Middle class does this too ...
on
The Zuckerberg Tax
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· Score: 1, Insightful
Alternatively, anything that allows the wealthiest to dodge their tax obligations should be looked at as a bug, not a feature.
The middle class does this exact sort of thing too. When a retired blue collar worker leaves his house to his kids, the kids only pay taxes on the appreciation from the date of death.
Like most other gadgets, the iPad can charge off of a USB port. That would be 5 Vdc.
Actually, the iPad can not be charged off a standard USB port while it is powered on. It draws 1.5 amps (more than the.5 amps of USB 2.0).
There are USB ports that will charge the iPad (if they support the Battery Charging v1.1 spec), but having those on a device is rare.
The iPad can charge slowly when it is asleep from a standard USB 2.0 port if there is nothing else drawing power.
So, go ahead and find me a USB port on the flight deck of a C-17. I'll wait <crickets> I thought so....
Did you forget that *you* wrote that 28 Vdc was available.
... Whatever they're doing to keep their pads charged beyond normal battery endurance, it'll be a workaround hack (issuing external USB-connected battery packs along with the pad) or some significant auxiliary systems re-engineering of in-service military transport aircraft.
Or it will be a simple DC/DC converter, simpler than the AC/DC converter that every iPad already ships with.
Well, I'm not an aircraft engineer (either ground or flight), but I really don't remember 120v 60hz AC service routinely available on most military aircraft I've flown in. The stuff I've seen is 120 Vac at 400hz or 28 Vdc. I suppose a multi-billion dollar program to retrofit all these AMC aircraft to include US household current on the flight decks of the current transport aircraft inventory wouldn't be all bad...
Like most other gadgets, the iPad can charge off of a USB port. That would be 5 Vdc.
To further delve into your point the recent "Citizens United" Supreme Court decision said that media organizations are not some special class of organization with respect to speech. That they have the same rights as any organization, no more, no less. And that since organizations are groups of people, organizations have the same Constitutionally protected right to speech as people.
Maybe it's different in California, but where I live, there is no law granting the 'press' special powers or privilege to information that is denied to everyone else.
... Maybe it's different in California, but where I live, there is no law granting the 'press' special powers or privilege to information that is denied to everyone else...
The press would like us to believe otherwise but it is the same in the U.S. The only right that the press has is that it can not be muzzled, it has a Constitutionally guaranteed right to speak. It has no right to access the government beyond what a normal citizen may nor does it have any immunity from laws when pursuing a story. If they wiretap, trespass, etc they can be arrested and prosecuted.
When the press is treated advantageously compared to a normal citizen it is merely a courtesy or politics. Nothing in the Constitution requires it.
What is there to discuss? The record industry initially required audio files from the iTunes Store to include DRM but Apple eventually got them to abandon DRM. Mac OS X does not require DRM or the use of the Mac App Store. You can distribute binaries directly to users if you wish. You can distribute open source apps if you like.
And considering an intern could port a complete OS port in a mere 12 weeks, shows how portable it is. This person presumably had never touched the OS-X source before, yet manages to pull it off...
It sounds more like Darwin that Mac OS X in a form the average user would recognize. From the summary: "The port got as far as booting to a multi-user prompt, but then hit hurdles to do with drivers and cache." If so he probably was familiar with it since Darwin is open source, http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2000/04/05Apple-Releases-Darwin-1-0-Open-Source.html.
That said, the intern did great work, I'm happy he got hired by the CoreOS team.
... I suppose portability is simply part of the demands by management...
I would not be surprised to find that this is just an internal effort to verify portability. Replacing PowerPC as the "other" architecture since ARM represents a viable contingency. It might be wishful thinking to expect an ARM based Mac at any time in the near future.
... I don't think Microsoft will have such an easy time if they were ever to switch to another architecture.
Windows NT was portable from day one of internal development, MIPS and x86. Windows NT 4 shipped with four supported architectures on the standard retail CD: x86, MIPS, Alpha and PowerPC. While subsequent commercial versions of Windows NT only supported one architecture, well two if you count x86 and amd64 separately, Microsoft supposedly continues to build internally on some "other" architecture to maintain portability.
An iPhone 3GS is pretty much EOL. You know that iOS versions past 5.1 are highly unlikely to support them because Apple always drops the version 2 behind the current, and the 3GS is up next. It's free because it's just that far behind.
