There are programs that allow Mac-only iPods to work on Windows, and other OSes. There is no excuse for iTunes not being able to do the same. And no, it's not about "just working" on a Mac - it's about "just working" with iTunes, whatever OS Apple decides to port it to.
There is a perfectly good excuse. Apple chose not to include this feature. Why? I dunno, maybe it would have been a good one to include. But maybe it caused other problems with the software, or their UI guys said it would just confuse people who couldn't use their old, out-of-the-box Mac iPod software on their Windows machine.
If you want to say "Hey, this is a feature Apple should have included," go ahead, but don't act like it's a bug that they didn't.
So apple should have some kind of way to reset their ipods to the factory default, I know my nomad has. Simply give out how to do this and then don't do what you did wrong again.
As far as I could tell from the guy's posts, he did set it to factory defaults, which didn't solve his problem... namely, he *still* couldn't play the songs he downloaded from iTunes on his iPod.
So, in your analogy, he followed the instructions in the manual to clean his engine himself, but when he tried putting the diesel fuel back in, it *still* didn't work. Surprised?
Not silly when apple claims windows support for iPods, unless you have had your head in the sand (or, uh, elsewhere;>) and haven't seen their TV commercials to that effect.
Apparently, it's possible to learn almost as much from reading/. as from watching commercials, because by this point I'm quite well aware that first-generation iPods, such as the one this guy was using, didn't support Windows. And that's without any paid advertising at all!
They support windows, and using their device with windows fries the device.
Not even close.
Newer iPods support Windows. He was using an older one that doesn't. Using the device under Windows worked fine for him, when he was using software that provided a workaround to the filesystem incompatibility. iTunes does not provide this workaround, and so the device could not play any of the tracks *downloaded from iTunes*. Apparently works fine for other tracks, though.
An old-fashioned record on a ceramic base - that's forever.
I gotta ask... where do you get your record player needles? The last two turntables I've had have become junk because the company wasn't selling replacements anymore...
Cave paintings are about the only media that will never be obsolete. Books, you might think, until you try to read something in a dead and lost language...
Whatever... If you make a device and slap a USB port on it you have to assume that people *will* use a USB connection to all sorts of things, not just your own other devices and products.
Yes, they probably did assume that people would do that, which is why they said they wouldn't support it.
When Conair sells hair dryers, they assume that some people will use it while sitting in the tub. That's why they put that warning sticker telling people not to do that, so that if they do and electrocute themselves, Conair isn't held responsible.
If it was an official Sony driver, they better damn send me a replacement. Remember, this was an Apple iPod, running with an Apple driver, that seemed to work just fine before something happened that caused it to stop working.
(1) In the example above, it was not an official Sony driver.
(2) Drivers are irrelevant to the iPod issue; the problem is the file system.
(3) It didn't "work fine," it worked with a third party program that got around the compatibility issue. It didn't work with the provided software, since there was no Windows software provided with the Mac-only version of the device.
(4) It doesn't matter if it worked fine. Apple said "We don't support this" on the product. It worked anyway... they said "We don't support this" when their software didn't work the same as other software. They didn't change their stance; he was fortunate that he found software that worked, and silly to think that iTunes would work just as well.
But, did you buy the Sonicare to clean your dogs' teeth, and were able to do so just fine with a third-party toothbrush head, but when Philips started marketing a new toothbrush head designed to work with a newer version of your Sonicare that was made for pooch hygiene, you got *that* and expected it to work with your existing Sonicare? And then got it replaced when the new toothbrush head, which was made for a different version of the product, didn't work with your toothbrush?
Because, that would be a little closer to the current situation...
Ok. let me get this straight. So you're using software (Xplay) that's completely unsupported by Apple, and in fact, has nothing to do with Apple, in order to use a product (the 5gb iPod) which specifically was sold as being Mac-only, on a Windows machine.
It didn't work. It broke your iPod. Now you want Apple to fix it. You're mad because they won't.
You don't quite have it straight. XPlay works just fine for him. Because of this, he expects iTunes to work as well. As far as I can tell, it didn't break the iPod, he just can't listen to tracks he downloaded with iTunes on his iPod.
Otherwise, you're right on target... but he was being even sillier than you gave him credit for.
