But without these kind of posts, we'd be deprived of some true comedy gold. Check out the last link in the summary. The first paragraph reads:
Apple has just fired a death shot at the netbook. The new iPad could easily displace the netbook category, and I believe it will. Cheap laptops are at risk of extinction as well.
I am typing this on an expensive, arguably even overpriced Macbook Pro so I am not drinking the Apple Haterade. But this kind of hyperbole is... pretty astounding.
The only revolutionary thing about the iPad is a business thing, not a tech thing... the new AT&T data plans.
Hopefully, someday, I will be able to get a $30/mo, no contract, unlimited data plan that I can stick onto any computer I happen to have. (Hell, I might settle for adding a $30 data plan to my hacktivated iPhone. It isn't possible to do without a contract extension... for all lines on the family plan the phone is on. But I should complain on HowardForums, not here...)
No kidding. If I end up with lottery money, I'm getting one built.
I thought of something else I could do in the meantime, though, to scratch that itch--Goa'uld transport rings. You know how the base station is embedded in the ground? I am pretty sure that I have seen on the show a circle made of seemingly weathered stone-like wedges, embedded into the forest floor.
They also simply paint the pattern onto the decks of the ships. It's occasionally shown clearly enough to get a clean image to build from.
Transport ring wedges could be cast in concrete with a mold, painted, and installed outdoors. I'd like to go put one out in the middle of nowhere for a sci-fi fan to find 20 years from now.
Thank you for posting that. The ability to "just copy stuff to it" turns the iPad into a possible contender for my dollars. If I can add my own ePubs to it without the iTunes rodeo... maybe, just maybe it would be worth having as a color e-reader with a long battery life.
If, on the secondary PC, Sync is unchecked then iTunes doesn't let you add any content of that type to the iPhone.
If you check Sync, even if you only want to sync manually selected items, iTunes says, "The iPhone 'XXX' is synced with another iTunes library. Do you want to erase this iPhone and sync with this iTunes library?"
So it does not seem possible to add an MP3 to my iPhone from a foreign PC without clobbering the existing content on the device.
If I am misunderstanding you, seriously, please enlighten me.
(There are obviously workarounds like FTP or Airshare to get a file on the device. But they all have drawbacks, like MP3s you add that way will not be in the phone's iPod's database and you'll need an external player for them.)
It's also a $500 16GB USB device with no mass storage mode! Assuming that it works like the iPhone.
If I could drag 'n' drop content to this thing, it might, MIGHT be on my shopping list. A 10+ hour color ePub reader would be truly swell. But forcing me to use iTunes sync is a complete killer because it prevents me from adding content from two different computers.
Say I am at home with my iPhone. I sync the device to my computer and copy over books and music. Then I go to work, and a coworker says, "check out this mp3."
I want to put the mp3 on my iPhone so I can listen to it later, maybe in the car on the way home. But I can't. My iPhone is paired to my Mac at home, and if I want to put an MP3 on while I am at work, iTunes insists on erasing the device first. (It doesn't do this for some data, like contacts, which sync at home & work with no problem.)
I still use a Zune, a BROWN Zune, because it has a "guest mode." Mass storage support would be better, but at least with guest mode I can manage the content from the 2 machines I use most, home and work.
If I am a moron, and I have missed some obvious way to do that on my iPhone, I will happily take a -5 iTard moderation if someone tells me how to do it.
At least when I was contracting at Microsoft, being a contractor was not much of an advantage for getting a real job. (I worked for 3 different agencies while I was there.)
Over several years, I learned of about 2 people that moved from contract to full time--and it was always full time in another department.
As a contractor, your manager is unable to give you any kind of consideration for full-time job openings. It was forbidden, at least where and when I was working.
Got a contractor that would make an ideal full-time employee? Got an open FTE slot? Want to hire the guy? Tell that contractor sorry, I suggest you go to Microsoft.com and apply there. Good luck.
(My manager did give me a lead on a position well away from our department, which did result in an interview. It was his own turf he had to be careful about. Not that he had any head count to fill anyway... There were 3 full timers and about 6-8 contractors depending on workload. As far as I know, the full-timer headcount has only gone down in that department too.)
