How difficult is it to hit the maximize button with a finger tip?
Not very difficult, but you also have the option of double tapping the title bar, or my favorite, dragging the window to the top of the screen, which maximizes it using Aero Snap.
I'm not sure about every discipline, but some publications by IEEE are intended specifically for professional engineers who want to keep up with their field but don't require the rigor of a journal publication.
I might also suggest conference proceedings for a prominent conference in your field. Conference papers are usually shorter and less in depth than a journal paper, but still offer a good overview of the research.
"A list of stuff that people can blow up if they want to screw with us", is something that legitimately deserves to be hidden from everyone but the guy dispatching people to guard that stuff.
Isn't it widely known that security by obscurity doesn't work? If it was simply a matter of knowing which buildings to target, anyone can figure this out easily. Maybe they can just ask "the guy dispatching people to guard that stuff" for instance. If anything,/. should know that an open, transparent system can still be secure.
For me, yes there are a number of things WP7 does better than iOS and Android.
First and foremost is the integration with various microsoft products that I use. I realize this doesn't apply to everyone, especially Slashdot users, but it's great for me. Xbox integration is great as I can send messages between my phone and consoles, I can play games, get points, etc. It promises to be even better in the future with the possibility of multiplayer with console gamers. Also, the Windos Marketplace allows for game demos, which is a little nicer than the countless "lite" and "full" apps on the appstore.
Then there's live integration. You just sign in with your live account and you have access to your calendar, mail, messenger, and best of all skydrive. No other phone offers this kind of integration, not even Google. With skydrive I have 25GB of cloud storage, automatically, for free, to which I can upload photos I take with my phone.
Next, office integration. Again, free, and robust. It's not great for creating documents, but I've definitely edited power point presentations and excel documents on the road. The killer app here is Onenote, which allows me to take notes on the phone and sync them with my desktop notes.
Then there's integration with facebook and twitter. I don't need to access separate apps to see someone's status updates; I just go to the people hub, and they're there along with texts, emails, and other communications.
Beyond these integration features, there are some other features which stand out to me. Wireless sync is one iPhone users constantly crave, and one you have to pay for on Android. Music subscription service is great for those who love music. Then there's the Zune software itself, which I find much nicer to use (and better looking) than iTunes. I especially like how it doesn't install 20 different services.
Honestly, I think most of the negative feedback about WP7 is coming from people who never used it, and have no intention of forming an informed opinion on the device. In terms of multitasking, it does a better job than iOS circa June 2010 due to a vastly superior notification system. The only thing it's missing is the various backgrounding APIs introduced by iPhone 4.0, which really only address the needs of a small subset of applications. Cut and paste and other missing features will come shortly (~3 months) according to devs. To me, the platform is exciting and has great potential. People only need to give it a chance.
Coincidentally I have degrees in computer science and engineering, business, and physics, so you can see where my perspective originates. Incidentally I failed biology because of the sheer number of facts I needed to memorize.
Well that's kind of the point. On the iPhone platform, and WP7 for that matter, multitasking in all its forms is enabled by the application developer. Therefore the user cannot expect a reliable experience when using apps; exiting an app can have any effect from erasing all unsaved data to running the process in the background.
Therefore, I don't understand why WP7 multitasking is measured against iPhone, when it's largely similar to the iPhone (covering most user needs) and the iPhone's user experience (in terms of app switching) is inconsistent at best.
iOS apps are hardly guaranteed to be stable or safe. You don't know how many times I've downloaded an app update which completely erased all of my data, or completely crashed on startup.
I'm not sure how PDF readers work, but shouldn't you only have to render the page once, and only re-render it if it changes?
If this is the case, if I'm switching between my ebook and wikipedia, wouldn't it be more efficient to keep the ebook in memory, than to clear memory, close the application, re initialize the application, and then load the book back into memory?
The scenario I run in to is while I'm watching a movie, I might recognize one of the actors and want to know what I've seen him in. So I launch the IMDB app. Netflix will stop playback entirely; when I go to resume, it's not a matter of hitting unpause, but restarting the viewing session. Sometimes playback resumes from where I left off, sometimes not. It seems to be random.
WP7 offers the same multitasking capabilities as the pre iOS 4.0 iPhone, and in some ways goes beyond it. That is, on WP7 you can suspend an application so that when you launch it again, you're where you left off. This accounts for probably 75% of a users need to multitask, and must be implemented on a per application basis. WP7 calls it "tombstoning" (when the application is terminated, a record of its state, the tombstone, is created, and read when the application is launched again.)
