Microsoft could... gain momentum on ARM which Apple cannot afford to follow (yet) because of another big CPU switch.
Arguably, nobody would be better off than Apple from a massive shift to ARM architectures (except, of course, ARM itself).
ALMOST ALL apps for both Mac OSX and iPhone and iPod/Touch are written in the exact identical developer environment, and share a huge fraction (not 100%) of frameworks. I.e., the internal tools to support multiple code bases are in great shape for such a change. Go ahead, ask a developer who writes for both Mac OSX and iPhone: the ones I've seen quoted say that writing for iPhone actually helps them re-code better for Mac OSX, not that they had to relearn everything as FUD would suggest.
The crossover functionality is so great that I, for example, expect that a LOT of Snow Leopard functionality shows up in iPhones within less than 12 months, as the CPUs go multi-core, graphics switch between CPU and GPU, and Apple goes berserk about surmounting Pre's edge in multi-tasking. Why not? Or rather, why is this not inevitable? Apple doesn't talk a lot about its roadmaps, but these are connect-the-dot obvious, no?
This is not like trying to get Java to work acceptably on 16 different architectures. There are some major apps not written using Apple's current frameworks, but the whole beauty of netbooks is that you aren't expecting (yet, anyhow) to run massive CS4, Office or other huge apps barely able to carry around their own weight. So MacOSX/Arm has thousands of everyday iPhone and Mac OSX apps ready to burnish for ARM books, with a streamlined app store for mass consumer distribution.
Finally, Microsoft makes its money off (a) Corporate Desktop Windows and (b) Corporate Desktop Office, plus those of us unlucky enough to need to take work home. Neither of these share any resemblance to the burgeoning netbook ethos, which is small, flexible, almost throwaway. The last thing MS wants to do is undercut its only source of profitability by declaring their current game over, and starting another where they have no monopoly power. (Nota bene: Zune, XBox, Bing,... they're all money-losers.)
If I were Apple, I'd be drooling if I thought the original premise were much more than a wet dream.
"Please listen carefully as our options have changed blah blah blah..."
Our in-house tech support is plagued by this... the latest issue du jour of some tiny division gets the front of the menu, with apparently no regard for ideas such as blasting an email to the affected 2% with a link to a special FAQ or custom number. So it takes about a minute to get to the menu item for the most frequent issue everybody in my division has, "problem with desktop software or hardware" (and then you get into the hold queue; oh goody).
Curiously, however, we do NOT outsource this support, so the dollars for each individual's lost productivity and the penny for 800-number traffic is borne by the very corporation that mindlessly causes it. Likely, nobody in IT support has ever heard of Claude Shannon, or thought to apply probabilistic analysis (a là Huffman encoding) to the menus to minimize the cost of support.
(Also possible in the centralized control mentality of our Big Brother organization, the wasted time is to remind us how we are lowly toads. But these fears must not be given voice.)
In any case, it weakens Pogue's case: this imbecility is clearly economically disadvantageous AND aggravating, and yet it's rife within Corporate America.
For a laptop that cost them $1500, you think they'd just stroll into the back and bring you a new one?
Right you are. Shortly after the battery replacement, and down to about 30 days before my 17" MBP went out of 3-year AppleCare, the Genius examined every little ding and warned me that abuse wasn't covered in the warranty.
Still, not so bad. I had it back with a new screen 3 business days later. I didn't have to huff and puff or anything, just observed that the screen was occasionally flaking out when I flexed the top half of the laptop and that it was getting worse.
I don't need them to be pushovers, just to be reasonable about backing implicit and explicit warranties. They seem to get it.
When I showed the Genius my swelled battery, he didn't even want to know the purchase date, etc. He just headed back to the store room for a replacement.
Some companies pretty much *have to* do The Right Thing, as another post implies. Culture or Holier than thou advertising, I don't care.
There's no plausible reason I've heard or can think of to regulate VCs more closely.
(aside) This is the problem with on-topic comments: they attempt to deal with the article as given, instead of spewing how insidious it is that Berkeley students have tuition paid by Mom & Dad. (/aside)
The original quote, "...neither Geithner nor Ruffini understand deeply what venture capital is all about," appears to be based only on the argument by "Republican consultant" Ruffini. You expected a "Republican consultant" to say his party sucks for the Valley? Even on Ruffini's website, commenters call bullshit on the premise that (a) Obama / Geithner are trying to regulate VCs in a way that'd kill it, and (b) the premise that Republicans actually provide a better business climate for new ventures.
This is an ideal way to have a debate: set up a total straw man claim, that can't actually be falsified. ("Geithner wants to...". Note: not "will," "would" or "can.") Put it before a politically naïve (vociferous, but mostly, naïve) group with few people who care to address the claims, and snag a few of the less affiliated to support your argument, never having seen a single fact. Pump up your supporters; call the opponents girly or sissy.
I'm surprised I didn't see much in the above about the premise of how good the GOP actually is for venture business. Sarbanes Oxley was signed into law by a GOP president, after being passed through a GOP-controlled Congress. So if that's the problem with freedom of business, the Dems don't deserve a whole lot of blame. Second, VC totally dried up at the end of 2008 not because Mr. Obama had been elected to office, but rather as part of a disastrous collapse of our financial and business systems, overseen by a President & Fed who thought lack of regulation worked always and everywhere.
Total scaremongering. Can't say it doesn't seem to have worked, though.
Indeed, privitization of what used to be thought of as "public infrastructure" is aggressively promoted throughout the world.