Actually, their standard rhetoric on dinosaurs would still apply: Either the devil put it there to destroy mankinds belief in God, or else God placed it there as part of the creation process to test the faith of true believers.
The only thing I have to say to people who believe that is this:
If God gave us brains yet doesn't wish us to USE them as proof of our faith, then he's not a God that I care to associate with.
Well, ok, I might also tell them that their narrow view of the world is blinding them to the majesty of all Creation, which extends not just from one horizon to the other, but instead subsumes EVERYTHING from the most minute subatomic particles to the breadth of the entire Universe.
OK, well, those aren't the only things I would say. There might be some shouting. I can't rule that out.
I am not a religious person, but I am a cranky person, and I am holding out hope for green-skinned alien women.
You're correct. Many kinds of coral do this, as do some clams and nudibranchs.
The relationship between host and algae partner can be kind of delicate in corals, though. Being able to make your own photosynthetic apparatus could be a more robust system.
I watched a guy at work playing the closed beta. One of his newb missions was to fight the Borg.
It looked just like a fantasy MMO game where newbs showed up to fight rats, except the rats were Borg. There may have been some crates, too. And lasers.
I would rather have been blasting Denebian slime devils than the FREAKIN' BORG, who should be too tough for newbs. So their talk about respecting the story is not entirely accurate.
Like clothing that has in it a substance that will be seen by the scanners... So you can have a big smiley face or "Hi TSA!" message written across your body when they scan you.
What will a full-body scanner see clearly that won't set off the metal detector? We need that stuff in some kind of paint pen.
I expect to see some sort of kit for this at ThinkGeek in the coming year.
Nothing could be more true. The damage the 'terrorists' have done is damn near zero. A few busted trains, a few blown up airplanes, and and few buildings? Pfft. It doesn't even rate as pocket change next to one hurricane in terms of costs. In terms of lives lost it doesn't even exist on the same scale as mundane boring shit like cold or warm weather, car accidents, the common cold, and other stupid shit no one gives two shits about.
Even more importantly it doesn't compare to other kinds of human-perpetrated violence that our societies tolerate.
Drunk driving, for example. According to some page on the intertube, DUI kills one person in the US every 39 minutes in the US, or 13,470 in 2006.
I choose DUI here not because I have a special agenda against it, but it is similar to terrorism in that many of its victims are hit randomly, like a bolt from the blue.
So we tolerate many thousands of people every year being killed basically at random on the roads, and completely flip our wigs over the possibility of a much smaller number of victims in another context.
I don't know what to do about terrorism, DUI, or any other problem in society, but the difference in our reaction to various kinds of violence is baffling to me. Your darn kids are in more danger being driven to the airport than being on the plane, people.
Phones are little computers, and there will always be a faster model with more features.
Big deal. It's about as interesting as video card wars.
Real news would be new service plans, increased competition in the wireless business, or legislation that changes the shape of my relationship with the phone company.
"[Google intends] to turn 3G data service (and subsequently, LTE) into a commodity, like Wi-Fi hotspot service only more widespread and cheaper to get at."
So let's say I get this proposed affordable, unlocked Google phone with advanced data features...
What network is it on?
When I go in to the ATT store to actually get that phone on the network, isn't it going to be the same old story? 2 year contract, expensive limited 'unlimited' data plans, SMS messages for a quarter, and all that other nonsense?
I have seen the Google phone hailed as putting the internet in everyone's pocket, but in the current business climate I don't see how that is possible, unless Google builds or buys a network of cell towers. The network question has been avoided in all the material I have read so far, but maybe I have not found the right news.
If I am wrong, and Google is going to be my new, affordable phone company, someone please post and strike me down--because that would be great news. Even if Skynet listens to my voice mail to better sell me stuff.
(Hah: I originally had a typo above: adfordable. I'm going to keep that word.)
I was with 3 other people for dinner the other night, none of them geeks in ANY way... When ebooks came up, 2 of them had heard the Kindle 1984 story and it gave them the willies. "They can just delete my stuff?"
Based on this massive sample I will say that Joe Public may be more aware of the problem than we give him credit for.
I have used SageTV on WinXP to timeshift OTA HD and play back other media. It works pretty well, and I even got auto commercial skipping with some cheap shareware addons. But as you probably know getting PREMIUM cable/sat programming into your computer can be a hassle.
