What you have missed is that failures in the PC industry are generally caused by issues such as a power supply problem, or hard drive failure(magnetic storage does have a shelf life). PC processors also are designed to do as much work as possible and are much more complex as a result compared to the chips in cars. This is why you need cooling fans for the CPU. If you cut the speed down to the point where you don't need fans to help pull the heat off the chip, you will be in better shape.
Now, look at the progress of cell phone processors. Passive cooling in a tiny space and you see 1GHz and beyond have become the norm in the high end phone market. While these chips may not operate at 127 degrees Celsius at these speeds, most chips will run at 90 degrees C, and that isn't even TRYING to make a chip that operates in high temperature environments. Most people are more concerned with chip speed for the entertainment system in a car anyway, and THAT could be a different chip that isn't located anywhere near the engine, so temperatures wouldn't go above the 80 degree Celsius mark even in a worse case(except for if there is a fire of course). If the temperature in a car hits even 60 degrees Celsius it is really really hot(140 Fahrenheit). Video cards will often run under load where the temperature of the GPU is at 80 degrees Celsius or beyond and they can operate that way for a long time. The problem is that keeping it at 80 degrees C requires a fan, but if it can operate at 80 degrees C without a problem, I don't see a problem with putting a chip in the dashboard away from the engine would be a problem. Just put an OMAP processor under the dashboard with an inch of air around it to run the electronics, and you are good to go.
When the Internet first started, you had a backbone that was paid for by government dollars(tax money), and back in those days, it was easy to be able to advocate for that backbone to be covered by net neutrality rules. As the Internet became more commercial, it became more and more difficult for the government to be able to set rules for the overall Internet. What we have today is the result, where the old government sponsored backbone is only used by a tiny fraction of the overall user base, and setting net neutrality rules would not make much sense at this point since telling a private company what they can or can not do on their own network is against the very nature of private enterprise.
If the government were to really push for a massive backbone for the PUBLIC Internet, and put lots of money behind it, then rules could be applied to THAT backbone, leaving QoS issues to each private ISP that connects to it, but without much overall ability to impact service levels. The government could also set up NAPs at various places around the Internet where any ISP could connect to it free of charge(paying only for the line connecting them to the NAP) as a way to bypass any discrimination by private ISPs. The old MAE-east and MAE-west used to be some of the primary places for ISPs to connect to each other, but the Internet has grown and evolved, and with the old NAPs being privately owned and operated, you couldn't count on Net Neutrality rules working today.
Again, setting Net Neutrality for any privately owned and operated part of the Internet should be seen as the government pushing to control a private business without having been a primary financial source to fund that business. As a result, if the government has not paid to take a majority stake in a business, then the government should not have the right to demand ANYTHING, except for help in upholding the law in select cases, such as stopping kiddie porn, and even then, it is difficult to justify that an ISP MUST monitor traffic to identify illegal activity. Again, government forcing the private sector to spend money/resources for some new dictate just goes against the idea of government not watching everything private citizens are doing.
One thing that people do not think about is how bad policies should not be supported. In the long run, this means that people will die due to shortages, and perhaps the rest of the world should let this happen.
Look at China, and I mean seriously look at China. The levels of pollution are getting so high, I predict there will be mass deaths due to how bad the air quality is, if that has not already started happening. If the rest of the world does not help, the population in China will go down over time, reducing the demand for resources. I am not saying it is a good thing, but the Chinese government is pushing for production at all costs, and at some point, all that pollution will end up killing their population off.
There have been starving children in Ethiopia for decades....and if people would stop helping over there, the population would drop, there would be fewer children, and things there would balance out, rather than having people reproducing when they can't even feed themselves.
If there are food shortages to the point of starvation, do you really think that the rest of the world will jump in to help if they are also having problems with food production? Most countries already are taking the attitude that they can not help in the event of a natural disaster, and the USA is the only country that has been taking on additional debt just to help other countries when they have a problem. When the USA stops bailing out the rest of the world, then we will see things balance out a bit when it comes to supply and demand. This may sound cold, but honestly, if people are predicting that there will not be enough food to feed everyone in only 20 years, then we SHOULD let those who have no hope of feeding themselves just die out NOW, since an increasing population of people who can't help themselves is the problem.
Oil and such is an issue that the USA is dealing with by looking for other ways to generate power, and if oil were to suddenly become unavailable, do you honestly think that any other country would help US? Helping friends is one thing, but just trying to "save the world", is hurting the world more than helping. Getting people past a natural disaster is only useful if the people getting help NOW will be able to take care of themselves. But, we should not save people from themselves, because that just isn't a viable long-term solution. If the Chinese government wants to kill off the population of China with pollution, let them! If after 40 years Ethiopia can't provide enough food to feed the population, then isn't it time to let the population there SHRINK to the point where they can feed themselves?
The problem you have sounds like a memory leak. What you have not told us is what version of Firefox you are using, since memory leaks ARE found and fixed, but there are still more.
Ford released the 2011 Fiesta, which gets 40 miles per gallon on the highway and isn't a hybrid. The 2012 Focus(compact, not subcompact) will get 155 horsepower, has a lot of features, get the 40ish miles per gallon on the highway non-hybrid as well, and sells for $17000 to $25000(with almost all options, $24000 for the 5-door Titanium version with premium package. With these sorts of prices, what does the Volt(a hybrid, not an all-electric car) provide?
