This battle between open and proprietary standards hasn't resulted in people adopting open standards - it's just encouraged the continued use of Flash.
I think that has more to do with <video> support sucking compared to Flash. Specifically, things like:
1. The ability to fullscreen a video in a single step. 2. The ability to skip ahead to a section of the video that hasn't downloaded yet. 3. The ability to seamlessly switch between different bitrates depending on connection speed. 4. The ability to seamlessly switch between different resolutions depending on connection speed.
I think of that list, the only one that works fairly reliably across browsers is #1. And even that's fairly recent - it used to be that if you provided your own playback controls, you lost the ability to fullscreen without making the user fullscreen the entire browser.
Flash and Silverlight do all of those. Well, sort of - I'm not sure how well Flash handles #4 based on YouTube, but I know that the NetFlix player handles all of those through Silverlight. Granted NetFlix also requires DRM, so they'll never be able to use HTML5.
Overall, though, this list should give you an idea why people still use Flash to stream video. It has more to do with the capabilities Flash provides that HTML5 does not.
Of course, there's also things like the lack of decent tools to encode WebM video...
In just a few years the royalty fees will expire and H.264 will be just as open as any other codec.
How few is a few? If I'm not mistaken, the patents on H.264 date back to the 2000s, and will still be enforceable for another 10 years or more. Which I guess is "a few years" in the grand scheme of things, but given the pace of Firefox version numbers, we're looking at Firefox 50.0 at least before H.264 is patent-free.
And that's just in the US. I have no idea how long the various parts of it are patented in other countries.
What I'd like to know is how Samsung's lawyers could be unable to tell the difference between an Apple and a Samsung product from ten feet away, yet you assume that the casual viewer will totally know the difference.
I'm pretty sure that's bullshit, because:
At one point during the hearing, she held one black glass tablet in each hand above her head, and asked Sullivan if she could identify which company produced which.
They were most likely off, meaning you couldn't see the user interface. And depending on how they were being held, you could probably block off the home button and other identifying characteristics so the only thing to go on would be the aspect ratio, which while entirely different, is something you'd need to know ahead of time.
So, here's a challenge for you: Go into a big box store, and find the TV section. From far enough away that you can't see the logos, I want you to identify by brand each TV. Can you do it? Because some people certainly can, but most people would just see a bunch of black rectangles on the wall, all showing the same video.
Yet, TV manufacturers don't sue each other over the "trade dress" despite the fact that all the large black slabs look basically identical. You know why? Because form follows function. It's a TV: it's basically all display with a little bit of structure around it and a few controls beneath the screen. They all look the same.
The exact same thing applies to tablets. Visually, they're just a touchscreen, with a few buttons around the display. They all look identical to the casual observer. But if you hand one to someone and ask them who made it, unless they can't read, no one will mistake a Samsung for an ASUS. Let alone an iPad.
The U.K. and E.U. do a god job with truth in advertising. Why can't the U.S.too? Maybe if we ban paid radio t.v. political ads (stations running only as much non-paid balanced public affairs programming as they choose), we would not have so many elected officials selling influence through those corporate campaign contributions.
Didn't we try that already, at least for restrictions on paid political ads? The companies sued, claiming that such restrictions violated the First Amendment. I believe that it was called Citizens United, and the Supreme Court agreed with the First Amendment argument, paving the way for unlimited spending on political ads.
I imagine the same line of thinking works with cellphone ads: As long as it's not out-and-out fraud, it's my First Amendment right to mislead you into thinking your "unlimited data plan" allows access to unlimited data!
Mundane stuff is how you catch the existence of secret stuff. By sifting through a lot of boring sounding data and making connections, things that don't add up are seen, and the right questions to ask are found.
Not too surprisingly, government security people know this, which is why so much mundane shit is classified: to cover up the stuff that really should be secret.
The fact that it also covers up government wrong-doing, like spying on American citizens or massive government waste, is just a nice happy fringe benefit.
Though to be fair, after reading the John carter wikipedia page, it does appear that they actually purchased the rights to this one back in the early 80s.
So presumably we're talking trademark rights, and not copyright rights, since the movie covers only public domain books. Which also demonstrates quite nicely how trademark can be used to extend copyright well beyond the death of the author, since Edgar Rice Burroughs died over 60 years ago. And it's being used to extract royalties for making a movie based on public domain works.
Probably. Who knows, except the lawyers who worked out whatever rights we're talking about.
