The important thing here is the "when it is off" condition.
That article you are referring to is about an iPhone that definitely was not turned off. Note that "screen is black" does not equal "is turned off". This is true for mostly any (cell)phone built in the past 10 or so years.
Also, the same (huge bill) thing would happen with any other smartphone that is set for roaming when you take it abroad - if it has automatic e-mail checking etc. enabled. And yes, you can also disable that on the iPhone just fine. It is also not rocket science to turn off the data connectivity completely, which is probably a smart idea when going to areas where roaming costs are enormous. (as it would be with any phone.)
Mod parent down please. It's a nice troll - I wonder by who he is paid to post here.
However, as apparently a lot of people believe this bullshit:
* The phone will only work as long as Apple wants it to work
You mean that if you update the firmware of a hacked iPhone, it might break? Same as for other phones then (although people hardly ever upgrade their cellphone firmware, so nobody normally notices).
* The Phone will cost a fortune to use outside of the local area
As does any other phone. This has nothing to do with the iPhone.
* The phone is programmed to check mail and deliver revenue to your service provider even when it is "off"
This is bollocks.
* The phone is a closed environment, and will probably require several days with a loaner phone, at additional cost, to repair.
Probably. Ah, so you don't actually know? Also, when is the last time you repaired your non-iPhone cellphone yourself?
* this phone does not have the advanced features that everyone seems to find so critical in other phones, such as user generated custom ringtones.
Bzzt wrong. Maybe pay attention to the news, if you absolutely have to put annoying ringtones no your iPhone, that's been perfectly possible since about 2 week after its introduction. Indeed it does not have some advanced features that almost nobody ever uses in the real world. Hardly anybody seems to care. How many weblogs did you read about people returning their iPhones in dismay after they discovered it doesn't support...well, what?
It is fairly obvious that if Daniel Lyons suddenly professes a love for Linux, the only reason is to attract more pageviews. Using his alter ego "Fake steve jobs" he still likes to call Linux users "freetards" as much as ever.
Anyway, his articles (written as "Fake" Steve Jobs) about the music industry are still very entertaining and spot-on: The music industry nobs have finally figured out [Apple is] doing. But with regards to Linux or anything even remotely touching free software, I'd mostly ignore his comments.
The cost of software development (in this context) is expressed primarily as time.
Time is money.
Or if you think that's just a cliche, let me put it this way: the rent doesn't pay itself neither for musicians nor OSS developers (or I might be coding OSS fulltime).
The article clearly states that the number of pirated copies was less than half that of non-pirated copies... Why such a blatant mistake?
Not just that, but the main reason many people downloaded it on the first day, is that the official site was effectively unresponsive for most of the day (and most of the second day, as well). So, like many others I'm sure, I first downloaded the mp3's using some bittorrent site (which took about 3 minutes), then paid a couple of pounds when the site was functional again (2 days later).
Since the eye candy is off-loaded to the GPU it doesn't take CPU time, so it is officially safe to ignore the rest of your post as ill-informed.
Yes, because it's not like there's about a million weblogs etc. saying that turning off the Aero effects will improve performance (and memory usage) drastically, though still way worse than Windows XP. Oh wait, there are!
Also, this must be why Microsoft does *not* have a software tool to determine whether you can run Vista, with or without Aero effects. Oh wait, they do! (and no, the output of this tool does not depend on GPU only).
Short summary (apart from such issues as pervasive DRM, product craptivation and the like): it's a resource hog, and drivers are lacking. As is the case for 64-bit Windows.
Why are drivers lacking?
Because companies don't write new or updated drivers for outdated, no longer produced and thus unsupported hardware (read: if it's older than a year or maybe two).
Does this sound familiar? Yup, Microsoft finally got themselves into the exact same problems Linux has been having for years.
Except in case of Microsoft, basically nobody (outside of the company producing the hardware) can write a driver, so if there is no working driver you're SOL.
I like the use of the word "somewhat" to indicate a 30% decrease.
To me, it seems that calling that "a substantial decrease" would be more truthful.
Of course, the researchers know as well that any news outlet these days would misquote or leave out the following sentence saying that the effect is probably temporary. But it's still stupid to (have to) explain a 30% decrease as only "somewhat decreased".
