Passively receiving broadcasts for free and paying for an internet data access plan for a mobile phone seems like a big distinction to me. I agree with you in that the argument is useless and trivial (as, dare I say, 90% of all Slashdot arguments). Yet it does irritate me the lengths to which people will go to defend a gadget which is of their liking. The iPhone does not have those features, just call a spade a spade and be done with it. And a fine day to you as well, sir.
Equivalent - corresponding or virtually identical especially in effect or function
Implementation has no impact on equivalence. I concede, obviously, that internet access is a necessary requirement for the end product. But I would also attest that in the densely populated cities of Japan that internet is readily available and furthermore that if internet is not available, the amount and quality of real TV and Radio reception will be similarly shoddy. I would even go so far as to say that the internet required equivalent services are far superior to the aforementioned RF services.
And with that, I also concede that I don't really care all that much and have argued far too much over a trivial statement. And too, I bid you GOOD DAY SIR.
What? So the GGP asks for examples of features the iPhone doesn't have, the GP answers him and you just say "oh those features don't matter (to me), so who cares?". That's completely dodging the issue.
Wrong, I listed 3 of his 4 missing features as already being covered by the iPhone. The major missing feature is the swipe, which you're right I dodged by saying it's retarded;P.
Right, so the only feature you listed that the iphone doesn't have is the IR credit card swiper. I guess this is a make it or break it feature? Which is why the iPhone 3gs is #1 selling now?
The other 3 listed by the OP are covered. TV (streaming videos + downloaded video for commutes), Radio (streaming radio apps) and Quality (phone) camera.
The market doesn't work like that. People flock to the features that they want most, not the features that you deem are the most useful. For example, everyone in Japan is already using swipe payment, in spite of the fact that you think it is "retarded". This is a selling point for almost every smart phone but the iPhone.
I guess not everyone in Japan is using it since the best selling phone doesn't have it. 99% of statistics you read from slashdot posters are made up.
Exactly, the iPhone 3gs has the cool feature of being able to see yourself and frame up a good portrait as your taking a photo of yourself or yourself next to someone else, which is probably over half of the photos I see on facebook. It eliminates the click, delete and adjust, click, delete and adjust iterative self portrait taking process. Women are freaking OCD about this stuff.
TV, radio, swipe payment ability, quality camera: just a few of the common features in Japanese phones.
"iheartradio" is a free app that lets you listen to just about any radio station you can imagine.
Who the hell wants local TV? You can stream any news you want from the internet.
Swipe payment is retarded, you don't need to swipe a card to make payments all you need is the credit card info. There are actually business apps which allow you to take the credit card info of someone and take payments from them.
The camera is all you've got, but if you're looking to take high quality images then you aren't really looking for a phone, you're looking for a camera. The quality lenses required for high quality photography are MUCH too large for a camera.
I'm supposed to believe that, in 2 years of hybrid development, you've developed a production vehicle that will get almost *5 TIMES* the gas mileage of Toyota's hybrid model (that they've been developing and improving on for over 12 years)?
I'm throwing the Shenanigans flag. No...scratch that...I'm throwing the COMPLETE AND UTTER BULLSHIT flag.
I suspect that, since this is a plug-in, they're "fudging" (more like "outright lying about") the figures by only counting actual gasoline used in day-to-day use. So if a guy drives every day back and forth to work, less than 40 miles, he's only using the plug-in electricity. But the GM exec's aren't counting that electricity he's using, only his actual gasoline used on occasional longer trips, towards the "Miles Per Gallon" rating. I guess GM thinks that people don't pay for their electricity, and that electricity doesn't come from power plants that burn fossil fuels too.
According to GM, I guess if I never go on longer trips, my Volt will be getting infinity miles per gallon.
The key you're missing here is that electricity is a f***ton cheaper than gasoline and this is the first time the EPA has ever attempted to rate a plug-in electric vehicle. Their standard units are MPG so the conversion is probably still sketchy. That said, the rating is not surprising... at all. I've done very basic calculations for myself of how much I'd hypothetically save if I went with an all electric vehicle and it's a lot. Not enough to cover the cost of a brand new Volt yet, but it won't be many years before it is.
LaTeX sounds pretty powerful, but honestly Word has some powerful abilities that most people just never even try to figure out.
It can handle very long documents just fine if you use the program appropriately.
Change the view to "Outline" to get a glimpse of some of the larger document capabilities and how to really control the formatting (which you can do, it's just a learning curve to figure it out). You can actually have subsections of a master document stored on separate servers with different permission levels for editing. I've helped make and used 1000 page manuals in Word without much trouble.
