screw media coverage, that does not mean anything. the media told us that there were stockpiles of WMDs in Iraq.
as of an hour ago i saw a few sites (gizmodo included) calling for anyone that actually has, or has access to, a nano with a cracked screen to send in a picture. nobody seems to be able to find a single picture. i am not saying it is not happening, but if it is so widespread, where are the photos? we all know tons of Apple nerds did a photo documentary of them opening the packaging.... so didn't anyone photograph the damage yet? like i said, i am not saying it is a myth, but i don't know anyone who had their nano break, and nobody i know seems to know anybody, and i know some klutzy people.
as for the scratching, did you notice the pics you see of the scratches are all on the black ones? maybe that's why the big iPods mostly only ship in white. it does a pretty good job at hiding scratches. close inspection makes it look like my ibook slid down a mountain, but from two feet away it looks fine. it sucks to wrap something so thin, but i guess you have to protect the things if you are that concerned with cosmetics.
Apple Computer said Tuesday that problems with iPod nano screens breaking, as documented at FlawedMusicPlayer.com are not a design issue, but rather an issue of vendor quality that affected a small number of units. Furthermore, the company is now replacing those units that do have problems through AppleCare.
"This is a real but minor issue involving a vendor quality problem in a small number of units," Apple vice president Phil Schiller said in a statement to Macworld. "In fact, this issue has affected less than 1/10 of 1 percent of the total iPod nano units that we've shipped. It is not a design issue."
that's the important part, right? as much as some cosmetic scratches might suck, is it a case of people needing to be more careful? the few i have seen, and played with, in person (that people bought right away) seem scratch-free. no protective cases or anything. they are mostly black ones, so the scratches are more visible. is it possible they are not all the same plastic, or do some people just put it in their pocket with their keys or something? i honestly can not believe that an empty cloth pocket will scratch it like people are describing. if that's true how do the demo ones in the stores last more than 3 hours? are some Apple people just more neurotic about how their device looks?
if it is a real issue, i would think Apple will just swap out the plastic any time now, not waiting till they revise the device in some other way. they still have not revised the shuffle... all they did was drop the price a little.
i think one key element of iPods is that they work with Macs. remember at first there was just 3rd party software to get PC users the ability to load songs on an iPod. Apple never intended the iPod to be such a cross platform hit. i realize a ton of PC users now buy iPods, but before the iPod (and even today) there is nothing for the Mac that comes close to the iPod in terms of software to load songs from your desktop/portable. yes, most people just load songs once and don't care, but with podcasting, to do lists and whatever else, people are more prone to sync their digital music players than they may have been in the beginning. really, if somebody made a good MP3 player that had Mac support, it's quite possible Apple would have never bothered making the iPod in the first place. kind of funny when you look at it that way.
yeah, there are ways to jam songs on some other MP3 players, but it's a pain. why should a Mac user support a company that does not support them? Linux users are used to having to hack a lot of things and make them work, but when there is a Mac friendly solution ready out of the box it makes sense.
all companies make profits. that $90 cost to manufacture was a guess, the real numbers will be in the next quarterly earnings report.
how are they making less money now than with CDs/tapes? they lose all the manufacturing and overhead of a CD, and still make the same profits. BESIDES the issue of people only buying select tracks and not the stinkers, how can they complain? if ANYTHING they may lock down some things so you have to buy a whole album of songs and not the one hit.
are they trying to make even more money out of this new technology than they traditionally have from brick and mortar record/cd/tape shops? if anything they win because people can not resell these files like they do with CDs. let's face it, a lot of people that they profit from buy a song and listen to it for weeks, maybe months, and dump the CD. somebody else picks it up online or in a shop that sells used ones. they are effectively destroying that world with pay-per-download DRM'd songs. they were never able to do anything about that world before, and they have always loathed it.
ok fine!....but i still would not call the seemingly impending video iPod a blatant rip-off of somebody else's idea. something like the ipod or a video ipod is common sense at this point. it's just who will make it first, and who will make it well. being the first out the gate is one thing when it catches everyone by surprise, it is another when it is something obviously in the pipe. it is a real achievement to make the device well.
