These days more than ever the hardware only makes one difference - what inputs are available. There are a few other minor considerations like which APIs are enabled for developers, but really the only significant factor is how you can get information into the machine. Everything else like CPU speed, RAM, storage, etc are problems that, for the ordinary user at least, are solved.
The iPad is designed to make it easy to enter spacial information (where you're pressing on the screen) compared to a mouse or a keyboard. That's why it'll make a great reader, web browsing tool, and gaming device, but a relatively poor word processor or data entry device. A netbook on the other hand isn't really optimised for information entry at all. The keyboard isn't as good as a laptop, it's harder to operate a touchscreen on one than a tablet, and there's usually a pretty rubbish trackpad. Netbooks are a great compromise but they're not going to win in the long term when we can make laptops fold up smaller (somehow!).
In the future there will be a place for tablet PCs while there won't be for netbooks. I'm sure Bill is right that for now MSFT's interest lies in the netbook, but looking to the longer term he's dead wrong.
95% of user-generated posts on Web sites are spam or malicious.
The fact is that there are millions of old blogs, unused forums, ancient guestbooks, etc that are easy to spam automatically. While it might very well be true that 95% of comments on the internet are spam of some sort, they're probably read by a tiny fraction of internet users. People tend to stick to about a dozen big sites that get very little rubbish posted on them at all.
Car analogy: 95% of cars are rusty old heaps of crap that can't move. Thankfully they're in scrapyards and not on the roads.
It's true enough that a tablet PC that's essentially just a scaled up iPhone would be pretty cool. If it's based on something similar to iPhone OS it'd be easy for developers to port existing apps too, so the App Store would fill up with software for it relatively quickly too. A tablet scale version of Orbital would be brilliant.
But...
It'd cost a lot. It wouldn't be particularly usable for traditional apps like email. It'd be great for watching films and stuff, but not as good as a TV. I guess it'd appeal to a narrow band of Apple nerds; even fewer than bought into the Macbook Air. While I'm sure Apple are capable of releasing something like that, and making a profit out of it, I can't help but think they're cleverer than that. Whatever is coming is going to have to be bigger (in the sense of appealing to the populace rather than a tiny subset of it) than a mere tablet even if they make it super snazzy.
The point about e-ink is that it's passive. It doesn't emit light. That's what makes it very easy to read for extended periods. Throw that away and you might as well go back to reading books on your laptop.
Getting heart disease is risk, obviously, but it's a relatively small one unless you're very unhealthy or you have a history of it in your family. If you increase said risk by 18% per hour you're not actually much more likely to die. For example, if you're facing a 1% chance of heart disease then an hour of telly every day changes that to a 1.18% risk. That's probably within any margin of error anyway.
18% is the "scary tabloid statistic". The reality is that it's not really a big deal.
It doesn't follow that a lack of accuracy from dragging in a painting app would affect click accuracy in a browser at all. For example, the accuracy could degrade the longer you hold your finger to the screen due to moisture building up on your fingertip or due to reduced capacitance as the blood flow is restricted.
If you want to test point accuracy then write an app to test that; don't test something completely different and then leap to a potentially inaccurate conclusion.
The printer that you buy with ink comes with cartridges that are, at most, half full. Usually it's considerably less than half. It might feel cheaper, but in dollars-per-print it's not, and that's the only metric that really measures the value you're getting.
If you read Cuban's original blog post he suggests giving money to the top 100,000 sites ($1m each to the top 1000, and a further billion or so split between the next 99,000 sites), and that Microsoft or Yahoo promise to drive as much traffic their way as they'd lose by pulling out of Google. His idea is that if you can persuade the top 100,000 sites on the net to leave then Google is screwed. It wasn't a serious suggestion, just a sort of whimsical "Google could be killed you know" musing.
Or, if you prefer, listen to the horror stories female developers tell about sexist remarks or being asked out for dates.
Making sexist remarks, ok, I can understand how that might be seen as being sexist. But how is asking a woman out considered sexist behaviour? Face it, if I were to join a group that's 98.5% women and demonstrate that I share an interest with all of them then I strongly suspect I'd get asked out too. Would I complain that their behaviour was sexist? No. Obviously not.
No. I'd be making lurve. All those ladies! Oh yeah baby!
