I wasn't trying to spread FUD, I was trying to find the source code, because I couldn't find it linked from their home page. I have now been steered in the right direction.
Yeah, I keep expecting it to be Cmd-Shift-Z, and when that doesn't work I have to remind myself that it's Cmd-Y in MS Office. (s/Cmd/Ctrl/g on Windows, of course)
So uhh.. where's the source code? I didn't see any mention of source code or documentation on their web site; did I miss it?
Obviously the GPL doesn't compel them to release the code publicly; they're only required to make any GPL-derived source code available to people who buy the phone (and those people may redistribute it). Still, the best way of complying with the license is to make the source code freely downloadable on their web site (like this).
I think 80 characters is a perfectly reasonable limitation for each line of actual code, not counting indentation. With indentation, you need around a 132-character width to let you do that.
Perl code should show structure too. It doesn't all look like this:
#!/usr/bin/perl
for $a(1,46){for $b(0..7){$c=0;$_?hex substr(q), "ef7fa1866706ca",
Just another Perl Hacker, ("eff02289402844"),2*$_+$a,2)&2**(7-$b): /..phroggy../ and $c+=2**(7-$_)for(0..7);$d.=chr $c;}}print"$d\n";
Flash drives to work on unpowered ports, but I believe the bandwidth is split differently - the ports directly on the motherboard will usually get the full 480Mbps each, while ports on the keyboard must divide the bandwidth with the keyboard itself. So ports on the keyboard are ideal for plugging in a mouse, but may significantly slow down the access time of a flash drive, hard drive, etc. This is one of the reasons why USB sucks, compared to FireWire which isn't retarded like that.
I think Apple's original decision to charge a trademark licensing fee (of about $1 per port per device, IIRC) for the name "FireWire" is the biggest reason why FireWire never became as popular as it could have. Apple had hoped everyone would pay up, and they could pull in some extra cash (which is reasonable, considering their part in developing the technology), but only very few companies actually did. Sony came up with their own trademark (i.Link), most just went with the name "IEEE 1394", and some companies chose not to support it at all. Two different brand names and a numeric designation for the same product caused severe customer confusion. (Apple has since dropped the licensing requirement, but the damage had already been done.) Combine that with the fact that not all computers support FireWire (but all can work with USB 2.0 devices, even if they only support USB 1.1 at 12Mbps), and the vastly inferior USB 2.0 was the clear winner.
FireWire 800 was doomed by requiring a different connector. Nobody wants to use an adapter for backwards compatibility.
Ironically, Apple was also responsible for the success of USB in the first place - virtually nobody was interested in supporting USB at all, until in 1998 Apple introduced a hugely successful computer that had no other means of connecting peripherals. It's no coincidence that nearly all the early USB devices (the first USB printer, for example) were translucent fruit-colored plastic.
I hope they add (or move) at least one USB port to the front of the computer. It's annoying to have to fumble your way trying to insert a USB flash drive into one of the USB ports on the back that you can't see. Or at least on the side, someplace visible. They should keep the ports on the back as well, because those are great for plugging a printer into, but for a USB flash drive, it's just a disaster.
It's not like the old beige cases that you could swipe at occasionally with 409. And I'm never sure of what to use on the screen. This is the stuff. You can use it on both the screen and the case (do the screen first, then the rest). Rub it like a polish, rather than like a cleaner; read the instructions.
make it look clean and futuristic Have you noticed that when the future actually arrives, what used to be futuristic looks always suddenly just look retarded?
The MBP has a DVI port, and you can pick up a 20" LCD at 1680x1050 for $200 to plug in while you're using the laptop on your desk.
While I'm on the road, I'll gladly settle for a smaller screen if it means I get a smaller laptop. The 12" iBook I'm typing this on has a built-in full-size keyboard that I can use all 10 fingers on, which the iPhone never will. Try running SSH on your phone, and try to get any serious work done while you're sitting in a restaurant waiting for your food to arrive. This works great from my laptop (using a USB Bluetooth dongle to connect to the Internet via my cell phone, which is another thing the iPhone can't do).
Typing this on a 3.5-yr-old 12" iBook that I hope keeps running until Apple releases a 13" MBP.