that being said Steve Jobs just last week said he still doesn't see a market for an iPod video device. he didn't say it will never happen, but that it doesn't exist now. i kind of agree. Sony is trying to jump start it by putting movies out for PSP, but there is not really a good (legal?) way for the masses to even get movies to their portable players now. i guess at some point they could have some video support for novelty value so you can see the music video that is bundled with some album purchases from iTMS, or the video podcasts that iTunes now supports. that may lead to the ability to play the digicam created that you can now organize in iPhoto (and sync with video iPods). if the ipod processor/software can handle it, they could turn it on at any point and have a way to serve it up..... but how much demand is there? i am guessing that at some point you will be able to sync videos/movies and use the cables to hook the ipod to a TV and watch them where ever.... or on the crappy little screen if you want. maybe videopodcasting will create a demand for people to easily download the shows and carry them to a TV? i dunno. personally i don't care that much right now. i have no desire to carry movies or videos in my pocket at this time. if the feature was there, i may drag around some fun video stuff to randomly have on hand... but maybe not really.
yeah, there was a Dr Kellog. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg invented corn flakes. he ran the Battle Creek Sanitarium and they were the creation of his issue with whatever patients were being fed for breakfast. it was a mix of nutrition, his religious based vegetarianism and whatever else. there is some show on one of the discovery channels that went into the history of cereal and gave his bio. seems he had a lot of odd health ideas (a lot of religious based stuff mixed in with old style medicine).
first off, i am not saying i agree with this thinking, but....... if you read the legal bla bla you are not really paying for anything more than plastic and paper and ink. you do not technically OWN the music on the CD, you are lent it for personal entertainment purposes only. you bought the vehicle to get that music to your approved music player and you bought the right to listen to it as much as you want.
if you play that CD in your restaurant or bar, then legally you have to pay an annual fee to BMI or ASCAP or whatever company owns the publishing rights.
that's why there was a legal question at some point about the sale of used CDs. it never went anywhere, but the big record companies would have loved to destroy the used CD market. personally that's why i don't understand their greed over the iTMS 99/song thing. there is not really any way to resell those songs. there are ways, but not easy ones for joe 6-pack. that is perfect for the people that buy a CD, listen to it for a few months and sell it used. now they will buy the few songs off the album, and never recirculate those songs. they may not buy a whole CD, but they can not really resell those songs (cutting old man Sony out of the loop).
the only way to make the big labels have CDs that comply with current/past CD authoring standards is for consumers to stand up and demand it. there was some question about how they should make these new CDs be labeled obviously as non-standard audio CDs. i guess the powers at be can just update the standard to say they only play in the newest M$ Windows machines, but till they do that, audio CD implies it can be listened to on any computer.
where is Ralph Nader's team on this? i would think this is a valid issue of consumers being mislead.
i didn't do any research and i have no idea what you are talking about. back in the day Apple was one of the first to actively market computers to individuals (as opposed to businesses). if there were others that tried the same push, i don't remember them.
even if i was off on one little point, my post in general was obviously dead on since you had nothing else to say about it. the point of my post was that when a second or a hundredth company markets a similar product it is not always stealing. there are a lot of companies that sell cereal and they did not have to get an ok from old man Kellog (or whomever invented that). maybe they stole the concept of cereal, but they make their own version. competition makes better products. Nintendo Sony were not making game systems back in the day, but they outlasted the founders of that world. do you get my point? probably not.
steal the idea of a portable video player? haha so only one company should have ever made a record player? a cassette deck? a computer? a car?
do you work for some company that made an early MP3 player that is long forgotten? Apple never claimed to create the first MP3 player.... they seem to just be the first ones to get it right. it would not have gotten so popular at that initial price if it was a nightmare to use (like some other players of the time).
