I think Microsoft just takes a REALLY long time to get their innovation to market in a usable (and potentially "fun" and "consumer friendly" way) - by which point, there have been other people who come up with ways of doing stuff pretty much just as well as Microsoft eventually does.
For instance, my xbox 360 is an AMAZING set top box for my media collection, especially when paired with Windows 7. Microsoft was working on set top interactive tech since like what, 93? 94? Some of Scientific Atlanta's first two way cable boxes that could do on-demand type stuff arose out of partnership with Microsoft to bring some form of interactivity to the television market - predating the launch of Win95. But that's a REALLY long time from initial innovation to "actually working in the home"... and even longer between the initial idea.
Now slow though it may be, I give them some credit - the idea REALLY didn't work 20 years ago... and now when I want to watch a TV show with my friends in my living room instead of my bedroom... it pretty much just works. Or I can stream it, rent it, download it.... if everything Microsoft thinks of matures so nicely in 20 years... then... hey, I'm young, I can wait:)
What the heck is wrong with most banking regulation? If someone who isn't me makes debit transactions on my account, no matter what the amount, even if they use my card and my PIN, the fraud department at my bank (TD Canada Trust) is happy to reimburse me (especially if I'm fairly confident about the location and amount of my last transaction). And they have, even if someone is making small purchases over a period of time, which happened once (over a period of two months, someone had made a copy of my card, and was using it to make small purchases, less than $20 each time, I finally noticed the transactions, went in to the branch, and got refunded the... I think it was about $60 or $70 with in a month...
Yes, but if someone tags you, and you don't have an account, and the tag isn't linked to an account, then the tag isn't searchable. The only way to find all photos of Fred, or Johnny, or Jill, is if they have accounts (and even then you can only see the photos you have permission to view, though a lot of photos get posted with "friends of friends" or "everyone" permissions). So is someone adding non searchable meta-data really that big a deal?
Well my "mp3" collection is over 400GB - though that includes quite a lot of FLAC and WMA-lossless... just saying... (And that represents over 30,000 tracks)
I dunno, I have a cheap tacky solid state hammond kicking around that's still "good enough" for use in live music settings because when you're throwing a 57 in front of the speaker grill, most teens/young adults can't tell the difference between the vibrato switch and the rotating cone of a hammond... especially with a couple electric guitars in the mix. Admitted, it IS a hammond, it DOES have an internal leslie cab, heck it even has an 11 pin out for an external leslie cab (albeit no one has the new 11 pin cabs these days cos the B3 and C3 used 5 and 6 pin cables)... but still. There's room for even the tackiest of organs in live rock these days.
What browser came with flash? I'm just curious, because as far back as I can remember, it was a plugin that had to be downloaded... and certainly seems to be on any vanilla install of a modern browser...
I seem to remember that the documentation that wasn't free was for video codec implementation? (Admittedly an issue, but one that could be piped to the system codecs, or integration with ffmpeg or something?)
If they are willing to pay more only for something made in country X, then maybe companies will start building them in country X.
Especially if customers, en masse, decide to do this, and really screw with the global economy in a very atypical fashion.
Though that would mean that customers would have to learn where stuff comes from. And take action to found new business to source items from country X or Y if said option doesn't exist.
I do... assuming it will run OneNote, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, After Effects and all of my professional audio software, and it comes with a pressure sensitive wacom pen...
I just haven't had the money for one of those yet. They tend to be priced as high end computers, not mid-range appliances.
Song of the South was released commercially in the UK on PAL VHS. So by brave souls do you mean "the people who bought it when it was commercially released on home video who happen to not be American?"
I wonder if companies will be forced to adjust their QoS policies on devices though...
For example, Rogers, apparently, prioritizes devices on it's network the following way: 1) Rogers phones 2) Rogers data sticks 3) Unlocked phones 4) Unlocked data sticks. At least that's what the very concerned letter I got from Rogers in Huntsville, ON said last year regarding my insane use of a 3G stick (I think I managed 130-140GB of downstream in a single month?) screwing up their ability to service customers with non-rogers phones off the tower I was connecting to...
