To me, that says that even Google is mildly concerned about fragmentation--they're willing to try and update what applications they can without an OS update so that manufacturers and carriers don't sink the good-will that they have. Smart move on Google's part, for sure.
This is a mild necro, but I'm compelled to point out that theism and atheism are orthogonal to gnosticism and agnosticism. A gnostic atheist would claim to KNOW there is no God. An agnostic atheist (most of us) do not believe in god, but do not purport to KNOW anything.
It's important to note that there's not really any such thing as 'an agnostic', since 'agnostic' just means 'I have no idea', but doesn't say about what. In the common vernacular, it tends to mean 'I don't believe in God, but I can't be sure'; indeed, with this formulation, most people that claim to be 'agnostic' are actually 'agnostic atheists'.
You can also be an agnostic theist, who believes there's a god, but can't be sure about it. Strangely, I find there are more gnostic theists (despite their evidence being no better than a gnostic atheist's) than agnostic theists.
It means Apple can build an OS incrementally and add features that everyone can leverage. iMessage is a really handy OS level upgrade. I can use the text message interface to send pictures and files using my data connection. I can see that the other person is typing. I don't have to worry about international texting fees. I know there are apps that do it, but this is something that's built in and has a consistent level of quality.
In places where Apple was lagging--like notifications--they can issue an OS update to make things better. The notification centre is a big step up from the big modal pop-up system they had before. I got to have that with an OS update, without buying a new phone for it. And it was free.
It also provides advantages to developers to have new and better APIs, meaning new and better apps.
There are lots of reasons for OS upgrades. If there weren't, Google wouldn't bother updating their OS at all either. They would have just released Gingerbread, told the community it was theirs now, and washed their hands of it. They didn't. And from what I hear, 4.0 is a big upgrade from 2.2. The fact that it works well enough on those older phones doesn't mean that 4.0 would provide no value.
It's funny, PC people always made fun of Mac owners by saying when a small problem came up, it was time for the Mac owner to buy a whole new computer instead of just replacing a component. Now it's the iOS users that somehow need to convince Android owners that you can, in fact, keep a phone for 2 or 3 or 4 years and get OS updates to stay current, without a need to buy the most cutting edge hardware? Weird.
This is, of course, the Windows Phone model. They control the OS updates, but there are multiple phone hardware vendors. I've personally held that this is the best model of development for a long time. As an iOS user, I do get curious about different hardware sometimes, but I'm unwilling to leave the ecosystem and the extremely good and timely OS updates from Apple.
Could someone just mod this down. It's all conjecture and hearsay, or out-and-out incorrect information. No, iPhone 4 users aren't, in general, worried about iOS 6. In fact, I've heard more people worried about updating to iOS 6 over the maps issue than the model of their phone.
iOS 5 never could be installed on the iPhone 3G at all.
My iPhone 4 still has pretty decent battery life with iOS 6. I used iOS 6 in beta, and THAT was problematic, but it's been fine since release. My battery is actually surprisingly strong considering it's the original battery from 2 years ago.
I may not have Siri on my iPhone 4, but I have all sorts of things that came with the latest OS, including security and performance updates. My phone works just fine. This comment is basically 99% FUD, which is what passes for 5, Insightful in a story about Apple these days, I guess.
(And for those that are curious, I'm not updating because I'm tired of how my Canadian provider treats me, so I'm waiting for my 3-year contract to run out. 3 years is standard here, and if I let it lapse, I can sign a new one with Quebec's consumer protection laws in effect. If I upgrade, they grandfather me in on old terms which are decidedly consumer unfriendly.)
That's not true; of course it affects the understanding of the science. How can you understand the adaptations of an invertebrate without also understanding genetics? How can you believe in genetics without understanding evolution? You can believe the origin of life is up for debate, but everything after the first organism is subject to the rules of evolution.
I had a class in invertebrate paleontology once, and the professor told us that we didn't necessarily need to believe in evolution, but we needed to understand it and be able to effectively talk about it and understand it to pass his class. At the very least, you have to understand the rules of the game before you can play. Maybe your creationist zoologist friends don't believe in evolution per se, but they almost certainly understand it, understand how it's purported to work, and operate on that basis.
That's absurd. There's no agenda to atheism. By definition, *there's nothing to believe in*.
If I told you I was an a-unicorn-ist (that is, someone that doesn't believe in unicorns) would you think that I have some sort of agenda? Some sort of RELIGION?
At best, you can describe atheism as a philosophy, but it's more accurate not to call it anything at all. It's like the number 0. It's there, it's useful to define the absence of something (i.e., I have 0 oranges at my desk), but in the end, there's literally no belief structure tied to it at all.
You can make the point that there are ANTI-religious people and that THEY have an agenda, but don't tell me I have a religion specifically because I don't believe in any of them.
It's funny that you say that you think they're "scaring the human race back into the dark ages". I see the exact opposite: they're trying to scare us into the future. Better designed cities, smart materials, advanced energy production and capture...
Some of the things, we'll borrow from the past. Just because the designs are old doesn't mean they're bad. When you design a building to be passively heated by the sun and with airflow to maintain a livable temperature without adding any energy of your own, that's a friggin' incredible feat of engineering. And yet, that's what humans have been doing for hundreds of years.
