Since the Pandora is a project started by only a few people (and it isn't even out yet), you can't buy it at any online stores! As the first batch is currently produced and shipped, pre-orders will be available at www.gbax.com, shop.gp2x.de or www.gp2xtr.com soon.
Please check back regularly to find out when preordering for the second batch starts.
Other than that </snarky> it does sincerely look pretty cool. What do Pandoras cost? $99 for the new one is cool, and the lack of WiFi is made up for (at least to me) by ready acceptance of WiFi cards. But the Pandora does have a much better screen.
As long as Flash and its cousins Flex and Shockwave remain the simplest tools for lazy designers producing drop-dead gorgeous websites that don't scale well, make right-clicking useless, and bookmarking impossible, they'll keep their place on the Internet.
Great in theory, not so much in practice when all carriers suck equally. Might as well pick the slightly-less-of-four-evils and let them pay for 2/3 of your phone.
Modern Internet-over-cellular technology is damn impressive (when I'm downtown, I get faster speeds on my iPhone than I do at home on my 1.5/256k DSL, according to that cool app from the FCC) and I could see people using ONLY a wireless data plan and not even having traditional wired Internet access at home, the same way that people are doing without landlines for voice. For someone like my mom, an iPad plus its unlimited data plan would be all she needed and cost less than she's paying for cable Internet. 2 GB/month might sound like a lot but that's only 66 MB per day, or about 10 minutes of YouTube.
The blame probably doesn't lie with AT&T though, the telecom manufacturers can't deliver at full capacity because there is a shortage of components for the whole business.
The blame lies SQUARELY on AT&T's shoulders (and all the others) because if they don't have the capacity then they shouldn't be constantly advertising how great it is to have tons of Internet access on mobile devices! It is EXACTLY their fault that people want to do the things that are shown in the ads. And no one has explained to my satisfaction how they can sell a cheap plan with a zillion voice minutes and free nights and weekends but OMG NOT DATA!!!!!11!! I mean, it's all data, right?
To anyone who says "the iPad is just a big iPod touch" I say "yes, and a swimming pool is just a big bathtub" and then let them think about the implications of that for a while.
Then why is it that it was only Apple that "[convinced] the industry that limiting features is a good idea"--exactly as the GP said?
In other words, Antoine might have been the first to say it, but it was Steve Jobs (and J. Ive) that proved it. Antoine, evidently, didn't convince anyone of anything. (Except for Steve.) I would say the GP's point stands.
I'm looking forward to getting one. One reason is that I'd like to be able to read sites like Slashdot comfortably in and on the couch. A laptop is a bit unwieldy and my iPhone is a little too small, plus it's a pain to type on. Even typing the first couple lines here would have taken a few minutes. I do a lot of "moderate browsing and light typing" and for me, I think the iPad will be do a lot of that really well. Certainly not ideal for all tasks, but really great for some. And you can get books on it right over the air with several apps--and who cares if they're third-party or not? You install them once, update them OTA, and then they're just another button on the home screen.
I'm not saying the iPad WILL change the world, but I would like to point out that a lot of devices DID change the world and it wasn't obvious that they would in the beginning.
And as far as it being "just a giant iPod"--remember, a swimming pool is just a giant bathtub.:-)
A custom/etc/hosts file is not the ultimate solution for all of your ad-blocking needs, but it's DAMN handy and, contrary to what some people will tell you, it does NOT hurt the system in any way. I had a large custom/etc/hosts file on an old machine--a single-core 800 MHz G3 iBook--and the only performance difference I noticed was the gigantic INCREASE in speed when browsing. I had Apache running with a custom 404 that said "Another blocked ad!" and even though you only see it for iframe ads, I still saw it a LOT. Bonus:/etc/hosts works on all installed browsers with no configuration needed, so even a naked install of Chrome, Opera, IE, whatever, is pretty nice even before you configure all the browser-specific adblockers.
Security in layers, man. But even all by itself,/etc/hosts kicks all kinds of ass. Even when I use Safari with no other ad blocking software, the Web is a pretty pleasant place. (Especially if you also add ClickToFlash.)