I love the comments on here: The exact same people who advocate doing all them hacks to get Windows stuff to work on Linux/etc are now indignantly piling on top of the guy who did not take the step on reading every possible piece of writing on an iPod (which is made by "so easy to use you don't need a stinkin' manual" Apple). Of course, you do not learn it is not supported until after it's broken, but it's Apple, so it cannot be the company's fault...
I'd think that the fact that he had to use third-party software to get it to work on his PC probably tipped him off that the device wasn't meant to work under Windows. At the time that the device he was using was being sold, they weren't making *any* that were supported under Windows. They made a pretty big deal when the iPod was available for Windows.
This isn't a case where he didn't see the fine print and it worked anyway, this is a case where a third-party workaround worked for him, but then another piece of software didn't. The same people who would "advocate doing all them hacks to get Windows stuff to work on Linux/etc" probably have no problem with him using XPlay, but they *do* have a problem with him being shocked when another piece of software doesn't work... especially since it was made by the company who told him that the device wasn't compatible in the first place.
Workarounds, hacks, whatever are one thing, but expecting another company to support them is silliness. What, do people here tell folks to call MS tech support if they're having trouble getting MS Office to work under WINE?
Apple says it's not possible for Windows to read the file system, but we know that is obviously not true because you could use it using XPlay, which could read the file system.
Windows != XPlay. One can read HFS+, the other cannot.
iTunes for Windows also cannot read HFS+, apparently. Maybe it should, but this is a feature request, not a showstopper bug. Most Windows software doesn't have that functionality, and most iTunes users who have Windows PCs don't need it either... they bought second- or third-generation iPods that support FAT32.
If I wore tin-foil hats, I would think that Apple wanted to lock their users into the Mac format and were afraid that if they could keep their cool toys like iPods and use them on the Windows system they could.
But, they can... they just have to (1) get an iPod that includes Windows support and (2) ensure that it's formatted for Windows.
After all, the Windows users can user their iPods on Macs, so it's easy for the switch to happen the other way.
Third-generation iPods can switch back and forth between Windows- and Mac-compatible, but can't be both at once. So it's not entirely correct that "Windows users can user [sic] their iPods on Macs," since they do have to reformat them first... just like the Mac users do before using their iPods on Windows.
The old Apple would have gone an extra half mile and made iTunes recognize if an iPod is of the wrong kind, and popped up a nice little informative error message for it, rather than blindly proceed and destroy the iPod!
Whose iPod got destroyed? All anyone has said is that they can't play tracks they got from iTunes...
Regardless of what Apple may have claimed since day one, generally getting something "for PC" or "For Mac" only meant which drivers it included. If you could connect it to the same type of port and run it driverless, you could use it on either. Ethernet-connected "Apple-only" PCL6 printer? Yeah, right, whatever, smoke s'more, Jobs.
Does anyone remember buying pre-formatted 3.5" floppy disks? They would say "for Mac" or "for Windows" on the box, right? Again, poor driver support, right?
The iPod is a drive... it's formatted in the file system appropriate to the machine it's used on. Has nothing to do with the drivers or ports. Sure, there's some software for the PC that will let you use your HFS+ formatted, first-generation iPod with it... iTunes isn't of this variety.
Even the newest iPods have to be formatted for Windows before they are used under Windows. But the included software does that for you now.
Windows isn't exactly Apple's speciality after all.
If this were the case, then what the fuck are Apple doing by releasing Windows software in the first place?
I dunno, trying to capture that 80% of the home PC market still dominated by Windows?
This must be the lamest excuse I've ever heard for a poor product. C'mon, Apple isn't some $10 start-up run by preteens; it's a large, experienced software/hardware company, and they shouldn't be screwing things like this up. If MS were shown this much latitude, people would be screaming blue murder.
People *are* screaming blue murder... but usually for more interesting stuff than MS saying "We're not supporting that function that it says on the box we don't support." More like, "We're not supporting the ability to back up your OS install."
Come on, the device wasn't supposed to work on Windows, the guy got it working, then he used different software and it didn't work anymore. Just for those tracks, of course... still apparently works fine for everything else. How can you hold the vendor responsible for *this*?
A bit of statistics for you: over 1 million people have downloaded iTunes for windows. 13 people have posted on Liam's thread, only 6 of whom are having this problem. If we generously estimated that this accounts for only one-half of 1% of the people actually having this issue, that still means that there are perhaps 1200 people of the over one million who downloaded the software who have had it not work properly with (unsupported) hardware.
