *All* the people keen to keep the ASR-10 alive have shifted to SCSI solutions because floppies are just not reliable anymore.
They actually put research into the layout on the Frogpad, which explains it's non-qwerty, non-alphabetic arrangement. This new one he's just gone for alphabetic order.
It's Google trying to consolidate identities by weaning people off passwords.
I have multiple identities on the 'net. Deliberately. For instance, I don't need my workplace associated with sites that don't need to know. It's the same reason I hate Disqus and will not comment on sites that use it. It's one reason I moved my blog off blogger. Google have shown they do not understand why people want multiple identities - but they have to support it because when they try to not, they find the negative feedback is deafening.
TL;DR: I Am Not A Google Identity. And I wish to remain that way.
Slashdot Mirror
I would never buy a Mac for myself for a number of reasons, but my work-issued laptop is an MBP. I'm on my second or third. The keyboard has _always_ sucked - even the 2012/3 models we started with. I noticed my colleagues were slowing their typing down because the keyboard was shit even compared to the cheap and cheerful Dell keyboards we had prior. A triumph of form over function.
There is a reason I use an external keyboard as much as possible. A Happy Hacking Keyboard to be honest, but even Microsoft's TypeCover keyboard is considerably better than that on Mac Books.
And a few have mentioned it. Yes, it is paying for Youtube Premium.
Originally, I signed up to explicitly get rid of the ads. But almost immediately I got offered the Youtube Music app and I love it. And I didn't have to teach it what music I liked because it already knew as I'd been Liking the music videos I love for years. Subtle advantage over other music services: Youtube usually has the music video, too. :)
Reading just the linked article, it sounds like Tesla are indeed heading down the road of "breaking their neck looking the other way". It sounds to me a very Tesla thing to do. They just needed a little prodding.
There are Bluetooth dongles for receiving audio and using your existing headphones. They have been aiming at people with high-end headphones, so their DACs are really good. But you can use whatever you like with them. An EarStudio is the one I use, but there are others.
Can't address the first items, but there are Bluetooth dongles for receiving audio that you can plug in whatever headphones you like. They tend to target people with high-end headphones and as such have very good DACs of their own, but you can use them however you like. Even with cheap off-brand earbuds.
You know, the one they wanted you to buy. It still does conversion, but downloading has been downloaded and it won't download from youtube at all anymore.
I think my last 5 phones have had FM receivers, but I don't use it because I don't like any of the stations here. I basically stopped listening to FM radio years ago when I had had enough of the narcissistic hosts. Plus I lost my taste in pop music.
The music station I do listen to now is available on DAB, though. But that hasn't taken off as a smartphone trick yet. It doesn't help that DAB coverage is way worse than FM. Especially in things like building penetration or train tunnels (where it completely fails). And leave the big city and there's _no_ DAB.
So I stream audio over data. Meh.
Yep. Same here. I use mine for streaming video more than games.
Advertising content puts tracking cookies in your browser. Due to how cookies work, they are associated with the advertiser, not the website you're looking at. This means that the advertiser will see the *same* tracking ID whenever their content appears regardless of the site they're advertising on. Since they know what sites they're advertising on, they can match that with the tracking ID they've dropped on you to assemble a history of what sites you're browsing through. Including giving you the same ads.
This is the "forgotten" reason why people run ad-blockers: to nix the tracking data across websites!
So do I.
But sometimes merchants don't like the unusual domain name. I had a credit card purchase go into an odd "hold" state because they didn't know my domain name. Required a phone call (fortunately to a local number!) to fix.
I wonder why. Is it because Facebook bought them? Or is it because they munted the simple timeline with some "algorithm" that is driving people away.
That has a Precision Touchpad in it with the secondary advantage that every once in a blue moon, a Windows update includes a firmware update for the TypeCover. And I have been impressed to see that Windows updates have improved the touch responsiveness over time and now I know why.
And the TypeCover is also a better keyboard than Apple put in their Mac Book Pros (work PC).
A lot of the "suck" effect of particular versions was dependant on the underlying hardware. In my experience, Windows ME on a laptop that was properly supported by OEM drivers was actually quite a dream. Similarly, Windows 3.x on a VLB machine was very stable. It was on a PCI box that it was considerably less than glorious.
I had to change from a Linux desktop to a MacBookPro for work. It really only confirmed why I had never been interested in buying one for myself.
