The interface spends too much time trying to sell me shit.
In iTunes? Where? You can close the Genius bar, and when I'm looking at a play list or my music collection (or movies, or books), there is precisely 0% of the screen which is allocated to trying to sell you stuff. None, nada, zip.
In fact, on the new version, I can't even find where I'd turn on the Genius bar which would try to show me stuff I might like based on what I have.
So either it's been a very long time since you looked at iTunes, or you're talking out of your butt.
You don't have to like iTunes, but I'm not seeing any evidence to suggest what you've said is factual -- and a fair bit of direct evidence to suggest it's quite wrong since I have it up on screen now and there's no sign of any attempts to sell me stuff or screen real-estate dedicated to that.
I like to think that, somewhere, God is looking down on them and taking serious offense to how they are portraying Him.
I like to think that if there was such an entity, the reaction would be more along the lines of "ohhh, how cute, ze little pink ones are all wearing blue hats this year. I like it when zey vear hats" and "oh dear, ze fuzzy blue ones have all gone extinct, better luck next time". (I have no idea of why in my mind God has an accent like Einstein.)
My biggest problem is that we characterize this notional entity as being entirely human like, and constrained by how we think the universe works at any given time.
The reality would be something which is on such a vastly different scale as we are that it seems meaningless to say anything about it.
If such a god exists, I have a hard time believing it would be some petty brat who throws temper tantrums and holds grudges, is especially concerned with who you have sex with, or expects you to flagellate yourself to show devotion. I'm thinking there would have to be a lot better perspective and a long-term view of things.
It just always seems to be the people who try to reject the substance of reality who scream the loudest they speak on behalf of a god who made something they refuse to accept as real.
This is a horrible precedent. Evolution is likely the correct explanation for life on earth, but what happens when science is wrong? (it often is, that's how we learn) Do we then just say "oops, sorry, we didn't mean to legislate teaching you what wasn't known for certain yet."
Find me one piece of credible, scientific evidence for creationism. Go ahead, I'll wait.
So far, people have put forth theories to try to shore up their belief in creationism, but there's precisely zero evidence for it. The best attempt I've ever seen is "this is so complex it couldn't have happened through natural processes, therefore it must have been magic".
We have observed evolution and speciation. We haven't observed any creation occurring, nor is there any evidence for it.
So when people try to teach creationism in school, it largely amounts to a religious point of view, and is presented as if it's an equally valid "theory" -- because they abuse the scientific definition of "theory" to say "well, that's just what you think". (If Newton had proposed the law of Gravity in the last 100 years or so, it would stil be a theory.)
Politicians should not be involving themselves in science, lest they quickly become little better than a monarchy.
They're not dictating the outcomes of scientific endeavors, they're saying that since there is no credible scientific evidence for creationism -- you can't teach it alongside science as an equally valid view, because there is precisely zero science involved in it.
If the public is paying for people to be educated, it expects people to come out of that system understanding what is real and what isn't. Creationism isn't objective reality, it's trying to make the universe adhere to your religious beliefs.
So, if you want to teach your children that 2+2=58 million, that water is made up gumdrops and moonbeams, and that some creator god whipped up the world in 7 literal days... well, you can bloody well pay for it yourself, and expect them to be mocked relentlessly when they get out into the world.
But all those people saying that fossils were there to test their faith, and that the world is only 6000 years old -- well, we can't exactly accept that their version of reality is equally valid so we don't hurt their feelings, especially when it contradicts real physical measurements.
If there is a creator god, he/she/it is vastly more complex and unknowable in light of everything we know about the universe. it would have to encompass everything we know about physical reality. And if people can't include reality in their religious beliefs, it's not the states job to pay for funding their version of it.
I've known professors of computational astrophysics who are still quite religious. They have no problem with the duality of it -- because if God did create the universe, he's so far outside of any of the bits we can ever directly see and measure, that you have to take those parts on faith.
Science and religion deal with different areas of human endeavour. But you can't twist science to match what your religion tells you.
Creationism is not a scientific theory by any meaningful definition. It isn't testable, falsifiable, or evidence based. It's based on thousands of years of beliefs, most of which were borrowed from civilizations which came before the religions who now say that their bible tells them that the world was created in 7 days (the creation myth was borrowed from the Sumerians or Babylonians almost verbatim).