I'm thinking that it's a bad idea to expect something to work when Apple said it wouldn't, but it's a *really* bad idea to act like the whole world is having this problem when you're actually in an infinitesimal minority.
Have you visited the website? I've built more complex websites in a matter of weeks. Even charging $200/hour that would be easily less than $32k.... Government waste isn't surprising, but it's sad when it is made so obvious.
There's a few things to take into account:
- Private companies are paying this much for their websites (a friend was offered $150k to come up with a *proposal* for redoing McDonald's website, on a contract that would be $5 million).
- Government has a lot of trouble adjusting to changes. We demand accountability, which turns into bureaucracy after you've filed fifteen different forms to get the same change made. It takes more than someone in a position of power realizing that they need a new position to bring in folks with experience and knowledge to tell them things like "$3.5 million is a waste of money for this."
- Again due to laws that we, the people, demanded, government contractors have to go through a LOT to get those contracts. They have to comply with many, many regulations (such as demonstrating that they're an equal opportunity employer), they have to submit monthly invoices and progress reports that are longer than the latest Neal Stephenson novel, and they often have to comply with outdated regulations about what kind of equipment and software they can use (see above about governments being slow to adapt to change). In many cases they charge extra just because it's more work to do work for government.
- Government contracts aren't awarded like contracts in private business, based on human judgement and experience. There's too much potential for human greed and graft if they do it that way. This means that they're often awarded on the strength of a proposal and a bid, without any real way to know whether the company can deliver. Sure, if the cost estimate rises, the contractor is required to explain why... but there's very little that government agencies can do when it comes to firing incompetent contractors. Best case scenario has them starting all over again with the job; worst, the contractor gets to keep doing the job anyway and has absolutely no incentive to do it right.
After my experiences working for a government agency, I'm inclined to agree in theory with the sentiment that "government would be more efficient if it worked more like private enterprise" but usually not with the substance of the claim. Instead of the "efficiencies" of squeezing labor dry and cutting costs whereever they won't get sued, government needs to have more flexibility to get the job done *right*, and more efficient oversight to counterbalance the flexibility.
if I want, I can opt to only receive texts from people who are in my phonebook - meaning it'll ignore all the spams anyway.
Wow, what amazing technology they've invented over there in the UK. I wonder how it is that your cell phone science researchers are so far ahead of ours.
Or maybe it's just that our economics researchers are far more advanced in telling companies how to squeeze every short-term cent out of their customers, without regard to the long-term goodwill of their userbase...
Not true. I'm way into homeschooling, but I know the public school system's not that bad.
"Most" means a majority. Are you seriously expecting people to believe you that >50% of American school children can't read?
Maybe the poster has more info than we suspect. Since 26% of Americans under the age of 18 ("kids") are under 5 years of age, they probably can't read too good yet by and large. Of the 28% that are 5-9 years old, there's probably a quite few late bloomers that can be lumped into the illiterate category. Add in all the ones in the higher age categories that were good enough at basketball or football that they evaded expectations of literacy, and it's quite possible that half of them "can't read."
But you do have to count all the infants for that.
Surely even in the us you are innocent until proven guilty.
In a criminal case. This is a civil matter, which is decided by "a preponderance of the evidence."
Has anyone hit with a bogus law-suit ever tried *not* to hire a lawyer? Just go in the court room in front of the jury and say "we spend the money on trying to provide education and can't afford lots of lawyers, the charges are baseless, these devices are used everywhere in the country, don't be silly"
Well, you have to answer the paperwork, first. And you have to follow the court guidelines. If you screw that up, then you lose the lawsuit by default. It's usually not a task that people want to leave to their free hours on the weekend... it should be done by a professional.
Also, judges worked hard to get where they are, and they were lawyers first. So they have a certain respect for the system, and anything that seems disrespectful isn't likely to sit well with them.
What's that Voltaire quote? Something about the poor having access to the courts the same way the Christians in ancient Rome had access to the lions? While government agencies aren't exactly poor, they also have nothing in the way of disposable income... since every cent has to be accounted for to their employers (i.e. their constituents).
What about the black boxes that are now standard in cars?
According to the link you posted, these aren't standard... the standard for them is being developed. At least, it was as of April 2002, and it seems unlikely that in less than a year it's gone from concept to standard equipment.
