It sure is a toy if you treat it like one by downloading novelty apps and games. But to some of us, the iPhone makes all the other phones look like toys. My last Windows Mobile device was a joke. Yeah, it could read Word and Excel, but I never used them. Is that you're only reason why?
Yeah, I was looking around on some sites yesterday for a meditation timer and there seems to be a huge number of novelty apps. The last one that comes to mind is one that creates neat effects using your voice. There's huge potential for really great killer apps and even more simply useful apps, but there also seems to be a much higher number of novelty and rather lame apps compared to what you'd find on the desktop. Not to mention all the games. Still, there are quite a few good apps out there considering how long the app store has been around. I expect more good apps will emerge over time, and hopefully some of the novelty crap will disappear, too.
Wouldn't it just make more sense to have solar panels in orbit and transmit the power along the space elevator?
I imagine it might add too much weight or complexity. Even just running two strips of conductive tether separated by an insulator may be too much considering how feasible the tether is to begin with. Then there are things such as resistance to consider. Might simply be easier to beam it seperatly rather than add another layer of complexity to something that is already pushing the limits.
Choice in software is antithetical to their existence, much more than it is to Microsoft.
Really? I have a pretty good choice and not many restrictions in OS X. And less built-in DRM and other such stuff compared to MS, too. So I'm not sure where you get your ideas from. And last time I checked, I could run Windows and Linux on my Mac as well as OS X. Seems I'm actually spoiled for choice.
May be due to commercial interests, they are being very closed in the iphone ecosystem. Initial reluctance to open up the sdk, arbitrary selections on the apps you can distribute ( Considering Appstore is the only "legal" and future proof way to get apps on to iphone, I consider this very monopolistic*)
Why is that most of Slashdot seems to think this? I've always thought it was partly because of their contract with AT&T and partly because you'd have to be stupid to enter the cellphone market and try to do everything at once. Do people here really think Apple was pressured into opening the SDK?
That's the beauty of mass production and the inherent standardization, dude: it doesn't matter that it's over-engineered for some occasions, because in practice the mass production paradigm will still make it cheaper than any continual one-off design process.
Wrong. In practice it depends on how many you are producing and what the costs are. Depending on exactly what you are doing in the first place, tooling up may cost you more if you aren't going to produce enough to off-set the higher initial costs. Then you have to take into the lifespan of the technology, too, among other things. Some components may never get developed often enough to justify mass production.
Craft that simply make passes and orbits, as these are intended to do, would lend themselves most readily of all to that modularity compared, to, say, the Mars rovers.
How do you know that orbiters don't required quite different fundamental designs depending on the mission? For some missions you could end up with something that is over engineered and therefore more expensive. And how do you know that the custom parts aren't still taking up the most costs? I think the variety of missions and a low frequency of them make F1 cars look mass-produced in comparison.
Did you even look at the fixit guide? It may be 10 screws (a whole 4 more screws!) to take the back off, but that's hardly a chore -- no prying apart plastic tabs etc. And then the HDD is sitting right there and is pretty easy to replace (2 screws), along with a lot of other things. You're replacing a HDD -- does it really matter if it takes an extra 30 seconds on top of everything else involved? Perhaps the keyboard is another matter, but a small price to pay for a keyboard that doesn't bounce, IMHO. The magsafe connector is also on a separate board -- even though there is less chance of damaging it to begin with.
Pisses you off, obviously. I like the slimmer hardware, and find it especially important on something that I carry around with me all the time in my pockets.
Perhaps you have some bad hex drivers or screws? As they're quite common in the RC world because they're not as easy to strip (less you're using the wrong size).
Since when are did all religious people believe in the second coming of Jesus and have anything against atheists? And since when has all religion been against science?
Things that happened like learning how to speak and what your name is? Or are you telling me that if the world was filled with objects with Klingon names and you responded to the name "Cowboy Neal" you would be the same person?
Why would I think that? When you say person, are you more talking about personality or consciousness?
I think your confusion is that you are 30,000 years out of date on the debate on what happens after you die. What happens is that you rot, mate.
Your body sure does. And before I go any further, I'm not sure I even believe in the afterlife or reincarnation. But I'm also a scientist, so it would be stupid for me to assume what happens to my consciousness when I die.
