Yes, iTunes for Windows is a sub-standard app... for the Windows platform.
Compared to other Windows apps (which are already not great feats of engineering), the iTunes app really sucks in many areas - slow startup, unresponsive UI whenever it is busy, non-standard UI elements, etc.
To be fair you can level those same criticisms at Office as well. Perhaps it's the platform that is the problem in the Windows case?
He also said "While cute, I don't think it really qualifies as much of a First-Encounter-type UI experiment." That's the bit that was contradicted: no one claimed that it did.
You, as a participant in online gambling, have ZERO ability to determine if you are being cheated.
Firstly, if you're coming out ahead, who cares? Secondly, it's not even true: it is possible to detect cheating statistically. Thirdly, why would they bother? They're literally raking the money in anyway.
Re:He didn't address suitability of it as a ereade
on
iPad Review
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· Score: 0
I think the iPad will be similar to iTunes and the Wii. Most people store their own mp3's on their iPods and the attach rate on the Wii is the lowest of all consoles.
The myth that the Wii has a particularly low attach rate is simply false. According to Wikipedia by the end of 2009 509.66M games had been sold to 67.45M Wiis: an attach rate of over 7.5. That's exactly the same as the Xbox 360 claims. The PS3 has sold 174.9M games and 25M consoles to the end of Q1 '09 for an attach rate of about 7. The fact is that the attach rate is not low now. It was initially low, but that is hardly surprising for a new system. What is also true is that most of the biggest selling Wii games are made by Nintendo so it's not a great platform for 3rd party developers. But the idea that Wii owners don't buy games is simply FUD.
And nothing in TFA suggests that the two charged with statutory rape had anything to do with the bullying (cyber or otherwise); they aren't charged with the other stuff.
$.05 an article? Micropayment? How many articles have you read on the internet today? How many this month? Let's see... in the past hour or so I read...
Ok... that works out to $.55 in an hour. Let's say 3 hours on the internet per day or 21 hours per week... $11.55 a week multiplied by 4 to get per month... $46.20... multiplied by 12 for the yearly cost... $554.40. $554.40 a year on micropayments!!!
I think those numbers are high - you're talking about averaging 33 articles a day. I doubt many people read that much. Personally I probably average less than 10. So I'd be looking at something like $150 per year, which doesn't actually sound that bad. Except that I already pay something like $500 a year for internet access.
The space is your screen is yours, but the content you're downloading isn't. If you don't want to pay for it (either by subscribing or watching ads), maybe you shouldn't see the content.
You know, this isn't like in file sharing were all that is "lost" are hypothetical sales. You are effectively using their resources and thus costing them real money.
I don't know about the poster you replied to, but in my case I get a little checked box saying "Ads Disabled, Thanks again for helping make Slashdot great!".
Slashdot graciously gave me the option of disabling the advertising and I took them up on that offer.
To give you an idea of the cost breakdown, look here. Diagram is for textbooks; trade publishing is a bit different, but not wildly so. As you can see, freight is a very small part of the cost, and (it's not clear from the diagram) but printing is not a huge contributor, either. It's mostly editorial and administrative fees, author royalties, sub-licensing, and taxes
Printing looks like its around a third of the cost of the book, add in store costs and distribution and you could probably half the cost of an ebook all in.
Look again. That 32.1c for "Publisher's Paper, Printing and Editorial Costs" includes "record keeping, billing, publisher’s offices, employee’s salaries and benefits". Most of that is still going to be applicable to eBooks.
The Kindle has a free unlimited data plan with no contract, a screen that's much easier on the eyes than backlit LCD, a much longer battery life, and it run Linux.
In code, however, it makes a world of difference, and therefore it doesn't make sense to use a font that may cause confusion between a pair of parentheses '()' and a zero '0', an 'I' and an 'l', a single dash '-' and two dashes '--', etc.
You know it is possible to design a proportional font which keeps all the different characters visually distinct, right?
Notice that this wasn't a report of 250% sales growth... it was a report of 250% increase in a poll asking "What cell phone do you PLAN to buy?"... not quite the same thing.
Also worth noting is the complete lack of any mention of the margin of error. And the report also doesn't really explain what is losing out to Android. The summary implies it's the iPhone, but TFA says that iPhone demand went from 32% to 28% - only a small fraction of the 15 points that Android picked up. From the original story the numbers are:
iPhone from 32 (Sept 09) fell to 28 (Dec 09)
Android from 6 rose to 21
Blackberry from 17 stayed basically stable at 18
Windows Mobile dropped from 9 to 6
Palm OS/Web OS dropped from 6 to 3.