Developers have reported that it is difficult to maintain applications working on different versions of Android, because of various compatibility issues between versions 1.5 and 1.6,[112][113] specifically concerning the different resolution ratios of the various Android phones.[114] Such problems were specifically encountered during the ADC2 contest.[115]
The rapid growth in the number of Android-based phone models with different hardware capabilities also makes it difficult to develop applications which work on all Android-based phones.[116][117][118][119]. As of May 2010, only 32% of Android phones run the 2.1 version, and 37% still run the 1.5 version[120]
Follow the links in the footnotes. This is not just "FUD from the Apple camp."
From John Gruber: Adobe Flash: Almost as Open as Microsoft Office...let's concede that Flash is "open" because Adobe has published the partial SWF 10 file format spec. Microsoft published the OOXML file format specs for its Office apps. And not only did they publish the specs, they submitted them to a widely-respected industry standards organization, and now they're ISO standards. Adobe's Flash specs have never been submitted to a standards body, let alone accepted, thus, anyone who argues that Adobe Flash is open would agree that Microsoft Office is even more open."
From Christina Warren: Adobe and Apple: Please Spare Us the Platitudes About "Open"While Adobe can argue that elements of Flash (through its Open Screen Project) are indeed open source, Flash itself is not an open standard. While Adobe cites some open source implementations in its "truth about Flash", like Gnash -- the open source Flash alternative -- those same runtimes cannot achieve parity with the closed-source alternatives [emphasis added] because parts of Flash associated with DRM and other content controls aren't available... Unlike HTML5 and CSS3 and related technologies, Flash is not an open standard on the web. Adobe might license some of its technology free of charge, and it may have some of its SWF spec available, but the entirety of the Flash ecosystem is not open, nor is it a web standard.
From GNU Gnash page - Gnash is based on GameSWF, and supports most SWF v7 features and some SWF v8 and v9.
From Wikipedia - SWF v7 (the one that Gnash supports "most of") came out in 2003--SEVEN YEARS AGO. They support "some" of the new features in v8 and v9 and, based on the omission, none of the features that are new in v10.
Wow, you really think that McDonald's became #1 for one reason only, and that reason was marketing? Well, you're wrong. Marketing is part of it, sure, but mainly, it's because they're a well-run business that makes things people want. They grew naturally, over the course of seven DECADES. It's simple, really--what used to be called "good business": make a store, make good things at a decent price, become popular, invest profits into more stores, etc. Repeat until you've become a multi-billion-dollar company with 31,000 restaurants in 119 countries and 47 million customers DAILY.
From Wikipedia: "The business began in 1940, with a restaurant opened by brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald in San Bernardino, California. Their introduction of the "Speedee Service System" in 1948 established the principles of the modern fast-food restaurant." [Emphasis mine] So yeah, all they did was invent a whole new way of doing business, much like Henry Ford did. But no, let's just say they only became #1 through "marketing" so we can look down our noses at them.
If you would have said "they make moderately OK food, really cheap and fast" you would have gotten no argument from me.
> The next year will be the "year of android" but Apple needs to > tee up a home run next year (Unless there are unannounced > features for the 4th generation iPhone).
Wrong. Lots of other important updates have come out between the major point-0 releases each summer. Lots of substantial features were introduced in 1.1, 1.1.3, 2.1, and 2.2 in particular. As just one example, the iTunes Music Store was added in 1.1. It's entirely possible--nay, likely--that Apple will introduce, say, major "cloud" features this year, even if there's nothing shown at WWDC. I'm sure a lot depends on when this bad boy comes online.
Dinky company, perhaps, but quite successful at a personal level. In less than ten years, Joel took his company from zero to seven million dollars per year by my accounting.
http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/BionicOffice.html $700 per employee in the original office
"When we moved into our current offices, our rent had been equal to 15 percent of revenue, which was high. But the company grew, and today our rent is only about 2 percent of revenue."
So revenue was $84,000/mo ($1,008,000/yr) and is now about $7,500,000/year.
So he's not a complete waste of space. And he may not be God but that doesn't mean he's never right and/or never worth listening to. READ THE F ARTICLE about rewrites--plenty of Slashdotters (you included) have been here long enough to know that at least, his example about Netscape/Mozilla is 100% accurate. They lost YEARS because they chose to rewrite everything.
And judging by the comments here, I think a lot of people are reading the title and thinking he's saying "never make any changes." That is 10000% NOT what he is saying. He's saying "never throw away 100% of your code and start over from scratch." If you actually read his original article (I know, I'm new here) you'll see a lot of really good points.
Joel isn't God, but he isn't just some stumbling moron either. There IS a continuum between those two extremes, you know.