We don't need to go back to caves, we just need to be better at what we're doing now.
Actually, I've put quite a lot of thought into it. I won't put words into YOUR mouth, though, so I'll assume that you've also thought about this but come to different conclusions.
The WHOLE POINT of this thread is to address the worries that the World Bank sees as major economic issues as a result of climate change. They've based their conclusions on fairly widely accepted climate science. Climate scientists are good at looking at the atmosphere, but they may not be qualified to interpret the results in an economic sense. Well, we've got an agency dedicated to analysing the economy that's looking at the conclusions that climate scientists are drawing, and they're predicting trouble. So that's one thing.
The other thing is that addressing our stance on energy usage is inherently more efficient. Either we use less fuel to do the same sorts of things, or we use different, cheaper, cleaner fuels to do the same things. Instead of relying 100% on fossil fuels, solar energy (for instance) provides a long-term source of electricity that is thermodynamically effectively free (i.e., it would've been absorbed and/or re-radiated as waste heat anyway--this breaks down in places where the albedo is high and would have reflected the light, but it's still going to be better than fossil fuels, on balance).
More forests, cleaner air, more captured carbon. Healthier oceans? More food, clean water, less need to purify our own waste out of it. More jobs. Fewer starving people. (As opposed to overfishing, which is a short-term win, but a long-term loss when fish populations come down to a level that is impossible to monetize.)
We can do a lot of this stuff TODAY. My definition of short-term is one or two election cycles. Maybe a few more than that. Most of what we lack isn't technological, it's political. We've dug ourselves pretty deep at this point, though, so maybe it'll be a couple decades. A couple of decades of forcing ourselves to be better as caretakers of the one and only planet that we know supports life. Twenty years of passing up the SUV that you don't need for the compact car or bicycle that'll suffice. Twenty years of choosing to use less energy and choosing, perhaps, to use slightly more expensive sources of energy (that will come down in price as we use it, no less!)
I really don't think it's that much. One planet is all we've got. We should be willing to sacrifice a lot more.
Okay, let's take a real world example, then: will the average temperature this winter be colder than the average temperature in the summer in the Northern Hemisphere?
Yes. Yes it will.
That is a statement of climate, not of weather. It's also a statement that we can make with fairly strong confidence, despite the many factors involved in modelling the climate. If you want to get more specific, like how much colder one is than the other, you have to improve the models and simulations.
Climate science isn't voodoo. There's data to draw on, models that can be devised, and hypotheses that can be verified. Sometimes the models fail, or the hypotheses are shown to be incorrect, just like in any other field of science.
So if a climate scientist predicts that the temperature will climb over the next 50 years given current trends and lack of action, and the result of this will be certain climactic effects--like more drought or more powerful and less predictable storms (like Sandy)--they're not just pulling this stuff out of thin air.
There is literally no long-term downside to improving our approach to the environment. All the down-sides are short term. Even the economic benefits in the long run (or at least, the lack of economic penalties) are enormous.
I'd like to point out that the absolute resolution isn't the particular claim to fame of the so-called 'Retina' screens. My monitor here at work has a better 'resolution'--that is, it has more absolute pixels--than your phone, but if you look at the screens up close, your Samsung is almost certainly going to look better than my monitor. The pixel density is what's important. And, by the definition of the 'retina' screen, anything at or above that limit is going to be undetectable to the naked eye (at a certain distance from the eye, of course). So the S3's resolution is comparable, and so is the pixel density. Now it's just quibbling over which screen size makes everyone feel best.
Most of the other things you're talking about aren't really relevant to most people, either. Proprietary plug? I'm pretty sure nobody cares. Standard USB cable or not, I'm always hunting around for SOME cable or another at my house. You DO need to install iTunes, which is a down-side for some (and it's TERRIBLE under Windows, there's no doubt)...but only if you want to interact with a PC, which is no longer necessary. You can backup to the cloud and buy everything you need directly from the phone. I'm pretty sure you're talking about the purple *flare* (not 'flair') problems that you see when you point the camera at a light-source in a way that introduces bad effects into the picture whether they're purple or not. (I would consider most pictures with that artifact ruined anyway, regardless of the camera I'm using.) Not many people like stylii. I don't want 'sweet desktop widgets', for the most part. Or 3rd party apps. (Though I can install anything I want, since I have a developer account.) And from what I remember, the battery life is comparable when not just talking about stand-by or talk time.
I'm not saying these aren't decisions that people make or factors that aren't sometimes considered, but I think you've mostly put a lot more weight on them than people care about. I think folks are buying for fashion and simplicity and a certain amount of uncomplicated utility. They can quickly download games on either phone, both make calls and take pictures...but they like the way one phone looks better, or their family told them to get a Samsung, or their friends have an iPhone. I think THOSE are the factors that dominate these purchases. I work as a programmer (not of Apple software, despite my developer account; that's personal) and I think only one of a dozen of us has anything other than an iPhone. Moreover, I think there's only one or two of us that even CARE. Most of us are still using the iPhone 4 because all of this extra stat-wanking is now entirely irrelevant.
