note: jedidiah is a gnu/hippie who's angry that Apple took-over the *nix desktop market.
In any case, Thunderbolt has been out for two years now and the peripheral selection is pretty pathetic. Apple has an expensive monitor/docking station. Belkin's docking station has been "coming soon" forever now. And there's some drive enclosures, and that's abou tit.
The Belkin and Matrox docks have been out for a while now. The Belkin dock was "Temporarily out of stock" at Amazon despite the $299 price tag the last time I checked I checked (about 60 seconds ago). There are no drive enclosures available (unfortunately), only ready made external drives which only make sense if you have an SSD to really take advantage of Thunderbolt's speed and a capacity of at least 128gb which makes them extra expensive. Buying a Thunderbolt enabled mechanical drive only makes sense if you are stuck with a machine that has a Thunderbolt connector and USB2 connectors since you get no speed advantage to speak of over USB3. For my purposes external drives start getting interesting at 500gb since I use them mostly for backups and to store tons of photographs, Photoshop files and e-books. There is also a SATA adapter from Seagate (Although strangely enough no SSD disks), a string of really interesting and ridiculously expensive RAID solutions and a few adapters for FW800, GigaBit ethernet., Video etc... What is keeping Thunderbolt down is the price of high capacity SSDs and the fact you can't get any empty enclosures. As the price of SSDs starts to fall and mechanical disks go the way of the dodo (not shedding any tears) and Thunderbolt stands a good chance to compete with USB3 as long as it can keep a speed advantage because I'll buy what ever gets me as close to native SSD+SATA speeds as possible when I'm making large data transfers. Another thing to consider with Thunderbolt is that the display connector usually doubles as a Thunderbolt connector. Since some machines like the MacBook AIr only have one connector you'll either have to unplug the display every time you want to plug in a Thunderbolt device or put your display on the end of the daisy chain so never buy a TB device that does not support daisy chaining. The other option is to buy a machine with two TB ports like the MacBook Pro which is what I did. It's only marginally heavier than a MBA and has way more connector options.
3. Allowance rate increases as average quality of patent applications increases.
You have to be a troll. A reasonable person can't think this...
Someone whose beliefs about patents are based on what they read on Slashdot, will not believe this. But someone who actually looks at reality will see things differently. The quality of patents really has improved in recent years. Much of this is because of the Supreme Court ruling in KSR vs Teleflex, which expanded and clarified the "obviousness" criteria, as well as invalidating many types of "combination" patents.
Another reason the backlog of patents has declined is that the USPTO is better funded, and has hired many more patent examiners. In 2005, there were about 7300 examiners. Today, there are more than 9500.
Stop ruining our patent bashing session with 'facts'...
There was a war. About 20 percent of the "palestinians" chose to stay and fight with the Jews. They, and their children, are still living in Israel. Those who voluntarily left were not allowed to return.
.... and then the Government of Israel handed out the land of those who were not allowed to return to Jewish settlers.
That sounds like pretty neat description of ethnic cleansing to me.
I'm not sure they can contribute their improvements terribly easily. Apple changed their development policies recently to be fairly hostile to non-Apple users of Webkit; basically, developers are allowed to check in changes that break the build on non-Apple platforms (which is enough to make development elsewhere a pain on its own because it breaks git bisect), and commits - including ones to non-Apple platform code, even ones that fix the build - now require the approval of an Apple employee with no knowlege of other platform and no incentive to approve changes important to them promptly.
Relax, I'm sure someone will come along and explain that it's not anti-competitive and Apple have everyone's best interests in mind.
It may be a balm to your soul to pretend that Apple is being especially evil here but they aren't the only ones doing this. I was recently given the task of compiling MySQL on AIX 7. It's doable but the code is riddled with stuff committed by people who don't care what else they are breaking as long as it works on Linux. Not that I'm complaining, AIX versions newer than 5.3 are not supported by the MySQL team due to "low demand" and I can easily sympathise with the MySQL team's reluctance to support it. It's impossible to maintain a complex software project and support Windows, the Unixes, a vast collection of fragmenting Linux distributions, Android, iOS, OS X.... (the list goes on). Sooner or later the communities surrounding these OS'es are going to have to step up and fix the broken code if they want the software to be supported on their OS. You can't expect Apple, Oracle, Google, et al... or non profit FOSS efforts for that matter, to support every single OS out there and all of their variants.
