"and tries to explain why wi-fi has caught on so well"...
How about: the same reason why the GUI, the mouse, the floppy drive, USB and heaven knows how many other standards have caught on so well in the PC markets:
Apple.
They pushed it. Note: I'm not saying they developed it; but there's a big difference between some geek sitting in his basement with a really cool tech, and getting the entire world to use it. Apple is the link between the two in this case.
yep, I'm gonna get marked as a troll or overrated for this, but I got karma to burn.
But that doesn't necessarily mean 802.11b, however. Ultimately though, computers are going to continue to shrink and converge with such devices as mobile phones. Data transfer and communications are going to be fundamental to such devices.
Now, whether 802.11 or its descendants are going to be the facilitators, or whether it's satellite; or maybe even a combination of both, wireless technology will be the future. In my mind, the fusion of short range and long range makes sense; satellites are useless indoors or in cities with skyscrapers or underground in facilities like subways or busses. 802 is perfect for this. On the other hand, 802 has a very limited range; you drive from Washington to NY, you still want to be able to get your mail. Satellite slips in.
Either way, wireless technology is going to continue to play an increasing role in our lives. People are insisting upon staying connected with the rest of the world no matter where they are, and connectivity without wires facilitiates this.
it is the case. absolute privacy wouldn't just facilitate terrorism, it facilitates all kinds of crime. If police weren't allowed to come in and search the premises of suspects of crime, everyone would just hide evidence within their home and it'd be very hard to convict anyone of anything.
Terrorism is no different. The greater the degree of privacy within a country, the easier it is for terrorists to blend in to the background noise.
But then again, nobody wants a surveillance state.
There is a balance that must be struck between the two. I don't think there would be many people who would claim absolute privacy is a good thing, or no privacy at all. There must be a trade-off between what's best for the society and what's best for the individual.
was the reg's comments on the software, which I found from personal experience to be particularly pertinent.
First off; bluetooth needs to be simplified. The current method of doing it is confusing and unclear.
Next; same goes for the airport software and splitting up between authentication and encryption. The way apple uses the "internet connect" application in tandem with the network system pref is something that should be addressed.
The battery conditioning issue; Apple doesn't really provide users with any clear and obvious documentation on it.
Finally; CDRWs needs the Disk Utility app. What a joke! It should all be able to be done from within the Finder.
In other words, your righteous indignation has been accounted for and factored into their budget, thank you very much.
I reckon it'll get taken down quick smart. There is no upside to posting something like that.
Yes, I hear all the arguments about "PCs are cheaper therefore you spend more money on Adobe software", but that fails to take into account - mac users have lived with Apple through the Amelio 90s, when the only colour the Apple logo was associated with was red.
You think they're suddenly going to drop their macs now that Adobe links to some biased PC dork who can't get basics like mhz or correct units of measurement for time?
All that will happen is that Adobe'll piss off their long standing customers. I have no desire to use a Windows PC; and some concocted brew of "hyperthreaded" enabled tests aren't going to convince me otherwise. Just switch the tables, and use altivec tests instead? And then we're back to lies, damned lies and stats.
Regardless, where's the upside for Adobe once you realise people aren't going to abandon Apple because Adobe say so? There's a much more worrisome flipside; people will abandon Adobe if Apple say so; viz a viz FCP etc
We have American companies claiming offshore workers are better and cheaper (which is one-half bullshit) except when it comes to management. Now isn't that remarkable? We have American CEOs getting obscene salaries and bonuses for putting American residents out of work.
I love this insular view of the world that many Americans have - everywhere else in the world is full of starving uneducated hordes.
I did a software engineering course a year or so ago, and there's a well known software engineering institute (i forget its name) that catergorises organisations based on how well they adhere to certain professional standards. You have to have specific planning phases, etc etc... The companies are graded from 1 (worst) through 5 (best).... anyway, it came as a bit of a shock to me as well, but of all the organisations they had graded (including MS, IBM, etc) there were only two in the world that had scored 5. They were both in India.