However, standardization of car electronics interface would probably make the project you've pointed out quite a bit easier.
Is it true they don't have text messages (SMS) in America - or was someone making that up?
They may have honestly thought that, because we don't use it so much here... probably because most cell phone providers charge extra for it. I can pay another $10 a month for unlimited text message reception (though the number of free outgoing texts is limited), or I can pay 10 cents for every message I receive or send. Or I can cancel the ability to receive/send messages altogether, which I may do, since idiots like www.411freegift.com aren't likely to give me 10 cents every time they spam me, and Cingular isn't too helpful on blocking unsolicited messages only. (I've only gotten two so far, but it could add up fast.)
Yes, of course, Fight Club. It shows nothing. Certainly, it's possible, but the risk of such a strategy (national outcry, Arthur Anderson-style drawing and quartering of the entire corporation) offset the cost-benefit analysis that Tyler Durden so smugly explicates.
First of all, it wasn't "Tyler Durden," it was his other personality, before he even met that side of himself.
Second, he was alluding to actual practices by the Ford Motor Company. They have in the past (and may still, though they're much more careful about it) weighed the cost of a recall against the cost of lawsuits stemming from a defect, and make a purely financial decision on whether to recall the product. There's summaries of several such cases here.
The thing about this incident that I find concerning is that this phone exploded in the guys pocket when battery consumption is at its lowest.
You're assuming that the phone wasn't engaged in an open call when it was in his pocket.
Don't you get those "pocket calls" from friends' cell phones? most of them are actually "purse calls" from my mother. "Mom? MOM? MMMMOOOOMMMM!!!!! TURN ON YOUR KEY GUARD!"
The best is when she gets my home phone by accident, and I come home to a 30-minute answering machine message... then I can call her and tell her what she ordered for lunch just to freak her out. But she still hasn't quite gotten the habit of hitting Menu -> * automatically when she's putting the phone away.
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There are programs that allow Mac-only iPods to work on Windows, and other OSes. There is no excuse for iTunes not being able to do the same. And no, it's not about "just working" on a Mac - it's about "just working" with iTunes, whatever OS Apple decides to port it to.
There is a perfectly good excuse. Apple chose not to include this feature. Why? I dunno, maybe it would have been a good one to include. But maybe it caused other problems with the software, or their UI guys said it would just confuse people who couldn't use their old, out-of-the-box Mac iPod software on their Windows machine.
If you want to say "Hey, this is a feature Apple should have included," go ahead, but don't act like it's a bug that they didn't.
So apple should have some kind of way to reset their ipods to the factory default, I know my nomad has. Simply give out how to do this and then don't do what you did wrong again.
As far as I could tell from the guy's posts, he did set it to factory defaults, which didn't solve his problem... namely, he *still* couldn't play the songs he downloaded from iTunes on his iPod.
So, in your analogy, he followed the instructions in the manual to clean his engine himself, but when he tried putting the diesel fuel back in, it *still* didn't work. Surprised?
Not silly when apple claims windows support for iPods, unless you have had your head in the sand (or, uh, elsewhere ;>) and haven't seen their TV commercials to that effect.
/. as from watching commercials, because by this point I'm quite well aware that first-generation iPods, such as the one this guy was using, didn't support Windows. And that's without any paid advertising at all!
Apparently, it's possible to learn almost as much from reading
They support windows, and using their device with windows fries the device.
Not even close.
Newer iPods support Windows. He was using an older one that doesn't. Using the device under Windows worked fine for him, when he was using software that provided a workaround to the filesystem incompatibility. iTunes does not provide this workaround, and so the device could not play any of the tracks *downloaded from iTunes*. Apparently works fine for other tracks, though.
An old-fashioned record on a ceramic base - that's forever.
I gotta ask... where do you get your record player needles? The last two turntables I've had have become junk because the company wasn't selling replacements anymore...
Cave paintings are about the only media that will never be obsolete. Books, you might think, until you try to read something in a dead and lost language...
Whatever... If you make a device and slap a USB port on it you have to assume that people *will* use a USB connection to all sorts of things, not just your own other devices and products.
Yes, they probably did assume that people would do that, which is why they said they wouldn't support it.
When Conair sells hair dryers, they assume that some people will use it while sitting in the tub. That's why they put that warning sticker telling people not to do that, so that if they do and electrocute themselves, Conair isn't held responsible.
