Going after Apple and then telling in which areas MS won't be out-innovated anymore is not the same as innovation. Innovation doesn't mean to be better than others in the same markets. It means creating new markets and new product categories. Just being as good or better than Apple would mean shit if Apple then comes with the next big thing MS had never even wasted a thought on.
Of course this is pure theory, since I don't think we will see that much innovation from Apple anymore. Still, these are laughable comments from a CEO. It's pretty clear that Ballmer doesn't even know what innovation actually means.
Well, most of the bezels is ornamental (there's nothing behind them) and with them also the corners and their radii. The back could look much different, too. It would also be easy to have glas only over the actual display and plastic or metal on the bezels on the front (as common for decades on monitors), so this is also ornamental.
The Galaxy Tab is the underdog and underdogs can be cool.
Yes, but just being underdog is not enough to actually be cool. Almost everyone learns this at some point. You can be cool despite being underdog if you're actually cool, but being underdog doesn't make you cool if you aren't.
The research team will be in the running for a Nobel prize, and of course they would generate large numbers of published articles that will enhance their work metrics and keep them in "most favor researcher" status with their research institute. Not to mention, the additional travel to conferences and an increased amount of celebrity for the principle scientists.
Well, as someone with close secondhand knowledge of how things work there (as someone in my family is working in this "business"): For most (almost all) of them it will be the same measly hotels, lots of travelling to both stressful and boring events, working with outdated hardware, fighting for funds, working in very boring offices and labs and all in all no trace of glamour, riches or fame around. It's good work if you like what you're doing but not more.
A good example is gravity. We can map it's properties, theorize as to it's extremes and how it reacts and how things react to it, but we simply don't know how it works (cause) at a very basic level. This is that kind of fundamental discovery. Not a discovery about a new light source, or a new type of fuel, but a fundamental building block of our universe.
Well, it still just says "we don't know" in a very complicated way.
The proof of having understood mass and gravity would be to manipulate it. So use the knowledge to be gained from that Goddamned Particle to remove the mass along with its attributes (inertia, gravity) from matter (shouldn't change much, if any, of its chemical properties while freeing up lots of energy) and that would mean we've understood something.
Before that it's really just a very, very complicated and largely symbolic way of saying "we haven't got any clue".
And if -- ghod forbid -- we discover a way to make the vacuum unstable, then we might learn how to make one really big boom. Just one, because it will consume the entire universe, but that one will be REALLY BIG.
it would not be practical for an app to be written to gracefully handle the user accepting or denying all possible combinations of permissions. well, maybe that's too strong. at the very least, it'd be a pain in the arse. if you were a developer you'd thank your lucky stars that it works like this.
The fine-grained permissions are informative but nothing more. You either accept them or not install the app. There's no actual control for the user. I really, really hate that.
...but for the love of God, why can't we just have small personal computers instead of small personal walled gardens?
Why do I have to spend hours to connect a damn bluetooth keyboard to my phone to be able to do some typing when on the go? Why?!?
You're not really meaning to say that this would be easier with a "small personal computer" than with an appliance like the iPad?
Because with the iPhone or iPad pairing a BT keyboard takes seconds (and trying to get this working with a Lenovo A1 tablet running Froyo took me hours without actually making it work for more than a few seconds).
Android is a great OS with some problems, but making it more PC-like surely wouldn't solve any of these.
If you want a solution get a large-screened smartphone (the Samsung Note is nice, the Galaxy Nexus not much worse and cheaper, especially used) and a BT keyboard if you have to do lots of typing. This weights almost nothing, you can carry it on you (smaller risk of it getting lost or stolen) and you can get software for almost everything you'll ever need. Battery life is good and charging via USB won't be a problem anywhere. And you'll have a camera and a phone, too! Most mobile solution ever, and it will basically work out of the box while giving you still enough room to tinker if you want to.
If you want an interesting problem, go the RPI and projector route. It will be much more more work to set up, it will be more portable than mobile, it will weight much more, the risk of some important component to break or get lost is much higher and it very probably won't even be much cheaper, all in all.
Seriously, when I'm traveling light I often just carry my iPhone and the Apple BT keyboard (which is very nice really). Many things are more comfortable with a real computer, but a smartphone covers the most important things easily and even lots of writing works quite trouble-free with a good keyboard. If you want to have a more open/unixy environment, there are more than enough Android phones and apps around. Hell, if you want to, pack a small projector too. At least you'll still able to get things done on your phone then if (when) the projector breaks.
Because not having a single eight-hour sleep cycle would be highly inconvenient in a post-industrial age, and therefore changing it is not an option, whether it affects your health or not.
