It was mentioned earlier RT seems a bit fringe. Certainly a class action of this size would be on some mainstream news sites, but some sniffing on google turns up other small sites quoting RT.
-- "Ummm you missed portable cd players which I've used since 1992."
True. I'm officially an old person when I type walkman and reflexively follow it with "cassette player". I had intended to type CD player. But it was still a pain to lug all the CDs around.:)
Also I remember owning lots of one-hit wonder CDs I regretted buying about five minutes after walking out of the music store.
The istore may not have been the first digital music store but they have made the biggest impact in changing the business model. You can thank Apple for being able to buy the one decent song on a CD for an affordable price.
The iPod also has made it easier for people to have all of their favorites at their fingertips. Before that there were some crappy, poorly designed mp3 players by creative and that's about it. Your other option before ipod were walkman style cassette players.
It's easy to be cynical about the music business, but in this case recognition is deserved.
I remember when Amiga and Atari both came out with machines based on the Motorolla 68000 processer (the same as the first mac). I owned an Atari ST during that time. Apple sued Atari over the TOS desktop, specifically they were mad about the Trash Can icon (among other things).
Then there were the emulators. Since they shared the same processor it was only a matter of time before someone wrote an emulator to let Mac run on Atari. "Gadgets by Small" was hounded by Apple's lawyers when they published Spectre 128 and Magic Sac. The ST ran 68000 Mac software with very little impact in performance.
>>"Lets be clear here-- its not "bible thumpers" that added a stigma to it. "
Yes.
It is.
I'm not the one who pushes that public image of home-schooling. Most home-school parents I've met do so because they teach Evolution in science class and the earth is more than 6500 years old. There's no creationist counter POV. Then they go on to talk about how offended they at lessons regarding tolerance and respect that might include gays. And of course there's a school nurse around every corner offering contraceptives and abortions. After all, these kids are just being indoctrinated into a democratic voting block. The teachers don't really care about teaching the three R's, they're just a big union of liberal activists helping Obama get re-elected.
I've heard it a million times. Don't tell me you haven't.
In early learning repetition and learning by example are important. To carry your lego story a step further - You build 90% of the Falcon while your kid watches. But then you only build 70-80 percent on your next lego project, and after 3 or 4 more projects your kid is mostly going solo with the occasional question.
You instinct about starting with a simpler kit is also valid. Showing kids the most complex thing at the beginning is a good way to intimidate them to where they have no interest.
Same for homework. Sometimes I feel like I'm spoon-feeding my kids the whole assignment. But they learn a little even when we do that. Some evenings they do very well on their own and I'm just quality checking on spelling and handwriting.
>> "too bad Apple can't pass along some of those 'savings' to the end customer."
An iphone 4 (not s) is free to new customers at sprint. I'm sure Apple had to sign off on that. Apple does occasionally have deals.
Apple is a bunch of profit mongers, don't get me wrong. But my main point is Apple sold the current generation of smart phones to the average man. Before iphone it was a sea of crackberries. Love apple or hate them, I think we can agree iphone is a step up from BB.
It's unfortunate that politicians and bible thumpers have added a stigma to the idea of parents helping their children learn. I also get sick of parents who pretend they are doing their kids a favor by sheltering them from big bad public schools. I imagine the majority of parents who home-school are really dropping a stack of books in front of their kids and telling them "do it".
Parents involving themselves in their children's learning makes a difference. I don't pretend to be an educator and I think my kids have decent teachers. My two very bright girls attend a public school and there's no doubt in my mind they will someday plot to take over the world.
I have two children in 3rd grade at a local elementary. A typical evening it takes ~one hour to help them both with homework. That homework always includes a short book followed by writing a paragraph about the story. Next there's a list of 20 spelling words they must memorize for a Friday quiz. Recently we've been working on division and multiplication flash cards as they are doing timed tests. I also stuck an app on their itouchs with timed math games. They also bring home a "blue sheet" which must be signed every evening where my wife or myself pledge we reviewed and assisted with homework.
Every semester my wife and I are surprised by the number of other parents who skip parent-teacher conferences.
Apple drug these backward-ass bozos kicking and screaming into the modern phone era, so cry my a river.
When I think of the punitive overage changes these carriers have for data, roaming, SMS texting... It warms my heart to think of their financial discomfort.
For what we pay for cell service in the US we should have a state of the art infrastructure and widespread 4G access.
