More PPI is better for reading, but at that screen size, the difference between the two devices is pretty much irrelevant for movies. And what handcuffs are we talking about? It may be difficult to migrate away from Apple devices but the same is true to some extent for other devices like Kindles or Android tablets. And good luck reading books from distributors other than Amazon on your Kindle; it still does not support DRM'ed ePub (and not free ePub either if I am not mistaken although you can convert those files). On my Apple or Android device I can get content from whomever I want (including Amazon).
Or worse: it'll crap out when there's a commercial on and everyone leaves the room at that point. Mandatory viewing on this topic (pun intended...): The second installment of Charlie Brooker's Black mirror.
*** RESUME VIEWING *** RESUME VIEWING *** RESUME VIEWING ***
Economy plus is rubbish, you get the same for far less by reserving an exit seat (which is possible on many airlines, by paying a little extra).
Here's a thought: how about charging me twice as much for twice the space? That means some extra legroom as well as wider seats (2-3-2 instead of 3-5-3 arrangement). Legroom is good not just for stretching your legs but also to let you out to go to the bathroom without disturbing your neighbor. Wider seats ensure that you actually can get some sleep instead of having to fight that neighbor for the armrest (and god forbid they book an obese person in the seat next to you). Business class doesn't make economic sense or is plain out of reach for people traveling on their own dime. But to get some real comfort at twice the price of economy... I'd go for that, certainly on transatlantic flights.
The request is reasonable, but the only reasonable response is: "We're sorry your honour, but we do not require contributors to register under their real name, and we do not record IP addresses of visitors". For sites that respect the privacy of visitors, the best way to ensure that you never have to reveal the identity of your members is to make sure that you don't have that information on file in the first place.
Of course in Europe, all this info is logged by the ISP's anyway, by law.
The language is dense, nearly impenetrable and horrible repetitive.
This is on purpose. Patent lawyers are like any other lawyer in that they want their little priesthood to remain protected. If anyone can draft and interpret a patent application, what need for their expensive services?
OT but along the same vein: when people complained about certain bits in the new EU "constitution", those bits were rewritten in horribly obfuscated language that boils down to more or less the same meaning. Another reason for using legalese.
The telcos here do not want the sender to pay for comms cost instead of the receiver. They want both parties to pay. Charge their subscribers the same (or a marginally lower) monthly fee, and levy a tax on Google and FB at the same time. Their argument is that the successful content providers make billions while the telcos earn a pittance, but the truth of course is that without those content providers, the telcos would earn nothing. UPC doesn't get to charge the customer or the shopkeeper an extra fee for shipping stuff from popular online shops like Amazon. Neither should the telcos.
Of course this is just their latest trick, after they shot themselves in the foot with both barrels by proposing to apply an additional fee to the subscribers, on traffic to certain sites like Google and FB. (As a result of that proposal, the Netherlands adopted Net Neutrality into law, and other EC countries or even the EC itself may follow suit).
From past stories it seems that US customs have no qualms about harassing "unpatriotic" US citizens either. But it's true: customs (and not just the US one) have the power to harass and detain, and you pretty much have zero legal recourse if for example you miss your flight. Even regular police are more accountable for their actions (as they should be).
What evil? Someone lost his phone, the company that owns it sends a guy over to collect it. Given the fact that it was an important prototype, it's understandable that the guy was a bit anxious to get it back.
Then again, Google might have staged the whole thing. I think they are a little jealous of Apple, with their millions of fans going ohh and ahh over fuzzy pictures of a frickin' new docking connector of all things...
It seems to me the First Sale doctrine is about consumer rights. When you buy something, it is yours to dispose of any way you like, including reselling. Where you actually bought it should be irrelevant, and this claim that it is seems to me like a perversion of the law.
Of course you'll want some laws to govern parallel imports and such, but they should be separate laws, like they are in Europe. Here, we have restrictions on importing goods to govern that. You can bring a few copies of a book into the country at most, anything more is the prerogative of the copyright holder. But those few copies should by rights be yours to dispose of as you please.
The first 50" plasma cost about the same as this thing. The first flat panel TVs sold for even more, and those were tiny by today's standards. History's lesson is that this sort of tech will come down in price fast; I expect that in a few years you can get a similar set for $4000 or so.