So here's a thought experiment. Take police & fire services. National defense. Drinkable water. Cleaning the streets & parks. Building, maintaining & expanding hiways & streets.
Now apply how delighted you are with similarly privatized, monopoly providers: cell phone service providers. Cable TV. Landlines. Over-the-air news & entertainment from your local stations.
How's that feel? Want more of it? Good; it's coming.
Let's be clear here: the purpose of my post was to ask for realism about government's role, rather than the senseless "private enterprise is the only efficient way to accomplish anything" implied by trashing ALL government. And police & national defense are hardly the only areas where cost mechanisms or benefit expropriation require a social, rather than individual response, just a relatively easy target, I thought. Guess that escaped some.
For another area, consider how raising hogs fouls the water and air of individuals who in no way profit from them. (Take a drive thru Iowa & you'll begin to get the idea.) Should not a society impose a tax that compensates the many for the opportunities taken by a few, or regulate how much stench and filth you can dump into others' air & water supply? If there were a private solution to this exploitation of neighbors, there wouldn't be a problem. Ergo, a government solution for a Pareto improvement: city regulations about how much filth you can dump onto your front yard or into the creek behind your house, state regulation of businesses (since most households don't regularly process much toxic material) and the EPA. Inefficient? Compared to what?
"...first, the terms "effective" and "government" are pretty much mutually exclusive terms."
Gosh, so many elements of stupidity here, but let's just go with a single thought experiment: what more effective response to Hitler would the poster have proposed?
Or would he prefer to live in a nation that enjoyed a capitalist accommodation to Hitler, as Henry Ford favored? (Check it out: the pre-Nazi German government protested Ford's financing of Hitler.) Yeah, let's talk about Ford's expertise in assembly-line efficiency combined with a mutual anti-Semitism. That'd be a great US to live in! And think of the efficiency in removing all the degenerate Jews, Gypsies, mental defectives, artists, and other such trash!
On all the color displays I know, Red, Green & Blue are displaced from each other. If you want to do blue-on-black, for example, you potentially light up only one-third of the pixels -- you ignore every red & green. White on cyan? only the red pixel is on/off; it's also hideously difficult to read.
That means your font renderer doesn't have the flexibility to draw each character where it really wants to be, and the letterforms are clunkier than they ought to be. ClearType and whatever the Adobe trade name is allow the renderer to turn on the individual colors to more sharply form the edges they want. The color errors may or may not be noticeable and/or important, depending on how skinny a particular stroke is, etc. And the renderer can be fairly clever.
If it has the chance. Black on white gives it the most freedom. I believe on all devices, black on white will also support the greatest precision of characters. Given how people complain about fuzzy text in some rendering schemes, I'd allow for the maximum flexibility. This may not matter if you have a bright-enough, 1280X800 screen, on which you're displaying 80X25 style monospaced text -- effectively, something like 24 point or more. Yes, green on black would be fine if it captured the spirit of what you were doing.
I really cringed as I read many of the other partial answers and unsupported claims, but between the high contrast -- allowing your eye/mind to most quickly discern the shape -- and the higher spatial accuracy -- allowing your PC to do its best job in displaying what you want -- it's tough to beat b/w for long-term use. If that's drab, consider some off-white background that sets the mood you feel your app is compatible with.
Get your precious guns out of their shiny cases/sock drawers...
Oh, I get it! The administration's co-opting of the NRA had a longer time horizon than simply winning an election or two.
Or maybe NRA members don't know, or give a rat's ass about, any other amendment besides the 2nd.
But beware: inciting others to violence is a crime, possibly even reminding others of one interpretation of the 2nd amendment could be considered a threat to the Constitution. Catch 22? Nah, that was just some novel. Look for the Supreme Court to issue a finely nuanced interpretation that while the "individual" interpretation of the amendment prevents DC from regulating guns, it does not allow you to actually act on the right. Purely hypothetical.
But after scanning ALL the posts, I didn't see a single one, which said, "oh, if this is a PITA, I'll just explain to my neighbor that (s)he is being obnoxious; please don't invade my space." Nor one, which said, "I'll just ask the attendant to manage the situation, optionally threatening to write the airline explaining that they are forfeiting my patronage, naming the specific crew who caused the difficulty.
Why do ordinary solutions seem extraordinary on Slashdot?
Considering... the aggressive way their software "takes over" your computer...
Good Lord! Apple has hacked Windows' security so it lets Apple software mod the Registry to determine which app starts when you double-click a URL?
They're more malicious than I could ever have imagined!!! Soon, all these machines will be filled with all the spyware, viruses, trojans and etc that Apple is notorious for hosting!
I wouldn't install a piece of Apple software on my computer if you put a gun to my head...
Glad to see at least oneSlashdotter has his priorities straight. Helps have useful discussions about how we can guide MS, Apple, Real, Adobe et al to help create a more useful, friendly computing community.
I can make firefox for the iPhone but legally I can't install it.
It's hardly a fine point that statements like this are so exactly false that they must be intentionally so.
You are welcome to make firefox for the iPhone as long as you use technologies that help Apple protect its standards for quality, user experience, security etc. Yes, it might take more work than a quick copy'n'paste, and yes, you might lose third-party software that you want. But again, you can make firefox as long as you show you have followed the technological guidelines.
