It's got fewer apps than the previous generation of smartphones... whether they're using Symbian, Windows, or Palm OS. And it's not just the number of applications.
* It's losing capability that was there in smartphones ten years ago. Nokia and Palm had general purpose smartphones last century, and Microsoft's partners followed within a few years.
* It's losing the ability to run existing applications under simulation or emulation. I can run all my PalmOS applications under UAE... but not on an iPhone.
Backing off on a core capability that were there in ten year old products is just critical, it really does put the iPhone in a new category... something less than a true smartphone. A smartphone is a general purpose handheld computer. If you can only run canned apps, either shipped with the phone or pulled in through a portal, it's not "smart". It's cool that it's made running applications on your phone popular, but it's less capable than what many of us have been using for a decade,
Re:Like the Unbeliever series?
on
The Magicians
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· Score: 1
/me ties pregister down in a chair (Clockwork-Orange style) and plays "Bright Eyes" at him until his ears bleed. Freaking rabbits indeed.
Re:Like the Unbeliever series?
on
The Magicians
·
· Score: 1
Thanks, you're right... that's a good summary of the problem with Lord Foul's Bane. I don't know whether the other faults I remember are real or just a side effect of the complete lack of a sympathetic character.
Apathetic, I can handle. I'll just pretend it's Wodehouse.:)
Like the Unbeliever series?
on
The Magicians
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Instead, when I read this book, I saw through the eyes of a fairly apathetic protagonist, who messes things up and blames everyone else, who had chances to become a hero and fails each time.
Would you say there's a similarity between this character and Donaldson's Thomas Covenant?
While Covenant doesn't fail *every* time, it was the extreme unlikeability of the character that put me off and made finishing the novel a chore. I didn't even care all that much whether he learned to overcome that character, and at most I was vaguely worried about whether he was going to die in the real world or not.
If you want a versatile, easy to use, high end phone, but don't want more than that, get an iPhone. If you want a real smartphone, get a real smartphone. If Apple doesn't want to sell a general purpose smart handheld, that's their prerogative. There's plenty of options right now.
While it's unlikely that Google's scanning technology is as dramatic as the one in Vinge's novel, there appear to be striking similarities. I wonder if Larry Page or Sergey Brin have read it.
Just checked Baen.com and all the Tor books sold through Webscriptions seem to be listed as "not currently available". Guess Tor wants to cut out the middleman.
I don't like Mother Hubbard and I think almost all religions are cages for minds, but would this have been so bad had it been from a mainstream religion, Christianity, Islam, etc?
In whatever alternate universe in which this COULD have come from a mainstream church, probably.
You've never actually looked at the mousepad settings panel on your Mac, have you?
Sure. None of them say "physically add an extra button".
I've tried them all. I've tried third party hacks. None of them give me an actual extra button that I can feel with my fingers, that I can reliably hit without having to stop and think about what I'm doing lest I brush the mousepad and move the mouse and click in the wrong place. Nothing but a separate physical button will solve that problem.
You don't have that problem? I'm happy for you. Enough people do that Apple's passive-aggressive war against the second mouse button is fundamentally self-defeating.
This is only a problem if you don't want a solution.
No matter how many times you solve the wrong problem, you're still SOLVING THE WRONG PROBLEM.
The problem with the two finger tap is that you have to touch the positioning device (the trackpad surface) to double tap, which means that there is a possibility of moving the mouse as you attempt to tap. Now, some people apparently don't have a problem with this... but other people do. The new trackpads with the pivoting trackpad as the button make the problem ten times worse. A separate pair of buttons is simpler to implement, more reliable, and works for more people.
I agree, the passive-aggressive trackpad on my Macbook Pro with its two finger tap (which I too often screw up) really ticks me off. It makes me wish I could run OS X on a Thinkpad.
Apple's hardware style is simply something I have to put up with to get an OS that doesn't suck that has an actual commercial application base.
So, I ask, what am I getting for Free or a flate rate that cloud companies are going to make me pay through the nose for?
Everything on your hard disk. Everything on your bookshelves. You don't pay every time you take down a book and read it, slot a tape or DVD into the player, play a song in your music library, fire up Halo or Okami. These things are flat rate... you pay for them once and use them as many times as you want as long as you want.
I thought the most interesting part of the article was the bit about the Beatles and the way they're accidentally debunking Beatles urban legends in their trivia. I'm not much into gaming but I almost want to get it just for that.:)
In a cathartic orgy of violence in the third act, in which everyone dies except the narrator, who is finally revealed to be an obscure character who was shown briefly in the second episode and everyone forgot about in the meantime.
It would just act like "stop" and not do anything. How is that mysterious?
If the page just started refreshing under control of a script, I hope it wouldn't be acting like "stop" or even like "refresh", it would just not do anything. If I'm trying to keep it from starting the refresh before it clears the page I'm actually reading, I sure as hell don't want to to "not do anything". I want a button that actually works. One that always does the same thing.
The plan is for the button to be invisibly disabled for about half a second just after changing from "stop" to "reload", to take human reaction time into account.
Worse and worse, now the button will mysteriously _not work_ some times.
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It's got fewer apps than the previous generation of smartphones... whether they're using Symbian, Windows, or Palm OS. And it's not just the number of applications.
* It's losing capability that was there in smartphones ten years ago. Nokia and Palm had general purpose smartphones last century, and Microsoft's partners followed within a few years.