Apple was the first to market a windows based UI, so everyone else has *stolen* that as you say. Apple was also the first to market a personal computer and that idea has been stolen by everyone else. i think you need to rethink your thought on intellectual property rights and how far they actually go.
it is a phone with a mini version of iTunes software tacked on, that does not make the phone an iPod or a Mac. in theory that iTunes app could be added to a lot of cell phones. if they wanted, Verizon could allow a version in their Get It Now thing (they won't).
at least one article has speculated that his may be Apple testing the waters before making their own handset. i have no idea how likely that is (i would not hold my breath). this is far from an iPod phone or iPhone or whatever.
i was watching the news yesterday and there were reporters calling FEMA on the phone. after holding for over an hour they were told to apply online due to the unusually high volume of calls and disconnected.
1) people needing the help the most should be able to use any computer they can get access to. especially when it is just some bogus IE crap filtering them.
2) people needing the help most should not have to tie up limited phones to sit on hold for over an hour just to get disconnected. some people that did get through were told they needed to give the FEMA workers their fax number to get forms!?!? they were offered to have the forms emailed in pdf format. i don't think these worker bees have been watching enough CNN to see a lot of these victims did not bring their computers in the rescue boats, let alone clothes or food. remember this is not a ton of nerds that got washed out.... it is a lot of people with the computer skills of your grandparents.
3) government websites should never be forcing its population to buy into one proprietary operating system.
4) yes, there are tricks to switch user agent identifiers on your browser (safari enhancer used to work well, i have not tried it in a long time). those tricks are not known by the general public. if you are so smart maybe you should go down there with your laptop and help all these people trick the government website into accepting their help requests.
not just blimps but there have been those tests of drone aircraft that can relay communications (phone and internet) to the ground. the planes they are working on could stay aloft for weeks at a time, they are almost gliders and have solar panels on their wings. if i remember right one of them was called Helios and used a Mac Tibook (because of its weight).
this seems to be a perfect case for drones or blimps. they are saying it may take a month to fully drain the city, THEN they start cleaning up THEN they start rebuilding the power, communications, water etc services. it is going to take a long time to rebuild and having some form of communication up would be a boost... even if it is a drone that can be a repeater for proprietary walkie-talkies.
those had multiple purposes including being able to fly over an area like this and bring up some degree of cell service (or military use to fly over a battlefield kind of area possibly). while you may not think that matters, it would be a big help to rescue workers. they could also work as radio towers for walkie talkies. right now they have to use satellite phones.
the military use has limitations, but there are a slew of ideas on how to set up a communications grid for soldiers (including them dropping little repeaters and using a network of them back to base). Wired has had stories about the ideas. i guess the thinking is that if the military likes your idea and throws you cash it is very lucrative, and you will have tons of R&D funding.... with the trickle down technology making it to the public in some form.
that story aside, there is no absolutes when plotting the path of a hurricane. remember if you evacuate people, you have to move them somewhere... and you may be moving them right into the path of the storm. Amtrak trains would be a very slow way to do mass evacuations of a whole region.... and the trains have limited directions they can go. didn't you ever see a Godzilla movie? the people on the trains ALWAYS get it.
there is also the case of many people not wanting to leave. in a way i could see their thinking. people did not expect this kind of devastation. people have a habit of recalling the worst storm they remember and figure "i survived that". they also fear leaving all their possessions to looters or whatever.
won't the lack of features cut back on the hardware requirements? i don't follow windows stuff, but that is the impression i got from my housemate. i know they cut a lot of things in general, but i thought some of the things missing would lessen the number of current machines that would not handle the new OS.
if the current machine can run XP, then i bet a lot of people run it as long as they can. i would like to see them switch over to Linux, but let's be realistic. a lot of people never really upgrade the OS on their machine. those are also the people that are generally behind on security patches.... but who knows how long Microsoft will kept patching XP after Vista ships.
there is still a lot of chaos with this. there are a bunch of city sponsored hot spots around town (Convention Center, Reading Terminal Market, LOVE Park etc). beyond that it is a mess. there were some lawsuits floated about the government stifling businesses and how unfair that is.
last i heard it went from free to super low cost for most people and free for people that somehow are defined as needing it for free (beats me how that's going to happen). if it is not truly free then in theory it will not exist for tourists or other visitors.
granted it's all up in the air while some companies fight so they can sell the service and others fight over who gets the contract to make it happen.