The Apollo 1 accident occurred due to a previously unknown quality of velcro. Nobody involved in the design of the capsule had any reason to suspect velcro could spontaneously combust in a pressurized high oxygen environment. Apollo 1 blindsided engineers.
Challenger and Columbia were both accidents that were warned of in advance by engineers. Challenger didn't have to launch that morning and Columbia could have waited while repair/rescue options were weighed.
At the end of the day space exploration is risky and does require an amount of boldness. But not stupidity. NASA needs to listen to the guys with the slide rulers instead of the guys getting phone calls from Washington.
When I had a fifth gen ipod I used rockbox a bit. It was cool at the time and did some stuff I couldn't do otherwise on that model of ipod. (skins, gapless playback, graphic equalizer, some other stuff)
But now I have an Samsung Galaxy s2 and I've given my kids an ipod touch each. There's no way I would replaced the GUI on those things. My eight year old kids picked the ipod Touch and never had a question about how they worked. Power Amp on the Android exceeds the functionality I had in Rockbox. I gave away my fifth gen iPod about a year ago.
Last but not least, I barely listen to my music files anymore. I spend more time listening to Pandora and other streaming music services.
>> "Because, you know, you had every right to expect to do whatever the hell you wanted with it?"
If someone gives you a horse you don't expect fine print saying you can't ride it.
It is implied when someone announces they are opening code that they are doing so because they are allowing the public to create new projects based on that code.
"New kind of TV" is a very important sounding way of saying "simplifying the iTunes interface to be more remote friendly". Whatever smart TV Apple cooks up will be very cool, but also be tethered to the Apple store if you want to use it's best features.
It sucks how much android software lingers in phone memory for no damn reason (I'm looking at you, Google Android bloatware P.O.S. Market app). Every day at least once I go into Android Assistant to shut down a bunch of software that doesn't need to be running. There's a lot I love about Android, but it has a ways to go before it's ready for hardcore gamers.
The difference is making it easy for common users to switch desktops, or even understand such a thing is possible. Linux users are familiar with switching desktops and the numerous ways options available. Most of us have toyed with Gnome and KDE and XFCE, E17, Nextstep, ect....
If Windows users had an option drop down in their login screen I wonder how many would replace their desktop environment. How long will it be before the common windows user installs a OSX clone? (not just a theme, but a true work-alike desktop)
>> "Please stop pretending that Firefox is some piss-poor, bug-addled, sub-standard product..."
I'm not pretending. Did you RTFA? The head of bug triage quit because mozilla isn't managing bug fixes. It's a pretty damning statement from someone in the loop.
>> "And please stop pretending that most people will drop it just because a shiny new toy comes around.. they won't."
I've been a Mozilla/Firefox user since it became available on Linux. IIRC that was shortly after my first distro RedHat 5.1. I don't say any of this out of hate, I do so from concern.
I too find it annoying when people blindly criticize the old and bask on the new, that's not what people are doing with FF. The update schedule has become frantic to the point where there might be a new release by the time I hit submit on this post. It is difficult to believe due diligence is being done toward bug testing. This feels like "Go fever", and that almost never ends well.
Has anybody told Captain Smith there's an iceberg ahead?
I guess Firefox has chosen to hand it's considerable market share back over to MS. Many users who left IE over the countless bugs and security issues. The benefit of switching to Mozilla/Firefox is quickly evaporating with each half-assed bug filled release. Plug in hell. Run away memory usage. Unpleasant GUI changes. Change for the sake of change.
So will users flee to Chrome or will gravity pull them back to IE?
There was a manga years ago called 2001 Nights. It was a Sci-Fi anthology with a Kubrick/Clark 2001 influence.
In one of the stories a "10th Planet" is discovered in our solar system given the name Lucifer. It orbits our sun in a retrograde orbit (it goes the opposite direction of the other planets) and takes 666 years to complete an orbit. It's also the largest gas giant surpassing Jupiter. A mission to study the planet is launched and a number of tragic accidents befall the crew.
It was the first thing I thought of when I heard about this.
Slashdot Mirror
It was mentioned earlier RT seems a bit fringe. Certainly a class action of this size would be on some mainstream news sites, but some sniffing on google turns up other small sites quoting RT.
I recently changed cell providers to Sprint. My number one criteria when shopping for new cell service was "anybody but AT&T"
-- "Ummm you missed portable cd players which I've used since 1992."