So maybe this is Disney being hoist with their own petard?
they laughed about how needless yet simple it was to crush out and poison the public domain from which Walt's famous works initially sprang.
Incidentally, if you think Disney is done ripping off the public domain, then you've missed John Carter. Wondering why on Earth Disney would create a film about a Civil War vet who is sent to Mars to save the Princess of Helium?
Oh, but the bug reports do. Apparently they're going to "work around" UAC by running yet another background updater. Just what I need. Another background updater running at startup, slowing Windows boot, just to "work around" Windows security.
Somehow, the idea of "working around" security features built into the OS sounds like a horrible idea to me.
I'm not sure, but I'll bet the mayor of Boston knows him. I mean, hell, Martha Coakley mistaking him for a Yankee was enough to get a Republican into Ted Kennedy's senate seat.
That said, I listened to Curt Schilling talk at a panel at PAX East last year, and I will say this - the guy is legitimately passionate about video games. He clearly enjoys playing them, and it's clear that he hopes to make the best game he can. So he's not just some random executive, he's a gamer at heart.
While I'm impressed with his passion towards making games, I'm not at all convinced it translates to the ability to make a good game. Nor does it mean that he's able to run a game company.
"I dont' know if you've noticed" but that's a different division.
What, of Apple? Because it's Apple that's considering dropping Samsung as a chip fab. You might have read about that on Slashdot.
But technically you're right, I got the details slightly wrong. The A5 apparently contains some Samsung technology, so they'll continue to fab it. The rumor is that the A6 will be made by TSMC.
Only Apple as far as I know has started moving any production (the A5 chip) back into the U.S.
No, that would be Samsung that's doing that. And I don't know if you've noticed, but Apple and Samsung haven't been getting along that well recently. (Something about Apple thinking they own the rights to rounded corners in electronics or something.) It's unclear whether or not the A5 will continue to be manufactured by Samsung at all, let alone in Texas.
So, just for you, and to be more specific: on the server, the only place it matters, Java is the most banged on, battle hardened, security-first computer program EVER written.
Ah, so that would explain why the two CVE entries for Java this year are exploits in HTTP server components?
There is no way in hell that your Java app uses anything even as remotely complex as DirectX
Sure you can! The Java AWT uses DirectDraw for hardware acceleration under Windows.
No, really, it does. They apparently couldn't get their UI library (Swing) to run fast enough without using hardware graphics acceleration. So they did.
Under Windows, you can get the FRAPS framerate counter to appear on Java GUI applications. I don't think I've gotten the Steam overlay to work on top of a Java app yet, but it might be possible.
Plain and simple: the JVM is the most banged on, battle hardened, security-first computer programs ever written.
Really? So you're running the latest version of Java (update 30, I think?) to close that remotely exploitable "arbitrary code execution" bug, right?
And that would explain the over 700 CVE Java entries, right? Including two already this year! Already going straight into the remote vulnerabilities again, Java!
I've always wondered how Java manages to have arbitrary code execution bugs on a routine basis, being a virtual machine that supposedly does bytecode verification, not to mention the built-in array boundary checking, yet it does. Consistently and frequently. It's kind of impressive, really.
Did you try using it? It goes to the National Archives website. Click on one of the states. Let's try Alabama.
First result is "White House Central Files Subject File, compiled 1977 - 1981." What does that have to do with the Documerica project, done 1971-1977? Well, I guess they overlap a year. Apparently that's close enough.
The next result is "EPA GULF COAST WATER SUPPLY RESEARCH LABORATORY, DAUPHIN ISLAND. STAFF MEETING, 05/1972" (yes, in all caps).
Click through that, you get a very verbose description of the single picture, plus a link to a "digital copy." Click on that, and you get a thumbnail to that picture. Click on that, and finally get the picture. Maybe. The ones I've tried gave me a horribly low-resolution version. The Flickr versions are much higher resolution.
So, yeah: good luck using that "by location" feature to look through pictures, considering it takes two clicks per picture to view a tiny thumbnail, and the best you can get is a fairly low resolution version.
On the plus side, you can then go try and hunt down the Flickr version by photographer to try and get a useable copy.
Through a cooperative partnership with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), TSA personnel assist us at some of the inspection sites. There[sic; emphasis mine] authority to assist is derived from 49 U.S.C. Â 114(d). Pub.L. 107-71
Ah, I see English education is alive and well in the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The same school system that taught me American history through just before, but not including, the Civil War. (Really. Although said history teacher was later fired about a decade later for unrelated reasons. So there's that?)
