Yep. Anytime they change your contract, you can opt out without any penalties what-so-ever. It's the law. Those guys hate it, and certainly will never tell you about it, but it's true.
You don't have to pay penalties, but you still have to pay off your equipment. And afterwards, you're left with a device that is next to useless because it won't run on any other carrier's network.
Sorry, but C/C++ isn't designed for "project files" or the kinds of build systems that MS has been trying to shoehorn those languages into. That is a problem with C/C++ (and a real and serious one at that). But you can't fix it in the compiler or IDE without breaking the language. The next C++ language standard will hopefully address it.
Cya in 2020 when they have done it, 5 years after MS in 2015.
Microsoft... proudly popularizing dumb ideas since 1980.
The most obvious reason is code optimization. If your target device is something relatively light on resources like a mobile phone, then you probably want to optimize very aggressively.
And that's why they program the phone in Java???
All forms of optimization require context. For something like "false && statement" all the required context for optimizing away the statement is very nearby.
Whole program optimization is useful for large computational codes. It is useless for something as dynamic as a mobile phone operating system. If you attempt to run such optimizations on something like Android, you get a bloated memory footprint and a miniscule performance improvement, leaving you worse off than you would otherwise have been.
JIT was supposed to fix this (since it obviates the need for whole program analysis; you just compile the hotspots), but obviously that didn't work out so well either.
Whoopity fucking doo! A smart phone alone isn't justification enough to pay these high ass data prices
Several companies offer hundreds of megabytes for $25/month. For a lot of people, that's worth it just to get E-mail, chat, navigation, traffic, weather, and other stuff.
I appreciate the reminder that I need to tell Verizon to jam their data plan in their ass... Either way, their wanting to get rich off of the data flow is pissing me the fuck off.
If you are paying Verizon's inflated fees, you only have yourself to blame; there are alternatives.
A BMW 3 Series is a better car than a Camry but it also is more expensive. There is a reason it is called a luxury car.
The BMW is not more comfortable, nor more reliable, nor lower cost, nor easier to use. It doesn't drive anywhere where the Camry doesn't drive, and it costs more. It will be in the shop more and its repairs will cost a lot more. The few things where it might technically be argued to be better (handling, top speed) don't matter on US roads and highways.
So what? It's still a boring soulless econobox that people almost never buy when they can afford something better.
In fact, the only thing that's "better" about the BMW is the fact that it is more expensive: it is conspicuous consumption. In terms of all the things that matter in a car, the BMW is inferior to the Camry.
Mind you, there are expensive cars that give you something extra for your money: electric cars, luxury limousines, etc. But the Ferrari and the BMWs are overpriced, unreliable crap for people who just want to show off.
So Siri was, apparently, an existing product? Buggered if I'd heard about it.
Siri comes from the CALO project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CALO Google has most of the same technologies in their products, as part of their speech recognition and voice-activated Google search.
More like: Apple takes a bunch of ideas that have been kicking around going nowhere for years, integrates them nicely into a desirable product and markets the hell out of it.
You can put it like that if you like. Doesn't change the fact that Apple didn't invent this stuff, didn't invest in its development, and isn't making significant technical contributions. Hence, they shouldn't get the credit for the innovation.
I suspect (but would be happy if you proved me wrong) that Apple didn't even pay what DARPA originally spent on CALO, but is now busy locking up the technology with patents. And if Steve Jobs were still around, he'd start a "thermonuclear war" over speech technology with his competitors, just like he did the last few times when a paradigm shift was happening.
Android has had voice recognition nearly since the beginning, first via third party apps, then via Google's own voice recognition. One of the most useful ones is Vlingo, which has a "driving mode", were you don't need to press any buttons, or a more that works like Siri.
But like so many features, Apple copies it, comes out with it years later, and then gets the credit for it. What's next? Are people going to talk about how to "bring" Apples substandard iCloud to Android?
You're assuming that the cheap Android devices hurt them. I think that's an erroneous assumption. While cheap Android devices may cause the Apple press to ridicule Android, I think they are a net benefit. The biggest problem with cheap Android devices isn't the cheap hardware, it's lack of access to Google's Market. Instead of clamming up and making things harder for users, Google should open up more.
Apple has such a fringe market that it just isn't worth even competing with them; and Android isn't going to lure away die-hard iPhone users anyway because they by iPhone because of the brand name, not the functionality.
