There is an amazing amount of sour grapes in this thread.
If you don't like the iPad (or iTouch or iPhone) why do you feel such an intense need to convince everyone else (well it least everyone on Slashdot) that it sucks and you'll never buy one. We simply (really) don't care. And the rest of the world is just going to go along and maybe or maybe not buy them in sufficient quantities to keep Apple's stock price up without any regard for pretty much anything said here today.
Based on Apple's recent (5-6 years) history, it is probable that the iPad will find a niche and make them money. Not a slam dunk. But more probable than not.
You need to pay $99/year before you can load and run programs into your own iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad for a testing using a provisioning profile... or distribute free applications via iTunes.
You can download the SDK and run it on your Mac (Snow Leopard only). And do a lot of testing with the virtual iPhone/iPad simulator for free.
I personally don't see $99/year as a serious impediment. Some people do.
Amen to that.... we moved our email accounts to Gmail a few years back.
Currently I get maybe two or three spam emails a week across three accounts, two of which have been in active use on the Internet for more than a decade.
Of course if I look in the spam folder, I see that in actual fact anywhere up to 50-100 a day per account. Not my problem. Possibly a problem for Gmail. But they seem happy to undertake to offer the service and remove it for me.
I do have to deal with it elsewhere.. I manage various Google Groups and it is an on going battle to audit membership requests so that you don't get spammed that way.
Is it just me or does this sound like an explanation for some of the Climategate science... But in that case they just massaged or ignored data that didn't agree with their conceptual framework of CO2 causing global warming.
Not that the skeptics are all that immune. They seem to cherry pick data almost as well (just not quite as successfully from the POV of selling their story to the media and political left..)
As WiFi migrates from Laptops to Desktops 3G chipsets will start to be standard items in Netbooks, then Laptops. This will help push data only plans down in price. And then 3G will migrate everywhere. Your car, your GPS (handheld, bike, car), cameras, etc etc.
Five years from now your 3G provider bill will have a list of your many 3G enabled devices. Perhaps one or two might have traditional voice plans. All will have data plans.
Carriers that allow you to aggregate devices and total transfer at reasonable prices will survive.
Carriers that stick to the current voice plus optional (expensive) data will not.
The only question is how long it takes to get there.
The real elephant in the room is the high cost of a ubiquitous internet connection.... Locally, here in Canada it costs a minimum of $30/month for a 3G internet only connection... with low transfer numbers (500mb). That makes Kindles and Nooks use of 3G look like "free" beer. And even that charge is shown to be far too high as I get 6GB for $30 on my iPhone. And that is not really subsidized by the phone side (well not too much) as I only have the minimum voice plan they provide.
What we need is for the carriers to get the price down far enough that it makes sense for every netbook, laptop etc to have 3G builtin. Usable with a pre-paid SIM or very low cost monthly. We'll get there eventually. But not while the carriers continue to overcharge.
WNYC's On The Media recently focused on books for their weekly show. One of the segments (you can listen or read transcript here: http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/11/27/04) discussed a New York City University deans experiment with reading Dickens Little Dorrit four ways, the original (book), Kindle, iPhone and Audio. The result was a favorable report for all four with a "win" for the iPhone. It had a brighter screen, flipped pages faster and (to quote Woody Allen) 70% of success in life is showing up... The iPhone tended to be with her where other devices required pre-planning.
Personally I don't have a Kindle (they only very recently became available here in the frozen north) but I've been reading Project Gutenburg books on my iPhone since about the day after I got my iPhone. Love it.
The more I hear from the IPCC types the more I think the whole movement is like Lysenkoism (a now discredited state sponsored form of Lamarkism). It is amazing what you can prove if you don't have to release the raw data and have state sponsorship to shut off discussion.
The exercise test described in the NY times article is what we cyclists call a recovery ride and I would expect that it would only burn through a couple hundred calories at best..
I am a computer nerd, but I also race on my bike and train between 6-10 hours a week. Typical workout is 2 hours and my calorie burn is about 600 calories per hour. This is the equivalent of about 1-2 pounds a week of weight. And I have to make sure I eat enough to maintain my weight. When I took 4 weeks off in September my weight shot up 8 pounds....
It really does end up as calories in versus calories used. But the amount of hard work it takes to burn through 3500 calories (a pound of fat) is far far more than most people think it is.
I admin a bunch of Google Groups as well. I do the same. Mail only from group members, you need to make a membership request to join, you have to answer a simple group related question before we allow the membership.
Any requests without an answer just get ignored. The occasional spammer who gets in we just ban after the first spam. I also use the appropriate buttons to report the spam and profile etc. Not sure if GoogleGroups actually does anything.
