It was built using artificial intelligence developed by Lionhead studios, along with undisclosed technology from Microsoft.
Artificial intelligence and undisclosed technology coming together? There's something very familiar, and unsettling, about this...
BRYANT Mr. Dyson? The material teams wants to run another test on the uh... on it. DYSON Yup. Come on. I'll get it. Dyson produces an unusual-looking KEY from his pocket as they stride through the lab. Bryant has to hustle to keep up. BRYANT Listen, Mr. Dyson, I know I haven't been here that long, but I was wondering if you could tell me... I mean, if you know... DYSON Know what? BRYANT Well... where it came from. DYSON I asked them that question once. Know what they told me? "Don't ask."
Microsoft will defiantly put out a good tablet they know what people want and they will defiantly do a good job.
1. They've been flogging "tablet computing" unsuccessfully for damn near 10 years now, because they do a shitty job at tablet computing. That's not just me saying that, the market has spoken. Clearly, nobody wants a bloated desktop OS with a few UI changes, shoehorned into a tablet form factor that then must have heavy-duty hardware and a big, heavy battery to make it usable. As long as they keep trying to stuff Windows and Windows applications into a tablet, they will fail. The iPad is doing well because it uses a purpose-built OS with a UI made for fingers that runs fast on relatively lightweight hardware.
I have a few cheap-ass SanDisk drives that are almost 10 years old, and those have write-protect switches on them. The switches are recessed into the case and you need a paperclip to flip them, but they're there. Very handy for getting anti-malware stuff onto an infected machine without risking spreading the infection.
Surely someone's still making drives that have this capability, without all the encryption features and shit that drive up the price to ridiculous levels.
The second-hand machine had a one-year warranty. Apple fixed the whole thing, free of charge, a week before it turned 3.
The eMacs got hit with the same bad capacitors that the Dells did. Unlike Dell, Apple instituted a repair extension program for the affected machines, so that's probably why they fixed it for free that far out of warranty.
Apple has been known to go above and beyond, however. Some of the Power Mac G5s that were liquid cooled developed leaks, resulting in corrosive coolant basically destroying the innards. Even though those are from almost 5 years ago and well out of even the optional three-year extended warranty, Apple has been making affected customers whole. Not by repairing their old G5, but by giving them a new Mac Pro.
None of these companies hire rocket scientists for tech support. You couldn't afford the machines if they did.
I'd be willing to pay a bit more for access to a clueful support staff of native English speakers that don't insist on following a script, but actually listen to what troubleshooting I've already done and go from there.
That's why I buy Macs. The last time I had to call Apple support a couple years ago, the tech I spoke to was in Texas. He listened to what I had done to isolate the problem, agreed with my conclusion, and arranged a repair with no BS.
We're already seeing saturation with over 75% of iPhone 4 purchasers being previous iPhone users (the highest repeat buyer rate of any iPhone release)
Where does it say the iPhones being replaced will all go into the trash can?
More likely they will be resold or given away and used by someone else, who may or may not already have an iPhone. Let's do some math. 1.7M new phones sold last weekend. 75% of that would be 1.275M upgraders who now possess a spare iPhone. Even if half of them DO just chuck out their old iPhone, that still leaves 637,500 iPhones finding their way to new owners. Surely there will be enough "new to iPhone" users in that 637K to give a nice bump to Apple's installed base.
"MaryAnn and Jim McMahon thought their money troubles were over when they hit an $11 million jackpot at a Cripple Creek casino Tuesday. It turns out they were wrong."
Maybe it's just how I was raised, but the first thing I thought upon reading that was, "If you have 'money troubles' then why the fuck are you blowing what money you DO have in a casino, you assholes???"
There have already been data miners for the Iphone that have gotten past Apple's ever watchful censors including at least one fake banking application (BOA, IIRC).
Link, please. Because I remember hearing that fake banking apps were a problem on Android. I certainly never heard that one was out in the app store for the iPhone, and I think that would have been pretty big news.
Err, what? My iPhone has PPTP, L2TP and IPSec VPN support, and iPhone OS 4.0 will add support for SSL VPN applications from Juniper Networks and Cisco.
...in the mobile OS space anymore. They don't really have a dog in the fight right now. I've used WM6.5, and it is awful. I think it is actually worse for them having tried to ape some iPhone features.