So to bring it all back to a point, I think Apple's phones are still selling well, but they'd be selling better if each phone didn't have quite a lot of longevity on its own. I'm waiting for next year's release so I can get out of my 3-year Canadian telco contract. I'll stick with Apple. I know my phone will last about 3 years and get OS updates for that long. I'm not on the cutting edge, but that stopped being important to me years ago. Smartphones have become appliances. As long as they work pretty well, all of this butting heads is just fanboyism.
This is not entirely unlike the state of marijuana laws in the country. A small amount for personal use is still, as far as I know, strictly illegal with few exceptions for medical reasons. Growing large amounts is also illegal. But cops are too busy to enforce that law, so that sort of thing slides all the time.
But philosophically, you have to think about whether the law is meant for enforcement or punishment. If you break the law by making your own copy of a DVD that you already own, there are probably no repercussions--unless they're already coming for you and mean to find things to punish you with.
It's not unlike speeding. Most people do it, and it's ignored. If you're 10km over the speed limit, most cops don't care. HIT someone while you're 10km over the speed limit, and you can bet that that'll be brought up at trial.
I defended Apple's prior action as technically being within the letter of the law, if not the spirit. I believe that's what their lawyers are arguing too.
As such, I retract my prior comment that the judge knew this would happen--I'm surprised to find that the court is surprised. Give a lawyer an inch, and they'll certainly take a mile.
As such, I ALSO don't think that this new ruling will work the way they intend. Apple will put the link in with a bunch of other links. They'll put bigger links in, trumpeting their legal wins in other countries. This 'apology' needs to be in 11pt font? Well, the counter-argument will be in 18pt font. What's the court going to do? Ban Apple from talking about legal decisions in other jurisdictions? I'm not sure they have the power for that.
And Apple has to take out full-page ads in some papers with the text of the decision? They'll do that, but they'll have a counter-ad on the facing page. Or they'll buy a whole section of the paper (tell me the newspapers wouldn't DESPERATELY love that) and then put the non-descript 'apology' there.
Getting corporations to apologise is hopeless. I can come up with a dozen ways to circumvent any meaningful apology given the conditions that appear to be laid out here. Apple will come up with many more. It's a stupid decision on the Court's part, honestly. Fine them and be done with it. Award Samsung damages. Anything else is just fodder for the lawyers to test how creative they are at finding the edges of a non-exhaustive list of conditions.
I use the CD/DVD drive on my iMac maybe once a year. I actually use it so little, I positioned my second monitor right next to it on the right side, effectively blocking the drive entirely. I went out and bought a handful of 4GB USB keys. It's faster, cheaper and better to use them instead of burning DVDs to transfer information.
At work, I don't think I've used the drive on this machine at all. In all likelihood, it was installed and only used for the installation of the OS.
Optical media is on its way out. Let it die. There's lots of other options.
I'm well aware of the differentiation of the letter and the spirit of the law. It is arguable that they broke the spirit of the ruling. However, they HAVE made the information available that the UK court said that they did infringe on Samsung's patent. Caveat emptor, right?
But like I said, the law is not something that you play horseshoes with. That's why 'legalese' is such impenetrable gibberish. In some (many?) cases, there's an obvious attitude of obfuscation, but legalese is often so convoluted as to be as precise as possible. Exhaustive lists are noted as such. Lists that are not exhaustive are ALSO noted as such. (As an example I can remember, the Canadian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms specifically notes that the list is not exhaustive, and not appearing on the list does not mean you're not afforded the protections of the Charter. It merely lists obvious categories as examples.)
The judge is no dummy. I'm sure he knew the implications of the decision he was handing down, and he wrote it the way he wanted to write it. He knows the players in the game, and he knows the stakes. Apple is not new in its legal aggressiveness; many companies before have had slippery lawyers and lots of money.
Finally, it wouldn't have mattered. Say Apple adhered to the strict spirit of the decision in the sense that they put up a page with just the prescribed text, and printed ads in the paper reading the same. Do you think they wouldn't have a link on their front page in much bigger font touting their legal victories? The Judge just told them how big the apology had to be, not how big surrounding propaganda had to be. And if they take out a full page ad in the paper, you think they don't have the money to take out an ad on the facing page also explaining that they won big victories in other courts? These are trivial problems to work around that you can only stop if you take away Apple's right to advertise at all, and no court would reasonably be able to do that.
Apple DID post those things in the notice. They followed (as near as I can tell, though IANAL) the precise letter of the law. I do not see anywhere anything that says that they must ONLY post the notice specified in Schedule 1. In fact, they posted the stuff they were supposed to at the TOP of the text, not in the middle or anything. You can stop reading after the court-appointed 'apology' and not read any of the rest of the propaganda.
Listen, I know Apple is getting less popular by the day around here, but they did exactly what they were told to by the courts. If the courts wanted something else, they should have been more specific. Don't tell me that Apple should have gone out of their way to be more apologetic than they were supposed to or they shouldn't have spun this in their favour if they could find it. Specificity in the law is a big deal; contracts have been invalidated on the basis of INDIVIDUAL PUNCTUATION MARKS.
