I disagree. While Twitter's posts tend to be vacuous, insipid, information-free, or merely incorrect on occasion, it isn't entirely clear to me that this differentiates Twitter's posts from, oh, probably half of the other posts at Slashdot these days. If the only difference is that Twitter has an opinion that annoys some people who use their mod points to punish people with differing opinions. Although Twitter can't express it very well, Twitter's opinions tend to be rooted in the notion that Microsoft is a convicted monopolist which has the media by the short hairs and which has done far more damage to the pace of technology development through use of anti-competitive and illegal monopolist tactics, than they have helped the pace by investment in R&D and delivery of interesting, innovative, high quality software.
With respect to the particular post above us, Twitter is being punished for having an opinion that differs from the moderator, rather than being punished for being consistently insipid. The Twitter post in question is weak sauce, but it isn't off-topic and it's not even really much different from the opinions held by quite a few people posting round here. Hell, it really isn't even inflammatory enough to warrant the briefest consideration as a Troll mod if it has been posted by some random newbee, for example, or by someone who posted on a wider variety of topics and had more "street cred".
Maybe other Twitter posts are Trolls, but this one seems unfairly punished by, what, possibly a paid pro-Microsoft contingent? Abuse of the Troll and Flamebait mods to squelch opinions that the moderators don't like appears to me to be entirely too common of late. Personally, I'd rather never see another post by that twit, Twitter, they are a waste of electrons, but Troll is an abuse in this case.
Look, you jackass moderators, the parent is an example of "Overrated" perhaps, but it's not a Troll. "Troll" should be used sparingly. If you don't understand what a Troll is, then don't fucking rate a post as "Troll". There has been a flood of inappropriate Troll ratings for the past several months. I seem them constantly.
To the rest of you, please, meta moderate frequently, and be sure to flag these kinds of things as "Unfair". It's the only hope to save Slashdot. God knows the keepers of the system won't fix the algorithms that allow people to be bounced out of the moderation system by a couple jackass moderators flipping Troll mods at all the people they don't like.
He was trying to be funny. You can tell 'cause of the "Troll" mod, which is the hallmark of any clever witticism posted to Slashdot lately. The average IQ of the moderators is dropping fast. I suspect that smarter commentators here get permanently locked out of the mod system at some point, because they get Troll mods flung at them more frequently than the algorithm expects.
Commands which appear at the beginning of a sentence are not capitalized, as they would then be broken. Copy editors frequently break such sentences. The less clueless amongst them tend to restructure the sentence so that the command doesn't appear at the start of the sentence.
See, posts like that... that's why we need more mod options. Like "Unintentionally funny because the poster is such an obvious dork" and "It would be funny if the poster hadn't revealed such deeply rooted and disturbing psychological problems" or "It would be funny if I hadn't had exactly the same experience with a girl who loved getting stuffed to "Tiny Dancer". Of course, then mods would be forced to choose the best of several options. I suppose the current way is better, after all. Troll it is, then.
Hollywood special interests? I haven't heard much about tax breaks for key grips and best boys lately. Hollywood had plenty of right wing nut jobs, too. I don't think Hollywood is the canonical Democratic Party special interest group.
Well, the idiot who modded Troll is the reason we have, uh, idiots. Did you stop to consider that perhaps the person lives in the EU or Japan, and was extending a heartfelt invitation to join a better broadband life? Idiots abound.
Moderators, you have clearly had your humor removed. Was it a tragic accident, or a government experiment that made you so flat? Oh, wait... perhaps it was that the intended humor wasn't very funny. Overrated is more appropriate than Troll.
"Leap is a trojan for iChat that is unable to replicate. It is as dangerous as sending someone a chat request and telling them to pour water on their computer."
Experience indicates that as many as 500 out of 35,000 users can be tricked into something similar (opening a zip file to run a virus for example).
You might enjoy the following books. Be warned, they are subversive. You may wind up with an understanding of science less like that conveyed by a diet of Fox News (strange, skewed, and vaguely hostile). These are fun to read and very accessible.
Yes. Cellular One is ironically named. It's not one cell phone company, but quite literally dozens. They just licensed the Cellular One brand. I didn't realize some were not GSM vendors, but I'm not really surprised.
There are several ways that you can fall into an anecdotal experience fallacy with this case. Perhaps you tried to activate all seven phones with the same broken iTunes installation on the same broken PC, for example. The fact that my sample size is much larger than yours, and includes no major problems whatsoever is another clue that perhaps you cannot extrapolate your experience into a validation of the obviously skewed survey that started this discussion thread.