no, this is still freeloading. just because it is a developer release that is not yet for sale does not mean it is a free for all. you are not entitled to have it just because you have mad warez finding skillz. that's like going and stealing a concept car and saying it had to be done because you were not allowed to buy it. Apple released these machines and this version of the OS a year in advance to make it a smooth transition. that will make my life easier as a Mac user. sorry if i feel no empathy for x86 box owning pirates.
all this will do is make apple tighten up their developers.
if this happens in the wild it will probably also mean that Apple will start using serial numbers or some authentication for their OS releases (and iLife and all the other Apple stuff that is currently not protected). honestly i have bought every version of OS X going back to 10.0 and i used to buy some of the classic versions of the OS. i really liked that i did not have to do all kinds of validation to run it. i was genuinely paying for it as i was supposed to, and Apple seemed to be content with leaving it at that. Apple users seem to buy a lot of copies of the OS. their incoming money from OS X are significant enough that they mention them in quarterly earnings reports. i realize that they spend a ton of money on creating the OS, so who knows how much of it is actually profit? it's hard to argue when the same OS runs on so many machines (including 5 year old ones). the development is spread out over soooo much hardware.
wasn't there something said along the lines that the processors going into Mac-Intel boxes do not even exist yet? unless Intel has something else brewing to come out in the next 9 months, then this may very well be that? was this just crazy rumors (aka wishful thinking)?
if that is the case, or whatever Apple uses, it has to be a friendly hop from what the OS X developers have now. something that the OS can manage the change in hardware, and the apps can ignore. seems odd for processor optimization type stuff... but what do i know.
might not be quite what you want, but some notebook can be set so they do not sleep when the lids are closed. i only know Mac notebook, and that is a feature of the powerbooks (but not ibooks).
you can carry the notebook in a shoulder bag and hook a DV cam to record straight to the internal drive (bypassing the tape). you would have to offload it later if you want to keep the files at full quality, but that may do it? i do know people do this. it has that 80's camcorder thing going but it may be the cheapest solution.... in the sense that the notebook is not dedicated to this project and you can use any handheld video camera with firewire output (even an apple isight).
Apple powerbooks have had this feature for a few years, and i really doubt they are the only ones. i am not saying they were first either, i just do not follow other notebooks. the only thing to ponder is that it is a software setting that tells the machine if it should sleep or not when the lid is closed. if the notebook was designed to run OS X or Windows, there may not be an easy way to control that from a Linux install.
i would assume there is some other all-in-one option, but it might be prohibitively expensive?
maybe some people don't want bluetooth. for my desktop machine i have no problem with a wire. i would rather deal with that than needlessly waste batteries.
i am sure there will be a BT model coming, and that will be nice for laptop users.
i though other M$ search engines would give back top results from M$ pages about migrating from Linux to windoze, or pages about how Linux is going away or something? this page spits back results that are links to linux.org or other legit stuff.
the point of the one button mouse was more "this is all you need" as opposed to "one is far better than 2 or 5". how many people really use the mouse their computer comes with? seriously. even if it is a great design, we all have different sized hands, we use our machines for different reasons. that being said i am curious to try one of these out. i will not run to the store tonight, but next time i am at a store i'll try one out and maybe get one.
i doubt this mouse will ship with the iMac or eMac. my mom can use her iMac to check email and use ebay. she is still confused by some stuff, and having to teach her (or any compu-newbie) about which button is for what is just a pain. OS X will still work 100% with a one button mouse.
i wonder if this will mean powerbooks/ibooks will have some sort of multi button support coming? even a programmable button that can be one or two button style would be a nice upgrade. they now have the scrolling trackpad thing going on ibooks and powerbooks, so we just need the other button.
the shuttle was initially designed in the 1950s, right? i think it was the Air Force that changed the designs to make it a boxcar like it is so they could haul lots of gear. if that's the case we are flying a 50 year old design and have not really started to design its replacement? ack!
i think they always had debris issues, even with the paint. have you ever read how much weight the paint added? it was enough that it had significant impact on fuel use calculations.
heaters may be shaky in such an environment. remember this is not ice that is 30 F and requires a little warming.
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screw media coverage, that does not mean anything. the media told us that there were stockpiles of WMDs in Iraq.