Its the hardware not the OS that decides such things. Apple will most likely always offer three hardware generations, the latest starting at $200, the previous at $100 and the oldest at $0. The 3GS won't go away until the iPhone 5 arrives and pushes the iPhone 4 into the $0 position.
For now the the 3GS has the current version of iOS and all the new functionality that comes with it. Since the 3GS is current in this respect and is still being sold it is still targeted by developers today. It may not be new but it is still a highly functional smart phone.
Space has fuel sources: ethane, methane, hydrogen
on
Remembering Sealab
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· Score: 2
Space, sadly, doesn't even have oil exploration going for it.
However it could have something akin to natural gas exploration. Space has fuels such as ethane, methane, hydrogen, etc.
In my experience lawyers exist to extract money from clients.
When I told my lawyer that I needed a EULA for an iPhone / iPad app and gave him a list of concerns, he called me back 15 minutes later to say that Apple's App Store EULA covers third parties like me and that my listed concerns are covered there. That I didn't need my own EULA.
There must be something wrong with my lawyer, he served me well rather than extract the maximum amount of money. YMMV.
No, my iPhone's plan works out to about $1,500 over two years. My former phone, a Razor flip phone, worked out to about $1,000 over two years. So $500 over two years to move from a feature phone to a smart phone, actually less adjusting for inflation.
More importantly subsidized Android based phones require comparable plans.
I agree to a degree (no pun intended), however I have some observations.
Getting a Masters in the same field as a Bachelors may not be worth it **unless** you work or hope to work in the area you do your research. Personally I have no regrets getting a MS Comp Sci but my employer paid for everything except parking and we were located literally next door to the university.
Are you targeting a specific employer? For example if you wanted to work for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is Pasadena, California it may be very advantageous to work on a Masters at the neighboring university, Cal Poly Pomona. Your department may have professors affiliated or consulting with JPL, JPL interns or otherwise employs students from the university, etc.
As an undergraduate I had the conversation about getting a Masters with a fellow Comp Sci major. I was undecided. He commented an MBA would be far more useful. I laughed and couldn't imagine doing that. Many years later I did go to business school, again next door to work (the university is well ranked) and with employer support. After many years on the job focusing exclusively on engineering and technical issues I really enjoyed learning new and different thing, understanding other parts of the organization, understanding their perspective and concerns so that I could communicate more effectively with them... but most of all I enjoyed seeing how ignorant and misinformed I had been about business perspectives and business school. For example marketing was not about snake oil and psychological cons as my inner engineer would have expected, it was about how to conduct a survey to get real rankings of customer preferences (which may differ from self identified preferences), how to construct a mathematical model of the existing market, how to introduce a new product with new features into that market and see how the market adapts, etc. In other words how to develop an educated guess at expected market share of something new, I used to believe they just pulled such numbers out of... the air. This is just one example of many.
I'd recommend looking into an MBA. Its probably not at all what one expects and it probably is more valuable to scientists and engineers than more degrees in their existing fields. As you become more senior you need to interact, understand and effectively communicate with others outside of science and engineering. I think an MBA helps in this regard.
... most people (at least in the US) buy their phone subsidized with a contract renewal, so the price for even a top-tier phone is $200-$300...
We are past that point in history where one has to pay for a smartphone. One can get an iPhone 3GS for free with the sort of plan you describe. Its not the latest model but it is still supported by the latest version of iOS and is highly capable. Not top-tier but second-tier is pretty good these days.
... $150+/month contract for 3 years to get unlimited local voice, text, data, and 10 hours of North America long distance/month...
My plan's period is 2 years and the monthly fee is about $65. Of course I am grandfathered with respect to unlimited data, I'm not sure what that would add if I were a new customer. At about 1.5 years they will waive the remaining 0.5 if I am upgrading to a new phone and starting a new 2 year contract.
... I can get the same device for under $100...
An iPhone 3GS is free. We are past the point where one has to pay for smart phones.
The reason for the high rate of defection is not because Android is not as good as iOS, but rather because so many people pick up free (on a two year contract) low end Android devices and those really tend to be very bad.
And on the Apple side you can get an iPhone 3GS for free with a 2 year contract. So I think the issue is not "free" phones but that Apple provides both the OS and hardware so that they control the end user experience. Google is at a relative disadvantage in this respect.
That wasn't a rate of defection that was quoted, it was a rate of "announced intended defection". Just because 50% of Android users might have said in a poll that they wouldn't buy another Android, doesn't mean they would. They may, for example, remember why they didn't get an iPhone in the first place - because it's much more expensive.