Wait. I think I might be being sexist. Err.. Oh dear.
The patent in question deals with associating data into multiple categories dynamically. It's fairly obvious but (as far as I'm aware) it is a relatively recent innovation. It's definitely not something that databases do in terms of storage. They can do it, using views or triggers with stored procedures, but this is not a simple patent on a data table, a category table and a many-to-many cross reference table linking the two.
There are two caveats that limit the appeal of this...
1. You have to be a Premium Account holder... that's £10/month.
2. (Apparently) it'll only work with a wifi connection, not 3G.
The wifi-only bit is the killer. Everywhere I use wifi I have a computer (office, home, girlfriend's home). That means it's not very useful, and as it's not very useful I don't see the point in buying the £10/month subscription in order to use it. If I wanted the Premium service I'd already have paid for it to use with the computers.
These articles crop up pretty much daily on various blogs. They all follow a very clear pattern:
1. Pick a hot IT company. 2. Pick a service they're not providing. 3. Pick something that they're spending money on. 4. Relate points 2 and 3.
There's no evidence that the two things are related. For all we know Apple might be getting back into selling time-slices on servers because Steve Jobs has hit his head and thinks it's 1983 again. These sorts of poorly researched, uninsightful articles that are absolutely nothing more than *a guess* are completely pointless.
That's not the suggestion at all. It's implying that, at some point in time, 90% of the notes in circulation has been used to take cocaine. That could be by 1 very prolific addict for all we know. The article doesn't give any indication.
Their innate abilities can't improve, but that's not to say there aren't other ways that they might be better drug sniffers than their ancestors - improving training, diet, exercise, rewards, and simply having more dogs because they're cheaper would all serve to increase detection rates.
The service that uSocial are offering is neither an exploit nor a problem. They're not spamming anyone - they're just letting people have access to a pool of people open to "following back" and taking a fee. It's a total waste of money buying in because the sort of people who'll follow everyone and care about the number of followers they have are generally idiots, but it's not really anything to worry about.
Likewise though, there aren't many things as frustrating as paying a fair amount for a game only to get a few hours of entertainment for it. There's a balance to be struck, and a delicate one at that. If a game is too hard or too easy you'll feel you didn't get value for money.
I think the 'auto-complete' idea is a good one, but it needs to come with a penalty. Spending a "life" to progress, or some points, or simply being branded a "cheat" on the end screen would be enough to make you try to play through again without the help. People without the time to invest would be able to access everything they've bought while people wanting the challenge would still have a reason to put in the required effort.
Excellent video demonstration of why Natal *will fail* (at least in the UK and Japan). Land is much less of a scarce resource in the USA so houses can have big open areas, but in countries with a higher population density people's houses just don't have that much space. Unless Microsoft can persuade people to rearrange their living spaces to make room by removing coffee tables, buying smaller sofas, etc Natal just won't be accessible for many people.
The whole idea of mecha robots is plain wrong. It's not necessary to make an exoskeleton that big. In a military (or 'gaming') situation it'd just present a bigger target. All you need is a minimal amount of armour with enough power to augment picking up large amounts of weight, and possibly some system to dampen recoil if you're holding a projectile weapon.
(Oh dear. I'm actually arguing that mecha robots are a poor weapons system design on the internet. Is this what my life has become? Maybe I should go outside?)
A taught Masters (eg two more years of lectures) is a waste of time compared to two years experience, but a research Masters (two years of independent research under a mentor) is a good opportunity to make a name for yourself in a computing niche. The research one is more difficult, more expensive because you'll need to get to the right conferences and 'market' yourself, and only worthwhile if there's an aspect of computing that fascinates you more than it interests other people.
But...
The economy is shot. There's a chance that you won't be able to get a solid two years of work experience. If ever there was a time to not be in work for a while and take some time to improve your skills and get some "me time" where you're doing what you want to do this is it. If you do a Masters when you finish you'll be entering a work environment where there are lots of people who've graduated with you and then been unemployed for a large proportion of the past 2 years. You'll have an advantage over them.
Slashdot Mirror
These days more than ever the hardware only makes one difference - what inputs are available. There are a few other minor considerations like which APIs are enabled for developers, but really the only significant factor is how you can get information into the machine. Everything else like CPU speed, RAM, storage, etc are problems that, for the ordinary user at least, are solved.
