>>Why would you never EVER own it? A simple matter of reliability and trust which goes beyond firearms. Given the choice between a simple machine and a complicated one proven to be less reliable with unknown points of failure, I will choose to rely upon a simple tool.
>>If this existed, it would be one more layer of protection so some kid can't shoot himself or some other kid. if. if. if. I don't mean to be snide, but given a limitless list of other hypothetical situations anything could be anything.
A firearm must, above all things, be reliable. There is no indication whatsoever that the so-called "smart" features (whatever that is) have been developed to anything even close to acceptable real-world performance. Meaning "I pull trigger, gun goes bang every time." I've seen crappy fingerprint recognizing prototypes, some that require an associated bracelet or ring (works great until the battery dies...), GPS-enabled (no signal? stinks for you).
The police won't carry it. The military doesn't want it. Neither does the general public.
Of course it's a sample size of only a few but the gun owners I know (including myself) with whom I have discussed this very topic are agreed -- none of us would ever, EVER own a firearm complicated with failure points (aka "electronics"), which, I will add, could easily be jammed.
I say the study is propaganda meant to sway the easily influenced public herd, or encourage some politicians with reading comprehension issues to ignore the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution they are sworn to uphold.
>>read the fucking Mythical Man Month and realize that the death march is an idiotic way to do things which doesn't really work.
I disagree. The death march model works just fine -- *IF* you have a sufficiently large pool of new developers to replace the old ones dropping off along the way and *IF* your focus is short-term wins over long-term strategy. To wit: the entire video game industry (layoffs after a release, anyone?), the endless employee churn at all the major offshoring companies, "captive" on-site employees via H1b Visas, etc. This is just an extension of what is common outside the IT industry with low-paying service jobs.
If the only metric is cost, or if cost is valued sufficiently higher than quality (not uncommon), then it's all the more obvious.
Infrastructure for a subdivision (especially one this size) has costs. Clearing land, grading, cutting in roads, installing water, sewer, natural gas, electric and phone utilities, permitting, inspections, impact studies & statements, insurance, contracting, setbacks, advertising, etc. all adds up rather quickly.
For OSX, Apple provides a superb tool for simulating "bad" networks -- slow, dropped packets, high latency, or all the above -- called Network Link Conditioner more info at --> http://nshipster.com/network-l...
That's the point. You may not have to. If, in exchange for watching a few advertisements a day, consumers were given a shiny new Apple iPhone300kTurbo for "free", or were given "free" cell service, that might be seen as an acceptable trade. It benefits Apple by giving them evidence that those pricey advertisements they sell are reaching eyeballs.
Pure speculation on my part, btw. I have no inside knowledge (nor do I really care) about Apple's marketing or product plans.
>>A least Microsoft isn't taking picture of people's homes and posting them online without permission.
They don't have to -- if your home has been built or purchased in the past 30 years, it's likely the floorplan is already available online. Just check with your county/parish tax assessor's office. With many of them, just enter the street address and you can see a county tax appraisor's estimate of value beside a photo or two of the home and a floorplan drawing.
This information, in most cases is considered public information and is thus available free to anyone who can click a mouse. Worst case, a simple data scraper would yield an entire county's data in a few days.
So no, they don't have to drive around and take photos when photos are already available online, complete with a floorplan courtesy of the government.
good catch -- indeed, that was a goof. meant to write 66 but my fingers had other ideas. Sorry. But at any rate, I don't think the specific numbers are that important. The point was the new machine was computationally hundreds of times faster. But in actual use, it was slower in some areas that really matter, to the degree that even a young child noticed! BTW, It's been a few years since I read it, but I believe this story is included in Abrash's book titled "Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book" since it's largely a compilation of his DDJ "Mode X" articles and a few others.