WP7 also supports push notifications in a way that's faaaar superior to even iPhone 4. An MSDN blog describes WP7 notifications as a "tap on the user’s shoulder." I would content that the corresponding iPhone experience is a shout in the face and a punch in the stomach; WP7s unintrusive ribbon is much more usable than iPhone application halting pop-up. The idea behind push notifications is to provide a low-resource method for an always connected application, like AIM. I'd say this method meets the needs of another 20% of applications. Again this is enabled per application
So I would argue that WP7 meets the multitasking needs for 95% of applications out there. iOS 4 goes the extra distance and adds certain APIs to provide processes like music that can play in the background. This is something that, beyond 1st party apps, WP7 does not do. Again, this is enabled per application
Pre iOS 4.0, Apple customers argued that true multitasking is not necessary, since the current implementation accounts for the majority of user needs. Now all of a sudden it's the most important measure of a platform. It should be noted that iOS still to this day does not support true multitasking; in each of the examples above, I noted that the functionality must be enabled on a per app basis. The OS will not save your app for you like it does if you remove focus in windows. For instance, the Netflix App will stop playing your movie if you switch to another app. Meaning if you are watching something an you want to look up an actor on IMDB, you're boned.
For these reasons and others, I believe the claims that a) WP7 does not support multitasking and b) it will be the death of the platform are overblown and sensationalized, particularly by people who have never used the platform.
Most instances of malware on the Windows desktop operating system are due to users actively installing malicious programs, security warnings and toggle switches be damned. Malware is much more dangerous for MS than it is for Google or Android, because of the association consumers have between viruses and windows. Suddenly Apple is making "I'm an iPhone, I'm a Windows Phone" ads touting WP7 as the same old MS junk.
Right, but judging the entire platform based on the lack or inclusion of c&p/multitasking is myopic. Despite theese features, WP7 does what other platforms do very well, and better in some situations (for example, I like the camera app better on WP7 compared to iPhone, and every WP7 device is required to have a dedicated hardware camera button, whereas iPhone is a software button you have to tap on the screen).
Further I feel that WP7 offers value that the iPhone or Android can't match like Xbox integration, wireless sync (although it looks like Android has apps you can buy to do this) and other features I've already mentioned.
The platform is just starting, and I find the launch offering to be desirable. You're right that other platforms have these features, and MS must be quick to add them. Talk to me again in a few months. If MS hasn't updated the platform at all, I'll be changing my tune.
Actually, iOS had this functionality before 4.0. On my iPad (pre 4.2), iBooks saved my page location if I left to go into safari. The best thing 4.2 actually added was a quick app switcher (double home button click). Otherwise it's not all that different from before unless your app takes advantage of special functionality (like Pandora).
I don't need to be able to edit word documents while watching a Netflix movie.
The funny thing is, iPhone (or at least iPad, because that's my only experience with iOS 4) still can't do this. When you switch out of the netflix app, the movie stops playing, and sometimes even quits playing when you return to the app.
If this kid is planning to sell these, I hope he has some serious product liability coverage when the inevitable accident occurs.
This is the problem with 8 year olds running businesses. Instead of thinking about these issues, he thinks "Now how can I sell these so I can buy a hockey puck?" Actually I take that back; most businesses don't have the foresight to realize these issues. He'll make a fine capitalist!
Patents are invariant over Euclidian similarity transformations of translation, rotation and scaling. Meaning you can't patent "the same thing but bigger" or "rotated 180 degrees." At least you shouldn't be able to.
Original iPhone lacked 3G, MMS, video recording, third party apps of any kind, and of course an app store. To top it off, it cost $500-$600, came on one carrier, and a single form factor for all. This, on top of multitasking and copy/paste. If the only two things you can pick out are cp/multitasking, you're just grasping at straws to find shortcomings of the platform.
The fact is, these shortcomings of the iPhone were vehemently defended by Apple aficionados. Before June 21, 2010, the official line from Apple users was "Who needs multitasking on a phone?" Now it's some sort of benchmark for the success/failure of a platform, despite the fact that the iPhone earned most of its respect before iOS 4.0.
I understand that today, iPhone does have multitasking/c&p, and I agree it's a shortcoming of the WP7 platform, but I don't think it's a deal killer as there are other reasons to want one of the phones (xbox integration, wireless sync, zunepass, and office integration are my major interests in the platform), and they're sure to be introduced in future updates.
And even with good clues we don't actually measure distance well. Have somebody place items on a parking lot or some place like that, then try to guess the distances. Not going to be very accurate.