And my reply to the grandparent question: why is the response here so negative? Because slashdotters naturally gravitate to pushing the envelope -- a good thing almost all the time except when you & your intended are standing before the altar -- and have almost zero experience with following others' rules about security, ownership, etc. I take it as a form of narcissism that goes with the territory.
If we want to have a real discussion (not just blatant hyperbole that's discounted as a "slight stretch") we could start with facts about other platforms' features. I'd start with...
* breadth of market: how many handsets are out there with enough screen/bandwidth, using a mobile carrier who will allow the app to transfer significant amounts of data without prohibitive costs?
* cost of distribution in these spaces: what does it cost a small dev / large dev to host a store in-house or on a provider such as Digital River? Who does the promo and cataloguing? How many users actually BUY these apps, given how impossible they are to find, or buried on the carrier's website?
* how about a few testimonials about how profitable it's been to sell Tetris on LG phones over Sprint (or other examples that span the matrix) given all the setup, approvals, volume,... ?
* given a strong objective of keeping miscreant functions OFF the iPhone, and to minimize any damage if they DO get on, what alternatives to Apple's rules would be at least as effective and less intrusive?
* ditto, what other alternative store system, etc., could be fairly said to create a more open, transparent market (yeah, I work in the investment industry, where this is crucial to minimize overpaying for crap) for apps?
Again, Slashdotters are mostly interested in rifle-shot solutions -- solve an immediate problem with a minimum of interference from externals that can't be specified -- and Apple is setting up new external considerations. So I hardly expect the type of matrix or balancing that these questions imply. I do expect that from the major tech journals, and that's where we've been ill-served so far -- InfoWorld and its ilk have been prime disseminators of falsehoods and FUD.
... rather than just an unfinished toy which is all it's been up to now.
Actually, the phone works just fine w/o 3G. (They call it an "iPhone," geddit?) Ditto, the calendar, address book, iPod and some other functions. Synchronization is an utter delight for those of us with busy skeds and contact lists. That'd be enough for many people, especially those who use the device for focused business on the go.
Then, there's WiFi when you're at your home, office, friends' places or congenial coffee shop. Damn sight better'n 3G. All the data you want.
And even when you rely on EDGE, it works just great for SMS, maps, weather and other nibbles of the 'net. Even email, as long as you don't expect it'll be faster than Blackberry, the supposed one to beat.
So the quote suggests you've never actually USED one for non-toy use and been frustrated. iPhones function VERY well within the design parameters, better than many browsers, for example, on nominally faster nets.
But bugs are bad, and after reading TFA, it sounds like this function is likely responsible for lousy screen drawing issues that pop up when I scroll in Safari. Tho I haven't seen them lately... maybe the function finally works right in 10.5.2, or the latest Webkit builds that I've started fooling with are smarter, or I've stopped running Safari in parallel with whatever was interfering with it, or... well Slashdotters are supposed to know software issues like this.
In any case, a mountain out of a molehill, methinks. Idiotic to think that Apple believes it'll gain any advantage by crippling Firefox or anybody else who wants to scroll text/images. Much more likely that their approach to doing same is pushing the envelope in a way that has to be carefully controlled.
What's wrong with a firm specializing in buying patents from inventors, and then enforcing them?
There's a widespread belief that the USPO gives out patents too easily for "obvious" patents, hence gratuitous comments that "patent trolls" can make it impossible for enthusiastic entrepreneurs to do business in a growing area. But pish: the complaint is against bogus patents, not whether a private inventor brought the case or whether a hired gun took on the risk (and the healthy reward) of doing it for him.
These discussions seem ignorant of real inventors whose work was stolen, and for whom high-powered attorneys would've been a godsend.
One such is the inventor (Robt Kearns) who was unable to interest Ford Motor in his interval windshield wiper design, then found them using the technology a few years later. Seventeen years in the courts, more than most of us could hold up without substantial financial backing. Indeed, his victory was hollow; news accounts show him as having gotten divorced and otherwise overwhelmed by Ford's (and Chrysler's) theft of his work. Alzheimer's eventually forced him to stop his efforts to be paid for his ideas.
Another famous example is Edwin Armstrong vs. RCA over Armstrong's invention of FM; he committed suicide in despair of gaining his fair recognition and it took his wife several years to finally prevail in the courts. Armstrong's other cases went to the Supreme Court, where his case for the super-regen circuitry is generally perceived as having been misunderstood by the Court. (A fabulously talented engineer, he also invented the Superhetrodyne receiver that is the basis for ALL AM, FM and TV circuits. Still.)
These men clearly and importantly advanced the state of engineering in their days (and ours!) yet had a Hell of a time getting compensated for their prodigious efforts, and in some cases, huge engineering expenses. Those who would throw out all patents, or individuals' rights to assign their patents to others, should explain why we don't need to encourage people like Kearns and Armstrong.
Should we just have all the developments be done by big corporations, or contract our entire country to China & India?
but the city refused... they made more money from parking tickets.
I will never discount the motive of greed. But for all city resources in short supply, i.e., parking in shopping centers, cities have an obligation to ration in some sensible way. Parking meters encourage you to come shop, pay a couple of quarters (50c yesterday in front of the Apple store nearby me), get your couple of items and move on. So somebody else could go get a present at Gap Kids or Williams-Sonoma, etc.
Merchants could get a bit titchy if it seemed that Apple was limiting their opportunity to sell lattés just so Apple could look classy. Shoppers would have to spend more time circling the block, and eventually, go elsewhere.