Cost of ownership has to be considered as well, since you will be paying for electricity to charge the batteries, plus putting gas in the Volt as well. The environmental impact for the battery production is also left out. If the batteries are produced in China, then the pollution from battery production may be there instead of here, but pollution is still being produced. So it doesn't save the planet, it just hides it in a place that has zero environmental laws.
So, NIMBY may apply when it comes to these things, but the cost of electricity is already very high, and for the Volt, is it cheaper to get your electrical power from plugging it in, or from the gas generator in the car? I'd say that Ford has the right approach, get gas engines to 50 miles per gallon, because that will be cheaper for the owner than the electric needed to charge an all-electric. 40 miles per gallon is already a huge improvement over what most cars are getting, and at 155hp, provides a decent amount of power as well. Or you go with the 305hp Mustang that gets 31 miles per gallon on the highway. Either way, does GM have ANY cars at this point, gas or electric, which have a GOOD total cost of ownership?
You clearly don't understand the way programming works. There are some issues that show up as a part of a fundamental design flaw, and the only way those get fixed is if there is a massive overhaul of the code. And guess what, that happens with Firefox a lot more frequently than with many other applications.
The 32 bit issue really is an issue with the limitations of 32 bit. Going to 64 bit is more than just how they compile it, but it also adds the requirements for 64 bit plugins. Since people would whine if Flash 64 bit were not available the moment 64 bit Firefox was released, picture how many people would post a Firefox bug on the issue, and you would probably be one of those early people complaining that Firefox is at fault.
There are two ways to fix a bug, one is to just go in and fix the bug, which may not be trivial if it can't be reproduced. The other way is to overhaul the way that part of the program operates, eliminating the need to fix that particular bug. The GIF file issue(who uses GIF anyway at this point?) is eliminated by going to 64 bit. Other things are used so infrequently, they don't matter. How many people are actually affected by the CSS color rule bug you are talking about? Do you consider it to be critical?
Just because there is a bug does not mean that ANYONE sees any impact from it. Oh, when typing a URL in the "address bar", my theme can't make the text alternate the colors of what I am typing sorts of bugs really are the sorts of things that sit at the bottom of the priority list. Or some obscure feature that one person on the planet may want to use having a bug in it....yes, it is a bug, but when ZERO people may encounter it, then who really cares?
Just because a bug is stupid doesn't mean that fixing it would be trivial. If you feel it is a trivial fix, then YOU should fix it if no one else cares enough about it to do the work. In the same way that I don't care about the starving people in Ethiopia, many people don't care about the bugs you have mentioned. Those who care about the issue will do something about it if they have the programming ability. So, you care, so YOU fix the bugs.
If your entire focus is on making games that involve running around shooting things, then of course you will have problems with the crosshairs. If the game isn't focused on that, and instead is based on...I don't know, plot and trying to use your brain to solve problems instead of shooting everything that gets in your way, then the game may not have any of that sort of thing to get in the way of the field of vision. What these so-called game designers are running into is being sucked into making new versions of the same old military "if it moves, shoot it" type of game. How many World War II combat games can they come out with before they lose their audience? Ok, future version with lasers and larger explosions, but the same basic gameplay....it runs out of steam eventually.
So, focus on making a game that is fun, and where you only end up in "combat mode" a small portion of the time, and the rest involves playing without the obstructions. Come up with NEW ways for players to play, from the violent methods, to diplomatic, to stealth. The game industry really started in the 1970s, and it is amazing that the focus has come down to different flavors of the same game, with some rare RPGs that show up less and less frequently.
People travel by air because it is faster than other forms of travel. With all the security headaches, and the need to change planes because most airlines do not provide non-stop service, a FAST rail line might become an acceptable method of traveling long distances. The key to success or failure is really how often the train stops since that is what slows down current rail systems. Try going from Penn Station in NY City to Montauk(the east end of Long Island), on anything but an express, and you will feel that traveling by car would be faster and less annoying. At the same time, if the train only stopped two or three times, it would be a better option if the train ran more than 4-5 times a day.
Convenience is the real key to what makes using any form of transportation a better choice. If driving is faster and/or easier, then that is the best option. If taking a train is faster and/or easier, people may use that if it travels every hour. If something only runs every four hours, that will make people avoid it.
So, Boston to NY to Washington, DC to Atlanta. If there are no additional stops and trains leave every two hours, that would be seen as a very acceptable run if you could go from Boston to Atlanta in six-seven hours(rail not shared by other trains, and going 200 miles per hour with only those three stations). Keep in mind that it would take you 18+ hours by car.
If the speed could be pushed to 300 or 400 miles per hour, that would easily make people choose this method of travel over flying, just because you don't have to change planes or anything annoying like that.
Pretty much any save game will hold a record of how you went through a game. Choices you selected, etc. Just look at games like Mass Effect, which transfers MANY of your choices to Mass Effect 2. So suddenly, this must violate the Apple patent because you could go through the save game to see your choices? Ummm, no thank you Apple, prior art comes into play.