If they made a Macbook without the glossy screen, I might settle for one; I want better graphics than that, but it'd be such an upgrade from my current machine that I could definitely live with it. Barring that, it's gotta be the 15" MBP... but that really is a lot larger than I want to haul around.
I seem to remember that LiIon batteries are designed with four levels of safety features. The fourth one is called "Vent With Flame", which does just what the name suggests - and that's a safety feature, to prevent something really bad from happening!
Right, but what I meant by that was that they couldn't necessarily tell who'd downloaded an MP3 versus who ripped it themselves. For example, I imagine that 99% of people who rip a given album with iTunes will end up with identical AAC (or MP3) files. They could still tell that a given Britney.mp3 really was the latest teen junk single and not some random bait file or misnamed Metallica track. Sure they can - ignore the filename, and compare checksum of the file to a list of known checksums of files being offered for illegal download. Britney.mp3 will match against the checksum of a Metallica track that somebody uploaded to Kazaa, but something you ripped yourself is unlikely to match, regardless of the filename.
I don't believe there would be significantly more accidents, but for most of I-205 it'd be against our current policy of slowing down traffic in urban areas. I believe that there is a plan in the works for the southern end, but they're waiting to finish the third lane between I-5 and Oregon City first (that's the construction mess you see at the Tualatin interchange currently, increasing traffic flows for the I-5/205 interchange and earthquake upgrades for the overpasses in that area). The south end used to be 65, then they reduced it to 55 before the construction began. I'm totally OK with that, and would not want it increased back to 65 before the construction is finished. Is that policy you mentioned just an ODOT policy, or state law? Whose decision is it? It looks like Washington does the same kind of speed reduction near Vancouver, but their speeds are 60/70 instead of 55/65; would increasing Oregon's speed to match that be a bad idea?
(For the youngsters out there: in "traditional" Fortran, variables didn't need to be explicitly declared. Those starting with the letters i to n were integers. The rest were reals.) I'm a youngster unfamiliar with Fortran (although I may have to learn soon, since I have a client using NIST's FDS which uses Fortran), but I don't believe this is specifically a Fortran joke. First of all, if variables starting with i to n are integers, could variables starting with a to h be declared as integers too? If not, then the joke doesn't work in Fortran.
However, I do recall that in BASIC, the % sign designated an integer variable while $ designated a string, so A$ would be a string, A% would be an integer, and A would be a real (floating-point) variable. However, you could use DEFINT or DEFSTR to cause A to mean A% or A$ respectively (I just looked this up in QBASIC to confirm). I remember having to use DEFINT when I was programming in BASIC on my TRS-80 Model 100 laptop, which had 32KB of RAM, some of which was taken up by the OS, and some of which was taken up by file storage (anything you saved was kept in RAM, so if you really needed to keep it, you'd better back it up to cassette tape, or it could be lost if the batteries died!). Anyway, I used DEFINT because a particular array I'd been using (which only needed to store integer values anyway) was taking up far too much RAM if I didn't.
So I always sorta thought of this as a BASIC joke, although I'm sure it applies to a few other languages too.
Slashdot Mirror
Make it $600, and they will sell like hotcakes, except Apple makes 3x as much cash.
Seems to be working so far!
I wasn't trying to spread FUD, I was trying to find the source code, because I couldn't find it linked from their home page. I have now been steered in the right direction.
Shift-Tab doesn't usually work in a terminal emulator (or a real terminal). Of course when you're using a GUI, Shift-Tab should work fine.
Yeah, I keep expecting it to be Cmd-Shift-Z, and when that doesn't work I have to remind myself that it's Cmd-Y in MS Office. (s/Cmd/Ctrl/g on Windows, of course)
99.9999% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
So uhh.. where's the source code? I didn't see any mention of source code or documentation on their web site; did I miss it?
Obviously the GPL doesn't compel them to release the code publicly; they're only required to make any GPL-derived source code available to people who buy the phone (and those people may redistribute it). Still, the best way of complying with the license is to make the source code freely downloadable on their web site (like this).
I think 80 characters is a perfectly reasonable limitation for each line of actual code, not counting indentation. With indentation, you need around a 132-character width to let you do that.
Perl's not that bad; I was thinking of an SQL query perhaps.