If your Internet connection goes down, your locked out of much of the unit's functionality until you return.
Including watching previously recorded shows.
Yep. That's cute. If your Internet connection goes down, about the only functionality left is viewing the Network Settings menu.
Of course, when I tried to do that, the unit hard-crashed and I had to unplug it and restart it, and after rebooting, it finally properly reconnected to the wired network that had never gone down.
Admittedly, the only good thing to come out of them recently was the iPad TiVo remote control. Nicely done.
You haven't tried using it much, have you? The TiVo remote control program for iOS is a giant piece of shit. It's a far better UI than the TiVo UI itself is, but it routinely crashes (try scrolling through the guide in it), regularly disconnects from the TiVo, and up until the latest version (according to the change log), would frequently mistake a TiVo Premier for a "Series 3" and disable the majority of its functionality.
The sad thing is that I'm pretty sure the TiVo is still the best DVR available. My mom has a DVR she gets through Verizon, and it's a complete piece of shit, where as the TiVo is only mostly shit.
It's really kind of sad, because if they only put a little bit of effort into bug fixes and polishing their interface, they could have a really system. But they just don't care.
I have a pretty good idea why Verizon never used CarrierIQ. I'll bet you do, to, if you've watched any TV in the past several years. Or listened to radio. Or seen any billboards. Or really ever existed anywhere that Verizon advertises:
"Can you hear me now?"
Remember that?
Verizon actively tests their network by driving around with special vans. They're so super-secret about it, though, that it served the basis of a national ad campaign with an obnoxious catch phrase.
Somewhat ironically, the first comment on the last Slashdot story on them was asking why they didn't just use something like CarrierIQ.
Turns out, there are some very good reasons why they might opt not to, and they have nothing to do with respecting privacy.
"If you don't like it, don't bother complaining, just don't buy it."
Yeah, that will work. I have a better idea: let the company know why you're not buying it, and let other people know why you believe they shouldn't purchase it. That way the company has feedback on why people are refusing to buy their product, and the "invisible hand of the free market" is properly informed. Because don't forget, a proper free market involves informed customers, and people complaining about things they see as defects helps keep customers informed. (Which means that if someone is spreading lies about a product, sure, go ahead and debunk what they're saying.)
Word of mouth is important. Telling people to shut up about things that they don't like is silly and counterproductive.
Or, to invert your comment, if you don't care about high prices, don't bother complaining about people who do, just buy the expensive memory card. What do you care if other people don't?
I notice that, despite being an MIT team, they analyzed data from an intersection somewhere in Virginia. Probably because their model from a Boston intersection was even simpler:
Really? Really? Oh my God, I have a complaint about a tech product which I posted on a tech website! I should just ignore flaws because I live in the first world!
I mean, can you imagine people complaining about 3D movies? They should just shut up because 3D is new and therefore better!
Sheesh, dude, deal with people complaining about minor things. It's not like I really care, but if the topic comes up in a discussion, then yes, I'm going to post my opinions about Siri. Deal with it.
It's still beta, it'll get better. If it doesn't suit your needs right now, don't use it.
Yep. If no one complains about problems they have with it, Steve Jobs will magically read people's minds from the grave and telepathically imprint ideas for fixes into the development team.
Or, people could complain about small flaws on blogs, and Apple can take feedback and improve their product. Which, in fact, they seem to be fairly good at doing. Complaints can be a good thing. It offers feedback and allows people to improve things.
Slashdot Mirror
This battle between open and proprietary standards hasn't resulted in people adopting open standards - it's just encouraged the continued use of Flash.
I think that has more to do with <video> support sucking compared to Flash. Specifically, things like:
1. The ability to fullscreen a video in a single step.
2. The ability to skip ahead to a section of the video that hasn't downloaded yet.
3. The ability to seamlessly switch between different bitrates depending on connection speed.
4. The ability to seamlessly switch between different resolutions depending on connection speed.
I think of that list, the only one that works fairly reliably across browsers is #1. And even that's fairly recent - it used to be that if you provided your own playback controls, you lost the ability to fullscreen without making the user fullscreen the entire browser.
Flash and Silverlight do all of those. Well, sort of - I'm not sure how well Flash handles #4 based on YouTube, but I know that the NetFlix player handles all of those through Silverlight. Granted NetFlix also requires DRM, so they'll never be able to use HTML5.
Overall, though, this list should give you an idea why people still use Flash to stream video. It has more to do with the capabilities Flash provides that HTML5 does not.