It is the nature of the laws and the legal system surrounding patents that needs changing, if anything. Every actor in the system will work to the absolute edges of the legal system. Don't tell me that Samsung wouldn't have done the same, given the chance. Or Microsoft. Or even Google, who is less angelic than we like to delude ourselves into believing. It's all a giant game to them; don't expect them to be altruistic or contrite.
They didn't miss their earnings estimates. As usual, they beat their own estimates. As usual, they missed the absurdly inflated estimates of stock analysts that have never gotten an Apple earnings call right in the history of earnings calls. (The large institutions were largely correct, however.)
The CEO ALWAYS has to talk smack about the competitor's product. The REAL proof is whether or not he does nothing about it while he's talking smack, a la Ballmer. But I greatly suspect that he's already got a team of people looking at what features to take from the competition. We'll see what's what in 6 months.
This isn't the same. Cook is dismissing the competition in this case as effectively irrelevant--he gives it no ground at all. This is what he needs to do. He acknowledges it exists, but that's as far as it goes externally.
Tech history is littered with the corpses of devices that claimed they were 'iPod-killers'. By defining themselves in terms of the dominant player, they ensured that they'd never be able to compete.
There is an important difference between the way Apple and RIM (or MS) do business in that while Cook is dismissing the product, you can be sure that he's got 100 of them on order, a couple labs of people ready to study them, and they'll be on top of stealing whatever they can that IS good. RIM and MS mocked the competition and also decided that there was nothing to learn from them. Ballmer's famous dismissal of almost every Apple product and failure to follow up with anything better is pretty damning proof that once he dismisses something, it stays dismissed--until it's impossible to ignore anymore because the consumers aren't as blind as he is.
But there are exceptions to all rules...if you're good at what you do, you can compete effectively. To wit: the Mac/PC ads. They were a bit of marketing genius (but I don't know how much more effective they were than the so-called halo effect surrounding iDevices).
I dunno. 'All in the Family' deals with really subject matter that was really forward thinking and controversial at the time, but seems ridiculously antiquated to us now. Same with M.A.S.H. The shows need to be evaluated in the context of the time, not in the context of OUR time. And even still, there are themes that are STILL relevant in both those shows; the issue of homosexuality comes up at least a couple times in a way that you'd think isn't so different than the way it might be handled now in the more conservative areas of the USA.
And for a particular counter-example: the Star Wars movies of the 70s were quite a bit deeper and more complex (perhaps by accident?...but still) than the modern ones. And there are an awful lot of movies that bring nothing new to the table at all--just sequels and re-hashes of things that were good 20, 30, 40 or even 50+ years ago.
When companies are that size, it's pretty unusual for them to be angels. Just because you don't like Apple doesn't make Samsung a paragon for anything.
The popularity of your ideas have been steadily climbing for some time. Your work, the writings of Christopher Hitchens, and the ideas of Sam Harris as well as many others have really taken hold with a segment of the population, and (without citation) I think that the number of people claiming 'No Religion' when polled is growing.
However, I've also started to see the rise of post-Atheist philosophy, like Possibilianism (http://www.possibilian.com/) proposed by David Eagleman, a Doctor of Neuroscience. Effectively, it's the notion that Atheism is itself too restrictive a philosophy. Certainly, based on all available evidence, we can rule out the major religions, but holding to a position of (agnostic) Atheism is itself overly dogmatic. (This isn't the only example of post-Atheist philosophizing, but it's the most readily accessible.)
So can you discuss the notion of an 'Atheist', 'Post-Atheist' or 'Post-Religious' era; can you see us moving beyond the need for any particular dogma and merely allowing ourselves to examine the Universe and being able to actively hypothesize about it in many different ways simultaneously?
In that case, I rather think any solution is a bit tenuous. Even a normal plug might fail or pull out; the designs of all of them are inherently easier to remove than the plug on a desktop machine. I can see what you're getting at, but it seems like maybe you should be using something else instead of a laptop if that's your use case. While you're right that you've got a real problem where possibly one didn't exist before, I'd also venture that you're a wild outlier here; more people are concerned with tripping over the cord (or children or pets tripping over the cord) than running a laptop without a battery.
Huh, I must never have seen the design that you're talking about. I have a MacBook in the house with a magnetic cord connector, and the battery is independently removable. And (seriously, since I clearly don't understand) how does that impact data loss?
I've seen two laptops with damaged barrel power connectors, and that's an expensive problem to fix if you have it. I honestly think this design with the magnets is better, notwithstanding any problems that you appear to be having.
Wait, why are the magnetic connectors bad? Everyone should have those. They solve a problem--accidentally snagging a cable and dragging stuff onto the ground--that's a REAL problem, with a really great design. (It's not Apple's idea, BTW. Hot grease cookers and hot water dispensers have had this for ages for similar reasons.)
I see someone pull their headphones onto the ground at my office literally 5 or 6 times a day. It's a dumb problem, but it's so common. It's the same reason why the XBox has a break-away cable.
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To me, that says that even Google is mildly concerned about fragmentation--they're willing to try and update what applications they can without an OS update so that manufacturers and carriers don't sink the good-will that they have. Smart move on Google's part, for sure.