You should be free to believe whatever you think god has told you about morality and the like -- but it really can't be placed along side of science as a plausible alternate answer to these questions.
Which is actually more times than the word Tantrum appears in the article.
The problem is that once you're involved in this kind of litigation, this is a natural conclusion -- everybody pretty much has to go for scorched Earth.
Of course, the problem is they both own patents, and like so much of the tech industry, you either sign licensing agreements, or sue the hell out of each other. The stakes keep going up -- especially since we're talking about billions of dollars in revenue.
And, I'm sure that in no way will all of these fscking legal costs ever get passed onto consumers. I'm sure they'll take it out of the pool they use for executive bonuses, right?
Also, from the summary: "each valued at approximately 16,000 USD, giving a neat total of almost 69 trillion USD" is misleading. Futures are traded on margin so the total the total amount of cash they would have had to put up is orders of magnitude less. 69 trillion USD is simply the maximum they could lose.
I'm sorry, but if the US GDP was 15.09 Trillion dollars in 2011 (according to google) -- there is no meaningful scenario in which a stock trade could have a potential loss (or cost) of 69 Trillion USD.
You are firmly into the realm on nonsensical numbers at that point -- that's like all the money in the world. Take the US, China, Japan, Germany, France, the UK, Brazil, Italy, India and Canada and add them all up it's not that. 69 trillion was the worldGDP in 2011. The NYSE combined market cap in December of 2011 was only about 15 Trillion.
I think you're trying too hard to explain something here. I'm not convinced there's a plausible explanation for any trade trying to cover 4 billion shares of anything, and for more money than is imaginable.
This is a trade size which is unbelievably huge, for a dollar value which is equally huge.
My wife's last car had an in-dash GPS. After a few years when the maps started showing their age and missing entire subdivisions, we looked into replacing it.
Turned out to buy the DVD from GM to update the maps was on the order of $700 or so. Which, was obviously way more than it would cost to buy a Tom Tom or similar.
I try to avoid such things because they do go obsolete far faster than the thing they're attached to. Though, the BlueTooth integration in my KIA is pretty sweet.
This is why you always use dynamic storage like a link list when you potentially have to deal with numbers bigger then the address bus width.
A linked list of digits? Seems a little much given that there's data types meant to handle really big numbers.
At a minimum someone should be bounds/sanity checking their inputs before it goes anywhere past the user interface -- you have to assume your users will type all sorts of random stuff into your fields.
Then again, I am often surprised when testing new software that when I do something completely random I often see issues.
I remember a developer saying to me once "but nobody is ever going to do that" -- the reality is, unless you actively prevent it, sooner or later they will; and in the case of many users, it's more like within the first 5 minutes. They don't know or care what you think is 'normal' inputs -- they're going to do what they do no matter what.
Since I doubt you can buy -6 shares, and likely nobody had access to $69 trillion USD (including the US government)... this sounds like it was done by someone who knew it would cause problems with the system.
I don't know about most of you, but I couldn't initiate a trade for that kind of money. How could someone even do this without having some good knowledge of how the system works?
You'd really have to assume there should be some pretty obvious checks and balances in there that either weren't, or didn't trigger.
This has been answered many times. You haven't "[tuned] out the entire viewpoint"; you never bothered to read it in the first place.
I think you've just demonstrated the first half of my post -- sorry, but you've basically said "RTFM". I've been using free software in some form or another since about '92 or so -- I most certainly have tuned out the more extreme aspects of it. But I didn't fully agree with RMS when I heard him lecture in the early 90s, and I still don't. Don't take that to mean that I've never educated myself on it.
If Richard Stallman can't freshly articulate this point on demand, he's a pretty lousy advocate.
And if the default position is "we've already laid our glorious truth for you to see" -- well, some religions try to tell me the same thing, and they get told to go bugger themselves too.
It's not my job to validate your viewpoint -- it's your job to state your case. And having had conversations with absolutely drooling, rabid proponents of free software, it usually devolves into apoplectic whinging amounting to "but can't you see my obvious truth that I'm right and you're wrong". In my professional life, that usually ends up saying "OK, then since you can't articulate your point, I will continue to ignore you on this topic".
Sorry Mr AC -- but you're exactly what I was talking about. You just fall back to an appeal to a higher authority that since the FSF says it, it must be entirely valid and true. Not all of us have been swayed by these arguments.