They are already basically relegated to the sliver of the mobile OS marketshare pie chart labeled "Other." By the time they get WM7 into devices and on store shelves, Apple will have iPhone OS 4 out and be working on improving it, and Google isn't standing still with Android, either. Microsoft is going to be playing an endless game of catch-up, and they can't use their old tactics anymore to chase their competitors out of the market. Windows Mobile now has to compete on merit alone.
They laughed at the iPhone and basically ignored Android, let their own product languish, and now they're paying the price.
Workgroup Manager. Between that and Apple Remote Desktop there's practically nothing you can't manage on a fleet of Macs that authenticate against OD on an OS X Server. Software updates, backups of workstations, printers, etc...
Of course, if you have your little heart absolutely set on managing Macs with actual Microsoft group policy on a DC, you can use Centrify DirectControl.
Apple only made a few of these prototypes and an engineer would not have one out on the town without Apple being well aware that it could get spotted.
Which is why, if you had read the articles, you'd have noted that it was found in a case that made it look like an ordinary iPhone 3GS to the casual observer.
The only reason a user-replaceable battery is a plus when it comes to WM phones is that you can take the battery out in order to reboot, when the fucking piece of shit hangs on you. I've used three different company-issued WM phones in slightly more than 3 years*, and I regularly find it necessary to take advantage of this feature.
I only carry a WM phone when I am on the clock, and have always carried a personal phone as well. I did not get an iPhone for personal use until July of 2009, and to me, the difference between it and WM is like night and day. I will whip out my iPhone without a thought if I need to look at a web page and I'm not near a computer. I would only use the browsers on my WM phones if doing so was the only way to save my life. Using them was so awful I wanted to gouge my eyes out.
~Philly
*Audiovox PPC-6700 running WM 5, HTC Mogul running WM 6.0 and later upgraded to 6.1 in a desperate attempt to get the phone to suck less, and currently an HTC Touch Pro running WM 6.1, all from Sprint. I did not beat on these phones, nor did I install any apps on them whatsoever. In fact, I even shut off the fancy GUI shit HTC preloaded on the Touch Pro. They were still all uniformly terrible.
Jobs thinks everything Microsoft does is second-rate. He won't team up with them for that reason alone, never mind the fact that Apple has been burned by trusting Microsoft in the past, and I can't see that mistake being made again.
When the market for the iPhone is saturated, then of course it's market share will drop when some new do-dad comes out.
Except the market for the iPhone is not really saturated. It's the market for the iPhone on AT&T's network that's saturated. I bet nearly everyone reading this post knows at least one person who drools over the iPhone but would sooner take a hot poker in the eye than switch to AT&T to get it.
When Apple opens up the iPhone to other carriers in the US, iPhone adoption will skyrocket due to that pent-up demand. And they are definitely going to open it up to other carriers as soon as the latest exclusivity agreement expires-- because AT&T has dragged them down long enough, and because other carriers will give Apple what they want, now that they have seen the success it brought to AT&T despite their sub-par network.
Since I was watching it live and was closely examining the expected impact area during the final minute, I expected to at least be able to discern when the damn thing hit without having to be told that it did.
The last time I watched NASA TV was when they did the moon impact back in October. And here's the comment I posted when it was over:
----- Well, I watched it on NASA TV, and all I have to say is, "Where was the kaboom???" I saw no plume, no nothing, just a close-up of the crater which never changed, even after they said impact had occurred and started congratulating each other. Only NASA could make crashing something into the moon boring! Hopefully there will be actual video where I can -see- something posted from somewhere else. -----
They don't have to go too crazy, but a little color commentary would be nice-- especially when the viewer doesn't get to see anything good.
Meanwhile Microsoft actually has a good reputation for turning a blind eye to people making roms for Windows Mobile.
Turning a blind eye to piracy and other stuff you'd expect them to fight against is a standard Microsoft tactic in markets they want to take over. In their mind, as long as you're using a Microsoft product, even if you stole it, that's better than you using a competitor's product.