Then again that reason no longer exists. You can get a 3G for $0, a 4 for $100 or a 4S for $200.
The survey doesn't show much, other than perhaps more 'brand loyalty' amongst iPhone users. Hardly a surprise given the almost religious devotion many Mac users have, is it? (for reference, I own an iPhone, Mac Mini, and use both Linux & OS X at work).
"many", no, try "some". And some Android users are a bit religious too. The religious types, iPhone or Android, represent a minority. When dealing with the public at large a great disparity like the one demonstrated by this survey is a bit telling. As many other posters have pointed out Google has no control over the hardware, that is a big advantage of Apple. Apple controls the entire user experience. Android is going to share many of the same issues we see in the MS Windows world as OS and hardware come from different sources.
Of course some people seem to think that Windows and Android are winning.
It all depends on your definition of winning. One of the analysts covering the mobile industry was being interviewed on CNBC after Apple reported their quarterly results. This analyst claimed that 94% of current iPhone users would buy another iPhone but only 47% of current Android users would by another Android device.
$99 annual developer's fee later *cough*xcode*cough*
Well, the big difference there is that nothing stops you from cross-compiling your software on other platforms.
And nothing prevents you from generating your ebook with a different tool and selling it on other platforms. Only the binary generated by iBooks Author is restricted, not the content itself.
Sole commercial distributor, not sole distributor. The quote is a misstatement of the policy.
And this only refers to the binary produced by the iBooks Author program. Apple makes no claim on your content, you are free to produce other ebooks using different tools and distribute elsewhere.
Slow down, slow down, one step at a time ...
on
CEOs of RIM Step Down
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· Score: 4, Insightful
... will now lead the BlackBerry maker as it attempts to beat the likes of Apple and Google
Slow down, slow down, one step at a time. How about we get the company nice and healthy first and work on dominating the industry after that.
Slashdot Mirror
Alternatively, anything that allows the wealthiest to dodge their tax obligations should be looked at as a bug, not a feature.
The middle class does this exact sort of thing too. When a retired blue collar worker leaves his house to his kids, the kids only pay taxes on the appreciation from the date of death.
Like most other gadgets, the iPad can charge off of a USB port. That would be 5 Vdc.
Actually, the iPad can not be charged off a standard USB port while it is powered on. It draws 1.5 amps (more than the .5 amps of USB 2.0).
There are USB ports that will charge the iPad (if they support the Battery Charging v1.1 spec), but having those on a device is rare.
The iPad can charge slowly when it is asleep from a standard USB 2.0 port if there is nothing else drawing power.
There seems to be existing aviation oriented adapters that can deliver 2 amps. http://www.lonestaraviation.com/Power-Adapter-USB-Socket.html
Adapters for 28V dc aircraft environments already exist: http://www.lonestaraviation.com/Power-Adapter-USB-Socket.html
So, go ahead and find me a USB port on the flight deck of a C-17. I'll wait <crickets> I thought so. ...
Did you forget that *you* wrote that 28 Vdc was available.
... Whatever they're doing to keep their pads charged beyond normal battery endurance, it'll be a workaround hack (issuing external USB-connected battery packs along with the pad) or some significant auxiliary systems re-engineering of in-service military transport aircraft.
Or it will be a simple DC/DC converter, simpler than the AC/DC converter that every iPad already ships with.
Well, I'm not an aircraft engineer (either ground or flight), but I really don't remember 120v 60hz AC service routinely available on most military aircraft I've flown in. The stuff I've seen is 120 Vac at 400hz or 28 Vdc. I suppose a multi-billion dollar program to retrofit all these AMC aircraft to include US household current on the flight decks of the current transport aircraft inventory wouldn't be all bad...
Like most other gadgets, the iPad can charge off of a USB port. That would be 5 Vdc.
What is the mass of an MP3?
An African or European MP3?
To further delve into your point the recent "Citizens United" Supreme Court decision said that media organizations are not some special class of organization with respect to speech. That they have the same rights as any organization, no more, no less. And that since organizations are groups of people, organizations have the same Constitutionally protected right to speech as people.
Maybe it's different in California, but where I live, there is no law granting the 'press' special powers or privilege to information that is denied to everyone else.
What about press passes, then?
They are a courtesy. They are at the police department's discretion.
... Maybe it's different in California, but where I live, there is no law granting the 'press' special powers or privilege to information that is denied to everyone else ...