The Chromebook is a threat to everything, especially PC makers, as its apps improve. Compare Tweetdeck's HTML5 version with its native app.
It's a thin client. Chrome OS is not likely to put a dent in my plans to continue buying PCs until Google can guarantee complete network coverage everywhere and HTML5 apps are written that can replace complex native apps like Photoshop and the likes. There is a world of difference between Tweetdeck and really complex native apps. Then there is the issue of all my data residing on 3rd party data-center which might get hacked, data mined by the service provider without my permission, destroyed in an unseasonal flood disaster or just discontinued because the service failed to meet profitability goals. Nobody is going to discontinue the SSD in my laptop due to its failure to meet some corporate weasels profitability expectation any time soon and the same goes for my backup disks.
Lets break up the inevitable flood of cheesy Kryptonite jokes...
I am no expert in astrogeology but I can still see how it is possible to tell that a rock dropped to Earth from space, it will have signs of being heated during entry into the Earth's atmosphere etc... I can also see how there might be a difference between planetary rocks formed during geological processes under the influence of gravity and objects that formed in space. But how is it possible to prove beyond a doubt that a rock came from a particular planet/moon in the solar system?
Technically, it says that they can't trademark iPad right now either, because "I" means internet and "pad" is a generic term for a tablet. However, they also say that Apple can file an amended application claiming "acquired distinctiveness". Apple will have no trouble doing that, so basically, they can trademark it if they try again.
If they do that, they have to disclaim "mini" as being descriptive.
Cast your mind back to the 1998 Apple Back on Track Keynote. While introducing the iMac, The Steve stated that the 'i' stood for: internet, individual, instruct, inform, inspire (see here, 16 min 35 seconds into the clip). These days it probably does not stand for anything in particular other than that a product named iSomething is automatically associated with Apple in the mind of the consumer. Companies get turned down for trademarks all the time simply because they try to trademark obvious crap, for example, the all mighty "Don't be evil" Google got the finger when they tried to trademark "Nexus One" because it's not enough to add a descriptive term to a trademark already granted to somebody else.
...and did something about it that didn't ruin their code base.
Kudos Gnome Team.
I kinda like the KDE they forced me to try with their second-to-latest abortion, but I'll give Gnome 3.8 a try.
I still don't understand what all the hullaballoo is about, I like the new Gnome 3 interface. I can use the search tool to locate and/or launch practically anything I need which means that I am blessedly rid of that horrid Winodows-esque Applications button with it's sub-menus and endless click paths. Now I just hit the search button with my thumb, type app name, hit return and my app launches. Since I got a keyboard with an integrated trackpad I could also dump that useless bloody mouse so now I hardly ever have to take my hand off the keyboard. I only use the trackpad to reposition the cursor, move/resize windows and click buttons and that I can do with the thumb or index finger of my right hand.
I'm not being elitist here (well, perhaps I a little)... but most people can't code. They can't be taught to code, save for in a very limited manner.
The thing is... there are a billion people in china, and the same percentage will be able to code as are here.. You _cannot_ teach people to code if they cannot. It takes a slightly odd mindset, IMO.
ergo... there are always going to be more coders, or those with aptitude to code in China than in the west. I think it's just something we're going to have to deal with.
So... who said anything about China? TFA is about Vietnam, which has less than a third of the population of the US.
Sigh... Whether he used Vietnam or China as an example is immaterial. If one reads the part of his comment that you conveniently skipped, you will find that he was trying to point out that while the percentage of people that possess the aptitude for coding is probably more or less the same in different populations of modern humans, in areas with high population density there are going to be more talented coders. This is kind of obvious to anybody with a rudimentary grasp of statistical analysis, but people still go "Ooooh.... small Asian country country has lots of coders... what are they doing that we are not? Is there something in the water?". What it really boils down to is population density, quality of education, student motivation and the priorities government and educators set in schools which in Asia is Maths, Physics, CS and other technology related subjects and last but not least whether or not scripture thumping zealots are allowed to dictate what gets taught is schools.