After typing in www.google.com to play some Pac-Man yesterday I was saddened to see the regular logo instead of the game but then I noticed I was at https://www.google.com/. At first I thought all requests to http://.../ were being redirected to https://.../ but after a couple reloads I was back at http://.../ and Pac-Man, and even when I typed in https://.../ it redirected me back to http://./
My question now is, how long until the built-in browser search box in Safari uses this? (I'm sure the one in Firefox can handle this already, or will soon.) Another question: why not use https all the time? I know it's a bit more CPU to encrypt things, which is unnoticeable on modern clients, but how much of a strain is it on servers? Also, are there any popular clients out that don't support it? Is there any reason not to go all https all the time?
... maybe suicides happen every so often at all factories and we just notice this because it's the factory that makes iPhones?
I wonder how many Happy Meal Toy factory employees off themselves in a year?
Also: according to Wikipedia, Foxconn also makes "Intel-branded motherboards for Intel Corp.; various orders for American computer manufacturers Dell and Hewlett-Packard; motherboards for UK computer manufacturer Zoostorm; the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 for Sony; the Wii for Nintendo; the Xbox 360 for Microsoft, cell phones for Motorola, the Amazon Kindle, and Cisco equipment."
Score: -1. factually incorrect. You did NOT "have" to toss your old G4. Mac OS X 10.4 ("Tiger") would have run on it. Its main requirement was "a Mac with FireWire" which all G4s had. (As well as many G3s--all B/W desktops, most iMacs, most PowerBooks, and all iBooks.) Tiger runs the current version (4) of Safari. I know because I have a G5 at work (a little over 5 years old) with 10.4 and Safari 4.
Late G4s had ATA/133 controllers on the motherboard and natively supported large (>128GB) drives. Older G4s can read large drives with an ATA/133 PCI card. (And no one is making large hard drives in anything but SATA anyway--I think the largest PATA is 750 GB.)
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, forgot to click the store links. The one place that shows a price says $330.
So, porn is OK then?
One big strike against Pandora: You can't actually get one.
Since the Pandora is a project started by only a few people (and it isn't even out yet), you can't buy it at any online stores! As the first batch is currently produced and shipped, pre-orders will be available at www.gbax.com, shop.gp2x.de or www.gp2xtr.com soon.
Please check back regularly to find out when preordering for the second batch starts.
Other than that </snarky> it does sincerely look pretty cool. What do Pandoras cost? $99 for the new one is cool, and the lack of WiFi is made up for (at least to me) by ready acceptance of WiFi cards. But the Pandora does have a much better screen.
As long as Flash and its cousins Flex and Shockwave remain the simplest tools for lazy designers producing drop-dead gorgeous websites that don't scale well, make right-clicking useless, and bookmarking impossible, they'll keep their place on the Internet.
FTFY.
Great in theory, not so much in practice when all carriers suck equally. Might as well pick the slightly-less-of-four-evils and let them pay for 2/3 of your phone.
And ASCII porn.
Modern Internet-over-cellular technology is damn impressive (when I'm downtown, I get faster speeds on my iPhone than I do at home on my 1.5/256k DSL, according to that cool app from the FCC) and I could see people using ONLY a wireless data plan and not even having traditional wired Internet access at home, the same way that people are doing without landlines for voice. For someone like my mom, an iPad plus its unlimited data plan would be all she needed and cost less than she's paying for cable Internet. 2 GB/month might sound like a lot but that's only 66 MB per day, or about 10 minutes of YouTube.
The blame probably doesn't lie with AT&T though, the telecom manufacturers can't deliver at full capacity because there is a shortage of components for the whole business.
The blame lies SQUARELY on AT&T's shoulders (and all the others) because if they don't have the capacity then they shouldn't be constantly advertising how great it is to have tons of Internet access on mobile devices! It is EXACTLY their fault that people want to do the things that are shown in the ads. And no one has explained to my satisfaction how they can sell a cheap plan with a zillion voice minutes and free nights and weekends but OMG NOT DATA!!!!!11!! I mean, it's all data, right?
To anyone who says "the iPad is just a big iPod touch" I say "yes, and a swimming pool is just a big bathtub" and then let them think about the implications of that for a while.