On the flip side, the new Blackberry devices are fairly small, and if you compare prices, why get a Blackberry at this point? E-mail is handled well by most of the new smartphones out there, giving the edge to Blackberry ONLY when it comes to the corporate stuff(exchange servers and such). Give it another few years and Blackberry won't have ANY advantage when it comes to e-mail, so what will RIM do then?
RIM is really following in the footsteps of Palm.
Palm had a huge advantage, but sticking with an ancient OS made their devices seem slow and clunky.
Palm comes up with a new device with a new OS, but with a relatively small screen. The difference between what Blackberry and Palm have done is that WebOS is a VERY good OS compared to the new OS from Blackberry, which isn't nearly as good as what Palm came up with.
So, here's the question looking forward: Will HP/Palm release a higher end device with a larger screen before RIM does?
When you can get a Palm Pre Plus with two year contract for $50, what makes that so bad when RIM charges more and does less(even fewer apps than WebOS has)? Keep in mind that the Palm Pre and Pre Plus can be overclocked to 1GHz easily, so lag is a non-issue there as well.
The magic of Pixar is that the management understands that you want a positive work environment. Most corporations have clueless managers and executives who have never understood how to motivate people without threats.
You miss the role that management has on the overall feeling at a workplace. A bad supervisor, manager, or executive can suck the fun out of ANYTHING, and a good boss can make a bad job at least not seem to be all that bad. This applies to everything from software engineering to customer service, and all the way down into fast food. The harder the boss pushes employees who are normally motivated, the worse things will be, and productivity goes down as a result.
Now, if you treat your employees from the bottom to the top like they are a vital part of the team, and you encourage them in a POSITIVE way by showing how vital they are to getting the product out the door, they will WANT to work a bit harder to get things done right, without needing to force them. If you treat employees as just "resources" to be used, they will feel your lack of understanding, and will not want to work there. Now, how many of these business classes teach how to motivate employees in a positive way, because not a single person with a business degree I have ever seen seems to understand that basic idea. The role of management is to get the most productivity out of your employees, and the BEST way is to make the employees happy so that they will want to work overtime to get the job done properly.
One thing that many people don't understand is that you have a VERY different Internet situation based on the country you are dealing with. Here in the USA, the Internet STARTED as a government project linking military and research universities together. Since it was government, the idea that it is paid for by the PEOPLE of the country implies that citizens should have equal access to it.
What changed is that once you start adding private companies to the network, you start to get into the area of who should have control over those private networks, even when they are connected into the primary Internet backbone. At this point, the section of the Internet that is run and controlled by the Internet is actually very small. So, we go back to the original definition of what the Internet itself is: A network of networks. From that perspective, each private ISP SHOULD have the right to set policy for that private network. Customers can choose their ISP in many markets, with the choice of cable or DSL service, or even fiber optic, and this SHOULD allow for a freedom from "monopoly" laws. If you don't like the policies of one ISP, you go to another, the same way proper competition SHOULD be.
Now, things get a bit tricky in other countries, where the government actually has paid for the majority of the network deployment. People constantly point to how low the installed broadband percentage is in the USA compared to other countries, but if you look at why this is the case, you see the US Government has done very little when it comes to getting the Internet out to the public, and how much money has been spent in the private sector to get the Internet to where it is today. So, in those other countries, if the government deployed the cables for Internet access, it makes more sense that the government has the right to set the policy for that network. The more the government does, the more of an accepted right it is for the government to set policy for that service.
Net Neutrality is a nice idea, but it requires that those who spent millions or billions of dollars to deploy an infrastructure give up their rights to control what they have put in place. In most cases, companies here in the USA have been pretty fair, where IF they have the bandwidth to allow fully unlimited use, they provide it, but those who are capacity restrained have been trying to keep people from using so much so heavy users do not limit those who use less.
When Apple does not just offer an alternative for app makers to use, but shuts down the competition, you are looking at an even worse case than when Microsoft released Internet Explorer and worked to force Netscape out of the market. At least Netscape still worked under Windows, but Apple is outright stopping any competing products from working on their operating system(in the portable space at least).
And in theory, users should have the right to use a different competing App Store. Smartphones really have gotten so advanced that they can be seen as a computing platform, and locking devices into one vendor or another can be a problem.
If Microsoft decided to sell their own brand of computers, and lock them down so no other OS would run on them, you would be hearing anti-trust arguments across the entire computer industry. Apple is doing the same thing here with anti-competitive behavior, and people are talking about how they don't like Google? If you buy an app, Apple should not be able to control what content that app can provide. If you were to put a mobile version of Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, or anything else on an iPhone, it should be able to provide whatever content the app developer puts in, no matter what advertising network or web content there might be. If a mobile browser were to have a built-in flash player(without it being an Adobe add-on), Apple should not have the right to block it, since the BROWSER should be allowed on the device. To say otherwise is to be pro-monopoly and you would probably support fascist governments as well since you accept that the device maker has total control over a product you have purchased.