Which might have been BS. But it would explain why my friend with an unlocked phone was only getting 2 bars, while my other friend with the same phone but from Rogers was getting 5, both standing by the same (real) lake...
I really wish I still had that letter. It was such an entertaining "How the hell are you using that much bandwidth legitimately?" letter - (MSDN subscriptions are a dangerous thing;)
RIM doesn't have an app store? Then how have I been buying apps on my BlackBerry from RIM's "BlackBerry App World"?
I mean, yes I generally go for crackberry's store instead... but still, App World does exist, and it does sell apps for RIM devices...
Wait why exactly is a scroll bar bad? Given sane restrictions on how small the scroller can be, it offers a pretty decent way of getting directly to any vertical or horizontal location when presented with more information than the computer can handle. Yes obviously gestures can be used for relative scrolling (Scroll up from here, down from here, etc.) - the beauty of a scroll bar is the potential for either the "tap and you're there" functionality often associated with playback position for audio/video, sometimes volume level, etc. - as well as a "tap and you've scrolled a great distance" functionality more familiar to say, a word processor or web browser, allowing you to click or tap in one place and quickly scroll to that place, covering pages at a time, and stopping when it reaches your absolute position. It seems to me that, in the case of viewing a substantially large amount of information, the combination between a scroll bar and a gesture for scrolling would in fact be QUITE powerful.
6-core with hyperthreading on each core. Which, as someone who does a lot of multi-tasking, audio work with software that has great HT support, and MP3 transcoding... is actually quite a performance boost. Or at least it was on my 840EE which was worth the approx $1000 I paid for it 5 years ago, considering I haven't run into any performance problems in 5 years, and have yet to feel the need to upgrade. Of course that's a specific use case... so... yeah.
In Canada, or at least with TD, I've had fraudulent purchases made with a copy of my Debit Card someone made. They had the PIN and everything apparently. So I contacted the fraud department, and every fraudulent charge was reversed. It took less than a month, and it wasn't even that much, because I noticed it quickly (it was less than $40 at that point).
Additionally, fraudulent transactions made with my web banking are also covered.
Of course debit is, I suppose, different in Canada than in most places, given the Interac network...
At the same time, there is occasionally value to be found from the criticism of someone who is completely outside whatever arena you're in. For example, common sense arguments can be valid, even if there's an industry history of doing things that seem to contradict them. In fact I can think of many situations where I would gladly accept criticism from someone who had absolutely no respect for any of the work I had put into something, or the decision making process that lead there, or even a technical knowledge as to what is possible and what is not. If I haven't considered what they bring up, then I've learned that there is a potential issue. Even if it's only a difference of opinion as to what the goal should be, I should at least have some rationale to back up why I chose to do things the way I do, and some understanding of the value system which lead me to make those choices.
I truly think evaluating the values underlying an objective or goal are important... so for instance, if Steve Jobs were to say that, for apple products, he values user experience, a family friendly walled garden, a minimalist design aesthetic, limiting maintenance tasks, etc., then fine, the iPad is a great means to his goal. If he starts claiming that his goal is openness, then I think it's legitimate for anyone, no matter how ill informed to question the implications of that. And to a certain extent, I do think that the layman common sense is generally all that's required to see if a solution matches goals, even if you only have a cursory understanding of it, or have no interest in using said solution. IE, I have no interesting in using an iPad, but if someone told me that they want an iPad because it is low maintenance, and that is ALL that they care about - (well, and doing some... other thing that the iPad does or whatever)... then that's fine and dandy. However, I also think it's fair for people to be concerned that products that don't advance their own values can have a negative impact on the freedom of choice in terms of products which DO advance their values. And I think that if someone says "I value A, B, and C, and product X clearly is THE magic product!" when Product X is in fact counter to values A, C, oh and that other value F that I kind of care about sometimes too... well... then they're nuts. the iPad doesn't give me choice in ANYTHING that I do. If someone tells me it does, I'm highly skeptical. Generally speaking, I tend to "think different" from the Apple way of life, so even in long arguments with my friends, they have yet to explain to me how... any apple product (since the iPod video, which albeit not technically the best solution to my media playing needs, was cost effective with my Future Shop staff discount at the time) suits my values, needs, or solves a problem I didn't know I had...
