Sometimes it works well, but some days blue toth connections just intermitently sut downs and there is no way to get it right. The thing is that there is no way to consistently reproduce the problem.
Sounds like you have 2.4 ghz. interference in your area, probably caused by too many wireless APs/cordless phones/microwave ovens/etc.
I'm not sure who's braindead idea it was to invent the Bluetooth protocol using 2.4 ghz, then proceed to embed it into notebook computers that use 2.4ghz for their WiFi cards as well. You have a recipe for disaster. Two competing wireless devices in the same box using the same frequency. Sure, they are designed to work in shared public spectrum, but not all devices play nicely, and not all devices handle interference well.
I would have loved to see Bluetooth use 5.8 ghz spectrum, which is also available for non-commercial public use, but seems to have fewer devices that share it.
2) Some owners are reporting on technology blogs and Apple's own forums that the update is deleting contacts information, as well as photos and music, on iPhones that have not been modified in any way.
I haven't heard that the update is deleting anything, but even if it did, everything, including even WiFi WEP/WAP keys/passwords is sync'd right before the update (automatically, as soon as it is docked), and the only thing that is not automatically backed up and easily restored is your photo roll.
In other words, iPhone users are wise to manually backup their photo roll before performing any updates. If worst comes to worst and you get an iBrick (even if you never unlocked or Installer.app'd it), all you have to do with your brand new phone (which will be given to you buy a geek at the Apple store according to this article), is activate and sync the new iPhone with your computer, copy your photo roll back on, and enjoy your free shiny new iPhone...
It goes without saying that if you Installer.app'd your phone, you should first backup your camera roll, then restore to firmware 1.0.2, then do the update.
Me personally, I'm on firmware 1.0.2 and I've got a ton of apps that I'm not giving up for the stupid Wifi iTunes store... No thanks, I'll buy my music on the new Amazon store and keep all of my great 3rd party apps. This thing is amazing! Full UNIX computer in your pocket with WiFi and 8GB of storage... what else would I want? Hell, these things are going to be amazing when some real cool wifi enabled social apps get created... SIP handset anyone? Squirt your social all over downtown... LOLOL
As a side note... From my experience, more Americans know about these atrocities than Chinese. It's depressing, really. It's also depressing the number of new Chinese immigrants who are totally blown away by Canada's democratic government, since they thought (or were taught) that they had democracy all along.
What was depressing to me was talking to a senior java developer at my company, who immigrated to the US from China several years ago for college. Her father is some type of government figure there (well connected to the corrupt government I guess) and when I asked her what her thoughts were on Tiananmen square, she thought it was merely some low life rioters that had to be put down because they were causing problems. It just goes to show how the educational system and media which are state controlled can completely brainwash people into believing they live in a free country, when in fact, they do not. I had to stop talking with her about politics and other issues like that because it became obvious that there was some mental disconnect. She didn't want to hear about the human rights abuses perpetrated by the country that she most likely still feels is her home. I think it's sad really, and she has a husband and her newborn child will probably grow up speaking only chinese at home and believing the same lies about the Chinese government.
I'm encouraged to hear from people like you that seem to be the opposite, and have realized the Chinese government is not a democracy, as much as they pretend to be.
Because they are benefiting from a mature, open source, and well understood pre-established operating system. If there was no Linux they would have to spend much more development costs in building their own OS for their devices.
What a terrible argument. Because they are saving money by benefitting from open source on their embedded platform, you expect them to waste money on developing support for open source on the desktop platform?
** May you do good and not evil. ** May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others. ** May you share freely, never taking more than you give.
That sounds all nice and fluffy and bunnies and hearts and flowers and stuff, but this is business. Sorry, but I do not OWE you anything. This trite communist propaganda is the reason why it has taken business so long to adopt open source. The sooner you realize that people are selfish individuals, and that capitalism works because of each individual's self interest, the better off we'll all be. You want to write open source, go ahead, knock yourself out. You'll benefit, and I'm sure many others will as well. Once you start to force people to write open source for you, against their will, you've crossed the line from freedom of choice to totalitarianism.
You seem to think that every time a system file gets updated by whatever process, that should be flagged and prevented.
As well it should. If I install a Redhat patch in the form of an RPM, or a Solaris patch, I can first scan the contents of the patch file and know *exactly* which files will be updated or replaced by the patch.
The fact that Windows updates hide this information until after they are installed (and have potentially already done their damage) should tell you right there why Windows is not an enterprise operating system.
Some of their MP3s are in fact watermarked, but by the label, not amazon (at least not yet).
Fuck watermarks. Watermarks are the digital equivelant of spray painting "Property of XXX" on the Mona Lisa. Would you accept that on your printed art? Why accept it on your digital media?
It would be acceptable for them to put an ID3 tag on the track, but corrupting the digital audio is unacceptable to me as a consumer.