It was (and is) always an option for me. I often sleep a few hours at night and then another few hours in the afternoon. Gives me a nice stretch of quiet, undisturbed time through the first half of the night and I feel fresh all the time I'm awake. Never could stand the 16h+ stretch over the day since I was mindlessly tired half of the time anyway.
Well, they certainly would be made from glass and metal. Would look much better, especially since they are supposed to last for a long time this is important. I would even pay quite a bit more for them.
Yes, good idea. Apple should do that. Sell a good, cool LED bulb and you could make a lot of money. You could sell it for lots of money, because all other LED bulbs just are awful.
Since half a year now I have a 6x1W LED lamp (from IKEA) hanging off the ceiling in my kitchen. This thing fires 6 tightly focused beams at the walls, which makes 6 funny areas of bright white light to distribute around my kitchen (it has adjustable steel tentacles) . It's bright (where it shines), it's reasonable well designed, it's sturdy and looks seriously cool. It also consumes only a laughable amount of electricity.
And you know what? I happen to like that thing a lot. It eats 6 bloody watts and gives more than enough light everywhere I need it while generating a really nice light landscape. And yes, it does this while eating just 6 bloody watts of electric energy. It also fires up 100% instantly after switching it on.
Hey, there's nothing wrong with LED lights! Gimme more of those! How can geeks NOT like these things?
I have even thought of buying the cheapest LCD screens off ebay and making lamps from them. Hey, you spend how many dollars on gadgets and then you're mean on lighting? Why? Light is cool and LEDs are the next best thing after stealing fire from the gods (or nature or the OS of that particular simulation or whatever).
Stop complaining and invent BETTER LED LIGHTS! And make them cheaper! You will sell billions of them! You lazy, dumb, complacent idiots!
The science is severly limited by the fact our observable data set of worlds with life consists of a single sample.
It is vary hard to do science with a single sample.
Well, it proves beyond doubt that life is *possible*. It still may be a freak accident that only happened exactly once on all planets in the universe, but it *can* happen. That's more than knowing nothing.
Personally I think there is lots of life, but complex, even intelligent life, even with with technology and industry may be very rare. It also may tend to be very short-lived and every two species may easily be divided by not only space but also time.
Has nothing to do with "exploding". The problem is the automatic docking (actually berthing) and I've read they still have too many false emergency aborts in testing. They don't want to go all the way to the ISS just to have it pull back for no good reason automatically.
Anyway, if they have their software and their testing not ready one week before launch, this isn't good at all. They should better put if off for a month or so.
I'm not saying that docking to something in orbital space is child's play, but to talk about the station's speed relative to the earth is ridiculous and irrelevant. Only two things seem relevant to me. The first is the speed of the two objects relative to each other. The second is the possibility of space junk getting in the way.
All this stuff is interesting but it's not rocket science... well... okay, so it IS rocket science... but rocket science is not so new and awesome any more you know?
Those two objects are not just moving in a straight line, they're in a orbit. This means the one object moving faster than the other (to close up to it) can't be and won't be in the same orbit as the other object. Getting one object near enough to another with no or very little relative motion between them (rendezvous) requires some totally non-intuitive ways of maneuvering.
Not that this is the hard thing about that mission. What SpaceX did here is building a launcher and a spacecraft to get into orbit and back again. *That* was hard.
Will Google have native clients for Windows, Linux, OS X, iOS, Android and Symbian that will offer real file system integration?
Or is that just a web drive you have to up- and download data from?
I'm asking because I'm using Dropbox in a business environment in which I export a Samba share from a Linux server to Dropbox which gets synced to a bunch of clients on half a dozen of very different devices running on Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Android and iOS and all of this works just fine. Having 5 GB instead of 2 GB for free is not much of an advantage if there is no system integration to speak of and exactly this has always been a problem with Google. Hey, they even have a hard time to get IMAP right.
Why stupid? They got half the Internet viewing a video and discussing if it is real or not. That was well done and they obviously got everything out of it that they wanted and then some. If they had included some visible motors and a fake battery pack (hey, 2000 Watts for 60 seconds is just 33 Wh, less than the 45 Wh of an iPad) and put more work into the flapping of the wings, it would have more convincing, but still.
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Going after Apple and then telling in which areas MS won't be out-innovated anymore is not the same as innovation. Innovation doesn't mean to be better than others in the same markets. It means creating new markets and new product categories. Just being as good or better than Apple would mean shit if Apple then comes with the next big thing MS had never even wasted a thought on.
Of course this is pure theory, since I don't think we will see that much innovation from Apple anymore. Still, these are laughable comments from a CEO. It's pretty clear that Ballmer doesn't even know what innovation actually means.
