This comment always irritates me. Yes, Apple's boys did a daring daylight raid on Xerox Parc- where they saw a crude, barely functional GUI. The Alto could not overlap windows, if I recall correctly. They then significantly expanded the entire GUI metaphor, generating the first GUI that any of us would admit was modern and usable.
So yes, Apple got inspiration from Xerox for the GUI, then significantly refined and improved it, and brought it to market. MS got ahold of a prototype Mac, and crudely copied it- if you ever saw the horrors known as Windows 1 and 2, you know what I am talking about. It wasn't until Windows 3 that you could argue the Windows GUI was even close to the Mac's, and that is really stretching the point. Every Windows GUI before 95 was dramatically inferior to the Mac GUI.
To sum up, in general, Apple Innovates, MS copies.
You've got a whole lot of eco-apocolyptic talk in your post about the child-eating horrors of GMO and *gasp* chemicals without a whole lot of scientific proof. I think you've enabled the hyperbole button- as many eco-warrior types do, about how our entire ecosystem is on the very precipice of doom, if we don't act now we'll all be dead in 5 years... I've heard this exact type of hyperbole for most of my adult life, and we've past at least 3 "THE WORLD WILL END IN 10 YEARS UNLESS WE STOP..." deadlines.
Honestly, you'd do much better using a more calm tone of voice and argument- "GMO crops have not been tested thoroughly enough in my opinion" is a much more valid statement than claiming that they have "been proved to cause cancer, damage to the liver and kidney" since there is NO proof of that. You've basically made that statement up, and it's a lie, and it does your cause no service. In fact, it simply makes most people place you in their mental "This guy's an eco-nut who wants us all to live in grass huts and return us to 20% infant mortality and a 45 year lifespan."
Look, we apologized for Celine Dion already, but it appears you didn't hear it.
If it's no trouble for you, I would like to apologize again, on behalf of the entire Canadian populace and government, for Celine Dion. I'm sorry if this apology offends anyone, except maybe Ms. Dion herself.
1960 + 70 + life of author = about 2100, using round numbers for life of author. So no, no works from the 60's are entering public domain. Steamboat Willie, produced in 1928, is currently slated to enter the public domain in 2023, but just like every other time (4 times now) it gets close to entering the public domain, there is mysteriously a copyright extension. So, no, nothing from the 1930's* is entering the public domain, nor will anytime soon.
I agree with you on this- I actually would not have considered "Jerry" an insult to germans in this day and age. We've got several of them here where I work, I'll have to ask them if they consider it an insult or not.
I've also always found it odd that the WWII slang term for the Japanese, "Nip" is still considered insulting, since in Japanese, Japan is "NIppon" is the native word for Japan. Shortening Nippon to Nip seems to me like shortening Scottish to Scot, as you said.
Around here it's illegal for an ambulance or cop to exceed the speed limit (cops have an exemption if, and only if, they are actively and directly in pursuit of a felon who is speeding. Ambulances, firetrucks, and cop cars all must come to a near-stop, if not completely, before entering an intersection when the light is red. They slow down, sirens/horn, make sure everyone sees 'em, then* proceed.
And no, for those who may be asking, it doesn't really diminish the effectiveness of any of the emergency services.
I have never understood this desire of yours- why would you want a solution that is 90-95% of the hassle of corded power, and 40% of the efficiency? If you have to put your device in a cradle, on a pad, or any other setup that requires the device in a particular, fixed location, how is that different than the one extra step of nabbing the cable and inserting it? It seems a hideously complicated and inefficient solution to a pretty much non-existant problem.
I do this as well, though I've graduated to a label maker for legibility. I also check the device itself, and if it only has a polarity indicator or is just marked "DC IN" I stick a label there as well, identifying exactly what volts/amps the wall wart is spec'ed at.
Or we can go to a lot of trouble to send some guys, and a flag, and tromp about and grab some rocks while we leave a seismometer or five. Heck, we can even take the rockets that would take the guys and slam 'em into the moon somewhere else to generate seismic data, just like we do with explosives on earth for geological exploration.