Once they are the de facto standard in a given market, that's when they begin finishing off their weakened competitors and turning the thumbscrews on their users. That's why you could pass around Windows install keys for years with impunity, and then XP got activation. Once the activation-free corporate XP keys got out, they had to turn the screws some more, and now even corporate copies of Vista and, I presume, 7 require activation of a sort. People might find ways around that, but the point is Microsoft is making it more and more difficult to avoid paying them for Windows now that they've sewn up the OS market.
Of course, I could have made this post a lot shorter by comparing them to drug dealers: "First one's free," then once you're hooked, up goes the price.
Inkjets suck, they drain your wallet whether you print a lot or not... if you print a lot you use up the ink, if you don't the print heads can get clogged and you waste ink on the clearing process-- or worse, the clearing process doesn't work and you have to replace the cartridge anyway.
Get a laser printer. If possible, an older one that has been well taken care of and was a popular model (to ensure that you'll be able to get toner for a while). The older stuff, particularly HPs from the early 90s, was really built to last-- especially compared to the cheap, throwaway shit that is sold today.
I'm still nursing along an old Apple LaserWriter Select 360 that I bought new in 1994. It cost $1400 at the time. Toner carts for it cost about $80. I'm only on my second toner *ever*-- including the (full, not "starter") one that came in the box with the printer. I just got Snow Leopard to play nice with it, since the printer doesn't speak TCP/IP and Appletalk is gone from SL. A decent parallel port print server and less than an hour of monkeying with it to get the settings right, and I'm back in business. I may buy a color laser at some point, but as long as I can get it to work with my current systems, I plan to keep and use the Select 360 until one of us dies.
Slashdot Mirror
It was built using artificial intelligence developed by Lionhead studios, along with undisclosed technology from Microsoft.
Artificial intelligence and undisclosed technology coming together? There's something very familiar, and unsettling, about this...
BRYANT
Mr. Dyson? The material teams wants to run another test on the uh... on it.
DYSON
Yup. Come on. I'll get it.
Dyson produces an unusual-looking KEY from his pocket as they stride through the lab. Bryant has to hustle to keep up.
BRYANT
Listen, Mr. Dyson, I know I haven't been here that long, but I was wondering if you could tell me... I mean, if you know...
DYSON
Know what?
BRYANT
Well... where it came from.
DYSON
I asked them that question once. Know what they told me? "Don't ask."
Microsoft will defiantly put out a good tablet they know what people want and they will defiantly do a good job.
1. They've been flogging "tablet computing" unsuccessfully for damn near 10 years now, because they do a shitty job at tablet computing. That's not just me saying that, the market has spoken. Clearly, nobody wants a bloated desktop OS with a few UI changes, shoehorned into a tablet form factor that then must have heavy-duty hardware and a big, heavy battery to make it usable. As long as they keep trying to stuff Windows and Windows applications into a tablet, they will fail. The iPad is doing well because it uses a purpose-built OS with a UI made for fingers that runs fast on relatively lightweight hardware.
2. It's spelled "definitely"
~Philly
While Microsoft is pushing 64-bit as a way to gain performance in the OS...
Why bother trying to remove bloat from your OS when you can just tell your customers to throw more hardware at the problem?
I have a few cheap-ass SanDisk drives that are almost 10 years old, and those have write-protect switches on them. The switches are recessed into the case and you need a paperclip to flip them, but they're there. Very handy for getting anti-malware stuff onto an infected machine without risking spreading the infection.
Surely someone's still making drives that have this capability, without all the encryption features and shit that drive up the price to ridiculous levels.
~Philly
The second-hand machine had a one-year warranty. Apple fixed the whole thing, free of charge, a week before it turned 3.
The eMacs got hit with the same bad capacitors that the Dells did. Unlike Dell, Apple instituted a repair extension program for the affected machines, so that's probably why they fixed it for free that far out of warranty.
Apple has been known to go above and beyond, however. Some of the Power Mac G5s that were liquid cooled developed leaks, resulting in corrosive coolant basically destroying the innards. Even though those are from almost 5 years ago and well out of even the optional three-year extended warranty, Apple has been making affected customers whole. Not by repairing their old G5, but by giving them a new Mac Pro.
~Philly
None of these companies hire rocket scientists for tech support. You couldn't afford the machines if they did.
I'd be willing to pay a bit more for access to a clueful support staff of native English speakers that don't insist on following a script, but actually listen to what troubleshooting I've already done and go from there.
