It's a cache of cell tower locations. The reasonable thing to do is limit that cache by size, but there just aren't that many cell towers. What size limit would you use?
iOS also caches wifi locations. This is a much larger dataset and is routinely flushed to make space for new data.
When Maps (or any other app) requests your current location, the iPhone is able to provide it almost immediately because of this cache, without hitting the network or GPS. It's very convenient.
If your privacy is a concern, encrypt your backups (it's just a checkmark in iTunes) and turn off location services (it's just a switch in the iPhone settings).
And if you're *really* concerned about your privacy, don't use a cell phone, because your carrier also keeps a log of where you've been and will turn that information to authorities.
Good old days? There is far, far more technical information and tools available to developers today then there ever was for the Apple II, and today's machines are far more expandable using widely available cross-platform industry standard interfaces, from the smallest MacBook Air to the Mac Pro.
The mini-computer they talk about in this video is the PDP-8/L, not an Apple II, although the system was later ported to Apple II in the early 80s.
It's worth noting that the original Apple II (and most other microcomputers from the early 70s) would have been much more powerful, cheaper, and easier to program than the PDP-8, and the Apple II would have been an excellent choice for a project like this, due to its expandable and well-documented hardware architecture. However, I'm sure they started development of this system well before the original Apple II would have been well known or even available.
The Chrome keyboard does support Caps Lock, in a design inspired by Steve Jobs' old company. Here's a little history:
The original NeXTcube keyboard (circa 1989) also did not have a Caps Lock key. Instead, Caps Lock was engaged by pressing Command+Shift, which would light up matching green LEDs on both Shift keys. Caps Lock was disengaged by pressing the Shift key a second time. This freed up valuable keyboard real estate, eliminated the possibility of hitting Caps by accident, and allowed the Control key to be placed next to the "A" key, where it has always belonged. It's an excellent design.
Fast forward 20 years and Google is doing the same thing with the Chrome keyboard. Its Shift key also has a green LED to indicate Caps Lock. Presumbaly, Caps Lock is engaged in a similar way as the NeXT keyboard.
Unfortunately, they're putting a "Search" button there in its place, which is just stupid.
DNS was introduced in the mid-80s. Established internet domains (network, govt, military, universities) transitioned more slowly to the new system via the temporary.arpa TLD.
Symbolics, on the other hand, jumped on board right away. symbolics.com is the oldest domain name in use today.
That reason is copyright law...which, unless I'm mistaken, CBS doesn't control
Don't be ridiculous. CBS owns all the streaming rights to their shows. The problem is that they're trying to sell those rights.
By not streaming to, say, Canada, they create a product out of thin air that they can sell: Canadian streaming rights. As far as I know, the only network to buy this new "product" is Canada's Comedy Network, which purchased the streaming rights to a number of Comedy Central shows, including the Daily Show and the Colbert Report. So if you try to stream any Comedy Central shows from Canada you're redirected to The Comedy Network's (awful) website.
US networks have always sold their shows' broadcast rights to foreign TV networks, so it only makes sense that they'd try to do this on the web as well. Unfortunately, the implementation is terrible. For example, The Comedy Network bought the streaming rights to the Colbert Report so they could drive traffic to their site and run their own ads in the streams, but even though the content is legally available in Canada any blog links and embedded videos that point to Comedy Central's web site still won't work at all in Canada (they all redirect to the front page of the Comedy Network). It breaks the web.
I don't think regional streaming restrictions will be around for much longer. For all the money The Comedy Network spent on the streaming rights for the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, all they got was a bunch pissed off viewers who direct their rage at The Comedy Network instead of Comedy Central. I sincerely doubt any other networks will bother to buy streaming rights unless these serious implementation problems are sorted out.
... checkout this presentation from OpenStep Day, 1995 in which Jobs applies the famous reality distortion field not to iPods and Macs, but to Corba, OLE, Web Objects, and other Enterprisey Middleware.
And the "One More Thing" moment? Using Netscape 1.0 to demo Web Objects and Windows NT 3.1 interoperability.
Shoes! It's cross-platform, it uses the same powerful vector graphics engine that Firefox uses (Cairo), and it uses a simplified Ruby interpreter.