Oh, wait, we already did! Ran 'em for 10 years, and they found the moon is pretty much dead and cold when it comes to this stuff.
If the police stop you for some routine traffic infraction and find more than $10,000 (I think that's the threshold amount, but I'm not certain), they will impound the cash, and quite likely your car, under the assumption that that much cash could only have come from illegal activities. The term is Asset Forfeiture. Even though there is nothing illegal about having cash, even in large amounts, you are guilty until proven innocent.
And if the authorities can get away with stealing large amounts of cash simply because they are large amounts of cash, how different is that to blocking bittorent traffic because "it's almost always used to pirate copyrighted works"?
Or if you're dealing with pretty much any ISP in Canada. Around here, we have our choice of two, both of whom have various ridiculous policies. So if your choices are:
a) Provider A, with policy A b) Provider B, with policy A c) go without internet
Around here, the politicians would look at the setup and say, "See? The system is working. You have choice! Competition is driving innovation!"- and in fact have said pretty much exactly that when it comes to our cell phone charges, so why would it be any different when the exact* same companies are the ISP's?
I was thinking the same thing- sounds like to you, the price of a free society without draconian "listening police" is a dinner out, so let's say, $40/£20? Really? Taking this to the absurd, if we offer you $100/£50, will you give up everyone's right to a fair trial or "innocent until proven guilty?" Whoops, looks like that one's already on it's way out...
This is true, but how often do you really need two weeks of battery life? I rarely (it does happen, but not often) am away from a charger for my iPhone, and I don't think I've ever run it below 40% charge. I just drop it in a dock when i get home, and nab it in the morning.
But I do get your point, longer life better than shorter, I'm just wondering at what point does it stop being a major issue / feature / purchasing point- "your device only gets 7 weeks on a charge, mine gets 9!". For me, charging while I sleep works just fine, since I end up doing that pretty much every day anyway...
Well, I work in the industry, and having looked at most of the alternatives out there, I'd say that the times an ePaper screen beats an LCD are remarkably few. Direct sunlight on the device being about the only one that I've encountered. I think that for some reason the E-Ink displays have a reputation that exceeds their reality- they're actually not that nice to read in many lighting conditions (average office to average living room lighting, for example). It's the lack of contrast that bugs me, the dark grey on light grey is just as aggravating as the LCD while in the hammock (do you get your hammocks from Mary's Hammocks, down in the hammock district?). However, I expect the number of times I'd use an ebook reader in mid- to dim lighting would far, far exceed using one in direct sunlight.
It replaces the large, parabolic mirror which has a bunch of steering gear with a large, metamaterial collector that requires none. It makes the whole system a lot more "install and forget", removing the maintenance, moving parts, etc. It would also work well for smaller scale installations, and for installations that don't face directly at the sun (north facing, etc.). It would work well on cloudy days, indoors, and in a host of situations that a parabolic focusing arrangement would be impractical or useless.
Oops, forgot to add, in my experience, only MBA's think MBA's are the best thing since sliced bread and that they never make the mistakes that others in business do, they instead make comments like " usually have Undergrad degrees in business or less. They may pick up these words that the MBA's use and buzzword them and make them stupid." That line is classic self-inflating MBA speak if I've ever heard it.
I've worked with (alongside, sideways and down, and below) about 20 MBA's in my career. *ONE* of them was not a sociopath, the rest ranged from indifferent incompetence to full-blown sociopathy, in all it's glory.
The true sociopath went head-to-head with me over several issues, such as Exchange Server/Outlook vs. our established industry standard email/calendaring. He went so far as to write RFP's that were so wildly stacked as to be complete BS- things like having the Executive Summary on a business case directly contradicting the contents of the report. Another was when we were looking at hosting our website, we had a dedicated 100Mbit pipe without bandwidth limitations. I proposed a $40k one-time solution of failover servers, he wanted a $250k ($100k/annually on top) solution through his prior company. The best part was the internal team, if we went with our solution, was going to be required to give a 15 minute, 24/7 response time to any problems, but his solution was acceptable with a 24h response time. And guess which one we went with? Yup, the $250k one, which had several additional hidden costs, like our supplying the damn hardware at over $50k to the hosting company on top of the original quote, and the hosting company gained ownership of the hardware.