And yet we are able to navigate and interact with our environment with a high degree of precision. When I'm driving a car, for instance, without looking at how fast I'm going, knowing distances, the weight of the car, my acceleration and deceleration capabilities, I'm able to stop at a line painted on the road to within half a meter. Just with my eyes!
I work with robots, and even knowing all this information to a high accuracy, there is so much work that needs to be done with localization, navigation, planning, etc. to get it to mimic my performance. The robot must be equipped with laser range finders, wheel encoders, global positioning systems, and an array of other sensors. If only I could slap a vision system on it and call it a day. Whatever the human brain is doing under the hood, it's incredibly sophisticated. We're bad at estimating distances because we don't need to.
Microsoft didn't get sued for bundling IE, they got sued for only giving deals to vendors who refused to bundle other browsers.
That was United States vs. Microsoft. He's talking about the EU's 2009 decision where Microsoft had to provide a ballot box where upon first starting the operating system a user would be presented with various browsers to install. And I agree, it's fucking retarded.
No, he's trying to argue that the appstore shouldn't be the only way to load programs onto the phone, especially if Apple is going to assert total control over it.
Also, I've never owned a craftsman, but I've been able to use any drill bit I've ever owned in any drill I've ever owned. Likewise for extension cords.
Isn't this true of any software? I Updated my Ubuntu install last week and it refused to boot. I had to spend hours backing up my data and reinstalling the OS because I don't have the know how to diagnose the problem. How is this different than a virus taking down my system? Apple recently burned me with Snow Leopard, making it so that it wouldn't work with my 3 year old mac. There are perils at every turn in the tech world, and pretending that one company is the source of them all is foolish.
Also, there was still plenty of room for growth in the console market
And there's not room for growth in the smartphone market? So after 3 years, Apple, Google, and the rest have cornered the entire market, and now growth in this segment is a zero sum game?
Or perhaps in the US alone, only 20% of the phones out there are smart phones and the numbers are rising rapidly. This would suggest that there is plenty of room for growth, at least in America. I would be willing to bet the global numbers are similar.
Slashdot Mirror
Any review of the year in robots should include ROS, which released its first two major distributions this year: box-turtle and c-turtle.
How difficult is it to hit the maximize button with a finger tip?
Not very difficult, but you also have the option of double tapping the title bar, or my favorite, dragging the window to the top of the screen, which maximizes it using Aero Snap.
"oh, have you seen $show yesterday, who would have thought that $surprising_twist"?
Speaking of ending your social life...
I'm not sure about every discipline, but some publications by IEEE are intended specifically for professional engineers who want to keep up with their field but don't require the rigor of a journal publication.
I might also suggest conference proceedings for a prominent conference in your field. Conference papers are usually shorter and less in depth than a journal paper, but still offer a good overview of the research.
"A list of stuff that people can blow up if they want to screw with us", is something that legitimately deserves to be hidden from everyone but the guy dispatching people to guard that stuff.
Isn't it widely known that security by obscurity doesn't work? If it was simply a matter of knowing which buildings to target, anyone can figure this out easily. Maybe they can just ask "the guy dispatching people to guard that stuff" for instance. If anything, /. should know that an open, transparent system can still be secure.
I think you misread the sentence. What I mean is iOS 4.0 introduced backgrounding APIs to the iPhone in particular, not to smartphones in general.
For me, yes there are a number of things WP7 does better than iOS and Android.
First and foremost is the integration with various microsoft products that I use. I realize this doesn't apply to everyone, especially Slashdot users, but it's great for me. Xbox integration is great as I can send messages between my phone and consoles, I can play games, get points, etc. It promises to be even better in the future with the possibility of multiplayer with console gamers. Also, the Windos Marketplace allows for game demos, which is a little nicer than the countless "lite" and "full" apps on the appstore.
Then there's live integration. You just sign in with your live account and you have access to your calendar, mail, messenger, and best of all skydrive. No other phone offers this kind of integration, not even Google. With skydrive I have 25GB of cloud storage, automatically, for free, to which I can upload photos I take with my phone.
Next, office integration. Again, free, and robust. It's not great for creating documents, but I've definitely edited power point presentations and excel documents on the road. The killer app here is Onenote, which allows me to take notes on the phone and sync them with my desktop notes.
Then there's integration with facebook and twitter. I don't need to access separate apps to see someone's status updates; I just go to the people hub, and they're there along with texts, emails, and other communications.