The press would like us to believe otherwise but it is the same in the U.S. The only right that the press has is that it can not be muzzled, it has a Constitutionally guaranteed right to speak. It has no right to access the government beyond what a normal citizen may nor does it have any immunity from laws when pursuing a story. If they wiretap, trespass, etc they can be arrested and prosecuted.
When the press is treated advantageously compared to a normal citizen it is merely a courtesy or politics. Nothing in the Constitution requires it.
Lets start with being able to get source code for the OS ...
Core OS, filesystem, etc ... sure:
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2000/04/05Apple-Releases-Darwin-1-0-Open-Source.html
http://www.apple.com/opensource/
... or any of the apps ...
Mac OS X runs the same console and X11 apps as Linux. The X11 display server is well integrated into Mac OS X.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.7/en/mchlp2276.html
... Then we'll continue by discussing the DRM.
What is there to discuss? The record industry initially required audio files from the iTunes Store to include DRM but Apple eventually got them to abandon DRM. Mac OS X does not require DRM or the use of the Mac App Store. You can distribute binaries directly to users if you wish. You can distribute open source apps if you like.
And considering an intern could port a complete OS port in a mere 12 weeks, shows how portable it is. This person presumably had never touched the OS-X source before, yet manages to pull it off ...
It sounds more like Darwin that Mac OS X in a form the average user would recognize. From the summary: "The port got as far as booting to a multi-user prompt, but then hit hurdles to do with drivers and cache." If so he probably was familiar with it since Darwin is open source, http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2000/04/05Apple-Releases-Darwin-1-0-Open-Source.html.
That said, the intern did great work, I'm happy he got hired by the CoreOS team.
... I suppose portability is simply part of the demands by management ...
I would not be surprised to find that this is just an internal effort to verify portability. Replacing PowerPC as the "other" architecture since ARM represents a viable contingency. It might be wishful thinking to expect an ARM based Mac at any time in the near future.
... I don't think Microsoft will have such an easy time if they were ever to switch to another architecture.
Windows NT was portable from day one of internal development, MIPS and x86. Windows NT 4 shipped with four supported architectures on the standard retail CD: x86, MIPS, Alpha and PowerPC. While subsequent commercial versions of Windows NT only supported one architecture, well two if you count x86 and amd64 separately, Microsoft supposedly continues to build internally on some "other" architecture to maintain portability.
An iPhone 3GS is pretty much EOL. You know that iOS versions past 5.1 are highly unlikely to support them because Apple always drops the version 2 behind the current, and the 3GS is up next. It's free because it's just that far behind.
Its the hardware not the OS that decides such things. Apple will most likely always offer three hardware generations, the latest starting at $200, the previous at $100 and the oldest at $0. The 3GS won't go away until the iPhone 5 arrives and pushes the iPhone 4 into the $0 position.
For now the the 3GS has the current version of iOS and all the new functionality that comes with it. Since the 3GS is current in this respect and is still being sold it is still targeted by developers today. It may not be new but it is still a highly functional smart phone.
Space, sadly, doesn't even have oil exploration going for it.
However it could have something akin to natural gas exploration. Space has fuels such as ethane, methane, hydrogen, etc.
In my experience lawyers exist to extract money from clients.
When I told my lawyer that I needed a EULA for an iPhone / iPad app and gave him a list of concerns, he called me back 15 minutes later to say that Apple's App Store EULA covers third parties like me and that my listed concerns are covered there. That I didn't need my own EULA.
There must be something wrong with my lawyer, he served me well rather than extract the maximum amount of money. YMMV.
By "free" you mean $2000 over 2 years.
No, my iPhone's plan works out to about $1,500 over two years. My former phone, a Razor flip phone, worked out to about $1,000 over two years. So $500 over two years to move from a feature phone to a smart phone, actually less adjusting for inflation.
More importantly subsidized Android based phones require comparable plans.
I agree to a degree (no pun intended), however I have some observations.
... but most of all I enjoyed seeing how ignorant and misinformed I had been about business perspectives and business school. For example marketing was not about snake oil and psychological cons as my inner engineer would have expected, it was about how to conduct a survey to get real rankings of customer preferences (which may differ from self identified preferences), how to construct a mathematical model of the existing market, how to introduce a new product with new features into that market and see how the market adapts, etc. In other words how to develop an educated guess at expected market share of something new, I used to believe they just pulled such numbers out of ... the air. This is just one example of many.