So that you are saying is that Apple should be sued by the EU? Gotcha.
I mean after all, Apple actively prevents you from installing another main OS on its iProducts, does it not?
I'm not sure if you are trying to be sarcastic here or if you really believe that. Apple does not prevent you from installing another OS on you iDevice any more than Google or Samsung will jovially give you technical help and throw developer time at you for free if you decide to install Ubuntu on your Galaxy S3. Even if they put clauses in their EULAs, (I could not find one in the docs that came with my iPhone) It's perfectly possible to install Android on an iPhone if you are willing to put in the work.
Or, are you saying that this only applies to Windows and it is OK because it is Apple?
Apple should get it's ass kicked for anti competitive behaviour just like Microsoft did and so should Google and Samsung.
This makes me suspect that Apple deliberately started rumors that they were working on a "smartwatch" simply to trick other companies into wasting effort into actually developing such a useless product.
You mean, after half a dozen companies already released specs for or working Android-based smart watches?
You Apple fanbois truly, honestly believe that Apple invented every fucking thing in tech and beyond.
There were smartphones before Apple "invented" them, there were MP3 players before Apple "invented" them, there was even slide-to-unlock before Apple "invented" it. FTFS!
I'm an Apple 'fanboy' and I have been around since the 70s so I remember technology before the iPod and the iPhone, I even remember a time before PCs. About 10-12 years ago the only affordable MP3 players were RAM sticks in the sub 128mb range and, yes, there were smartphones. There were even smartphones with a big touch screen and a UI that had some of the features of the one in the iPhone. My favorite was the Sony Ericsson p800 and p900 series. They came with a stylus but up to a point you could actually work them with your fingers just like an iPhone so I'm well aware of the fact that there was technology before Apple. It's funny how most of the writings mentioning that Apple invented everything from MP3 players to the modern toaster are usually angry monologs written by fAndroids, trolling for karma, by complaining that Apple 'fanboys' are making that claim. Some of the other Apple fanboys I know talk about Apple revolutionizing MP3 player and smartphone design (which is kind of true) but so far none of them has actually claimed that Apple invented these things. The rest of my Apple fanboy friends just don't care about this crappy war betwee Apple and Google which puts them in the same boat as most Android users who don't care about this crappy tech war either.
Don't think you understand how these technologies work.
Apple has adopted HTML5 capabilities such as local storage, offline caching, and web workers as fast as anyone. You can make fantastic mobile web apps on top of HTML5 completely bypassing the app store.
Flash is an abomination and needed to go. There was no ulterior motive here. It was a terrible technology that needed to be put down.
I do wonder if someone has maliciously used a jailbreak methods on their own web site, installing binaries remotely without the user knowing, and then taking data. How do you find out if this has happened?
The exploit used by evasi0n to gain root is a missing permissions check in USB backup/restore.
So unless your web page or PDF somehow magically plugs a iPhone into a properly prepared host... nope.
I'm pretty sure you can root iOS (or any other mobile OS) using vulnerabilities that do not require the device to be USB connected so his point still stands.
Everything I've seen says that natural gas is two to three times cleaner than coal. That's not "marginally" cleaner; it's a significant improvement, and it is clearly better for the environment than sticking with coal.
Does that assessment include environmental damage caused by gas extraction with hydraulic fracturing?
And the US isn't forcing Asian countries to buy coal. They need energy -- China's economy is growing by 10% every year. They've determined that coal is the best choice for now, and this is somehow the US's fault?
I'm not quite sure what you're calling bullshit about. Not everything the US does is necessarily bad.
Calling bullshit about it being an improvement to switch to natural gas, extracted by hydraulic fracturing then turning around and selling coal to China and going on about how you are doing wonders for the environment. If the US was serious about this they'd close down the coal mines. I refer you to TFA (And keep in mind that his primary research question was: Has US Shale Gas Reduced CO2 Emissions?