Xbox Media Center I have also found to be a very nice front end for playing back media though I don't think it does TV recording. Despite the name it does not just run on Xboxes. But beware, XBMC is not easy to set up and it has about the most hostile forums I have ever seen, full of "read the damn sticky n00b" replies to questions--and the sticky is actually out of date! Put a long evening in to it and get it running, and it's nice though. It supports every media file I have tried, even lets you switch audio tracks in MKVs.
If you can separate the television and "other media" playback tasks your life may be easier because recording premium TV shows is a pain in the ass and there are few good computer solutions. Like someone else said, maybe just get a Tivo for TV and netflix, and play back your other media files with a computer. If you have a good smart remote setup, context switching between the television DVR and the HTPC you use for everything else isn't even a big deal, just a button press and a few seconds.
Does the 3rd world really have always-on mobile internet with unlimited data, such that all apps being webapps is a good idea?
I live in the US and I certainly don't have always-on mobile internet. I have access to it, sure, but it just isn't worth it--the expense, the poor selection of devices, the contracts with carriers... I may be in the minority, but there are still probably a lot of people that won't pop for another big monthly bill.
Why not break in to telephone networks with emergency messages?
Why not inject messages into IM networks and chat rooms? (Maybe private IM and chat tools should be heavily regulated--for safety.)
And what if you are not watching TV, listening to the radio, playing a game on an online service, or on the phone? Maybe you're surfing the web. So why not tap in to ad serving networks, so that every page you visit has warnings all over? Or maybe this should be done at the ISP level. I bet Comcast and ATT would play ball.
Slashdot Mirror
But without these kind of posts, we'd be deprived of some true comedy gold. Check out the last link in the summary. The first paragraph reads:
Apple has just fired a death shot at the netbook. The new iPad could easily displace the netbook category, and I believe it will. Cheap laptops are at risk of extinction as well.
I am typing this on an expensive, arguably even overpriced Macbook Pro so I am not drinking the Apple Haterade. But this kind of hyperbole is... pretty astounding.
The only revolutionary thing about the iPad is a business thing, not a tech thing... the new AT&T data plans.
Hopefully, someday, I will be able to get a $30/mo, no contract, unlimited data plan that I can stick onto any computer I happen to have. (Hell, I might settle for adding a $30 data plan to my hacktivated iPhone. It isn't possible to do without a contract extension... for all lines on the family plan the phone is on. But I should complain on HowardForums, not here...)
No kidding. If I end up with lottery money, I'm getting one built.
I thought of something else I could do in the meantime, though, to scratch that itch--Goa'uld transport rings. You know how the base station is embedded in the ground? I am pretty sure that I have seen on the show a circle made of seemingly weathered stone-like wedges, embedded into the forest floor.
They also simply paint the pattern onto the decks of the ships. It's occasionally shown clearly enough to get a clean image to build from.
Transport ring wedges could be cast in concrete with a mold, painted, and installed outdoors. I'd like to go put one out in the middle of nowhere for a sci-fi fan to find 20 years from now.
Thank you for posting that. The ability to "just copy stuff to it" turns the iPad into a possible contender for my dollars. If I can add my own ePubs to it without the iTunes rodeo... maybe, just maybe it would be worth having as a color e-reader with a long battery life.
The devil's in the details, of course.
If, on the secondary PC, Sync is unchecked then iTunes doesn't let you add any content of that type to the iPhone.
If you check Sync, even if you only want to sync manually selected items, iTunes says, "The iPhone 'XXX' is synced with another iTunes library. Do you want to erase this iPhone and sync with this iTunes library?"
So it does not seem possible to add an MP3 to my iPhone from a foreign PC without clobbering the existing content on the device.
If I am misunderstanding you, seriously, please enlighten me.
(There are obviously workarounds like FTP or Airshare to get a file on the device. But they all have drawbacks, like MP3s you add that way will not be in the phone's iPod's database and you'll need an external player for them.)
It's also a $500 16GB USB device with no mass storage mode! Assuming that it works like the iPhone.
If I could drag 'n' drop content to this thing, it might, MIGHT be on my shopping list. A 10+ hour color ePub reader would be truly swell. But forcing me to use iTunes sync is a complete killer because it prevents me from adding content from two different computers.