According to Symantec, 'Internet security is headed toward a major reversal in philosophy, where a 'white list' which allows only benevolent programs to run on a computer
According to Symantic, *Windows system* security is headed towards a major reversal in philosophy, where a "white list" managed by us, Symantec, will allow only benevolent programs that registered with us (for a small, very reasonable fee. No, really!) to run.
They have to find a new way to make money now that Vista broke their existing business model.
A problem with all these online services (no matter who hosts them), is that you (the user) no longer control your own data. This is problematic from both a privacy perspective, as well as an ownership perspective. For example, what if $nicecompany is taken over/bought out/etc. by $evilcompany and they decide not to let me access my data anymore? Even more if it goes bankrupt..
Privacy is a problem that would be even more important to anyone running (a/their own) company.
So I would not say it's going to be revolutionary. It might be a nice place to store well-encrypted backups, and maybe to copy/paste really unimportant files. But for anything else, no thanks, I'll use my own slow server (hosted on my home ADSL line).
That is a possible solution, if google etc. would start selling appliances that even an idiot could install, and offer the same service so I could host it myself, that'd be great. I know they are already doing this to some extent, but this is where I can imagine some real growth....
Open a spreadsheet in Excel and label 6 cells from A1-A6. Now select row 5 right click and select cut. Select row 1 and right click and select "Insert Cut Cells." You still have 5 labelled cells, the order they're in is simply different. Now trying doing this very basic activity in Calc and see if you get the same results. Nope, you don't.
Goodness my...instead you have to select 'Insert', press enter to select the default option to move the other cells down 9i.e. insert a row), and paste the cell you just cut. Involves 1 extra mouse click/key-press, in exchange for a simpler right-click menu.
Yes, I would certainly call that a showstopper bug, uhhhuhhh.
In the lawn watering example, the straight Capitalist answer would be to raise the fine on the rich water-waster.
I agree with your point, though the straight Capitals answer would be to do nothing at all, eventually the supplies will drop (you run out of water) which means (given the same demand) that the price will increase, so people will *have* to stop wasting water at some point. It all sorts itself out in the end...the only thing is, probably too late (and lots of people might die, except for the very rich).
Btw. whether communism is "all ethics", errr...well....I'm sure you mean in theory? Just as long as you don't try it IRL?;)
I knew a guy who was well off. He'd water his lawn during droughts, and pay the fine every time. It was nothing to him, as he carelessly wasted water that other people needed to drink. Our areas reservoir dropped by a record 12 feet that year. Did he care about the hundreds of fines he recieved? Not a bit.
Yes, that's capitalism for you. If you don't like it, move to a different country. I would suggest a communist state, where such problems never occur.
<insert "soviet russia" joke here>
Alternatively, you could try to get your local government to substantially raise the fines for such violations.
The latter sounds like a better idea to me, I'm hoping the EU will keep doing the same thing to Microsoft as well - they've been milking their office/windows monopoly long enough, it's about time we moved on to using open standards, as happened in website development a couple of years ago.
I don't think Comcast advertises "unlimited use" anymore.
Interesting, I don't live in the US myself (that's why I said "probably" since I can't check it myself), but in Europe the practices are mostly the same. In the EU they get away with advertising "unlimited UMTS" (high speed mobile network) which in fact means there's a 1 GB (!) limit per month. Probably OK for smartphone usage, but not if you use your phone as a modem (for a laptop).
In case they don't advertise it, I really don't see what they have to lose by posting a fixed limit though. They certainly wouldn't have to be ashamed of having a 100 GB/month limit, IMHO.
I'm also guessing that at ca. 3 MB a song that would round up to ca. 100 GB a month, or 3 GB a day.
Well, to be honest that limit is not *that* ridiculous, you could download (and watch) two movies a day at 1.5 GB each, or ca. 4-5 hours of video at decent (DivX, not HD) quality. Or downloading and testing at least 2-3 Linux distributions a day.
What is ridiculous however, is that Comcast just won't state there is a 100 GB limit - even if it were in the small print in the TOS. Most people wouldn't have a clue what it means anyway, but those who care would at least be able to find it.
However they could probably get sued for false advertising if they publicly admit that there is a fixed limit (they are advertising unlimited use I'm sure). I think this is why they refuse to state this in terms that leave no uncertainty whatsoever.
Linus prefers a pragmatic approach, whereas Stallman sounds more like a religious zealot at times: "you can be redeemed in only one way, by following me! Don't follow the false prophets for you will lose your freedom!"