Microsoft was in theory a Monopoly, yet Apple was there and Linux was there. At this point, Apple devices exist in their own world, their own product space, and there is a huge swarm that ties into it. From that point of view, while there are other devices out there, Apple has basically declared the iPhone and iPad to be in a different market than other devices. To say that Apple, and only Apple can do advertisements on the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch, and that Apple is the only company that can provide an app store, even when the functionality is clearly there to allow for competition SCREAMS anti-trust violation. What is next, that Apple can ban the use of Adobe or Google products from all of their devices?
I think you missed the point of the entire complaint. With any other device, including Android, you can run whatever browser you want and use whatever search engine you want. The DEVICE is there for you to use however you want to, and that includes using a different web browser, or using a different search site. It is OPEN.
Now, from Microsoft, if they tried to make it so no other web browser would work under Microsoft Windows, anti-trust lawsuits would be expected. So, when Apple basically says that only Apple Search can be used, and you can only use the Apple App store, and you can't use anything else, that calls for anti-trust, doesn't it? Apple holds an effective monopoly in the MP3 player arena(iPod Touch), and with the popularity of the iPhone and iPad, anti-competitive behavior like this SHOULD be earning Apple a bunch of lawsuits, as well as regulators investigating the business practices of Apple. If you feel that Microsoft was using anti-competitive behaviors back in the days of the "Browser Wars" between Internet Explorer and Netscape, and if you feel that Microsoft Office had an unfair advantage because of "insider information" about Windows that others did not have, then you SHOULD feel that Apple is even worse, because they won't even allow competing products to be run on their devices.
We need Google to buy the rights to one of these Tetris clones, then sue the Tetris Company for loss of revenue from not being able to sell a game that does not violate any trademarks or copyrights. That would do the trick and stop this sort of crap.
The real issue comes down to proper punishment, and making sure that those who are wronged have the chance to see "justice done". Now, what is the UK going to do in a trial, since the UK was not the one wronged in this case? That is the problem when you deal with international law, making sure the punishment fits the crime. Hacking or attempting to hack a government computer system is a very serious crime, but it is taken less seriously by those who are not the victims.
So, the UK is an ally, or has been....what do you think the court system in the UK would find proper punishment for hacking into US government computers? What do you think the court system in the USA would think is proper punishment? If he were to hack a Chinese government computer system, do you think the Chinese government might try to execute him for it? Obviously, these are things to consider in international law, but I seriously doubt that those in the UK would think the punishment over here would be unusually severe compared to if roles were reversed.
Initial hype is a large reason for that, and once the initial hype wears off(if it hasn't already), then iPad sales will drop fairly quickly. One of the primary draws of netbook computers is the low price(since many are just cut back laptops to begin with), so the iPad just won't touch the low-cost market there. Then you get the people who also want to be able to run their normal programs while on the road, again, the iPad does not touch that market. If anything, the iPad may impact the netbook market that has Linux on it rather than Windows XP/7 because those machines were not running any version of Microsoft Windows in the first place.
So, think about it, now that the initial group of 'I have to have the latest thing from Apple!' types have made their purchase, for the price, how long can the iPad have decent sales before sales drop like a rock?
You may have missed it, but the idea of a smartphone is to be functional, and with more function means it will probably be a bit larger. As far as how heavy a phone is, are you such a weakling that you find a 5 pound weight heavy(meaning EVERYTHING feels too heavy to you)? As far as I am concerned, there is an advantage to the weight of ANY device, you won't lose it as easily. I am not suggesting that phones go back to being as heavy as my old Palm Treo 680, but at the same time, why is there an obsession that nothing should weigh more than 0.00001 gram, yet should be able to open up to provide a 40 inch display so you can watch TV or movies on it with a battery life that will last for a full year on a single charge?
The more you want in a device, the larger and heavier it will be. The electronics need a bit of room to breathe due to heat built up by the chips, and chip design becomes more and more difficult to improve as smaller and smaller chip fabrication nodes are developed. You want not just WiFi, but WirelessN? How about more memory? A bigger battery, GPS, and how about being able to get traffic updates on your PHONE? FM transmitter so you can just use your car radio to listen to what you have on your device instead of using a cable?
These things are getting more powerful, but it takes TIME for CPU fab process improvements to allow all of these extra features without adding to power requirements, which is where heat buildup comes from.
This is one of the reasons I am looking to get a Palm Pre Plus once AT&T releases their version of it. True multi-tasking, more open, has the Touchstone for charging, a better UI than the iPhone, etc. Yes, Palm is having some financial problems, but if the phone is good, it will be worth buying. The style of the Pre and Pre Plus are also more attractive overall, and there is a real keyboard. Things are even looking up for things like a Bluetooth keyboard(not available yet, but things are happening that will allow one).
I think the big issue is the whole 'functionality before hype' argument. Electronic toys are all fine and dandy, but so much about the iPhone is based on hype, rather than on how good it is. This is why they can't give the iPhone away in Japan, because without the hype, the iPhone isn't really all that great compared to the competition.
People complain when an app they had paid for and downloaded is disabled by Apple after the fact. This is the problem with Apple, they don't allow people to even USE apps that are not provided on the iTunes store. Picture what would happen if Apple were to do an update that disabled the use of MP3 music files just because you could make your own instead of downloading them from their store. Would people complain?