Say I am at home with my iPhone. I sync the device to my computer and copy over books and music. Then I go to work, and a coworker says, "check out this mp3."
I want to put the mp3 on my iPhone so I can listen to it later, maybe in the car on the way home. But I can't. My iPhone is paired to my Mac at home, and if I want to put an MP3 on while I am at work, iTunes insists on erasing the device first. (It doesn't do this for some data, like contacts, which sync at home & work with no problem.)
I still use a Zune, a BROWN Zune, because it has a "guest mode." Mass storage support would be better, but at least with guest mode I can manage the content from the 2 machines I use most, home and work.
If I am a moron, and I have missed some obvious way to do that on my iPhone, I will happily take a -5 iTard moderation if someone tells me how to do it.
At least when I was contracting at Microsoft, being a contractor was not much of an advantage for getting a real job. (I worked for 3 different agencies while I was there.)
Over several years, I learned of about 2 people that moved from contract to full time--and it was always full time in another department.
As a contractor, your manager is unable to give you any kind of consideration for full-time job openings. It was forbidden, at least where and when I was working.
Got a contractor that would make an ideal full-time employee? Got an open FTE slot? Want to hire the guy? Tell that contractor sorry, I suggest you go to Microsoft.com and apply there. Good luck.
(My manager did give me a lead on a position well away from our department, which did result in an interview. It was his own turf he had to be careful about. Not that he had any head count to fill anyway... There were 3 full timers and about 6-8 contractors depending on workload. As far as I know, the full-timer headcount has only gone down in that department too.)
If you like light gun style games, House of the Dead Overkill is good.
It's no Time Crisis, mind you, but it's good.
Actually, their standard rhetoric on dinosaurs would still apply: Either the devil put it there to destroy mankinds belief in God, or else God placed it there as part of the creation process to test the faith of true believers.
The only thing I have to say to people who believe that is this:
If God gave us brains yet doesn't wish us to USE them as proof of our faith, then he's not a God that I care to associate with.
Well, ok, I might also tell them that their narrow view of the world is blinding them to the majesty of all Creation, which extends not just from one horizon to the other, but instead subsumes EVERYTHING from the most minute subatomic particles to the breadth of the entire Universe.
OK, well, those aren't the only things I would say. There might be some shouting. I can't rule that out.
I am not a religious person, but I am a cranky person, and I am holding out hope for green-skinned alien women.
Light gun games that relied on a the scan line in a CRT were a lot of fun. The new guns that work with thin panel TVs do not seem to be as accurate.
You're correct. Many kinds of coral do this, as do some clams and nudibranchs.
The relationship between host and algae partner can be kind of delicate in corals, though. Being able to make your own photosynthetic apparatus could be a more robust system.
I watched a guy at work playing the closed beta. One of his newb missions was to fight the Borg.
It looked just like a fantasy MMO game where newbs showed up to fight rats, except the rats were Borg. There may have been some crates, too. And lasers.
I would rather have been blasting Denebian slime devils than the FREAKIN' BORG, who should be too tough for newbs. So their talk about respecting the story is not entirely accurate.
Good call. UFO was like an X-COM tv series. I'd love to see a modern take on it.
Give it to Joss Whedon or Christopher Nolan. :)
Like clothing that has in it a substance that will be seen by the scanners... So you can have a big smiley face or "Hi TSA!" message written across your body when they scan you.
What will a full-body scanner see clearly that won't set off the metal detector? We need that stuff in some kind of paint pen.
I expect to see some sort of kit for this at ThinkGeek in the coming year.
Nothing could be more true. The damage the 'terrorists' have done is damn near zero. A few busted trains, a few blown up airplanes, and and few buildings? Pfft. It doesn't even rate as pocket change next to one hurricane in terms of costs. In terms of lives lost it doesn't even exist on the same scale as mundane boring shit like cold or warm weather, car accidents, the common cold, and other stupid shit no one gives two shits about.
Even more importantly it doesn't compare to other kinds of human-perpetrated violence that our societies tolerate.
Drunk driving, for example. According to some page on the intertube, DUI kills one person in the US every 39 minutes in the US, or 13,470 in 2006.