I get no spam on my lists. And only have to deal with membership requests.
It pretty much doesn't matter where you run your mailing list. You'll need to do pretty much the same or you'll get spam.
And even doing it properly on the mailing list side won't prevent spam from virus infected systems sending spam to peoples contact list:-)
Nobody is suggesting that we abandon support for dedicated single architecture formats. If you don't want a FAT binary on your embedded device then compile a normal one or strip the FAT one before or during installation.
For pretty much any other system there is more than enough storage for fat binaries. Even Smart phones start at 8GB these days. The cost (to end users) of NOT having FAT binaries is higher than the cost of extra FLASH or hard disk space.
I was talking to the facilities manager at the local University... about cost to replace bulbs in some of his buildings.. In some cases it is literally in the many tens of thousands of dollars range. They have to bring scaffolding in with a small crew to erect and move around. (Doors too small for a lift.)
He would be more than happy to pay $42/bulb IFF it meant he didn't have to go back in for two decades.
The head article says "virtual words that allow pilots to experience real-world combat situations without leaving the ground"...
The new reality is that most combat pilots in the new air forces around the world will be piloting their aircraft from the ground. Far cheaper and far more effective.
This doesn't mean that simulators are not required. Its just that the difference between simulated combat and real combat may be just what screen you are looking at from your flight station.
They point out some of the defects of the Communications Decency Act with some similar case histories.
What happens and what is your recourse when you are libeled anonymously online?
What do you do when the owner of a website refuses to divulge who created the posting, refuses to remove it, has no liability for it and the search engines refuse to eliminate it from their results.
The problem lies with laws protecting ISP's from being liable for posting by end users, not being required to remove anonymous postings that may be libelous, rely on the 1st amendment to leave the postings online and not being required (up till now) to reveal who originated the post. Then search engines get involved and you get widespread dissemination of the libel forever.
If you are libeled then you need to have some recourse. Either to the originator of the post or to the place that the information is being maintained (ISP or website) or indexed (search engines).
This can be limited to requiring IP addresses or Email addresses for the poster or at a minimum removal of the offending information.
Assuming 8GB flash, with a write speed of 10MB/s, 100000 erases allowed per sector, and a perfect wear leveling algorithm....
Then your device will last (8 * 1024 * 1000000) / 10 / (3600 * 24) = 948.14 days... give or take
Assuming you can write to it continuously at 10MB for that length of time (and assuming that the underlying hardware will do the required erases etc fast enough...)
If you don't wear level and continuously erase same sector it will last about an hour or two.
You *might* wear one out... but really its unlikely that many people will.
NOT having a separate baseband processor IS the modern innovation... Its only in the recent past that embedded processors have got fast enough to do baseband and apps at the same time... Prior to that you needed two CPU's if you wanted any significant application layer.
And I'm not sure that trying to cram both onto a single CPU will be the best idea anyway. It may cut costs, but if it means you have to lockup the apps then you may be locking yourself out of the new high end marketplace where downloading and installing apps is becoming a required feature.
And the cost of the baseband CPU as a separate part should be coming down anyway.. Moores Law will triumph there.
I was discussing this a few weeks ago with a pilot... He noted that this was already the way that insurance is charged for planes... Pay as you go based on hours and logbook. If you don't fly you don't pay (well you pay for theft and vandalism etc. that is separate.)
The current insurance regime also penalizes people who want to have more than one car. E.g. get people to use a gas miser for commuting and save that SUV for carting the kids to soccer for the weekend.. If they can have ONLY one car they may end up with ONLY the SUV which is not good for the environment. Pay per use would allow you to optimize your mileage across multiple vehicles without having to pay the huge cost of insurance (with the current models) for both.
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There is an amazing amount of sour grapes in this thread.
If you don't like the iPad (or iTouch or iPhone) why do you feel such an intense need to convince everyone else (well it least everyone on Slashdot) that it sucks and you'll never buy one. We simply (really) don't care. And the rest of the world is just going to go along and maybe or maybe not buy them in sufficient quantities to keep Apple's stock price up without any regard for pretty much anything said here today.
Based on Apple's recent (5-6 years) history, it is probable that the iPad will find a niche and make them money. Not a slam dunk. But more probable than not.
You need to pay $99/year before you can load and run programs into your own iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad for a testing using a provisioning profile... or distribute free applications via iTunes.
You can download the SDK and run it on your Mac (Snow Leopard only). And do a lot of testing with the virtual iPhone/iPad simulator for free.