Well, most of the bezels is ornamental (there's nothing behind them) and with them also the corners and their radii. The back could look much different, too. It would also be easy to have glas only over the actual display and plastic or metal on the bezels on the front (as common for decades on monitors), so this is also ornamental.
Well?
The Galaxy Tab is the underdog and underdogs can be cool.
Yes, but just being underdog is not enough to actually be cool. Almost everyone learns this at some point. You can be cool despite being underdog if you're actually cool, but being underdog doesn't make you cool if you aren't.
I hate much of this patent-bullshit and I also hate many of these radical patent haters, but this is just too good.
Not cool enough. Well, Apple should make a commercial out of this and rest its case otherwise. Mission accomplished.
The research team will be in the running for a Nobel prize, and of course they would generate large numbers of published articles that will enhance their work metrics and keep them in "most favor researcher" status with their research institute. Not to mention, the additional travel to conferences and an increased amount of celebrity for the principle scientists.
Well, as someone with close secondhand knowledge of how things work there (as someone in my family is working in this "business"): For most (almost all) of them it will be the same measly hotels, lots of travelling to both stressful and boring events, working with outdated hardware, fighting for funds, working in very boring offices and labs and all in all no trace of glamour, riches or fame around. It's good work if you like what you're doing but not more.
I have learned not to overestimate how hard something may be in the future because of how hard it could be today.
Sadly this really applies mainly to computer stuff and to hardly anything else.
A good example is gravity. We can map it's properties, theorize as to it's extremes and how it reacts and how things react to it, but we simply don't know how it works (cause) at a very basic level. This is that kind of fundamental discovery. Not a discovery about a new light source, or a new type of fuel, but a fundamental building block of our universe.
Well, it still just says "we don't know" in a very complicated way.
The proof of having understood mass and gravity would be to manipulate it. So use the knowledge to be gained from that Goddamned Particle to remove the mass along with its attributes (inertia, gravity) from matter (shouldn't change much, if any, of its chemical properties while freeing up lots of energy) and that would mean we've understood something.
Before that it's really just a very, very complicated and largely symbolic way of saying "we haven't got any clue".
And if -- ghod forbid -- we discover a way to make the vacuum unstable, then we might learn how to make one really big boom. Just one, because it will consume the entire universe, but that one will be REALLY BIG.
May have already happened once or more often.
it would not be practical for an app to be written to gracefully handle the user accepting or denying all possible combinations of permissions. well, maybe that's too strong. at the very least, it'd be a pain in the arse. if you were a developer you'd thank your lucky stars that it works like this.
I think it would lead to better apps.
The fine-grained permissions are informative but nothing more. You either accept them or not install the app. There's no actual control for the user. I really, really hate that.
...but for the love of God, why can't we just have small personal computers instead of small personal walled gardens?
Why do I have to spend hours to connect a damn bluetooth keyboard to my phone to be able to do some typing when on the go? Why?!?
You're not really meaning to say that this would be easier with a "small personal computer" than with an appliance like the iPad?
Because with the iPhone or iPad pairing a BT keyboard takes seconds (and trying to get this working with a Lenovo A1 tablet running Froyo took me hours without actually making it work for more than a few seconds).
Android is a great OS with some problems, but making it more PC-like surely wouldn't solve any of these.
If you want a solution get a large-screened smartphone (the Samsung Note is nice, the Galaxy Nexus not much worse and cheaper, especially used) and a BT keyboard if you have to do lots of typing. This weights almost nothing, you can carry it on you (smaller risk of it getting lost or stolen) and you can get software for almost everything you'll ever need. Battery life is good and charging via USB won't be a problem anywhere. And you'll have a camera and a phone, too! Most mobile solution ever, and it will basically work out of the box while giving you still enough room to tinker if you want to.
If you want an interesting problem, go the RPI and projector route. It will be much more more work to set up, it will be more portable than mobile, it will weight much more, the risk of some important component to break or get lost is much higher and it very probably won't even be much cheaper, all in all.
Seriously, when I'm traveling light I often just carry my iPhone and the Apple BT keyboard (which is very nice really). Many things are more comfortable with a real computer, but a smartphone covers the most important things easily and even lots of writing works quite trouble-free with a good keyboard. If you want to have a more open/unixy environment, there are more than enough Android phones and apps around. Hell, if you want to, pack a small projector too. At least you'll still able to get things done on your phone then if (when) the projector breaks.
Because not having a single eight-hour sleep cycle would be highly inconvenient in a post-industrial age, and therefore changing it is not an option, whether it affects your health or not.