This Chinese crypto is controversial "because of serious EU concerns with domestic restrictions on the implementation, use, and importation of cryptography in China". That doesn't explain much. As I understand it, TPM cannot be deployed in China because of restrictions on crypto in that country.
Does this addition enable deployment of TPM in China? (I'd expect it would, why else add it)
Is it controversial because this specific algorithm has a backdoor, giving Chinese users a false sense of security?
Is it controversial because this algorithm has a backdoor, giving the Chinese government a way to subvert TPM in any device?
In short, I have trouble understanding what the hubbub is about.
The real question is: is Windows 8 actually better? A few questions:
- How easy is it to find your way around the system without prior guidance?
- How well are common and uncommon tasks separated, with uncommon tasks being hidden or moved out of the way?
- How consistent is the interface across screens and applications?
- Are the interface and the interactions with it intuitive?
- How much steps does each common task require (the fewer the better)?
It is clear that, for example, iOS scored high on these points when it was first introduced, and provided a clear improvement over previous tablet and phone operating systems. Hence no one really minded having to learn a few new UI paradigms. If Windows 8 likewise scores a lot higher on these points than Windows 7, then I wouldn't mind relearning a thing or two. I haven't tried Windows 8 yet, but from what I have heard I doubt it is actually an improvement.
And before that it was a UK-based company. I used to work for these guys; not a bad company and in the past they have been involved in some rather cool stuff. They seem to have lost their way somewhat in the late 90s though, going from being a respected tech firm to trying to be a so-so consultancy, and growing by buying several other businesses and doing a poor job of integrating them into the whole.
What phone did you get that has such crappy GPS? I'm rather happy with my iPhone 4s, it is far faster to acquire a signal than any GPS I've owned and very accurate. Probably because this phone supports both GPS and Glonass, the latter being more accurate here in Europe.
By the way, here's what I don't need or use because I have a phone:
1) Social netowrking (ok, I don't this, period. Phone or no)
2) Camera. My phone makes very decent pictures and I always have it with me. For the very rare occasion that I need top notch photos and/or a decent flash, I'll bring a separate camera, but in practice I hardly use mine.
3) GPS. Who needs a separate unit that is bound to get nicked from your car, when you already carry one with you all the time?
4) Notepad/pen: Taking quick, short notes on the phone works just fine. And making a picture of whiteboards or flipovers is even quicker!
5) Music/video/entertainment device. My phone does it all.
6) When you're on the go, who needs a laptop or access to a full sized computer (in a webcafe or some such) when you have a smartphone? Sucks for prolonged browsing but great if you're outside and need to quickly look up an address or do a price comparison.
If I had to drop one feature from my phone, it'd probably be the ability to make calls.
although if you do it just before the end of the day, you're still doing it on my time, and you shouldn't be. Wait until just AFTER the end of the day, please
As long as I bill for less hours than I actually work, and I get my job done in a reasonable and agreed time frame, then my employer/client is ok with some private surfing and calls, and we can access pretty much anything from the corporate net. That is because we're all responsible adults here... and in the rare case that excessive surfing affects someone's work, it is easy enough to have a chat and set them straight.
A lot of job ads have something about the company looking for people who "don't have that 9-5 mentality". Guess what: that works both ways.
Oh, a "business tool", that sounds so professional
Business email may have a few different requirements (security and all that), but functionally it really isn't all that different from private email. Perhaps that is why people expect their phones to handle both kinds of email in the same manner. BB does this, but apparently other smartphones do a better job. At my client's office, managers have a corporate BB but can also get their business email and calendar on their iPhone or Android. Most of them have ditched the BB as a result, and keep in mind that these aren't your most geeky users; their primary use for their phone is making calls, checking appointments, and reading email.
I am seeing the same trend in other areas of IT as well: what's on the consumer market is often far better than what we're using in business... and there really are few good reasons why we shouldn't have the same stuff in business either.
It might be too late to worry about your work being stolen after you've already done the work and made it public. It's a good idea to sort this out before there's anything to actually steal.