Why do you think memories make up who you are? They're just things that happened. And how do you know you won't exist in the future? Last time I checked, the debate on what happens when you die was far from over.
Ever heard of phobias? PTSD? How does a person benefit from remembering their "mistakes" in those cases? Sometimes the mistake is remembering something when you don't need it.
Historically, though, I suspect that conscious economic warfare is a recent phenomenon, reflecting more of a WWII mindset than an ancient one.
May I ask what gives you that idea? I don't know that much about history, either, but I'm pretty sure similar things had been going on long before the 20th century.
I'm not so sure about the guided test drive. If people want to have play around to see what something is like, they generally don't want someone bugging them unless they actually have a question. You also have to keep in mind that many people aren't going to learn much from a single demo in terms of specifics (even if they're smart), so it would only be useful to show capabilities or answers to specific questions, rather than an experience for learning the tedious but important details of owning the system -- that's more of a learner course than a test drive.
This is what pisses me off about Slashdot. Often something is misleading or simply wrong, but they hardly ever update or re-write the summary, so we have a 100's of comments that are redundant. Just look at all the hysteria in this forum. Many people aren't going to see the parent comment until after they've finished their first Chicken Licken rant.
Apple is not a hardware company. Apple is not a software company.
Apple is a computer/electronics company. They make both the hardware and software and sell it as a single product. How hard is that to understand? This is what sets them apart. How can people here continually miss this?
If that isn't the definition of a monopoly, please do tell me what is.
A company that has market dominance in a certain industry? Apple doesn't fit that bill, as they don't have majority market share. The problem here seems to be that you think all computers must always have a completely separate OS and hardware. Once you take away that silly premise, Apple are just another product competing in the market.
Slashdot Mirror
You're just old fashioned ;)
Why would I want to carry a laptop around with me all the time for tasks that can be easily done on something the size of a phone?
It sure is a toy if you treat it like one by downloading novelty apps and games. But to some of us, the iPhone makes all the other phones look like toys. My last Windows Mobile device was a joke. Yeah, it could read Word and Excel, but I never used them. Is that you're only reason why?
Yeah, I was looking around on some sites yesterday for a meditation timer and there seems to be a huge number of novelty apps. The last one that comes to mind is one that creates neat effects using your voice. There's huge potential for really great killer apps and even more simply useful apps, but there also seems to be a much higher number of novelty and rather lame apps compared to what you'd find on the desktop. Not to mention all the games. Still, there are quite a few good apps out there considering how long the app store has been around. I expect more good apps will emerge over time, and hopefully some of the novelty crap will disappear, too.
Wouldn't it just make more sense to have solar panels in orbit and transmit the power along the space elevator?
I imagine it might add too much weight or complexity. Even just running two strips of conductive tether separated by an insulator may be too much considering how feasible the tether is to begin with. Then there are things such as resistance to consider. Might simply be easier to beam it seperatly rather than add another layer of complexity to something that is already pushing the limits.
Choice in software is antithetical to their existence, much more than it is to Microsoft.
Really? I have a pretty good choice and not many restrictions in OS X. And less built-in DRM and other such stuff compared to MS, too. So I'm not sure where you get your ideas from. And last time I checked, I could run Windows and Linux on my Mac as well as OS X. Seems I'm actually spoiled for choice.
May be due to commercial interests, they are being very closed in the iphone ecosystem. Initial reluctance to open up the sdk, arbitrary selections on the apps you can distribute ( Considering Appstore is the only "legal" and future proof way to get apps on to iphone, I consider this very monopolistic*)
Why is that most of Slashdot seems to think this? I've always thought it was partly because of their contract with AT&T and partly because you'd have to be stupid to enter the cellphone market and try to do everything at once. Do people here really think Apple was pressured into opening the SDK?
That's the beauty of mass production and the inherent standardization, dude: it doesn't matter that it's over-engineered for some occasions, because in practice the mass production paradigm will still make it cheaper than any continual one-off design process.
Wrong. In practice it depends on how many you are producing and what the costs are. Depending on exactly what you are doing in the first place, tooling up may cost you more if you aren't going to produce enough to off-set the higher initial costs. Then you have to take into the lifespan of the technology, too, among other things. Some components may never get developed often enough to justify mass production.