Although I agree that anonymity has a certain value, you are missing out on building a reputation. If you are a technology professional, you might want to reassess your position. A lot has changed since the early days of the net.
GSM coverage is definitely not excellent in the central U.S. plains or the Rocky Mountains. There is coverage now on interstate highways and in cities and larger towns, but smaller towns and highway routes have spotty coverage or none at all. There were a handful of small telephone companies that sprung up to fill the void in the past few years. Two of the largest such have been recently acquired.
AT&T recently acquired Dobson Communications (which was the largest vendor licensing the Cellular One brand). I think that the "new AT&T" realizes that Verizon will kick their ass if they don't start competing on the coverage front. Nobody can touch Verizon in the U.S. for actually getting a wireless signal in more places.
The AT&T coverage map is, ahem, optimistic, regarding its coverage in the plains states. The Dobson/Cellular One acquisition helps with this, but not with the rocky mountain states.
Here is a relatively honest assessment of GSM coverage in the western US: Cellular One coverage map (includes the Dobson network and all the other mom-and-pop licensees of the Cellular One brand).
The Alltel coverage map is also a little deceptive, because it mixes their GSM network in with their other network, but they provide much better GSM coverage in the west than anybody else, thanks to their acquisition of Western Wireless. Both T-Mobile and AT&T were asleep at the wheel and either should have acquired Western Wireless. It will be more difficult for AT&T to assemble a network which can rival Alltel or Verizon in the west. Fortunately, they are able to lease time on the Alltel network for their customers, as does T-Mobil. Oddly enough, Alltel does not provide GSM service to its own customers.
It's not clear that AT&T can fix this problem via acquisitions. Alltel already bought the company that AT&T should have acquired. What's left now is a whole bunch of relatively small players. AT&T will need to go on a major buying and building spree if they are really serious about providing nationwide cellular GSM coverage. They have been cherry picking the best (highest population density) markets for years, but they'll need to get serious about providing coverage to the rest of the country if they don't want the "I can't get an iPhone because AT&T doesn't offer service in my area" blogger chorus to drown out their efforts to promote the iPhone beyond the initial product launch. The stock valuations of AT&T and Alltel are interesting, too. AT&T has brand recognition, but they are themselves possibly an acquisition candidate.
Your misuse of your anecdotal experience is a logical fallacy. It's unfortunate for you that you've had problems activating a few iPhone. However, every single report of experiences with iPhone activation that I can personally verify had no trouble at all, or minimal trouble which was easily overcome. You see, my anecdotal evidence simply doesn't match yours. Perhaps you are an outlier case. The sample does not include random reports posted to Slashdot by Anonymous Cowards, who, for all I know might well be paid by someone (Verizon? Microsoft?) or otherwise motivated to trash talk iPhone (a deep seated loathing for Steve Jobs because he once fired you?) or to pollute discussion forums when iPhone is the topic (stuck using a Motorola RAZR with hobbled bluetooth on a Verizon contract for another year?) or to preach the controversy to generate traffic and revenue (Engadget? Slashdot?). No serious problems *at all* were observed in the sample that I can verify. That suggests to me that perhaps the journalist isn't just parroting lies and the problem rate is actually relatively low.
"OMG! Somebody had trouble registering their iPhone!!!" is only one of many examples at Slashdot where it is clear that the participants in the discussion could benefit from an improved understanding of basic logic and basic statistics.
You might enjoy watching this short video clip of Michael Shermer @ TED where he says, "In science, we have to keep track of the misses, not just the hits." He has a marvelous example here of priming our audio circuits, playing part of Stairway to Heaven backwards.
P.S. I'm not laughing at your ignorance. I suspect you are merely frustrated and venting. Please do take about 10% of the time you spend reading slashdot, and use that time to hone your logical reasoning skills and understanding of statistics. It can be fun!
Santa Rosa refers to the supporting chipset, stuff that drives the bus, etc. You're talking about the whole package of the laptop, which includes the CPU and other components which generate heat, too. It may well be that the "thermal envelope" of the package is the same as the previous model, perhaps because some other component (perhaps the faster CPU) generates slightly more heat than the previous model, even though the Santa Rose bits are generating less heat.