There has been a substantial increase in coal exports from the US over this time period
(2008-2011) and globally, coal consumption has continued to rise. As we discussed in our
previous report (Broderick et al. 2011), without a meaningful cap on global carbon
emissions, the exploitation of shale gas reserves is likely to increase total emissions. For this
not to be the case, consumption of displaced fuels must be reduced globally and remain
suppressed indefinitely; in effect displaced coal must stay in the ground.
It's not being used for electricity. We hardly make any steel here anymore. Most of it is made in Asia anymore.
About half of world steel production is in Asia, some 11% in the NAFTA area, the rest is made in Europe and Russia with miscellaneous other sources making up the remaining 8%.
China is using more coal. Let's blame America, not the annual movement of tens of millions of people from poverty to the middle class.
Sheesh.
America is cleaning up it's energy generation by using marginally cleaner natural gas and sells surplus polluting coal to eager Asian customers. Political pundits in the US then try to sucker the public into believing this is better for the environment.
Oddly, it seems more of a software issue to me. It will "ghost" for a bit then disappear. It is bizarre and annoys the shit out of me.
My Samsung flatscreen TV does this too. It ghosts app windows and desktop icons etc. The ghosted app windows stay on screen even when I flip from my media center PC to a separate live TV feed so it must be an issue with the TV hardware. Restart the TV and everything is fine... for a while. It doesn't annoy me half as much as the growing dark spot that's eating it's way across the display. I'm not buying a Samsung TV again.
Also, your view of hunter/gatherer society is very trite, and limited, H/G societies demonstrate many and varied social adaptations, such as ritualistic sharing, feast events, complex social resource distribution constructions that distribute food and resources in numerous manners, evident in cultures across vast spans of time and space. Definitely not as simplistic as "animalistic first come first serve".
I'll say.... Göbekli Tepe apparently built by semi nomadic hunter gatherers.
Homo Sapiens seems quite "stupid and brutish" most of the time. Just saying.
Actually, even when compared to our closest relatives the great apes, humans get along remarkably well. The frequency of violence in human communities is remarkably low compared to many other species. Chimpls for example have have rates of aggression between two and three orders of magnitude higher than humans. .
The last time I checked Neanderthals/Denisovans did not suffer a demise. It seems that at least some of them were absorbed by modern human populations so in a way Neanderthals/Denisovans are still around. Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to eat a dinosaur.
Wright brothers patented a lot of the mechanics of the aircraft they built and later prevented Curtis & other US aviators from progressing. By the time the Great War had started, European aviation was greatly ahead of the USA's efforts.
I know it is fashionable to blame patents for all the ills that plague humanity but stagnation in the US aircraft industry prior to the US entry into the Great War was down to more than just patents. Most of the aviation advances in Europe were due to state aviation challenges that featured big purses, air racing and most importantly military expenditure on aviation. In Germany and France for example military spending was a key factor in the expansion of the pre-war aviation industry and a key factor in technological advancement prior to 1914. Even in 1910-1914 both the German/French armies and navies were ordering aircraft by the hundreds. The USA's expenditure in the same period was a joke and despite US industry eventually accepting massive orders to supply the UK and the French with aircraft, large portions of the US air service had to be equipped with aircraft by the French and the British including the entire US fighter fleet on the Western Front. Civilian aviation as a technological motivator only began to assume any degree of importance when Hugo Junkers wheeled out the all metal Junkers F13 in 1919 to everybody's surprise and people found it was more sophisticated technologically than contemporary military machines. Especially because the F13 prototype could lift well over half a metric ton on a salvaged 160hp Mercedes engine.
Microsoft was forced to put that ballot list up after they deliberately used bundling and threats of OEMs having their Windows license revoked unless they shunned a Microsoft competitor. This tactic was successful in that it ruined Netscape. The list was put there to try and prevent MS from doing it again to another company and as a signal to other tech companies of what happens when you use tactics like that, i.e. very large fines. That bloody ballot list is as much a head on a spike as anything else.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft would of course know all about this, being at the end of several similar anti-competitive complaints in the past."
That does not mean that Google should get off the hook, IIRC Microsoft got some heavy fines and so should Google if they are being Anti-Competitive.
note: jedidiah is a gnu/hippie who's angry that Apple took-over the *nix desktop market.