Shoes is to the modern computer what BASIC was to the Apple//e and Commodore 64. That is, it aims to be a way for hobbyists and young computer geeks to do creative stuff with their computer.
That means a modified Ruby interpreter with really nice graphics, web, network, and text layout APIs that hopefully a hobbyist would be comfortable using. Knowing that, the Shoes About Page should make more sense.
Compare 80's style BASIC and modern Shoes:
10 GR
20 PRINT "PLEASE ENTER YOUR NAME:";
30 INPUT NAME$
40 PRINT "HELLO ";NAME$
50 COLOR=6
60 HLIN 5,10 AT 10
70 HLIN 5,10 AT 20
80 VLIN 10,20 AT 5
90 VLIN 10,20 AT 10
vs.
Shoes.app {
name = ask("Please enter your name:")
title "Hello " + name
stroke blue
fill red
rect 100, 100, 100, 100
}
Programming for a young computer geek won't be fun unless they can make they computer do really cool things. In the 80's, that meant color graphics and sound, along with plain text output and input. Plain old BASIC (or Python or Ruby) won't cut it today. You need something that supports GUI development, web and network access, pictures and video, and text layout. I think Shoes fits the bill nicely.
Not to mention Windowmaker, Afterstep. Maybe not decades, but certainly @1999.
Yes, and what operating system (hint: it was released in 1988) were Windowmaker and Afterstep trying to clone, and what happened to that operating system?
Lotus Notes for iPhone is just a plain old Web app. You can't stop the web.
Re:But the point is a backup would have been usele
on
Wal-Mart Ends DRM Support
·
· Score: 2, Informative
It's not rocket science. It's only audio, and it's very easy to work with.
There are plenty of ways to backup that don't involve DRM, but it really won't matter until there is a mass of people who want to remove the DRM from their purchased music. Of course, if there was a mass of people using Wal-Mart's music service they wouldn't have shut it down in the first place.
Most of the music people acquire falls out of fashion after a few short years. Nonetheless, it's always a good idea to backup your favorite music, regardless of the format in which it was purchased. Luckily, these days it has never been easier to do just that; there's really no excuse not to.
What are the advantages of a glass trackpad? Wouldn't your finger stick to it?
The problem the existing Apple trackpads is that their textured metal surface quick wears down to something that's very smooth and sticky, which is not ideal.
Presumably, a textured glass surface would solve that problem quite handily.
His take on Safari might have had an ounce of credibility if Firefox wasn't such a dog on OS X. (What's worse, they shipped Firefox 3 with some ridiculous performance regressions). But as it stands, his comment is complete nonsense. I've sensed a little hostility towards WebKit in a few of the Mozilla blogs lately. Perhaps there's still some bitterness over the whole ACID3 fiasco?
I still think it was foolish for Apple to implement a key technology in a language that is largely unknown by most C/C++ developers
It's not new (it predates Java), and it wasn't implemented by Apple. It is technology that Apple inherited when they bought NeXT Computer, and it is arguably one of the most important factors in the resurgence of the Mac platform.
Having working in C and C++ for 20 years, I find Objective C code very difficult to read and impossible to understand with just a glance like C/C++. The method call mechanism is far too compact to easily separate the parameters and labels in method calls seem to be a great way to further confuse things.
You're just not familiar with Smalltalk syntax yet. I went through the same process; it's a seemingly big deal that melts away pretty quickly. You'll come to appreciate the syntax once you start passing around method selectors like textView:willDisplayToolTip:forCharacterAtIndex:. Of course, you don't pass around method selectors in C++ and Java, but it's absolutely key to way things are done in Cocoa. The big stumbling block, especially for C++ developers, is to understand Cocoa design and how to take advantage of Cocoa's and Objective-C's unique features. You have to unlearn C++, and if you happen to like (or think you like) C++ then that can be a frustrating but ultimately rewarding and enlightening process. And then you'll understand why someone would create "Objective-J" for Javascript.
I'll give Apple credit for being gutsy and going outside the sure-bet languages, but it honestly seems like a huge mistake for adoption.
