Not to mention that the volume "shortfall" wasn't caused by poor sales or high prices. It was cause by the previous financial year's quarter being one week longer than this year's quarter. The weekly average actually increased.
And there will be no corrections, clarifications, or retractions because the tech press is completely beyond accountability.
I need to dig into the Twitter app, at 121.1 MB on my iPhone 6 Plus, to see how it ended up that much larger than Twitterrific at 11.4 MB. I'm guessing it's because The Iconfactory, as Mac development veterans, wrote Twitterrific in straight Objective-C code, while Twitter is using something like React. (I think Tweetbot is even smaller than Twitterrific, but that's probably because Tweetbot doesn't come with any iMessage stickers.)
All USB protocols and connectors are royalty-free to members of the USB Implementers Forum, and Microsoft is on their board of directors. And even if they weren't, I'm pretty sure they could find the US$4,000/year membership dues in the cushions of Satya Nadella's couch.
The exact same thing was said when Apple introduced Gatekeeper in mac OS Mountain Lion four years ago. The default when Mountain Lion* shipped was to allow apps from the App Store or signed apps from other sources, and it's still the default today. The blanket option to allow all apps and go unprotected is now hidden, but it can be re-enabled from the command line. And you can still override Gatekeeper for individual apps from at least three different interfaces (attempt to launch the app, then open the App Store prefpane; right-click the app in Finder; use spctl from the command line). As far as I'm concerned, that's all as it should be. It's still possible for a user to selectively bypass Gatekeeper, but it's harder to do so accidentally or globally.
(*: The back-port to Lion allowed all apps by default as a concession to users of old hardware that were left behind when Mountain Lion dropped support for 32-bit EFI.)
That's no guarantee that Microsoft will be as wise as Apple has been. Instead of code signing, Microsoft is encouraging developers to wrap Win32 apps in UWP containers so they can be published from the Windows Store, so probably not as wise. Closed-source OS developers aren't idiots, though. Apple and Microsoft both know that the "default walled garden on desktop" button is wired to the self-destruct system.
Or, it could be that some people were lazy and decided to use a crappy library? If you choose to use security by obscurity library 'x', is it Apple's fault when that security hole is discovered in your App?
AFNetworking is MIT-licensed, FYI. You can look it up on Github.
Now let's say that athlete tweets something extremely offensive to thousands of people. Is that sports organization not supposed to punish the athlete for his/her comments? Should brands continue endorsing?
This is exactly what happened to Pittsburgh Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall. In the days following Osama bin Laden's death, Mendenhall tweeted some misbegotten thoughts that could be interpreted as sympathetic to bin Laden (personally, not as leader of al Qaeda). He tried to explain himself, but just dug the hole deeper, until Champion dropped him as an endorser. The Steelers tend to keep their discipline for stuff like this out of the papers, but it's worth mentioning that Mendenhall hasn't tweeted since last season's training camp started.
Don't Let's Start was not perceived as a standout track to us or really anyone in our audience until many months after the album was out. A Pittsburgh radio station started playing it like it was a hit song, and that really turned it into something else.
We keep hearing echoes of WXXP in Pittsburgh, even after all these years. That was the most daring rock playlist in the city in the late '80s, but without all the WTF-ishness of WRCT. We'll never see its like again, though, especially with Clear Channel and CBS dominating the market.
Until 480 Mbps high-speed USB was widespread, Apple had specific use cases for USB and Firewire. USB replaced ADB and RS-232 for devices like keyboards, mice, and modems. Firewire replaced SCSI for devices that needed higher speeds, mostly hard drives, but later digital video.
The original iPod was a Firewire device because USB 2.0 was still a paper spec when the iPod was in development. If you were prototyping a new device built around a 5 GB hard drive, and given the choice of a 400 Mbps Firewire connection or a CPU-dependent 12 Mbps USB 1.1 connection to fill that drive, which would you choose? Creative Nomad players from that same era had both USB 1.1 (sloooowww sync, but PC compatible) and Firewire (fast sync) ports, but they were also much larger than the iPod. They also had more space, and were not lame.
To avoid the appearance of "marketing trolling", future references to product names will be replaced by more meaningful titles, like "Asparagus Peeler" or "Irving".