It may then come as a shock to you, but the fact is that there are a lot of people out in the world that are better for the job, and cheaper as well. The US has no monopoly on either brains or education.
and it's also important to remember, you end up with two distinct classes of hyper-evolved beings: the good guys, led by Professor X, and the evil mutants, led by Magneto.
The thing I love about Sony-Ericsson, and the reason why I will continue to buy their phones over Nokia's which I otherwise prefer to use, boils down to this:
Bluetooth.
S-E are putting it in a lot of their phones; Nokia are putting it in very few. You haven't seen how cool Bluetooth is until you run iSync with a mac, or get Romeo controlling your mac from the other side of the room through your phone.
Better yet, lawyers are having a heyday. The more lawsuits, the better.
But isn't this the US all over? I know you must be sick and tired of hearing being the most litigatious society etc - but don't think it's just limited to IP.
You want to talk about wolves guarding the henhouse? How many politicians used to be lawyers?
You gotta be kidding me! This reminds me of the old joke... a US Navy Carrier sees a big blip on the radar, and sends out of the radio: "This is the USS Big Ship to unidentified target, please change course." The response comes back: "That's a negative, Big Ship". "We are a Aircraft Carrier from the US Navy. Now please change course!" "That's a negative, Big Ship. We're a lighthouse"
For chrissakes, OSS has got to be the biggest stack of rocks sitting on MS's radar that they've had in a long, long time.
You are missing the whole point. Nobody thinks that Gore is delusional enough to actually believe that he invented the Internet, but his comments were so self-serving and clumsy that he deserves every bit of ridicule that he gets.
Basically, Ammiano is pissed that Segway didn't try to buy him off.
Spot on, unfortunately. Whilst Segway spent a lot on some very good lobbyists, they decided against political donations.
Now, there are all these stupid little local politicians deciding that the Segway is "unsafe". All the while, traffic congestion will continue to grown.
You know what? I think there's a grand opportunity for a bit of public disobedenience here... just ride the damn things on the sidewalk anyway.
So, I say the actions of MS and Apple are pretty much the same. Only in the case of MS, these actions get defined as illegal, while for Apple they are merely low, dirty and unethical. But don't you think that sort of hair splitting should be left up to the lawyers?
That deserves a response.
How is bundling apps "low, dirty or unethical"? This is different from what MS is doing - trying to reduce competition. For example, Apple didn't create Safari for the purpose to ensure it remained the dominant OS provider, or to kill the competition. They didn't change the operating system so that competitor's software wouldn't work. That would be "low, dirty and unethical". That is what MS does.
You want to characterise behaviour by entities, you have to look at the motives. Thanks to the DoJ prosecution, we know what MS's motives behind behind, for example, IE were. You can also get a pretty good idea of Apple's, by their behaviour - all the improvements that they make to the KHTML rendering engine will be re-released back into the open source community. This is not a company out to kill competition, to ensure that there are no competitor's products available - this is a company doing it's utmost to stimulate competition.
And as for cracking down on clone makers - well, what do you expect? I'm sure Sony would be within their rights to crack the shits if somebody started selling a box that played PS2 games. And as for your comments about part makers being cracked down on - that's not exactly true. I don't know of any "parts" makers that have been gone after unless they've blatantly broken the law - like making Apple cases or something.
Apple has not acted in a low, dirty or unethical way. There are probably reasons behind this move - most likely related to the RIAA. Regardless, it doesn't have anything to do with how open the OS is... it's a piece of proprietary software. If you don't like it, go use something else. There's plenty of competition, because unlike MS, Apple hasn't tried to stifle it.
Slashdot Mirror
"and tries to explain why wi-fi has caught on so well"...
How about: the same reason why the GUI, the mouse, the floppy drive, USB and heaven knows how many other standards have caught on so well in the PC markets:
Apple.