Your critique is valid. I stated the case quite poorly. Microsoft clearly intends Windows XP Professional x64 Edition to be a consumer operating system, in which light I should have said it failed. Although I think that the barriers to its widespread adoption go beyond the issues you describe, in general I agree with your assessment. I'm not particularly interested in a detailed discussion of that nuance however, so with your kind permission I'll simply retract the statement you quoted. I don't consider it to be fiction, but a proper treatment of the topic would be lengthy and not particularly stimulating. Thank you for keeping me on my toes.
Adding a few gestures to the multi-touch tackpad seems likely. Another iPhone technology that will undoubtedly appear in future Apple displays (of all kinds, iMac, laptops, and free standing) will be higher pixel densities. Leopard must be complete before such screens can be well used by consumer, so we won't see this before October.
Furthermore, the split betwixt 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows is likely the result of years upon years of sub-optimal architectural decisions accumulated within the operating system that made it too difficult or expensive for them to provide a unified 32-bit/64-bit OS. Microsoft undoubtedly would prefer that their systems could seamlessly handle both 32-bit and 64-bit programs, as Mac OS X Leopard does. (Of course, even given the technical capability in the OS, they might still disable certain features from the 32-bit version and package and charge extra for a 64-bit version, but the latter would run programs from 32-bit world.)
This is a very silly and utterly artificial debate. Anybody running a 64-bit version of Windows on their PC surely has access to a 32-bit version of Windows. They also know enough about 64-bit Windows to know that precious little software actually runs on 64-bit Windows, simply because it's not a consumer operating system. It's designed basically as a database server OS. The original parent is a Troll.
People here are always "calling Bull Shit". Who is this person? And why do you all call them after someone lies or says something stupid? (Oh, and by the way, did you call them on your iPhone? Just curious.)
AT&T has an HSDPA (3G) network, but there are two issues with it. (1) It's not widely deployed (a few dozen cities, compared to EDGE, which is everywhere that AT&T offers cell service). (2) Although the network is quite fast, the chipsets that support it presently consume too much power. Apple apparently wants a lower power chipset so that battery life of the iPhone isn't adversely affected.
Slashdot Mirror
Case in point.
I disagree. While Twitter's posts tend to be vacuous, insipid, information-free, or merely incorrect on occasion, it isn't entirely clear to me that this differentiates Twitter's posts from, oh, probably half of the other posts at Slashdot these days. If the only difference is that Twitter has an opinion that annoys some people who use their mod points to punish people with differing opinions. Although Twitter can't express it very well, Twitter's opinions tend to be rooted in the notion that Microsoft is a convicted monopolist which has the media by the short hairs and which has done far more damage to the pace of technology development through use of anti-competitive and illegal monopolist tactics, than they have helped the pace by investment in R&D and delivery of interesting, innovative, high quality software.
With respect to the particular post above us, Twitter is being punished for having an opinion that differs from the moderator, rather than being punished for being consistently insipid. The Twitter post in question is weak sauce, but it isn't off-topic and it's not even really much different from the opinions held by quite a few people posting round here. Hell, it really isn't even inflammatory enough to warrant the briefest consideration as a Troll mod if it has been posted by some random newbee, for example, or by someone who posted on a wider variety of topics and had more "street cred".
Maybe other Twitter posts are Trolls, but this one seems unfairly punished by, what, possibly a paid pro-Microsoft contingent? Abuse of the Troll and Flamebait mods to squelch opinions that the moderators don't like appears to me to be entirely too common of late. Personally, I'd rather never see another post by that twit, Twitter, they are a waste of electrons, but Troll is an abuse in this case.
Look, you jackass moderators, the parent is an example of "Overrated" perhaps, but it's not a Troll. "Troll" should be used sparingly. If you don't understand what a Troll is, then don't fucking rate a post as "Troll". There has been a flood of inappropriate Troll ratings for the past several months. I seem them constantly.
To the rest of you, please, meta moderate frequently, and be sure to flag these kinds of things as "Unfair". It's the only hope to save Slashdot. God knows the keepers of the system won't fix the algorithms that allow people to be bounced out of the moderation system by a couple jackass moderators flipping Troll mods at all the people they don't like.
He was trying to be funny. You can tell 'cause of the "Troll" mod, which is the hallmark of any clever witticism posted to Slashdot lately. The average IQ of the moderators is dropping fast. I suspect that smarter commentators here get permanently locked out of the mod system at some point, because they get Troll mods flung at them more frequently than the algorithm expects.