By linking directly to the PDF, the submitter bypassed a summary from ScriptLogic's web page that directly contradicts the summary provided by angry tapir and kdawson:
The primary goal of this survey was to assess the impact of the weak economy on IT infrastructure projects and we found that, despite its impact on short-term plans, 41% of organizations plan a wholesale migration to Windows 7 by the end of 2010. This is actually a strong adoption rate when compared to the historical adoption rate of Windows XP in its first year which was cited as 12-14%.
Furthermore, in ScriptLogic's primary market segment it is usual for businesses to upgrade operating systems piecemeal as they purchase new desktop hardware, so the fact that nearly half of organizations surveyed are planning major rollouts during 2009-2010 indicates a high acceptance of Windows 7 among small and medium businesses.
Um, no, the tabloid you linked to said that. Microsoft only said that they have new keyboards, mice, and webcams that leverage some of Win7's snazzy new features.
And why the hell would Creative get out of the PC audio market because Microsoft makes game consoles? That would be like Chrysler throwing in the towel on automobiles because they couldn't compete with Braun razors.
Oh, BTW, Microsoft did an own-brand sound card back in the early 1990s, and it was an also-ran. They left the market and never came back.
iTunes converts WMA to AAC for use on the iPod. Apple singled out WMA format when they added that conversion feature, but now they just say "other formats" in their marketing materials. (Haven't read them in a while, since I've been an iPod user since the dark days of MusicMatch Jukebox on Windows.)
Complaining that iTunes on the iPod doesn't support Microsoft DRM doesn't pass my sniff test. I simply do not believe there is a customer in the world that would sue over that.
Joe Baggadonuts buys a PlaysForSure-compatible media player
Joe accumulates a large collection of PlaysForSure-encrusted songs
Joe's kid breaks the media player
Joe sees that iPod is "compatible" with Windows Media files
Joe buys an iPod
(Joe misses fine print stating that iTunes converts WMA to AAC)
(Joe misses fine print stating that iTunes will not convert DRM-encrusted WMA files)
Joe realizes that none of the songs he bought for his old player work anymore
LAWSUIT!
PJ can be a little paranoid sometimes. God bless her, she's got a good heart, but it occasionally outraces her brain.
Then again, have we seen this yet?
Joe Baggadonuts buys a PlaysForSure-compatible media player
Joe accumulates a large collection of PlaysForSure-encrusted songs
Joe's kid breaks the media player
Joe sees that Zune is also by Microsoft
Joe buys an Zune
(Joe misses fine print stating that Zune doesn't use PlaysForSure DRM scheme)
(Joe misses fine print stating that PlaysForSure licenses can't be converted to Zune Store)
Joe realizes that none of the songs he bought for his old player work anymore
That's why those elevator rides take so long in Mass Effect. They added some news blurbs (which sometimes start quests) and conversations to fill the time, but they're mostly to hide long loads. A lot of players have complained about them, but I'll give BioWare credit for finding a way to use that time for plot and character development, not just a progress bar and some hint text.
I hear Dice used the same technique in Mirror's Edge, but without the witty bon mots from Wrex, it just wouldn't be the same.
I'm probably not the pirate to be askin' right now 'cause I probably won't say... it's just embarrassin'. Aye, 'tis. You got three scallywags who run balls out right now. It's frustratin'. Just frustratin'. The whole thing is frustratin'... I mean, look at this place. 'Tis a ghost town... I don't know. What arrr ye gonna do? Nothin' ye can do. Just pick up and try again tomorrow, I guess... Now ye best me movin' along, mates. I've said my piece.
Google was very up front about the fact that the browser would use MORE memory as a result... So give IE a break here.
That's going to be an interesting comparison: Chrome vs. IE8 (gold, not beta) on resource usage. I'd bet that Google comes out ahead, if only because they've been designing process isolation into the system from the start. I know a lot of architectural changes were made for IE7, possibly with this process isolation feature in mind, so Microsoft may not be pulling apart 10 year old IE3 code today, but it's probably still crufty enough to add a little bloat.
People there are pretty knowledgeable, and appear to have connections and sources in the industry, which is why people keep reading The Inquirer and don't really complain about stuff like that.
It is pronounced "quill", and it isn't Irish for "knowledge" either. Good job there, guys. Maybe if your search engine could, oh, find an Irish/English dictionary...
But AMD and/or The Inq's assertion is that the physics calculations are intended to be done on the CPU. If that were true, Futuremark would have crafted their own physics code. They had to know that PhysX could be hardware accelerated, so their choice of that API is a tacit acceptance of the effects of a PPU on benchmark scores.