It was Mac developers who ultimately decided to adopt Cocoa. Back in 2000 one of the open questions with OS X was whether developers would adopt Cocoa and Objective-C. Apple offered their C-based Mac APIs for existing Mac developers, they offered Cocoa bindings for Java developers, and they offered plain old Cocoa. Despite its learning curve, Cocoa eventually won over the existing Mac developers. Most importantly, Mac users have come to demand Cocoa applications and are generally hostile towards most Carbon apps (as well as Qt and Java Swing apps, of course).
I can't help but think of.NET in same context, a development platform I generally like. Will Windows users ever demand.NET applications in the way Mac users demand Cocoa applications? (Windows users will never demand WinForms apps, but if Windows developers embrace WPF, another unique approach to GUI development with a significant learning curve, then I think the answer will be yes).
but I'm also pretty sure Microsoft wasn't too worried about launching Hotmail without Firefox support.
Actually, Microsoft is worried about all of its internet properties right now. The last thing they is yet another reason for someone to consider migrating away to a competing service.
First, imagine how many people would just blindly click on a new desktop icon just to "see what it does".
This is a problem that is as old as the web browser itself, and it's impossible to deal with it completely at the browser level. That's why Microsoft and Apple now deal with it at the OS level and prompt the user before executing a file that was downloaded from the internet.
The problem is that Microsoft has too much money. To a "normal" company, a venture such as this would require a significant investment, which in turn gives the company a big incentive to pull out all the stops to try and make it work. Succeed or die.
To Microsoft, on the other hand, a venture such as this require relatively little investment. If it works, it works; if it doesn't, oh well. Virtually everything Microsoft does outside of their Window and Office monopolies loses money.
These are the same tactics Microsoft has been using since the early 90s. They're just playing defence to whatever the competitor-of-the-day is doing, and they do it solely to protect the monopolies. The venture doesn't need to "successful" in the traditional sense, and it certainly doesn't have to make money, but if it's disruptive in some way to what their competitor is trying to do then it at least has some value for Microsoft, because at least Microsoft can afford to take a financial hit where their competitor usually can't. In the 90s you have Oracle vs. SQL Server, Netscape vs. IE. Now you have whatever-Google-does vs. MSN-Live.NET, iTunes vs. PlaysForSure. The difference is that at least back in the 90s Microsoft was actually capable of turning a disruptive stinker (say, SQLServer 6) into a real and competitive product; these days, not so much. But then again, Microsoft has a lot more money to throw around.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a cache of cell tower locations. The reasonable thing to do is limit that cache by size, but there just aren't that many cell towers. What size limit would you use?
iOS also caches wifi locations. This is a much larger dataset and is routinely flushed to make space for new data.
It's a location cache.
When Maps (or any other app) requests your current location, the iPhone is able to provide it almost immediately because of this cache, without hitting the network or GPS. It's very convenient.
If your privacy is a concern, encrypt your backups (it's just a checkmark in iTunes) and turn off location services (it's just a switch in the iPhone settings).
And if you're *really* concerned about your privacy, don't use a cell phone, because your carrier also keeps a log of where you've been and will turn that information to authorities.
Good old days? There is far, far more technical information and tools available to developers today then there ever was for the Apple II, and today's machines are far more expandable using widely available cross-platform industry standard interfaces, from the smallest MacBook Air to the Mac Pro.
The mini-computer they talk about in this video is the PDP-8/L, not an Apple II, although the system was later ported to Apple II in the early 80s.
It's worth noting that the original Apple II (and most other microcomputers from the early 70s) would have been much more powerful, cheaper, and easier to program than the PDP-8, and the Apple II would have been an excellent choice for a project like this, due to its expandable and well-documented hardware architecture. However, I'm sure they started development of this system well before the original Apple II would have been well known or even available.
The Chrome keyboard does support Caps Lock, in a design inspired by Steve Jobs' old company. Here's a little history:
The original NeXTcube keyboard (circa 1989) also did not have a Caps Lock key. Instead, Caps Lock was engaged by pressing Command+Shift, which would light up matching green LEDs on both Shift keys. Caps Lock was disengaged by pressing the Shift key a second time. This freed up valuable keyboard real estate, eliminated the possibility of hitting Caps by accident, and allowed the Control key to be placed next to the "A" key, where it has always belonged. It's an excellent design.