That leaves 30% unaccounted for in the September numbers and 24% unaccounted for in the December numbers.
Now, to specifically answer the question: Although tractors, seeders and harvesters are coin based purchases, the fuel refills are not. Now, you don't need to buy the fuel, you can wait a day and get a free refill, but if you have one of the larger farms, you will not be able to harvest, plow and seed all of it on the one refill. And since you have a very limited supply of FVD that you earn.... It becomes a habit that must be paid for.
Except tractors, seeders and harvesters only reduce the number of clicks you have to do. They don't have any significant bearing on the game - you don't actually need them. Also a bit of planning can let you use them for free even with a large farm: just plant smaller plots with selected crops that will be due for harvest when you know you'll have fuel (this is actually just about the only scope for strategy in the whole game). So it's easy to avoid getting addicted to buying fuel if you don't want to.
I thought about it for a while, and I really didn't have a good answer. I've paid monthly fees to play MMOG's before. I pay money for a usenet account. To most of my friends spending money for these things would seem just as ridiculous. It's all a matter of perspective. For them, that tractor in Farmville is about as far as they've ventured into the gaming world outside of consoles, so why not spend a little money for it?
And unlike non-free MMOGs you don't have to pay. A monthly fee is at least as dubious a proposition given all the games out there that don't charge a subscription. Paying in these Zynga games is always a reasoned tradeoff: "I want X so I'll pay $Y to get it". I may not think that X is worth Y, but that's a personal value judgement no different than scoffing at people who buy stuff from shops that I think is overvalued.
As for how "good" these games are, they use basically the same formula as Diablo and WOW. Do stuff to gain levels and achievements and collect stuff. That's why people play them and keep playing them: they're addictive.
Apple is not a GSM Association member. They had nothing to do with developing GSM, and so don't have claim to the favorable RAND terms available to GSM Association members.
If Nokia wanted more in exchange for the use of their patents than other GSM patent holders do, then that is their right.
My understanding is that Nokia agreed to license those patents under FRAND terms to anyone implementing the GSM standard as a condition of having those technologies as part of the standard. If so then they don't have right to ask for whatever they like now.
Well.. you went and made me search wikipedia.. thanks for that.. 2008 total assets for Apple 39.57 billion.. 2008 total assets for Nokia 39.58 billion.. ok so you say, well thats only.01 billion more.. but the thing is, Nokia's billions are Euros.
You should have searched something more up to date than wikipedia. That 39.47B figure is for 2008. According to their 10K they now have 53.85B, or which 34B is liquid assets. Nokia's market cap is less than double that.
These little things are a) very helpful everyday things, value of which you realize only after loosing them
How many o's are there in "lost"? Use the same number when writing "lose". How many o's are there in "goose"? Use the same number when writing "loose".
'Irregardless' is a double negative and is thusly illogical by construction and would only be understandable to people born in the U.S. since 1970, and those less literate in the U.S. prior to that.
You are completely misunderestimating the ability of people to figure out what someone means (as opposed to what someone actually says).
Yes, there is something different. A typewriter is a durable device that lasts many years. It will build character as it wears. On the other hand, a computer grows viruses as it ages. In addition, they aren't very durable at all (I've had 7 computers/laptops. Only one of them still works... the one I'm using now) and they don't last very many years at all.
I see your anecdote and raise you an anecdote: I have two Amigas from the early 90s that both still work fine (or at least did the last time I tried them a couple of years ago). I keep them purely for sentimental reasons.
Yes, and in the US we have the right of free speech. The solution is not to suppress speech but to change the concept of how past infractions are viewed. While the later is a difficult task; repressing speech in the name of protecting people's rights is far worse.
And yet you still have libel and slander laws. You have laws about obscenity and regulation of pornography. You have regulation of commercial speech. The right to freedom of speech is not so simple and universal as you are making out.
1500 characters, 1-20 per crack attempt, 30k to check. That's nothing. Any other trivial modifications you make, you end up just hoping your attacker doesn't try.
You don't have to construct your password using consecutive characters - you could use every second one or whatever. You don't have to use a left-to-right ordering either.
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Yes, iTunes for Windows is a sub-standard app... for the Windows platform.
Compared to other Windows apps (which are already not great feats of engineering), the iTunes app really sucks in many areas - slow startup, unresponsive UI whenever it is busy, non-standard UI elements, etc.
To be fair you can level those same criticisms at Office as well. Perhaps it's the platform that is the problem in the Windows case?
He also said "While cute, I don't think it really qualifies as much of a First-Encounter-type UI experiment." That's the bit that was contradicted: no one claimed that it did.
You, as a participant in online gambling, have ZERO ability to determine if you are being cheated.
