The only thing famous about it is how pathetic the damage control was after accidentally telling the truth. He had to backpedal. You don't have to buy into something that lame. You can, for instance, look around and wonder where all those Galaxy S tablets are that people supposedly bought. I can see Android phones but not much luck finding the mythical Android tablets in the wild. YMMV.
This has the odor of a pump priming attempt to create the impression of wide scale adoption hoping that more people will consider an Android tablet as a viable option. If you buy an Android tablet you are a brave pioneer and you may be rewarded or you may be the owner of the equivalent of the Zune.
I got the impression that these stores are selling actual Apple products. Is that not the case? If they are Apple products that the stores bought wholesale from Apple, what is the alleged problem? We have other stores where we can buy Apple products in the US. These stores in China just appear to suck less than Best Buy or Walmart. Building stores that are elegant and provide an agreeable customer experience is not something that is the "intellectual property" of Apple.
If "His biggest risk is if someone uses his connection to look at child porn", then his (Schneier's) position is entirely correct. What is it about this hysterical obsession with "child porn"? Are they lurking everywhere like the commies? Do we really have to pass laws criminalizing people who have incorrect thoughts? I strongly support criminalizing adults who take advantage of minors but it is always wrong to have thought crimes. Allowing thought crimes as a category allows people who really have evil intentions to use it as a tool for undermining society. Being tolerant of this hysteria plays into the hands of this new witch hunt of the twenty first century. Just say no when someone tries to use it as a justification.
Just to be clear I do run a guest network from my wireless router (Apple Airport Extreme) which allows internet access but not access to my devices on the local network. If everyone did something similar then mobile internet access would be much less problematic.
Whether or if you own a Mac or PC is (will be with iOS 5) being rendered irrelevant. Before a Mac or PC had to be used to register and update iOS devices. That function migrates to the Cloud with iOS 5 (as well as synchronizing functions currently handled by iTune, hence iCloud is the new iTunes). Arguably the most important result of this new situation is that a person can buy an iPad and never has to deal with the complexity (and power and elegance) of a Mac or PC. This will certainly hasten the day when there are more tablets (including iPads) than desktop and laptop computers. I would say the migration is all but over.
There is nothing disturbing about the results so far unless it is due to a security breach of iTMS. So far it seems more likely that this is the result of people "depending on the kindness of strangers". More explicitly, that users may be using the same username and password for multiple sites. If that is the problem it is hard to imagine what any e-commerce site could do to protect a customer other than requiring credit card information to be entered for each transaction.
A company can take the reactive position of correcting the issue after email notification alerts the user to the fraud. That seems to be what Apple has done. If iTMS has not been hacked then public announcements by Apple could be very inflammatory without doing anything to correct the problem. Any service with 230 million accounts is going to have some events that require investigation. If Apple has been hacked, they know it and have remained mute, then shame on them. Based on what's been reported so far that does not look likely.
15 minutes at the speed of light is different than 15 minutes standing still.
If you had bothered to learn any relativity theory (over a century old, not exactly hot off the presses), you would be less completely confused. Sorry, you have to pay to play. As Euclid remarked, there is no "royal road to geometry", you actually have to learn some math and physical theories or your opinions really don't matter (in fact they are not even wrong). On the other hand none of the relevant knowledge is inaccessible (unlike when scholarly texts were all in Latin which was only taught to the very few privileged members of society). You can't acquire it by having sophomoric debates on slashdot, but that internet you are using does provide access to wikipedia which is much more instructive and knowledgable than anything that was available when I was young (and had to walk uphill both ways, in the snow...)
I so wanted to let you have your last word, whatever it might have been. But this is too stupid. Yes, I did attend both micro and macro economics classes. But just from a standpoint of simple logic consider the argument you put forward earlier. The person "saves" money because as the head of a family of five (I also have three children so this isn't entirely hypothetical) he purchases a $2,000 TV because it costs less than 17 trips to the movies. This would seem to imply that if he chose to go to the movies 16 times rather than purchase a TV for a comparable cost that those trips to the movies constitutes an investment. That is so stupid it makes fun of itself.
Really? It sounds more like two different choices for how to consume. Either option is probably enjoyable in its own way but both are consumption rather than investment. We all consume and sometimes invest. Calling the purchase of a multi thousand dollar TV an investment just seems a daft use of the word.
Investment is usually used to describe a purchase that enables one to obtain an income. For instance a rental property or a computer used in a business. A big ass TV can be great fun but unless you operate a bar (and pay royalties for programs shown) it is sort of odd to use the term 'investment' though this misuse is not unusual.