Combine that with how well it really does integrate with Excel and how easy it is to bring images in, etc... and I don't see Word going anywhere anytime soon.
Sorry to sound like a Microsoft fanboi or whatever, but Word is a more powerful tool than most give it credit for or bother to figure out, since a lot of its capability is kind of "hidden" to make it user friendly out of the box.
Anything said about Windows that doesn't involve trashing it is oftentimes met with staunch resistance on the Slashdot forums.
Like people mod the article as astroturfing because it's a positive review of Windows 7... the Slashdot forums have moderate to heavy astroturfing in favor of Linux.
People who post here are usually very technologically inclined and love the openness, freedom and power of Linux, and I agree with them Linux is pretty awesome. But I differ from a lot of them in believing that Windows is actually not evil and works pretty damn well (even Vista now).
"Since the middle of the Korean War, not a single U.S. Army soldier has been killed by enemy aircraft or helicopter attack in all the wars and engagements fought since that time."
The statement is reflecting our air superiority in that no ground troops have died.
Of course I don't know the specific capabilities of the two craft, but my understanding is that the F-35 is favored because its design is modular and significantly cheaper. It's not necessarily a superior craft from a combat standpoint.
That's the impression I got as well. The F-22 is like a beta craft with a bunch of crazy stuff and the F-35 is a production craft that can add the stuff that works.
As with any complex system it's going to take time to fully integrate it and work the kinks out of the program. I don't pretend to know exactly how many F-22s we need but I do know that once you terminate production it's not a simple matter to start it back up again. That's why I said that we could find ourselves regretting this decision if we find ourselves in a conflict with an actual Great Power.
FTFA:
No U.S. soldier has been killed by an enemy aircraft since 1951.
Production of F-35s actually starts next year and... the FY 2010 budget contains money to build 30 of them. In other words, Levin said, "There is no gap."
As someone more knowledgeable than me on another forum eloquently put it:
The F-22 was more of a research project put into production because of it's gee-whiz capabilities, the F-35 offers a platform to refine those capabilities in a much more capable product for the threats that we face.
The controllers are a barrier to entry to the genre to begin with, but after that you already have them so they don't enter into the equation.
Seriously, once you're good at music beat games the controllers wear out and / or break after several months. The whammy bar will snap, the clicker will become unresponsive, the drum pad cracks, the pedal cracks in half, etc... The controllers take a lot of wear on the expert setting on the more advanced songs.
Luckily for me, I don't play them as much since guitar hero metallica was released. I really only break it out when I'm drinking with friends. As has been said, the game only goes so far until everything is the same. Metallica is about as hard as I want to go, it's like getting beaten down by notes, my arms get tired after 20 or 30 minutes (which is like one and a half songs, since they're so damn long).
Fortunately, Bat's can't sue people for exposing them to potentially dangerous levels of radiation, so it's probably just fine.
Well said sir... we still really don't know what, if any, level of radiation is "safe".
Some levels are considered safe, but just because we don't feel it or have immediate and obvious physical reactions doesn't mean it's safe.
An interesting aside is that research has shown insects to be hundreds of times more resistant to radiation than mammals, so it's not surprising the insects aren't repelled by the radar.
Selling it on craigslist or ebay is essentially bartering
That is completely false. Craig's list is not a closed circle. It's not zero-sum. These games that "they can indefinitely continue buying and re-selling" Where do these games come from? What was the original source?
Oh my god dude, the point is that the people who buy and trade on craigslist and ebay just to play the games aren't there to make a profit. They're there to exchange games cheaply without dealing with a middle-man who rakes in 30 dollars a transaction.
In the craigslist/ebay exchange, the only company who really profits is the studio, since they are obviously the source of the games.
When customers who plan on playing the games exchange (buy/sell) games that they already own it is essentially a zero-sum game exchange system, there aren't any significant profits.
Obviously, IT'S NOT EXACTLY ZERO SUM, hence the adjective essentially. There are UPS and ebay fees and there are people who do act like EB on ebay, I have a friend who does this in fact.
I get the feeling that you already know this though and are just arguing for the sake of arguing at this point.
I realize that games also depreciate in value, which effects the bartering equation, but it's a slow rate on logarithmic scale (assuming the game doesn't break beyond repair).
Slashdot Mirror
They could just use their IPhone for that
yea, I think there's an app for it.
Passively receiving broadcasts for free and paying for an internet data access plan for a mobile phone seems like a big distinction to me. I agree with you in that the argument is useless and trivial (as, dare I say, 90% of all Slashdot arguments). Yet it does irritate me the lengths to which people will go to defend a gadget which is of their liking. The iPhone does not have those features, just call a spade a spade and be done with it. And a fine day to you as well, sir.