Firstly, if you're coming out ahead, who cares? Secondly, it's not even true: it is possible to detect cheating statistically. Thirdly, why would they bother? They're literally raking the money in anyway.
I think the iPad will be similar to iTunes and the Wii. Most people store their own mp3's on their iPods and the attach rate on the Wii is the lowest of all consoles.
The myth that the Wii has a particularly low attach rate is simply false. According to Wikipedia by the end of 2009 509.66M games had been sold to 67.45M Wiis: an attach rate of over 7.5. That's exactly the same as the Xbox 360 claims. The PS3 has sold 174.9M games and 25M consoles to the end of Q1 '09 for an attach rate of about 7. The fact is that the attach rate is not low now. It was initially low, but that is hardly surprising for a new system. What is also true is that most of the biggest selling Wii games are made by Nintendo so it's not a great platform for 3rd party developers. But the idea that Wii owners don't buy games is simply FUD.
The 17yo was. From http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/03/holding_for_pho.html:
Scheibel's office released this list of those being charged, and the charges they face.
I'm surprised that "disturbance of a school assembly" is a crime. Do school assemblies really need statutory protection?
$.05 an article? Micropayment? How many articles have you read on the internet today? How many this month? Let's see... in the past hour or so I read...
$.05 1-Article MMO-Champion.com $.10 2-Articles WoW.com $.10 2-Articles Slashdot.org $.10 2-Articles ArsTechnica.com $.10 2-Articles Cracked.com $.05 1-Article NYTimes.com $.05 1-Article NewsoftheWeird.comOk... that works out to $.55 in an hour. Let's say 3 hours on the internet per day or 21 hours per week... $11.55 a week multiplied by 4 to get per month... $46.20... multiplied by 12 for the yearly cost... $554.40. $554.40 a year on micropayments!!!
I think those numbers are high - you're talking about averaging 33 articles a day. I doubt many people read that much. Personally I probably average less than 10. So I'd be looking at something like $150 per year, which doesn't actually sound that bad. Except that I already pay something like $500 a year for internet access.
So you're one of the freeloaders TFA talks about.
The space is your screen is yours, but the content you're downloading isn't. If you don't want to pay for it (either by subscribing or watching ads), maybe you shouldn't see the content.
You know, this isn't like in file sharing were all that is "lost" are hypothetical sales. You are effectively using their resources and thus costing them real money.
I don't know about the poster you replied to, but in my case I get a little checked box saying "Ads Disabled, Thanks again for helping make Slashdot great!". Slashdot graciously gave me the option of disabling the advertising and I took them up on that offer.
To give you an idea of the cost breakdown, look here. Diagram is for textbooks; trade publishing is a bit different, but not wildly so. As you can see, freight is a very small part of the cost, and (it's not clear from the diagram) but printing is not a huge contributor, either. It's mostly editorial and administrative fees, author royalties, sub-licensing, and taxes
Printing looks like its around a third of the cost of the book, add in store costs and distribution and you could probably half the cost of an ebook all in.
Look again. That 32.1c for "Publisher's Paper, Printing and Editorial Costs" includes "record keeping, billing, publisher’s offices, employee’s salaries and benefits". Most of that is still going to be applicable to eBooks.
The Kindle has a free unlimited data plan with no contract, a screen that's much easier on the eyes than backlit LCD, a much longer battery life, and it run Linux.
Yeah, but videos look like crap on it.
Same in New Zealand for most people.
In code, however, it makes a world of difference, and therefore it doesn't make sense to use a font that may cause confusion between a pair of parentheses '()' and a zero '0', an 'I' and an 'l', a single dash '-' and two dashes '--', etc.
You know it is possible to design a proportional font which keeps all the different characters visually distinct, right?
This is compatible with column-area selection, and other features it supports which frankly I use nearly daily.
I love column-area selection and use it often as well, but virtually never for programming.
Reasons to use them:
They also permit more readable text on a single line. That's a significant advantage for programming IMHO.
Um yes... its good looking.
See what I did there? "good looking" is subjective and when you act like it's not you come off as a jackass.
Didn't you just call yourself a jackass?
Notice that this wasn't a report of 250% sales growth... it was a report of 250% increase in a poll asking "What cell phone do you PLAN to buy?"... not quite the same thing.
Also worth noting is the complete lack of any mention of the margin of error. And the report also doesn't really explain what is losing out to Android. The summary implies it's the iPhone, but TFA says that iPhone demand went from 32% to 28% - only a small fraction of the 15 points that Android picked up. From the original story the numbers are:
iPhone from 32 (Sept 09) fell to 28 (Dec 09)
Android from 6 rose to 21
Blackberry from 17 stayed basically stable at 18
Windows Mobile dropped from 9 to 6
Palm OS/Web OS dropped from 6 to 3.