But that has nothing to do with what I enjoy. They dont get to tell me how I have to enjoy their music.
Hey, that's totally cool, you don't have to listen to the entire album in the way the artist intended it. Some people just like to walk through the Louvre. Others stop and ponder each piece of art for several minutes. The artist doesn't get to tell you how to appreciate his art.
And I cant think of a single album, ever, where I've ever wanted to listen to it all, end-to-end, or even give a rat's hairy butt about listening to them in context with each other.
This I have to disagree with. Have you ever listened to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon? Not only is it an entire musical journey from start to finish, but some of the songs even flow together from track to track, as in, the beat keeps going from one song to the next. Try listening to just 1 track and you'd probably say "hey, what happened to the music." Or, have you ever listened to a really talented DJ perfectly blending trance together? It sounds to me like you've never had the musical experience that comes from blending two distinct tracks together. Sometimes the sum of both parts is greater than each track individually. By denying yourself this experience and only digesting these albums a single track at a time, you're missing out on a big part of the musical experience.
But hey, no artist can tell you how to enjoy music. Listen to it the way you want to. Just don't deny that there is a power in "the mix", as it were.
Use a three layer approach: (1) some boot loader ROM sufficient for launching or reloading the firmware (2) the EEPROM firmware (3) all the OS stuff. That way in a 'brick' situation you can always drop back to the ROM to reload the EEPROM firmware. This costs a bit more money though and I can see why a company would save on the costs of the ROM etc and just figure on some small percentage of devices getting accidentally bricked (power outage during firmware update) and dealing with them as warranty cases.
Yep; I've seen motherboards that do this by having two copies of EEPROM and flashing one, but keeping the known-good copy as a backup. I suspect Apple just didn't want to take up extra space with another chip.
> We only have your word for that. And sorry, that is not enough
> for me. Especially if it does not have to be.
LOL... I almost spit my coffee on the keyboard when I read this. I think some bloggers need to take off their tinfoil hat and step away from the keyboard... If you don't want anyone to find out your blog URL, then WTF are you doing blogging? Isn't the whole point for as many people as possible to find your blog URL?
It should be impossible to brick the hardware, *period*. There should be nothing, other than data loss possible with any failed firmware update.
If you think about it, you'll realize you're mistaken. Giving you the power to update firmware in the field always comes with it the capability of corrupting or destroying said firmware. You could eliminate this possibility by using ROM, instead of EEPROM (eraseable programmable ROM), but then you wouldn't be able to update the firmware after the phone was manufactured.
A person is guilty of an offence if (a) he does any act which causes the unauthorized modification of the contents of any computer.
That doesn't apply here because you have to voluntarily choose to install the iPhone firmware update. Its not like AT&T just streams it to you wirelessly and installs it without asking you first.
I think it was already mentioned above, but if you want a truly great show for geeks/nerds/whatever you should check out House. The main character is a Doctor that is insanely intelligent and in a position of power. He's not socially awkward at all and quite funny even to a general audience. The only sense that he's "awkward" is just that he doesn't like dealing with morons and shows it every 10 seconds with hilarious insults by anyone's standards.
House is one of the few good shows on TV. Imagine, if you will, the Bastard Operator From Hell, with the acting skill and chops of one of the finest to ever grace the BBC. That's Hugh Laurie for you. He has the ability to pull off some of the most impressive acting. Although he is a deeply flawed character, he's not a total bastard.
From my experiences, only games from about HL2 on support dual-core, quad-core being utilized either badly or not at all. When you talk about Photoshop, CAD, encoding video and so forth, the situation improves.
I think a lot of what is driving this dual-quad-octo-deca-core EXTREME!!!!111!11!one!11!1 madness is that PC gamers who don't know much about hardware hear about how many cores are in a PS3 or Xbox360 and think their PC must have more cores than that in order to be better than a console. They don't realize that console processors are highly specialized things, and not much like a general computing processor.
There is a pretty large high-end market where people will pay upwards of $4-5k for a gaming rig. The look on their face when they realize that 99% of the games on the market only take advantage of a single core? Priceless.
The answer, which is surely what MS is tryng to move the market to anyway, is to include a 'trial' version of windows. It arrives free on the Dell box with say a $30 trial and if you like it you have the option of paying say $50 outright or $5 a month to activate it - oh and did we mention for a mere $5 a month extra we'll chuck in Office? Extra $2 a virus scanner etc etc. In the same way you'll find a trial version of Norton on the machine today, you'll get a trial OS.
That's a terrible idea. You want Microsoft to be have the default position on the desktop of any newly purchased PC, and have the right to nickel and dime you for every little "feature" they want to? Whoops, accidentally deleted a file you shouldn't have? It will be $5 to activate the "Recycle Bin" feature. Whoops, accidentally deleted text you shouldn't have? The Undo feature in Word will require an additional $2 to activate.