Higher-cost meters (or big fines for overstaying) are certainly not the only way to ration parking spaces, but it's a bad deal that I spend 5 minutes looking for a spot every time I try to go to my favorite coffee spot on a weekend -- costs me much more than a $1/entrance fee at the lot would. Even if Apple paid 3X the going rate, there would still be fewer spots available, unless the city took the $$$ to expand a garage nearby or whatever.
Perhaps my writing was unclear. But "dynamic" compression -- where electronics rapidly raise or lower the volume -- is intended to serve the same purpose as careful setting of the volume before an entire piece of work: to get as much of the original loudness as possible onto the medium, without excessive distortion. The former is pretty easy to determine; the latter is the subjective judgement.
Years ago, one could hear the "pumping" effect as volume was raised and lowered. Now, not so much at all. What sounds bad to some of us is - the sonic fatigue of listening to music that's all loud, all the time. - intended distortion of music from the sort of soft clipping (harmonic distortion) that tube amps create when pushed past design limits.
Both of these are facilitated by dynamic compression, but are not caused by it.
...Vinyl is not immune against someone compressing... Expect such stupidity to happen shortly
Compression is a by-definition requirement of ALL media, from the microphones (too high a sound pressure level will cause distortion and eventually damage), to the master tape (which has a very broad, but not limitless range of loudness representations available to it) and ESPECIALLY for vinyl -- which doesn't have much range between "so loud the needle will jump, or the sound will bleed thru to the adjacent tracks, 1/33 of a minute earlier or later" and "down in the crud of pops, ticks and just noise."
As you might expect, compression technology was created to address vinyl's limitations, and was used heavily then. It became even more valuable for radio, since AM has much tighter constraints (although lower expectations) and FM has slightly tighter constraints.
CDs have a very wide dynamic range, so higher compression of late is an "aesthetic" choice by the producers. And those same producers might correctly think that some people who want a different sound will pay more for vinyl as opposed to people who listen over iPods, radios or CDs, who might be less discriminating, and so compress all but vinyl more heavily. But that doesn't make vinyl superior, because it's worse. The MP3 and AAC formats, as well as virtually all portable players, have much more potential for quality music.
The weak link in the chain is still typically the speakers/phones. Exacerbated by standing waves in the empty space between the ears, in the case of people applying the anti-solution to misunderstandings of the problem.
DS may indeed have made many "choice comments" but I fail to see them as flamebait. Real discussions allow provocative ideas to which the group may not have logical rebuttals, and that presents a learning opportunity for all.
An acquaintance, "Laura," is an accomplished musician. She sells CDs on a website to help put food on the table. People who've heard (or heard of) her can enjoy hearing her (again) for a few dollars, if they like. There might be enough left after she pays her hosting, design and many other expenses, to make up for the little income she gets from concerts. With largely fixed costs for production, etc., every lost sale comes right out of her pocket.
She and her chef husband both do what they do out of love of their arts. They're not exactly worried about whether to take the BMW or the Mercedes down to the beach.
No RIAA middleman (those bastards!) here to promote and distribute her disks and take a fee for it, nor for anybody to demonize. Just the notion that the music is there for those who want it enough to send a few bucks her way. You do not "have to" have her performances, no matter how enriching you may find them. If you don't like the deal she offers, maybe you'd like to write her & ask for a discount. But she might think, "you know, I put half my childhood and my whole adult lifetime into practicing, practicing, practicing, after expensive training." (She's a classical pianist.) "Why does some guy think he should get the fruit of my labor without even watering the tree?" Or worse, give it away to passers-by so they won't help me, either?
Add the notion that she might hire somebody else to do all the messy logistics stuff for her so she can spend more time at the keyboard, and you have a basic version of every other musician's story. Demonize the RIAA all you want, but in the end, the musician can choose to self-publish or contract with a label, and it doesn't change your "right" to have her perform for you, one teeny iota.
To me, it seems pretty black-and-white, Little Red Hen, Non-Fairy Tale Edition, for people who don't get metaphors. If her listeners bought very much into file sharing, she'd basically have to find a new line of work, one that would deprive her of doing what she loves and all her fans, including me, of hearing her performances.
Yes, DS, it's all about basic human rights, just those of somebody more important to the process than the file-sharers. Some people don't like to hear that. Sigh.
When american expats go to teach english in china, don't you think they bring their western ideologies with them?
It's an open secret that most Americans going to "teach English" in China are doing so as a cover for proselytizing their religious beliefs (missionary work). China officially prohibits missionaries but tolerates them under that cover.
... disturbing level of support for Islamist values... Let's be clear that England does not have the same wired-into-the-constitution protection of religious beliefs that vary from the majority's, that the US claims. Partly thanks to our Bill of Rights, we get reminders about the value of tolerance. It wasn't put into the Constitution just cuz it sounded like a neat idea; it is there to stop religious wars that wracked the continent in the years leading up to the founding of the US.
Multi-cultural societies -- and that's at least all of Western Europe & the US -- need to have ongoing dialogues about how religious values work into the social fabric. De facto aversion to another person's beliefs is a good way of deprecating their respect for your own beliefs, even if you think you're more "liberal" or "inclusive." Let the wars begin!
Sending the Federal Bureau of Investigation after people who like MidEastern food is a great way to send exactly that message of disrespect for their bedrock beliefs, not the violent political actions that a few advocate. This nonsense needs to be condemned as harmful to our interest in having all in the US having a sense of common interest.