Craft that simply make passes and orbits, as these are intended to do, would lend themselves most readily of all to that modularity compared, to, say, the Mars rovers.
How do you know that orbiters don't required quite different fundamental designs depending on the mission? For some missions you could end up with something that is over engineered and therefore more expensive. And how do you know that the custom parts aren't still taking up the most costs? I think the variety of missions and a low frequency of them make F1 cars look mass-produced in comparison.
And is this really such a common problem?
BTW, there's nothing stopping you disconnecting the battery, as far as I could tell, just a label preventing you from removing it.
Did you even look at the fixit guide? It may be 10 screws (a whole 4 more screws!) to take the back off, but that's hardly a chore -- no prying apart plastic tabs etc. And then the HDD is sitting right there and is pretty easy to replace (2 screws), along with a lot of other things. You're replacing a HDD -- does it really matter if it takes an extra 30 seconds on top of everything else involved? Perhaps the keyboard is another matter, but a small price to pay for a keyboard that doesn't bounce, IMHO. The magsafe connector is also on a separate board -- even though there is less chance of damaging it to begin with.
Pisses you off, obviously. I like the slimmer hardware, and find it especially important on something that I carry around with me all the time in my pockets.
Perhaps you have some bad hex drivers or screws? As they're quite common in the RC world because they're not as easy to strip (less you're using the wrong size).
Do you also think philosophy should be based on evidence? How would that work?
And since have all religions been based on not having evidence?
I'm not sure you actually understand what either science or religion are.
Since when are did all religious people believe in the second coming of Jesus and have anything against atheists? And since when has all religion been against science?
Things that happened like learning how to speak and what your name is? Or are you telling me that if the world was filled with objects with Klingon names and you responded to the name "Cowboy Neal" you would be the same person?
Why would I think that? When you say person, are you more talking about personality or consciousness?
I think your confusion is that you are 30,000 years out of date on the debate on what happens after you die. What happens is that you rot, mate.
Your body sure does. And before I go any further, I'm not sure I even believe in the afterlife or reincarnation. But I'm also a scientist, so it would be stupid for me to assume what happens to my consciousness when I die.
Why do you think memories make up who you are? They're just things that happened. And how do you know you won't exist in the future? Last time I checked, the debate on what happens when you die was far from over.
Ever heard of phobias? PTSD? How does a person benefit from remembering their "mistakes" in those cases? Sometimes the mistake is remembering something when you don't need it.
I wish people would stop using words like "delete". Evidence suggests that the brain simple doesn't work like that.
Historically, though, I suspect that conscious economic warfare is a recent phenomenon, reflecting more of a WWII mindset than an ancient one.
May I ask what gives you that idea? I don't know that much about history, either, but I'm pretty sure similar things had been going on long before the 20th century.
I'm not so sure about the guided test drive. If people want to have play around to see what something is like, they generally don't want someone bugging them unless they actually have a question. You also have to keep in mind that many people aren't going to learn much from a single demo in terms of specifics (even if they're smart), so it would only be useful to show capabilities or answers to specific questions, rather than an experience for learning the tedious but important details of owning the system -- that's more of a learner course than a test drive.
This is what pisses me off about Slashdot. Often something is misleading or simply wrong, but they hardly ever update or re-write the summary, so we have a 100's of comments that are redundant. Just look at all the hysteria in this forum. Many people aren't going to see the parent comment until after they've finished their first Chicken Licken rant.
I'm slim, but I still find bus and airliner seats annoying, because they lack leg room.
I'm not sure "prefer" is the best word when you do something out of financial necessity.
Apple is not a hardware company.
Apple is not a software company.
Apple is a computer/electronics company. They make both the hardware and software and sell it as a single product. How hard is that to understand? This is what sets them apart. How can people here continually miss this?
If that isn't the definition of a monopoly, please do tell me what is.
A company that has market dominance in a certain industry? Apple doesn't fit that bill, as they don't have majority market share. The problem here seems to be that you think all computers must always have a completely separate OS and hardware. Once you take away that silly premise, Apple are just another product competing in the market.