This is a mild necro, but I'm compelled to point out that theism and atheism are orthogonal to gnosticism and agnosticism. A gnostic atheist would claim to KNOW there is no God. An agnostic atheist (most of us) do not believe in god, but do not purport to KNOW anything.
It's important to note that there's not really any such thing as 'an agnostic', since 'agnostic' just means 'I have no idea', but doesn't say about what. In the common vernacular, it tends to mean 'I don't believe in God, but I can't be sure'; indeed, with this formulation, most people that claim to be 'agnostic' are actually 'agnostic atheists'.
You can also be an agnostic theist, who believes there's a god, but can't be sure about it. Strangely, I find there are more gnostic theists (despite their evidence being no better than a gnostic atheist's) than agnostic theists.
Security updates. Performance updates. Feature updates.
It means Apple can build an OS incrementally and add features that everyone can leverage. iMessage is a really handy OS level upgrade. I can use the text message interface to send pictures and files using my data connection. I can see that the other person is typing. I don't have to worry about international texting fees. I know there are apps that do it, but this is something that's built in and has a consistent level of quality.
In places where Apple was lagging--like notifications--they can issue an OS update to make things better. The notification centre is a big step up from the big modal pop-up system they had before. I got to have that with an OS update, without buying a new phone for it. And it was free.
It also provides advantages to developers to have new and better APIs, meaning new and better apps.
There are lots of reasons for OS upgrades. If there weren't, Google wouldn't bother updating their OS at all either. They would have just released Gingerbread, told the community it was theirs now, and washed their hands of it. They didn't. And from what I hear, 4.0 is a big upgrade from 2.2. The fact that it works well enough on those older phones doesn't mean that 4.0 would provide no value.
It's funny, PC people always made fun of Mac owners by saying when a small problem came up, it was time for the Mac owner to buy a whole new computer instead of just replacing a component. Now it's the iOS users that somehow need to convince Android owners that you can, in fact, keep a phone for 2 or 3 or 4 years and get OS updates to stay current, without a need to buy the most cutting edge hardware? Weird.
This is, of course, the Windows Phone model. They control the OS updates, but there are multiple phone hardware vendors. I've personally held that this is the best model of development for a long time. As an iOS user, I do get curious about different hardware sometimes, but I'm unwilling to leave the ecosystem and the extremely good and timely OS updates from Apple.
Could someone just mod this down. It's all conjecture and hearsay, or out-and-out incorrect information. No, iPhone 4 users aren't, in general, worried about iOS 6. In fact, I've heard more people worried about updating to iOS 6 over the maps issue than the model of their phone.
iOS 5 never could be installed on the iPhone 3G at all.
My iPhone 4 still has pretty decent battery life with iOS 6. I used iOS 6 in beta, and THAT was problematic, but it's been fine since release. My battery is actually surprisingly strong considering it's the original battery from 2 years ago.
I may not have Siri on my iPhone 4, but I have all sorts of things that came with the latest OS, including security and performance updates. My phone works just fine. This comment is basically 99% FUD, which is what passes for 5, Insightful in a story about Apple these days, I guess.
(And for those that are curious, I'm not updating because I'm tired of how my Canadian provider treats me, so I'm waiting for my 3-year contract to run out. 3 years is standard here, and if I let it lapse, I can sign a new one with Quebec's consumer protection laws in effect. If I upgrade, they grandfather me in on old terms which are decidedly consumer unfriendly.)
That's not true; of course it affects the understanding of the science. How can you understand the adaptations of an invertebrate without also understanding genetics? How can you believe in genetics without understanding evolution? You can believe the origin of life is up for debate, but everything after the first organism is subject to the rules of evolution.
I had a class in invertebrate paleontology once, and the professor told us that we didn't necessarily need to believe in evolution, but we needed to understand it and be able to effectively talk about it and understand it to pass his class. At the very least, you have to understand the rules of the game before you can play. Maybe your creationist zoologist friends don't believe in evolution per se, but they almost certainly understand it, understand how it's purported to work, and operate on that basis.
That's absurd. There's no agenda to atheism. By definition, *there's nothing to believe in*.
If I told you I was an a-unicorn-ist (that is, someone that doesn't believe in unicorns) would you think that I have some sort of agenda? Some sort of RELIGION?
At best, you can describe atheism as a philosophy, but it's more accurate not to call it anything at all. It's like the number 0. It's there, it's useful to define the absence of something (i.e., I have 0 oranges at my desk), but in the end, there's literally no belief structure tied to it at all.
You can make the point that there are ANTI-religious people and that THEY have an agenda, but don't tell me I have a religion specifically because I don't believe in any of them.
It's funny that you say that you think they're "scaring the human race back into the dark ages". I see the exact opposite: they're trying to scare us into the future. Better designed cities, smart materials, advanced energy production and capture...
Some of the things, we'll borrow from the past. Just because the designs are old doesn't mean they're bad. When you design a building to be passively heated by the sun and with airflow to maintain a livable temperature without adding any energy of your own, that's a friggin' incredible feat of engineering. And yet, that's what humans have been doing for hundreds of years.