Yep, the early 486 with the clock-doubled processor. I had a DX2-80 *I think* (with a VESA local-bus video card so I could play Aces Of The Pacific in 256 color 800x600 mode -- woot!) and thought it was the cat's whiskers. Couldn't believe how fast it was compared to my lowly 33MHz machine @ work. And it only cost me $2300, what a great deal! And to think, now a $99 iPod Touch could run a PC emulator faster than that machine. That's serious progress.
Impressive and would be a huge improvement over the current state of things.
But then again, my 1Mhz Apple ][ could cold boot in just a couple seconds.Of course, loading Applesoft Basic from tape took an additional two minutes but Integer Basic was in the ROM.
Michael Abrash wrote a great article about this in Dr. Dobbs magazine in the 90s. His young daughter (5 years old?) asked him why he never used his "fast" computer. Abrash was using a state-of-the-art 266mhz DX2 powerhouse and couldn't figure out what she meant. She was referring to the old Vic-20 in the corner that would boot in just a few seconds. Windows 3.0 took several minutes to load. IIRC, the article was titled "perception is everything"
Yet another reason why the newspaper business is bleeding money and descreasing subscriptions year after year after year. Kudos to the editors for attempting something different -- trying to match the product they sell to the market demand.
I don't believe these employees understand they are just that -- retained at the pleasure of their employer. If they wish to spout off with unpopular opinions without fear of retribution, they should have either been college professors or Supreme Court justices.
In the meantime, so long as someone else is paying them, they will do as they are told. Call the Waaaambulance.
It's a very entrepreneurial idea -- quit all the talking and hand-waving and actually ship something! There's not much value in developing great ideas that never get out of the lab. As for the claim that neither innovates? Hogwash. Taking an idea and integrating it into a viable product IS innovation by definition -- it is something that has not been done before that point. Both MS and Apple innovate, to different degrees, which we can squabble about, ad infinitum.:) I would say MSFT is far better at marketing their ideas and capturing market share, while Apple is better at inventing. Others will have a different view.
But back to the original subject, I suspect Apple's desire for custom chips comes not from a desire to save power (there are already many viable low-power CPUs and chipsets available) but rather a desire to fight off Hackintosh clones (OSX running on non-apple hardware, such as the Dell mini 9 or generic desktop PCs). Technologically, there's no reason why this can't happen but one must consider that Apple's hardware sales are quite profitable and that share is worth protecting.
>>Why would you want spam filtering on ANY phone? Maybe because I don't want to flick through 10 spams for every email? Look, I can write a Bayesian classifier in a couple hundred lines of code. Trivial. Adding training is just a bit more work and it's not a matter of consuming some precious resource -- counting word frequency (the heart of the algorithm) is not exactly processor intensive and as for storage requirements for the corpus, that won't be much larger than an eBook.
But Apple won't allow a background task (so no proxy server), and they won't approve an app that replaced core functionality (so that rules out a "Mail" replacement app). I can only conclude that they are working on something themselves or are hopelessly naive about the frustrations we users suffer. So for now, I endure.
>>As for printing, how in demand is it for someone to plug in an electronic device that allows you to view the document already to print it to paper?
For all the same reasons as one might wish to print from a desktop or laptop system. At this point the iPhone is very close to replacing my need for a laptop. Occasionally I might like to print a contract, or a project plan, or a burndown chart for the project board. It's not like I'm asking for a magic pony here, just want the same functionality as my old Apple Newton had. (which could copy & paste, and print to a variety of inkjet and laser printers, even across a network, AND search all the system soups (data and metadata) from day one.)
Slashdot Mirror
>>Why would you never EVER own it?
A simple matter of reliability and trust which goes beyond firearms. Given the choice between a simple machine and a complicated one proven to be less reliable with unknown points of failure, I will choose to rely upon a simple tool.
>>If this existed, it would be one more layer of protection so some kid can't shoot himself or some other kid.
if. if. if. I don't mean to be snide, but given a limitless list of other hypothetical situations anything could be anything.
Sorry, but I don't believe this for one moment.