.... so didn't anyone photograph the damage yet? like i said, i am not saying it is a myth, but i don't know anyone who had their nano break, and nobody i know seems to know anybody, and i know some klutzy people.
as of an hour ago i saw a few sites (gizmodo included) calling for anyone that actually has, or has access to, a nano with a cracked screen to send in a picture. nobody seems to be able to find a single picture. i am not saying it is not happening, but if it is so widespread, where are the photos? we all know tons of Apple nerds did a photo documentary of them opening the packaging
as for the scratching, did you notice the pics you see of the scratches are all on the black ones? maybe that's why the big iPods mostly only ship in white. it does a pretty good job at hiding scratches. close inspection makes it look like my ibook slid down a mountain, but from two feet away it looks fine. it sucks to wrap something so thin, but i guess you have to protect the things if you are that concerned with cosmetics.
http://www.ipodobserver.com/story/23712/
Apple Computer said Tuesday that problems with iPod nano screens breaking, as documented at FlawedMusicPlayer.com are not a design issue, but rather an issue of vendor quality that affected a small number of units. Furthermore, the company is now replacing those units that do have problems through AppleCare.
"This is a real but minor issue involving a vendor quality problem in a small number of units," Apple vice president Phil Schiller said in a statement to Macworld. "In fact, this issue has affected less than 1/10 of 1 percent of the total iPod nano units that we've shipped. It is not a design issue."
that's the important part, right? as much as some cosmetic scratches might suck, is it a case of people needing to be more careful? the few i have seen, and played with, in person (that people bought right away) seem scratch-free. no protective cases or anything. they are mostly black ones, so the scratches are more visible. is it possible they are not all the same plastic, or do some people just put it in their pocket with their keys or something? i honestly can not believe that an empty cloth pocket will scratch it like people are describing. if that's true how do the demo ones in the stores last more than 3 hours? are some Apple people just more neurotic about how their device looks?
if it is a real issue, i would think Apple will just swap out the plastic any time now, not waiting till they revise the device in some other way. they still have not revised the shuffle... all they did was drop the price a little.
i think one key element of iPods is that they work with Macs. remember at first there was just 3rd party software to get PC users the ability to load songs on an iPod. Apple never intended the iPod to be such a cross platform hit. i realize a ton of PC users now buy iPods, but before the iPod (and even today) there is nothing for the Mac that comes close to the iPod in terms of software to load songs from your desktop/portable. yes, most people just load songs once and don't care, but with podcasting, to do lists and whatever else, people are more prone to sync their digital music players than they may have been in the beginning. really, if somebody made a good MP3 player that had Mac support, it's quite possible Apple would have never bothered making the iPod in the first place. kind of funny when you look at it that way.
yeah, there are ways to jam songs on some other MP3 players, but it's a pain. why should a Mac user support a company that does not support them? Linux users are used to having to hack a lot of things and make them work, but when there is a Mac friendly solution ready out of the box it makes sense.
all companies make profits. that $90 cost to manufacture was a guess, the real numbers will be in the next quarterly earnings report.
how are they making less money now than with CDs/tapes? they lose all the manufacturing and overhead of a CD, and still make the same profits. BESIDES the issue of people only buying select tracks and not the stinkers, how can they complain? if ANYTHING they may lock down some things so you have to buy a whole album of songs and not the one hit.
are they trying to make even more money out of this new technology than they traditionally have from brick and mortar record/cd/tape shops? if anything they win because people can not resell these files like they do with CDs. let's face it, a lot of people that they profit from buy a song and listen to it for weeks, maybe months, and dump the CD. somebody else picks it up online or in a shop that sells used ones. they are effectively destroying that world with pay-per-download DRM'd songs. they were never able to do anything about that world before, and they have always loathed it.
ok fine! ....but i still would not call the seemingly impending video iPod a blatant rip-off of somebody else's idea. something like the ipod or a video ipod is common sense at this point. it's just who will make it first, and who will make it well. being the first out the gate is one thing when it catches everyone by surprise, it is another when it is something obviously in the pipe. it is a real achievement to make the device well.