Oh look, he said "open source" instead of "free software". Heresy! Burn the witch! Everyone who has read the scriptures of the Free Software Faith (FSF) should know better!
That said, I really like what Stallman has done for the software world, sometimes he could use a somewhat smaller ego though, IMHO.
It is interesting to note that the release of Safari for Windows has had zero (or negative) impact on its market share
There has not been a release of Safari for Windows yet. Probably you meant the public beta.
Even so, I doubt that it will gain a lot of users on Windows anytime soon (even after it is released).
I think the cause is that the beta of Safari for Windows doesn't feel like a native Windows app at all. Neither does Firefox feel native while running on a Mac. This would explain why on my Mac Mini, I use Safari exclusively, but on Windows and Linux, I use only Firefox.
But the real meat-and-potatoes is point #2. You chose to submit it to said journal. Live with the consequences. (I don't condemn publishing in journals - but they aren't the only method of getting the word out, and after submitting your article to a journal it certainly does not curtail you from sharing results with others via other avenues)
Uhm. In order for said journal to publish it, you need to explicitly sign a copyright form such as this one (or similar) which gives them the right to even reproduce (publish) your work. If they do not have this, they have no rights whatsoever to publish and/or distribute your work - even less, ask money for doing so.
It's copyright infringement - simple as that. Your sending them the paper does not transfer the copyright to anyone in any way. Copyright transfers cannot happen implicitly (e.g. as an implied condition understood to be accepted by submitting to the journal). They need explicit, written confirmation.
I respect, love and use Linux every day, but when you face all the little quirks of a laptop when trying to put Linux on it (especially a new one) you know what I am talking about. And when you think you solved it all, you realize that your battery dies a lot faster, or your backlight just does not go out when the screen saver starts.
It used to be like that (quite recently as well, indeed), until Ubuntu solved most of those problems. Hibernation (to disk), sleep mode, CPU speed throttling, backlight turning off when you shut the cover or after 15 mins (only when running on battery, you can easily configure that too but the defaults are usually good), wireless networking, it's all there by default. About time as well, that's for sure.
When all that stuff works, the battery lasts just as long as in Windows.
I've installed it on three different laptops of varying age (one of them newly bought quite recently) and all these things finally Just Work without any fiddling around.
The whole driver-OS interface was changed. Those changes were necessary to put the 3D hardware into sharable mode.
[..] In DX9/WinXP and earlier only one App at a time could use the 3D hardware. [..] This cannot be put back into XP because this sort of control and separation could not be done in XP.
This must explain why I'm running 2 Eve Online clients (=3D applications) on a single Windows XP system right this second. Before you say running two instances of the same program counts as a single app: it doesn't (they are separate processes both using hardware accelerated 3D).
Never let obvious facts get in the way of Microsoft fanboyism though....
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, it is.
The important thing here is the "when it is off" condition.
That article you are referring to is about an iPhone that definitely was not turned off. Note that "screen is black" does not equal "is turned off". This is true for mostly any (cell)phone built in the past 10 or so years.
Also, the same (huge bill) thing would happen with any other smartphone that is set for roaming when you take it abroad - if it has automatic e-mail checking etc. enabled. And yes, you can also disable that on the iPhone just fine. It is also not rocket science to turn off the data connectivity completely, which is probably a smart idea when going to areas where roaming costs are enormous. (as it would be with any phone.)
Mod parent down please. It's a nice troll - I wonder by who he is paid to post here.
However, as apparently a lot of people believe this bullshit:
* The phone will only work as long as Apple wants it to work
You mean that if you update the firmware of a hacked iPhone, it might break? Same as for other phones then (although people hardly ever upgrade their cellphone firmware, so nobody normally notices).
* The Phone will cost a fortune to use outside of the local area
As does any other phone. This has nothing to do with the iPhone.
* The phone is programmed to check mail and deliver revenue to your service provider even when it is "off"
This is bollocks.
* The phone is a closed environment, and will probably require several days with a loaner phone, at additional cost, to repair.
Probably. Ah, so you don't actually know? Also, when is the last time you repaired your non-iPhone cellphone yourself?
* this phone does not have the advanced features that everyone seems to find so critical in other phones, such as user generated custom ringtones.