In any case, Thunderbolt has been out for two years now and the peripheral selection is pretty pathetic. Apple has an expensive monitor/docking station. Belkin's docking station has been "coming soon" forever now. And there's some drive enclosures, and that's abou tit.
The Belkin and Matrox docks have been out for a while now. The Belkin dock was "Temporarily out of stock" at Amazon despite the $299 price tag the last time I checked I checked (about 60 seconds ago). There are no drive enclosures available (unfortunately), only ready made external drives which only make sense if you have an SSD to really take advantage of Thunderbolt's speed and a capacity of at least 128gb which makes them extra expensive. Buying a Thunderbolt enabled mechanical drive only makes sense if you are stuck with a machine that has a Thunderbolt connector and USB2 connectors since you get no speed advantage to speak of over USB3. For my purposes external drives start getting interesting at 500gb since I use them mostly for backups and to store tons of photographs, Photoshop files and e-books. There is also a SATA adapter from Seagate (Although strangely enough no SSD disks), a string of really interesting and ridiculously expensive RAID solutions and a few adapters for FW800, GigaBit ethernet., Video etc... What is keeping Thunderbolt down is the price of high capacity SSDs and the fact you can't get any empty enclosures. As the price of SSDs starts to fall and mechanical disks go the way of the dodo (not shedding any tears) and Thunderbolt stands a good chance to compete with USB3 as long as it can keep a speed advantage because I'll buy what ever gets me as close to native SSD+SATA speeds as possible when I'm making large data transfers. Another thing to consider with Thunderbolt is that the display connector usually doubles as a Thunderbolt connector. Since some machines like the MacBook AIr only have one connector you'll either have to unplug the display every time you want to plug in a Thunderbolt device or put your display on the end of the daisy chain so never buy a TB device that does not support daisy chaining. The other option is to buy a machine with two TB ports like the MacBook Pro which is what I did. It's only marginally heavier than a MBA and has way more connector options.
3. Allowance rate increases as average quality of patent applications increases.
You have to be a troll. A reasonable person can't think this...
Someone whose beliefs about patents are based on what they read on Slashdot, will not believe this. But someone who actually looks at reality will see things differently. The quality of patents really has improved in recent years. Much of this is because of the Supreme Court ruling in KSR vs Teleflex, which expanded and clarified the "obviousness" criteria, as well as invalidating many types of "combination" patents.
Another reason the backlog of patents has declined is that the USPTO is better funded, and has hired many more patent examiners. In 2005, there were about 7300 examiners. Today, there are more than 9500.
Stop ruining our patent bashing session with 'facts' ...
There was a war. About 20 percent of the "palestinians" chose to stay and fight with the Jews. They, and their children, are still living in Israel. Those who voluntarily left were not allowed to return.
.... and then the Government of Israel handed out the land of those who were not allowed to return to Jewish settlers.
That sounds like pretty neat description of ethnic cleansing to me.
I'm not sure they can contribute their improvements terribly easily. Apple changed their development policies recently to be fairly hostile to non-Apple users of Webkit; basically, developers are allowed to check in changes that break the build on non-Apple platforms (which is enough to make development elsewhere a pain on its own because it breaks git bisect), and commits - including ones to non-Apple platform code, even ones that fix the build - now require the approval of an Apple employee with no knowlege of other platform and no incentive to approve changes important to them promptly.
Relax, I'm sure someone will come along and explain that it's not anti-competitive and Apple have everyone's best interests in mind.
It may be a balm to your soul to pretend that Apple is being especially evil here but they aren't the only ones doing this. I was recently given the task of compiling MySQL on AIX 7. It's doable but the code is riddled with stuff committed by people who don't care what else they are breaking as long as it works on Linux. Not that I'm complaining, AIX versions newer than 5.3 are not supported by the MySQL team due to "low demand" and I can easily sympathise with the MySQL team's reluctance to support it. It's impossible to maintain a complex software project and support Windows, the Unixes, a vast collection of fragmenting Linux distributions, Android, iOS, OS X.... (the list goes on). Sooner or later the communities surrounding these OS'es are going to have to step up and fix the broken code if they want the software to be supported on their OS. You can't expect Apple, Oracle, Google, et al... or non profit FOSS efforts for that matter, to support every single OS out there and all of their variants.