We don't need to go back to caves, we just need to be better at what we're doing now.
Actually, I've put quite a lot of thought into it. I won't put words into YOUR mouth, though, so I'll assume that you've also thought about this but come to different conclusions.
The WHOLE POINT of this thread is to address the worries that the World Bank sees as major economic issues as a result of climate change. They've based their conclusions on fairly widely accepted climate science. Climate scientists are good at looking at the atmosphere, but they may not be qualified to interpret the results in an economic sense. Well, we've got an agency dedicated to analysing the economy that's looking at the conclusions that climate scientists are drawing, and they're predicting trouble. So that's one thing.
The other thing is that addressing our stance on energy usage is inherently more efficient. Either we use less fuel to do the same sorts of things, or we use different, cheaper, cleaner fuels to do the same things. Instead of relying 100% on fossil fuels, solar energy (for instance) provides a long-term source of electricity that is thermodynamically effectively free (i.e., it would've been absorbed and/or re-radiated as waste heat anyway--this breaks down in places where the albedo is high and would have reflected the light, but it's still going to be better than fossil fuels, on balance).
More forests, cleaner air, more captured carbon. Healthier oceans? More food, clean water, less need to purify our own waste out of it. More jobs. Fewer starving people. (As opposed to overfishing, which is a short-term win, but a long-term loss when fish populations come down to a level that is impossible to monetize.)
We can do a lot of this stuff TODAY. My definition of short-term is one or two election cycles. Maybe a few more than that. Most of what we lack isn't technological, it's political. We've dug ourselves pretty deep at this point, though, so maybe it'll be a couple decades. A couple of decades of forcing ourselves to be better as caretakers of the one and only planet that we know supports life. Twenty years of passing up the SUV that you don't need for the compact car or bicycle that'll suffice. Twenty years of choosing to use less energy and choosing, perhaps, to use slightly more expensive sources of energy (that will come down in price as we use it, no less!)
I really don't think it's that much. One planet is all we've got. We should be willing to sacrifice a lot more.
Oooh, I like that climate analogy. Well spoken.
Sigh.
Okay, let's take a real world example, then: will the average temperature this winter be colder than the average temperature in the summer in the Northern Hemisphere?
Yes. Yes it will.
That is a statement of climate, not of weather. It's also a statement that we can make with fairly strong confidence, despite the many factors involved in modelling the climate. If you want to get more specific, like how much colder one is than the other, you have to improve the models and simulations.
Climate science isn't voodoo. There's data to draw on, models that can be devised, and hypotheses that can be verified. Sometimes the models fail, or the hypotheses are shown to be incorrect, just like in any other field of science.
So if a climate scientist predicts that the temperature will climb over the next 50 years given current trends and lack of action, and the result of this will be certain climactic effects--like more drought or more powerful and less predictable storms (like Sandy)--they're not just pulling this stuff out of thin air.
There is literally no long-term downside to improving our approach to the environment. All the down-sides are short term. Even the economic benefits in the long run (or at least, the lack of economic penalties) are enormous.
I'd like to point out that the absolute resolution isn't the particular claim to fame of the so-called 'Retina' screens. My monitor here at work has a better 'resolution'--that is, it has more absolute pixels--than your phone, but if you look at the screens up close, your Samsung is almost certainly going to look better than my monitor. The pixel density is what's important. And, by the definition of the 'retina' screen, anything at or above that limit is going to be undetectable to the naked eye (at a certain distance from the eye, of course). So the S3's resolution is comparable, and so is the pixel density. Now it's just quibbling over which screen size makes everyone feel best.
Most of the other things you're talking about aren't really relevant to most people, either. Proprietary plug? I'm pretty sure nobody cares. Standard USB cable or not, I'm always hunting around for SOME cable or another at my house. You DO need to install iTunes, which is a down-side for some (and it's TERRIBLE under Windows, there's no doubt)...but only if you want to interact with a PC, which is no longer necessary. You can backup to the cloud and buy everything you need directly from the phone. I'm pretty sure you're talking about the purple *flare* (not 'flair') problems that you see when you point the camera at a light-source in a way that introduces bad effects into the picture whether they're purple or not. (I would consider most pictures with that artifact ruined anyway, regardless of the camera I'm using.) Not many people like stylii. I don't want 'sweet desktop widgets', for the most part. Or 3rd party apps. (Though I can install anything I want, since I have a developer account.) And from what I remember, the battery life is comparable when not just talking about stand-by or talk time.
I'm not saying these aren't decisions that people make or factors that aren't sometimes considered, but I think you've mostly put a lot more weight on them than people care about. I think folks are buying for fashion and simplicity and a certain amount of uncomplicated utility. They can quickly download games on either phone, both make calls and take pictures...but they like the way one phone looks better, or their family told them to get a Samsung, or their friends have an iPhone. I think THOSE are the factors that dominate these purchases. I work as a programmer (not of Apple software, despite my developer account; that's personal) and I think only one of a dozen of us has anything other than an iPhone. Moreover, I think there's only one or two of us that even CARE. Most of us are still using the iPhone 4 because all of this extra stat-wanking is now entirely irrelevant.