Slashdot Mirror
Or, as in "writing bad checks." "Sticking up a QuickieMart." "Running past the ticket taker at a movie."
Wouldn't want to confuse that with "Free" software, would we?
Arguably, nobody would be better off than Apple from a massive shift to ARM architectures (except, of course, ARM itself).
ALMOST ALL apps for both Mac OSX and iPhone and iPod/Touch are written in the exact identical developer environment, and share a huge fraction (not 100%) of frameworks. I.e., the internal tools to support multiple code bases are in great shape for such a change. Go ahead, ask a developer who writes for both Mac OSX and iPhone: the ones I've seen quoted say that writing for iPhone actually helps them re-code better for Mac OSX, not that they had to relearn everything as FUD would suggest.
The crossover functionality is so great that I, for example, expect that a LOT of Snow Leopard functionality shows up in iPhones within less than 12 months, as the CPUs go multi-core, graphics switch between CPU and GPU, and Apple goes berserk about surmounting Pre's edge in multi-tasking. Why not? Or rather, why is this not inevitable? Apple doesn't talk a lot about its roadmaps, but these are connect-the-dot obvious, no?
This is not like trying to get Java to work acceptably on 16 different architectures. There are some major apps not written using Apple's current frameworks, but the whole beauty of netbooks is that you aren't expecting (yet, anyhow) to run massive CS4, Office or other huge apps barely able to carry around their own weight. So MacOSX/Arm has thousands of everyday iPhone and Mac OSX apps ready to burnish for ARM books, with a streamlined app store for mass consumer distribution.
Finally, Microsoft makes its money off (a) Corporate Desktop Windows and (b) Corporate Desktop Office, plus those of us unlucky enough to need to take work home. Neither of these share any resemblance to the burgeoning netbook ethos, which is small, flexible, almost throwaway. The last thing MS wants to do is undercut its only source of profitability by declaring their current game over, and starting another where they have no monopoly power. (Nota bene: Zune, XBox, Bing, ... they're all money-losers.)
If I were Apple, I'd be drooling if I thought the original premise were much more than a wet dream.
"Please listen carefully as our options have changed blah blah blah..."
Our in-house tech support is plagued by this... the latest issue du jour of some tiny division gets the front of the menu, with apparently no regard for ideas such as blasting an email to the affected 2% with a link to a special FAQ or custom number. So it takes about a minute to get to the menu item for the most frequent issue everybody in my division has, "problem with desktop software or hardware" (and then you get into the hold queue; oh goody).
Curiously, however, we do NOT outsource this support, so the dollars for each individual's lost productivity and the penny for 800-number traffic is borne by the very corporation that mindlessly causes it. Likely, nobody in IT support has ever heard of Claude Shannon, or thought to apply probabilistic analysis (a là Huffman encoding) to the menus to minimize the cost of support.
(Also possible in the centralized control mentality of our Big Brother organization, the wasted time is to remind us how we are lowly toads. But these fears must not be given voice.)
In any case, it weakens Pogue's case: this imbecility is clearly economically disadvantageous AND aggravating, and yet it's rife within Corporate America.
For a laptop that cost them $1500, you think they'd just stroll into the back and bring you a new one? Right you are. Shortly after the battery replacement, and down to about 30 days before my 17" MBP went out of 3-year AppleCare, the Genius examined every little ding and warned me that abuse wasn't covered in the warranty. Still, not so bad. I had it back with a new screen 3 business days later. I didn't have to huff and puff or anything, just observed that the screen was occasionally flaking out when I flexed the top half of the laptop and that it was getting worse. I don't need them to be pushovers, just to be reasonable about backing implicit and explicit warranties. They seem to get it.
When I showed the Genius my swelled battery, he didn't even want to know the purchase date, etc. He just headed back to the store room for a replacement. Some companies pretty much *have to* do The Right Thing, as another post implies. Culture or Holier than thou advertising, I don't care.
(aside) This is the problem with on-topic comments: they attempt to deal with the article as given, instead of spewing how insidious it is that Berkeley students have tuition paid by Mom & Dad. (/aside)
The original quote, "...neither Geithner nor Ruffini understand deeply what venture capital is all about," appears to be based only on the argument by "Republican consultant" Ruffini. You expected a "Republican consultant" to say his party sucks for the Valley? Even on Ruffini's website, commenters call bullshit on the premise that (a) Obama / Geithner are trying to regulate VCs in a way that'd kill it, and (b) the premise that Republicans actually provide a better business climate for new ventures.
This is an ideal way to have a debate: set up a total straw man claim, that can't actually be falsified. ("Geithner wants to...". Note: not "will," "would" or "can.") Put it before a politically naïve (vociferous, but mostly, naïve) group with few people who care to address the claims, and snag a few of the less affiliated to support your argument, never having seen a single fact. Pump up your supporters; call the opponents girly or sissy.
I'm surprised I didn't see much in the above about the premise of how good the GOP actually is for venture business. Sarbanes Oxley was signed into law by a GOP president, after being passed through a GOP-controlled Congress. So if that's the problem with freedom of business, the Dems don't deserve a whole lot of blame. Second, VC totally dried up at the end of 2008 not because Mr. Obama had been elected to office, but rather as part of a disastrous collapse of our financial and business systems, overseen by a President & Fed who thought lack of regulation worked always and everywhere.
Total scaremongering. Can't say it doesn't seem to have worked, though.
Indeed, privitization of what used to be thought of as "public infrastructure" is aggressively promoted throughout the world.
