IBM didn't offer a "standard" mouse interface until the PS/2, and even then it took several more years to weed out the proprietary "bus mice" and RS-232 rodents from the marketplace. This was partly because common AT cases didn't include a knockout for a PS/2 mouse, combined with the fact that motherboard makers always seemed very reluctant to move the PS/2 interface (if they even offered one) to a blank ISA panel.
Really, it doesn't seem that PS/2 gained wide acceptance until ATX made back panel knockouts useful and replaceable, thus providing a good place for a PS/2 mouse connector. And since, IIRC, IBM had nothing at all to do with the ATX spec, I don't really think they deserve much credit for the PS/2 mouse's eventual widespread acceptance.
So, though I myself think that IBM contributed a whole lot more than a couple of peripheral interfaces to the development of the PC, I must conclude for the sake of argument that your post is, at best, 50% correct.
PSN downloads are tied to the account, not the device. The downside of doing it this way is that if PSN ever disappears (which it asymptotically will), the games are useless without real effort on Sony's part. The upside is that in the meantime, at least, hardware failure is not a big deal since you can just download things again.
That's all well and good. I like accurate simulations, too.
The more important question (which I can't answer because I've never played the game), however, is this: Is it fun?
For example: Ridge Racer on the PSX is also wildly inaccurate, but it's a blast to play once one gets past the lack of disturbingly-real physics, even today with its rather limited (but also very smooth) graphics.
As another example: If I really wanted disturbingly-real physics, I'd go hop into the BMW in the driveway and go for a drive. It's such a good simulation of real-world physics that repairs cost actual money, license suspensions are real, and actual people get hurt when one fucks up badly.
Kid, I assure you: If you were around computers 20 years ago, you'd have never made such a statement. Computer video in 1990 was anything but "perfectly fine," and none of the software you listed even existed at that time.
So it's really not about saving the Bluefin Tuna after all, but about preserving existing diversity so we humans can continue to thrive within it in ways that we're already familiar with.
Just use a regular mic stand with a boom. They're not expensive, and since you're neither recording nor playing out, there's no need for specialized gear.
But first, hang the mic (by its cord) over the back of a chair or something else of appropriate height, and see if it's really an idea worth pursuing at all.
Picture it, if you will: Suppose that it is 1980, and you're asking people to explain why it is that they'd ever bother upgrading from their 1960's tech since, as far as you can tell, it still works just fine.
Folks will just look at you strangely and ignore your absurd question.
Amusingly, this sort accidental infection would be totally prevented if media (including SD cards, device internal storage, etc) were shipped unformatted, just like it was back in the days of floppies.
It wouldn't really be a big deal: First time you switch the device on, or insert the thumb drive, or whatever, it/your computer simply formats the media. Done.
This would obviously not stop a more sinister (firmware-based) attack, but I see nothing here to indicate that this particular attack vector was deliberate.
And my quick impromptu survey of the roads around me shows that 90% of truck and SUV drivers are flying solo with little or no visible cargo. Maybe they do need the capacity some of the time, but mostly they seem to just toddle between A and B with one person and no obvious cargo.
I need a large vehicle, too. I carry a lot of tools around with me for field work, and they just won't fit in my car. And when I'm done working for the day, I park the work van and drive something more suitable for my personal activities.
And since the van is full of tools and equipment (since, you know, I actually use it) and I need move something big (which, since I'm slowly remodeling my house, does happen from time to time) I rent something else.
I've considered buying an old beater pickup truck, but the costs of keeping such a thing living (and safe) for the times that I actually need it for some reason are far greater than the costs of just renting one as-needed.
For me, at least. YMMV.
(It may be worth noting that none of the cars I drive were purchased new by me, nor were they particularly expensive. There is less money wrapped up in all three of the vehicles that I drive -- including maintenance over the past many years -- than a new, reasonably equipped Chevy Malibu.)
I had a domain for a few years that I actually used. One day, an owner of several very similar domains (which they also actually used) came knocking in my inbox, waving a registered trademark around like a flag.
We could've gone to court over the issue, as we both had reasonable points to be made about trademark law and case history, and we both felt legitimately entitled to the domain that I had. But it would've been silly, expensive, and time-consuming.
In the end, they gave me what was probably somewhat more than market price (a few $k), I turned over the domain to them, and the lawyers had to make their money doing something else instead of fighting about this. And, though that was a reasonably sensible outcome, I'd still much rather have the domain in question than the pile of money.
Having the ability to plug USB peripherals (such as external storage or input devices) into a USB host such as an iPad is rather completely different than plugging an iPod (which is merely a USB peripheral) into a PC (which is a host).