OK, here is a comment on the content. I went through the hoops to soil my MBP with Silverlight. Then I learn that these aren't THE Feynman Lectures, they are just some Feynman lectures given at Cornell to a fairly general audience. I recall reading somewhere that the actual Feynman lectures delivered to undergrads at Caltech in the 60's which are the basis of the textbooks are stored somewhere in a video archive. The release of those lectures is what I thought was being announced. Of course that would be a huge archive, the sort of series that might show up in iTunes U if delivered today.
Feynman wasn't just another Nobel Prize wining physicist. When he was an undergraduate at MIT he competed in the Putnam Competition and "won" (the top few scores are lumped together and he was one of the competitors with a top score). Meaning that he wasn't a bull in a china shop when it came to mathematical sophistication. On the other hand I did hear first hand when he compared physics to math as analogous to comparing sex to masturbating.
I'll try not to shock you too badly, but the fact is that Netflix gets ALL of its revenue this way. One subscriber at a time. Netflix invests vast sums of capital to pursue new revenue. I've watched a few things on Netflix on my brother's Mac and did not find it quite compelling enough to subscribe. If new Firefly episodes were available I would be all over it. So would many, many more who discovered it on DVD after the fact. Enough to make it worthwhile to Netflix (or Amazon, Hulu, or Apple)? Hell yes!
Ha! The iPod touch has almost all the advantages of an iPhone without the $100 per month tribute paid to the cellphone carrier oligarchy. You can even use an iPod touch to make calls with Skype and others for free if you have wifi available. Those who examine Apple statements have estimated about a 3 to 2 ratio of iPhones to iPod touch. That would make it a huge part of the iOS market. The absence of a worthy iPod touch type device for other mobile OS's is a shocking oversight that inhibits their appeal to independent developers
Sorry, I must have been thinking about someone else's comment. In general I am really interested in details of what is present rather than people's misgivings about what they see as being absent.
OK, I am going to commit heresy. Watch the version with the voice over narration by Harrison Ford. It wasn't part of the plan by Ridley Scott and Harrison claims he tried to make his delivery especially dumb because he thought it was a bad idea. But without it the movie can seem awfully quiet and cnfusing at times. Of course it isn't so important after the story is familiar but I'm not sure the producers were so wrong to have it in the original release.
Nope, I've got no legitimate excuse for my adverse reaction to "bespoke". Brits use it all the time but having gone through over 50 years of life without having heard it before recently, it seems trendy and redundant. I'll get over it.
WTF? You are in a discussion about the features of a new gadget telling everyone they are idiots for considering it. Your dismissive opinion is of very limited value in the present discussion. It has been heard ad naseum. We get it. You don't want an iPad from Apple. Good for you. But further discussion of Flash is just tedious in this context. There are plenty of other discussions where people might care about your opinion about Flash.
Utter nonsense. But the wonderful thing is that you can buy a Xoom and live happily ever after. What is the sense of whining continually when your opinion has zero chance of making a difference? No iPad for you! (and possibly no soup)
I think you are right that there may be an opportunity for a device like this. In fact Apple made something quite like this almost 20 years ago called the Newton. I wouldn't expect an iPad update to change course so radically (focus is of paramount importance) but maybe they could introduce a new device if handwriting recognition were actually made to work (notice the subjunctive case). But with the Scully taint and the bruising they absorbed with Newton handwriting recognition, Apple may not be the company to pursue this.
"But most of our salespeople do have laptops and VPN connections."
You probably know this already but just in case you should know that iPads also support VPN connections with built in system software. Also, is there any way I could get you to use the term "custom apps" rather than "bespoke apps"? Please, I'm begging.
How would AirPlay capability (vs analog video out) differ from a practical viewpoint? All these "secure" efforts just seem counter-productive in a literal sense. They don't effectively prevent copyright infringement but they do reduce productivity for ordinary customers.
Well, one reason Apple would not be offering Flash support is that last time I bothered to check mobile Flash was still not available on any mobile device. It is not going to be available on Xoom during an initial period and who knows how long that will persist? A probable reason for that absence is that they might not want to have the reduced battery life emphasized in initial reviews. Apple managed to sell 15 million devices and encourage migration to less proprietary (and probably less crappy) technology. The absence of nonexistent Flash support has not been the disaster that the Monday morning quarterbacks have vociferously insisted it would be. When the real world (ie market) tells you that you're wrong, raising your voice is not a winning response.
It probably would make sense for you to buy a Xoom and be happy. You could also come to terms with the fact that many people will have different and valid viewpoints that differ from yours.
I don't think I'm missing anything obvious but rather that you are making claims for which you do not have proof. I doubt that anyone knows all the relevant facts besides Apple and the big vendors like Amazon, B & N, and Sony. That means we will learn this summer. If Apple loses the Kindle app they will lose a significant number of customers so I doubt that Apple will make a decision that leads to that result.
Slashdot Mirror
The only thing famous about it is how pathetic the damage control was after accidentally telling the truth. He had to backpedal. You don't have to buy into something that lame. You can, for instance, look around and wonder where all those Galaxy S tablets are that people supposedly bought. I can see Android phones but not much luck finding the mythical Android tablets in the wild. YMMV.