They pushed it. Note: I'm not saying they developed it; but there's a big difference between some geek sitting in his basement with a really cool tech, and getting the entire world to use it. Apple is the link between the two in this case.
yep, I'm gonna get marked as a troll or overrated for this, but I got karma to burn.
-- james
But that doesn't necessarily mean 802.11b, however. Ultimately though, computers are going to continue to shrink and converge with such devices as mobile phones. Data transfer and communications are going to be fundamental to such devices.
Now, whether 802.11 or its descendants are going to be the facilitators, or whether it's satellite; or maybe even a combination of both, wireless technology will be the future. In my mind, the fusion of short range and long range makes sense; satellites are useless indoors or in cities with skyscrapers or underground in facilities like subways or busses. 802 is perfect for this. On the other hand, 802 has a very limited range; you drive from Washington to NY, you still want to be able to get your mail. Satellite slips in.
Either way, wireless technology is going to continue to play an increasing role in our lives. People are insisting upon staying connected with the rest of the world no matter where they are, and connectivity without wires facilitiates this.
-- james
it is the case. absolute privacy wouldn't just facilitate terrorism, it facilitates all kinds of crime. If police weren't allowed to come in and search the premises of suspects of crime, everyone would just hide evidence within their home and it'd be very hard to convict anyone of anything.
Terrorism is no different. The greater the degree of privacy within a country, the easier it is for terrorists to blend in to the background noise.
But then again, nobody wants a surveillance state.
There is a balance that must be struck between the two. I don't think there would be many people who would claim absolute privacy is a good thing, or no privacy at all. There must be a trade-off between what's best for the society and what's best for the individual.
-- james
was the reg's comments on the software, which I found from personal experience to be particularly pertinent.
First off; bluetooth needs to be simplified. The current method of doing it is confusing and unclear.
Next; same goes for the airport software and splitting up between authentication and encryption. The way apple uses the "internet connect" application in tandem with the network system pref is something that should be addressed.
The battery conditioning issue; Apple doesn't really provide users with any clear and obvious documentation on it.
Finally; CDRWs needs the Disk Utility app. What a joke! It should all be able to be done from within the Finder.
Hopefully these will get addressed in Panther...
-- james
Are you being sarcastic?
Here come the squiddies
That's what jumped to my mind, anyway
-- james
I reckon it'll get taken down quick smart. There is no upside to posting something like that.
Yes, I hear all the arguments about "PCs are cheaper therefore you spend more money on Adobe software", but that fails to take into account - mac users have lived with Apple through the Amelio 90s, when the only colour the Apple logo was associated with was red.
You think they're suddenly going to drop their macs now that Adobe links to some biased PC dork who can't get basics like mhz or correct units of measurement for time?
All that will happen is that Adobe'll piss off their long standing customers. I have no desire to use a Windows PC; and some concocted brew of "hyperthreaded" enabled tests aren't going to convince me otherwise. Just switch the tables, and use altivec tests instead? And then we're back to lies, damned lies and stats.
Regardless, where's the upside for Adobe once you realise people aren't going to abandon Apple because Adobe say so? There's a much more worrisome flipside; people will abandon Adobe if Apple say so; viz a viz FCP etc
-- james
It has wOOx speakers?
Wow, this is just what I've been waiting for! I'd better rush out and get one of these things now!
-- james
I love this insular view of the world that many Americans have - everywhere else in the world is full of starving uneducated hordes.
I did a software engineering course a year or so ago, and there's a well known software engineering institute (i forget its name) that catergorises organisations based on how well they adhere to certain professional standards. You have to have specific planning phases, etc etc... The companies are graded from 1 (worst) through 5 (best).
It may then come as a shock to you, but the fact is that there are a lot of people out in the world that are better for the job, and cheaper as well. The US has no monopoly on either brains or education.