Web apps have failed? They have on mobile devices, where the app's responsiveness is everything. But the desktop app stores (OSX and Windows 8) have yet to prove themselves. Especially in the corporate world where it seems that web apps have won. Some years ago it looked like native apps delivered through Citrix to a thin client were going to be the wave of the future, but these days pretty much any corporate resource other than Office and Exchange is delivered through the browser. Personally I agree and would pick an Android device over this Chrome stuff anytime, but IT managers might beg to differ. And I would not be so hasty as to declare web apps dead.
Spekking of bubble... Perhaps the man is right, and data is the new oil, in the sense that we are (hopefully) fast approaching "peak data", or the point where Joe Public finally has had enough of his privacy being taken in every orifice for the sole purpose of pushing more of the same useless ads at us, to make us buy the same useless crap we don't want. I can only hope the backlash turns at least a little bit violent in places.
That's exactly it. There's another fairly famous book that you may have heard of, as it has been of some influence here and there around the world despite having fewer literary qualities than L. Ron Hubbard on a bad day. I'm talking about the bible, of course.
Such a book will resonate with you if it describes persons or events that fit your own world view. It will resonate even stronger if it describes a philosophy that you already sort of felt deep down, but never put into words so clearly. On the other hand, if such a book goes firmly against your own philosophical grain, then it's all too tempting to write it off as "literary tripe", which is indeed what left-wing Europeans tend to do, with surprising vehemence.
Atlas Shrugged isn't great literature, but it did resonate with me. I've always been an individualist instead of a collectivist, but this was the first book I read that put the distinction in clear perspective. At the danger of generalising, I think that Americans tend to be more individualist than others; a tendency that fits with the nation's history. By the way, I'm not an American nor a libertarian; I think Rand's ideas are a bit like Communism in that they fit a certain ideal, but they are unfit as a rulebook to run an imperfect world (or even a perfect one). But her ideas have had a great impact on the way I view the world.
Actually, I found "The art of war" to be vastly overrated. Not overrated as a great achievement in its time, nor as a work of historical significance, but as a self-help book for managers or those aspiring to be. There's a few valuable one-liners in there, but you probably already know those.
Slashdot Mirror
More PPI is better for reading, but at that screen size, the difference between the two devices is pretty much irrelevant for movies. And what handcuffs are we talking about? It may be difficult to migrate away from Apple devices but the same is true to some extent for other devices like Kindles or Android tablets. And good luck reading books from distributors other than Amazon on your Kindle; it still does not support DRM'ed ePub (and not free ePub either if I am not mistaken although you can convert those files). On my Apple or Android device I can get content from whomever I want (including Amazon).
Or worse: it'll crap out when there's a commercial on and everyone leaves the room at that point. Mandatory viewing on this topic (pun intended...): The second installment of Charlie Brooker's Black mirror.
*** RESUME VIEWING *** RESUME VIEWING *** RESUME VIEWING ***
Economy plus is rubbish, you get the same for far less by reserving an exit seat (which is possible on many airlines, by paying a little extra).
Here's a thought: how about charging me twice as much for twice the space? That means some extra legroom as well as wider seats (2-3-2 instead of 3-5-3 arrangement). Legroom is good not just for stretching your legs but also to let you out to go to the bathroom without disturbing your neighbor. Wider seats ensure that you actually can get some sleep instead of having to fight that neighbor for the armrest (and god forbid they book an obese person in the seat next to you). Business class doesn't make economic sense or is plain out of reach for people traveling on their own dime. But to get some real comfort at twice the price of economy... I'd go for that, certainly on transatlantic flights.
The request is reasonable, but the only reasonable response is: "We're sorry your honour, but we do not require contributors to register under their real name, and we do not record IP addresses of visitors". For sites that respect the privacy of visitors, the best way to ensure that you never have to reveal the identity of your members is to make sure that you don't have that information on file in the first place.
Of course in Europe, all this info is logged by the ISP's anyway, by law.
The language is dense, nearly impenetrable and horrible repetitive.
This is on purpose. Patent lawyers are like any other lawyer in that they want their little priesthood to remain protected. If anyone can draft and interpret a patent application, what need for their expensive services?
OT but along the same vein: when people complained about certain bits in the new EU "constitution", those bits were rewritten in horribly obfuscated language that boils down to more or less the same meaning. Another reason for using legalese.
Don't worry, this only applies to Eurotrash.