... when I see a banner over Moscone West that says "WWDDDDDDDDDDC"
You've obviously never placed classified ad in a regular old newspaper. "Spc Shtl Atl, PS/PW/PDL, tint, cold AC, lo miles, FAST. 321-867-7819 eves" :-)
Then why is it that it was only Apple that "[convinced] the industry that limiting features is a good idea"--exactly as the GP said?
In other words, Antoine might have been the first to say it, but it was Steve Jobs (and J. Ive) that proved it. Antoine, evidently, didn't convince anyone of anything. (Except for Steve.) I would say the GP's point stands.
I'm looking forward to getting one. One reason is that I'd like to be able to read sites like Slashdot comfortably in and on the couch. A laptop is a bit unwieldy and my iPhone is a little too small, plus it's a pain to type on. Even typing the first couple lines here would have taken a few minutes. I do a lot of "moderate browsing and light typing" and for me, I think the iPad will be do a lot of that really well. Certainly not ideal for all tasks, but really great for some. And you can get books on it right over the air with several apps--and who cares if they're third-party or not? You install them once, update them OTA, and then they're just another button on the home screen.
I'm not saying the iPad WILL change the world, but I would like to point out that a lot of devices DID change the world and it wasn't obvious that they would in the beginning.
And as far as it being "just a giant iPod"--remember, a swimming pool is just a giant bathtub. :-)
/etc/hosts FTW
A custom /etc/hosts file is not the ultimate solution for all of your ad-blocking needs, but it's DAMN handy and, contrary to what some people will tell you, it does NOT hurt the system in any way. I had a large custom /etc/hosts file on an old machine--a single-core 800 MHz G3 iBook--and the only performance difference I noticed was the gigantic INCREASE in speed when browsing. I had Apache running with a custom 404 that said "Another blocked ad!" and even though you only see it for iframe ads, I still saw it a LOT. Bonus: /etc/hosts works on all installed browsers with no configuration needed, so even a naked install of Chrome, Opera, IE, whatever, is pretty nice even before you configure all the browser-specific adblockers.
Security in layers, man. But even all by itself, /etc/hosts kicks all kinds of ass. Even when I use Safari with no other ad blocking software, the Web is a pretty pleasant place. (Especially if you also add ClickToFlash.)
The android market is not fragmented in any meaningful way, if you target 1.5 or 1.6 it will run on everything later.
So I should ignore all the great new features that came out in 2.0 and 2.2? And continue to do so? What a fantastic solution!
From Wikipedia:
Issues concerning application development
Follow the links in the footnotes. This is not just "FUD from the Apple camp."
From John Gruber: Adobe Flash: Almost as Open as Microsoft Office ...let's concede that Flash is "open" because Adobe has published the partial SWF 10 file format spec. Microsoft published the OOXML file format specs for its Office apps. And not only did they publish the specs, they submitted them to a widely-respected industry standards organization, and now they're ISO standards. Adobe's Flash specs have never been submitted to a standards body, let alone accepted, thus, anyone who argues that Adobe Flash is open would agree that Microsoft Office is even more open."
From Christina Warren: Adobe and Apple: Please Spare Us the Platitudes About "Open" While Adobe can argue that elements of Flash (through its Open Screen Project) are indeed open source, Flash itself is not an open standard. While Adobe cites some open source implementations in its "truth about Flash", like Gnash -- the open source Flash alternative -- those same runtimes cannot achieve parity with the closed-source alternatives [emphasis added] because parts of Flash associated with DRM and other content controls aren't available... Unlike HTML5 and CSS3 and related technologies, Flash is not an open standard on the web. Adobe might license some of its technology free of charge, and it may have some of its SWF spec available, but the entirety of the Flash ecosystem is not open, nor is it a web standard.
From GNU Gnash page - Gnash is based on GameSWF, and supports most SWF v7 features and some SWF v8 and v9.
From Wikipedia - SWF v7 (the one that Gnash supports "most of") came out in 2003--SEVEN YEARS AGO. They support "some" of the new features in v8 and v9 and, based on the omission, none of the features that are new in v10.
Wow, you really think that McDonald's became #1 for one reason only, and that reason was marketing? Well, you're wrong. Marketing is part of it, sure, but mainly, it's because they're a well-run business that makes things people want. They grew naturally, over the course of seven DECADES. It's simple, really--what used to be called "good business": make a store, make good things at a decent price, become popular, invest profits into more stores, etc. Repeat until you've become a multi-billion-dollar company with 31,000 restaurants in 119 countries and 47 million customers DAILY.