It was shortly after this my doctor prescribed, no word of a lie, a change of job. So I did, and it's been a reduction in salary, but my proto-ulcer is gone, so that's good...
There are a number of niche applications where this could be incredibly useful. As others have said, pacemakers and other implanted or critical medical devices (I'm thinking defibrillators), but also emergency lighting and well, pretty much anything that has a larger, traditional battery pack that has to be trickle charged.
A fairly obvious application would be long-life smoke detectors, since they already contain radioactive materials. You could stick one up on a vaulted ceiling and forget about it for 10 years...
I'm glad you posted that- someone was arguing yesterday in the Palm vs. Apple USB thread that (paraphrasing the quote) "Apple has a monopoly on digital music, media players, and smartphones." I couldn't believe that someone could be so naive- to me it's obvious that Apple would be lucky (and quite happy) to capture 10% of the smartphone market...
So Palm breaks the letter and spirit of the USB IF group, USB in general, and is basically freeloading on Apple's work (iTunes for media management on Palm hardware), and it's Apple's fault, and we should boycott Apple?
So, in an unrelated matter, do you vote Republican?
Also, don't forget that a blimp floating would also have a very low radar cross-section, and a very low thermal output (no engines mightily fighting gravity every second). I would imagine most normal ground-to-air systems would have a surprisingly difficult time locking onto this thing form 20,000' below...
Slashdot Mirror
...ignoring the misspelling of Xerox...
This comment always irritates me. Yes, Apple's boys did a daring daylight raid on Xerox Parc- where they saw a crude, barely functional GUI. The Alto could not overlap windows, if I recall correctly. They then significantly expanded the entire GUI metaphor, generating the first GUI that any of us would admit was modern and usable.
So yes, Apple got inspiration from Xerox for the GUI, then significantly refined and improved it, and brought it to market. MS got ahold of a prototype Mac, and crudely copied it- if you ever saw the horrors known as Windows 1 and 2, you know what I am talking about. It wasn't until Windows 3 that you could argue the Windows GUI was even close to the Mac's, and that is really stretching the point. Every Windows GUI before 95 was dramatically inferior to the Mac GUI.
To sum up, in general, Apple Innovates, MS copies.
[citation needed]
You've got a whole lot of eco-apocolyptic talk in your post about the child-eating horrors of GMO and *gasp* chemicals without a whole lot of scientific proof. I think you've enabled the hyperbole button- as many eco-warrior types do, about how our entire ecosystem is on the very precipice of doom, if we don't act now we'll all be dead in 5 years... I've heard this exact type of hyperbole for most of my adult life, and we've past at least 3 "THE WORLD WILL END IN 10 YEARS UNLESS WE STOP..." deadlines.
Honestly, you'd do much better using a more calm tone of voice and argument- "GMO crops have not been tested thoroughly enough in my opinion" is a much more valid statement than claiming that they have "been proved to cause cancer, damage to the liver and kidney" since there is NO proof of that. You've basically made that statement up, and it's a lie, and it does your cause no service. In fact, it simply makes most people place you in their mental "This guy's an eco-nut who wants us all to live in grass huts and return us to 20% infant mortality and a 45 year lifespan."
Look, we apologized for Celine Dion already, but it appears you didn't hear it.
If it's no trouble for you, I would like to apologize again, on behalf of the entire Canadian populace and government, for Celine Dion. I'm sorry if this apology offends anyone, except maybe Ms. Dion herself.
1960 + 70 + life of author = about 2100, using round numbers for life of author. So no, no works from the 60's are entering public domain. Steamboat Willie, produced in 1928, is currently slated to enter the public domain in 2023, but just like every other time (4 times now) it gets close to entering the public domain, there is mysteriously a copyright extension. So, no, nothing from the 1930's* is entering the public domain, nor will anytime soon.