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What you have missed is that failures in the PC industry are generally caused by issues such as a power supply problem, or hard drive failure(magnetic storage does have a shelf life). PC processors also are designed to do as much work as possible and are much more complex as a result compared to the chips in cars. This is why you need cooling fans for the CPU. If you cut the speed down to the point where you don't need fans to help pull the heat off the chip, you will be in better shape.
Now, look at the progress of cell phone processors. Passive cooling in a tiny space and you see 1GHz and beyond have become the norm in the high end phone market. While these chips may not operate at 127 degrees Celsius at these speeds, most chips will run at 90 degrees C, and that isn't even TRYING to make a chip that operates in high temperature environments. Most people are more concerned with chip speed for the entertainment system in a car anyway, and THAT could be a different chip that isn't located anywhere near the engine, so temperatures wouldn't go above the 80 degree Celsius mark even in a worse case(except for if there is a fire of course). If the temperature in a car hits even 60 degrees Celsius it is really really hot(140 Fahrenheit). Video cards will often run under load where the temperature of the GPU is at 80 degrees Celsius or beyond and they can operate that way for a long time. The problem is that keeping it at 80 degrees C requires a fan, but if it can operate at 80 degrees C without a problem, I don't see a problem with putting a chip in the dashboard away from the engine would be a problem. Just put an OMAP processor under the dashboard with an inch of air around it to run the electronics, and you are good to go.
When the Internet first started, you had a backbone that was paid for by government dollars(tax money), and back in those days, it was easy to be able to advocate for that backbone to be covered by net neutrality rules. As the Internet became more commercial, it became more and more difficult for the government to be able to set rules for the overall Internet. What we have today is the result, where the old government sponsored backbone is only used by a tiny fraction of the overall user base, and setting net neutrality rules would not make much sense at this point since telling a private company what they can or can not do on their own network is against the very nature of private enterprise.
If the government were to really push for a massive backbone for the PUBLIC Internet, and put lots of money behind it, then rules could be applied to THAT backbone, leaving QoS issues to each private ISP that connects to it, but without much overall ability to impact service levels. The government could also set up NAPs at various places around the Internet where any ISP could connect to it free of charge(paying only for the line connecting them to the NAP) as a way to bypass any discrimination by private ISPs. The old MAE-east and MAE-west used to be some of the primary places for ISPs to connect to each other, but the Internet has grown and evolved, and with the old NAPs being privately owned and operated, you couldn't count on Net Neutrality rules working today.
Again, setting Net Neutrality for any privately owned and operated part of the Internet should be seen as the government pushing to control a private business without having been a primary financial source to fund that business. As a result, if the government has not paid to take a majority stake in a business, then the government should not have the right to demand ANYTHING, except for help in upholding the law in select cases, such as stopping kiddie porn, and even then, it is difficult to justify that an ISP MUST monitor traffic to identify illegal activity. Again, government forcing the private sector to spend money/resources for some new dictate just goes against the idea of government not watching everything private citizens are doing.
One thing that people do not think about is how bad policies should not be supported. In the long run, this means that people will die due to shortages, and perhaps the rest of the world should let this happen.
Look at China, and I mean seriously look at China. The levels of pollution are getting so high, I predict there will be mass deaths due to how bad the air quality is, if that has not already started happening. If the rest of the world does not help, the population in China will go down over time, reducing the demand for resources. I am not saying it is a good thing, but the Chinese government is pushing for production at all costs, and at some point, all that pollution will end up killing their population off.
There have been starving children in Ethiopia for decades....and if people would stop helping over there, the population would drop, there would be fewer children, and things there would balance out, rather than having people reproducing when they can't even feed themselves.
If there are food shortages to the point of starvation, do you really think that the rest of the world will jump in to help if they are also having problems with food production? Most countries already are taking the attitude that they can not help in the event of a natural disaster, and the USA is the only country that has been taking on additional debt just to help other countries when they have a problem. When the USA stops bailing out the rest of the world, then we will see things balance out a bit when it comes to supply and demand. This may sound cold, but honestly, if people are predicting that there will not be enough food to feed everyone in only 20 years, then we SHOULD let those who have no hope of feeding themselves just die out NOW, since an increasing population of people who can't help themselves is the problem.
Oil and such is an issue that the USA is dealing with by looking for other ways to generate power, and if oil were to suddenly become unavailable, do you honestly think that any other country would help US? Helping friends is one thing, but just trying to "save the world", is hurting the world more than helping. Getting people past a natural disaster is only useful if the people getting help NOW will be able to take care of themselves. But, we should not save people from themselves, because that just isn't a viable long-term solution. If the Chinese government wants to kill off the population of China with pollution, let them! If after 40 years Ethiopia can't provide enough food to feed the population, then isn't it time to let the population there SHRINK to the point where they can feed themselves?
The problem you have sounds like a memory leak. What you have not told us is what version of Firefox you are using, since memory leaks ARE found and fixed, but there are still more.
Ford released the 2011 Fiesta, which gets 40 miles per gallon on the highway and isn't a hybrid. The 2012 Focus(compact, not subcompact) will get 155 horsepower, has a lot of features, get the 40ish miles per gallon on the highway non-hybrid as well, and sells for $17000 to $25000(with almost all options, $24000 for the 5-door Titanium version with premium package. With these sorts of prices, what does the Volt(a hybrid, not an all-electric car) provide?
