If they hadn't gotten into renewable energy, sure there would have been some good PR lost, but take a look at the backlash they're going to get now pulling out of it. The mistake was to get in if they had no staying power.
I wonder what kind of clearance this sort of balloon experiment requires. You wouldn't want to do this anywhere near air traffic routes for fear of hitting an airliner. I know the equipment is light but I imagine it'd still do some damage if it got sucked into an engine or hit a plane travelling at mach 0.85.
Compare this with an atheist who might believe that life is futile, fleeting, and nothing they do matters in the long run
Why does being an atheist pre-dispose you to think life is futile, fleeting, and nothing you do matters. It's still quite possible to be an atheist and recognise that life offers some wonderful transient opportunities that are to be grasped with both hands at every opportunity. Atheism does not pre-dispose one to being an idiot or an asshole. I don't need a belief in some fictional being to recognise that there's beauty all around as well as suffering. Nor do I need a god figure to realize that you help shape a better world when you treat others well. Atheists aren't all self absorbed existentialist assholes who think nothing they do matters.
If you think you're not afraid of death...you'll probably be dead before you get a chance to reproduce. In other words you're pre-disposed to dying out. People can say they're afraid of death all they like, but when it comes down to it natural selections says if that were true - if you had an innate lack of fear of death - odds are you'd not be around.
At 15:43 terror suspect Lishmaki Alibababran tweeted "Whazup man?" to Obama Balali who proceeded to set his status to "Obama is watching 'UK today'. We believe this is part of a terrorist plot to stay informed about domestic and world news. Furthermore we may be able to use TV licensing laws against Obama as we have no record of him owning a TV license. This is further proof that piracy aids terrorism. In other news Beth Smith sent a private facebook message to Sally Tallman about Bill Wade that said: "He's soooooo hot". Sally was not impressed and replied "Stay away biatch, he's mine". Our operatives believe this may lead to violence and much bitchslapping at the Trinity school for girls on Monday morning and recommends that we send in a team of operatives.
Fucking idiots. They've got a bunch of criminals so stupid that their crime routinely involves them photographing themselves in the act of committing it and posting it online. Not to be outdone for stupidity, the government then has to come up with a way to make it so that reporting the crime makes you the criminal, thereby making it much easier for the self incriminating child molesters to get away with it. They should be focusing their effort on preventing the production of child porn in the first place - THAT is when the child is hurt. Cutting off supply chains hasn't worked for drug laws and it won't work here. At least if you were to dob in a drug dealer you wouldn't be in trouble yourself. A government and law enforcement branch that can't get arrests when the criminals are so blaze and stupid as to often tape themselves in the act should be sacked.
Flying is boring - you're trapped in an uncomfortable chair with bad food for 12 hours, and if you open the little plastic window thing to look outside a stern woman comes and hits you with a stick and tells you to close it.
. As the kids grow old enough to figure out how to get around it, they're probably old enough to handle unfiltered content.
If she's searching the net for 'hot guys' she's going to be exposed to porn whether or not you filter. Unless you are planning to lock her in the basement. I would be having that birds and bees chat immediately. Keeping computers in the living room sounds like a good plan too. You don't have to be very technically savvy to follow simple instructions for getting around filters.
I'm waiting for the Mythbuster's episode. First we hobble Adam, Jamie and Grant (who can be the control). Then we inject them all with deadly spider venom. If they survive, we see if the spider venom helps them to walk again. Grant gets no venom. Whether they survive or not, it's entertaining and about as scientific as the rest of their testing.
So the only innovation that should be allowed is innovation qualified through IEEE or another standards body? This way, we immediately have a race to the bottom on price? How would any company ever make money?
Of course, no one ever made money providing commodities, have they? PC vendors have all gone bust because they build to standards don't they? Gimme a break!!!
So what? If you bought an SLR, you understood the consequences of the connection between the camera body and the lens - or you should have. Where is the limit? Would you propose that GM, Honda, and Toyota all be forced to use the same air filters and fuel filters? What about speedometers and engines? At what point do we accept competition is about solutions and not about making every component in a solution interchangeable?
When the vendor does something legitimately new, they forge the way and a new standard is born. If the spedo, air filter, and fuel filter do nothing new, yes they should be built to some sort of standard or at the very least others should not be hindered from making interchangable parts....and if that happens, I suspect you'll find it turns into a standard. Lots of things start out proprietary and migrate to standards in order to assist both the manufacturers and consumers. What are now WiFi, HTML, SIP, and many other protocols followed this path. It only makes sense to standardize if the demand and volumes justify standardization.