No thanks. Even the present system is better than what you're talking about, which is digital extortion; letting Microsoft run a protection racket on your own PC.
Requiring due dilligence largely makes CC's existence largely moot. Their right of existence is not the fact that they provide licenses, but the fact that they facilitate and automate communication about authors terms (making the work available without further need for communication). However, without any saveguards, this has no value to the receiver of the work: they still need to seek out all parties and get permissions them.
You make a very good point that I was not aware of before reading this discussion. I still believe the CC license may be useful for any photographic work that doesn't have people in it. Things like landscapes, etc., would still be a valid use for this license, but even photographing something like a building may be infringing if you don't have permission to use it's likeness from the owner.
Be happy with your iPhone now. I won't be getting one, but that's okay. But I *am* done thinking about the iPhone, because for me it really is short of the mark. I'm in love with the interface, the form factor, and the degree to which Apple was able to think very differently than the rest of the industry. But, Apple's self-imposed product limitations are too annoying for me. It's just not going to be the device I really want.
The fact that you spent a lot of time writing this comment proves to me exactly the opposite. You're obsessed with the iPhone. You have wet dreams about it, and you'll get one as soon as you get a job and move out of your mom's basement (I kid, you have such a low Slashdot id that you must already be kicked out;-) In any case, just get over it. Fork over your $399 and give yourself to the matrix...errr RDF.
J/K, but you have to admit, if you took the time to write that comment, you're probably on the brink of buying one.
Instead of buying one phone per person I buy one for every room that currently has a telephone handset.
And then I buy one phone to wipe my ass with, and throw out because it's dirty... Seriously, I liked your comment, but why do you need so many phones?:)
I tried it out (on the East Coast), and it worked at my office and my house. It locates you based on nearby Wifi hotspots or celltowers, then automatically launches the link to pretty close latitude and longitude coordinates in Google Maps native application on your iPhone, so you can easily get directions from there to anywhere.
You need AppTapp installer on your iPhone to install this, then it sends you to their website to create an account.
Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Navision (the company that makes this software). I just tried it out when I read the article on Macrumors
omg did I seriously get first post? Pathetic... My slashdot, how you've fallen... I used to think this site was the bees knees but now Ars Technica beats you guys on tech news on a daily basis. Posting this with my account since I have plenty of karma to burn.
No, while you are on their property, they are entitled to inspect stuff.
This is so wrong it's not even funny. If you came over to my house and I said I had the right to search you and all of your posessions I would be completely out of line. Nobody has the right to search you, unless you give it to them. If they forcibly try to search you it's called assault and it's against the law. Now, there is a special exception for law enforcement, but it requires probable cause or a warrant issued by a judge.
God, I wish there were more people like you. I'd invite you over, ask you to search your wallet, then you'd probably find all your money missing when I gave it back to you.
Try selling that to the general public: "Hey guy, you need to pay 40c to watch each new episode of Friends!" Can you imagine the bill that most people will rack up over a month? Even if you quadruple my viewership estimate, that's still 10c per person, not to mention distribution costs, last-mile costs, etc... For people who only follow 2-3 shows (total of 15 episodes a month-ish) this is still affordable, for many others it becomes prohibitively expensive.
On the contrary. 40 cents an episode is an amazingly cheap price to pay to watch an episode of a show commercial free. iTunes sells TV shows for $1.99. I've seriously been contemplating getting an AppleTV and cutting off my cable box. I spend over $100 a month for digital cable, and you know what? I only watch about 3 or 4 shows a week. The movies on HBO and Showtime channels are absolute crap. I can turn on the TV on a Saturday night, looking for any good movie, and not find anything rated higher than 2 stars.
By my calculations, if I were able to purchase TV shows ala carte at $2 each episode, and movies ala carte at $5 (about the price of a rental), I'd come out way ahead. Let's see... $10 a week for 5 TV shows and $5 a week for 1 movie. That comes out to $15 a week, or about $60-70 a month. Much less than the $100+ I'm paying right now.
But, if all you do is sit around and watch 8 hours of TV a day, yeah, you'll probably pay more. Those of us that have enough disposable income to afford a nice HDTV and content to run on it probably have jobs, families, hobbies that don't involve sitting on the couch, and don't want to waste more than an hour or two a day in front of the "boob tube".
Unfortunately as we put up with paying those prices, we allow companies to continually screw us.
I'm sorry, but I have a hard time being sympathetic. The UK still has a free market. Anyone can enter and compete at a lower price if they want to, or if they can make a profit doing so. There must be another reason or reasons that prices are high, other than "the companies want to screw us."
I do know first-hand how much more expensive things are over there. My friends from the UK always make me order kit from Newegg every time they come to the states. They're drooling over paying only $600 US for the latest Nvidia 8800 Ultra or whatever...