Only now, that "PPU" just so happens to be an Nvidia GPU. That's why this whole thing stinks of intellectual dishonesty. If this was a pre-buyout Ageia showing off the effect of their PPU on 3DMark Vantage, nobody would give a damn.
So this whole thing was kicked off by a column on the Inquirer? The same people who brought us the Rydermark "scandal"? The Inq has shown a blatant and consistent anti-Nvidia bias over the years, so why give this any credence?
Besides, the first question that popped into my head is one that is being asked a lot of places, but not answered: If accelerating PhysX on Nvidia's GPU hardware is cheating, wouldn't accelerating PhysX on Ageia's PPU hardware be considered cheating, too? Call me cynical, but I think AMD knows the answer to that, and would rather you didn't mention it, thank you very much.
Didn't somebody do a "golden ear" A-B test that determined that Monster speaker cable was no better than an extension cord with the connectors cut off?
Slashdot Mirror
Not to mention that the volume "shortfall" wasn't caused by poor sales or high prices. It was cause by the previous financial year's quarter being one week longer than this year's quarter. The weekly average actually increased.
And there will be no corrections, clarifications, or retractions because the tech press is completely beyond accountability.
I need to dig into the Twitter app, at 121.1 MB on my iPhone 6 Plus, to see how it ended up that much larger than Twitterrific at 11.4 MB. I'm guessing it's because The Iconfactory, as Mac development veterans, wrote Twitterrific in straight Objective-C code, while Twitter is using something like React. (I think Tweetbot is even smaller than Twitterrific, but that's probably because Tweetbot doesn't come with any iMessage stickers.)
All USB protocols and connectors are royalty-free to members of the USB Implementers Forum, and Microsoft is on their board of directors. And even if they weren't, I'm pretty sure they could find the US$4,000/year membership dues in the cushions of Satya Nadella's couch.
The exact same thing was said when Apple introduced Gatekeeper in mac OS Mountain Lion four years ago. The default when Mountain Lion* shipped was to allow apps from the App Store or signed apps from other sources, and it's still the default today. The blanket option to allow all apps and go unprotected is now hidden, but it can be re-enabled from the command line. And you can still override Gatekeeper for individual apps from at least three different interfaces (attempt to launch the app, then open the App Store prefpane; right-click the app in Finder; use spctl from the command line). As far as I'm concerned, that's all as it should be. It's still possible for a user to selectively bypass Gatekeeper, but it's harder to do so accidentally or globally.
(*: The back-port to Lion allowed all apps by default as a concession to users of old hardware that were left behind when Mountain Lion dropped support for 32-bit EFI.)
That's no guarantee that Microsoft will be as wise as Apple has been. Instead of code signing, Microsoft is encouraging developers to wrap Win32 apps in UWP containers so they can be published from the Windows Store, so probably not as wise. Closed-source OS developers aren't idiots, though. Apple and Microsoft both know that the "default walled garden on desktop" button is wired to the self-destruct system.
Or, it could be that some people were lazy and decided to use a crappy library? If you choose to use security by obscurity library 'x', is it Apple's fault when that security hole is discovered in your App?
AFNetworking is MIT-licensed, FYI. You can look it up on Github.
Now let's say that athlete tweets something extremely offensive to thousands of people. Is that sports organization not supposed to punish the athlete for his/her comments? Should brands continue endorsing?
This is exactly what happened to Pittsburgh Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall. In the days following Osama bin Laden's death, Mendenhall tweeted some misbegotten thoughts that could be interpreted as sympathetic to bin Laden (personally, not as leader of al Qaeda). He tried to explain himself, but just dug the hole deeper, until Champion dropped him as an endorser. The Steelers tend to keep their discipline for stuff like this out of the papers, but it's worth mentioning that Mendenhall hasn't tweeted since last season's training camp started.
We keep hearing echoes of WXXP in Pittsburgh, even after all these years. That was the most daring rock playlist in the city in the late '80s, but without all the WTF-ishness of WRCT. We'll never see its like again, though, especially with Clear Channel and CBS dominating the market.
Until 480 Mbps high-speed USB was widespread, Apple had specific use cases for USB and Firewire. USB replaced ADB and RS-232 for devices like keyboards, mice, and modems. Firewire replaced SCSI for devices that needed higher speeds, mostly hard drives, but later digital video.