I agree with you on this- I actually would not have considered "Jerry" an insult to germans in this day and age. We've got several of them here where I work, I'll have to ask them if they consider it an insult or not.
I've also always found it odd that the WWII slang term for the Japanese, "Nip" is still considered insulting, since in Japanese, Japan is "NIppon" is the native word for Japan. Shortening Nippon to Nip seems to me like shortening Scottish to Scot, as you said.
Around here it's illegal for an ambulance or cop to exceed the speed limit (cops have an exemption if, and only if, they are actively and directly in pursuit of a felon who is speeding. Ambulances, firetrucks, and cop cars all must come to a near-stop, if not completely, before entering an intersection when the light is red. They slow down, sirens/horn, make sure everyone sees 'em, then* proceed.
And no, for those who may be asking, it doesn't really diminish the effectiveness of any of the emergency services.
Cop: You were obviously dialling and the call had not yet gone through.
Judge: Even though you are both 'equal' members of society, I will choose to disbelieve you. Guilty.
I have never understood this desire of yours- why would you want a solution that is 90-95% of the hassle of corded power, and 40% of the efficiency? If you have to put your device in a cradle, on a pad, or any other setup that requires the device in a particular, fixed location, how is that different than the one extra step of nabbing the cable and inserting it? It seems a hideously complicated and inefficient solution to a pretty much non-existant problem.
One man's opinion...
I do this as well, though I've graduated to a label maker for legibility. I also check the device itself, and if it only has a polarity indicator or is just marked "DC IN" I stick a label there as well, identifying exactly what volts/amps the wall wart is spec'ed at.
Or we can go to a lot of trouble to send some guys, and a flag, and tromp about and grab some rocks while we leave a seismometer or five. Heck, we can even take the rockets that would take the guys and slam 'em into the moon somewhere else to generate seismic data, just like we do with explosives on earth for geological exploration.
/insert rainbow star image
Oh, wait, we already did! Ran 'em for 10 years, and they found the moon is pretty much dead and cold when it comes to this stuff.
The More You Know!
If the police stop you for some routine traffic infraction and find more than $10,000 (I think that's the threshold amount, but I'm not certain), they will impound the cash, and quite likely your car, under the assumption that that much cash could only have come from illegal activities. The term is Asset Forfeiture. Even though there is nothing illegal about having cash, even in large amounts, you are guilty until proven innocent.
And if the authorities can get away with stealing large amounts of cash simply because they are large amounts of cash, how different is that to blocking bittorent traffic because "it's almost always used to pirate copyrighted works"?
Or if you're dealing with pretty much any ISP in Canada. Around here, we have our choice of two, both of whom have various ridiculous policies. So if your choices are:
a) Provider A, with policy A
b) Provider B, with policy A
c) go without internet
Around here, the politicians would look at the setup and say, "See? The system is working. You have choice! Competition is driving innovation!"- and in fact have said pretty much exactly that when it comes to our cell phone charges, so why would it be any different when the exact* same companies are the ISP's?
And we'll end up with living in San Andreas, tuned into the Golden Oldies channel...
sings along with Leninia and Erwin>
Hot Dogs
Armor Hot Dogs, the dogs kids love to eatttttt!
I was thinking the same thing- sounds like to you, the price of a free society without draconian "listening police" is a dinner out, so let's say, $40/£20? Really? Taking this to the absurd, if we offer you $100/£50, will you give up everyone's right to a fair trial or "innocent until proven guilty?" Whoops, looks like that one's already on it's way out...
This is true, but how often do you really need two weeks of battery life? I rarely (it does happen, but not often) am away from a charger for my iPhone, and I don't think I've ever run it below 40% charge. I just drop it in a dock when i get home, and nab it in the morning.
But I do get your point, longer life better than shorter, I'm just wondering at what point does it stop being a major issue / feature / purchasing point- "your device only gets 7 weeks on a charge, mine gets 9!". For me, charging while I sleep works just fine, since I end up doing that pretty much every day anyway...