Even if you can't get your head around that, then you must admit that the functional ability of the iPad to connect to external USB peripherals is a great departure from the norm.
Meanwhile, I think you've been drinking too much of the Kool-Aid.
I recognize that your UID is lower than mine, but that doesn't mean I just fell off the turnip truck.:)
Of course the iPhone doesn't support CDMA, but it is an option -- all Apple has to do is integrate a radio for it instead of their GSM kit, like just about every other vendor of phones does for the US market.
Of course, they won't be doing this as long as there is contractual exclusivity with AT&T, since (obviously) AT&T is a GSM network.
And, simply, it's a deal-breaker for me, since CDMA works here and GSM mostly doesn't.
Locally, history tells the story:
Back in the day (~20 years ago) there was Airtouch and Cellular One and Sprint, available here in usable form.
Sprint became 360 Communications and then sold their AMPS and early CDMA resources and towers to Alltel.
Cellular One left the market locally.
Airtouch was absorbed by Verizon, as was Alltel.
Eventually, AT&T started building out their network so we could use it some places. Eventually, we got a Sprint PCS tower. Eventually, right before the Sprint merger, we got some semblance of proper iDen service. All of these eventualities were at least a decade late, IMHO: In particular, AT&T's coverage map didn't start changing colors for this area in any favorable way until about a year ago, after Verizon was forced to divest some of the Alltel resources they had recently acquired.
It's an ugly enough situation, choice-wise, that recently half of the Sprint stores have closed up shop. There is no local vendor for AT&T except non-specialized places like Best Buy. And, yet, there's a Verizon or Alltel retailer every few blocks on the main roads, moving phones like hotcakes (and yes, it's absurd that they are conceptually the same thing).
Glad you've got choices up in NY, but in my corner of Ohio things are different, and it's CDMA or bust for folks who wander off the beaten path.:)
Sure, it's a USB-to-dock adapter. But the fact that there are USB host signals in the iPad's dock connector is a wild departure from every other iPhone-like device that Apple produces.
I don't know all of the reasons that Apple might have had for non-removable storage on the iPad, I'm just listing possibilities. I'm sure that reality includes some of these reasons and possibly more but you'd have to talk to the engineers over at Apple to get their actual reasoning. I'm sure some of it, but not all of it, is the money issue.
Please understand your subject matter, and the context: The iPad does support removable storage (and a few other things), and this is a discussion about the iPhone 4, which does not.
I don't know any of the reasons why Apple does what Apple does, except that engineering has little to do with it. The lack of the SD card slot is the product of the same folks who are responsible for the non-removable battery: designers, the marketers, and (most importantly) Steve Jobs. Had any of these folks created a spec and a drawing that included a place for an micro SD card and sent that down the chain to the folks who make specs work, I have every bit of confidence that Apple's engineering department would have had little difficulty implementing it.
One is they wanted to keep everything as similar as possible between the iTouch, iPhone, and iPad. Since the iPad would be the only one that had the space for a SD slot they chose to go without one on all the devices.
The iPad is already very different, in that it is rather large and has a USB port. Supporting SD simply isn't very far-fetched from my perspective. Next.
A second reason would be that they wanted easily-definable configurations and allowing people to put in their own SD card would cause the device to have odd amounts of storage.
It's not as if modern filesystems haven't solved these problems for decades. Next.
A third might be design issues. Supporting stuff like SD cards might mess with internal timing, bus design of the device, or software support and Apple just didn't feel it was worth pursuing.
Oh noes. Adding hardware to a device is hard, and takes engineers and stuff, which sounds expensive. (The rest of the device, apparently, is ejaculated fully-assembled by unicorns, since there's not any engineering involved with them, or something.) (And nevermind the fact that it's a dead-simple basement hack to plug an SD card in to a lightly-modified WRT54G without creating any issues. But then, I guess Linksys doesn't use unicorns for their R&D and production.) Next.
Lastly, allowing people to buy a lower-end device and then add in more storage later would generate less money than having people go for the higher memory ones from the start.
This. Or, better: Someone buys cheap version, decides they like it, uses lots of space, runs out, and then must buy an entirely new phone in order to get more space.
Never attribute to technical limitations that which can be adequately explained by greed.
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I think he means: A lot of places encourage their employees to use of pedestrian or public transportation.
(Disclaimer: I drive a big, heavy van at least 70 miles every day for work, and park for free. Hell, even the van is free. So is the gas. YMMV.)