The iPad is designed to make it easy to enter spacial information (where you're pressing on the screen) compared to a mouse or a keyboard. That's why it'll make a great reader, web browsing tool, and gaming device, but a relatively poor word processor or data entry device. A netbook on the other hand isn't really optimised for information entry at all. The keyboard isn't as good as a laptop, it's harder to operate a touchscreen on one than a tablet, and there's usually a pretty rubbish trackpad. Netbooks are a great compromise but they're not going to win in the long term when we can make laptops fold up smaller (somehow!).
In the future there will be a place for tablet PCs while there won't be for netbooks. I'm sure Bill is right that for now MSFT's interest lies in the netbook, but looking to the longer term he's dead wrong.
The fact is that there are millions of old blogs, unused forums, ancient guestbooks, etc that are easy to spam automatically. While it might very well be true that 95% of comments on the internet are spam of some sort, they're probably read by a tiny fraction of internet users. People tend to stick to about a dozen big sites that get very little rubbish posted on them at all.
Car analogy: 95% of cars are rusty old heaps of crap that can't move. Thankfully they're in scrapyards and not on the roads.
I'm sure that should be http://ministry_of_love.direct.gov.uk/ .
(If you've not read Orwell: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Love )
No internet access for 45 days? But there's nothing else to do!
It's true enough that a tablet PC that's essentially just a scaled up iPhone would be pretty cool. If it's based on something similar to iPhone OS it'd be easy for developers to port existing apps too, so the App Store would fill up with software for it relatively quickly too. A tablet scale version of Orbital would be brilliant.
But...
It'd cost a lot. It wouldn't be particularly usable for traditional apps like email. It'd be great for watching films and stuff, but not as good as a TV. I guess it'd appeal to a narrow band of Apple nerds; even fewer than bought into the Macbook Air. While I'm sure Apple are capable of releasing something like that, and making a profit out of it, I can't help but think they're cleverer than that. Whatever is coming is going to have to be bigger (in the sense of appealing to the populace rather than a tiny subset of it) than a mere tablet even if they make it super snazzy.
The point about e-ink is that it's passive. It doesn't emit light. That's what makes it very easy to read for extended periods. Throw that away and you might as well go back to reading books on your laptop.
Getting heart disease is risk, obviously, but it's a relatively small one unless you're very unhealthy or you have a history of it in your family. If you increase said risk by 18% per hour you're not actually much more likely to die. For example, if you're facing a 1% chance of heart disease then an hour of telly every day changes that to a 1.18% risk. That's probably within any margin of error anyway.
18% is the "scary tabloid statistic". The reality is that it's not really a big deal.
It doesn't follow that a lack of accuracy from dragging in a painting app would affect click accuracy in a browser at all. For example, the accuracy could degrade the longer you hold your finger to the screen due to moisture building up on your fingertip or due to reduced capacitance as the blood flow is restricted.
If you want to test point accuracy then write an app to test that; don't test something completely different and then leap to a potentially inaccurate conclusion.
The printer that you buy with ink comes with cartridges that are, at most, half full. Usually it's considerably less than half. It might feel cheaper, but in dollars-per-print it's not, and that's the only metric that really measures the value you're getting.
Next time, don't fall for it.
If you read Cuban's original blog post he suggests giving money to the top 100,000 sites ($1m each to the top 1000, and a further billion or so split between the next 99,000 sites), and that Microsoft or Yahoo promise to drive as much traffic their way as they'd lose by pulling out of Google. His idea is that if you can persuade the top 100,000 sites on the net to leave then Google is screwed. It wasn't a serious suggestion, just a sort of whimsical "Google could be killed you know" musing.
http://blogmaverick.com/2009/11/13/google-murdoch-madoff/
Making sexist remarks, ok, I can understand how that might be seen as being sexist. But how is asking a woman out considered sexist behaviour? Face it, if I were to join a group that's 98.5% women and demonstrate that I share an interest with all of them then I strongly suspect I'd get asked out too. Would I complain that their behaviour was sexist? No. Obviously not.
No. I'd be making lurve. All those ladies! Oh yeah baby!
Wait. I think I might be being sexist. Err.. Oh dear.
I don't see what's so impressive about photographing 1 atom at a time. I can photograph billions all at once with my $50 camera.