It was (and is) always an option for me. I often sleep a few hours at night and then another few hours in the afternoon. Gives me a nice stretch of quiet, undisturbed time through the first half of the night and I feel fresh all the time I'm awake. Never could stand the 16h+ stretch over the day since I was mindlessly tired half of the time anyway.
Sun Tzu said the greatest victory is one which doesn't require a shot.
It may also be the best way of losing, especially if you ask those who haven't been shot then.
Well, they certainly would be made from glass and metal. Would look much better, especially since they are supposed to last for a long time this is important. I would even pay quite a bit more for them.
Yes, good idea. Apple should do that. Sell a good, cool LED bulb and you could make a lot of money. You could sell it for lots of money, because all other LED bulbs just are awful.
Complaining is easier, though.
Since half a year now I have a 6x1W LED lamp (from IKEA) hanging off the ceiling in my kitchen. This thing fires 6 tightly focused beams at the walls, which makes 6 funny areas of bright white light to distribute around my kitchen (it has adjustable steel tentacles) . It's bright (where it shines), it's reasonable well designed, it's sturdy and looks seriously cool. It also consumes only a laughable amount of electricity.
And you know what? I happen to like that thing a lot. It eats 6 bloody watts and gives more than enough light everywhere I need it while generating a really nice light landscape. And yes, it does this while eating just 6 bloody watts of electric energy. It also fires up 100% instantly after switching it on.
Hey, there's nothing wrong with LED lights! Gimme more of those! How can geeks NOT like these things?
I have even thought of buying the cheapest LCD screens off ebay and making lamps from them. Hey, you spend how many dollars on gadgets and then you're mean on lighting? Why? Light is cool and LEDs are the next best thing after stealing fire from the gods (or nature or the OS of that particular simulation or whatever).
Stop complaining and invent BETTER LED LIGHTS! And make them cheaper! You will sell billions of them! You lazy, dumb, complacent idiots!
In a perfect world we would all be ambidextrous -- being able to use BOTH hands would make things much simpler.
The science is severly limited by the fact our observable data set of worlds with life consists of a single sample.
It is vary hard to do science with a single sample.
Well, it proves beyond doubt that life is *possible*. It still may be a freak accident that only happened exactly once on all planets in the universe, but it *can* happen. That's more than knowing nothing.
Personally I think there is lots of life, but complex, even intelligent life, even with with technology and industry may be very rare. It also may tend to be very short-lived and every two species may easily be divided by not only space but also time.
NASAspaceflight has a much better article than TFA. Go read it, if you're interested in details and facts.
If the testing wouldn't carry the risk of having to change some code (or tweak some parameters) they could just stop testing and launch already.
Has nothing to do with "exploding". The problem is the automatic docking (actually berthing) and I've read they still have too many false emergency aborts in testing. They don't want to go all the way to the ISS just to have it pull back for no good reason automatically.
Anyway, if they have their software and their testing not ready one week before launch, this isn't good at all. They should better put if off for a month or so.
I'm not saying that docking to something in orbital space is child's play, but to talk about the station's speed relative to the earth is ridiculous and irrelevant. Only two things seem relevant to me. The first is the speed of the two objects relative to each other. The second is the possibility of space junk getting in the way.
All this stuff is interesting but it's not rocket science... well... okay, so it IS rocket science... but rocket science is not so new and awesome any more you know?
Those two objects are not just moving in a straight line, they're in a orbit. This means the one object moving faster than the other (to close up to it) can't be and won't be in the same orbit as the other object. Getting one object near enough to another with no or very little relative motion between them (rendezvous) requires some totally non-intuitive ways of maneuvering.
Not that this is the hard thing about that mission. What SpaceX did here is building a launcher and a spacecraft to get into orbit and back again. *That* was hard.
Will Google have native clients for Windows, Linux, OS X, iOS, Android and Symbian that will offer real file system integration?
Or is that just a web drive you have to up- and download data from?
I'm asking because I'm using Dropbox in a business environment in which I export a Samba share from a Linux server to Dropbox which gets synced to a bunch of clients on half a dozen of very different devices running on Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Android and iOS and all of this works just fine. Having 5 GB instead of 2 GB for free is not much of an advantage if there is no system integration to speak of and exactly this has always been a problem with Google. Hey, they even have a hard time to get IMAP right.
Why stupid? They got half the Internet viewing a video and discussing if it is real or not. That was well done and they obviously got everything out of it that they wanted and then some. If they had included some visible motors and a fake battery pack (hey, 2000 Watts for 60 seconds is just 33 Wh, less than the 45 Wh of an iPad) and put more work into the flapping of the wings, it would have more convincing, but still.
Harmless fun, cleverly done, I'd say.