It's well known that not everybody shares the same enthusiasm for open software, and sometimes this enthusiasm borders on a religious fervor that alienates people by being confrontational and borders on "my free software philosophy is right and yours is wrong".
This can cause people to start tuning out the entire viewpoint and stop listening -- it certainly has for me.
So, why should we care? And why must software be open to your standards?
I don't know. Maybe this is what we should ask our courts and congresscritters to decide?
Well, since the congresscritters (which Finland may or may not have) will do whatever the lobbyists pay them to do... good luck with that.
With the head of the USPTO saying this whole mess is working fine... I just don't see this insanity getting fixed anytime soon.
I'm bet if someone came to market with a dildo that was wifi enabled, someone would sue them for patent infringement -- despite both dildos and wifi being pretty common things (and, no, I have no idea of what you would use wifi for in conjunction with a dildo, something involving 'teledildonics' I'm sure). Admittedly, such things may already exist -- I don't want to know.
But that doesn't really apply when we're talking about a standard (Wi-Fi) on a standard type of device (PDA).
I couldn't agree more. We've had variants of 802 for decades (it's ethernet basically), and 802.11 since 1997 or so.
To me this sounds like so many patents which seem to read "a system for doing something well known, but with a computer". Connecting a device to a network isn't exactly anything new... having a hand-held device connect to a wifi network is something which is pretty obvious by now.
Does Nokia try to sue laptop makers who connect to wifi? Or does some how "with a cell phone" magically make this an innovation?
All tablets I've ever seen can connect to wifi, and some of those can also use cell signals as well. Does Nokia sue them? What is the cutoff point at which adding wifi to a new device ceases to be an innovation, and becomes something obvious?
Exactly this. I don't EVER want to see a mobile version of any website on my tablet. And yet far too many websites refuse to give me the full site no matter what I click
Amen to that.
I can't tell you how annoying it is to follow a link that says "redirecting to our mobile site", which then dumps you at the main page without attempting to get you where you wanted and no way to get to it.
If you can't give me the content I was looking for, and give me at least as good as what I'd have gotten from the normal page... don't try to be a clever guy and redirect me to an un-usable mobile site. I wasn't looking for your front page, I was looking for something specific that I already have a link to.
I have yet to be directed to a mobile site which actually works.
Slashdot Mirror
In iTunes? Where? You can close the Genius bar, and when I'm looking at a play list or my music collection (or movies, or books), there is precisely 0% of the screen which is allocated to trying to sell you stuff. None, nada, zip.
In fact, on the new version, I can't even find where I'd turn on the Genius bar which would try to show me stuff I might like based on what I have.
So either it's been a very long time since you looked at iTunes, or you're talking out of your butt.
You don't have to like iTunes, but I'm not seeing any evidence to suggest what you've said is factual -- and a fair bit of direct evidence to suggest it's quite wrong since I have it up on screen now and there's no sign of any attempts to sell me stuff or screen real-estate dedicated to that.
Bolour with a K? Silly bunt.
In fairness, it used to be a much bigger galaxy. Just wait for the x-ray/gamma ray belch which will come just before it decides to take a nap.
That was Moses, not Lincoln. ;-)
Only about 70% of the time.
No, but they seem to be experts at DBAG. :-P
I like to think that if there was such an entity, the reaction would be more along the lines of "ohhh, how cute, ze little pink ones are all wearing blue hats this year. I like it when zey vear hats" and "oh dear, ze fuzzy blue ones have all gone extinct, better luck next time". (I have no idea of why in my mind God has an accent like Einstein.)
My biggest problem is that we characterize this notional entity as being entirely human like, and constrained by how we think the universe works at any given time.
The reality would be something which is on such a vastly different scale as we are that it seems meaningless to say anything about it.
If such a god exists, I have a hard time believing it would be some petty brat who throws temper tantrums and holds grudges, is especially concerned with who you have sex with, or expects you to flagellate yourself to show devotion. I'm thinking there would have to be a lot better perspective and a long-term view of things.
It just always seems to be the people who try to reject the substance of reality who scream the loudest they speak on behalf of a god who made something they refuse to accept as real.
I do. I've come to accept that won't change anything though. :-P
Why, are we worried about AIs committing venial sins or something?
Find me one piece of credible, scientific evidence for creationism. Go ahead, I'll wait.