The telcos here do not want the sender to pay for comms cost instead of the receiver. They want both parties to pay. Charge their subscribers the same (or a marginally lower) monthly fee, and levy a tax on Google and FB at the same time. Their argument is that the successful content providers make billions while the telcos earn a pittance, but the truth of course is that without those content providers, the telcos would earn nothing. UPC doesn't get to charge the customer or the shopkeeper an extra fee for shipping stuff from popular online shops like Amazon. Neither should the telcos.
Of course this is just their latest trick, after they shot themselves in the foot with both barrels by proposing to apply an additional fee to the subscribers, on traffic to certain sites like Google and FB. (As a result of that proposal, the Netherlands adopted Net Neutrality into law, and other EC countries or even the EC itself may follow suit).
I think Jabba's "pleasure barge" in "Return of the Jedi" was nicer than this thing.
I doubt very much that marrying a jew will win a lot of favours with voters in predominantly muslim Pakistan.
From past stories it seems that US customs have no qualms about harassing "unpatriotic" US citizens either. But it's true: customs (and not just the US one) have the power to harass and detain, and you pretty much have zero legal recourse if for example you miss your flight. Even regular police are more accountable for their actions (as they should be).
What evil? Someone lost his phone, the company that owns it sends a guy over to collect it. Given the fact that it was an important prototype, it's understandable that the guy was a bit anxious to get it back.
Then again, Google might have staged the whole thing. I think they are a little jealous of Apple, with their millions of fans going ohh and ahh over fuzzy pictures of a frickin' new docking connector of all things...
It seems to me the First Sale doctrine is about consumer rights. When you buy something, it is yours to dispose of any way you like, including reselling. Where you actually bought it should be irrelevant, and this claim that it is seems to me like a perversion of the law.
Of course you'll want some laws to govern parallel imports and such, but they should be separate laws, like they are in Europe. Here, we have restrictions on importing goods to govern that. You can bring a few copies of a book into the country at most, anything more is the prerogative of the copyright holder. But those few copies should by rights be yours to dispose of as you please.
"Wall mounted keyboards... it must be THE FUTURE", quoting MST3Ks riff of Space Mutiny.
The first 50" plasma cost about the same as this thing. The first flat panel TVs sold for even more, and those were tiny by today's standards. History's lesson is that this sort of tech will come down in price fast; I expect that in a few years you can get a similar set for $4000 or so.
This Chinese crypto is controversial "because of serious EU concerns with domestic restrictions on the implementation, use, and importation of cryptography in China". That doesn't explain much. As I understand it, TPM cannot be deployed in China because of restrictions on crypto in that country.
Does this addition enable deployment of TPM in China? (I'd expect it would, why else add it)
Is it controversial because this specific algorithm has a backdoor, giving Chinese users a false sense of security?
Is it controversial because this algorithm has a backdoor, giving the Chinese government a way to subvert TPM in any device?
In short, I have trouble understanding what the hubbub is about.
The real question is: is Windows 8 actually better? A few questions:
- How easy is it to find your way around the system without prior guidance?
- How well are common and uncommon tasks separated, with uncommon tasks being hidden or moved out of the way?
- How consistent is the interface across screens and applications?
- Are the interface and the interactions with it intuitive?
- How much steps does each common task require (the fewer the better)?
It is clear that, for example, iOS scored high on these points when it was first introduced, and provided a clear improvement over previous tablet and phone operating systems. Hence no one really minded having to learn a few new UI paradigms. If Windows 8 likewise scores a lot higher on these points than Windows 7, then I wouldn't mind relearning a thing or two. I haven't tried Windows 8 yet, but from what I have heard I doubt it is actually an improvement.
And before that it was a UK-based company. I used to work for these guys; not a bad company and in the past they have been involved in some rather cool stuff. They seem to have lost their way somewhat in the late 90s though, going from being a respected tech firm to trying to be a so-so consultancy, and growing by buying several other businesses and doing a poor job of integrating them into the whole.
What phone did you get that has such crappy GPS? I'm rather happy with my iPhone 4s, it is far faster to acquire a signal than any GPS I've owned and very accurate. Probably because this phone supports both GPS and Glonass, the latter being more accurate here in Europe.