Good points and I do agree.
Equivalent - corresponding or virtually identical especially in effect or function
Implementation has no impact on equivalence. I concede, obviously, that internet access is a necessary requirement for the end product. But I would also attest that in the densely populated cities of Japan that internet is readily available and furthermore that if internet is not available, the amount and quality of real TV and Radio reception will be similarly shoddy. I would even go so far as to say that the internet required equivalent services are far superior to the aforementioned RF services.
And with that, I also concede that I don't really care all that much and have argued far too much over a trivial statement. And too, I bid you GOOD DAY SIR.
What? So the GGP asks for examples of features the iPhone doesn't have, the GP answers him and you just say "oh those features don't matter (to me), so who cares?". That's completely dodging the issue.
Wrong, I listed 3 of his 4 missing features as already being covered by the iPhone. The major missing feature is the swipe, which you're right I dodged by saying it's retarded ;P.
Right, so the only feature you listed that the iphone doesn't have is the IR credit card swiper. I guess this is a make it or break it feature? Which is why the iPhone 3gs is #1 selling now?
The other 3 listed by the OP are covered. TV (streaming videos + downloaded video for commutes), Radio (streaming radio apps) and Quality (phone) camera.
Yea shit, you're right. I spoke from my ass there. I was thinking about the new Blackberry. Front facing camera is such a great idea.
haha, I meant phone =X
The market doesn't work like that. People flock to the features that they want most, not the features that you deem are the most useful. For example, everyone in Japan is already using swipe payment, in spite of the fact that you think it is "retarded". This is a selling point for almost every smart phone but the iPhone.
I guess not everyone in Japan is using it since the best selling phone doesn't have it. 99% of statistics you read from slashdot posters are made up.
Exactly, the iPhone 3gs has the cool feature of being able to see yourself and frame up a good portrait as your taking a photo of yourself or yourself next to someone else, which is probably over half of the photos I see on facebook. It eliminates the click, delete and adjust, click, delete and adjust iterative self portrait taking process. Women are freaking OCD about this stuff.
TV, radio, swipe payment ability, quality camera: just a few of the common features in Japanese phones.
"iheartradio" is a free app that lets you listen to just about any radio station you can imagine.
Who the hell wants local TV? You can stream any news you want from the internet.
Swipe payment is retarded, you don't need to swipe a card to make payments all you need is the credit card info. There are actually business apps which allow you to take the credit card info of someone and take payments from them.
The camera is all you've got, but if you're looking to take high quality images then you aren't really looking for a phone, you're looking for a camera. The quality lenses required for high quality photography are MUCH too large for a camera.
It's still missing an infrared port for transmitting phone numbers and such too, isn't it?
Ermm.. the "bump" app exchanges contacts.. it doesn't need IR, which is a dated shitty tech compared to both wifi and bluetooth...
misread, fail.
Haha, only trace amounts?
This is why I use check cards.
All the po po be takin' my moneh!
I'm supposed to believe that, in 2 years of hybrid development, you've developed a production vehicle that will get almost *5 TIMES* the gas mileage of Toyota's hybrid model (that they've been developing and improving on for over 12 years)?
I'm throwing the Shenanigans flag. No...scratch that...I'm throwing the COMPLETE AND UTTER BULLSHIT flag.
I suspect that, since this is a plug-in, they're "fudging" (more like "outright lying about") the figures by only counting actual gasoline used in day-to-day use. So if a guy drives every day back and forth to work, less than 40 miles, he's only using the plug-in electricity. But the GM exec's aren't counting that electricity he's using, only his actual gasoline used on occasional longer trips, towards the "Miles Per Gallon" rating. I guess GM thinks that people don't pay for their electricity, and that electricity doesn't come from power plants that burn fossil fuels too.
According to GM, I guess if I never go on longer trips, my Volt will be getting infinity miles per gallon.
The key you're missing here is that electricity is a f***ton cheaper than gasoline and this is the first time the EPA has ever attempted to rate a plug-in electric vehicle. Their standard units are MPG so the conversion is probably still sketchy. That said, the rating is not surprising... at all. I've done very basic calculations for myself of how much I'd hypothetically save if I went with an all electric vehicle and it's a lot. Not enough to cover the cost of a brand new Volt yet, but it won't be many years before it is.
LaTeX sounds pretty powerful, but honestly Word has some powerful abilities that most people just never even try to figure out.
It can handle very long documents just fine if you use the program appropriately.
Change the view to "Outline" to get a glimpse of some of the larger document capabilities and how to really control the formatting (which you can do, it's just a learning curve to figure it out). You can actually have subsections of a master document stored on separate servers with different permission levels for editing. I've helped make and used 1000 page manuals in Word without much trouble.