that being said Steve Jobs just last week said he still doesn't see a market for an iPod video device. he didn't say it will never happen, but that it doesn't exist now. i kind of agree. Sony is trying to jump start it by putting movies out for PSP, but there is not really a good (legal?) way for the masses to even get movies to their portable players now. i guess at some point they could have some video support for novelty value so you can see the music video that is bundled with some album purchases from iTMS, or the video podcasts that iTunes now supports. that may lead to the ability to play the digicam created that you can now organize in iPhoto (and sync with video iPods). if the ipod processor/software can handle it, they could turn it on at any point and have a way to serve it up..... but how much demand is there? i am guessing that at some point you will be able to sync videos/movies and use the cables to hook the ipod to a TV and watch them where ever.... or on the crappy little screen if you want. maybe videopodcasting will create a demand for people to easily download the shows and carry them to a TV? i dunno. personally i don't care that much right now. i have no desire to carry movies or videos in my pocket at this time. if the feature was there, i may drag around some fun video stuff to randomly have on hand... but maybe not really.
yeah, there was a Dr Kellog. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg invented corn flakes. he ran the Battle Creek Sanitarium and they were the creation of his issue with whatever patients were being fed for breakfast. it was a mix of nutrition, his religious based vegetarianism and whatever else. there is some show on one of the discovery channels that went into the history of cereal and gave his bio. seems he had a lot of odd health ideas (a lot of religious based stuff mixed in with old style medicine).
first off, i am not saying i agree with this thinking, but.......
if you read the legal bla bla you are not really paying for anything more than plastic and paper and ink. you do not technically OWN the music on the CD, you are lent it for personal entertainment purposes only. you bought the vehicle to get that music to your approved music player and you bought the right to listen to it as much as you want.
if you play that CD in your restaurant or bar, then legally you have to pay an annual fee to BMI or ASCAP or whatever company owns the publishing rights.
that's why there was a legal question at some point about the sale of used CDs. it never went anywhere, but the big record companies would have loved to destroy the used CD market. personally that's why i don't understand their greed over the iTMS 99/song thing. there is not really any way to resell those songs. there are ways, but not easy ones for joe 6-pack. that is perfect for the people that buy a CD, listen to it for a few months and sell it used. now they will buy the few songs off the album, and never recirculate those songs. they may not buy a whole CD, but they can not really resell those songs (cutting old man Sony out of the loop).
the only way to make the big labels have CDs that comply with current/past CD authoring standards is for consumers to stand up and demand it. there was some question about how they should make these new CDs be labeled obviously as non-standard audio CDs. i guess the powers at be can just update the standard to say they only play in the newest M$ Windows machines, but till they do that, audio CD implies it can be listened to on any computer.
where is Ralph Nader's team on this? i would think this is a valid issue of consumers being mislead.
i didn't do any research and i have no idea what you are talking about. back in the day Apple was one of the first to actively market computers to individuals (as opposed to businesses). if there were others that tried the same push, i don't remember them.
even if i was off on one little point, my post in general was obviously dead on since you had nothing else to say about it. the point of my post was that when a second or a hundredth company markets a similar product it is not always stealing. there are a lot of companies that sell cereal and they did not have to get an ok from old man Kellog (or whomever invented that). maybe they stole the concept of cereal, but they make their own version. competition makes better products. Nintendo Sony were not making game systems back in the day, but they outlasted the founders of that world. do you get my point? probably not.
whatever.... you might still want to get your head out of your ass.
steal the idea of a portable video player? haha so only one company should have ever made a record player? a cassette deck? a computer? a car?
do you work for some company that made an early MP3 player that is long forgotten? Apple never claimed to create the first MP3 player.... they seem to just be the first ones to get it right. it would not have gotten so popular at that initial price if it was a nightmare to use (like some other players of the time).