Of course, there's also things like the lack of decent tools to encode WebM video...
In just a few years the royalty fees will expire and H.264 will be just as open as any other codec.
How few is a few? If I'm not mistaken, the patents on H.264 date back to the 2000s, and will still be enforceable for another 10 years or more. Which I guess is "a few years" in the grand scheme of things, but given the pace of Firefox version numbers, we're looking at Firefox 50.0 at least before H.264 is patent-free.
And that's just in the US. I have no idea how long the various parts of it are patented in other countries.
What I'd like to know is how Samsung's lawyers could be unable to tell the difference between an Apple and a Samsung product from ten feet away, yet you assume that the casual viewer will totally know the difference.
I'm pretty sure that's bullshit, because:
At one point during the hearing, she held one black glass tablet in each hand above her head, and asked Sullivan if she could identify which company produced which.
They were most likely off, meaning you couldn't see the user interface. And depending on how they were being held, you could probably block off the home button and other identifying characteristics so the only thing to go on would be the aspect ratio, which while entirely different, is something you'd need to know ahead of time.
So, here's a challenge for you: Go into a big box store, and find the TV section. From far enough away that you can't see the logos, I want you to identify by brand each TV. Can you do it? Because some people certainly can, but most people would just see a bunch of black rectangles on the wall, all showing the same video.
Yet, TV manufacturers don't sue each other over the "trade dress" despite the fact that all the large black slabs look basically identical. You know why? Because form follows function. It's a TV: it's basically all display with a little bit of structure around it and a few controls beneath the screen. They all look the same.
The exact same thing applies to tablets. Visually, they're just a touchscreen, with a few buttons around the display. They all look identical to the casual observer. But if you hand one to someone and ask them who made it, unless they can't read, no one will mistake a Samsung for an ASUS. Let alone an iPad.
The U.K. and E.U. do a god job with truth in advertising. Why can't the U.S.too? Maybe if we ban paid radio t.v. political ads (stations running only as much non-paid balanced public affairs programming as they choose), we would not have so many elected officials selling influence through those corporate campaign contributions.
Didn't we try that already, at least for restrictions on paid political ads? The companies sued, claiming that such restrictions violated the First Amendment. I believe that it was called Citizens United, and the Supreme Court agreed with the First Amendment argument, paving the way for unlimited spending on political ads.
I imagine the same line of thinking works with cellphone ads: As long as it's not out-and-out fraud, it's my First Amendment right to mislead you into thinking your "unlimited data plan" allows access to unlimited data!
Mundane stuff is how you catch the existence of secret stuff. By sifting through a lot of boring sounding data and making connections, things that don't add up are seen, and the right questions to ask are found.
Not too surprisingly, government security people know this, which is why so much mundane shit is classified: to cover up the stuff that really should be secret.
The fact that it also covers up government wrong-doing, like spying on American citizens or massive government waste, is just a nice happy fringe benefit.
Though to be fair, after reading the John carter wikipedia page, it does appear that they actually purchased the rights to this one back in the early 80s.
I'm not clear on why, but I just realized that the author of the original books was Edgar Rice Burroughs, and - well, he created a company to manage licensing his works which apparently still sues people for using Tarzan. Trying to find more info on that discovered several articles about Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. suing comic book companies for using Tarzan and John Carter himself.
So presumably we're talking trademark rights, and not copyright rights, since the movie covers only public domain books. Which also demonstrates quite nicely how trademark can be used to extend copyright well beyond the death of the author, since Edgar Rice Burroughs died over 60 years ago. And it's being used to extract royalties for making a movie based on public domain works.
Probably. Who knows, except the lawyers who worked out whatever rights we're talking about.
So maybe this is Disney being hoist with their own petard?
they laughed about how needless yet simple it was to crush out and poison the public domain from which Walt's famous works initially sprang.
Incidentally, if you think Disney is done ripping off the public domain, then you've missed John Carter. Wondering why on Earth Disney would create a film about a Civil War vet who is sent to Mars to save the Princess of Helium?
Because it's based on the now public domain A Princess of Mars .
Disney is, to this day, still profiting off the public domain, while refusing to allow anything they have made to ever enter it.
I'm sure you're all completely shocked to discover that. Completely.
FF11 will remove the UAC prompt on Windows, which will be a further improvement in 6 weeks from now.
How the hell do they intend to do that?
No, wait, let me guess - they intend to install it in the user directory like Chrome does. I have to guess, because the feature description sure doesn't explain how it would work.