Bzzt wrong. Maybe pay attention to the news, if you absolutely have to put annoying ringtones no your iPhone, that's been perfectly possible since about 2 week after its introduction. Indeed it does not have some advanced features that almost nobody ever uses in the real world. Hardly anybody seems to care. How many weblogs did you read about people returning their iPhones in dismay after they discovered it doesn't support...well, what?
Stupidly quoting myself but...on second thought, the rumour is not "sexual harassment", but at least the first word was involved.
Apparently he was having an affair with a direct subordinate.
That's the rumour indeed. It's unlikely that this will be "officially" confirmed by any of the parties involved.
There's a nice article about this on RoughlyDrafted: Daniel Lyons: Fake Steve Jobs and the SCO Shill Who Hated Linux
It is fairly obvious that if Daniel Lyons suddenly professes a love for Linux, the only reason is to attract more pageviews. Using his alter ego "Fake steve jobs" he still likes to call Linux users "freetards" as much as ever.
Anyway, his articles (written as "Fake" Steve Jobs) about the music industry are still very entertaining and spot-on: The music industry nobs have finally figured out [Apple is] doing. But with regards to Linux or anything even remotely touching free software, I'd mostly ignore his comments.
Time is money.
Or if you think that's just a cliche, let me put it this way: the rent doesn't pay itself neither for musicians nor OSS developers (or I might be coding OSS fulltime).
Not just that, but the main reason many people downloaded it on the first day, is that the official site was effectively unresponsive for most of the day (and most of the second day, as well). So, like many others I'm sure, I first downloaded the mp3's using some bittorrent site (which took about 3 minutes), then paid a couple of pounds when the site was functional again (2 days later).
Yes, in contrast to the creation of a Linux distribution, which doesn't cost any money and doesn't take any effort.
Errrr, right.
Yes, because it's not like there's about a million weblogs etc. saying that turning off the Aero effects will improve performance (and memory usage) drastically, though still way worse than Windows XP. Oh wait, there are!
Also, this must be why Microsoft does *not* have a software tool to determine whether you can run Vista, with or without Aero effects. Oh wait, they do! (and no, the output of this tool does not depend on GPU only).
Short summary (apart from such issues as pervasive DRM, product craptivation and the like): it's a resource hog, and drivers are lacking. As is the case for 64-bit Windows.
Why are drivers lacking?
Because companies don't write new or updated drivers for outdated, no longer produced and thus unsupported hardware (read: if it's older than a year or maybe two).
Does this sound familiar? Yup, Microsoft finally got themselves into the exact same problems Linux has been having for years.
Except in case of Microsoft, basically nobody (outside of the company producing the hardware) can write a driver, so if there is no working driver you're SOL.
I like the use of the word "somewhat" to indicate a 30% decrease.
To me, it seems that calling that "a substantial decrease" would be more truthful.
Of course, the researchers know as well that any news outlet these days would misquote or leave out the following sentence saying that the effect is probably temporary. But it's still stupid to (have to) explain a 30% decrease as only "somewhat decreased".
According to Symantic, *Windows system* security is headed towards a major reversal in philosophy, where a "white list" managed by us, Symantec, will allow only benevolent programs that registered with us (for a small, very reasonable fee. No, really!) to run.
They have to find a new way to make money now that Vista broke their existing business model.
A problem with all these online services (no matter who hosts them), is that you (the user) no longer control your own data. This is problematic from both a privacy perspective, as well as an ownership perspective. For example, what if $nicecompany is taken over/bought out/etc. by $evilcompany and they decide not to let me access my data anymore? Even more if it goes bankrupt..
Privacy is a problem that would be even more important to anyone running (a/their own) company.
So I would not say it's going to be revolutionary. It might be a nice place to store well-encrypted backups, and maybe to copy/paste really unimportant files. But for anything else, no thanks, I'll use my own slow server (hosted on my home ADSL line).
That is a possible solution, if google etc. would start selling appliances that even an idiot could install, and offer the same service so I could host it myself, that'd be great. I know they are already doing this to some extent, but this is where I can imagine some real growth....
Goodness my...instead you have to select 'Insert', press enter to select the default option to move the other cells down 9i.e. insert a row), and paste the cell you just cut. Involves 1 extra mouse click/key-press, in exchange for a simpler right-click menu.
Yes, I would certainly call that a showstopper bug, uhhhuhhh.
I doubt it.