Apple was the first to market a windows based UI, so everyone else has *stolen* that as you say. Apple was also the first to market a personal computer and that idea has been stolen by everyone else. i think you need to rethink your thought on intellectual property rights and how far they actually go.
as opposed to the testosterone filled world of internet shit-talking?
it is a phone with a mini version of iTunes software tacked on, that does not make the phone an iPod or a Mac. in theory that iTunes app could be added to a lot of cell phones. if they wanted, Verizon could allow a version in their Get It Now thing (they won't).
at least one article has speculated that his may be Apple testing the waters before making their own handset. i have no idea how likely that is (i would not hold my breath). this is far from an iPod phone or iPhone or whatever.
i was watching the news yesterday and there were reporters calling FEMA on the phone. after holding for over an hour they were told to apply online due to the unusually high volume of calls and disconnected.
1) people needing the help the most should be able to use any computer they can get access to. especially when it is just some bogus IE crap filtering them.
2) people needing the help most should not have to tie up limited phones to sit on hold for over an hour just to get disconnected. some people that did get through were told they needed to give the FEMA workers their fax number to get forms!?!? they were offered to have the forms emailed in pdf format. i don't think these worker bees have been watching enough CNN to see a lot of these victims did not bring their computers in the rescue boats, let alone clothes or food. remember this is not a ton of nerds that got washed out.... it is a lot of people with the computer skills of your grandparents.
3) government websites should never be forcing its population to buy into one proprietary operating system.
4) yes, there are tricks to switch user agent identifiers on your browser (safari enhancer used to work well, i have not tried it in a long time). those tricks are not known by the general public. if you are so smart maybe you should go down there with your laptop and help all these people trick the government website into accepting their help requests.
not just blimps but there have been those tests of drone aircraft that can relay communications (phone and internet) to the ground. the planes they are working on could stay aloft for weeks at a time, they are almost gliders and have solar panels on their wings. if i remember right one of them was called Helios and used a Mac Tibook (because of its weight).
this seems to be a perfect case for drones or blimps. they are saying it may take a month to fully drain the city, THEN they start cleaning up THEN they start rebuilding the power, communications, water etc services. it is going to take a long time to rebuild and having some form of communication up would be a boost... even if it is a drone that can be a repeater for proprietary walkie-talkies.
those had multiple purposes including being able to fly over an area like this and bring up some degree of cell service (or military use to fly over a battlefield kind of area possibly). while you may not think that matters, it would be a big help to rescue workers. they could also work as radio towers for walkie talkies. right now they have to use satellite phones.
the military use has limitations, but there are a slew of ideas on how to set up a communications grid for soldiers (including them dropping little repeaters and using a network of them back to base). Wired has had stories about the ideas. i guess the thinking is that if the military likes your idea and throws you cash it is very lucrative, and you will have tons of R&D funding.... with the trickle down technology making it to the public in some form.
that story aside, there is no absolutes when plotting the path of a hurricane. remember if you evacuate people, you have to move them somewhere... and you may be moving them right into the path of the storm. Amtrak trains would be a very slow way to do mass evacuations of a whole region.... and the trains have limited directions they can go. didn't you ever see a Godzilla movie? the people on the trains ALWAYS get it.
there is also the case of many people not wanting to leave. in a way i could see their thinking. people did not expect this kind of devastation. people have a habit of recalling the worst storm they remember and figure "i survived that". they also fear leaving all their possessions to looters or whatever.
won't the lack of features cut back on the hardware requirements? i don't follow windows stuff, but that is the impression i got from my housemate. i know they cut a lot of things in general, but i thought some of the things missing would lessen the number of current machines that would not handle the new OS.
if the current machine can run XP, then i bet a lot of people run it as long as they can. i would like to see them switch over to Linux, but let's be realistic. a lot of people never really upgrade the OS on their machine. those are also the people that are generally behind on security patches.... but who knows how long Microsoft will kept patching XP after Vista ships.
there is still a lot of chaos with this. there are a bunch of city sponsored hot spots around town (Convention Center, Reading Terminal Market, LOVE Park etc). beyond that it is a mess. there were some lawsuits floated about the government stifling businesses and how unfair that is.
last i heard it went from free to super low cost for most people and free for people that somehow are defined as needing it for free (beats me how that's going to happen). if it is not truly free then in theory it will not exist for tourists or other visitors.
granted it's all up in the air while some companies fight so they can sell the service and others fight over who gets the contract to make it happen.
no, this is still freeloading.