A firearm must, above all things, be reliable. There is no indication whatsoever that the so-called "smart" features (whatever that is) have been developed to anything even close to acceptable real-world performance. Meaning "I pull trigger, gun goes bang every time." I've seen crappy fingerprint recognizing prototypes, some that require an associated bracelet or ring (works great until the battery dies...), GPS-enabled (no signal? stinks for you).
The police won't carry it.
The military doesn't want it.
Neither does the general public.
Of course it's a sample size of only a few but the gun owners I know (including myself) with whom I have discussed this very topic are agreed -- none of us would ever, EVER own a firearm complicated with failure points (aka "electronics"), which, I will add, could easily be jammed.
I say the study is propaganda meant to sway the easily influenced public herd, or encourage some politicians with reading comprehension issues to ignore the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution they are sworn to uphold.
>>read the fucking Mythical Man Month and realize that the death march is an idiotic way to do things which doesn't really work.
I disagree. The death march model works just fine -- *IF* you have a sufficiently large pool of new developers to replace the old ones dropping off along the way and *IF* your focus is short-term wins over long-term strategy. To wit: the entire video game industry (layoffs after a release, anyone?), the endless employee churn at all the major offshoring companies, "captive" on-site employees via H1b Visas, etc. This is just an extension of what is common outside the IT industry with low-paying service jobs.
If the only metric is cost, or if cost is valued sufficiently higher than quality (not uncommon), then it's all the more obvious.
Infrastructure for a subdivision (especially one this size) has costs. Clearing land, grading, cutting in roads, installing water, sewer, natural gas, electric and phone utilities, permitting, inspections, impact studies & statements, insurance, contracting, setbacks, advertising, etc. all adds up rather quickly.
For OSX, Apple provides a superb tool for simulating "bad" networks -- slow, dropped packets, high latency, or all the above -- called Network Link Conditioner
more info at --> http://nshipster.com/network-l...
That, or they'll be treated to a very delicious and moist slice of cake.
That's the point. You may not have to. If, in exchange for watching a few advertisements a day, consumers were given a shiny new Apple iPhone300kTurbo for "free", or were given "free" cell service, that might be seen as an acceptable trade.
It benefits Apple by giving them evidence that those pricey advertisements they sell are reaching eyeballs.
Pure speculation on my part, btw. I have no inside knowledge (nor do I really care) about Apple's marketing or product plans.
Welcome to Slashdot.
This is precisely the sort of action that could lead to encryption taking hold.
Personally, I blame the turtle, the one all the way down.
>>Getting these into the app store might be tricky, though.
But getting this into the courts will be a snap.
Certain recent high-profile apps store refusals (most notably, google voice) have drawn FCC attention. Apple cannot keep a walled garden forever.
>>A least Microsoft isn't taking picture of people's homes and posting them online without permission.
They don't have to -- if your home has been built or purchased in the past 30 years, it's likely the floorplan is already available online. Just check with your county/parish tax assessor's office. With many of them, just enter the street address and you can see a county tax appraisor's estimate of value beside a photo or two of the home and a floorplan drawing.
This information, in most cases is considered public information and is thus available free to anyone who can click a mouse. Worst case, a simple data scraper would yield an entire county's data in a few days.
So no, they don't have to drive around and take photos when photos are already available online, complete with a floorplan courtesy of the government.
...at 1/10th the cost ($30 vs $300)
good catch -- indeed, that was a goof. meant to write 66 but my fingers had other ideas. Sorry. But at any rate, I don't think the specific numbers are that important. The point was the new machine was computationally hundreds of times faster. But in actual use, it was slower in some areas that really matter, to the degree that even a young child noticed!
BTW, It's been a few years since I read it, but I believe this story is included in Abrash's book titled "Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book" since it's largely a compilation of his DDJ "Mode X" articles and a few others.