That leaves 30% unaccounted for in the September numbers and 24% unaccounted for in the December numbers.
I often wondered what was so special about the iPhone. I have never got a satisfying answer.
Well it's difficult to explain. As this graph shows, they're more satisfying to own basically. They're just well designed.
Now, to specifically answer the question: Although tractors, seeders and harvesters are coin based purchases, the fuel refills are not. Now, you don't need to buy the fuel, you can wait a day and get a free refill, but if you have one of the larger farms, you will not be able to harvest, plow and seed all of it on the one refill. And since you have a very limited supply of FVD that you earn.... It becomes a habit that must be paid for.
Except tractors, seeders and harvesters only reduce the number of clicks you have to do. They don't have any significant bearing on the game - you don't actually need them. Also a bit of planning can let you use them for free even with a large farm: just plant smaller plots with selected crops that will be due for harvest when you know you'll have fuel (this is actually just about the only scope for strategy in the whole game). So it's easy to avoid getting addicted to buying fuel if you don't want to.
I thought about it for a while, and I really didn't have a good answer. I've paid monthly fees to play MMOG's before. I pay money for a usenet account. To most of my friends spending money for these things would seem just as ridiculous. It's all a matter of perspective. For them, that tractor in Farmville is about as far as they've ventured into the gaming world outside of consoles, so why not spend a little money for it?
And unlike non-free MMOGs you don't have to pay. A monthly fee is at least as dubious a proposition given all the games out there that don't charge a subscription. Paying in these Zynga games is always a reasoned tradeoff: "I want X so I'll pay $Y to get it". I may not think that X is worth Y, but that's a personal value judgement no different than scoffing at people who buy stuff from shops that I think is overvalued.
As for how "good" these games are, they use basically the same formula as Diablo and WOW. Do stuff to gain levels and achievements and collect stuff. That's why people play them and keep playing them: they're addictive.
Apple is not a GSM Association member. They had nothing to do with developing GSM, and so don't have claim to the favorable RAND terms available to GSM Association members.
If Nokia wanted more in exchange for the use of their patents than other GSM patent holders do, then that is their right.
My understanding is that Nokia agreed to license those patents under FRAND terms to anyone implementing the GSM standard as a condition of having those technologies as part of the standard. If so then they don't have right to ask for whatever they like now.
Well.. you went and made me search wikipedia.. thanks for that.. 2008 total assets for Apple 39.57 billion .. 2008 total assets for Nokia 39.58 billion .. ok so you say, well thats only .01 billion more.. but the thing is, Nokia's billions are Euros.
You should have searched something more up to date than wikipedia. That 39.47B figure is for 2008. According to their 10K they now have 53.85B, or which 34B is liquid assets. Nokia's market cap is less than double that.
These little things are a) very helpful everyday things, value of which you realize only after loosing them
How many o's are there in "lost"? Use the same number when writing "lose". How many o's are there in "goose"? Use the same number when writing "loose".
'Irregardless' is a double negative and is thusly illogical by construction and would only be understandable to people born in the U.S. since 1970, and those less literate in the U.S. prior to that.
You are completely misunderestimating the ability of people to figure out what someone means (as opposed to what someone actually says).
I would see Gmail's live chat feature being quite close in concept.
I don't. Being able to go back and edit what someone else has written previously is a fundamentally different concept IMO.
Yes, there is something different. A typewriter is a durable device that lasts many years. It will build character as it wears. On the other hand, a computer grows viruses as it ages. In addition, they aren't very durable at all (I've had 7 computers/laptops. Only one of them still works... the one I'm using now) and they don't last very many years at all.
I see your anecdote and raise you an anecdote: I have two Amigas from the early 90s that both still work fine (or at least did the last time I tried them a couple of years ago). I keep them purely for sentimental reasons.
Yes, and in the US we have the right of free speech. The solution is not to suppress speech but to change the concept of how past infractions are viewed. While the later is a difficult task; repressing speech in the name of protecting people's rights is far worse.
And yet you still have libel and slander laws. You have laws about obscenity and regulation of pornography. You have regulation of commercial speech. The right to freedom of speech is not so simple and universal as you are making out.
1500 characters, 1-20 per crack attempt, 30k to check. That's nothing. Any other trivial modifications you make, you end up just hoping your attacker doesn't try.
You don't have to construct your password using consecutive characters - you could use every second one or whatever. You don't have to use a left-to-right ordering either.