There's a real difference between something new and innovative and the same old same old.
Then they have product requirements that will lead them to investigate and purchase a different music player. Apple produces a product for a specific segment of the market, they are not required to serve other segments (e.g. those that do care about the headphones) ...and I'm not required to spend money on their proprietary product, nor am I required not to criticise it.
You aware of the price consumers paid having to support "standards" like ISA, SCSI, RS232, Centronix, and others that "had to" be complied with, at considerable cost in $$$ and size and complexity, for years beyond any sane benefit.
You really think things would be cheaper if these standards weren't in place? Why do you think ISA, SCSI and RS232 are considered a commodity? If they were proprietary and per manufacturer nothing would interoperate and if you wanted a new gadget or addon, you'd pay whatever the manufacturer chose to charge for the privilege.
For some systems, inter-operability is a hindrance. You're buying into a SYSTEM, not an individual product, and forcing compatability among systems loses an edge some are willing to pay a price for.
As I said, take a look at digital SLRs. Lenses are expensive and don't interoperate between brands. If a manufacturer takes a direction you don't like you'll have to replace flashes, lenses, remotes etc. and start again.
Welcome to life. Sometimes you have to sell out of an old system to buy into a new one; the old just can't be salvaged at some point.
Welcome to standards. You don't have to do that if the manufacturers all agree on a standard. You know that PC you bought. You don't have to buy a particular brand of hard drive or a particular brand of memory to expand. That is why the IBM PC took off when other, arguably better architectures died.
And progress is made. Apple "pulled this crap" by putting USB and FireWire on their computers, leading other manufacturers to eventually (thankfully) abandon Parallel Printer Ports, Serial Ports, and other fat-cable incompatable old crud. People bitched when FireWire was added; now they're bitching because it's going away.
Stop trying to rewrite history. Apple had nothing to do with creating the USB standard.
They did lead the development of Firewire, but they weren't the only ones, and since they charge to use their patents Firewire hasn't received the kind of adoption it might otherwise.
If you don't like the new headphones - don't frikkin buy a new shuffle.
No danger of that happening.
He was being nice. I'd tell you to pull your head out, as there are no set standards for you to whine about.
Ah, but I was whining about the fact that there were no set standards. Where do you think these come from? The magic standards fairy? It's the industry that sets such things if they choose to.
t. If Apple wants to release an mp3 player that only works with an infrared remote control and bluetooth headphones, that's their business. And you of course are free to take your business elsewhere.
I'm also free to criticise the industry for a lack of standards, and criticise Apple for producing something proprietary. Perhaps you don't quite understand that freedom thing as well as you think you do.
Well, it seems to fit the definition of innovation perfectly well. according to the Oxford English Dictionary to innovate means - "make changes in something established, esp. by introducing new methods, ideas, or products".
Hint: If it's been done before, and been done for 40 years, it's not innovative.
If a company wants to make an MP3 player with buttons on the headphone cable, instead of on the device, why is that evil?
- It isn't standards compliant. When standards disintegrate the consumer pays.
- It promotes vendor lock in. It isn't inter-operable with other equipment. Consider digital SLRs. Once you buy into a brand and you've invested in enough equipment you're stuck with that brand unless you sell it all and start again.
- People who are replacing an older model may not realize there is new lock in until they've actually bought the product.
Why is everyone going mental? So you can't use the headphones you already have, so what? Just buy a different MP3 player!
When a market leader pulls this crap, others do too and pretty soon all the MP3 players you can buy have this "feature".
Lots of people don't care much what headphones they have, they just wanna listen to music while exercising, and they want a small light device to do that.
That's nice. They get what they want. What about those that do care about the headphones? What about those who can't use ear buds due to hearing or ear problems?
By the end of the month there will even be a handful of other headphones to choose from.
- Not if there's a patent on the tech and Apple wants to lock them out
- If they aren't locked out there's a licensing fee which drives the price up of all the headphones
There's no standard way to control a device from a standard headphone jack
Sounds like a good argument to develop a standard rather than applaud this bad behaviour.
you'll be buried in lawsuits if you do it the same as someone else is doing it, so a new approach had to be made
Don't you see there's something very very wrong with that? At this point it's not innovative so why are people afraid of being buried in lawsuites? Sounds like an argument for IP law reform.