There are UI features in OS X which are clearly "Apple has always done things this way and we don't understand how you could want things different". The Unix-underneath is pretty good, but the BSD-ish toolchain is annoyingly out-of-date. The hardware support is (of course) excellent, but the keyboard is sadly a triumph of form over function - I use an external keyboard whenever I can.
I still wish I had my Linux desktop back.
No, even VHS records them separately. It's just that S-VHS decks not only have better comb filters but provide access to the separated signal paths (S-video).
DropBox expects an internet connection - it simply doesn't work _at all_ without that. Or at least, it did when I looked at it for my WiFi-only tablet. This was not a good user experience.
Ubuntu One does not expect an Internet connection. Instead it caches all the meta-data; you only need an Internet connection to actually get a file or send an update. Much better user experience.
DropBox, by design, expects an internet connection to work. Ubuntu One does not, except to actually transfer an update, because it caches the meta data. This is a _major_ usability improvement on a tablet that is WiFi-only, for instance.
It's cheaper for Apple to change that law than to provide repairs.
It's more profitable for the lawmakers to change that law than to force Apple to provide repairs.
Therefore, the law will be changed.
Capitalist Oligarchy 101.
Apple is far from the only company affected by stronger consumer protection laws. I doubt they are even the largest company. And it is an area of law they cannot ignore because the regulator has teeth, which is what the top story is all about. Consumer advocate groups have been campaigning for a long time about these rights. If Apple tried to Make Them Go Away, they would find themselves in quite a lot more hot water.
The correct solution, of course, is for them to make sure their products are actually made to last the typical lifetime people expect from them. Which is exactly what the latest consumer protection laws are designed to encourage.
Wade.
Indeed. I don't know what they'll be using in Australia, but here in the US, 8-vsb transmits 1 error correction bit for every 2 data bits. I live in a small town in a valley that's 30 miles from the nearest television transmitter.
Australia uses DVB-T which has different propagation characteristics than 8VSB. DVB-T makes it easier to do SFN (single frequency network) because it resists multi-path interference (ghosting in the analogue world) better whilst 8VSB has a better power dispersal profile, which means larger coverage areas from one antenna.
Adobe's Integrated Runtime. Putting aside the problem that Adobe was behind it, this was actually a truly good platform. Apps could be written with any mix of HTML, JS, CSS and/or Flash (put aside your complaints about that, too, for the moment). And best of all: it was genuinely cross-platform. The .air file for an app would run absolutely flawlessly in any of the three environments. They even had a Linux version for a while.
Of course, the sheer problem that it was Adobe behind it served to undermine its power. I reckon Google are right on the edge of that problem with Chrome. For one thing, it actually doesn't have very many options for controlling privacy. For another, it encourages people to sign-in to their Google account. And Google's own websites are targetted for Chrome first and fixed for other browsers later (maybe). Yet they have spurred on significant advances in browser developments. And there are still a lot of programmers who would like to build a local app but only know browser-based programming.
The Opera web browser has had the ability to re-open closed tabs for years. There's even a menu so you can pick which page!
It was news five years ago. It's not news today.
Old samplers are rather a victim of that. The hardware is often fine and can still crank out some awesome sounds, but they are often diskette based and storage technology has moved on hundreds of times faster than synthesizor technology.
The Ensoniq scene has almost abandoned the EPS series because they used double-density drives and DD 3½" floppies haven't been made for years - and HD floppies aren't reliable in DD drives. Nowadays even HD diskettes are losing their stored bits. *All* the people keen to keep the ASR-10 alive have shifted to SCSI solutions because floppies are just not reliable anymore.
Wade.
They actually put research into the layout on the Frogpad, which explains it's non-qwerty, non-alphabetic arrangement. This new one he's just gone for alphabetic order.
It's Google trying to consolidate identities by weaning people off passwords.
I have multiple identities on the 'net. Deliberately. For instance, I don't need my workplace associated with sites that don't need to know. It's the same reason I hate Disqus and will not comment on sites that use it. It's one reason I moved my blog off blogger. Google have shown they do not understand why people want multiple identities - but they have to support it because when they try to not, they find the negative feedback is deafening.
TL;DR: I Am Not A Google Identity. And I wish to remain that way.
Have a look at app.net, then. It's aiming to be what Twitter could have been.