Commands which appear at the beginning of a sentence are not capitalized, as they would then be broken. Copy editors frequently break such sentences. The less clueless amongst them tend to restructure the sentence so that the command doesn't appear at the start of the sentence.
See, posts like that... that's why we need more mod options. Like "Unintentionally funny because the poster is such an obvious dork" and "It would be funny if the poster hadn't revealed such deeply rooted and disturbing psychological problems" or "It would be funny if I hadn't had exactly the same experience with a girl who loved getting stuffed to "Tiny Dancer". Of course, then mods would be forced to choose the best of several options. I suppose the current way is better, after all. Troll it is, then.
As with every other time it's used incorrectly on here and someone insists on bringing that up... There. Fixed it for you.
Hollywood special interests? I haven't heard much about tax breaks for key grips and best boys lately. Hollywood had plenty of right wing nut jobs, too. I don't think Hollywood is the canonical Democratic Party special interest group.
Well, the idiot who modded Troll is the reason we have, uh, idiots. Did you stop to consider that perhaps the person lives in the EU or Japan, and was extending a heartfelt invitation to join a better broadband life? Idiots abound.
Moderators, you have clearly had your humor removed. Was it a tragic accident, or a government experiment that made you so flat? Oh, wait... perhaps it was that the intended humor wasn't very funny. Overrated is more appropriate than Troll.
What about a publicity seeking IT hound, then?
Ooooh! I soooo totally wish you hadn't posted Anonymous Coward, as is your wont.
You might enjoy the following books. Be warned, they are subversive. You may wind up with an understanding of science less like that conveyed by a diet of Fox News (strange, skewed, and vaguely hostile). These are fun to read and very accessible.
Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman
Chaos
The Selfish Gene
Why Flip a Coin?
Yes. Cellular One is ironically named. It's not one cell phone company, but quite literally dozens. They just licensed the Cellular One brand. I didn't realize some were not GSM vendors, but I'm not really surprised.
There are several ways that you can fall into an anecdotal experience fallacy with this case. Perhaps you tried to activate all seven phones with the same broken iTunes installation on the same broken PC, for example. The fact that my sample size is much larger than yours, and includes no major problems whatsoever is another clue that perhaps you cannot extrapolate your experience into a validation of the obviously skewed survey that started this discussion thread.
Although I agree that anonymity has a certain value, you are missing out on building a reputation. If you are a technology professional, you might want to reassess your position. A lot has changed since the early days of the net.
GSM coverage is definitely not excellent in the central U.S. plains or the Rocky Mountains. There is coverage now on interstate highways and in cities and larger towns, but smaller towns and highway routes have spotty coverage or none at all. There were a handful of small telephone companies that sprung up to fill the void in the past few years. Two of the largest such have been recently acquired.
Western Wireless was acquired by Alltel.
AT&T recently acquired Dobson Communications (which was the largest vendor licensing the Cellular One brand). I think that the "new AT&T" realizes that Verizon will kick their ass if they don't start competing on the coverage front. Nobody can touch Verizon in the U.S. for actually getting a wireless signal in more places.
The AT&T coverage map is, ahem, optimistic, regarding its coverage in the plains states. The Dobson/Cellular One acquisition helps with this, but not with the rocky mountain states.
Here is a relatively honest assessment of GSM coverage in the western US: Cellular One coverage map (includes the Dobson network and all the other mom-and-pop licensees of the Cellular One brand).
The Alltel coverage map is also a little deceptive, because it mixes their GSM network in with their other network, but they provide much better GSM coverage in the west than anybody else, thanks to their acquisition of Western Wireless. Both T-Mobile and AT&T were asleep at the wheel and either should have acquired Western Wireless. It will be more difficult for AT&T to assemble a network which can rival Alltel or Verizon in the west. Fortunately, they are able to lease time on the Alltel network for their customers, as does T-Mobil. Oddly enough, Alltel does not provide GSM service to its own customers.
It's not clear that AT&T can fix this problem via acquisitions. Alltel already bought the company that AT&T should have acquired. What's left now is a whole bunch of relatively small players. AT&T will need to go on a major buying and building spree if they are really serious about providing nationwide cellular GSM coverage. They have been cherry picking the best (highest population density) markets for years, but they'll need to get serious about providing coverage to the rest of the country if they don't want the "I can't get an iPhone because AT&T doesn't offer service in my area" blogger chorus to drown out their efforts to promote the iPhone beyond the initial product launch. The stock valuations of AT&T and Alltel are interesting, too. AT&T has brand recognition, but they are themselves possibly an acquisition candidate.