So here's a thought experiment. Take police & fire services. National defense. Drinkable water. Cleaning the streets & parks. Building, maintaining & expanding hiways & streets.
Now apply how delighted you are with similarly privatized, monopoly providers: cell phone service providers. Cable TV. Landlines. Over-the-air news & entertainment from your local stations.
How's that feel? Want more of it? Good; it's coming.
Let's be clear here: the purpose of my post was to ask for realism about government's role, rather than the senseless "private enterprise is the only efficient way to accomplish anything" implied by trashing ALL government. And police & national defense are hardly the only areas where cost mechanisms or benefit expropriation require a social, rather than individual response, just a relatively easy target, I thought. Guess that escaped some.
For another area, consider how raising hogs fouls the water and air of individuals who in no way profit from them. (Take a drive thru Iowa & you'll begin to get the idea.) Should not a society impose a tax that compensates the many for the opportunities taken by a few, or regulate how much stench and filth you can dump into others' air & water supply? If there were a private solution to this exploitation of neighbors, there wouldn't be a problem. Ergo, a government solution for a Pareto improvement: city regulations about how much filth you can dump onto your front yard or into the creek behind your house, state regulation of businesses (since most households don't regularly process much toxic material) and the EPA. Inefficient? Compared to what?
Gosh, so many elements of stupidity here, but let's just go with a single thought experiment: what more effective response to Hitler would the poster have proposed?
Or would he prefer to live in a nation that enjoyed a capitalist accommodation to Hitler, as Henry Ford favored? (Check it out: the pre-Nazi German government protested Ford's financing of Hitler.) Yeah, let's talk about Ford's expertise in assembly-line efficiency combined with a mutual anti-Semitism. That'd be a great US to live in! And think of the efficiency in removing all the degenerate Jews, Gypsies, mental defectives, artists, and other such trash!
On all the color displays I know, Red, Green & Blue are displaced from each other. If you want to do blue-on-black, for example, you potentially light up only one-third of the pixels -- you ignore every red & green. White on cyan? only the red pixel is on/off; it's also hideously difficult to read.
That means your font renderer doesn't have the flexibility to draw each character where it really wants to be, and the letterforms are clunkier than they ought to be. ClearType and whatever the Adobe trade name is allow the renderer to turn on the individual colors to more sharply form the edges they want. The color errors may or may not be noticeable and/or important, depending on how skinny a particular stroke is, etc. And the renderer can be fairly clever.
If it has the chance. Black on white gives it the most freedom. I believe on all devices, black on white will also support the greatest precision of characters. Given how people complain about fuzzy text in some rendering schemes, I'd allow for the maximum flexibility. This may not matter if you have a bright-enough, 1280X800 screen, on which you're displaying 80X25 style monospaced text -- effectively, something like 24 point or more. Yes, green on black would be fine if it captured the spirit of what you were doing.
I really cringed as I read many of the other partial answers and unsupported claims, but between the high contrast -- allowing your eye/mind to most quickly discern the shape -- and the higher spatial accuracy -- allowing your PC to do its best job in displaying what you want -- it's tough to beat b/w for long-term use. If that's drab, consider some off-white background that sets the mood you feel your app is compatible with.
Get your precious guns out of their shiny cases/sock drawers...
Oh, I get it! The administration's co-opting of the NRA had a longer time horizon than simply winning an election or two.
Or maybe NRA members don't know, or give a rat's ass about, any other amendment besides the 2nd.
But beware: inciting others to violence is a crime, possibly even reminding others of one interpretation of the 2nd amendment could be considered a threat to the Constitution. Catch 22? Nah, that was just some novel. Look for the Supreme Court to issue a finely nuanced interpretation that while the "individual" interpretation of the amendment prevents DC from regulating guns, it does not allow you to actually act on the right. Purely hypothetical.
Maybe I didn't set my threshold low enough?
But after scanning ALL the posts, I didn't see a single one, which said, "oh, if this is a PITA, I'll just explain to my neighbor that (s)he is being obnoxious; please don't invade my space." Nor one, which said, "I'll just ask the attendant to manage the situation, optionally threatening to write the airline explaining that they are forfeiting my patronage, naming the specific crew who caused the difficulty.
Why do ordinary solutions seem extraordinary on Slashdot?
Considering ... the aggressive way their software "takes over" your computer...
Good Lord! Apple has hacked Windows' security so it lets Apple software mod the Registry to determine which app starts when you double-click a URL?
They're more malicious than I could ever have imagined!!! Soon, all these machines will be filled with all the spyware, viruses, trojans and etc that Apple is notorious for hosting!
I wouldn't install a piece of Apple software on my computer if you put a gun to my head...
Glad to see at least oneSlashdotter has his priorities straight. Helps have useful discussions about how we can guide MS, Apple, Real, Adobe et al to help create a more useful, friendly computing community.
I can make firefox for the iPhone but legally I can't install it.
... ?
It's hardly a fine point that statements like this are so exactly false that they must be intentionally so.
You are welcome to make firefox for the iPhone as long as you use technologies that help Apple protect its standards for quality, user experience, security etc. Yes, it might take more work than a quick copy'n'paste, and yes, you might lose third-party software that you want. But again, you can make firefox as long as you show you have followed the technological guidelines.
And my reply to the grandparent question: why is the response here so negative? Because slashdotters naturally gravitate to pushing the envelope -- a good thing almost all the time except when you & your intended are standing before the altar -- and have almost zero experience with following others' rules about security, ownership, etc. I take it as a form of narcissism that goes with the territory.