That's why I buy Macs. The last time I had to call Apple support a couple years ago, the tech I spoke to was in Texas. He listened to what I had done to isolate the problem, agreed with my conclusion, and arranged a repair with no BS.
~Philly
We're already seeing saturation with over 75% of iPhone 4 purchasers being previous iPhone users (the highest repeat buyer rate of any iPhone release)
Where does it say the iPhones being replaced will all go into the trash can?
More likely they will be resold or given away and used by someone else, who may or may not already have an iPhone. Let's do some math. 1.7M new phones sold last weekend. 75% of that would be 1.275M upgraders who now possess a spare iPhone. Even if half of them DO just chuck out their old iPhone, that still leaves 637,500 iPhones finding their way to new owners. Surely there will be enough "new to iPhone" users in that 637K to give a nice bump to Apple's installed base.
~Philly
"MaryAnn and Jim McMahon thought their money troubles were over when they hit an $11 million jackpot at a Cripple Creek casino Tuesday. It turns out they were wrong."
Maybe it's just how I was raised, but the first thing I thought upon reading that was, "If you have 'money troubles' then why the fuck are you blowing what money you DO have in a casino, you assholes??? "
~Philly
I came here to post the exact same thing. Good thing I searched for "pacer" first to check.
~Philly
There have already been data miners for the Iphone that have gotten past Apple's ever watchful censors including at least one fake banking application (BOA, IIRC).
Link, please. Because I remember hearing that fake banking apps were a problem on Android. I certainly never heard that one was out in the app store for the iPhone, and I think that would have been pretty big news.
I know who will blink first: Adobe's shareholders, when they hear that Adobe is cutting off about half their revenue stream, out of spite.
~Philly
I can't say I use it that often, but every time I have, it has worked without issue.
Android also has VPN, which the Iphone lacks
Err, what? My iPhone has PPTP, L2TP and IPSec VPN support, and iPhone OS 4.0 will add support for SSL VPN applications from Juniper Networks and Cisco.
~Philly
...in the mobile OS space anymore. They don't really have a dog in the fight right now. I've used WM6.5, and it is awful. I think it is actually worse for them having tried to ape some iPhone features.
They are already basically relegated to the sliver of the mobile OS marketshare pie chart labeled "Other." By the time they get WM7 into devices and on store shelves, Apple will have iPhone OS 4 out and be working on improving it, and Google isn't standing still with Android, either. Microsoft is going to be playing an endless game of catch-up, and they can't use their old tactics anymore to chase their competitors out of the market. Windows Mobile now has to compete on merit alone.
They laughed at the iPhone and basically ignored Android, let their own product languish, and now they're paying the price.
~Philly
pushing down group policies to a fleet of macs?
Workgroup Manager. Between that and Apple Remote Desktop there's practically nothing you can't manage on a fleet of Macs that authenticate against OD on an OS X Server. Software updates, backups of workstations, printers, etc...
Of course, if you have your little heart absolutely set on managing Macs with actual Microsoft group policy on a DC, you can use Centrify DirectControl.
~Philly
Apple only made a few of these prototypes and an engineer would not have one out on the town without Apple being well aware that it could get spotted.
Which is why, if you had read the articles, you'd have noted that it was found in a case that made it look like an ordinary iPhone 3GS to the casual observer.
http://gizmodo.com/5520164/this-is-apples-next-iphone
The only reason a user-replaceable battery is a plus when it comes to WM phones is that you can take the battery out in order to reboot, when the fucking piece of shit hangs on you. I've used three different company-issued WM phones in slightly more than 3 years*, and I regularly find it necessary to take advantage of this feature.
I only carry a WM phone when I am on the clock, and have always carried a personal phone as well. I did not get an iPhone for personal use until July of 2009, and to me, the difference between it and WM is like night and day. I will whip out my iPhone without a thought if I need to look at a web page and I'm not near a computer. I would only use the browsers on my WM phones if doing so was the only way to save my life. Using them was so awful I wanted to gouge my eyes out.