Why is this such a big deal? We're stifling innovation by making a scene over stuff like this.
This is innovation? Seriously? Controlling a player externally via a proprietary cable? Really??? If this is considered innovation, there's a real problem.
Yeah sounds about right. I wasn't trying to attack you or all women, but I do find that men's issues get tossed right out the door in the equality debate with men being told to just suck it up and am a little tired of hearing how men are layabouts who don't want to do their share. You seem like quite a rational and reasonable young woman who's actually able to praise individual men as well as women. There are too many women your age who are all to ready to just dump on all men.
The problem is I don't believe it was an honest mistake, so I'd rather they didn't lie in the first place.
As I said, present your evidence.
As to evidence: I'd point to the fact that they had no evidence whatsoever to back-up their claim and yet they made it any way.
As has been pointed out to you, there were other sites reporting the same.
The onus isn't on me.
Actually it is, since you're the one accusing them of lying with no evidence. They may have said something that turned out to be wrong but they've retracted it. You still insist on accusing them with no proof and nothing to back you, yet you don't seem to realise the irony.
What disappoints me is that Boing Boing get on the front page of/. for lying, and then a second time for admitting they lied.
You'd prefer they just left the "lie" out there? Where I come from admitting your mistakes and taking responsibility for them is a good thing and to be encouraged. If you honestly believe they misled everyone despite knowing the purpose of the chip in the first place, please present your evidence.
Slashdot Mirror
If they hadn't gotten into renewable energy, sure there would have been some good PR lost, but take a look at the backlash they're going to get now pulling out of it. The mistake was to get in if they had no staying power.
(Pedants aside, a large proportion of Slashdot readers are programmers whose brains sound an alarm bell when a sentence doesn't parse correctly.)
Well when they read slashdot they should be compiling with gcc -w or at least without passing -pedantic
I wonder what kind of clearance this sort of balloon experiment requires. You wouldn't want to do this anywhere near air traffic routes for fear of hitting an airliner. I know the equipment is light but I imagine it'd still do some damage if it got sucked into an engine or hit a plane travelling at mach 0.85.
Compare this with an atheist who might believe that life is futile, fleeting, and nothing they do matters in the long run
Why does being an atheist pre-dispose you to think life is futile, fleeting, and nothing you do matters. It's still quite possible to be an atheist and recognise that life offers some wonderful transient opportunities that are to be grasped with both hands at every opportunity. Atheism does not pre-dispose one to being an idiot or an asshole. I don't need a belief in some fictional being to recognise that there's beauty all around as well as suffering. Nor do I need a god figure to realize that you help shape a better world when you treat others well. Atheists aren't all self absorbed existentialist assholes who think nothing they do matters.
If you think you're not afraid of death ...you'll probably be dead before you get a chance to reproduce. In other words you're pre-disposed to dying out. People can say they're afraid of death all they like, but when it comes down to it natural selections says if that were true - if you had an innate lack of fear of death - odds are you'd not be around.
At 15:43 terror suspect Lishmaki Alibababran tweeted "Whazup man?" to Obama Balali who proceeded to set his status to "Obama is watching 'UK today'. We believe this is part of a terrorist plot to stay informed about domestic and world news. Furthermore we may be able to use TV licensing laws against Obama as we have no record of him owning a TV license. This is further proof that piracy aids terrorism. In other news Beth Smith sent a private facebook message to Sally Tallman about Bill Wade that said: "He's soooooo hot". Sally was not impressed and replied "Stay away biatch, he's mine". Our operatives believe this may lead to violence and much bitchslapping at the Trinity school for girls on Monday morning and recommends that we send in a team of operatives.
Fucking idiots. They've got a bunch of criminals so stupid that their crime routinely involves them photographing themselves in the act of committing it and posting it online. Not to be outdone for stupidity, the government then has to come up with a way to make it so that reporting the crime makes you the criminal, thereby making it much easier for the self incriminating child molesters to get away with it. They should be focusing their effort on preventing the production of child porn in the first place - THAT is when the child is hurt. Cutting off supply chains hasn't worked for drug laws and it won't work here. At least if you were to dob in a drug dealer you wouldn't be in trouble yourself. A government and law enforcement branch that can't get arrests when the criminals are so blaze and stupid as to often tape themselves in the act should be sacked.
Yeah, it only needs to be accurate to be a good joke. You may continue with fart jokes.