Yep, the early 486 with the clock-doubled processor. I had a DX2-80 *I think* (with a VESA local-bus video card so I could play Aces Of The Pacific in 256 color 800x600 mode -- woot!) and thought it was the cat's whiskers. Couldn't believe how fast it was compared to my lowly 33MHz machine @ work. And it only cost me $2300, what a great deal! And to think, now a $99 iPod Touch could run a PC emulator faster than that machine. That's serious progress.
Impressive and would be a huge improvement over the current state of things.
But then again, my 1Mhz Apple ][ could cold boot in just a couple seconds.Of course, loading Applesoft Basic from tape took an additional two minutes but Integer Basic was in the ROM.
Michael Abrash wrote a great article about this in Dr. Dobbs magazine in the 90s. His young daughter (5 years old?) asked him why he never used his "fast" computer. Abrash was using a state-of-the-art 266mhz DX2 powerhouse and couldn't figure out what she meant. She was referring to the old Vic-20 in the corner that would boot in just a few seconds. Windows 3.0 took several minutes to load. IIRC, the article was titled "perception is everything"
Write once. Pay everywhere.
Yet another reason why the newspaper business is bleeding money and descreasing subscriptions year after year after year. Kudos to the editors for attempting something different -- trying to match the product they sell to the market demand.
I don't believe these employees understand they are just that -- retained at the pleasure of their employer. If they wish to spout off with unpopular opinions without fear of retribution, they should have either been college professors or Supreme Court justices.
In the meantime, so long as someone else is paying them, they will do as they are told. Call the Waaaambulance.
Queue the "how many physicists does it take to change a nano lightbulb?" jokes...
Steve Jobs said it well: "Real artists ship."
It's a very entrepreneurial idea -- quit all the talking and hand-waving and actually ship something! There's not much value in developing great ideas that never get out of the lab. :) I would say MSFT is far better at marketing their ideas and capturing market share, while Apple is better at inventing. Others will have a different view.
As for the claim that neither innovates? Hogwash. Taking an idea and integrating it into a viable product IS innovation by definition -- it is something that has not been done before that point. Both MS and Apple innovate, to different degrees, which we can squabble about, ad infinitum.
But back to the original subject, I suspect Apple's desire for custom chips comes not from a desire to save power (there are already many viable low-power CPUs and chipsets available) but rather a desire to fight off Hackintosh clones (OSX running on non-apple hardware, such as the Dell mini 9 or generic desktop PCs). Technologically, there's no reason why this can't happen but one must consider that Apple's hardware sales are quite profitable and that share is worth protecting.
Imagine the horror if the monitor crashed -- A quite literal Blue Screen Of Death!
>>* Butt wiper
No, that's included. AT&T's billing office sends me six sheets or so every month.
Those Apple guys thought of everything!
modded down?
>>Why would you want spam filtering on ANY phone?
Maybe because I don't want to flick through 10 spams for every email?
Look, I can write a Bayesian classifier in a couple hundred lines of code. Trivial. Adding training is just a bit more work and it's not a matter of consuming some precious resource -- counting word frequency (the heart of the algorithm) is not exactly processor intensive and as for storage requirements for the corpus, that won't be much larger than an eBook.
But Apple won't allow a background task (so no proxy server), and they won't approve an app that replaced core functionality (so that rules out a "Mail" replacement app). I can only conclude that they are working on something themselves or are hopelessly naive about the frustrations we users suffer. So for now, I endure.
>>As for printing, how in demand is it for someone to plug in an electronic device that allows you to view the document already to print it to paper?
For all the same reasons as one might wish to print from a desktop or laptop system. At this point the iPhone is very close to replacing my need for a laptop. Occasionally I might like to print a contract, or a project plan, or a burndown chart for the project board. It's not like I'm asking for a magic pony here, just want the same functionality as my old Apple Newton had. (which could copy & paste, and print to a variety of inkjet and laser printers, even across a network, AND search all the system soups (data and metadata) from day one.)
Let me guess -- you work in engineering, not marketing?
I'll start the list:
* printing ...
* spam filtering on email