Listening to vocal minorities is not the same as democracy. And I'm not sure whether this kind of push-button response is actually good for democracy or democratic decision making. Far more important than petitioning would be interaction and discussion among constituents, and there seems to be very little of that going on.
Isn't it obvious? First hand goods are produced and sold by companies with big political lobbies; they are hoping to kill competition from second hand sales with this. Second hand goods are just exchanged by people like you and me.
The first one (temp) seems to have peaks at 10 or 20, 130, 240, 325, and 410 or so.
These glacial oscillations have gone on for the past 3 million years; the Vostok core is just the tail end of it (and easy to cite). They are extremely regular for a geological process (they are overlaid by some other processes, which accounts for the variability). They are, in fact, gradually lengthening and deepening (like a grandfather clock running down). You really need to stop being lazy and do some reading yourself so that you can actually understand what you're looking at.
There is something serious going on here, but so badly overstating the precision of the results is no way to convince even moderately intelligent people (who passed their high-school math classes) of anything.
That's because you still aren't thinking clearly about the arguments. The length or structure of the cold periods doesn't matter much to us (although it has been remarkably regular for dozens of cycles). What matters is that they are long and civilization destroying, that the warm periods are invariably brief, and that we have been in a warm period for about 10-20ka. The Vostok core illustrates this four of those cycles. It also shows you that temperatures and CO2 concentrations have been as high as predicted by IPCC for this cycle if we don't do anything, yet earth entered another long cold spell anyway.
So, explain to me, since earth hasn't escaped from this regular cycle for millions of years, at higher temperatures and higher CO2 concentrations, why should it do so now? And even if human activity could cause such a change in global climate, why wouldn't that be a better outcome than another 80000 years of vast ice sheets covering the northern hemisphere?
Obviously, you didn't understand them at all then, since you responded to my comment about glacial oscillations with a comment about a putative 30 million year ice age cycle. Therefore, again, do some reading and try to understand this stuff.
Intent isn't sufficient. They need to release frequently and completely if they don't want to lose the trust of the community. They may not have a problem yet, but they soon will if they don't act soon.
Legally, of course, they can do what they want and get away with it. But one reason users and companies adopted Android was because Google promised to keep it open source and royalty free.
Generally, there's a strong presumption that if it was done with your car and you didn't report your car as stolen, you did it. It's the same with your computer.
Of course they do, and it has a name: Lawful interception
Lawful interception requires a court order in the US. In Germany, it's a judgment call by the police, controlled only by internal reviews.
That is very interesting: even during a criminal terrorism investigation, a suspect's personal notes and diary are legally protected.
That's protection against investigation by the police, enforced largely by internal reviews. It isn't protection against intelligence services or state security services, and even for police work there are exceptions.
I doubt very many other nations have such strong privacy laws
You illustrate the major problem with German privacy: Germans actually trust that the existence of laws will protect them from government abuse. You'd think a nation that was run by the Nazis and in which a democratically elected government used personal information to commit mass murder would know better, but apparently the lesson still hasn't sunk in.
I seriously doubt it. Since WWII, German governments have gotten away with a lot, including massive surveillance and widespread invasions of privacy. Germans just don't care.
The glaciation records have been published often and openly, and regardless of the level of detail, the only accurate description of the graphs is "chaotic". There was a bit of a fuss a while back about the detection of a regular "signal" with a 30-million-year wavelength, but that took some sophisticated statistical work to ferret out, and is still considered somewhat hypothetical.
You're off by about 3 orders of magnitude. You're confusing putative periodicity of geologic ice ages (maybe every 30-100ma) with glacial oscillations.
What's especially funny about this is the claim that the glacial record shows "regular as clockwork" variations. But I suppose this sort of claim is one simple test for whether a writer knows anything at all about the topic. In discussions with scientific quacks,
Your sort of ignorance and arrogance would be laughable if the subject weren't so serious and if you kind of addled thinking wasn't so widespread.
I don't see how a system you describe as "regular as clockwork" system on an approximately 100,000 year cycle could start 80,000 years ahead of schedule.
Each cycle is about 80-100ka of cold temperatures, followed by about 10-20ka of warm temperatures. We are now near the end of our 10-20ka warm spell. The Wikipedia page is pretty good and consistent with the original literature; the graphs say it clearer than I can:
That sounds like a classic case of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
I'm not a climatologist and don't pretend to be one. But I'm a scientist and do time series analysis and work with dynamical systems. If the people who propose massive interventions against global warming can't make an argument that I understand, then that's their fault not mine.