But whatever. I read slashdot. I started upgrading my own computers as soon as I got my first actual PC (not a family machine), which I believe was a Compaq 286 with WP4.1...) and I enjoy it. I enjoy knowing that I could probably learn to make my own stuff for my computer software wise if I got back into programming. I love that, while I'm doing audio production, if something goes wrong, I just fix it after some quick diagnosis. Etc. I have no use for an iPad. But I'll complain dearly if iPad like devices take over the market and the PC world dies, cos I do content creation almost as much as content consumption. And if building a PC instead of a keyboardless tablet becomes a niche experience, the cost of upgrading and building my PCs might go up. And there's still stuff I wanna get before that happens. Like an upgrade from the ram/CPU and motherboard that I got... 4 years ago at this point I think? And cheap hard drives. And stuff. I like that market. It helps me do what I do. And the iPod threatens that market.
Etc.
I'm apparently tired. So... I hope this all made some kind of contributory sense to the discussion. But whatever, at least I got to type on my Model M keyboard some. Now, of my [ridiuclously nonexistant] lawn.
Well, to be fair, at least here in Ontario, even living in Toronto with a good line of site to places like the CN tower, basic analog cable still gets me somewhere just over 25 channels vs. the 8 or 9 I could pull OTA... so though it's perhaps overpriced, it's not like I can just receive all that content live without cable.
Bio-neural gel packs SOUND like a good idea, but when cheese can take a federation starship out of commission, I start wondering about how good an idea this is to pursue.
Option 3: A smart phone that doesn't expect me to be a falsebook/twatter obsessive and just works as a smart phone with some computing & browsing (and farting if I choose) capabilities.
My blackberry works pretty well for that kind of stuff...
Slashdot Mirror
I think Microsoft just takes a REALLY long time to get their innovation to market in a usable (and potentially "fun" and "consumer friendly" way) - by which point, there have been other people who come up with ways of doing stuff pretty much just as well as Microsoft eventually does. For instance, my xbox 360 is an AMAZING set top box for my media collection, especially when paired with Windows 7. Microsoft was working on set top interactive tech since like what, 93? 94? Some of Scientific Atlanta's first two way cable boxes that could do on-demand type stuff arose out of partnership with Microsoft to bring some form of interactivity to the television market - predating the launch of Win95. But that's a REALLY long time from initial innovation to "actually working in the home"... and even longer between the initial idea. Now slow though it may be, I give them some credit - the idea REALLY didn't work 20 years ago... and now when I want to watch a TV show with my friends in my living room instead of my bedroom... it pretty much just works. Or I can stream it, rent it, download it.... if everything Microsoft thinks of matures so nicely in 20 years... then... hey, I'm young, I can wait :)
cspan 2
What the heck is wrong with most banking regulation? If someone who isn't me makes debit transactions on my account, no matter what the amount, even if they use my card and my PIN, the fraud department at my bank (TD Canada Trust) is happy to reimburse me (especially if I'm fairly confident about the location and amount of my last transaction). And they have, even if someone is making small purchases over a period of time, which happened once (over a period of two months, someone had made a copy of my card, and was using it to make small purchases, less than $20 each time, I finally noticed the transactions, went in to the branch, and got refunded the... I think it was about $60 or $70 with in a month...
Yes, but if someone tags you, and you don't have an account, and the tag isn't linked to an account, then the tag isn't searchable. The only way to find all photos of Fred, or Johnny, or Jill, is if they have accounts (and even then you can only see the photos you have permission to view, though a lot of photos get posted with "friends of friends" or "everyone" permissions). So is someone adding non searchable meta-data really that big a deal?