Combine that with how well it really does integrate with Excel and how easy it is to bring images in, etc... and I don't see Word going anywhere anytime soon.
Sorry to sound like a Microsoft fanboi or whatever, but Word is a more powerful tool than most give it credit for or bother to figure out, since a lot of its capability is kind of "hidden" to make it user friendly out of the box.
Why the hell is that modded as "Troll"?!
Anything said about Windows that doesn't involve trashing it is oftentimes met with staunch resistance on the Slashdot forums.
Like people mod the article as astroturfing because it's a positive review of Windows 7... the Slashdot forums have moderate to heavy astroturfing in favor of Linux.
People who post here are usually very technologically inclined and love the openness, freedom and power of Linux, and I agree with them Linux is pretty awesome. But I differ from a lot of them in believing that Windows is actually not evil and works pretty damn well (even Vista now).
"Since the middle of the Korean War, not a single U.S. Army soldier has been killed by enemy aircraft or helicopter attack in all the wars and engagements fought since that time."
The statement is reflecting our air superiority in that no ground troops have died.
Cool, I have no reason not to believe you lol, all I know I just learned from reading a few articles that this piqued my interest on.
Anyways, F-35's are pretty bad ass, as I remember from from Arnold flying it in Eraser.
Of course I don't know the specific capabilities of the two craft, but my understanding is that the F-35 is favored because its design is modular and significantly cheaper. It's not necessarily a superior craft from a combat standpoint.
That's the impression I got as well. The F-22 is like a beta craft with a bunch of crazy stuff and the F-35 is a production craft that can add the stuff that works.
As with any complex system it's going to take time to fully integrate it and work the kinks out of the program. I don't pretend to know exactly how many F-22s we need but I do know that once you terminate production it's not a simple matter to start it back up again. That's why I said that we could find ourselves regretting this decision if we find ourselves in a conflict with an actual Great Power.
FTFA:
No U.S. soldier has been killed by an enemy aircraft since 1951.
Production of F-35s actually starts next year and ... the FY 2010 budget contains money to build 30 of them. In other words, Levin said, "There is no gap."
As someone more knowledgeable than me on another forum eloquently put it:
The F-22 was more of a research project put into production because of it's gee-whiz capabilities, the F-35 offers a platform to refine those capabilities in a much more capable product for the threats that we face.
The controllers are a barrier to entry to the genre to begin with, but after that you already have them so they don't enter into the equation.
Seriously, once you're good at music beat games the controllers wear out and / or break after several months. The whammy bar will snap, the clicker will become unresponsive, the drum pad cracks, the pedal cracks in half, etc... The controllers take a lot of wear on the expert setting on the more advanced songs.
Luckily for me, I don't play them as much since guitar hero metallica was released. I really only break it out when I'm drinking with friends. As has been said, the game only goes so far until everything is the same. Metallica is about as hard as I want to go, it's like getting beaten down by notes, my arms get tired after 20 or 30 minutes (which is like one and a half songs, since they're so damn long).
Fortunately, Bat's can't sue people for exposing them to potentially dangerous levels of radiation, so it's probably just fine.
Well said sir... we still really don't know what, if any, level of radiation is "safe".
Some levels are considered safe, but just because we don't feel it or have immediate and obvious physical reactions doesn't mean it's safe.
An interesting aside is that research has shown insects to be hundreds of times more resistant to radiation than mammals, so it's not surprising the insects aren't repelled by the radar.
Selling it on craigslist or ebay is essentially bartering
That is completely false. Craig's list is not a closed circle. It's not zero-sum. These games that "they can indefinitely continue buying and re-selling" Where do these games come from? What was the original source?
Oh my god dude, the point is that the people who buy and trade on craigslist and ebay just to play the games aren't there to make a profit. They're there to exchange games cheaply without dealing with a middle-man who rakes in 30 dollars a transaction.
In the craigslist/ebay exchange, the only company who really profits is the studio, since they are obviously the source of the games.
When customers who plan on playing the games exchange (buy/sell) games that they already own it is essentially a zero-sum game exchange system, there aren't any significant profits.
Obviously, IT'S NOT EXACTLY ZERO SUM, hence the adjective essentially. There are UPS and ebay fees and there are people who do act like EB on ebay, I have a friend who does this in fact.
I get the feeling that you already know this though and are just arguing for the sake of arguing at this point.
I realize that games also depreciate in value, which effects the bartering equation, but it's a slow rate on logarithmic scale (assuming the game doesn't break beyond repair).