Perl code should show structure too. It doesn't all look like this:
#!/usr/bin/perlfor $a(1,46){for $b(0..7){$c=0;$_?hex substr(q), "ef7fa1866706ca",
Just another Perl Hacker, ("eff02289402844"),2*$_+$a,2)&2**(7-$b):
Flash drives to work on unpowered ports, but I believe the bandwidth is split differently - the ports directly on the motherboard will usually get the full 480Mbps each, while ports on the keyboard must divide the bandwidth with the keyboard itself. So ports on the keyboard are ideal for plugging in a mouse, but may significantly slow down the access time of a flash drive, hard drive, etc. This is one of the reasons why USB sucks, compared to FireWire which isn't retarded like that.
I think Apple's original decision to charge a trademark licensing fee (of about $1 per port per device, IIRC) for the name "FireWire" is the biggest reason why FireWire never became as popular as it could have. Apple had hoped everyone would pay up, and they could pull in some extra cash (which is reasonable, considering their part in developing the technology), but only very few companies actually did. Sony came up with their own trademark (i.Link), most just went with the name "IEEE 1394", and some companies chose not to support it at all. Two different brand names and a numeric designation for the same product caused severe customer confusion. (Apple has since dropped the licensing requirement, but the damage had already been done.) Combine that with the fact that not all computers support FireWire (but all can work with USB 2.0 devices, even if they only support USB 1.1 at 12Mbps), and the vastly inferior USB 2.0 was the clear winner.
FireWire 800 was doomed by requiring a different connector. Nobody wants to use an adapter for backwards compatibility.
Ironically, Apple was also responsible for the success of USB in the first place - virtually nobody was interested in supporting USB at all, until in 1998 Apple introduced a hugely successful computer that had no other means of connecting peripherals. It's no coincidence that nearly all the early USB devices (the first USB printer, for example) were translucent fruit-colored plastic.
The MBP has a DVI port, and you can pick up a 20" LCD at 1680x1050 for $200 to plug in while you're using the laptop on your desk.
While I'm on the road, I'll gladly settle for a smaller screen if it means I get a smaller laptop. The 12" iBook I'm typing this on has a built-in full-size keyboard that I can use all 10 fingers on, which the iPhone never will. Try running SSH on your phone, and try to get any serious work done while you're sitting in a restaurant waiting for your food to arrive. This works great from my laptop (using a USB Bluetooth dongle to connect to the Internet via my cell phone, which is another thing the iPhone can't do).
Yep, a 13" MBP is exactly what I want too.
Typing this on a 3.5-yr-old 12" iBook that I hope keeps running until Apple releases a 13" MBP.
If they made a Macbook without the glossy screen, I might settle for one; I want better graphics than that, but it'd be such an upgrade from my current machine that I could definitely live with it. Barring that, it's gotta be the 15" MBP... but that really is a lot larger than I want to haul around.
The G4 Cube was not a "regular computer", it was exactly the same concept as the Mac mini, except expensive.
The composition is still copyrighted, whether it's written down or not, I believe.
But you can play Pong!
Opera Mobile isn't a real web browser?
Sometimes prowling through everything is part of the job you're actually supposed to be doing, and you can't help but notice things.
(I'm not suggesting I would actually take something. On the other hand, none of my clients are likely to have anything I'd be interested in anyway...)
I seem to remember that LiIon batteries are designed with four levels of safety features. The fourth one is called "Vent With Flame", which does just what the name suggests - and that's a safety feature, to prevent something really bad from happening!
Fair point - I withdraw the suggestion. Although, I do wonder how well it works in places that do it.
However, I do recall that in BASIC, the % sign designated an integer variable while $ designated a string, so A$ would be a string, A% would be an integer, and A would be a real (floating-point) variable. However, you could use DEFINT or DEFSTR to cause A to mean A% or A$ respectively (I just looked this up in QBASIC to confirm). I remember having to use DEFINT when I was programming in BASIC on my TRS-80 Model 100 laptop, which had 32KB of RAM, some of which was taken up by the OS, and some of which was taken up by file storage (anything you saved was kept in RAM, so if you really needed to keep it, you'd better back it up to cassette tape, or it could be lost if the batteries died!). Anyway, I used DEFINT because a particular array I'd been using (which only needed to store integer values anyway) was taking up far too much RAM if I didn't.
So I always sorta thought of this as a BASIC joke, although I'm sure it applies to a few other languages too.