If your criteria for a joke being good is it's scientific accuracy I submit that you are in no position to advise me on humour.
Flying is boring - you're trapped in an uncomfortable chair with bad food for 12 hours, and if you open the little plastic window thing to look outside a stern woman comes and hits you with a stick and tells you to close it.
Does the airline make you pay extra for the S&M?
. As the kids grow old enough to figure out how to get around it, they're probably old enough to handle unfiltered content.
If she's searching the net for 'hot guys' she's going to be exposed to porn whether or not you filter. Unless you are planning to lock her in the basement. I would be having that birds and bees chat immediately. Keeping computers in the living room sounds like a good plan too. You don't have to be very technically savvy to follow simple instructions for getting around filters.
I'm waiting for the Mythbuster's episode. First we hobble Adam, Jamie and Grant (who can be the control). Then we inject them all with deadly spider venom. If they survive, we see if the spider venom helps them to walk again. Grant gets no venom. Whether they survive or not, it's entertaining and about as scientific as the rest of their testing.
Surface temperature of Venus is well over 500 Kelvin.
I was waiting for that. Yes they are. It's a joke, it doesn't need to be technically accurate.
One thing that I appreciate about Apple is that they don't let a slavish regard for "standards" prevent them from making improvements.
Turtle necks, transparent cases, and ultra-thin laptops that lack an optical drive are not improvements.
So the only innovation that should be allowed is innovation qualified through IEEE or another standards body? This way, we immediately have a race to the bottom on price? How would any company ever make money?
Of course, no one ever made money providing commodities, have they? PC vendors have all gone bust because they build to standards don't they? Gimme a break!!!
So what? If you bought an SLR, you understood the consequences of the connection between the camera body and the lens - or you should have. Where is the limit? Would you propose that GM, Honda, and Toyota all be forced to use the same air filters and fuel filters? What about speedometers and engines? At what point do we accept competition is about solutions and not about making every component in a solution interchangeable?
When the vendor does something legitimately new, they forge the way and a new standard is born. If the spedo, air filter, and fuel filter do nothing new, yes they should be built to some sort of standard or at the very least others should not be hindered from making interchangable parts. ...and if that happens, I suspect you'll find it turns into a standard. Lots of things start out proprietary and migrate to standards in order to assist both the manufacturers and consumers. What are now WiFi, HTML, SIP, and many other protocols followed this path. It only makes sense to standardize if the demand and volumes justify standardization.
There's a real difference between something new and innovative and the same old same old.
Then they have product requirements that will lead them to investigate and purchase a different music player. Apple produces a product for a specific segment of the market, they are not required to serve other segments (e.g. those that do care about the headphones) ...and I'm not required to spend money on their proprietary product, nor am I required not to criticise it.
You aware of the price consumers paid having to support "standards" like ISA, SCSI, RS232, Centronix, and others that "had to" be complied with, at considerable cost in $$$ and size and complexity, for years beyond any sane benefit.
You really think things would be cheaper if these standards weren't in place? Why do you think ISA, SCSI and RS232 are considered a commodity? If they were proprietary and per manufacturer nothing would interoperate and if you wanted a new gadget or addon, you'd pay whatever the manufacturer chose to charge for the privilege.
For some systems, inter-operability is a hindrance. You're buying into a SYSTEM, not an individual product, and forcing compatability among systems loses an edge some are willing to pay a price for.
As I said, take a look at digital SLRs. Lenses are expensive and don't interoperate between brands. If a manufacturer takes a direction you don't like you'll have to replace flashes, lenses, remotes etc. and start again.
Welcome to life. Sometimes you have to sell out of an old system to buy into a new one; the old just can't be salvaged at some point.
Welcome to standards. You don't have to do that if the manufacturers all agree on a standard. You know that PC you bought. You don't have to buy a particular brand of hard drive or a particular brand of memory to expand. That is why the IBM PC took off when other, arguably better architectures died.
And progress is made. Apple "pulled this crap" by putting USB and FireWire on their computers, leading other manufacturers to eventually (thankfully) abandon Parallel Printer Ports, Serial Ports, and other fat-cable incompatable old crud. People bitched when FireWire was added; now they're bitching because it's going away.
Stop trying to rewrite history. Apple had nothing to do with creating the USB standard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#History
They did lead the development of Firewire, but they weren't the only ones, and since they charge to use their patents Firewire hasn't received the kind of adoption it might otherwise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewire#History_and_development
Don't let reality get in the way of a good pro Apple fanboi rant.