The patent in question deals with associating data into multiple categories dynamically. It's fairly obvious but (as far as I'm aware) it is a relatively recent innovation. It's definitely not something that databases do in terms of storage. They can do it, using views or triggers with stored procedures, but this is not a simple patent on a data table, a category table and a many-to-many cross reference table linking the two.
It's incredibly unlikely to ever affect anyo
People have been happily buying and selling cars here in the UK for the past 100 years, all without ID cards. Why do we need them now?
There are two caveats that limit the appeal of this...
1. You have to be a Premium Account holder ... that's £10/month.
2. (Apparently) it'll only work with a wifi connection, not 3G.
The wifi-only bit is the killer. Everywhere I use wifi I have a computer (office, home, girlfriend's home). That means it's not very useful, and as it's not very useful I don't see the point in buying the £10/month subscription in order to use it. If I wanted the Premium service I'd already have paid for it to use with the computers.
These articles crop up pretty much daily on various blogs. They all follow a very clear pattern:
1. Pick a hot IT company.
2. Pick a service they're not providing.
3. Pick something that they're spending money on.
4. Relate points 2 and 3.
There's no evidence that the two things are related. For all we know Apple might be getting back into selling time-slices on servers because Steve Jobs has hit his head and thinks it's 1983 again. These sorts of poorly researched, uninsightful articles that are absolutely nothing more than *a guess* are completely pointless.
That's not the suggestion at all. It's implying that, at some point in time, 90% of the notes in circulation has been used to take cocaine. That could be by 1 very prolific addict for all we know. The article doesn't give any indication.
Their innate abilities can't improve, but that's not to say there aren't other ways that they might be better drug sniffers than their ancestors - improving training, diet, exercise, rewards, and simply having more dogs because they're cheaper would all serve to increase detection rates.
The service that uSocial are offering is neither an exploit nor a problem. They're not spamming anyone - they're just letting people have access to a pool of people open to "following back" and taking a fee. It's a total waste of money buying in because the sort of people who'll follow everyone and care about the number of followers they have are generally idiots, but it's not really anything to worry about.
Likewise though, there aren't many things as frustrating as paying a fair amount for a game only to get a few hours of entertainment for it. There's a balance to be struck, and a delicate one at that. If a game is too hard or too easy you'll feel you didn't get value for money.
I think the 'auto-complete' idea is a good one, but it needs to come with a penalty. Spending a "life" to progress, or some points, or simply being branded a "cheat" on the end screen would be enough to make you try to play through again without the help. People without the time to invest would be able to access everything they've bought while people wanting the challenge would still have a reason to put in the required effort.
Excellent video demonstration of why Natal *will fail* (at least in the UK and Japan). Land is much less of a scarce resource in the USA so houses can have big open areas, but in countries with a higher population density people's houses just don't have that much space. Unless Microsoft can persuade people to rearrange their living spaces to make room by removing coffee tables, buying smaller sofas, etc Natal just won't be accessible for many people.
The whole idea of mecha robots is plain wrong. It's not necessary to make an exoskeleton that big. In a military (or 'gaming') situation it'd just present a bigger target. All you need is a minimal amount of armour with enough power to augment picking up large amounts of weight, and possibly some system to dampen recoil if you're holding a projectile weapon.
(Oh dear. I'm actually arguing that mecha robots are a poor weapons system design on the internet. Is this what my life has become? Maybe I should go outside?)
It's terrible. Awful. A hopeless system. I wouldn't use ever it.
And I'm not just saying that because it rated a couple of my photos as poor. :)
A taught Masters (eg two more years of lectures) is a waste of time compared to two years experience, but a research Masters (two years of independent research under a mentor) is a good opportunity to make a name for yourself in a computing niche. The research one is more difficult, more expensive because you'll need to get to the right conferences and 'market' yourself, and only worthwhile if there's an aspect of computing that fascinates you more than it interests other people.
But...
The economy is shot. There's a chance that you won't be able to get a solid two years of work experience. If ever there was a time to not be in work for a while and take some time to improve your skills and get some "me time" where you're doing what you want to do this is it. If you do a Masters when you finish you'll be entering a work environment where there are lots of people who've graduated with you and then been unemployed for a large proportion of the past 2 years. You'll have an advantage over them.