As someone with daughter that just turned two years old, meaning we now have to pay for a ticket for her to fly, this sounds like a great deal to me.
As someone who is two meters tall, it doesn't :-)
The Chromebook is a threat to everything, especially PC makers, as its apps improve. Compare Tweetdeck's HTML5 version with its native app.
It's a thin client. Chrome OS is not likely to put a dent in my plans to continue buying PCs until Google can guarantee complete network coverage everywhere and HTML5 apps are written that can replace complex native apps like Photoshop and the likes. There is a world of difference between Tweetdeck and really complex native apps. Then there is the issue of all my data residing on 3rd party data-center which might get hacked, data mined by the service provider without my permission, destroyed in an unseasonal flood disaster or just discontinued because the service failed to meet profitability goals. Nobody is going to discontinue the SSD in my laptop due to its failure to meet some corporate weasels profitability expectation any time soon and the same goes for my backup disks.
Lets break up the inevitable flood of cheesy Kryptonite jokes... I am no expert in astrogeology but I can still see how it is possible to tell that a rock dropped to Earth from space, it will have signs of being heated during entry into the Earth's atmosphere etc... I can also see how there might be a difference between planetary rocks formed during geological processes under the influence of gravity and objects that formed in space. But how is it possible to prove beyond a doubt that a rock came from a particular planet/moon in the solar system?
Technically, it says that they can't trademark iPad right now either, because "I" means internet and "pad" is a generic term for a tablet. However, they also say that Apple can file an amended application claiming "acquired distinctiveness". Apple will have no trouble doing that, so basically, they can trademark it if they try again.
If they do that, they have to disclaim "mini" as being descriptive.
Cast your mind back to the 1998 Apple Back on Track Keynote. While introducing the iMac, The Steve stated that the 'i' stood for: internet, individual, instruct, inform, inspire (see here, 16 min 35 seconds into the clip). These days it probably does not stand for anything in particular other than that a product named iSomething is automatically associated with Apple in the mind of the consumer. Companies get turned down for trademarks all the time simply because they try to trademark obvious crap, for example, the all mighty "Don't be evil" Google got the finger when they tried to trademark "Nexus One" because it's not enough to add a descriptive term to a trademark already granted to somebody else.
...and did something about it that didn't ruin their code base. Kudos Gnome Team. I kinda like the KDE they forced me to try with their second-to-latest abortion, but I'll give Gnome 3.8 a try.
I still don't understand what all the hullaballoo is about, I like the new Gnome 3 interface. I can use the search tool to locate and/or launch practically anything I need which means that I am blessedly rid of that horrid Winodows-esque Applications button with it's sub-menus and endless click paths. Now I just hit the search button with my thumb, type app name, hit return and my app launches. Since I got a keyboard with an integrated trackpad I could also dump that useless bloody mouse so now I hardly ever have to take my hand off the keyboard. I only use the trackpad to reposition the cursor, move/resize windows and click buttons and that I can do with the thumb or index finger of my right hand.
I'm not being elitist here (well, perhaps I a little)... but most people can't code. They can't be taught to code, save for in a very limited manner.
The thing is... there are a billion people in china, and the same percentage will be able to code as are here.. You _cannot_ teach people to code if they cannot. It takes a slightly odd mindset, IMO.
ergo... there are always going to be more coders, or those with aptitude to code in China than in the west. I think it's just something we're going to have to deal with.
So... who said anything about China? TFA is about Vietnam, which has less than a third of the population of the US.
Sigh... Whether he used Vietnam or China as an example is immaterial. If one reads the part of his comment that you conveniently skipped, you will find that he was trying to point out that while the percentage of people that possess the aptitude for coding is probably more or less the same in different populations of modern humans, in areas with high population density there are going to be more talented coders. This is kind of obvious to anybody with a rudimentary grasp of statistical analysis, but people still go "Ooooh.... small Asian country country has lots of coders... what are they doing that we are not? Is there something in the water?". What it really boils down to is population density, quality of education, student motivation and the priorities government and educators set in schools which in Asia is Maths, Physics, CS and other technology related subjects and last but not least whether or not scripture thumping zealots are allowed to dictate what gets taught is schools.