The original iPod was a Firewire device because USB 2.0 was still a paper spec when the iPod was in development. If you were prototyping a new device built around a 5 GB hard drive, and given the choice of a 400 Mbps Firewire connection or a CPU-dependent 12 Mbps USB 1.1 connection to fill that drive, which would you choose? Creative Nomad players from that same era had both USB 1.1 (sloooowww sync, but PC compatible) and Firewire (fast sync) ports, but they were also much larger than the iPod. They also had more space, and were not lame.
To avoid the appearance of "marketing trolling", future references to product names will be replaced by more meaningful titles, like "Asparagus Peeler" or "Irving".
Sent from my Tin of Christmas Cookies
But the mounting screws weren't actual Fermi mounting screws. How can we ever trust you again!?
By linking directly to the PDF, the submitter bypassed a summary from ScriptLogic's web page that directly contradicts the summary provided by angry tapir and kdawson:
Hat tip: Ed Bott
Um, no, the tabloid you linked to said that. Microsoft only said that they have new keyboards, mice, and webcams that leverage some of Win7's snazzy new features.
And why the hell would Creative get out of the PC audio market because Microsoft makes game consoles? That would be like Chrysler throwing in the towel on automobiles because they couldn't compete with Braun razors.
Oh, BTW, Microsoft did an own-brand sound card back in the early 1990s, and it was an also-ran. They left the market and never came back.
I gotta warn you, though, that the Kwisatz Haderach achievement is a grind and a half!
I'd rather think about skating to where the puck is going to be than where it is now.
We've just learned two things about Jim Whitehurst:
iTunes converts WMA to AAC for use on the iPod. Apple singled out WMA format when they added that conversion feature, but now they just say "other formats" in their marketing materials. (Haven't read them in a while, since I've been an iPod user since the dark days of MusicMatch Jukebox on Windows.)
PJ can be a little paranoid sometimes. God bless her, she's got a good heart, but it occasionally outraces her brain.
Then again, have we seen this yet?
That's why those elevator rides take so long in Mass Effect. They added some news blurbs (which sometimes start quests) and conversations to fill the time, but they're mostly to hide long loads. A lot of players have complained about them, but I'll give BioWare credit for finding a way to use that time for plot and character development, not just a progress bar and some hint text.
I hear Dice used the same technique in Mirror's Edge, but without the witty bon mots from Wrex, it just wouldn't be the same.
-- Doug Mientkiewicz, after Tuesday night's loss to the Dodgers
That's going to be an interesting comparison: Chrome vs. IE8 (gold, not beta) on resource usage. I'd bet that Google comes out ahead, if only because they've been designing process isolation into the system from the start. I know a lot of architectural changes were made for IE7, possibly with this process isolation feature in mind, so Microsoft may not be pulling apart 10 year old IE3 code today, but it's probably still crufty enough to add a little bloat.
*cough* Rydermark! *cough*
It is pronounced "quill", and it isn't Irish for "knowledge" either. Good job there, guys. Maybe if your search engine could, oh, find an Irish/English dictionary...
But AMD and/or The Inq's assertion is that the physics calculations are intended to be done on the CPU. If that were true, Futuremark would have crafted their own physics code. They had to know that PhysX could be hardware accelerated, so their choice of that API is a tacit acceptance of the effects of a PPU on benchmark scores.
Only now, that "PPU" just so happens to be an Nvidia GPU. That's why this whole thing stinks of intellectual dishonesty. If this was a pre-buyout Ageia showing off the effect of their PPU on 3DMark Vantage, nobody would give a damn.
So this whole thing was kicked off by a column on the Inquirer? The same people who brought us the Rydermark "scandal"? The Inq has shown a blatant and consistent anti-Nvidia bias over the years, so why give this any credence?
Besides, the first question that popped into my head is one that is being asked a lot of places, but not answered: If accelerating PhysX on Nvidia's GPU hardware is cheating, wouldn't accelerating PhysX on Ageia's PPU hardware be considered cheating, too? Call me cynical, but I think AMD knows the answer to that, and would rather you didn't mention it, thank you very much.
Nope. Duke Nukem Forever will be delayed so the engine can maximize the potential of the new combined GPU/CPU tech.
Didn't somebody do a "golden ear" A-B test that determined that Monster speaker cable was no better than an extension cord with the connectors cut off?