just because it is a developer release that is not yet for sale does not mean it is a free for all. you are not entitled to have it just because you have mad warez finding skillz. that's like going and stealing a concept car and saying it had to be done because you were not allowed to buy it. Apple released these machines and this version of the OS a year in advance to make it a smooth transition. that will make my life easier as a Mac user. sorry if i feel no empathy for x86 box owning pirates.
all this will do is make apple tighten up their developers.
if this happens in the wild it will probably also mean that Apple will start using serial numbers or some authentication for their OS releases (and iLife and all the other Apple stuff that is currently not protected). honestly i have bought every version of OS X going back to 10.0 and i used to buy some of the classic versions of the OS. i really liked that i did not have to do all kinds of validation to run it. i was genuinely paying for it as i was supposed to, and Apple seemed to be content with leaving it at that. Apple users seem to buy a lot of copies of the OS. their incoming money from OS X are significant enough that they mention them in quarterly earnings reports. i realize that they spend a ton of money on creating the OS, so who knows how much of it is actually profit? it's hard to argue when the same OS runs on so many machines (including 5 year old ones). the development is spread out over soooo much hardware.
wasn't there something said along the lines that the processors going into Mac-Intel boxes do not even exist yet? unless Intel has something else brewing to come out in the next 9 months, then this may very well be that? was this just crazy rumors (aka wishful thinking)?
if that is the case, or whatever Apple uses, it has to be a friendly hop from what the OS X developers have now. something that the OS can manage the change in hardware, and the apps can ignore. seems odd for processor optimization type stuff... but what do i know.
might not be quite what you want, but some notebook can be set so they do not sleep when the lids are closed. i only know Mac notebook, and that is a feature of the powerbooks (but not ibooks).
you can carry the notebook in a shoulder bag and hook a DV cam to record straight to the internal drive (bypassing the tape). you would have to offload it later if you want to keep the files at full quality, but that may do it? i do know people do this. it has that 80's camcorder thing going but it may be the cheapest solution.... in the sense that the notebook is not dedicated to this project and you can use any handheld video camera with firewire output (even an apple isight).
Apple powerbooks have had this feature for a few years, and i really doubt they are the only ones. i am not saying they were first either, i just do not follow other notebooks. the only thing to ponder is that it is a software setting that tells the machine if it should sleep or not when the lid is closed. if the notebook was designed to run OS X or Windows, there may not be an easy way to control that from a Linux install.
i would assume there is some other all-in-one option, but it might be prohibitively expensive?
maybe some people don't want bluetooth. for my desktop machine i have no problem with a wire. i would rather deal with that than needlessly waste batteries.
i am sure there will be a BT model coming, and that will be nice for laptop users.
i though other M$ search engines would give back top results from M$ pages about migrating from Linux to windoze, or pages about how Linux is going away or something? this page spits back results that are links to linux.org or other legit stuff.
the point of the one button mouse was more "this is all you need" as opposed to "one is far better than 2 or 5". how many people really use the mouse their computer comes with? seriously. even if it is a great design, we all have different sized hands, we use our machines for different reasons. that being said i am curious to try one of these out. i will not run to the store tonight, but next time i am at a store i'll try one out and maybe get one.
i doubt this mouse will ship with the iMac or eMac. my mom can use her iMac to check email and use ebay. she is still confused by some stuff, and having to teach her (or any compu-newbie) about which button is for what is just a pain. OS X will still work 100% with a one button mouse.
i wonder if this will mean powerbooks/ibooks will have some sort of multi button support coming? even a programmable button that can be one or two button style would be a nice upgrade. they now have the scrolling trackpad thing going on ibooks and powerbooks, so we just need the other button.
the shuttle was initially designed in the 1950s, right? i think it was the Air Force that changed the designs to make it a boxcar like it is so they could haul lots of gear. if that's the case we are flying a 50 year old design and have not really started to design its replacement? ack!
i think they always had debris issues, even with the paint.
have you ever read how much weight the paint added? it was enough that it had significant impact on fuel use calculations.
heaters may be shaky in such an environment. remember this is not ice that is 30 F and requires a little warming.