Oh, but the bug reports do. Apparently they're going to "work around" UAC by running yet another background updater. Just what I need. Another background updater running at startup, slowing Windows boot, just to "work around" Windows security.
Somehow, the idea of "working around" security features built into the OS sounds like a horrible idea to me.
Does he know the mayor of Boston?
I'm not sure, but I'll bet the mayor of Boston knows him. I mean, hell, Martha Coakley mistaking him for a Yankee was enough to get a Republican into Ted Kennedy's senate seat.
That said, I listened to Curt Schilling talk at a panel at PAX East last year, and I will say this - the guy is legitimately passionate about video games. He clearly enjoys playing them, and it's clear that he hopes to make the best game he can. So he's not just some random executive, he's a gamer at heart.
While I'm impressed with his passion towards making games, I'm not at all convinced it translates to the ability to make a good game. Nor does it mean that he's able to run a game company.
"I dont' know if you've noticed" but that's a different division.
What, of Apple? Because it's Apple that's considering dropping Samsung as a chip fab. You might have read about that on Slashdot.
But technically you're right, I got the details slightly wrong. The A5 apparently contains some Samsung technology, so they'll continue to fab it. The rumor is that the A6 will be made by TSMC.
Only Apple as far as I know has started moving any production (the A5 chip) back into the U.S.
No, that would be Samsung that's doing that. And I don't know if you've noticed, but Apple and Samsung haven't been getting along that well recently. (Something about Apple thinking they own the rights to rounded corners in electronics or something.) It's unclear whether or not the A5 will continue to be manufactured by Samsung at all, let alone in Texas.
So, just for you, and to be more specific: on the server, the only place it matters, Java is the most banged on, battle hardened, security-first computer program EVER written.
Ah, so that would explain why the two CVE entries for Java this year are exploits in HTTP server components?
There is no way in hell that your Java app uses anything even as remotely complex as DirectX
Sure you can! The Java AWT uses DirectDraw for hardware acceleration under Windows.
No, really, it does. They apparently couldn't get their UI library (Swing) to run fast enough without using hardware graphics acceleration. So they did.
Under Windows, you can get the FRAPS framerate counter to appear on Java GUI applications. I don't think I've gotten the Steam overlay to work on top of a Java app yet, but it might be possible.
Plain and simple: the JVM is the most banged on, battle hardened, security-first computer programs ever written.
Really? So you're running the latest version of Java (update 30, I think?) to close that remotely exploitable "arbitrary code execution" bug, right?
And that would explain the over 700 CVE Java entries, right? Including two already this year! Already going straight into the remote vulnerabilities again, Java!
I've always wondered how Java manages to have arbitrary code execution bugs on a routine basis, being a virtual machine that supposedly does bytecode verification, not to mention the built-in array boundary checking, yet it does. Consistently and frequently. It's kind of impressive, really.
Troops are withdrawing from Iraq.
Yes, they are (did?), despite Obama's best efforts.
Obama spent the past year trying to keep us in Iraq. He failed to negotiate an extension with the Iraqi government.
That's not a point in his favor.
I'll let other people point out the other flaws in your points for him, but you're giving him way more credit than he's due.
Did you try using it? It goes to the National Archives website. Click on one of the states. Let's try Alabama.
First result is "White House Central Files Subject File, compiled 1977 - 1981." What does that have to do with the Documerica project, done 1971-1977? Well, I guess they overlap a year. Apparently that's close enough.
The next result is "EPA GULF COAST WATER SUPPLY RESEARCH LABORATORY, DAUPHIN ISLAND. STAFF MEETING, 05/1972" (yes, in all caps).
Click through that, you get a very verbose description of the single picture, plus a link to a "digital copy." Click on that, and you get a thumbnail to that picture. Click on that, and finally get the picture. Maybe. The ones I've tried gave me a horribly low-resolution version. The Flickr versions are much higher resolution.
So, yeah: good luck using that "by location" feature to look through pictures, considering it takes two clicks per picture to view a tiny thumbnail, and the best you can get is a fairly low resolution version.
On the plus side, you can then go try and hunt down the Flickr version by photographer to try and get a useable copy.
Submission fails to note that they want pictures of the same locations as the original project.
Plus, if you follow through to the collection of original photos you're supposed to recreate you'll discover that they've helpfully sorted them by photographer, and not, say, location.
Because who wouldn't want to sift through 15,000 photos organized by photographer to see if they can find one near them that they can recreate?