If it was an official Sony driver, they better damn send me a replacement. Remember, this was an Apple iPod, running with an Apple driver, that seemed to work just fine before something happened that caused it to stop working.
(1) In the example above, it was not an official Sony driver.
(2) Drivers are irrelevant to the iPod issue; the problem is the file system.
(3) It didn't "work fine," it worked with a third party program that got around the compatibility issue. It didn't work with the provided software, since there was no Windows software provided with the Mac-only version of the device.
(4) It doesn't matter if it worked fine. Apple said "We don't support this" on the product. It worked anyway... they said "We don't support this" when their software didn't work the same as other software. They didn't change their stance; he was fortunate that he found software that worked, and silly to think that iTunes would work just as well.
But, did you buy the Sonicare to clean your dogs' teeth, and were able to do so just fine with a third-party toothbrush head, but when Philips started marketing a new toothbrush head designed to work with a newer version of your Sonicare that was made for pooch hygiene, you got *that* and expected it to work with your existing Sonicare? And then got it replaced when the new toothbrush head, which was made for a different version of the product, didn't work with your toothbrush?
Because, that would be a little closer to the current situation...
Ok. let me get this straight. So you're using software (Xplay) that's completely unsupported by Apple, and in fact, has nothing to do with Apple, in order to use a product (the 5gb iPod) which specifically was sold as being Mac-only, on a Windows machine.
It didn't work. It broke your iPod. Now you want Apple to fix it. You're mad because they won't.
You don't quite have it straight. XPlay works just fine for him. Because of this, he expects iTunes to work as well. As far as I can tell, it didn't break the iPod, he just can't listen to tracks he downloaded with iTunes on his iPod.
Otherwise, you're right on target... but he was being even sillier than you gave him credit for.
I love the comments on here: The exact same people who advocate doing all them hacks to get Windows stuff to work on Linux/etc are now indignantly piling on top of the guy who did not take the step on reading every possible piece of writing on an iPod (which is made by "so easy to use you don't need a stinkin' manual" Apple). Of course, you do not learn it is not supported until after it's broken, but it's Apple, so it cannot be the company's fault...
I'd think that the fact that he had to use third-party software to get it to work on his PC probably tipped him off that the device wasn't meant to work under Windows. At the time that the device he was using was being sold, they weren't making *any* that were supported under Windows. They made a pretty big deal when the iPod was available for Windows.
This isn't a case where he didn't see the fine print and it worked anyway, this is a case where a third-party workaround worked for him, but then another piece of software didn't. The same people who would "advocate doing all them hacks to get Windows stuff to work on Linux/etc" probably have no problem with him using XPlay, but they *do* have a problem with him being shocked when another piece of software doesn't work... especially since it was made by the company who told him that the device wasn't compatible in the first place.
Workarounds, hacks, whatever are one thing, but expecting another company to support them is silliness. What, do people here tell folks to call MS tech support if they're having trouble getting MS Office to work under WINE?
Apple says it's not possible for Windows to read the file system, but we know that is obviously not true because you could use it using XPlay, which could read the file system.
Windows != XPlay. One can read HFS+, the other cannot.
iTunes for Windows also cannot read HFS+, apparently. Maybe it should, but this is a feature request, not a showstopper bug. Most Windows software doesn't have that functionality, and most iTunes users who have Windows PCs don't need it either... they bought second- or third-generation iPods that support FAT32.
If I wore tin-foil hats, I would think that Apple wanted to lock their users into the Mac format and were afraid that if they could keep their cool toys like iPods and use them on the Windows system they could.
But, they can... they just have to (1) get an iPod that includes Windows support and (2) ensure that it's formatted for Windows.
After all, the Windows users can user their iPods on Macs, so it's easy for the switch to happen the other way.
Third-generation iPods can switch back and forth between Windows- and Mac-compatible, but can't be both at once. So it's not entirely correct that "Windows users can user [sic] their iPods on Macs," since they do have to reformat them first... just like the Mac users do before using their iPods on Windows.
The old Apple would have gone an extra half mile and made iTunes recognize if an iPod is of the wrong kind, and popped up a nice little informative error message for it, rather than blindly proceed and destroy the iPod!
Whose iPod got destroyed? All anyone has said is that they can't play tracks they got from iTunes...