If we want to have a real discussion (not just blatant hyperbole that's discounted as a "slight stretch") we could start with facts about other platforms' features. I'd start with...
* breadth of market: how many handsets are out there with enough screen/bandwidth, using a mobile carrier who will allow the app to transfer significant amounts of data without prohibitive costs?
* cost of distribution in these spaces: what does it cost a small dev / large dev to host a store in-house or on a provider such as Digital River? Who does the promo and cataloguing? How many users actually BUY these apps, given how impossible they are to find, or buried on the carrier's website?
* how about a few testimonials about how profitable it's been to sell Tetris on LG phones over Sprint (or other examples that span the matrix) given all the setup, approvals, volume,
* given a strong objective of keeping miscreant functions OFF the iPhone, and to minimize any damage if they DO get on, what alternatives to Apple's rules would be at least as effective and less intrusive?
* ditto, what other alternative store system, etc., could be fairly said to create a more open, transparent market (yeah, I work in the investment industry, where this is crucial to minimize overpaying for crap) for apps?
Again, Slashdotters are mostly interested in rifle-shot solutions -- solve an immediate problem with a minimum of interference from externals that can't be specified -- and Apple is setting up new external considerations. So I hardly expect the type of matrix or balancing that these questions imply. I do expect that from the major tech journals, and that's where we've been ill-served so far -- InfoWorld and its ilk have been prime disseminators of falsehoods and FUD.
Actually, the phone works just fine w/o 3G. (They call it an "iPhone," geddit?) Ditto, the calendar, address book, iPod and some other functions. Synchronization is an utter delight for those of us with busy skeds and contact lists. That'd be enough for many people, especially those who use the device for focused business on the go.
Then, there's WiFi when you're at your home, office, friends' places or congenial coffee shop. Damn sight better'n 3G. All the data you want.
And even when you rely on EDGE, it works just great for SMS, maps, weather and other nibbles of the 'net. Even email, as long as you don't expect it'll be faster than Blackberry, the supposed one to beat.
So the quote suggests you've never actually USED one for non-toy use and been frustrated. iPhones function VERY well within the design parameters, better than many browsers, for example, on nominally faster nets.
Yes, performance is good.
But bugs are bad, and after reading TFA, it sounds like this function is likely responsible for lousy screen drawing issues that pop up when I scroll in Safari. Tho I haven't seen them lately... maybe the function finally works right in 10.5.2, or the latest Webkit builds that I've started fooling with are smarter, or I've stopped running Safari in parallel with whatever was interfering with it, or... well Slashdotters are supposed to know software issues like this.
In any case, a mountain out of a molehill, methinks. Idiotic to think that Apple believes it'll gain any advantage by crippling Firefox or anybody else who wants to scroll text/images. Much more likely that their approach to doing same is pushing the envelope in a way that has to be carefully controlled.
What's wrong with a firm specializing in buying patents from inventors, and then enforcing them?
There's a widespread belief that the USPO gives out patents too easily for "obvious" patents, hence gratuitous comments that "patent trolls" can make it impossible for enthusiastic entrepreneurs to do business in a growing area. But pish: the complaint is against bogus patents, not whether a private inventor brought the case or whether a hired gun took on the risk (and the healthy reward) of doing it for him.
These discussions seem ignorant of real inventors whose work was stolen, and for whom high-powered attorneys would've been a godsend.
One such is the inventor (Robt Kearns) who was unable to interest Ford Motor in his interval windshield wiper design, then found them using the technology a few years later. Seventeen years in the courts, more than most of us could hold up without substantial financial backing. Indeed, his victory was hollow; news accounts show him as having gotten divorced and otherwise overwhelmed by Ford's (and Chrysler's) theft of his work. Alzheimer's eventually forced him to stop his efforts to be paid for his ideas.
Another famous example is Edwin Armstrong vs. RCA over Armstrong's invention of FM; he committed suicide in despair of gaining his fair recognition and it took his wife several years to finally prevail in the courts. Armstrong's other cases went to the Supreme Court, where his case for the super-regen circuitry is generally perceived as having been misunderstood by the Court. (A fabulously talented engineer, he also invented the Superhetrodyne receiver that is the basis for ALL AM, FM and TV circuits. Still.)
These men clearly and importantly advanced the state of engineering in their days (and ours!) yet had a Hell of a time getting compensated for their prodigious efforts, and in some cases, huge engineering expenses. Those who would throw out all patents, or individuals' rights to assign their patents to others, should explain why we don't need to encourage people like Kearns and Armstrong.
Should we just have all the developments be done by big corporations, or contract our entire country to China & India?
Another would be
but the city refused ... they made more money from parking tickets.
I will never discount the motive of greed. But for all city resources in short supply, i.e., parking in shopping centers, cities have an obligation to ration in some sensible way. Parking meters encourage you to come shop, pay a couple of quarters (50c yesterday in front of the Apple store nearby me), get your couple of items and move on. So somebody else could go get a present at Gap Kids or Williams-Sonoma, etc.
Merchants could get a bit titchy if it seemed that Apple was limiting their opportunity to sell lattés just so Apple could look classy. Shoppers would have to spend more time circling the block, and eventually, go elsewhere.