So to bring it all back to a point, I think Apple's phones are still selling well, but they'd be selling better if each phone didn't have quite a lot of longevity on its own. I'm waiting for next year's release so I can get out of my 3-year Canadian telco contract. I'll stick with Apple. I know my phone will last about 3 years and get OS updates for that long. I'm not on the cutting edge, but that stopped being important to me years ago. Smartphones have become appliances. As long as they work pretty well, all of this butting heads is just fanboyism.
This is not entirely unlike the state of marijuana laws in the country. A small amount for personal use is still, as far as I know, strictly illegal with few exceptions for medical reasons. Growing large amounts is also illegal. But cops are too busy to enforce that law, so that sort of thing slides all the time.
But philosophically, you have to think about whether the law is meant for enforcement or punishment. If you break the law by making your own copy of a DVD that you already own, there are probably no repercussions--unless they're already coming for you and mean to find things to punish you with.
It's not unlike speeding. Most people do it, and it's ignored. If you're 10km over the speed limit, most cops don't care. HIT someone while you're 10km over the speed limit, and you can bet that that'll be brought up at trial.
I defended Apple's prior action as technically being within the letter of the law, if not the spirit. I believe that's what their lawyers are arguing too.
As such, I retract my prior comment that the judge knew this would happen--I'm surprised to find that the court is surprised. Give a lawyer an inch, and they'll certainly take a mile.
As such, I ALSO don't think that this new ruling will work the way they intend. Apple will put the link in with a bunch of other links. They'll put bigger links in, trumpeting their legal wins in other countries. This 'apology' needs to be in 11pt font? Well, the counter-argument will be in 18pt font. What's the court going to do? Ban Apple from talking about legal decisions in other jurisdictions? I'm not sure they have the power for that.
And Apple has to take out full-page ads in some papers with the text of the decision? They'll do that, but they'll have a counter-ad on the facing page. Or they'll buy a whole section of the paper (tell me the newspapers wouldn't DESPERATELY love that) and then put the non-descript 'apology' there.
Getting corporations to apologise is hopeless. I can come up with a dozen ways to circumvent any meaningful apology given the conditions that appear to be laid out here. Apple will come up with many more. It's a stupid decision on the Court's part, honestly. Fine them and be done with it. Award Samsung damages. Anything else is just fodder for the lawyers to test how creative they are at finding the edges of a non-exhaustive list of conditions.
I use the CD/DVD drive on my iMac maybe once a year. I actually use it so little, I positioned my second monitor right next to it on the right side, effectively blocking the drive entirely. I went out and bought a handful of 4GB USB keys. It's faster, cheaper and better to use them instead of burning DVDs to transfer information.
At work, I don't think I've used the drive on this machine at all. In all likelihood, it was installed and only used for the installation of the OS.
Optical media is on its way out. Let it die. There's lots of other options.
I'm well aware of the differentiation of the letter and the spirit of the law. It is arguable that they broke the spirit of the ruling. However, they HAVE made the information available that the UK court said that they did infringe on Samsung's patent. Caveat emptor, right?
But like I said, the law is not something that you play horseshoes with. That's why 'legalese' is such impenetrable gibberish. In some (many?) cases, there's an obvious attitude of obfuscation, but legalese is often so convoluted as to be as precise as possible. Exhaustive lists are noted as such. Lists that are not exhaustive are ALSO noted as such. (As an example I can remember, the Canadian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms specifically notes that the list is not exhaustive, and not appearing on the list does not mean you're not afforded the protections of the Charter. It merely lists obvious categories as examples.)
The judge is no dummy. I'm sure he knew the implications of the decision he was handing down, and he wrote it the way he wanted to write it. He knows the players in the game, and he knows the stakes. Apple is not new in its legal aggressiveness; many companies before have had slippery lawyers and lots of money.
Finally, it wouldn't have mattered. Say Apple adhered to the strict spirit of the decision in the sense that they put up a page with just the prescribed text, and printed ads in the paper reading the same. Do you think they wouldn't have a link on their front page in much bigger font touting their legal victories? The Judge just told them how big the apology had to be, not how big surrounding propaganda had to be. And if they take out a full page ad in the paper, you think they don't have the money to take out an ad on the facing page also explaining that they won big victories in other courts? These are trivial problems to work around that you can only stop if you take away Apple's right to advertise at all, and no court would reasonably be able to do that.
Apple DID post those things in the notice. They followed (as near as I can tell, though IANAL) the precise letter of the law. I do not see anywhere anything that says that they must ONLY post the notice specified in Schedule 1. In fact, they posted the stuff they were supposed to at the TOP of the text, not in the middle or anything. You can stop reading after the court-appointed 'apology' and not read any of the rest of the propaganda.
Listen, I know Apple is getting less popular by the day around here, but they did exactly what they were told to by the courts. If the courts wanted something else, they should have been more specific. Don't tell me that Apple should have gone out of their way to be more apologetic than they were supposed to or they shouldn't have spun this in their favour if they could find it. Specificity in the law is a big deal; contracts have been invalidated on the basis of INDIVIDUAL PUNCTUATION MARKS.