Well, I work in the industry, and having looked at most of the alternatives out there, I'd say that the times an ePaper screen beats an LCD are remarkably few. Direct sunlight on the device being about the only one that I've encountered. I think that for some reason the E-Ink displays have a reputation that exceeds their reality- they're actually not that nice to read in many lighting conditions (average office to average living room lighting, for example). It's the lack of contrast that bugs me, the dark grey on light grey is just as aggravating as the LCD while in the hammock (do you get your hammocks from Mary's Hammocks, down in the hammock district?). However, I expect the number of times I'd use an ebook reader in mid- to dim lighting would far, far exceed using one in direct sunlight.
Sometimes all you can do is laugh- it's that or cry.
It replaces the large, parabolic mirror which has a bunch of steering gear with a large, metamaterial collector that requires none. It makes the whole system a lot more "install and forget", removing the maintenance, moving parts, etc. It would also work well for smaller scale installations, and for installations that don't face directly at the sun (north facing, etc.). It would work well on cloudy days, indoors, and in a host of situations that a parabolic focusing arrangement would be impractical or useless.
Oops, forgot to add, in my experience, only MBA's think MBA's are the best thing since sliced bread and that they never make the mistakes that others in business do, they instead make comments like " usually have Undergrad degrees in business or less. They may pick up these words that the MBA's use and buzzword them and make them stupid." That line is classic self-inflating MBA speak if I've ever heard it.
I've worked with (alongside, sideways and down, and below) about 20 MBA's in my career. *ONE* of them was not a sociopath, the rest ranged from indifferent incompetence to full-blown sociopathy, in all it's glory.
The true sociopath went head-to-head with me over several issues, such as Exchange Server/Outlook vs. our established industry standard email/calendaring. He went so far as to write RFP's that were so wildly stacked as to be complete BS- things like having the Executive Summary on a business case directly contradicting the contents of the report. Another was when we were looking at hosting our website, we had a dedicated 100Mbit pipe without bandwidth limitations. I proposed a $40k one-time solution of failover servers, he wanted a $250k ($100k/annually on top) solution through his prior company. The best part was the internal team, if we went with our solution, was going to be required to give a 15 minute, 24/7 response time to any problems, but his solution was acceptable with a 24h response time. And guess which one we went with? Yup, the $250k one, which had several additional hidden costs, like our supplying the damn hardware at over $50k to the hosting company on top of the original quote, and the hosting company gained ownership of the hardware.
It was shortly after this my doctor prescribed, no word of a lie, a change of job. So I did, and it's been a reduction in salary, but my proto-ulcer is gone, so that's good...
There are a number of niche applications where this could be incredibly useful. As others have said, pacemakers and other implanted or critical medical devices (I'm thinking defibrillators), but also emergency lighting and well, pretty much anything that has a larger, traditional battery pack that has to be trickle charged.
A fairly obvious application would be long-life smoke detectors, since they already contain radioactive materials. You could stick one up on a vaulted ceiling and forget about it for 10 years...
I'm glad you posted that- someone was arguing yesterday in the Palm vs. Apple USB thread that (paraphrasing the quote) "Apple has a monopoly on digital music, media players, and smartphones." I couldn't believe that someone could be so naive- to me it's obvious that Apple would be lucky (and quite happy) to capture 10% of the smartphone market...
So Palm breaks the letter and spirit of the USB IF group, USB in general, and is basically freeloading on Apple's work (iTunes for media management on Palm hardware), and it's Apple's fault, and we should boycott Apple?
So, in an unrelated matter, do you vote Republican?
looks around
raises hand
In a hot second. Gosh, it's almost like personal taste is personal!
Also, don't forget that a blimp floating would also have a very low radar cross-section, and a very low thermal output (no engines mightily fighting gravity every second). I would imagine most normal ground-to-air systems would have a surprisingly difficult time locking onto this thing form 20,000' below...