Higher-cost meters (or big fines for overstaying) are certainly not the only way to ration parking spaces, but it's a bad deal that I spend 5 minutes looking for a spot every time I try to go to my favorite coffee spot on a weekend -- costs me much more than a $1/entrance fee at the lot would. Even if Apple paid 3X the going rate, there would still be fewer spots available, unless the city took the $$$ to expand a garage nearby or whatever.
Perhaps my writing was unclear. But "dynamic" compression -- where electronics rapidly raise or lower the volume -- is intended to serve the same purpose as careful setting of the volume before an entire piece of work: to get as much of the original loudness as possible onto the medium, without excessive distortion. The former is pretty easy to determine; the latter is the subjective judgement.
Years ago, one could hear the "pumping" effect as volume was raised and lowered. Now, not so much at all. What sounds bad to some of us is
- the sonic fatigue of listening to music that's all loud, all the time.
- intended distortion of music from the sort of soft clipping (harmonic distortion) that tube amps create when pushed past design limits.
Both of these are facilitated by dynamic compression, but are not caused by it.
...Vinyl is not immune against someone compressing ... Expect such stupidity to happen shortly
Compression is a by-definition requirement of ALL media, from the microphones (too high a sound pressure level will cause distortion and eventually damage), to the master tape (which has a very broad, but not limitless range of loudness representations available to it) and ESPECIALLY for vinyl -- which doesn't have much range between "so loud the needle will jump, or the sound will bleed thru to the adjacent tracks, 1/33 of a minute earlier or later" and "down in the crud of pops, ticks and just noise."
As you might expect, compression technology was created to address vinyl's limitations, and was used heavily then. It became even more valuable for radio, since AM has much tighter constraints (although lower expectations) and FM has slightly tighter constraints.
CDs have a very wide dynamic range, so higher compression of late is an "aesthetic" choice by the producers. And those same producers might correctly think that some people who want a different sound will pay more for vinyl as opposed to people who listen over iPods, radios or CDs, who might be less discriminating, and so compress all but vinyl more heavily. But that doesn't make vinyl superior, because it's worse. The MP3 and AAC formats, as well as virtually all portable players, have much more potential for quality music.
The weak link in the chain is still typically the speakers/phones. Exacerbated by standing waves in the empty space between the ears, in the case of people applying the anti-solution to misunderstandings of the problem.
DS may indeed have made many "choice comments" but I fail to see them as flamebait. Real discussions allow provocative ideas to which the group may not have logical rebuttals, and that presents a learning opportunity for all.
An acquaintance, "Laura," is an accomplished musician. She sells CDs on a website to help put food on the table. People who've heard (or heard of) her can enjoy hearing her (again) for a few dollars, if they like. There might be enough left after she pays her hosting, design and many other expenses, to make up for the little income she gets from concerts. With largely fixed costs for production, etc., every lost sale comes right out of her pocket.
She and her chef husband both do what they do out of love of their arts. They're not exactly worried about whether to take the BMW or the Mercedes down to the beach.
No RIAA middleman (those bastards!) here to promote and distribute her disks and take a fee for it, nor for anybody to demonize. Just the notion that the music is there for those who want it enough to send a few bucks her way. You do not "have to" have her performances, no matter how enriching you may find them. If you don't like the deal she offers, maybe you'd like to write her & ask for a discount. But she might think, "you know, I put half my childhood and my whole adult lifetime into practicing, practicing, practicing, after expensive training." (She's a classical pianist.) "Why does some guy think he should get the fruit of my labor without even watering the tree?" Or worse, give it away to passers-by so they won't help me, either?
Add the notion that she might hire somebody else to do all the messy logistics stuff for her so she can spend more time at the keyboard, and you have a basic version of every other musician's story . Demonize the RIAA all you want, but in the end, the musician can choose to self-publish or contract with a label, and it doesn't change your "right" to have her perform for you, one teeny iota.
To me, it seems pretty black-and-white, Little Red Hen, Non-Fairy Tale Edition, for people who don't get metaphors. If her listeners bought very much into file sharing, she'd basically have to find a new line of work, one that would deprive her of doing what she loves and all her fans, including me, of hearing her performances.
Yes, DS, it's all about basic human rights, just those of somebody more important to the process than the file-sharers. Some people don't like to hear that. Sigh.
Right. Because a technical paper has typos etc., its content should be ignored (or at least, deprecated).
Ergo, Slashdot is useless.
When american expats go to teach english in china, don't you think they bring their western ideologies with them?
It's an open secret that most Americans going to "teach English" in China are doing so as a cover for proselytizing their religious beliefs (missionary work). China officially prohibits missionaries but tolerates them under that cover.
... disturbing level of support for Islamist values ...
Let's be clear that England does not have the same wired-into-the-constitution protection of religious beliefs that vary from the majority's, that the US claims. Partly thanks to our Bill of Rights, we get reminders about the value of tolerance. It wasn't put into the Constitution just cuz it sounded like a neat idea; it is there to stop religious wars that wracked the continent in the years leading up to the founding of the US.
Multi-cultural societies -- and that's at least all of Western Europe & the US -- need to have ongoing dialogues about how religious values work into the social fabric. De facto aversion to another person's beliefs is a good way of deprecating their respect for your own beliefs, even if you think you're more "liberal" or "inclusive." Let the wars begin!
Sending the Federal Bureau of Investigation after people who like MidEastern food is a great way to send exactly that message of disrespect for their bedrock beliefs, not the violent political actions that a few advocate. This nonsense needs to be condemned as harmful to our interest in having all in the US having a sense of common interest.