This has the odor of a pump priming attempt to create the impression of wide scale adoption hoping that more people will consider an Android tablet as a viable option. If you buy an Android tablet you are a brave pioneer and you may be rewarded or you may be the owner of the equivalent of the Zune.
I got the impression that these stores are selling actual Apple products. Is that not the case? If they are Apple products that the stores bought wholesale from Apple, what is the alleged problem? We have other stores where we can buy Apple products in the US. These stores in China just appear to suck less than Best Buy or Walmart. Building stores that are elegant and provide an agreeable customer experience is not something that is the "intellectual property" of Apple.
If "His biggest risk is if someone uses his connection to look at child porn", then his (Schneier's) position is entirely correct. What is it about this hysterical obsession with "child porn"? Are they lurking everywhere like the commies? Do we really have to pass laws criminalizing people who have incorrect thoughts? I strongly support criminalizing adults who take advantage of minors but it is always wrong to have thought crimes. Allowing thought crimes as a category allows people who really have evil intentions to use it as a tool for undermining society. Being tolerant of this hysteria plays into the hands of this new witch hunt of the twenty first century. Just say no when someone tries to use it as a justification.
Just to be clear I do run a guest network from my wireless router (Apple Airport Extreme) which allows internet access but not access to my devices on the local network. If everyone did something similar then mobile internet access would be much less problematic.
Whether or if you own a Mac or PC is (will be with iOS 5) being rendered irrelevant. Before a Mac or PC had to be used to register and update iOS devices. That function migrates to the Cloud with iOS 5 (as well as synchronizing functions currently handled by iTune, hence iCloud is the new iTunes). Arguably the most important result of this new situation is that a person can buy an iPad and never has to deal with the complexity (and power and elegance) of a Mac or PC. This will certainly hasten the day when there are more tablets (including iPads) than desktop and laptop computers. I would say the migration is all but over.
There is nothing disturbing about the results so far unless it is due to a security breach of iTMS. So far it seems more likely that this is the result of people "depending on the kindness of strangers". More explicitly, that users may be using the same username and password for multiple sites. If that is the problem it is hard to imagine what any e-commerce site could do to protect a customer other than requiring credit card information to be entered for each transaction.
A company can take the reactive position of correcting the issue after email notification alerts the user to the fraud. That seems to be what Apple has done. If iTMS has not been hacked then public announcements by Apple could be very inflammatory without doing anything to correct the problem. Any service with 230 million accounts is going to have some events that require investigation. If Apple has been hacked, they know it and have remained mute, then shame on them. Based on what's been reported so far that does not look likely.
Yep, you have fixed the problem unless THE PERPETRATOR IS IN YOUR HOUSE!! Get out as fast as you can!
Please tell us you were joking so I can retract this harsh comment.
15 minutes at the speed of light is different than 15 minutes standing still.
If you had bothered to learn any relativity theory (over a century old, not exactly hot off the presses), you would be less completely confused. Sorry, you have to pay to play. As Euclid remarked, there is no "royal road to geometry", you actually have to learn some math and physical theories or your opinions really don't matter (in fact they are not even wrong). On the other hand none of the relevant knowledge is inaccessible (unlike when scholarly texts were all in Latin which was only taught to the very few privileged members of society). You can't acquire it by having sophomoric debates on slashdot, but that internet you are using does provide access to wikipedia which is much more instructive and knowledgable than anything that was available when I was young (and had to walk uphill both ways, in the snow...)
I so wanted to let you have your last word, whatever it might have been. But this is too stupid. Yes, I did attend both micro and macro economics classes. But just from a standpoint of simple logic consider the argument you put forward earlier. The person "saves" money because as the head of a family of five (I also have three children so this isn't entirely hypothetical) he purchases a $2,000 TV because it costs less than 17 trips to the movies. This would seem to imply that if he chose to go to the movies 16 times rather than purchase a TV for a comparable cost that those trips to the movies constitutes an investment. That is so stupid it makes fun of itself.
Econ 101: there is consumption and investment. Buying a TV set whether it is $100 or $5,000 is consumption. Calling it an investment: priceless.
Really? It sounds more like two different choices for how to consume. Either option is probably enjoyable in its own way but both are consumption rather than investment. We all consume and sometimes invest. Calling the purchase of a multi thousand dollar TV an investment just seems a daft use of the word.
Investment is usually used to describe a purchase that enables one to obtain an income. For instance a rental property or a computer used in a business. A big ass TV can be great fun but unless you operate a bar (and pay royalties for programs shown) it is sort of odd to use the term 'investment' though this misuse is not unusual.