So far, people have put forth theories to try to shore up their belief in creationism, but there's precisely zero evidence for it. The best attempt I've ever seen is "this is so complex it couldn't have happened through natural processes, therefore it must have been magic".
We have observed evolution and speciation. We haven't observed any creation occurring, nor is there any evidence for it.
So when people try to teach creationism in school, it largely amounts to a religious point of view, and is presented as if it's an equally valid "theory" -- because they abuse the scientific definition of "theory" to say "well, that's just what you think". (If Newton had proposed the law of Gravity in the last 100 years or so, it would stil be a theory.)
They're not dictating the outcomes of scientific endeavors, they're saying that since there is no credible scientific evidence for creationism -- you can't teach it alongside science as an equally valid view, because there is precisely zero science involved in it.
If the public is paying for people to be educated, it expects people to come out of that system understanding what is real and what isn't. Creationism isn't objective reality, it's trying to make the universe adhere to your religious beliefs.
So, if you want to teach your children that 2+2=58 million, that water is made up gumdrops and moonbeams, and that some creator god whipped up the world in 7 literal days ... well, you can bloody well pay for it yourself, and expect them to be mocked relentlessly when they get out into the world.
But all those people saying that fossils were there to test their faith, and that the world is only 6000 years old -- well, we can't exactly accept that their version of reality is equally valid so we don't hurt their feelings, especially when it contradicts real physical measurements.
If there is a creator god, he/she/it is vastly more complex and unknowable in light of everything we know about the universe. it would have to encompass everything we know about physical reality. And if people can't include reality in their religious beliefs, it's not the states job to pay for funding their version of it.
I've known professors of computational astrophysics who are still quite religious. They have no problem with the duality of it -- because if God did create the universe, he's so far outside of any of the bits we can ever directly see and measure, that you have to take those parts on faith.
Science and religion deal with different areas of human endeavour. But you can't twist science to match what your religion tells you.
Creationism is not a scientific theory by any meaningful definition. It isn't testable, falsifiable, or evidence based. It's based on thousands of years of beliefs, most of which were borrowed from civilizations which came before the religions who now say that their bible tells them that the world was created in 7 days (the creation myth was borrowed from the Sumerians or Babylonians almost verbatim).
You should be free to believe whatever you think god has told you about morality and the like -- but it really can't be placed along side of science as a plausible alternate answer to these questions.
Which is actually more times than the word Tantrum appears in the article.
The problem is that once you're involved in this kind of litigation, this is a natural conclusion -- everybody pretty much has to go for scorched Earth.
Of course, the problem is they both own patents, and like so much of the tech industry, you either sign licensing agreements, or sue the hell out of each other. The stakes keep going up -- especially since we're talking about billions of dollars in revenue.
And, I'm sure that in no way will all of these fscking legal costs ever get passed onto consumers. I'm sure they'll take it out of the pool they use for executive bonuses, right?
Can't speak to that, but the obvious answer is "Natalie Portman and hot grits" since this is Slashdot.
I'm sorry, but if the US GDP was 15.09 Trillion dollars in 2011 (according to google) -- there is no meaningful scenario in which a stock trade could have a potential loss (or cost) of 69 Trillion USD.
You are firmly into the realm on nonsensical numbers at that point -- that's like all the money in the world. Take the US, China, Japan, Germany, France, the UK, Brazil, Italy, India and Canada and add them all up it's not that. 69 trillion was the world GDP in 2011. The NYSE combined market cap in December of 2011 was only about 15 Trillion.
I think you're trying too hard to explain something here. I'm not convinced there's a plausible explanation for any trade trying to cover 4 billion shares of anything, and for more money than is imaginable.
This is a trade size which is unbelievably huge, for a dollar value which is equally huge.
Gee, it's a collaboration between Ford and Microsoft ... what did you expect? ;-)
My wife's last car had an in-dash GPS. After a few years when the maps started showing their age and missing entire subdivisions, we looked into replacing it.
Turned out to buy the DVD from GM to update the maps was on the order of $700 or so. Which, was obviously way more than it would cost to buy a Tom Tom or similar.
I try to avoid such things because they do go obsolete far faster than the thing they're attached to. Though, the BlueTooth integration in my KIA is pretty sweet.
A linked list of digits? Seems a little much given that there's data types meant to handle really big numbers.