Beyond these integration features, there are some other features which stand out to me. Wireless sync is one iPhone users constantly crave, and one you have to pay for on Android. Music subscription service is great for those who love music. Then there's the Zune software itself, which I find much nicer to use (and better looking) than iTunes. I especially like how it doesn't install 20 different services.
Honestly, I think most of the negative feedback about WP7 is coming from people who never used it, and have no intention of forming an informed opinion on the device. In terms of multitasking, it does a better job than iOS circa June 2010 due to a vastly superior notification system. The only thing it's missing is the various backgrounding APIs introduced by iPhone 4.0, which really only address the needs of a small subset of applications. Cut and paste and other missing features will come shortly (~3 months) according to devs. To me, the platform is exciting and has great potential. People only need to give it a chance.
Coincidentally I have degrees in computer science and engineering, business, and physics, so you can see where my perspective originates. Incidentally I failed biology because of the sheer number of facts I needed to memorize.
Well that's kind of the point. On the iPhone platform, and WP7 for that matter, multitasking in all its forms is enabled by the application developer. Therefore the user cannot expect a reliable experience when using apps; exiting an app can have any effect from erasing all unsaved data to running the process in the background.
Therefore, I don't understand why WP7 multitasking is measured against iPhone, when it's largely similar to the iPhone (covering most user needs) and the iPhone's user experience (in terms of app switching) is inconsistent at best.
iOS apps are hardly guaranteed to be stable or safe. You don't know how many times I've downloaded an app update which completely erased all of my data, or completely crashed on startup.
I'm not sure how PDF readers work, but shouldn't you only have to render the page once, and only re-render it if it changes?
If this is the case, if I'm switching between my ebook and wikipedia, wouldn't it be more efficient to keep the ebook in memory, than to clear memory, close the application, re initialize the application, and then load the book back into memory?
The scenario I run in to is while I'm watching a movie, I might recognize one of the actors and want to know what I've seen him in. So I launch the IMDB app. Netflix will stop playback entirely; when I go to resume, it's not a matter of hitting unpause, but restarting the viewing session. Sometimes playback resumes from where I left off, sometimes not. It seems to be random.
WP7 offers the same multitasking capabilities as the pre iOS 4.0 iPhone, and in some ways goes beyond it. That is, on WP7 you can suspend an application so that when you launch it again, you're where you left off. This accounts for probably 75% of a users need to multitask, and must be implemented on a per application basis. WP7 calls it "tombstoning" (when the application is terminated, a record of its state, the tombstone, is created, and read when the application is launched again.)
WP7 also supports push notifications in a way that's faaaar superior to even iPhone 4. An MSDN blog describes WP7 notifications as a "tap on the user’s shoulder." I would content that the corresponding iPhone experience is a shout in the face and a punch in the stomach; WP7s unintrusive ribbon is much more usable than iPhone application halting pop-up. The idea behind push notifications is to provide a low-resource method for an always connected application, like AIM. I'd say this method meets the needs of another 20% of applications. Again this is enabled per application
So I would argue that WP7 meets the multitasking needs for 95% of applications out there. iOS 4 goes the extra distance and adds certain APIs to provide processes like music that can play in the background. This is something that, beyond 1st party apps, WP7 does not do. Again, this is enabled per application
Pre iOS 4.0, Apple customers argued that true multitasking is not necessary, since the current implementation accounts for the majority of user needs. Now all of a sudden it's the most important measure of a platform. It should be noted that iOS still to this day does not support true multitasking; in each of the examples above, I noted that the functionality must be enabled on a per app basis. The OS will not save your app for you like it does if you remove focus in windows. For instance, the Netflix App will stop playing your movie if you switch to another app. Meaning if you are watching something an you want to look up an actor on IMDB, you're boned.
For these reasons and others, I believe the claims that a) WP7 does not support multitasking and b) it will be the death of the platform are overblown and sensationalized, particularly by people who have never used the platform.
Most instances of malware on the Windows desktop operating system are due to users actively installing malicious programs, security warnings and toggle switches be damned. Malware is much more dangerous for MS than it is for Google or Android, because of the association consumers have between viruses and windows. Suddenly Apple is making "I'm an iPhone, I'm a Windows Phone" ads touting WP7 as the same old MS junk.
Right, but judging the entire platform based on the lack or inclusion of c&p/multitasking is myopic. Despite theese features, WP7 does what other platforms do very well, and better in some situations (for example, I like the camera app better on WP7 compared to iPhone, and every WP7 device is required to have a dedicated hardware camera button, whereas iPhone is a software button you have to tap on the screen).