Regardless of what Apple may have claimed since day one, generally getting something "for PC" or "For Mac" only meant which drivers it included. If you could connect it to the same type of port and run it driverless, you could use it on either. Ethernet-connected "Apple-only" PCL6 printer? Yeah, right, whatever, smoke s'more, Jobs.
Does anyone remember buying pre-formatted 3.5" floppy disks? They would say "for Mac" or "for Windows" on the box, right? Again, poor driver support, right?
The iPod is a drive... it's formatted in the file system appropriate to the machine it's used on. Has nothing to do with the drivers or ports. Sure, there's some software for the PC that will let you use your HFS+ formatted, first-generation iPod with it... iTunes isn't of this variety.
Even the newest iPods have to be formatted for Windows before they are used under Windows. But the included software does that for you now.
I dunno, trying to capture that 80% of the home PC market still dominated by Windows?
This must be the lamest excuse I've ever heard for a poor product. C'mon, Apple isn't some $10 start-up run by preteens; it's a large, experienced software/hardware company, and they shouldn't be screwing things like this up. If MS were shown this much latitude, people would be screaming blue murder.
People *are* screaming blue murder... but usually for more interesting stuff than MS saying "We're not supporting that function that it says on the box we don't support." More like, "We're not supporting the ability to back up your OS install."
Come on, the device wasn't supposed to work on Windows, the guy got it working, then he used different software and it didn't work anymore. Just for those tracks, of course... still apparently works fine for everything else. How can you hold the vendor responsible for *this*?
A bit of statistics for you: over 1 million people have downloaded iTunes for windows. 13 people have posted on Liam's thread, only 6 of whom are having this problem. If we generously estimated that this accounts for only one-half of 1% of the people actually having this issue, that still means that there are perhaps 1200 people of the over one million who downloaded the software who have had it not work properly with (unsupported) hardware.
I'm thinking that it's a bad idea to expect something to work when Apple said it wouldn't, but it's a *really* bad idea to act like the whole world is having this problem when you're actually in an infinitesimal minority.
It's not like using the iPod on windows is not supported... So stop the trolling
It is very much like using the *Mac-only* iPod on Windows is not supported.
Have you visited the website? I've built more complex websites in a matter of weeks. Even charging $200/hour that would be easily less than $32k. ...
Government waste isn't surprising, but it's sad when it is made so obvious.
There's a few things to take into account:
- Private companies are paying this much for their websites (a friend was offered $150k to come up with a *proposal* for redoing McDonald's website, on a contract that would be $5 million).
- Government has a lot of trouble adjusting to changes. We demand accountability, which turns into bureaucracy after you've filed fifteen different forms to get the same change made. It takes more than someone in a position of power realizing that they need a new position to bring in folks with experience and knowledge to tell them things like "$3.5 million is a waste of money for this."
- Again due to laws that we, the people, demanded, government contractors have to go through a LOT to get those contracts. They have to comply with many, many regulations (such as demonstrating that they're an equal opportunity employer), they have to submit monthly invoices and progress reports that are longer than the latest Neal Stephenson novel, and they often have to comply with outdated regulations about what kind of equipment and software they can use (see above about governments being slow to adapt to change). In many cases they charge extra just because it's more work to do work for government.
- Government contracts aren't awarded like contracts in private business, based on human judgement and experience. There's too much potential for human greed and graft if they do it that way. This means that they're often awarded on the strength of a proposal and a bid, without any real way to know whether the company can deliver. Sure, if the cost estimate rises, the contractor is required to explain why... but there's very little that government agencies can do when it comes to firing incompetent contractors. Best case scenario has them starting all over again with the job; worst, the contractor gets to keep doing the job anyway and has absolutely no incentive to do it right.
After my experiences working for a government agency, I'm inclined to agree in theory with the sentiment that "government would be more efficient if it worked more like private enterprise" but usually not with the substance of the claim. Instead of the "efficiencies" of squeezing labor dry and cutting costs whereever they won't get sued, government needs to have more flexibility to get the job done *right*, and more efficient oversight to counterbalance the flexibility.
Let me paraphrase one section of this exchange:
"So, show us where Linux is in violation."
"No, we can't do that, because then we'd be revealing protected code, and then there would be a problem."
"So there's not a problem?"
"No, there is a problem, which is that there's SCO protected code in Linux."
"So if there's a problem, just tell us which code, and we can fix it."
"No, I can't do that, it would cause a problem."