At a minimum someone should be bounds/sanity checking their inputs before it goes anywhere past the user interface -- you have to assume your users will type all sorts of random stuff into your fields.
Then again, I am often surprised when testing new software that when I do something completely random I often see issues.
I remember a developer saying to me once "but nobody is ever going to do that" -- the reality is, unless you actively prevent it, sooner or later they will; and in the case of many users, it's more like within the first 5 minutes. They don't know or care what you think is 'normal' inputs -- they're going to do what they do no matter what.
Since I doubt you can buy -6 shares, and likely nobody had access to $69 trillion USD (including the US government)... this sounds like it was done by someone who knew it would cause problems with the system.
I don't know about most of you, but I couldn't initiate a trade for that kind of money. How could someone even do this without having some good knowledge of how the system works?
You'd really have to assume there should be some pretty obvious checks and balances in there that either weren't, or didn't trigger.
I think you've just demonstrated the first half of my post -- sorry, but you've basically said "RTFM". I've been using free software in some form or another since about '92 or so -- I most certainly have tuned out the more extreme aspects of it. But I didn't fully agree with RMS when I heard him lecture in the early 90s, and I still don't. Don't take that to mean that I've never educated myself on it.
If Richard Stallman can't freshly articulate this point on demand, he's a pretty lousy advocate.
And if the default position is "we've already laid our glorious truth for you to see" -- well, some religions try to tell me the same thing, and they get told to go bugger themselves too.
It's not my job to validate your viewpoint -- it's your job to state your case. And having had conversations with absolutely drooling, rabid proponents of free software, it usually devolves into apoplectic whinging amounting to "but can't you see my obvious truth that I'm right and you're wrong". In my professional life, that usually ends up saying "OK, then since you can't articulate your point, I will continue to ignore you on this topic".
Sorry Mr AC -- but you're exactly what I was talking about. You just fall back to an appeal to a higher authority that since the FSF says it, it must be entirely valid and true. Not all of us have been swayed by these arguments.
It's well known that not everybody shares the same enthusiasm for open software, and sometimes this enthusiasm borders on a religious fervor that alienates people by being confrontational and borders on "my free software philosophy is right and yours is wrong".
This can cause people to start tuning out the entire viewpoint and stop listening -- it certainly has for me.
So, why should we care? And why must software be open to your standards?
Well, since the congresscritters (which Finland may or may not have) will do whatever the lobbyists pay them to do ... good luck with that.
With the head of the USPTO saying this whole mess is working fine ... I just don't see this insanity getting fixed anytime soon.
I'm bet if someone came to market with a dildo that was wifi enabled, someone would sue them for patent infringement -- despite both dildos and wifi being pretty common things (and, no, I have no idea of what you would use wifi for in conjunction with a dildo, something involving 'teledildonics' I'm sure). Admittedly, such things may already exist -- I don't want to know.
Sadly, not if your lawyers can get your royalties in perpetuity.
This is a desperate act, but if it works, it gets them another revenue stream (assuming RIM doesn't keel over).
Well, that's OK .. they can always apply to a US court and try to get them to tell the Swedes they're not allowed to enforce that.
I seem to recall that happening between Apple and Samsung.
I couldn't agree more. We've had variants of 802 for decades (it's ethernet basically), and 802.11 since 1997 or so.
To me this sounds like so many patents which seem to read "a system for doing something well known, but with a computer". Connecting a device to a network isn't exactly anything new ... having a hand-held device connect to a wifi network is something which is pretty obvious by now.
Does Nokia try to sue laptop makers who connect to wifi? Or does some how "with a cell phone" magically make this an innovation?
All tablets I've ever seen can connect to wifi, and some of those can also use cell signals as well. Does Nokia sue them? What is the cutoff point at which adding wifi to a new device ceases to be an innovation, and becomes something obvious?
This is really stupid.
For some people. Not everybody is as politically interested in libre software -- no matter what the great bearded one thinks.
For many people, free is all they care about.
Amen to that.
I can't tell you how annoying it is to follow a link that says "redirecting to our mobile site", which then dumps you at the main page without attempting to get you where you wanted and no way to get to it.
If you can't give me the content I was looking for, and give me at least as good as what I'd have gotten from the normal page ... don't try to be a clever guy and redirect me to an un-usable mobile site. I wasn't looking for your front page, I was looking for something specific that I already have a link to.
I have yet to be directed to a mobile site which actually works.