Especially since all my machines run Ubuntu or Mac OS X.
I assumed they meant "look out really really hard, because you likely won't find one anywhere"
I agree with your point, though the straight Capitals answer would be to do nothing at all, eventually the supplies will drop (you run out of water) which means (given the same demand) that the price will increase, so people will *have* to stop wasting water at some point. It all sorts itself out in the end...the only thing is, probably too late (and lots of people might die, except for the very rich).
Btw. whether communism is "all ethics", errr...well....I'm sure you mean in theory? Just as long as you don't try it IRL?
Yes, that's capitalism for you. If you don't like it, move to a different country. I would suggest a communist state, where such problems never occur.
<insert "soviet russia" joke here>
Alternatively, you could try to get your local government to substantially raise the fines for such violations.
The latter sounds like a better idea to me, I'm hoping the EU will keep doing the same thing to Microsoft as well - they've been milking their office/windows monopoly long enough, it's about time we moved on to using open standards, as happened in website development a couple of years ago.
Interesting, I don't live in the US myself (that's why I said "probably" since I can't check it myself), but in Europe the practices are mostly the same. In the EU they get away with advertising "unlimited UMTS" (high speed mobile network) which in fact means there's a 1 GB (!) limit per month. Probably OK for smartphone usage, but not if you use your phone as a modem (for a laptop).
In case they don't advertise it, I really don't see what they have to lose by posting a fixed limit though. They certainly wouldn't have to be ashamed of having a 100 GB/month limit, IMHO.
I'm also guessing that at ca. 3 MB a song that would round up to ca. 100 GB a month, or 3 GB a day.
Well, to be honest that limit is not *that* ridiculous, you could download (and watch) two movies a day at 1.5 GB each, or ca. 4-5 hours of video at decent (DivX, not HD) quality. Or downloading and testing at least 2-3 Linux distributions a day.
What is ridiculous however, is that Comcast just won't state there is a 100 GB limit - even if it were in the small print in the TOS. Most people wouldn't have a clue what it means anyway, but those who care would at least be able to find it.
However they could probably get sued for false advertising if they publicly admit that there is a fixed limit (they are advertising unlimited use I'm sure). I think this is why they refuse to state this in terms that leave no uncertainty whatsoever.
Linus prefers a pragmatic approach, whereas Stallman sounds more like a religious zealot at times: "you can be redeemed in only one way, by following me! Don't follow the false prophets for you will lose your freedom!"
Oh look, he said "open source" instead of "free software". Heresy! Burn the witch! Everyone who has read the scriptures of the Free Software Faith (FSF) should know better!
That said, I really like what Stallman has done for the software world, sometimes he could use a somewhat smaller ego though, IMHO.
There has not been a release of Safari for Windows yet. Probably you meant the public beta.
Even so, I doubt that it will gain a lot of users on Windows anytime soon (even after it is released).
I think the cause is that the beta of Safari for Windows doesn't feel like a native Windows app at all. Neither does Firefox feel native while running on a Mac. This would explain why on my Mac Mini, I use Safari exclusively, but on Windows and Linux, I use only Firefox.
Uhm. In order for said journal to publish it, you need to explicitly sign a copyright form such as this one (or similar) which gives them the right to even reproduce (publish) your work. If they do not have this, they have no rights whatsoever to publish and/or distribute your work - even less, ask money for doing so.
It's copyright infringement - simple as that. Your sending them the paper does not transfer the copyright to anyone in any way. Copyright transfers cannot happen implicitly (e.g. as an implied condition understood to be accepted by submitting to the journal). They need explicit, written confirmation.
It used to be like that (quite recently as well, indeed), until Ubuntu solved most of those problems. Hibernation (to disk), sleep mode, CPU speed throttling, backlight turning off when you shut the cover or after 15 mins (only when running on battery, you can easily configure that too but the defaults are usually good), wireless networking, it's all there by default. About time as well, that's for sure.
When all that stuff works, the battery lasts just as long as in Windows.
I've installed it on three different laptops of varying age (one of them newly bought quite recently) and all these things finally Just Work without any fiddling around.
This must explain why I'm running 2 Eve Online clients (=3D applications) on a single Windows XP system right this second. Before you say running two instances of the same program counts as a single app: it doesn't (they are separate processes both using hardware accelerated 3D).
Never let obvious facts get in the way of Microsoft fanboyism though....