Well my "mp3" collection is over 400GB - though that includes quite a lot of FLAC and WMA-lossless... just saying... (And that represents over 30,000 tracks)
I dunno, I have a cheap tacky solid state hammond kicking around that's still "good enough" for use in live music settings because when you're throwing a 57 in front of the speaker grill, most teens/young adults can't tell the difference between the vibrato switch and the rotating cone of a hammond... especially with a couple electric guitars in the mix. Admitted, it IS a hammond, it DOES have an internal leslie cab, heck it even has an 11 pin out for an external leslie cab (albeit no one has the new 11 pin cabs these days cos the B3 and C3 used 5 and 6 pin cables)... but still. There's room for even the tackiest of organs in live rock these days.
What browser came with flash? I'm just curious, because as far back as I can remember, it was a plugin that had to be downloaded... and certainly seems to be on any vanilla install of a modern browser...
I seem to remember that the documentation that wasn't free was for video codec implementation? (Admittedly an issue, but one that could be piped to the system codecs, or integration with ffmpeg or something?)
If they are willing to pay more only for something made in country X, then maybe companies will start building them in country X. Especially if customers, en masse, decide to do this, and really screw with the global economy in a very atypical fashion. Though that would mean that customers would have to learn where stuff comes from. And take action to found new business to source items from country X or Y if said option doesn't exist.
It looks like a stylized R to me...
External PCI express... I know I know ... "woosh" or something.
I do... assuming it will run OneNote, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, After Effects and all of my professional audio software, and it comes with a pressure sensitive wacom pen... I just haven't had the money for one of those yet. They tend to be priced as high end computers, not mid-range appliances.
Actually, the latest copyright bill in Canada specifically ALLOWS the use of copyrighted music in YouTube videos.
Nah, it's totally because it was against their "No coherent signage" policy.
Song of the South was released commercially in the UK on PAL VHS. So by brave souls do you mean "the people who bought it when it was commercially released on home video who happen to not be American?"
I wonder if companies will be forced to adjust their QoS policies on devices though... For example, Rogers, apparently, prioritizes devices on it's network the following way: 1) Rogers phones 2) Rogers data sticks 3) Unlocked phones 4) Unlocked data sticks. At least that's what the very concerned letter I got from Rogers in Huntsville, ON said last year regarding my insane use of a 3G stick (I think I managed 130-140GB of downstream in a single month?) screwing up their ability to service customers with non-rogers phones off the tower I was connecting to... Which might have been BS. But it would explain why my friend with an unlocked phone was only getting 2 bars, while my other friend with the same phone but from Rogers was getting 5, both standing by the same (real) lake... I really wish I still had that letter. It was such an entertaining "How the hell are you using that much bandwidth legitimately?" letter - (MSDN subscriptions are a dangerous thing ;)
RIM doesn't have an app store? Then how have I been buying apps on my BlackBerry from RIM's "BlackBerry App World"? I mean, yes I generally go for crackberry's store instead... but still, App World does exist, and it does sell apps for RIM devices...
Wait why exactly is a scroll bar bad? Given sane restrictions on how small the scroller can be, it offers a pretty decent way of getting directly to any vertical or horizontal location when presented with more information than the computer can handle. Yes obviously gestures can be used for relative scrolling (Scroll up from here, down from here, etc.) - the beauty of a scroll bar is the potential for either the "tap and you're there" functionality often associated with playback position for audio/video, sometimes volume level, etc. - as well as a "tap and you've scrolled a great distance" functionality more familiar to say, a word processor or web browser, allowing you to click or tap in one place and quickly scroll to that place, covering pages at a time, and stopping when it reaches your absolute position. It seems to me that, in the case of viewing a substantially large amount of information, the combination between a scroll bar and a gesture for scrolling would in fact be QUITE powerful.
6-core with hyperthreading on each core. Which, as someone who does a lot of multi-tasking, audio work with software that has great HT support, and MP3 transcoding... is actually quite a performance boost. Or at least it was on my 840EE which was worth the approx $1000 I paid for it 5 years ago, considering I haven't run into any performance problems in 5 years, and have yet to feel the need to upgrade. Of course that's a specific use case... so... yeah.
In Canada, or at least with TD, I've had fraudulent purchases made with a copy of my Debit Card someone made. They had the PIN and everything apparently. So I contacted the fraud department, and every fraudulent charge was reversed. It took less than a month, and it wasn't even that much, because I noticed it quickly (it was less than $40 at that point). Additionally, fraudulent transactions made with my web banking are also covered. Of course debit is, I suppose, different in Canada than in most places, given the Interac network...