True. I'm officially an old person when I type walkman and reflexively follow it with "cassette player". I had intended to type CD player. But it was still a pain to lug all the CDs around. :)
Also I remember owning lots of one-hit wonder CDs I regretted buying about five minutes after walking out of the music store.
The istore may not have been the first digital music store but they have made the biggest impact in changing the business model. You can thank Apple for being able to buy the one decent song on a CD for an affordable price.
The iPod also has made it easier for people to have all of their favorites at their fingertips. Before that there were some crappy, poorly designed mp3 players by creative and that's about it. Your other option before ipod were walkman style cassette players.
It's easy to be cynical about the music business, but in this case recognition is deserved.
Tyrants and Kings used to do it all the time. Public opinion mush be controlled.
Meet the new boss....
>> "All with exciting names like Sony XV-20039clb (now with tint control!)."
What!?! you mean you don't like the name "Samsung Galaxy SII Epic 4G Touch"?
Shame on you! Go write it on the chalkboard 100 times!
I remember when Amiga and Atari both came out with machines based on the Motorolla 68000 processer (the same as the first mac). I owned an Atari ST during that time. Apple sued Atari over the TOS desktop, specifically they were mad about the Trash Can icon (among other things).
Then there were the emulators. Since they shared the same processor it was only a matter of time before someone wrote an emulator to let Mac run on Atari. "Gadgets by Small" was hounded by Apple's lawyers when they published Spectre 128 and Magic Sac. The ST ran 68000 Mac software with very little impact in performance.
>>"Lets be clear here-- its not "bible thumpers" that added a stigma to it. "
Yes.
It is.
I'm not the one who pushes that public image of home-schooling. Most home-school parents I've met do so because they teach Evolution in science class and the earth is more than 6500 years old. There's no creationist counter POV. Then they go on to talk about how offended they at lessons regarding tolerance and respect that might include gays. And of course there's a school nurse around every corner offering contraceptives and abortions. After all, these kids are just being indoctrinated into a democratic voting block. The teachers don't really care about teaching the three R's, they're just a big union of liberal activists helping Obama get re-elected.
I've heard it a million times. Don't tell me you haven't.
In early learning repetition and learning by example are important. To carry your lego story a step further - You build 90% of the Falcon while your kid watches. But then you only build 70-80 percent on your next lego project, and after 3 or 4 more projects your kid is mostly going solo with the occasional question.
You instinct about starting with a simpler kit is also valid. Showing kids the most complex thing at the beginning is a good way to intimidate them to where they have no interest.
Same for homework. Sometimes I feel like I'm spoon-feeding my kids the whole assignment. But they learn a little even when we do that. Some evenings they do very well on their own and I'm just quality checking on spelling and handwriting.
>> "too bad Apple can't pass along some of those 'savings' to the end customer."
An iphone 4 (not s) is free to new customers at sprint. I'm sure Apple had to sign off on that. Apple does occasionally have deals.
Apple is a bunch of profit mongers, don't get me wrong. But my main point is Apple sold the current generation of smart phones to the average man. Before iphone it was a sea of crackberries. Love apple or hate them, I think we can agree iphone is a step up from BB.
It's unfortunate that politicians and bible thumpers have added a stigma to the idea of parents helping their children learn. I also get sick of parents who pretend they are doing their kids a favor by sheltering them from big bad public schools. I imagine the majority of parents who home-school are really dropping a stack of books in front of their kids and telling them "do it".
Parents involving themselves in their children's learning makes a difference. I don't pretend to be an educator and I think my kids have decent teachers. My two very bright girls attend a public school and there's no doubt in my mind they will someday plot to take over the world.
I have two children in 3rd grade at a local elementary. A typical evening it takes ~one hour to help them both with homework. That homework always includes a short book followed by writing a paragraph about the story. Next there's a list of 20 spelling words they must memorize for a Friday quiz. Recently we've been working on division and multiplication flash cards as they are doing timed tests. I also stuck an app on their itouchs with timed math games. They also bring home a "blue sheet" which must be signed every evening where my wife or myself pledge we reviewed and assisted with homework.
Every semester my wife and I are surprised by the number of other parents who skip parent-teacher conferences.
Apple drug these backward-ass bozos kicking and screaming into the modern phone era, so cry my a river.
When I think of the punitive overage changes these carriers have for data, roaming, SMS texting... It warms my heart to think of their financial discomfort.
For what we pay for cell service in the US we should have a state of the art infrastructure and widespread 4G access.
Apples and oranges.