-- james
and it's also important to remember, you end up with two distinct classes of hyper-evolved beings: the good guys, led by Professor X, and the evil mutants, led by Magneto.
The thing I love about Sony-Ericsson, and the reason why I will continue to buy their phones over Nokia's which I otherwise prefer to use, boils down to this:
:)
Bluetooth.
S-E are putting it in a lot of their phones; Nokia are putting it in very few. You haven't seen how cool Bluetooth is until you run iSync with a mac, or get Romeo controlling your mac from the other side of the room through your phone.
It's very cool
-- james
I bet the green lights have all gone red, too.
-- james
I don't know what you mean by that, but there is some pretty cool firewire stuff over here that looks to be a bit better than a usb memory stick.
-- james
But isn't this the US all over? I know you must be sick and tired of hearing being the most litigatious society etc - but don't think it's just limited to IP.
You want to talk about wolves guarding the henhouse? How many politicians used to be lawyers?
-- james
I think the InfoSync guys beat you to it, for all their site is responding now...
-- james
You gotta be kidding me! This reminds me of the old joke... a US Navy Carrier sees a big blip on the radar, and sends out of the radio:
"This is the USS Big Ship to unidentified target, please change course." The response comes back:
"That's a negative, Big Ship".
"We are a Aircraft Carrier from the US Navy. Now please change course!"
"That's a negative, Big Ship. We're a lighthouse"
For chrissakes, OSS has got to be the biggest stack of rocks sitting on MS's radar that they've had in a long, long time.
-- james
Can you imagine what would happen when Slammer hits that thing?
-- james
MS says that US consumers want a copy of windows on all their computers and Ford believes that nobody wishes to buy GM cars anymore.
I mean, come on.
-- james
Then Dubya got elected President.
Poetic justice, no?
-- james
Spot on, unfortunately. Whilst Segway spent a lot on some very good lobbyists, they decided against political donations.
Now, there are all these stupid little local politicians deciding that the Segway is "unsafe". All the while, traffic congestion will continue to grown.
You know what? I think there's a grand opportunity for a bit of public disobedenience here... just ride the damn things on the sidewalk anyway.
-- james
That deserves a response.
How is bundling apps "low, dirty or unethical"? This is different from what MS is doing - trying to reduce competition. For example, Apple didn't create Safari for the purpose to ensure it remained the dominant OS provider, or to kill the competition. They didn't change the operating system so that competitor's software wouldn't work. That would be "low, dirty and unethical". That is what MS does.
You want to characterise behaviour by entities, you have to look at the motives. Thanks to the DoJ prosecution, we know what MS's motives behind behind, for example, IE were. You can also get a pretty good idea of Apple's, by their behaviour - all the improvements that they make to the KHTML rendering engine will be re-released back into the open source community. This is not a company out to kill competition, to ensure that there are no competitor's products available - this is a company doing it's utmost to stimulate competition.
And as for cracking down on clone makers - well, what do you expect? I'm sure Sony would be within their rights to crack the shits if somebody started selling a box that played PS2 games. And as for your comments about part makers being cracked down on - that's not exactly true. I don't know of any "parts" makers that have been gone after unless they've blatantly broken the law - like making Apple cases or something.
Apple has not acted in a low, dirty or unethical way. There are probably reasons behind this move - most likely related to the RIAA. Regardless, it doesn't have anything to do with how open the OS is... it's a piece of proprietary software. If you don't like it, go use something else. There's plenty of competition, because unlike MS, Apple hasn't tried to stifle it.
-- james
case in point - that ancanar movie linked above. looks like a high school production.
what sucks about that is, when it fails, studios etc think it failed because it's fantasy, not because *it sucked*.
-- james
As does Apple's Mail program. It works great - very very accurate at getting rid of spam.
-- james
I'm not sure replying was the best course of action then.
-- james
you forgot the propellor-head hat. I'll refer you to my sig.
-- james