This sounds like one of those loops that those AIs get into when talking to each other...
if I want, I can opt to only receive texts from people who are in my phonebook - meaning it'll ignore all the spams anyway.
Wow, what amazing technology they've invented over there in the UK. I wonder how it is that your cell phone science researchers are so far ahead of ours.
Or maybe it's just that our economics researchers are far more advanced in telling companies how to squeeze every short-term cent out of their customers, without regard to the long-term goodwill of their userbase...
Bitter? Me? Noooooo.... never!
Not true. I'm way into homeschooling, but I know the public school system's not that bad.
"Most" means a majority. Are you seriously expecting people to believe you that >50% of American school children can't read?
Maybe the poster has more info than we suspect. Since 26% of Americans under the age of 18 ("kids") are under 5 years of age, they probably can't read too good yet by and large. Of the 28% that are 5-9 years old, there's probably a quite few late bloomers that can be lumped into the illiterate category. Add in all the ones in the higher age categories that were good enough at basketball or football that they evaded expectations of literacy, and it's quite possible that half of them "can't read."
But you do have to count all the infants for that.
(Data obtained through the US Census 2000.)
Surely even in the us you are innocent until proven guilty.
In a criminal case. This is a civil matter, which is decided by "a preponderance of the evidence."
Has anyone hit with a bogus law-suit ever tried *not* to hire a lawyer? Just go in the court room in front of the jury and say "we spend the money on trying to provide education and can't afford lots of lawyers, the charges are baseless, these devices are used everywhere in the country, don't be silly"
Well, you have to answer the paperwork, first. And you have to follow the court guidelines. If you screw that up, then you lose the lawsuit by default. It's usually not a task that people want to leave to their free hours on the weekend... it should be done by a professional.
Also, judges worked hard to get where they are, and they were lawyers first. So they have a certain respect for the system, and anything that seems disrespectful isn't likely to sit well with them.
What's that Voltaire quote? Something about the poor having access to the courts the same way the Christians in ancient Rome had access to the lions? While government agencies aren't exactly poor, they also have nothing in the way of disposable income... since every cent has to be accounted for to their employers (i.e. their constituents).
What about the black boxes that are now standard in cars?
According to the link you posted, these aren't standard... the standard for them is being developed. At least, it was as of April 2002, and it seems unlikely that in less than a year it's gone from concept to standard equipment.
However, standardization of car electronics interface would probably make the project you've pointed out quite a bit easier.
Is it true they don't have text messages (SMS) in America - or was someone making that up?
They may have honestly thought that, because we don't use it so much here... probably because most cell phone providers charge extra for it. I can pay another $10 a month for unlimited text message reception (though the number of free outgoing texts is limited), or I can pay 10 cents for every message I receive or send. Or I can cancel the ability to receive/send messages altogether, which I may do, since idiots like www.411freegift.com aren't likely to give me 10 cents every time they spam me, and Cingular isn't too helpful on blocking unsolicited messages only. (I've only gotten two so far, but it could add up fast.)
Yes, of course, Fight Club. It shows nothing. Certainly, it's possible, but the risk of such a strategy (national outcry, Arthur Anderson-style drawing and quartering of the entire corporation) offset the cost-benefit analysis that Tyler Durden so smugly explicates.
First of all, it wasn't "Tyler Durden," it was his other personality, before he even met that side of himself.
Second, he was alluding to actual practices by the Ford Motor Company. They have in the past (and may still, though they're much more careful about it) weighed the cost of a recall against the cost of lawsuits stemming from a defect, and make a purely financial decision on whether to recall the product. There's summaries of several such cases here.
The thing about this incident that I find concerning is that this phone exploded in the guys pocket when battery consumption is at its lowest.
You're assuming that the phone wasn't engaged in an open call when it was in his pocket.
Don't you get those "pocket calls" from friends' cell phones? most of them are actually "purse calls" from my mother. "Mom? MOM? MMMMOOOOMMMM!!!!! TURN ON YOUR KEY GUARD!"
The best is when she gets my home phone by accident, and I come home to a 30-minute answering machine message... then I can call her and tell her what she ordered for lunch just to freak her out. But she still hasn't quite gotten the habit of hitting Menu -> * automatically when she's putting the phone away.
... The up side is, no body work, I'll just reboot it.
The down side is, it will happen several times per week, and usually right when I most need to get somewhere...