IBM didn't offer a "standard" mouse interface until the PS/2, and even then it took several more years to weed out the proprietary "bus mice" and RS-232 rodents from the marketplace. This was partly because common AT cases didn't include a knockout for a PS/2 mouse, combined with the fact that motherboard makers always seemed very reluctant to move the PS/2 interface (if they even offered one) to a blank ISA panel.
Really, it doesn't seem that PS/2 gained wide acceptance until ATX made back panel knockouts useful and replaceable, thus providing a good place for a PS/2 mouse connector. And since, IIRC, IBM had nothing at all to do with the ATX spec, I don't really think they deserve much credit for the PS/2 mouse's eventual widespread acceptance.
So, though I myself think that IBM contributed a whole lot more than a couple of peripheral interfaces to the development of the PC, I must conclude for the sake of argument that your post is, at best, 50% correct.
PSN downloads are tied to the account, not the device. The downside of doing it this way is that if PSN ever disappears (which it asymptotically will), the games are useless without real effort on Sony's part. The upside is that in the meantime, at least, hardware failure is not a big deal since you can just download things again.
That's all well and good. I like accurate simulations, too.
The more important question (which I can't answer because I've never played the game), however, is this: Is it fun?
For example: Ridge Racer on the PSX is also wildly inaccurate, but it's a blast to play once one gets past the lack of disturbingly-real physics, even today with its rather limited (but also very smooth) graphics.
As another example: If I really wanted disturbingly-real physics, I'd go hop into the BMW in the driveway and go for a drive. It's such a good simulation of real-world physics that repairs cost actual money, license suspensions are real, and actual people get hurt when one fucks up badly.
Go ahead, try it. "Binging" for "Google" produces a far more useful result than I would've expected.
Spit, not splitted.
That's not creative. That's just the natural result of being stuck in a studio, and running out of hardware to hold microphones. :)
If you want to be pedantic, Windows Media Player didn't exist, either, having not been in existence until the release of Windows 98.
Dear AC,
I think you misinterpreted my sarcasm.
You've got it all wrong.
I like tuna. It's delicious.
I'd rather be dead due to a global lack biodiversity, than live in a world wherein I cannot consume tuna.
In conclusion: Give me tuna, or give me death.
That is all.
Decades? Plural?
Kid, I assure you: If you were around computers 20 years ago, you'd have never made such a statement. Computer video in 1990 was anything but "perfectly fine," and none of the software you listed even existed at that time.
Cool.
So it's really not about saving the Bluefin Tuna after all, but about preserving existing diversity so we humans can continue to thrive within it in ways that we're already familiar with.
Thanks for clearing that up.
Just use a regular mic stand with a boom. They're not expensive, and since you're neither recording nor playing out, there's no need for specialized gear.
But first, hang the mic (by its cord) over the back of a chair or something else of appropriate height, and see if it's really an idea worth pursuing at all.
Picture it, if you will: Suppose that it is 1980, and you're asking people to explain why it is that they'd ever bother upgrading from their 1960's tech since, as far as you can tell, it still works just fine.
Folks will just look at you strangely and ignore your absurd question.
[sarcasm] Right. Because satellite networks are somehow inherently more secure than terrestrial networks. [/sarcasm]
Amusingly, this sort accidental infection would be totally prevented if media (including SD cards, device internal storage, etc) were shipped unformatted, just like it was back in the days of floppies.
It wouldn't really be a big deal: First time you switch the device on, or insert the thumb drive, or whatever, it/your computer simply formats the media. Done.
This would obviously not stop a more sinister (firmware-based) attack, but I see nothing here to indicate that this particular attack vector was deliberate.
A fifth of liquor is 750mL, indeed. But a fifth of a gallon is 757.082357mL, not 750mL.
All real liquor is sold in Metric units.
And my quick impromptu survey of the roads around me shows that 90% of truck and SUV drivers are flying solo with little or no visible cargo. Maybe they do need the capacity some of the time, but mostly they seem to just toddle between A and B with one person and no obvious cargo.
I need a large vehicle, too. I carry a lot of tools around with me for field work, and they just won't fit in my car. And when I'm done working for the day, I park the work van and drive something more suitable for my personal activities.
And since the van is full of tools and equipment (since, you know, I actually use it) and I need move something big (which, since I'm slowly remodeling my house, does happen from time to time) I rent something else.
I've considered buying an old beater pickup truck, but the costs of keeping such a thing living (and safe) for the times that I actually need it for some reason are far greater than the costs of just renting one as-needed.
For me, at least. YMMV.