Yes, but not this class. This specific class was titled "the History of the United States from the Revolutionary War to World War II."
Oops.
From the same link:
Through a cooperative partnership with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), TSA personnel assist us at some of the inspection sites. There [sic; emphasis mine] authority to assist is derived from 49 U.S.C. Â 114(d). Pub.L. 107-71
Ah, I see English education is alive and well in the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The same school system that taught me American history through just before, but not including, the Civil War. (Really. Although said history teacher was later fired about a decade later for unrelated reasons. So there's that?)
I stopped reading after this since if you actually had a TiVo Premiere you'd know the second core was enabled in the 14.9 software update.
What update? I don't think my TiVo Premiere has ever received a software update.
Or if it has, it's certainly never bothered mentioning it or displaying a changelog, so it's not like I'd know anything about it.
As for your other issues: crashes, hanging, etc, I have a Premiere and have rarely if ever seen anything like that.
Really? Go to Settings, DVR Diagnostics. Enjoy.
If your Internet connection goes down, your locked out of much of the unit's functionality until you return.
Including watching previously recorded shows.
Yep. That's cute. If your Internet connection goes down, about the only functionality left is viewing the Network Settings menu.
Of course, when I tried to do that, the unit hard-crashed and I had to unplug it and restart it, and after rebooting, it finally properly reconnected to the wired network that had never gone down.
Admittedly, the only good thing to come out of them recently was the iPad TiVo remote control. Nicely done.
You haven't tried using it much, have you? The TiVo remote control program for iOS is a giant piece of shit. It's a far better UI than the TiVo UI itself is, but it routinely crashes (try scrolling through the guide in it), regularly disconnects from the TiVo, and up until the latest version (according to the change log), would frequently mistake a TiVo Premier for a "Series 3" and disable the majority of its functionality.
The sad thing is that I'm pretty sure the TiVo is still the best DVR available. My mom has a DVR she gets through Verizon, and it's a complete piece of shit, where as the TiVo is only mostly shit.
It's really kind of sad, because if they only put a little bit of effort into bug fixes and polishing their interface, they could have a really system. But they just don't care.
I have a pretty good idea why Verizon never used CarrierIQ. I'll bet you do, to, if you've watched any TV in the past several years. Or listened to radio. Or seen any billboards. Or really ever existed anywhere that Verizon advertises:
"Can you hear me now?"
Remember that?
Verizon actively tests their network by driving around with special vans. They're so super-secret about it, though, that it served the basis of a national ad campaign with an obnoxious catch phrase.
Somewhat ironically, the first comment on the last Slashdot story on them was asking why they didn't just use something like CarrierIQ.
Turns out, there are some very good reasons why they might opt not to, and they have nothing to do with respecting privacy.
You know, I really hate this type of comment.
"If you don't like it, don't bother complaining, just don't buy it."
Yeah, that will work. I have a better idea: let the company know why you're not buying it, and let other people know why you believe they shouldn't purchase it. That way the company has feedback on why people are refusing to buy their product, and the "invisible hand of the free market" is properly informed. Because don't forget, a proper free market involves informed customers, and people complaining about things they see as defects helps keep customers informed. (Which means that if someone is spreading lies about a product, sure, go ahead and debunk what they're saying.)
Word of mouth is important. Telling people to shut up about things that they don't like is silly and counterproductive.
Or, to invert your comment, if you don't care about high prices, don't bother complaining about people who do, just buy the expensive memory card. What do you care if other people don't?
I notice that, despite being an MIT team, they analyzed data from an intersection somewhere in Virginia. Probably because their model from a Boston intersection was even simpler:
First world problems. Everything's Amazing & Nobody's Happy
Really? Really? Oh my God, I have a complaint about a tech product which I posted on a tech website! I should just ignore flaws because I live in the first world!
I mean, can you imagine people complaining about 3D movies? They should just shut up because 3D is new and therefore better!
Sheesh, dude, deal with people complaining about minor things. It's not like I really care, but if the topic comes up in a discussion, then yes, I'm going to post my opinions about Siri. Deal with it.
It's still beta, it'll get better. If it doesn't suit your needs right now, don't use it.
Yep. If no one complains about problems they have with it, Steve Jobs will magically read people's minds from the grave and telepathically imprint ideas for fixes into the development team.
Or, people could complain about small flaws on blogs, and Apple can take feedback and improve their product. Which, in fact, they seem to be fairly good at doing. Complaints can be a good thing. It offers feedback and allows people to improve things.