Cost of ownership has to be considered as well, since you will be paying for electricity to charge the batteries, plus putting gas in the Volt as well. The environmental impact for the battery production is also left out. If the batteries are produced in China, then the pollution from battery production may be there instead of here, but pollution is still being produced. So it doesn't save the planet, it just hides it in a place that has zero environmental laws.
So, NIMBY may apply when it comes to these things, but the cost of electricity is already very high, and for the Volt, is it cheaper to get your electrical power from plugging it in, or from the gas generator in the car? I'd say that Ford has the right approach, get gas engines to 50 miles per gallon, because that will be cheaper for the owner than the electric needed to charge an all-electric. 40 miles per gallon is already a huge improvement over what most cars are getting, and at 155hp, provides a decent amount of power as well. Or you go with the 305hp Mustang that gets 31 miles per gallon on the highway. Either way, does GM have ANY cars at this point, gas or electric, which have a GOOD total cost of ownership?
You clearly don't understand the way programming works. There are some issues that show up as a part of a fundamental design flaw, and the only way those get fixed is if there is a massive overhaul of the code. And guess what, that happens with Firefox a lot more frequently than with many other applications.
The 32 bit issue really is an issue with the limitations of 32 bit. Going to 64 bit is more than just how they compile it, but it also adds the requirements for 64 bit plugins. Since people would whine if Flash 64 bit were not available the moment 64 bit Firefox was released, picture how many people would post a Firefox bug on the issue, and you would probably be one of those early people complaining that Firefox is at fault.
There are two ways to fix a bug, one is to just go in and fix the bug, which may not be trivial if it can't be reproduced. The other way is to overhaul the way that part of the program operates, eliminating the need to fix that particular bug. The GIF file issue(who uses GIF anyway at this point?) is eliminated by going to 64 bit. Other things are used so infrequently, they don't matter. How many people are actually affected by the CSS color rule bug you are talking about? Do you consider it to be critical?
Just because there is a bug does not mean that ANYONE sees any impact from it. Oh, when typing a URL in the "address bar", my theme can't make the text alternate the colors of what I am typing sorts of bugs really are the sorts of things that sit at the bottom of the priority list. Or some obscure feature that one person on the planet may want to use having a bug in it....yes, it is a bug, but when ZERO people may encounter it, then who really cares?
Just because a bug is stupid doesn't mean that fixing it would be trivial. If you feel it is a trivial fix, then YOU should fix it if no one else cares enough about it to do the work. In the same way that I don't care about the starving people in Ethiopia, many people don't care about the bugs you have mentioned. Those who care about the issue will do something about it if they have the programming ability. So, you care, so YOU fix the bugs.
If your entire focus is on making games that involve running around shooting things, then of course you will have problems with the crosshairs. If the game isn't focused on that, and instead is based on...I don't know, plot and trying to use your brain to solve problems instead of shooting everything that gets in your way, then the game may not have any of that sort of thing to get in the way of the field of vision. What these so-called game designers are running into is being sucked into making new versions of the same old military "if it moves, shoot it" type of game. How many World War II combat games can they come out with before they lose their audience? Ok, future version with lasers and larger explosions, but the same basic gameplay....it runs out of steam eventually.
So, focus on making a game that is fun, and where you only end up in "combat mode" a small portion of the time, and the rest involves playing without the obstructions. Come up with NEW ways for players to play, from the violent methods, to diplomatic, to stealth. The game industry really started in the 1970s, and it is amazing that the focus has come down to different flavors of the same game, with some rare RPGs that show up less and less frequently.
People travel by air because it is faster than other forms of travel. With all the security headaches, and the need to change planes because most airlines do not provide non-stop service, a FAST rail line might become an acceptable method of traveling long distances. The key to success or failure is really how often the train stops since that is what slows down current rail systems. Try going from Penn Station in NY City to Montauk(the east end of Long Island), on anything but an express, and you will feel that traveling by car would be faster and less annoying. At the same time, if the train only stopped two or three times, it would be a better option if the train ran more than 4-5 times a day.
Convenience is the real key to what makes using any form of transportation a better choice. If driving is faster and/or easier, then that is the best option. If taking a train is faster and/or easier, people may use that if it travels every hour. If something only runs every four hours, that will make people avoid it.
So, Boston to NY to Washington, DC to Atlanta. If there are no additional stops and trains leave every two hours, that would be seen as a very acceptable run if you could go from Boston to Atlanta in six-seven hours(rail not shared by other trains, and going 200 miles per hour with only those three stations). Keep in mind that it would take you 18+ hours by car.
If the speed could be pushed to 300 or 400 miles per hour, that would easily make people choose this method of travel over flying, just because you don't have to change planes or anything annoying like that.
Pretty much any save game will hold a record of how you went through a game. Choices you selected, etc. Just look at games like Mass Effect, which transfers MANY of your choices to Mass Effect 2. So suddenly, this must violate the Apple patent because you could go through the save game to see your choices? Ummm, no thank you Apple, prior art comes into play.