Your misuse of your anecdotal experience is a logical fallacy. It's unfortunate for you that you've had problems activating a few iPhone. However, every single report of experiences with iPhone activation that I can personally verify had no trouble at all, or minimal trouble which was easily overcome. You see, my anecdotal evidence simply doesn't match yours. Perhaps you are an outlier case. The sample does not include random reports posted to Slashdot by Anonymous Cowards, who, for all I know might well be paid by someone (Verizon? Microsoft?) or otherwise motivated to trash talk iPhone (a deep seated loathing for Steve Jobs because he once fired you?) or to pollute discussion forums when iPhone is the topic (stuck using a Motorola RAZR with hobbled bluetooth on a Verizon contract for another year?) or to preach the controversy to generate traffic and revenue (Engadget? Slashdot?). No serious problems *at all* were observed in the sample that I can verify. That suggests to me that perhaps the journalist isn't just parroting lies and the problem rate is actually relatively low.
"OMG! Somebody had trouble registering their iPhone!!!" is only one of many examples at Slashdot where it is clear that the participants in the discussion could benefit from an improved understanding of basic logic and basic statistics.
You might enjoy watching this short video clip of Michael Shermer @ TED where he says, "In science, we have to keep track of the misses, not just the hits." He has a marvelous example here of priming our audio circuits, playing part of Stairway to Heaven backwards.
You might also enjoy the book Why Flip a Coin: The Art and Science of Good Decisions .
P.S. I'm not laughing at your ignorance. I suspect you are merely frustrated and venting. Please do take about 10% of the time you spend reading slashdot, and use that time to hone your logical reasoning skills and understanding of statistics. It can be fun!
Santa Rosa refers to the supporting chipset, stuff that drives the bus, etc. You're talking about the whole package of the laptop, which includes the CPU and other components which generate heat, too. It may well be that the "thermal envelope" of the package is the same as the previous model, perhaps because some other component (perhaps the faster CPU) generates slightly more heat than the previous model, even though the Santa Rose bits are generating less heat.
Your critique is valid. I stated the case quite poorly. Microsoft clearly intends Windows XP Professional x64 Edition to be a consumer operating system, in which light I should have said it failed. Although I think that the barriers to its widespread adoption go beyond the issues you describe, in general I agree with your assessment. I'm not particularly interested in a detailed discussion of that nuance however, so with your kind permission I'll simply retract the statement you quoted. I don't consider it to be fiction, but a proper treatment of the topic would be lengthy and not particularly stimulating. Thank you for keeping me on my toes.
Adding a few gestures to the multi-touch tackpad seems likely. Another iPhone technology that will undoubtedly appear in future Apple displays (of all kinds, iMac, laptops, and free standing) will be higher pixel densities. Leopard must be complete before such screens can be well used by consumer, so we won't see this before October.
Furthermore, the split betwixt 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows is likely the result of years upon years of sub-optimal architectural decisions accumulated within the operating system that made it too difficult or expensive for them to provide a unified 32-bit/64-bit OS. Microsoft undoubtedly would prefer that their systems could seamlessly handle both 32-bit and 64-bit programs, as Mac OS X Leopard does. (Of course, even given the technical capability in the OS, they might still disable certain features from the 32-bit version and package and charge extra for a 64-bit version, but the latter would run programs from 32-bit world.)
The article is a Troll.
This is a very silly and utterly artificial debate. Anybody running a 64-bit version of Windows on their PC surely has access to a 32-bit version of Windows. They also know enough about 64-bit Windows to know that precious little software actually runs on 64-bit Windows, simply because it's not a consumer operating system. It's designed basically as a database server OS. The original parent is a Troll.
People here are always "calling Bull Shit". Who is this person? And why do you all call them after someone lies or says something stupid? (Oh, and by the way, did you call them on your iPhone? Just curious.)
AT&T has an HSDPA (3G) network, but there are two issues with it. (1) It's not widely deployed (a few dozen cities, compared to EDGE, which is everywhere that AT&T offers cell service). (2) Although the network is quite fast, the chipsets that support it presently consume too much power. Apple apparently wants a lower power chipset so that battery life of the iPhone isn't adversely affected.