~Philly
*Audiovox PPC-6700 running WM 5, HTC Mogul running WM 6.0 and later upgraded to 6.1 in a desperate attempt to get the phone to suck less, and currently an HTC Touch Pro running WM 6.1, all from Sprint. I did not beat on these phones, nor did I install any apps on them whatsoever. In fact, I even shut off the fancy GUI shit HTC preloaded on the Touch Pro. They were still all uniformly terrible.
Jobs thinks everything Microsoft does is second-rate. He won't team up with them for that reason alone, never mind the fact that Apple has been burned by trusting Microsoft in the past, and I can't see that mistake being made again.
~Philly
When the market for the iPhone is saturated, then of course it's market share will drop when some new do-dad comes out.
Except the market for the iPhone is not really saturated. It's the market for the iPhone on AT&T's network that's saturated. I bet nearly everyone reading this post knows at least one person who drools over the iPhone but would sooner take a hot poker in the eye than switch to AT&T to get it.
When Apple opens up the iPhone to other carriers in the US, iPhone adoption will skyrocket due to that pent-up demand. And they are definitely going to open it up to other carriers as soon as the latest exclusivity agreement expires-- because AT&T has dragged them down long enough, and because other carriers will give Apple what they want, now that they have seen the success it brought to AT&T despite their sub-par network.
~Philly
Hum... you do realize I was being colorful and making a pop-culture reference, don't you, Professor?
Since I was watching it live and was closely examining the expected impact area during the final minute, I expected to at least be able to discern when the damn thing hit without having to be told that it did.
The last time I watched NASA TV was when they did the moon impact back in October. And here's the comment I posted when it was over:
-----
Well, I watched it on NASA TV, and all I have to say is, "Where was the kaboom???"
I saw no plume, no nothing, just a close-up of the crater which never changed, even after they said impact had occurred and started congratulating each other. Only NASA could make crashing something into the moon boring!
Hopefully there will be actual video where I can -see- something posted from somewhere else.
-----
They don't have to go too crazy, but a little color commentary would be nice-- especially when the viewer doesn't get to see anything good.
Meanwhile Microsoft actually has a good reputation for turning a blind eye to people making roms for Windows Mobile.
Turning a blind eye to piracy and other stuff you'd expect them to fight against is a standard Microsoft tactic in markets they want to take over. In their mind, as long as you're using a Microsoft product, even if you stole it, that's better than you using a competitor's product.
Once they are the de facto standard in a given market, that's when they begin finishing off their weakened competitors and turning the thumbscrews on their users. That's why you could pass around Windows install keys for years with impunity, and then XP got activation. Once the activation-free corporate XP keys got out, they had to turn the screws some more, and now even corporate copies of Vista and, I presume, 7 require activation of a sort. People might find ways around that, but the point is Microsoft is making it more and more difficult to avoid paying them for Windows now that they've sewn up the OS market.
Of course, I could have made this post a lot shorter by comparing them to drug dealers: "First one's free," then once you're hooked, up goes the price.
~Philly
Inkjets suck, they drain your wallet whether you print a lot or not... if you print a lot you use up the ink, if you don't the print heads can get clogged and you waste ink on the clearing process-- or worse, the clearing process doesn't work and you have to replace the cartridge anyway.
Get a laser printer. If possible, an older one that has been well taken care of and was a popular model (to ensure that you'll be able to get toner for a while). The older stuff, particularly HPs from the early 90s, was really built to last-- especially compared to the cheap, throwaway shit that is sold today.
I'm still nursing along an old Apple LaserWriter Select 360 that I bought new in 1994. It cost $1400 at the time. Toner carts for it cost about $80. I'm only on my second toner *ever*-- including the (full, not "starter") one that came in the box with the printer. I just got Snow Leopard to play nice with it, since the printer doesn't speak TCP/IP and Appletalk is gone from SL. A decent parallel port print server and less than an hour of monkeying with it to get the settings right, and I'm back in business. I may buy a color laser at some point, but as long as I can get it to work with my current systems, I plan to keep and use the Select 360 until one of us dies.
~Philly
Me: Doc, Do I have rectal Cancer?
Doc: Email me a pic so I can tell.
----------
To: Doc
Subject: Rectal diagnosis photo
Attachment: hello.jpg (25 KB)
Here you go.
----------
let's get HUMANS walking on Mars and on the asteroids and on Titan and Europa...
Europa? But we're supposed to attempt no landings there!
~Philly