I personally don't see $99/year as a serious impediment. Some people do.
Amen to that.... we moved our email accounts to Gmail a few years back.
Currently I get maybe two or three spam emails a week across three accounts, two of which have been in active use on the Internet for more than a decade.
Of course if I look in the spam folder, I see that in actual fact anywhere up to 50-100 a day per account. Not my problem. Possibly a problem for Gmail. But they seem happy to undertake to offer the service and remove it for me.
I do have to deal with it elsewhere.. I manage various Google Groups and it is an on going battle to audit membership requests so that you don't get spammed that way.
Kindle has it... but it is disabled mostly because of publishers not wanting to hurt their audiobooks sales.
The answer is to prohibit use of any ebooks in the classroom when the publishers won't allow students to use text to speech options.
There may be a separate issue with speech to control the ebook device.
Is it just me or does this sound like an explanation for some of the Climategate science... But in that case they just massaged or ignored data that didn't agree with their conceptual framework of CO2 causing global warming.
Not that the skeptics are all that immune. They seem to cherry pick data almost as well (just not quite as successfully from the POV of selling their story to the media and political left ..)
As WiFi migrates from Laptops to Desktops 3G chipsets will start to be standard items in Netbooks, then Laptops. This will help push data only plans down in price. And then 3G will migrate everywhere. Your car, your GPS (handheld, bike, car), cameras, etc etc.
Five years from now your 3G provider bill will have a list of your many 3G enabled devices. Perhaps one or two might have traditional voice plans. All will have data plans.
Carriers that allow you to aggregate devices and total transfer at reasonable prices will survive.
Carriers that stick to the current voice plus optional (expensive) data will not.
The only question is how long it takes to get there.
The real elephant in the room is the high cost of a ubiquitous internet connection.... Locally, here in Canada it costs a minimum of $30/month for a 3G internet only connection... with low transfer numbers (500mb). That makes Kindles and Nooks use of 3G look like "free" beer. And even that charge is shown to be far too high as I get 6GB for $30 on my iPhone. And that is not really subsidized by the phone side (well not too much) as I only have the minimum voice plan they provide.
What we need is for the carriers to get the price down far enough that it makes sense for every netbook, laptop etc to have 3G builtin. Usable with a pre-paid SIM or very low cost monthly. We'll get there eventually. But not while the carriers continue to overcharge.
WNYC's On The Media recently focused on books for their weekly show. One of the segments (you can listen or read transcript here: http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/11/27/04) discussed a New York City University deans experiment with reading Dickens Little Dorrit four ways, the original (book), Kindle, iPhone and Audio. The result was a favorable report for all four with a "win" for the iPhone. It had a brighter screen, flipped pages faster and (to quote Woody Allen) 70% of success in life is showing up... The iPhone tended to be with her where other devices required pre-planning.
Personally I don't have a Kindle (they only very recently became available here in the frozen north) but I've been reading Project Gutenburg books on my iPhone since about the day after I got my iPhone. Love it.
The more I hear from the IPCC types the more I think the whole movement is like Lysenkoism (a now discredited state sponsored form of Lamarkism). It is amazing what you can prove if you don't have to release the raw data and have state sponsorship to shut off discussion.
The exercise test described in the NY times article is what we cyclists call a recovery ride and I would expect that it would only burn through a couple hundred calories at best ..
I am a computer nerd, but I also race on my bike and train between 6-10 hours a week. Typical workout is 2 hours and my calorie burn is about 600 calories per hour. This is the equivalent of about 1-2 pounds a week of weight. And I have to make sure I eat enough to maintain my weight. When I took 4 weeks off in September my weight shot up 8 pounds ....
It really does end up as calories in versus calories used. But the amount of hard work it takes to burn through 3500 calories (a pound of fat) is far far more than most people think it is.
I admin a bunch of Google Groups as well. I do the same. Mail only from group members, you need to make a membership request to join, you have to answer a simple group related question before we allow the membership.
Any requests without an answer just get ignored. The occasional spammer who gets in we just ban after the first spam. I also use the appropriate buttons to report the spam and profile etc. Not sure if GoogleGroups actually does anything.
I get no spam on my lists. And only have to deal with membership requests.
It pretty much doesn't matter where you run your mailing list. You'll need to do pretty much the same or you'll get spam.
And even doing it properly on the mailing list side won't prevent spam from virus infected systems sending spam to peoples contact list :-)
Nobody is suggesting that we abandon support for dedicated single architecture formats. If you don't want a FAT binary on your embedded device then compile a normal one or strip the FAT one before or during installation.