It is the nature of the laws and the legal system surrounding patents that needs changing, if anything. Every actor in the system will work to the absolute edges of the legal system. Don't tell me that Samsung wouldn't have done the same, given the chance. Or Microsoft. Or even Google, who is less angelic than we like to delude ourselves into believing. It's all a giant game to them; don't expect them to be altruistic or contrite.
They didn't miss their earnings estimates. As usual, they beat their own estimates. As usual, they missed the absurdly inflated estimates of stock analysts that have never gotten an Apple earnings call right in the history of earnings calls. (The large institutions were largely correct, however.)
The CEO ALWAYS has to talk smack about the competitor's product. The REAL proof is whether or not he does nothing about it while he's talking smack, a la Ballmer. But I greatly suspect that he's already got a team of people looking at what features to take from the competition. We'll see what's what in 6 months.
This isn't the same. Cook is dismissing the competition in this case as effectively irrelevant--he gives it no ground at all. This is what he needs to do. He acknowledges it exists, but that's as far as it goes externally.
Tech history is littered with the corpses of devices that claimed they were 'iPod-killers'. By defining themselves in terms of the dominant player, they ensured that they'd never be able to compete.
There is an important difference between the way Apple and RIM (or MS) do business in that while Cook is dismissing the product, you can be sure that he's got 100 of them on order, a couple labs of people ready to study them, and they'll be on top of stealing whatever they can that IS good. RIM and MS mocked the competition and also decided that there was nothing to learn from them. Ballmer's famous dismissal of almost every Apple product and failure to follow up with anything better is pretty damning proof that once he dismisses something, it stays dismissed--until it's impossible to ignore anymore because the consumers aren't as blind as he is.
But there are exceptions to all rules...if you're good at what you do, you can compete effectively. To wit: the Mac/PC ads. They were a bit of marketing genius (but I don't know how much more effective they were than the so-called halo effect surrounding iDevices).
I dunno. 'All in the Family' deals with really subject matter that was really forward thinking and controversial at the time, but seems ridiculously antiquated to us now. Same with M.A.S.H. The shows need to be evaluated in the context of the time, not in the context of OUR time. And even still, there are themes that are STILL relevant in both those shows; the issue of homosexuality comes up at least a couple times in a way that you'd think isn't so different than the way it might be handled now in the more conservative areas of the USA.
And for a particular counter-example: the Star Wars movies of the 70s were quite a bit deeper and more complex (perhaps by accident? ...but still) than the modern ones. And there are an awful lot of movies that bring nothing new to the table at all--just sequels and re-hashes of things that were good 20, 30, 40 or even 50+ years ago.
Yeah, no. Samsung has plenty of problems with their working conditions, too.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/09/05/tech-samsung-labour.html
When companies are that size, it's pretty unusual for them to be angels. Just because you don't like Apple doesn't make Samsung a paragon for anything.
The popularity of your ideas have been steadily climbing for some time. Your work, the writings of Christopher Hitchens, and the ideas of Sam Harris as well as many others have really taken hold with a segment of the population, and (without citation) I think that the number of people claiming 'No Religion' when polled is growing.
However, I've also started to see the rise of post-Atheist philosophy, like Possibilianism (http://www.possibilian.com/) proposed by David Eagleman, a Doctor of Neuroscience. Effectively, it's the notion that Atheism is itself too restrictive a philosophy. Certainly, based on all available evidence, we can rule out the major religions, but holding to a position of (agnostic) Atheism is itself overly dogmatic. (This isn't the only example of post-Atheist philosophizing, but it's the most readily accessible.)
So can you discuss the notion of an 'Atheist', 'Post-Atheist' or 'Post-Religious' era; can you see us moving beyond the need for any particular dogma and merely allowing ourselves to examine the Universe and being able to actively hypothesize about it in many different ways simultaneously?
Ah-ha. I get it now. :)
In that case, I rather think any solution is a bit tenuous. Even a normal plug might fail or pull out; the designs of all of them are inherently easier to remove than the plug on a desktop machine. I can see what you're getting at, but it seems like maybe you should be using something else instead of a laptop if that's your use case. While you're right that you've got a real problem where possibly one didn't exist before, I'd also venture that you're a wild outlier here; more people are concerned with tripping over the cord (or children or pets tripping over the cord) than running a laptop without a battery.
Huh, I must never have seen the design that you're talking about. I have a MacBook in the house with a magnetic cord connector, and the battery is independently removable. And (seriously, since I clearly don't understand) how does that impact data loss?
I've seen two laptops with damaged barrel power connectors, and that's an expensive problem to fix if you have it. I honestly think this design with the magnets is better, notwithstanding any problems that you appear to be having.
Wait, why are the magnetic connectors bad? Everyone should have those. They solve a problem--accidentally snagging a cable and dragging stuff onto the ground--that's a REAL problem, with a really great design. (It's not Apple's idea, BTW. Hot grease cookers and hot water dispensers have had this for ages for similar reasons.)
I see someone pull their headphones onto the ground at my office literally 5 or 6 times a day. It's a dumb problem, but it's so common. It's the same reason why the XBox has a break-away cable.