If you don't like the new headphones - don't frikkin buy a new shuffle.
No danger of that happening.
He was being nice. I'd tell you to pull your head out, as there are no set standards for you to whine about.
Ah, but I was whining about the fact that there were no set standards. Where do you think these come from? The magic standards fairy? It's the industry that sets such things if they choose to.
t. If Apple wants to release an mp3 player that only works with an infrared remote control and bluetooth headphones, that's their business. And you of course are free to take your business elsewhere.
I'm also free to criticise the industry for a lack of standards, and criticise Apple for producing something proprietary. Perhaps you don't quite understand that freedom thing as well as you think you do.
Well, it seems to fit the definition of innovation perfectly well. according to the Oxford English Dictionary to innovate means - "make changes in something established, esp. by introducing new methods, ideas, or products".
Hint: If it's been done before, and been done for 40 years, it's not innovative.
Apple (going on their track record) even have the decency to let 3rd parties build the remotes, something which can't be said for most other vendors.
THAT is the problem. How decent of them to let people use their product without paying 10x what it should cost.
You're telling me to wake up??? Sheesh!
If a company wants to make an MP3 player with buttons on the headphone cable, instead of on the device, why is that evil?
- It isn't standards compliant. When standards disintegrate the consumer pays.
- It promotes vendor lock in. It isn't inter-operable with other equipment. Consider digital SLRs. Once you buy into a brand and you've invested in enough equipment you're stuck with that brand unless you sell it all and start again.
- People who are replacing an older model may not realize there is new lock in until they've actually bought the product.
Why is everyone going mental? So you can't use the headphones you already have, so what? Just buy a different MP3 player!
When a market leader pulls this crap, others do too and pretty soon all the MP3 players you can buy have this "feature".
Lots of people don't care much what headphones they have, they just wanna listen to music while exercising, and they want a small light device to do that.
That's nice. They get what they want. What about those that do care about the headphones? What about those who can't use ear buds due to hearing or ear problems?
By the end of the month there will even be a handful of other headphones to choose from.
- Not if there's a patent on the tech and Apple wants to lock them out
- If they aren't locked out there's a licensing fee which drives the price up of all the headphones
There's no standard way to control a device from a standard headphone jack
Sounds like a good argument to develop a standard rather than applaud this bad behaviour.
you'll be buried in lawsuits if you do it the same as someone else is doing it, so a new approach had to be made
Don't you see there's something very very wrong with that? At this point it's not innovative so why are people afraid of being buried in lawsuites? Sounds like an argument for IP law reform.
Why is this such a big deal? We're stifling innovation by making a scene over stuff like this.
This is innovation? Seriously? Controlling a player externally via a proprietary cable? Really??? If this is considered innovation, there's a real problem.
Yeah sounds about right. I wasn't trying to attack you or all women, but I do find that men's issues get tossed right out the door in the equality debate with men being told to just suck it up and am a little tired of hearing how men are layabouts who don't want to do their share. You seem like quite a rational and reasonable young woman who's actually able to praise individual men as well as women. There are too many women your age who are all to ready to just dump on all men.
The problem is I don't believe it was an honest mistake, so I'd rather they didn't lie in the first place.
As I said, present your evidence.
As to evidence: I'd point to the fact that they had no evidence whatsoever to back-up their claim and yet they made it any way.
As has been pointed out to you, there were other sites reporting the same.
The onus isn't on me.
Actually it is, since you're the one accusing them of lying with no evidence. They may have said something that turned out to be wrong but they've retracted it. You still insist on accusing them with no proof and nothing to back you, yet you don't seem to realise the irony.
What disappoints me is that Boing Boing get on the front page of /. for lying, and then a second time for admitting they lied.
You'd prefer they just left the "lie" out there? Where I come from admitting your mistakes and taking responsibility for them is a good thing and to be encouraged. If you honestly believe they misled everyone despite knowing the purpose of the chip in the first place, please present your evidence.
No, its Overrated.
Highly over-rated if you have no sense of humour.
Will this do anything for bicycle frames?
Yes. Now you'll be able to rid a bike on Venus. You'll disintegrate in 30 seconds but the bike frame won't. Have a nice ride.
"12 megapixels should be enough for anybody." - Akira Watanabe
"But I want more!!!" - Akira Wannabe