Fast forward 20 years and Google is doing the same thing with the Chrome keyboard. Its Shift key also has a green LED to indicate Caps Lock. Presumbaly, Caps Lock is engaged in a similar way as the NeXT keyboard.
Unfortunately, they're putting a "Search" button there in its place, which is just stupid.
DNS was introduced in the mid-80s. Established internet domains (network, govt, military, universities) transitioned more slowly to the new system via the temporary .arpa TLD.
Symbolics, on the other hand, jumped on board right away. symbolics.com is the oldest domain name in use today.
Don't be ridiculous. CBS owns all the streaming rights to their shows. The problem is that they're trying to sell those rights.
By not streaming to, say, Canada, they create a product out of thin air that they can sell: Canadian streaming rights. As far as I know, the only network to buy this new "product" is Canada's Comedy Network, which purchased the streaming rights to a number of Comedy Central shows, including the Daily Show and the Colbert Report. So if you try to stream any Comedy Central shows from Canada you're redirected to The Comedy Network's (awful) website.
US networks have always sold their shows' broadcast rights to foreign TV networks, so it only makes sense that they'd try to do this on the web as well. Unfortunately, the implementation is terrible. For example, The Comedy Network bought the streaming rights to the Colbert Report so they could drive traffic to their site and run their own ads in the streams, but even though the content is legally available in Canada any blog links and embedded videos that point to Comedy Central's web site still won't work at all in Canada (they all redirect to the front page of the Comedy Network). It breaks the web.
I don't think regional streaming restrictions will be around for much longer. For all the money The Comedy Network spent on the streaming rights for the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, all they got was a bunch pissed off viewers who direct their rage at The Comedy Network instead of Comedy Central. I sincerely doubt any other networks will bother to buy streaming rights unless these serious implementation problems are sorted out.
The world is full of people who tried Dvorak and didn't think it was all that special.
... checkout this presentation from OpenStep Day, 1995 in which Jobs applies the famous reality distortion field not to iPods and Macs, but to Corba, OLE, Web Objects, and other Enterprisey Middleware.
And the "One More Thing" moment? Using Netscape 1.0 to demo Web Objects and Windows NT 3.1 interoperability.
Shoes! It's cross-platform, it uses the same powerful vector graphics engine that Firefox uses (Cairo), and it uses a simplified Ruby interpreter.
Shoes is to the modern computer what BASIC was to the Apple //e and Commodore 64. That is, it aims to be a way for hobbyists and young computer geeks to do creative stuff with their computer.
That means a modified Ruby interpreter with really nice graphics, web, network, and text layout APIs that hopefully a hobbyist would be comfortable using. Knowing that, the Shoes About Page should make more sense.
Compare 80's style BASIC and modern Shoes:
vs.
Programming for a young computer geek won't be fun unless they can make they computer do really cool things. In the 80's, that meant color graphics and sound, along with plain text output and input. Plain old BASIC (or Python or Ruby) won't cut it today. You need something that supports GUI development, web and network access, pictures and video, and text layout. I think Shoes fits the bill nicely.
The video of the MacBook's manufacturing process is pretty cool. It's always a treat to see video of something that looks like it actually belongs in the 21st century.
Not to mention Windowmaker, Afterstep. Maybe not decades, but certainly @1999.
Yes, and what operating system (hint: it was released in 1988) were Windowmaker and Afterstep trying to clone, and what happened to that operating system?
The NEXTSTEP Dock (Byte Magazine, 1989) was first released in 1988 and predates Windows 3.0 by a couple of years, and CDE by at least 5 years.
You probably need less than your RAM size. On my laptop with 1 GB of RAM it's 512 MB:
astro@myrtle:~] ll -h /var/vm/
total 3145728
-rw------T 1 root wheel 1.0G 6 Feb 2008 sleepimage
-rw------T 1 root wheel 64M 1 Oct 13:21 swapfile0
-rw------T 1 root wheel 64M 1 Oct 14:32 swapfile1
-rw------T 1 root wheel 128M 1 Oct 14:35 swapfile2
-rw------T 1 root wheel 256M 1 Oct 14:35 swapfile3
Lotus Notes for iPhone is just a plain old Web app. You can't stop the web.