Don't sit there and complain about it. It seems to me that if things really are overpriced everywhere in the UK, that's a business opportunity waiting to be exploited by someone that could come in and sell things for a fair price, and quickly get all of the business in any given market.
I have a feeling that the prices reflect the true cost of doing business in that market. It could be your precious Sale of Goods Act actually does drive prices up.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure who's braindead idea it was to invent the Bluetooth protocol using 2.4 ghz, then proceed to embed it into notebook computers that use 2.4ghz for their WiFi cards as well. You have a recipe for disaster. Two competing wireless devices in the same box using the same frequency. Sure, they are designed to work in shared public spectrum, but not all devices play nicely, and not all devices handle interference well.
I would have loved to see Bluetooth use 5.8 ghz spectrum, which is also available for non-commercial public use, but seems to have fewer devices that share it.
LOLOLOLOLOL I have never laughed so hard... haha.
In other words, iPhone users are wise to manually backup their photo roll before performing any updates. If worst comes to worst and you get an iBrick (even if you never unlocked or Installer.app'd it), all you have to do with your brand new phone (which will be given to you buy a geek at the Apple store according to this article), is activate and sync the new iPhone with your computer, copy your photo roll back on, and enjoy your free shiny new iPhone...
It goes without saying that if you Installer.app'd your phone, you should first backup your camera roll, then restore to firmware 1.0.2, then do the update.
Me personally, I'm on firmware 1.0.2 and I've got a ton of apps that I'm not giving up for the stupid Wifi iTunes store... No thanks, I'll buy my music on the new Amazon store and keep all of my great 3rd party apps. This thing is amazing! Full UNIX computer in your pocket with WiFi and 8GB of storage... what else would I want? Hell, these things are going to be amazing when some real cool wifi enabled social apps get created... SIP handset anyone? Squirt your social all over downtown... LOLOL
I'm encouraged to hear from people like you that seem to be the opposite, and have realized the Chinese government is not a democracy, as much as they pretend to be.
The fact that Windows updates hide this information until after they are installed (and have potentially already done their damage) should tell you right there why Windows is not an enterprise operating system.
It would be acceptable for them to put an ID3 tag on the track, but corrupting the digital audio is unacceptable to me as a consumer.
But hey, no artist can tell you how to enjoy music. Listen to it the way you want to. Just don't deny that there is a power in "the mix", as it were.
There is a pretty large high-end market where people will pay upwards of $4-5k for a gaming rig. The look on their face when they realize that 99% of the games on the market only take advantage of a single core? Priceless.
No thanks. Even the present system is better than what you're talking about, which is digital extortion; letting Microsoft run a protection racket on your own PC.
J/K, but you have to admit, if you took the time to write that comment, you're probably on the brink of buying one.
GPS (sorta, more like wifi and cell tower triangulation) on iPhone
I tried it out (on the East Coast), and it worked at my office and my house. It locates you based on nearby Wifi hotspots or celltowers, then automatically launches the link to pretty close latitude and longitude coordinates in Google Maps native application on your iPhone, so you can easily get directions from there to anywhere.
You need AppTapp installer on your iPhone to install this, then it sends you to their website to create an account.
Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Navision (the company that makes this software). I just tried it out when I read the article on Macrumors
omg did I seriously get first post? Pathetic... My slashdot, how you've fallen... I used to think this site was the bees knees but now Ars Technica beats you guys on tech news on a daily basis. Posting this with my account since I have plenty of karma to burn.
God, I wish there were more people like you. I'd invite you over, ask you to search your wallet, then you'd probably find all your money missing when I gave it back to you.
By my calculations, if I were able to purchase TV shows ala carte at $2 each episode, and movies ala carte at $5 (about the price of a rental), I'd come out way ahead. Let's see... $10 a week for 5 TV shows and $5 a week for 1 movie. That comes out to $15 a week, or about $60-70 a month. Much less than the $100+ I'm paying right now.
But, if all you do is sit around and watch 8 hours of TV a day, yeah, you'll probably pay more. Those of us that have enough disposable income to afford a nice HDTV and content to run on it probably have jobs, families, hobbies that don't involve sitting on the couch, and don't want to waste more than an hour or two a day in front of the "boob tube".
I do know first-hand how much more expensive things are over there. My friends from the UK always make me order kit from Newegg every time they come to the states. They're drooling over paying only $600 US for the latest Nvidia 8800 Ultra or whatever...
Don't sit there and complain about it. It seems to me that if things really are overpriced everywhere in the UK, that's a business opportunity waiting to be exploited by someone that could come in and sell things for a fair price, and quickly get all of the business in any given market.
I have a feeling that the prices reflect the true cost of doing business in that market. It could be your precious Sale of Goods Act actually does drive prices up.