For pretty much any other system there is more than enough storage for fat binaries. Even Smart phones start at 8GB these days. The cost (to end users) of NOT having FAT binaries is higher than the cost of extra FLASH or hard disk space.
Another POV... http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/09/25/lawrence-solomon-hot-and-cold.aspx
He points to a National Geographic report saying the opposite.
And according to some other studies TOO MUCH sleep may be implicated in Parkinsons....
http://www.sleepdex.org/s25.htm
So what is too little and what is too much... and how much overlap is there...
Scott Joplin is famous for hand "editing" player piano rolls, adding notes by hand to improve the music roll before being sold.
Sort of like binary editing your object file :-)
I was talking to the facilities manager at the local University... about cost to replace bulbs in some of his buildings.. In some cases it is literally in the many tens of thousands of dollars range. They have to bring scaffolding in with a small crew to erect and move around. (Doors too small for a lift.)
He would be more than happy to pay $42/bulb IFF it meant he didn't have to go back in for two decades.
See Oregon Scientifics ATC2K: http://www2.oregonscientific.com/shop/browse.asp?cid=6&scid=14 for a helmet mount camera that records to SD card.
Not available yet, hopefully by next April... a "rear view" video system for bikes... from Cerevellum... http://www.cerevellum.com/
Both should provide a way to capture video suitable for youtube bad driver exposes... and perhaps even for law enforcement to get interested.
So if you are arrested with an iPhone then you will automatically get tagged for possessing a wiretapping device?
Sounds like you will need to remove the Voice memo app...
But wait, its builtin.... you cannot remove the Apple apps... :-)
The GMail Mail Service did not appear to have any problems today at all... You could IMAP or POP your mail all the while... and use SMTP to send..
What was down was the GMail Web Service. For reading your email online... it of course is just another client of the GMail Mail Service.
The head article says "virtual words that allow pilots to experience real-world combat situations without leaving the ground"...
The new reality is that most combat pilots in the new air forces around the world will be piloting their aircraft from the ground. Far cheaper and far more effective.
This doesn't mean that simulators are not required. Its just that the difference between simulated combat and real combat may be just what screen you are looking at from your flight station.
See here for a relevant story by the folks at On the Media. http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/08/14/01
Transcript and audio are both available.
They point out some of the defects of the Communications Decency Act with some similar case histories.
What happens and what is your recourse when you are libeled anonymously online?
What do you do when the owner of a website refuses to divulge who created the posting, refuses to remove it, has no liability for it and the search engines refuse to eliminate it from their results.
The problem lies with laws protecting ISP's from being liable for posting by end users, not being required to remove anonymous postings that may be libelous, rely on the 1st amendment to leave the postings online and not being required (up till now) to reveal who originated the post. Then search engines get involved and you get widespread dissemination of the libel forever.
If you are libeled then you need to have some recourse. Either to the originator of the post or to the place that the information is being maintained (ISP or website) or indexed (search engines).
This can be limited to requiring IP addresses or Email addresses for the poster or at a minimum removal of the offending information.
Assuming 8GB flash, with a write speed of 10MB/s, 100000 erases allowed per sector, and a perfect wear leveling algorithm....
Then your device will last (8 * 1024 * 1000000) / 10 / (3600 * 24) = 948.14 days... give or take
Assuming you can write to it continuously at 10MB for that length of time (and assuming that the underlying hardware will do the required erases etc fast enough...)
If you don't wear level and continuously erase same sector it will last about an hour or two.
You *might* wear one out... but really its unlikely that many people will.
NOT having a separate baseband processor IS the modern innovation... Its only in the recent past that embedded processors have got fast enough to do baseband and apps at the same time... Prior to that you needed two CPU's if you wanted any significant application layer. And I'm not sure that trying to cram both onto a single CPU will be the best idea anyway. It may cut costs, but if it means you have to lockup the apps then you may be locking yourself out of the new high end marketplace where downloading and installing apps is becoming a required feature. And the cost of the baseband CPU as a separate part should be coming down anyway.. Moores Law will triumph there.
I was discussing this a few weeks ago with a pilot... He noted that this was already the way that insurance is charged for planes... Pay as you go based on hours and logbook. If you don't fly you don't pay (well you pay for theft and vandalism etc. that is separate.) The current insurance regime also penalizes people who want to have more than one car. E.g. get people to use a gas miser for commuting and save that SUV for carting the kids to soccer for the weekend.. If they can have ONLY one car they may end up with ONLY the SUV which is not good for the environment. Pay per use would allow you to optimize your mileage across multiple vehicles without having to pay the huge cost of insurance (with the current models) for both.