By the way, here's what I don't need or use because I have a phone:
1) Social netowrking (ok, I don't this, period. Phone or no)
2) Camera. My phone makes very decent pictures and I always have it with me. For the very rare occasion that I need top notch photos and/or a decent flash, I'll bring a separate camera, but in practice I hardly use mine.
3) GPS. Who needs a separate unit that is bound to get nicked from your car, when you already carry one with you all the time?
4) Notepad/pen: Taking quick, short notes on the phone works just fine. And making a picture of whiteboards or flipovers is even quicker!
5) Music/video/entertainment device. My phone does it all.
6) When you're on the go, who needs a laptop or access to a full sized computer (in a webcafe or some such) when you have a smartphone? Sucks for prolonged browsing but great if you're outside and need to quickly look up an address or do a price comparison.
If I had to drop one feature from my phone, it'd probably be the ability to make calls.
As long as I bill for less hours than I actually work, and I get my job done in a reasonable and agreed time frame, then my employer/client is ok with some private surfing and calls, and we can access pretty much anything from the corporate net. That is because we're all responsible adults here... and in the rare case that excessive surfing affects someone's work, it is easy enough to have a chat and set them straight.
A lot of job ads have something about the company looking for people who "don't have that 9-5 mentality". Guess what: that works both ways.
Oh, a "business tool", that sounds so professional
Business email may have a few different requirements (security and all that), but functionally it really isn't all that different from private email. Perhaps that is why people expect their phones to handle both kinds of email in the same manner. BB does this, but apparently other smartphones do a better job. At my client's office, managers have a corporate BB but can also get their business email and calendar on their iPhone or Android. Most of them have ditched the BB as a result, and keep in mind that these aren't your most geeky users; their primary use for their phone is making calls, checking appointments, and reading email.
I am seeing the same trend in other areas of IT as well: what's on the consumer market is often far better than what we're using in business... and there really are few good reasons why we shouldn't have the same stuff in business either.
It might be too late to worry about your work being stolen after you've already done the work and made it public. It's a good idea to sort this out before there's anything to actually steal.
Web apps have failed? They have on mobile devices, where the app's responsiveness is everything. But the desktop app stores (OSX and Windows 8) have yet to prove themselves. Especially in the corporate world where it seems that web apps have won. Some years ago it looked like native apps delivered through Citrix to a thin client were going to be the wave of the future, but these days pretty much any corporate resource other than Office and Exchange is delivered through the browser. Personally I agree and would pick an Android device over this Chrome stuff anytime, but IT managers might beg to differ. And I would not be so hasty as to declare web apps dead.
Spekking of bubble... Perhaps the man is right, and data is the new oil, in the sense that we are (hopefully) fast approaching "peak data", or the point where Joe Public finally has had enough of his privacy being taken in every orifice for the sole purpose of pushing more of the same useless ads at us, to make us buy the same useless crap we don't want. I can only hope the backlash turns at least a little bit violent in places.
That's exactly it. There's another fairly famous book that you may have heard of, as it has been of some influence here and there around the world despite having fewer literary qualities than L. Ron Hubbard on a bad day. I'm talking about the bible, of course.
Such a book will resonate with you if it describes persons or events that fit your own world view. It will resonate even stronger if it describes a philosophy that you already sort of felt deep down, but never put into words so clearly. On the other hand, if such a book goes firmly against your own philosophical grain, then it's all too tempting to write it off as "literary tripe", which is indeed what left-wing Europeans tend to do, with surprising vehemence.
Atlas Shrugged isn't great literature, but it did resonate with me. I've always been an individualist instead of a collectivist, but this was the first book I read that put the distinction in clear perspective. At the danger of generalising, I think that Americans tend to be more individualist than others; a tendency that fits with the nation's history. By the way, I'm not an American nor a libertarian; I think Rand's ideas are a bit like Communism in that they fit a certain ideal, but they are unfit as a rulebook to run an imperfect world (or even a perfect one). But her ideas have had a great impact on the way I view the world.
Actually, I found "The art of war" to be vastly overrated. Not overrated as a great achievement in its time, nor as a work of historical significance, but as a self-help book for managers or those aspiring to be. There's a few valuable one-liners in there, but you probably already know those.