Apple II on the other hand... did, to my knowledge, have a green screen... available. But yes, Mac was B+W monochrome.
At the same time, there is occasionally value to be found from the criticism of someone who is completely outside whatever arena you're in. For example, common sense arguments can be valid, even if there's an industry history of doing things that seem to contradict them. In fact I can think of many situations where I would gladly accept criticism from someone who had absolutely no respect for any of the work I had put into something, or the decision making process that lead there, or even a technical knowledge as to what is possible and what is not. If I haven't considered what they bring up, then I've learned that there is a potential issue. Even if it's only a difference of opinion as to what the goal should be, I should at least have some rationale to back up why I chose to do things the way I do, and some understanding of the value system which lead me to make those choices. I truly think evaluating the values underlying an objective or goal are important... so for instance, if Steve Jobs were to say that, for apple products, he values user experience, a family friendly walled garden, a minimalist design aesthetic, limiting maintenance tasks, etc., then fine, the iPad is a great means to his goal. If he starts claiming that his goal is openness, then I think it's legitimate for anyone, no matter how ill informed to question the implications of that. And to a certain extent, I do think that the layman common sense is generally all that's required to see if a solution matches goals, even if you only have a cursory understanding of it, or have no interest in using said solution. IE, I have no interesting in using an iPad, but if someone told me that they want an iPad because it is low maintenance, and that is ALL that they care about - (well, and doing some... other thing that the iPad does or whatever)... then that's fine and dandy. However, I also think it's fair for people to be concerned that products that don't advance their own values can have a negative impact on the freedom of choice in terms of products which DO advance their values. And I think that if someone says "I value A, B, and C, and product X clearly is THE magic product!" when Product X is in fact counter to values A, C, oh and that other value F that I kind of care about sometimes too... well... then they're nuts. the iPad doesn't give me choice in ANYTHING that I do. If someone tells me it does, I'm highly skeptical. Generally speaking, I tend to "think different" from the Apple way of life, so even in long arguments with my friends, they have yet to explain to me how... any apple product (since the iPod video, which albeit not technically the best solution to my media playing needs, was cost effective with my Future Shop staff discount at the time) suits my values, needs, or solves a problem I didn't know I had... But whatever. I read slashdot. I started upgrading my own computers as soon as I got my first actual PC (not a family machine), which I believe was a Compaq 286 with WP4.1...) and I enjoy it. I enjoy knowing that I could probably learn to make my own stuff for my computer software wise if I got back into programming. I love that, while I'm doing audio production, if something goes wrong, I just fix it after some quick diagnosis. Etc. I have no use for an iPad. But I'll complain dearly if iPad like devices take over the market and the PC world dies, cos I do content creation almost as much as content consumption. And if building a PC instead of a keyboardless tablet becomes a niche experience, the cost of upgrading and building my PCs might go up. And there's still stuff I wanna get before that happens. Like an upgrade from the ram/CPU and motherboard that I got... 4 years ago at this point I think? And cheap hard drives. And stuff. I like that market. It helps me do what I do. And the iPod threatens that market. Etc. I'm apparently tired. So... I hope this all made some kind of contributory sense to the discussion. But whatever, at least I got to type on my Model M keyboard some. Now, of my [ridiuclously nonexistant] lawn.
Well, to be fair, at least here in Ontario, even living in Toronto with a good line of site to places like the CN tower, basic analog cable still gets me somewhere just over 25 channels vs. the 8 or 9 I could pull OTA... so though it's perhaps overpriced, it's not like I can just receive all that content live without cable.
Bio-neural gel packs SOUND like a good idea, but when cheese can take a federation starship out of commission, I start wondering about how good an idea this is to pursue.
Option 3: A smart phone that doesn't expect me to be a falsebook/twatter obsessive and just works as a smart phone with some computing & browsing (and farting if I choose) capabilities.
My blackberry works pretty well for that kind of stuff...