Getting a Masters in the same field as a Bachelors may not be worth it **unless** you work or hope to work in the area you do your research. Personally I have no regrets getting a MS Comp Sci but my employer paid for everything except parking and we were located literally next door to the university.
Are you targeting a specific employer? For example if you wanted to work for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is Pasadena, California it may be very advantageous to work on a Masters at the neighboring university, Cal Poly Pomona. Your department may have professors affiliated or consulting with JPL, JPL interns or otherwise employs students from the university, etc.
As an undergraduate I had the conversation about getting a Masters with a fellow Comp Sci major. I was undecided. He commented an MBA would be far more useful. I laughed and couldn't imagine doing that. Many years later I did go to business school, again next door to work (the university is well ranked) and with employer support. After many years on the job focusing exclusively on engineering and technical issues I really enjoyed learning new and different thing, understanding other parts of the organization, understanding their perspective and concerns so that I could communicate more effectively with them
I'd recommend looking into an MBA. Its probably not at all what one expects and it probably is more valuable to scientists and engineers than more degrees in their existing fields. As you become more senior you need to interact, understand and effectively communicate with others outside of science and engineering. I think an MBA helps in this regard.
"degree."
Why the quotes? They're all pieces of paper.
The degree is only as valuable as the accreditation and reputation of the issuing institution.
... most people (at least in the US) buy their phone subsidized with a contract renewal, so the price for even a top-tier phone is $200-$300 ...
We are past that point in history where one has to pay for a smartphone. One can get an iPhone 3GS for free with the sort of plan you describe. Its not the latest model but it is still supported by the latest version of iOS and is highly capable. Not top-tier but second-tier is pretty good these days.
My plan's period is 2 years and the monthly fee is about $65. Of course I am grandfathered with respect to unlimited data, I'm not sure what that would add if I were a new customer. At about 1.5 years they will waive the remaining 0.5 if I am upgrading to a new phone and starting a new 2 year contract.
... I can get the same device for under $100 ...
An iPhone 3GS is free. We are past the point where one has to pay for smart phones.
The reason for the high rate of defection is not because Android is not as good as iOS, but rather because so many people pick up free (on a two year contract) low end Android devices and those really tend to be very bad.
And on the Apple side you can get an iPhone 3GS for free with a 2 year contract. So I think the issue is not "free" phones but that Apple provides both the OS and hardware so that they control the end user experience. Google is at a relative disadvantage in this respect.
That wasn't a rate of defection that was quoted, it was a rate of "announced intended defection". Just because 50% of Android users might have said in a poll that they wouldn't buy another Android, doesn't mean they would. They may, for example, remember why they didn't get an iPhone in the first place - because it's much more expensive.
Then again that reason no longer exists. You can get a 3G for $0, a 4 for $100 or a 4S for $200.
The survey doesn't show much, other than perhaps more 'brand loyalty' amongst iPhone users. Hardly a surprise given the almost religious devotion many Mac users have, is it? (for reference, I own an iPhone, Mac Mini, and use both Linux & OS X at work).
"many", no, try "some". And some Android users are a bit religious too. The religious types, iPhone or Android, represent a minority. When dealing with the public at large a great disparity like the one demonstrated by this survey is a bit telling. As many other posters have pointed out Google has no control over the hardware, that is a big advantage of Apple. Apple controls the entire user experience. Android is going to share many of the same issues we see in the MS Windows world as OS and hardware come from different sources.
Of course some people seem to think that Windows and Android are winning.
It all depends on your definition of winning. One of the analysts covering the mobile industry was being interviewed on CNBC after Apple reported their quarterly results. This analyst claimed that 94% of current iPhone users would buy another iPhone but only 47% of current Android users would by another Android device.
$99 annual developer's fee later *cough*xcode*cough*
Well, the big difference there is that nothing stops you from cross-compiling your software on other platforms.
And nothing prevents you from generating your ebook with a different tool and selling it on other platforms. Only the binary generated by iBooks Author is restricted, not the content itself.
Sole commercial distributor, not sole distributor. The quote is a misstatement of the policy.
And this only refers to the binary produced by the iBooks Author program. Apple makes no claim on your content, you are free to produce other ebooks using different tools and distribute elsewhere.
... will now lead the BlackBerry maker as it attempts to beat the likes of Apple and Google
Slow down, slow down, one step at a time. How about we get the company nice and healthy first and work on dominating the industry after that.