(It may be worth noting that none of the cars I drive were purchased new by me, nor were they particularly expensive. There is less money wrapped up in all three of the vehicles that I drive -- including maintenance over the past many years -- than a new, reasonably equipped Chevy Malibu.)
When I'm elected Earth Czar, I'm going to institute mandatory driving tests and driver re-education every two years for all license-holders.
*shrug*
I had a domain for a few years that I actually used. One day, an owner of several very similar domains (which they also actually used) came knocking in my inbox, waving a registered trademark around like a flag.
We could've gone to court over the issue, as we both had reasonable points to be made about trademark law and case history, and we both felt legitimately entitled to the domain that I had. But it would've been silly, expensive, and time-consuming.
In the end, they gave me what was probably somewhat more than market price (a few $k), I turned over the domain to them, and the lawyers had to make their money doing something else instead of fighting about this. And, though that was a reasonably sensible outcome, I'd still much rather have the domain in question than the pile of money.
I believe that you misunderstand how USB works.
It's not peer-to-peer as Firewire is.
Having the ability to plug USB peripherals (such as external storage or input devices) into a USB host such as an iPad is rather completely different than plugging an iPod (which is merely a USB peripheral) into a PC (which is a host).
Even if you can't get your head around that, then you must admit that the functional ability of the iPad to connect to external USB peripherals is a great departure from the norm.
Meanwhile, I think you've been drinking too much of the Kool-Aid.
I recognize that your UID is lower than mine, but that doesn't mean I just fell off the turnip truck. :)
Of course the iPhone doesn't support CDMA, but it is an option -- all Apple has to do is integrate a radio for it instead of their GSM kit, like just about every other vendor of phones does for the US market.
Of course, they won't be doing this as long as there is contractual exclusivity with AT&T, since (obviously) AT&T is a GSM network.
And, simply, it's a deal-breaker for me, since CDMA works here and GSM mostly doesn't.
Locally, history tells the story:
Back in the day (~20 years ago) there was Airtouch and Cellular One and Sprint, available here in usable form.
Sprint became 360 Communications and then sold their AMPS and early CDMA resources and towers to Alltel.
Cellular One left the market locally.
Airtouch was absorbed by Verizon, as was Alltel.
Eventually, AT&T started building out their network so we could use it some places. Eventually, we got a Sprint PCS tower. Eventually, right before the Sprint merger, we got some semblance of proper iDen service. All of these eventualities were at least a decade late, IMHO: In particular, AT&T's coverage map didn't start changing colors for this area in any favorable way until about a year ago, after Verizon was forced to divest some of the Alltel resources they had recently acquired.
It's an ugly enough situation, choice-wise, that recently half of the Sprint stores have closed up shop. There is no local vendor for AT&T except non-specialized places like Best Buy. And, yet, there's a Verizon or Alltel retailer every few blocks on the main roads, moving phones like hotcakes (and yes, it's absurd that they are conceptually the same thing).
Glad you've got choices up in NY, but in my corner of Ohio things are different, and it's CDMA or bust for folks who wander off the beaten path. :)
iPad specs. Scroll down to "in the box."
Sure, it's a USB-to-dock adapter. But the fact that there are USB host signals in the iPad's dock connector is a wild departure from every other iPhone-like device that Apple produces.
Please understand your subject matter, and the context: The iPad does support removable storage (and a few other things), and this is a discussion about the iPhone 4, which does not.
I don't know any of the reasons why Apple does what Apple does, except that engineering has little to do with it. The lack of the SD card slot is the product of the same folks who are responsible for the non-removable battery: designers, the marketers, and (most importantly) Steve Jobs. Had any of these folks created a spec and a drawing that included a place for an micro SD card and sent that down the chain to the folks who make specs work, I have every bit of confidence that Apple's engineering department would have had little difficulty implementing it.
I try hard not to reply to myself, but, uh. This.
The iPad is already very different, in that it is rather large and has a USB port. Supporting SD simply isn't very far-fetched from my perspective. Next.
It's not as if modern filesystems haven't solved these problems for decades. Next.
Oh noes. Adding hardware to a device is hard, and takes engineers and stuff, which sounds expensive. (The rest of the device, apparently, is ejaculated fully-assembled by unicorns, since there's not any engineering involved with them, or something.) (And nevermind the fact that it's a dead-simple basement hack to plug an SD card in to a lightly-modified WRT54G without creating any issues. But then, I guess Linksys doesn't use unicorns for their R&D and production.) Next.
This. Or, better: Someone buys cheap version, decides they like it, uses lots of space, runs out, and then must buy an entirely new phone in order to get more space.
Never attribute to technical limitations that which can be adequately explained by greed.