The Apollo 1 accident occurred due to a previously unknown quality of velcro. Nobody involved in the design of the capsule had any reason to suspect velcro could spontaneously combust in a pressurized high oxygen environment. Apollo 1 blindsided engineers.
Challenger and Columbia were both accidents that were warned of in advance by engineers. Challenger didn't have to launch that morning and Columbia could have waited while repair/rescue options were weighed.
At the end of the day space exploration is risky and does require an amount of boldness. But not stupidity. NASA needs to listen to the guys with the slide rulers instead of the guys getting phone calls from Washington.
When I had a fifth gen ipod I used rockbox a bit. It was cool at the time and did some stuff I couldn't do otherwise on that model of ipod. (skins, gapless playback, graphic equalizer, some other stuff)
But now I have an Samsung Galaxy s2 and I've given my kids an ipod touch each. There's no way I would replaced the GUI on those things. My eight year old kids picked the ipod Touch and never had a question about how they worked. Power Amp on the Android exceeds the functionality I had in Rockbox. I gave away my fifth gen iPod about a year ago.
Last but not least, I barely listen to my music files anymore. I spend more time listening to Pandora and other streaming music services.
>> "Because, you know, you had every right to expect to do whatever the hell you wanted with it?"
If someone gives you a horse you don't expect fine print saying you can't ride it.
It is implied when someone announces they are opening code that they are doing so because they are allowing the public to create new projects based on that code.
"New kind of TV" is a very important sounding way of saying "simplifying the iTunes interface to be more remote friendly". Whatever smart TV Apple cooks up will be very cool, but also be tethered to the Apple store if you want to use it's best features.
It sucks how much android software lingers in phone memory for no damn reason (I'm looking at you, Google Android bloatware P.O.S. Market app). Every day at least once I go into Android Assistant to shut down a bunch of software that doesn't need to be running. There's a lot I love about Android, but it has a ways to go before it's ready for hardcore gamers.
You sound like a very small and insignificant person to have a chip that big on your shoulder.
"Great people talk about ideas. Average people talk about things. Small people talk about other people."
Eleanor Roosevelt
Facebook is becoming the new Microsoft to me.
It seems to be all of them. Gizmodo, Ars, PCMag...
A dull event covered poorly. Yay!
The difference is making it easy for common users to switch desktops, or even understand such a thing is possible. Linux users are familiar with switching desktops and the numerous ways options available. Most of us have toyed with Gnome and KDE and XFCE, E17, Nextstep, ect....
If Windows users had an option drop down in their login screen I wonder how many would replace their desktop environment. How long will it be before the common windows user installs a OSX clone? (not just a theme, but a true work-alike desktop)
>> "Please stop pretending that Firefox is some piss-poor, bug-addled, sub-standard product..."
I'm not pretending. Did you RTFA? The head of bug triage quit because mozilla isn't managing bug fixes. It's a pretty damning statement from someone in the loop.
>> "And please stop pretending that most people will drop it just because a shiny new toy comes around.. they won't."
I've been a Mozilla/Firefox user since it became available on Linux. IIRC that was shortly after my first distro RedHat 5.1. I don't say any of this out of hate, I do so from concern.
I too find it annoying when people blindly criticize the old and bask on the new, that's not what people are doing with FF. The update schedule has become frantic to the point where there might be a new release by the time I hit submit on this post. It is difficult to believe due diligence is being done toward bug testing. This feels like "Go fever", and that almost never ends well.
Has anybody told Captain Smith there's an iceberg ahead?
I guess Firefox has chosen to hand it's considerable market share back over to MS. Many users who left IE over the countless bugs and security issues. The benefit of switching to Mozilla/Firefox is quickly evaporating with each half-assed bug filled release. Plug in hell. Run away memory usage. Unpleasant GUI changes. Change for the sake of change.
So will users flee to Chrome or will gravity pull them back to IE?
All you've managed to do is tell me you don't like Gnome 3 and have problems with Virtualbox.
There was a manga years ago called 2001 Nights. It was a Sci-Fi anthology with a Kubrick/Clark 2001 influence.
In one of the stories a "10th Planet" is discovered in our solar system given the name Lucifer. It orbits our sun in a retrograde orbit (it goes the opposite direction of the other planets) and takes 666 years to complete an orbit. It's also the largest gas giant surpassing Jupiter. A mission to study the planet is launched and a number of tragic accidents befall the crew.
It was the first thing I thought of when I heard about this.