OK, here is a comment on the content. I went through the hoops to soil my MBP with Silverlight. Then I learn that these aren't THE Feynman Lectures, they are just some Feynman lectures given at Cornell to a fairly general audience. I recall reading somewhere that the actual Feynman lectures delivered to undergrads at Caltech in the 60's which are the basis of the textbooks are stored somewhere in a video archive. The release of those lectures is what I thought was being announced. Of course that would be a huge archive, the sort of series that might show up in iTunes U if delivered today.
Feynman wasn't just another Nobel Prize wining physicist. When he was an undergraduate at MIT he competed in the Putnam Competition and "won" (the top few scores are lumped together and he was one of the competitors with a top score). Meaning that he wasn't a bull in a china shop when it came to mathematical sophistication. On the other hand I did hear first hand when he compared physics to math as analogous to comparing sex to masturbating.
I'll try not to shock you too badly, but the fact is that Netflix gets ALL of its revenue this way. One subscriber at a time. Netflix invests vast sums of capital to pursue new revenue. I've watched a few things on Netflix on my brother's Mac and did not find it quite compelling enough to subscribe. If new Firefly episodes were available I would be all over it. So would many, many more who discovered it on DVD after the fact. Enough to make it worthwhile to Netflix (or Amazon, Hulu, or Apple)? Hell yes!
Ha! The iPod touch has almost all the advantages of an iPhone without the $100 per month tribute paid to the cellphone carrier oligarchy. You can even use an iPod touch to make calls with Skype and others for free if you have wifi available. Those who examine Apple statements have estimated about a 3 to 2 ratio of iPhones to iPod touch. That would make it a huge part of the iOS market. The absence of a worthy iPod touch type device for other mobile OS's is a shocking oversight that inhibits their appeal to independent developers
Sorry, I must have been thinking about someone else's comment. In general I am really interested in details of what is present rather than people's misgivings about what they see as being absent.
OK, I am going to commit heresy. Watch the version with the voice over narration by Harrison Ford. It wasn't part of the plan by Ridley Scott and Harrison claims he tried to make his delivery especially dumb because he thought it was a bad idea. But without it the movie can seem awfully quiet and cnfusing at times. Of course it isn't so important after the story is familiar but I'm not sure the producers were so wrong to have it in the original release.
Nope, I've got no legitimate excuse for my adverse reaction to "bespoke". Brits use it all the time but having gone through over 50 years of life without having heard it before recently, it seems trendy and redundant. I'll get over it.
WTF? You are in a discussion about the features of a new gadget telling everyone they are idiots for considering it. Your dismissive opinion is of very limited value in the present discussion. It has been heard ad naseum. We get it. You don't want an iPad from Apple. Good for you. But further discussion of Flash is just tedious in this context. There are plenty of other discussions where people might care about your opinion about Flash.
Utter nonsense. But the wonderful thing is that you can buy a Xoom and live happily ever after. What is the sense of whining continually when your opinion has zero chance of making a difference? No iPad for you! (and possibly no soup)
I think you are right that there may be an opportunity for a device like this. In fact Apple made something quite like this almost 20 years ago called the Newton. I wouldn't expect an iPad update to change course so radically (focus is of paramount importance) but maybe they could introduce a new device if handwriting recognition were actually made to work (notice the subjunctive case). But with the Scully taint and the bruising they absorbed with Newton handwriting recognition, Apple may not be the company to pursue this.
"But most of our salespeople do have laptops and VPN connections."
You probably know this already but just in case you should know that iPads also support VPN connections with built in system software. Also, is there any way I could get you to use the term "custom apps" rather than "bespoke apps"? Please, I'm begging.
How would AirPlay capability (vs analog video out) differ from a practical viewpoint? All these "secure" efforts just seem counter-productive in a literal sense. They don't effectively prevent copyright infringement but they do reduce productivity for ordinary customers.
Well, one reason Apple would not be offering Flash support is that last time I bothered to check mobile Flash was still not available on any mobile device. It is not going to be available on Xoom during an initial period and who knows how long that will persist? A probable reason for that absence is that they might not want to have the reduced battery life emphasized in initial reviews. Apple managed to sell 15 million devices and encourage migration to less proprietary (and probably less crappy) technology. The absence of nonexistent Flash support has not been the disaster that the Monday morning quarterbacks have vociferously insisted it would be. When the real world (ie market) tells you that you're wrong, raising your voice is not a winning response.
It probably would make sense for you to buy a Xoom and be happy. You could also come to terms with the fact that many people will have different and valid viewpoints that differ from yours.
I don't think I'm missing anything obvious but rather that you are making claims for which you do not have proof. I doubt that anyone knows all the relevant facts besides Apple and the big vendors like Amazon, B & N, and Sony. That means we will learn this summer. If Apple loses the Kindle app they will lose a significant number of customers so I doubt that Apple will make a decision that leads to that result.