It's not rocket science. It's only audio, and it's very easy to work with.
There are plenty of ways to backup that don't involve DRM, but it really won't matter until there is a mass of people who want to remove the DRM from their purchased music. Of course, if there was a mass of people using Wal-Mart's music service they wouldn't have shut it down in the first place.
Most of the music people acquire falls out of fashion after a few short years. Nonetheless, it's always a good idea to backup your favorite music, regardless of the format in which it was purchased. Luckily, these days it has never been easier to do just that; there's really no excuse not to.
Is Brian May a LaTeX user? Perhaps he could write a song about it.
The problem the existing Apple trackpads is that their textured metal surface quick wears down to something that's very smooth and sticky, which is not ideal.
Presumably, a textured glass surface would solve that problem quite handily.
His take on Safari might have had an ounce of credibility if Firefox wasn't such a dog on OS X. (What's worse, they shipped Firefox 3 with some ridiculous performance regressions). But as it stands, his comment is complete nonsense. I've sensed a little hostility towards WebKit in a few of the Mozilla blogs lately. Perhaps there's still some bitterness over the whole ACID3 fiasco?
It's not new (it predates Java), and it wasn't implemented by Apple. It is technology that Apple inherited when they bought NeXT Computer, and it is arguably one of the most important factors in the resurgence of the Mac platform.
You're just not familiar with Smalltalk syntax yet. I went through the same process; it's a seemingly big deal that melts away pretty quickly. You'll come to appreciate the syntax once you start passing around method selectors like textView:willDisplayToolTip:forCharacterAtIndex:. Of course, you don't pass around method selectors in C++ and Java, but it's absolutely key to way things are done in Cocoa. The big stumbling block, especially for C++ developers, is to understand Cocoa design and how to take advantage of Cocoa's and Objective-C's unique features. You have to unlearn C++, and if you happen to like (or think you like) C++ then that can be a frustrating but ultimately rewarding and enlightening process. And then you'll understand why someone would create "Objective-J" for Javascript.
It was Mac developers who ultimately decided to adopt Cocoa. Back in 2000 one of the open questions with OS X was whether developers would adopt Cocoa and Objective-C. Apple offered their C-based Mac APIs for existing Mac developers, they offered Cocoa bindings for Java developers, and they offered plain old Cocoa. Despite its learning curve, Cocoa eventually won over the existing Mac developers. Most importantly, Mac users have come to demand Cocoa applications and are generally hostile towards most Carbon apps (as well as Qt and Java Swing apps, of course).
I can't help but think of .NET in same context, a development platform I generally like. Will Windows users ever demand .NET applications in the way Mac users demand Cocoa applications? (Windows users will never demand WinForms apps, but if Windows developers embrace WPF, another unique approach to GUI development with a significant learning curve, then I think the answer will be yes).
Actually, Microsoft is worried about all of its internet properties right now. The last thing they is yet another reason for someone to consider migrating away to a competing service.
The problem is that Microsoft has too much money. To a "normal" company, a venture such as this would require a significant investment, which in turn gives the company a big incentive to pull out all the stops to try and make it work. Succeed or die.
To Microsoft, on the other hand, a venture such as this require relatively little investment. If it works, it works; if it doesn't, oh well. Virtually everything Microsoft does outside of their Window and Office monopolies loses money.
These are the same tactics Microsoft has been using since the early 90s. They're just playing defence to whatever the competitor-of-the-day is doing, and they do it solely to protect the monopolies. The venture doesn't need to "successful" in the traditional sense, and it certainly doesn't have to make money, but if it's disruptive in some way to what their competitor is trying to do then it at least has some value for Microsoft, because at least Microsoft can afford to take a financial hit where their competitor usually can't. In the 90s you have Oracle vs. SQL Server, Netscape vs. IE. Now you have whatever-Google-does vs. MSN-Live.NET, iTunes vs. PlaysForSure. The difference is that at least back in the 90s Microsoft was actually capable of turning a disruptive stinker (say, SQLServer 6) into a real and competitive product; these days, not so much. But then again, Microsoft has a lot more money to throw around.