On the flip side, the new Blackberry devices are fairly small, and if you compare prices, why get a Blackberry at this point? E-mail is handled well by most of the new smartphones out there, giving the edge to Blackberry ONLY when it comes to the corporate stuff(exchange servers and such). Give it another few years and Blackberry won't have ANY advantage when it comes to e-mail, so what will RIM do then?
RIM is really following in the footsteps of Palm.
Palm had a huge advantage, but sticking with an ancient OS made their devices seem slow and clunky.
Palm comes up with a new device with a new OS, but with a relatively small screen. The difference between what Blackberry and Palm have done is that WebOS is a VERY good OS compared to the new OS from Blackberry, which isn't nearly as good as what Palm came up with.
So, here's the question looking forward: Will HP/Palm release a higher end device with a larger screen before RIM does?
When you can get a Palm Pre Plus with two year contract for $50, what makes that so bad when RIM charges more and does less(even fewer apps than WebOS has)? Keep in mind that the Palm Pre and Pre Plus can be overclocked to 1GHz easily, so lag is a non-issue there as well.
The magic of Pixar is that the management understands that you want a positive work environment. Most corporations have clueless managers and executives who have never understood how to motivate people without threats.
You miss the role that management has on the overall feeling at a workplace. A bad supervisor, manager, or executive can suck the fun out of ANYTHING, and a good boss can make a bad job at least not seem to be all that bad. This applies to everything from software engineering to customer service, and all the way down into fast food. The harder the boss pushes employees who are normally motivated, the worse things will be, and productivity goes down as a result.
Now, if you treat your employees from the bottom to the top like they are a vital part of the team, and you encourage them in a POSITIVE way by showing how vital they are to getting the product out the door, they will WANT to work a bit harder to get things done right, without needing to force them. If you treat employees as just "resources" to be used, they will feel your lack of understanding, and will not want to work there. Now, how many of these business classes teach how to motivate employees in a positive way, because not a single person with a business degree I have ever seen seems to understand that basic idea. The role of management is to get the most productivity out of your employees, and the BEST way is to make the employees happy so that they will want to work overtime to get the job done properly.
One thing that many people don't understand is that you have a VERY different Internet situation based on the country you are dealing with. Here in the USA, the Internet STARTED as a government project linking military and research universities together. Since it was government, the idea that it is paid for by the PEOPLE of the country implies that citizens should have equal access to it.
What changed is that once you start adding private companies to the network, you start to get into the area of who should have control over those private networks, even when they are connected into the primary Internet backbone. At this point, the section of the Internet that is run and controlled by the Internet is actually very small. So, we go back to the original definition of what the Internet itself is: A network of networks. From that perspective, each private ISP SHOULD have the right to set policy for that private network. Customers can choose their ISP in many markets, with the choice of cable or DSL service, or even fiber optic, and this SHOULD allow for a freedom from "monopoly" laws. If you don't like the policies of one ISP, you go to another, the same way proper competition SHOULD be.
Now, things get a bit tricky in other countries, where the government actually has paid for the majority of the network deployment. People constantly point to how low the installed broadband percentage is in the USA compared to other countries, but if you look at why this is the case, you see the US Government has done very little when it comes to getting the Internet out to the public, and how much money has been spent in the private sector to get the Internet to where it is today. So, in those other countries, if the government deployed the cables for Internet access, it makes more sense that the government has the right to set the policy for that network. The more the government does, the more of an accepted right it is for the government to set policy for that service.
Net Neutrality is a nice idea, but it requires that those who spent millions or billions of dollars to deploy an infrastructure give up their rights to control what they have put in place. In most cases, companies here in the USA have been pretty fair, where IF they have the bandwidth to allow fully unlimited use, they provide it, but those who are capacity restrained have been trying to keep people from using so much so heavy users do not limit those who use less.
When Apple does not just offer an alternative for app makers to use, but shuts down the competition, you are looking at an even worse case than when Microsoft released Internet Explorer and worked to force Netscape out of the market. At least Netscape still worked under Windows, but Apple is outright stopping any competing products from working on their operating system(in the portable space at least).
And in theory, users should have the right to use a different competing App Store. Smartphones really have gotten so advanced that they can be seen as a computing platform, and locking devices into one vendor or another can be a problem.
If Microsoft decided to sell their own brand of computers, and lock them down so no other OS would run on them, you would be hearing anti-trust arguments across the entire computer industry. Apple is doing the same thing here with anti-competitive behavior, and people are talking about how they don't like Google? If you buy an app, Apple should not be able to control what content that app can provide. If you were to put a mobile version of Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, or anything else on an iPhone, it should be able to provide whatever content the app developer puts in, no matter what advertising network or web content there might be. If a mobile browser were to have a built-in flash player(without it being an Adobe add-on), Apple should not have the right to block it, since the BROWSER should be allowed on the device. To say otherwise is to be pro-monopoly and you would probably support fascist governments as well since you accept that the device maker has total control over a product you have purchased.