I understand where you are coming from, but then I actually got curious, read the IPCC reports, read many of the original papers. I suggest you do so too and draw your own conclusions.
Not at all. The end of the last ice age caused a rise of about 8C and a rise in sea levels of 120m. Since then, the weather has oscillated by about 1-2C and sea levels have remained unusually stable for a few millennia. Over the last century, humans have caused some warming that would otherwise not have happened and are probably causing sea levels to rise a little. All of that is uncontroversial. None of that implies that we can or should do anything about global warming.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't have to pay penalties, but you still have to pay off your equipment. And afterwards, you're left with a device that is next to useless because it won't run on any other carrier's network.
Evidently, you miss the old days when Stalin gave you all the free, high-speed Internet you wanted! Uncensored too!
I usually get by on a few hundred megs per month, and I use my 3G constantly. It's not a problem for normal smartphone usage.
Sorry, but C/C++ isn't designed for "project files" or the kinds of build systems that MS has been trying to shoehorn those languages into. That is a problem with C/C++ (and a real and serious one at that). But you can't fix it in the compiler or IDE without breaking the language. The next C++ language standard will hopefully address it.
Microsoft... proudly popularizing dumb ideas since 1980.
And that's why they program the phone in Java???
Whole program optimization is useful for large computational codes. It is useless for something as dynamic as a mobile phone operating system. If you attempt to run such optimizations on something like Android, you get a bloated memory footprint and a miniscule performance improvement, leaving you worse off than you would otherwise have been.
JIT was supposed to fix this (since it obviates the need for whole program analysis; you just compile the hotspots), but obviously that didn't work out so well either.
Several companies offer hundreds of megabytes for $25/month. For a lot of people, that's worth it just to get E-mail, chat, navigation, traffic, weather, and other stuff.
If you are paying Verizon's inflated fees, you only have yourself to blame; there are alternatives.
The BMW is not more comfortable, nor more reliable, nor lower cost, nor easier to use. It doesn't drive anywhere where the Camry doesn't drive, and it costs more. It will be in the shop more and its repairs will cost a lot more. The few things where it might technically be argued to be better (handling, top speed) don't matter on US roads and highways.
In fact, the only thing that's "better" about the BMW is the fact that it is more expensive: it is conspicuous consumption. In terms of all the things that matter in a car, the BMW is inferior to the Camry.
Mind you, there are expensive cars that give you something extra for your money: electric cars, luxury limousines, etc. But the Ferrari and the BMWs are overpriced, unreliable crap for people who just want to show off.
Oh, the Ferrari is special: it's an overpriced, unreliable, impractical car for guys who feel inadequate. Kind of like Apple products.
And the parody is better than the original.
Siri comes from the CALO project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CALO Google has most of the same technologies in their products, as part of their speech recognition and voice-activated Google search.
You can put it like that if you like. Doesn't change the fact that Apple didn't invent this stuff, didn't invest in its development, and isn't making significant technical contributions. Hence, they shouldn't get the credit for the innovation.
I suspect (but would be happy if you proved me wrong) that Apple didn't even pay what DARPA originally spent on CALO, but is now busy locking up the technology with patents. And if Steve Jobs were still around, he'd start a "thermonuclear war" over speech technology with his competitors, just like he did the last few times when a paradigm shift was happening.
I've used iOS and Android since they came out; you are full of shit.
Android has had voice recognition nearly since the beginning, first via third party apps, then via Google's own voice recognition. One of the most useful ones is Vlingo, which has a "driving mode", were you don't need to press any buttons, or a more that works like Siri.
But like so many features, Apple copies it, comes out with it years later, and then gets the credit for it. What's next? Are people going to talk about how to "bring" Apples substandard iCloud to Android?
You're assuming that the cheap Android devices hurt them. I think that's an erroneous assumption. While cheap Android devices may cause the Apple press to ridicule Android, I think they are a net benefit. The biggest problem with cheap Android devices isn't the cheap hardware, it's lack of access to Google's Market. Instead of clamming up and making things harder for users, Google should open up more.
Apple has such a fringe market that it just isn't worth even competing with them; and Android isn't going to lure away die-hard iPhone users anyway because they by iPhone because of the brand name, not the functionality.
Listening to vocal minorities is not the same as democracy. And I'm not sure whether this kind of push-button response is actually good for democracy or democratic decision making. Far more important than petitioning would be interaction and discussion among constituents, and there seems to be very little of that going on.