From Wikipedia: "The business began in 1940, with a restaurant opened by brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald in San Bernardino, California. Their introduction of the "Speedee Service System" in 1948 established the principles of the modern fast-food restaurant." [Emphasis mine] So yeah, all they did was invent a whole new way of doing business, much like Henry Ford did. But no, let's just say they only became #1 through "marketing" so we can look down our noses at them.
If you would have said "they make moderately OK food, really cheap and fast" you would have gotten no argument from me.
> The next year will be the "year of android" but Apple needs to
> tee up a home run next year (Unless there are unannounced
> features for the 4th generation iPhone).
Wrong. Lots of other important updates have come out between the major point-0 releases each summer. Lots of substantial features were introduced in 1.1, 1.1.3, 2.1, and 2.2 in particular. As just one example, the iTunes Music Store was added in 1.1. It's entirely possible--nay, likely--that Apple will introduce, say, major "cloud" features this year, even if there's nothing shown at WWDC. I'm sure a lot depends on when this bad boy comes online.
Dinky company, perhaps, but quite successful at a personal level. In less than ten years, Joel took his company from zero to seven million dollars per year by my accounting.
http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/BionicOffice.html
$700 per employee in the original office
http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/12/29.html
"built for 18 employees" = about $12,600/month
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20080601/how-hard-could-it-be-adventures-in-office-space.html
"When we moved into our current offices, our rent had been equal to 15 percent of revenue, which was high. But the company grew, and today our rent is only about 2 percent of revenue."
So revenue was $84,000/mo ($1,008,000/yr) and is now about $7,500,000/year.
So he's not a complete waste of space. And he may not be God but that doesn't mean he's never right and/or never worth listening to. READ THE F ARTICLE about rewrites--plenty of Slashdotters (you included) have been here long enough to know that at least, his example about Netscape/Mozilla is 100% accurate. They lost YEARS because they chose to rewrite everything.
And judging by the comments here, I think a lot of people are reading the title and thinking he's saying "never make any changes." That is 10000% NOT what he is saying. He's saying "never throw away 100% of your code and start over from scratch." If you actually read his original article (I know, I'm new here) you'll see a lot of really good points.
Joel isn't God, but he isn't just some stumbling moron either. There IS a continuum between those two extremes, you know.
After typing in www.google.com to play some Pac-Man yesterday I was saddened to see the regular logo instead of the game but then I noticed I was at https://www.google.com/. At first I thought all requests to http://.../ were being redirected to https://.../ but after a couple reloads I was back at http://.../ and Pac-Man, and even when I typed in https://.../ it redirected me back to http://./
My question now is, how long until the built-in browser search box in Safari uses this? (I'm sure the one in Firefox can handle this already, or will soon.) Another question: why not use https all the time? I know it's a bit more CPU to encrypt things, which is unnoticeable on modern clients, but how much of a strain is it on servers? Also, are there any popular clients out that don't support it? Is there any reason not to go all https all the time?
... maybe suicides happen every so often at all factories and we just notice this because it's the factory that makes iPhones?
I wonder how many Happy Meal Toy factory employees off themselves in a year?
Also: according to Wikipedia, Foxconn also makes "Intel-branded motherboards for Intel Corp.; various orders for American computer manufacturers Dell and Hewlett-Packard; motherboards for UK computer manufacturer Zoostorm; the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 for Sony; the Wii for Nintendo; the Xbox 360 for Microsoft, cell phones for Motorola, the Amazon Kindle, and Cisco equipment."
Wow, he came to that conclusion just three years after watching Sneakers.
... I'm totally naked under my clothes.
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One cannibal turns to the other and asks "Does this taste funny to you?"
Score: -1. factually incorrect. You did NOT "have" to toss your old G4. Mac OS X 10.4 ("Tiger") would have run on it. Its main requirement was "a Mac with FireWire" which all G4s had. (As well as many G3s--all B/W desktops, most iMacs, most PowerBooks, and all iBooks.) Tiger runs the current version (4) of Safari. I know because I have a G5 at work (a little over 5 years old) with 10.4 and Safari 4.
Late G4s had ATA/133 controllers on the motherboard and natively supported large (>128GB) drives. Older G4s can read large drives with an ATA/133 PCI card. (And no one is making large hard drives in anything but SATA anyway--I think the largest PATA is 750 GB.)