Microsoft was in theory a Monopoly, yet Apple was there and Linux was there. At this point, Apple devices exist in their own world, their own product space, and there is a huge swarm that ties into it. From that point of view, while there are other devices out there, Apple has basically declared the iPhone and iPad to be in a different market than other devices. To say that Apple, and only Apple can do advertisements on the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch, and that Apple is the only company that can provide an app store, even when the functionality is clearly there to allow for competition SCREAMS anti-trust violation. What is next, that Apple can ban the use of Adobe or Google products from all of their devices?
I think you missed the point of the entire complaint. With any other device, including Android, you can run whatever browser you want and use whatever search engine you want. The DEVICE is there for you to use however you want to, and that includes using a different web browser, or using a different search site. It is OPEN.
Now, from Microsoft, if they tried to make it so no other web browser would work under Microsoft Windows, anti-trust lawsuits would be expected. So, when Apple basically says that only Apple Search can be used, and you can only use the Apple App store, and you can't use anything else, that calls for anti-trust, doesn't it? Apple holds an effective monopoly in the MP3 player arena(iPod Touch), and with the popularity of the iPhone and iPad, anti-competitive behavior like this SHOULD be earning Apple a bunch of lawsuits, as well as regulators investigating the business practices of Apple. If you feel that Microsoft was using anti-competitive behaviors back in the days of the "Browser Wars" between Internet Explorer and Netscape, and if you feel that Microsoft Office had an unfair advantage because of "insider information" about Windows that others did not have, then you SHOULD feel that Apple is even worse, because they won't even allow competing products to be run on their devices.
We need Google to buy the rights to one of these Tetris clones, then sue the Tetris Company for loss of revenue from not being able to sell a game that does not violate any trademarks or copyrights. That would do the trick and stop this sort of crap.
The real issue comes down to proper punishment, and making sure that those who are wronged have the chance to see "justice done". Now, what is the UK going to do in a trial, since the UK was not the one wronged in this case? That is the problem when you deal with international law, making sure the punishment fits the crime. Hacking or attempting to hack a government computer system is a very serious crime, but it is taken less seriously by those who are not the victims.
So, the UK is an ally, or has been....what do you think the court system in the UK would find proper punishment for hacking into US government computers? What do you think the court system in the USA would think is proper punishment? If he were to hack a Chinese government computer system, do you think the Chinese government might try to execute him for it? Obviously, these are things to consider in international law, but I seriously doubt that those in the UK would think the punishment over here would be unusually severe compared to if roles were reversed.
Initial hype is a large reason for that, and once the initial hype wears off(if it hasn't already), then iPad sales will drop fairly quickly. One of the primary draws of netbook computers is the low price(since many are just cut back laptops to begin with), so the iPad just won't touch the low-cost market there. Then you get the people who also want to be able to run their normal programs while on the road, again, the iPad does not touch that market. If anything, the iPad may impact the netbook market that has Linux on it rather than Windows XP/7 because those machines were not running any version of Microsoft Windows in the first place.
So, think about it, now that the initial group of 'I have to have the latest thing from Apple!' types have made their purchase, for the price, how long can the iPad have decent sales before sales drop like a rock?
PEBKAC=Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.
That has been in use for a long time, but many are not familiar with it.
You may have missed it, but the idea of a smartphone is to be functional, and with more function means it will probably be a bit larger. As far as how heavy a phone is, are you such a weakling that you find a 5 pound weight heavy(meaning EVERYTHING feels too heavy to you)? As far as I am concerned, there is an advantage to the weight of ANY device, you won't lose it as easily. I am not suggesting that phones go back to being as heavy as my old Palm Treo 680, but at the same time, why is there an obsession that nothing should weigh more than 0.00001 gram, yet should be able to open up to provide a 40 inch display so you can watch TV or movies on it with a battery life that will last for a full year on a single charge?
The more you want in a device, the larger and heavier it will be. The electronics need a bit of room to breathe due to heat built up by the chips, and chip design becomes more and more difficult to improve as smaller and smaller chip fabrication nodes are developed. You want not just WiFi, but WirelessN? How about more memory? A bigger battery, GPS, and how about being able to get traffic updates on your PHONE? FM transmitter so you can just use your car radio to listen to what you have on your device instead of using a cable?
These things are getting more powerful, but it takes TIME for CPU fab process improvements to allow all of these extra features without adding to power requirements, which is where heat buildup comes from.
This is one of the reasons I am looking to get a Palm Pre Plus once AT&T releases their version of it. True multi-tasking, more open, has the Touchstone for charging, a better UI than the iPhone, etc. Yes, Palm is having some financial problems, but if the phone is good, it will be worth buying. The style of the Pre and Pre Plus are also more attractive overall, and there is a real keyboard. Things are even looking up for things like a Bluetooth keyboard(not available yet, but things are happening that will allow one).
I think the big issue is the whole 'functionality before hype' argument. Electronic toys are all fine and dandy, but so much about the iPhone is based on hype, rather than on how good it is. This is why they can't give the iPhone away in Japan, because without the hype, the iPhone isn't really all that great compared to the competition.
People complain when an app they had paid for and downloaded is disabled by Apple after the fact. This is the problem with Apple, they don't allow people to even USE apps that are not provided on the iTunes store. Picture what would happen if Apple were to do an update that disabled the use of MP3 music files just because you could make your own instead of downloading them from their store. Would people complain?