Further I feel that WP7 offers value that the iPhone or Android can't match like Xbox integration, wireless sync (although it looks like Android has apps you can buy to do this) and other features I've already mentioned.
The platform is just starting, and I find the launch offering to be desirable. You're right that other platforms have these features, and MS must be quick to add them. Talk to me again in a few months. If MS hasn't updated the platform at all, I'll be changing my tune.
Actually, iOS had this functionality before 4.0. On my iPad (pre 4.2), iBooks saved my page location if I left to go into safari. The best thing 4.2 actually added was a quick app switcher (double home button click). Otherwise it's not all that different from before unless your app takes advantage of special functionality (like Pandora).
I don't need to be able to edit word documents while watching a Netflix movie.
The funny thing is, iPhone (or at least iPad, because that's my only experience with iOS 4) still can't do this. When you switch out of the netflix app, the movie stops playing, and sometimes even quits playing when you return to the app.
If this kid is planning to sell these, I hope he has some serious product liability coverage when the inevitable accident occurs.
This is the problem with 8 year olds running businesses. Instead of thinking about these issues, he thinks "Now how can I sell these so I can buy a hockey puck?" Actually I take that back; most businesses don't have the foresight to realize these issues. He'll make a fine capitalist!
Patents are invariant over Euclidian similarity transformations of translation, rotation and scaling. Meaning you can't patent "the same thing but bigger" or "rotated 180 degrees." At least you shouldn't be able to.
Original iPhone lacked 3G, MMS, video recording, third party apps of any kind, and of course an app store. To top it off, it cost $500-$600, came on one carrier, and a single form factor for all. This, on top of multitasking and copy/paste. If the only two things you can pick out are cp/multitasking, you're just grasping at straws to find shortcomings of the platform.
The fact is, these shortcomings of the iPhone were vehemently defended by Apple aficionados. Before June 21, 2010, the official line from Apple users was "Who needs multitasking on a phone?" Now it's some sort of benchmark for the success/failure of a platform, despite the fact that the iPhone earned most of its respect before iOS 4.0.
I understand that today, iPhone does have multitasking/c&p, and I agree it's a shortcoming of the WP7 platform, but I don't think it's a deal killer as there are other reasons to want one of the phones (xbox integration, wireless sync, zunepass, and office integration are my major interests in the platform), and they're sure to be introduced in future updates.
And even with good clues we don't actually measure distance well. Have somebody place items on a parking lot or some place like that, then try to guess the distances. Not going to be very accurate.
And yet we are able to navigate and interact with our environment with a high degree of precision. When I'm driving a car, for instance, without looking at how fast I'm going, knowing distances, the weight of the car, my acceleration and deceleration capabilities, I'm able to stop at a line painted on the road to within half a meter. Just with my eyes!
I work with robots, and even knowing all this information to a high accuracy, there is so much work that needs to be done with localization, navigation, planning, etc. to get it to mimic my performance. The robot must be equipped with laser range finders, wheel encoders, global positioning systems, and an array of other sensors. If only I could slap a vision system on it and call it a day. Whatever the human brain is doing under the hood, it's incredibly sophisticated. We're bad at estimating distances because we don't need to.
Microsoft didn't get sued for bundling IE, they got sued for only giving deals to vendors who refused to bundle other browsers.
That was United States vs. Microsoft. He's talking about the EU's 2009 decision where Microsoft had to provide a ballot box where upon first starting the operating system a user would be presented with various browsers to install. And I agree, it's fucking retarded.
No, he's trying to argue that the appstore shouldn't be the only way to load programs onto the phone, especially if Apple is going to assert total control over it.
Also, I've never owned a craftsman, but I've been able to use any drill bit I've ever owned in any drill I've ever owned. Likewise for extension cords.
Isn't this true of any software? I Updated my Ubuntu install last week and it refused to boot. I had to spend hours backing up my data and reinstalling the OS because I don't have the know how to diagnose the problem. How is this different than a virus taking down my system? Apple recently burned me with Snow Leopard, making it so that it wouldn't work with my 3 year old mac. There are perils at every turn in the tech world, and pretending that one company is the source of them all is foolish.
Also, there was still plenty of room for growth in the console market
And there's not room for growth in the smartphone market? So after 3 years, Apple, Google, and the rest have cornered the entire market, and now growth in this segment is a zero sum game?
Or perhaps in the US alone, only 20% of the phones out there are smart phones and the numbers are rising rapidly. This would suggest that there is plenty of room for growth, at least in America. I would be willing to bet the global numbers are similar.