* It's losing the ability to run existing applications under simulation or emulation. I can run all my PalmOS applications under UAE... but not on an iPhone.
Backing off on a core capability that were there in ten year old products is just critical, it really does put the iPhone in a new category... something less than a true smartphone. A smartphone is a general purpose handheld computer. If you can only run canned apps, either shipped with the phone or pulled in through a portal, it's not "smart". It's cool that it's made running applications on your phone popular, but it's less capable than what many of us have been using for a decade,
/me ties pregister down in a chair (Clockwork-Orange style) and plays "Bright Eyes" at him until his ears bleed. Freaking rabbits indeed.
Thanks, you're right... that's a good summary of the problem with Lord Foul's Bane. I don't know whether the other faults I remember are real or just a side effect of the complete lack of a sympathetic character.
Apathetic, I can handle. I'll just pretend it's Wodehouse. :)
Instead, when I read this book, I saw through the eyes of a fairly apathetic protagonist, who messes things up and blames everyone else, who had chances to become a hero and fails each time.
Would you say there's a similarity between this character and Donaldson's Thomas Covenant?
While Covenant doesn't fail *every* time, it was the extreme unlikeability of the character that put me off and made finishing the novel a chore. I didn't even care all that much whether he learned to overcome that character, and at most I was vaguely worried about whether he was going to die in the real world or not.
If you want a versatile, easy to use, high end phone, but don't want more than that, get an iPhone. If you want a real smartphone, get a real smartphone. If Apple doesn't want to sell a general purpose smart handheld, that's their prerogative. There's plenty of options right now.
If the situation were reversed and Sony was bribing a corrupt police force to do their bidding, there would be widespread denounciations.
I don't see any insinuation in either story that corruption was involved. Can you provide a reference for the source of your information?
While it's unlikely that Google's scanning technology is as dramatic as the one in Vinge's novel, there appear to be striking similarities. I wonder if Larry Page or Sergey Brin have read it.
Favorite line in the video: "He's like a little puppy."
Most people can't take advantage of them
Nuff said.
Just checked Baen.com and all the Tor books sold through Webscriptions seem to be listed as "not currently available". Guess Tor wants to cut out the middleman.
I don't like Mother Hubbard and I think almost all religions are cages for minds, but would this have been so bad had it been from a mainstream religion, Christianity, Islam, etc?
In whatever alternate universe in which this COULD have come from a mainstream church, probably.
You've never actually looked at the mousepad settings panel on your Mac, have you?
Sure. None of them say "physically add an extra button".
I've tried them all. I've tried third party hacks. None of them give me an actual extra button that I can feel with my fingers, that I can reliably hit without having to stop and think about what I'm doing lest I brush the mousepad and move the mouse and click in the wrong place. Nothing but a separate physical button will solve that problem.
You don't have that problem? I'm happy for you. Enough people do that Apple's passive-aggressive war against the second mouse button is fundamentally self-defeating.
This is only a problem if you don't want a solution.
No matter how many times you solve the wrong problem, you're still SOLVING THE WRONG PROBLEM.
The problem with the two finger tap is that you have to touch the positioning device (the trackpad surface) to double tap, which means that there is a possibility of moving the mouse as you attempt to tap. Now, some people apparently don't have a problem with this... but other people do. The new trackpads with the pivoting trackpad as the button make the problem ten times worse. A separate pair of buttons is simpler to implement, more reliable, and works for more people.
If I wanted to run Windows, I wouldn't have a Macbook.
So then change how the mouse pad works.
I'm not prepared to solder in an extra button.
I agree, the passive-aggressive trackpad on my Macbook Pro with its two finger tap (which I too often screw up) really ticks me off. It makes me wish I could run OS X on a Thinkpad.
Apple's hardware style is simply something I have to put up with to get an OS that doesn't suck that has an actual commercial application base.
Well, it's almost like there's more Anime than TV at TVTropes anyway. :)
So, I ask, what am I getting for Free or a flate rate that cloud companies are going to make me pay through the nose for?
Everything on your hard disk. Everything on your bookshelves. You don't pay every time you take down a book and read it, slot a tape or DVD into the player, play a song in your music library, fire up Halo or Okami. These things are flat rate... you pay for them once and use them as many times as you want as long as you want.
Obviously the definition of a minimalist window manager has drifted over time. Feature creep at the low end. Give wmx a try.
I thought the most interesting part of the article was the bit about the Beatles and the way they're accidentally debunking Beatles urban legends in their trivia. I'm not much into gaming but I almost want to get it just for that. :)
... run Linux?
In a cathartic orgy of violence in the third act, in which everyone dies except the narrator, who is finally revealed to be an obscure character who was shown briefly in the second episode and everyone forgot about in the meantime.
Oh, sorry, I was reading TVTropes.
It would just act like "stop" and not do anything. How is that mysterious?
If the page just started refreshing under control of a script, I hope it wouldn't be acting like "stop" or even like "refresh", it would just not do anything. If I'm trying to keep it from starting the refresh before it clears the page I'm actually reading, I sure as hell don't want to to "not do anything". I want a button that actually works. One that always does the same thing.
The plan is for the button to be invisibly disabled for about half a second just after changing from "stop" to "reload", to take human reaction time into account.
Worse and worse, now the button will mysteriously _not work_ some times.
How about this... just don't do it?
I'm more interested in discouraging Firefox from picking up this stupid user interface design as well.