Isn't it obvious? First hand goods are produced and sold by companies with big political lobbies; they are hoping to kill competition from second hand sales with this. Second hand goods are just exchanged by people like you and me.
These glacial oscillations have gone on for the past 3 million years; the Vostok core is just the tail end of it (and easy to cite). They are extremely regular for a geological process (they are overlaid by some other processes, which accounts for the variability). They are, in fact, gradually lengthening and deepening (like a grandfather clock running down). You really need to stop being lazy and do some reading yourself so that you can actually understand what you're looking at.
That's because you still aren't thinking clearly about the arguments. The length or structure of the cold periods doesn't matter much to us (although it has been remarkably regular for dozens of cycles). What matters is that they are long and civilization destroying, that the warm periods are invariably brief, and that we have been in a warm period for about 10-20ka. The Vostok core illustrates this four of those cycles. It also shows you that temperatures and CO2 concentrations have been as high as predicted by IPCC for this cycle if we don't do anything, yet earth entered another long cold spell anyway.
So, explain to me, since earth hasn't escaped from this regular cycle for millions of years, at higher temperatures and higher CO2 concentrations, why should it do so now? And even if human activity could cause such a change in global climate, why wouldn't that be a better outcome than another 80000 years of vast ice sheets covering the northern hemisphere?
As for convincing people, people seem to be coming around, with 48% now saying that the concerns were exaggerated (up from 31% in 1998) : http://www.gallup.com/poll/126560/americans-global-warming-concerns-continue-drop.aspx
Obviously, you didn't understand them at all then, since you responded to my comment about glacial oscillations with a comment about a putative 30 million year ice age cycle. Therefore, again, do some reading and try to understand this stuff.
Intent isn't sufficient. They need to release frequently and completely if they don't want to lose the trust of the community. They may not have a problem yet, but they soon will if they don't act soon.
Legally, of course, they can do what they want and get away with it. But one reason users and companies adopted Android was because Google promised to keep it open source and royalty free.
Generally, there's a strong presumption that if it was done with your car and you didn't report your car as stolen, you did it. It's the same with your computer.
Lawful interception requires a court order in the US. In Germany, it's a judgment call by the police, controlled only by internal reviews.
That's protection against investigation by the police, enforced largely by internal reviews. It isn't protection against intelligence services or state security services, and even for police work there are exceptions.
You illustrate the major problem with German privacy: Germans actually trust that the existence of laws will protect them from government abuse. You'd think a nation that was run by the Nazis and in which a democratically elected government used personal information to commit mass murder would know better, but apparently the lesson still hasn't sunk in.
I seriously doubt it. Since WWII, German governments have gotten away with a lot, including massive surveillance and widespread invasions of privacy. Germans just don't care.
"the weather has" -- that should of course have been "mean global temperatures"
You're off by about 3 orders of magnitude. You're confusing putative periodicity of geologic ice ages (maybe every 30-100ma) with glacial oscillations.
We have been in a geologic ice age for about 15 million years. We have had glacial oscillations for the past 3 million years (confusingly also referred to as "ice ages"). The 100ka periodicity is crystal clear. See one of the most highly cited papers in climatology, "Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica", JR Petit, et al., Nature, 1999, figure here.
Your sort of ignorance and arrogance would be laughable if the subject weren't so serious and if you kind of addled thinking wasn't so widespread.
Each cycle is about 80-100ka of cold temperatures, followed by about 10-20ka of warm temperatures. We are now near the end of our 10-20ka warm spell. The Wikipedia page is pretty good and consistent with the original literature; the graphs say it clearer than I can:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology
I'm not a climatologist and don't pretend to be one. But I'm a scientist and do time series analysis and work with dynamical systems. If the people who propose massive interventions against global warming can't make an argument that I understand, then that's their fault not mine.
I understand where you are coming from, but then I actually got curious, read the IPCC reports, read many of the original papers. I suggest you do so too and draw your own conclusions.
Not at all. The end of the last ice age caused a rise of about 8C and a rise in sea levels of 120m. Since then, the weather has oscillated by about 1-2C and sea levels have remained unusually stable for a few millennia. Over the last century, humans have caused some warming that would otherwise not have happened and are probably causing sea levels to rise a little. All of that is uncontroversial. None of that implies that we can or should do anything about global warming.