So that you are saying is that Apple should be sued by the EU? Gotcha. I mean after all, Apple actively prevents you from installing another main OS on its iProducts, does it not?
I'm not sure if you are trying to be sarcastic here or if you really believe that. Apple does not prevent you from installing another OS on you iDevice any more than Google or Samsung will jovially give you technical help and throw developer time at you for free if you decide to install Ubuntu on your Galaxy S3. Even if they put clauses in their EULAs, (I could not find one in the docs that came with my iPhone) It's perfectly possible to install Android on an iPhone if you are willing to put in the work.
Or, are you saying that this only applies to Windows and it is OK because it is Apple?
Apple should get it's ass kicked for anti competitive behaviour just like Microsoft did and so should Google and Samsung.
This makes me suspect that Apple deliberately started rumors that they were working on a "smartwatch" simply to trick other companies into wasting effort into actually developing such a useless product.
You mean, after half a dozen companies already released specs for or working Android-based smart watches?
You Apple fanbois truly, honestly believe that Apple invented every fucking thing in tech and beyond. There were smartphones before Apple "invented" them, there were MP3 players before Apple "invented" them, there was even slide-to-unlock before Apple "invented" it. FTFS!
I'm an Apple 'fanboy' and I have been around since the 70s so I remember technology before the iPod and the iPhone, I even remember a time before PCs. About 10-12 years ago the only affordable MP3 players were RAM sticks in the sub 128mb range and, yes, there were smartphones. There were even smartphones with a big touch screen and a UI that had some of the features of the one in the iPhone. My favorite was the Sony Ericsson p800 and p900 series. They came with a stylus but up to a point you could actually work them with your fingers just like an iPhone so I'm well aware of the fact that there was technology before Apple. It's funny how most of the writings mentioning that Apple invented everything from MP3 players to the modern toaster are usually angry monologs written by fAndroids, trolling for karma, by complaining that Apple 'fanboys' are making that claim. Some of the other Apple fanboys I know talk about Apple revolutionizing MP3 player and smartphone design (which is kind of true) but so far none of them has actually claimed that Apple invented these things. The rest of my Apple fanboy friends just don't care about this crappy war betwee Apple and Google which puts them in the same boat as most Android users who don't care about this crappy tech war either.
Don't think you understand how these technologies work. Apple has adopted HTML5 capabilities such as local storage, offline caching, and web workers as fast as anyone. You can make fantastic mobile web apps on top of HTML5 completely bypassing the app store. Flash is an abomination and needed to go. There was no ulterior motive here. It was a terrible technology that needed to be put down.
Translation: "Steve Jobs was right, Flash sucks."
I don't own an iDevice, so I don't know if they have easy or automated OTA firmware/iOS updates or not.
I have a cheap 2 year old Android phone and it does not have firmware/OS updates available (v2.3.4).
(a) They do, and (b) that seems to be a fairly common problem.
I do wonder if someone has maliciously used a jailbreak methods on their own web site, installing binaries remotely without the user knowing, and then taking data. How do you find out if this has happened?
The exploit used by evasi0n to gain root is a missing permissions check in USB backup/restore. So unless your web page or PDF somehow magically plugs a iPhone into a properly prepared host... nope.
I'm pretty sure you can root iOS (or any other mobile OS) using vulnerabilities that do not require the device to be USB connected so his point still stands.
Everything I've seen says that natural gas is two to three times cleaner than coal. That's not "marginally" cleaner; it's a significant improvement, and it is clearly better for the environment than sticking with coal.
Does that assessment include environmental damage caused by gas extraction with hydraulic fracturing?
And the US isn't forcing Asian countries to buy coal. They need energy -- China's economy is growing by 10% every year. They've determined that coal is the best choice for now, and this is somehow the US's fault? I'm not quite sure what you're calling bullshit about. Not everything the US does is necessarily bad.
Calling bullshit about it being an improvement to switch to natural gas, extracted by hydraulic fracturing then turning around and selling coal to China and going on about how you are doing wonders for the environment. If the US was serious about this they'd close down the coal mines. I refer you to TFA (And keep in mind that his primary research question was: Has US Shale Gas Reduced CO2 Emissions?