I choose DUI here not because I have a special agenda against it, but it is similar to terrorism in that many of its victims are hit randomly, like a bolt from the blue.
So we tolerate many thousands of people every year being killed basically at random on the roads, and completely flip our wigs over the possibility of a much smaller number of victims in another context.
I don't know what to do about terrorism, DUI, or any other problem in society, but the difference in our reaction to various kinds of violence is baffling to me. Your darn kids are in more danger being driven to the airport than being on the plane, people.
You think I can afford a real goat?
Seriously, no "... airports bomb YOU" jokes yet. WTF?
Phones are little computers, and there will always be a faster model with more features.
Big deal. It's about as interesting as video card wars.
Real news would be new service plans, increased competition in the wireless business, or legislation that changes the shape of my relationship with the phone company.
But I guess we take what we can get.
"[Google intends] to turn 3G data service (and subsequently, LTE) into a commodity, like Wi-Fi hotspot service only more widespread and cheaper to get at."
So let's say I get this proposed affordable, unlocked Google phone with advanced data features...
What network is it on?
When I go in to the ATT store to actually get that phone on the network, isn't it going to be the same old story? 2 year contract, expensive limited 'unlimited' data plans, SMS messages for a quarter, and all that other nonsense?
I have seen the Google phone hailed as putting the internet in everyone's pocket, but in the current business climate I don't see how that is possible, unless Google builds or buys a network of cell towers. The network question has been avoided in all the material I have read so far, but maybe I have not found the right news.
If I am wrong, and Google is going to be my new, affordable phone company, someone please post and strike me down--because that would be great news. Even if Skynet listens to my voice mail to better sell me stuff.
(Hah: I originally had a typo above: adfordable. I'm going to keep that word.)
Thank you ladies and gentlemen, Monkeedude will be here all week. Try the veal! And please tip your server.
I was with 3 other people for dinner the other night, none of them geeks in ANY way... When ebooks came up, 2 of them had heard the Kindle 1984 story and it gave them the willies. "They can just delete my stuff?"
Based on this massive sample I will say that Joe Public may be more aware of the problem than we give him credit for.
I have used SageTV on WinXP to timeshift OTA HD and play back other media. It works pretty well, and I even got auto commercial skipping with some cheap shareware addons. But as you probably know getting PREMIUM cable/sat programming into your computer can be a hassle.
Xbox Media Center I have also found to be a very nice front end for playing back media though I don't think it does TV recording. Despite the name it does not just run on Xboxes. But beware, XBMC is not easy to set up and it has about the most hostile forums I have ever seen, full of "read the damn sticky n00b" replies to questions--and the sticky is actually out of date! Put a long evening in to it and get it running, and it's nice though. It supports every media file I have tried, even lets you switch audio tracks in MKVs.
If you can separate the television and "other media" playback tasks your life may be easier because recording premium TV shows is a pain in the ass and there are few good computer solutions. Like someone else said, maybe just get a Tivo for TV and netflix, and play back your other media files with a computer. If you have a good smart remote setup, context switching between the television DVR and the HTPC you use for everything else isn't even a big deal, just a button press and a few seconds.
Good luck.
I like having a Nintendo DS. The iPhone has not provided a game with the depth of most AAA DS titles.
Not to mention, who wants to get into bed with the damn TELEPHONE COMPANY to enjoy a game console?
Does the 3rd world really have always-on mobile internet with unlimited data, such that all apps being webapps is a good idea?
I live in the US and I certainly don't have always-on mobile internet. I have access to it, sure, but it just isn't worth it--the expense, the poor selection of devices, the contracts with carriers... I may be in the minority, but there are still probably a lot of people that won't pop for another big monthly bill.
Why not break in to telephone networks with emergency messages?
Why not inject messages into IM networks and chat rooms? (Maybe private IM and chat tools should be heavily regulated--for safety.)
And what if you are not watching TV, listening to the radio, playing a game on an online service, or on the phone? Maybe you're surfing the web. So why not tap in to ad serving networks, so that every page you visit has warnings all over? Or maybe this should be done at the ISP level. I bet Comcast and ATT would play ball.
I mean, think of the children.
It will take 1000 years for descrambling CSS without a license to become legal.