There has been a substantial increase in coal exports from the US over this time period (2008-2011) and globally, coal consumption has continued to rise. As we discussed in our previous report (Broderick et al. 2011), without a meaningful cap on global carbon emissions, the exploitation of shale gas reserves is likely to increase total emissions. For this not to be the case, consumption of displaced fuels must be reduced globally and remain suppressed indefinitely; in effect displaced coal must stay in the ground.
It's not being used for electricity. We hardly make any steel here anymore. Most of it is made in Asia anymore.
About half of world steel production is in Asia, some 11% in the NAFTA area, the rest is made in Europe and Russia with miscellaneous other sources making up the remaining 8%.
China is using more coal. Let's blame America, not the annual movement of tens of millions of people from poverty to the middle class. Sheesh.
America is cleaning up it's energy generation by using marginally cleaner natural gas and sells surplus polluting coal to eager Asian customers. Political pundits in the US then try to sucker the public into believing this is better for the environment.
Some of us are not fooled and call bullshit...
Oddly, it seems more of a software issue to me. It will "ghost" for a bit then disappear. It is bizarre and annoys the shit out of me.
My Samsung flatscreen TV does this too. It ghosts app windows and desktop icons etc. The ghosted app windows stay on screen even when I flip from my media center PC to a separate live TV feed so it must be an issue with the TV hardware. Restart the TV and everything is fine... for a while. It doesn't annoy me half as much as the growing dark spot that's eating it's way across the display. I'm not buying a Samsung TV again.
Also, your view of hunter/gatherer society is very trite, and limited, H/G societies demonstrate many and varied social adaptations, such as ritualistic sharing, feast events, complex social resource distribution constructions that distribute food and resources in numerous manners, evident in cultures across vast spans of time and space. Definitely not as simplistic as "animalistic first come first serve".
I'll say.... Göbekli Tepe apparently built by semi nomadic hunter gatherers.
Homo Sapiens seems quite "stupid and brutish" most of the time. Just saying.
Actually, even when compared to our closest relatives the great apes, humans get along remarkably well. The frequency of violence in human communities is remarkably low compared to many other species. Chimpls for example have have rates of aggression between two and three orders of magnitude higher than humans. .
The last time I checked Neanderthals/Denisovans did not suffer a demise. It seems that at least some of them were absorbed by modern human populations so in a way Neanderthals/Denisovans are still around. Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to eat a dinosaur.
Wright brothers patented a lot of the mechanics of the aircraft they built and later prevented Curtis & other US aviators from progressing. By the time the Great War had started, European aviation was greatly ahead of the USA's efforts.
I know it is fashionable to blame patents for all the ills that plague humanity but stagnation in the US aircraft industry prior to the US entry into the Great War was down to more than just patents. Most of the aviation advances in Europe were due to state aviation challenges that featured big purses, air racing and most importantly military expenditure on aviation. In Germany and France for example military spending was a key factor in the expansion of the pre-war aviation industry and a key factor in technological advancement prior to 1914. Even in 1910-1914 both the German/French armies and navies were ordering aircraft by the hundreds. The USA's expenditure in the same period was a joke and despite US industry eventually accepting massive orders to supply the UK and the French with aircraft, large portions of the US air service had to be equipped with aircraft by the French and the British including the entire US fighter fleet on the Western Front. Civilian aviation as a technological motivator only began to assume any degree of importance when Hugo Junkers wheeled out the all metal Junkers F13 in 1919 to everybody's surprise and people found it was more sophisticated technologically than contemporary military machines. Especially because the F13 prototype could lift well over half a metric ton on a salvaged 160hp Mercedes engine.
It ruined no one by not having that list present
Microsoft was forced to put that ballot list up after they deliberately used bundling and threats of OEMs having their Windows license revoked unless they shunned a Microsoft competitor. This tactic was successful in that it ruined Netscape. The list was put there to try and prevent MS from doing it again to another company and as a signal to other tech companies of what happens when you use tactics like that, i.e. very large fines. That bloody ballot list is as much a head on a spike as anything else.