All this revolves around are audio books sales. Forget the fact that right now synthesized text to speech is painful to listen vs a human voice, this is just another case of technology slowly making one industry obsolete.
They might as well sue teachers or those libraries that offer children's programs by reading a book out loud.
They say nothing makes more problems than solutions, and I feel the concept of intellectual property taking this to extreme.
How can anyone with a room temp IQ even argue the point?
I don't know. Find me someone with only a room temp IQ that argues the point, and I will examine him.
Ignoring the Mini, which is a solution in search of a problem,
If it didn't sell, Apple wouldn't be offering it for so long. They limit their offerings to what makes them money.
Everyone else offers basic machines for clerical workers for $4-600 these days
Apple wants margins. One could argue selling quantity will help the operating system, but I assume they don't find OS sales enticing. Perhaps 20 years ago they could have gone the microsoft route, but today it's arguable if it was worth it by the time they build such a thing up.
and the best Apple can offer is a Mini (braindead and at least a year behind) at $599 + keyboard and mouse ($99) + display...
That's more than most keyboard and mouse combos cost that people actually buy. I always replace the keyboard a PC comes with (probably a cheap $5-10) with a Microsoft Comfort Curve that costs $20. A decent wireless optical mouse cost $10 although I go for a more expensive laser (mid-level laser microsoft mouse + keyboard still is only $60 together when on sale)
I often see the Mini paired up with the keyboard, mouse, and monitor that person already had.
They're assimilating children to make them smart enough to use their products? MONSTERS!
Well, I look it as another case of Microsoft copying something. In this case, it's advertising. They can't even attack Apple without copying them. I'm not saying Apple is all that original, but at least their ads don't reak of "Nah, nah, I can do the same thing too to you!" It's rather pathetic that Microsoft has to lash out like this to a competitor that has less than 10% of it's marketshare. It just gives more credibility to OS X.
Also, I would say on the whole, the Windows is easy is a lark. How many times has a geek been called to fix his friend's computer? And it's usually just from browsing. Having to run spyware, adware, anti-virus isn't easy. But somehow security, those calls and that maintenance isn't added to the whole easy-to-use argument, sometimes deterred by the dubious market share whining rather than ascribing it to truly bad decisions.
And before someone whines, I use Vista day in and day out. I don't get infected because it's behind a router with firewall, run Firefox with adblock and noscript, and I generally know what I'm doing (not always). It's safer than it used to be, but now Microsoft is compromising UAC in the next version for convenience, still has IE married to the core, still has the registry, and until those things are remedied it will always have to contend with those valid charges.
Unlike other big companies, Apple doesn't even give research grants to academia in any significant quantity (they just charge an arm and a leg for their machines).
While I can fully appreciate that, I'm not thinking of an ereader to fully eradicate hardcopies but to actually supplement them. Lets face it, I don't think an author can talk about writing his book proudly without holding up a copy of it in his hand in public, at least once. Somehow, showing off a multi-megabyte file contained in a USB stick is going to really cut it in this instance.
But I came from a household with thousands and thousands of books and publications. For those few special ones that were there, they always got lost in the pile. I would fully love to show off a special book on my shelf that I cherish, signed by the author or what not. A kindle on the other side of it, containing the other 2000 books, magazines, and newspaper that are nothing special to me and which would otherwise crowd it (or be rotting down in the basement) doesn't sound so bad either.
Do you realize your entire argument could have been based around a backstage pass, having your boxed CD or Vinyl Record, and being glad that they signed it and vowing to never turn that in for one of those new-fangled iPod thingies with the same basic effect, right?
with the release of the original Kindle. Perhaps they still can.
The Kindle here is somewhat of a disappointment to me but its aesthetics are much better than than the first generation. Yet, the screen is only usable for fiction novels and the like, and the form factor is such that the keyboard takes up half the space. Either way, they should have eliminated the physical keyboard for an onscreen version (really, you can't exactly type a thesis with that thing as it is now) for that searching or annotation convenience. For serious annotation, the iRex iLiad and DR1000S have a wacom enabled screen with stylus. In this way, you can really go for a small reader that fits in a purse, or use that existing or slightly bigger form for 10x8 screen, allowing to display 11x8.5 pages sans margins.
I don't know how they sell the new york times on something like that. I can see it on the even smaller iPhone but only because of multitouch and reverse pinching (zoom in) to the exact story someone wants. But I would not pay for an ereader at current prices in the fiction novel page size; I would glady pay money for something that allows me to read reference guides and textbooks without scrolling horizontally, perhaps not vertically.
All the other readers I see on the market are toys. Like iRex, which sells there models as finished products but are woefully in the prototype stage even after years of development and being on the market because lack of serious money behind it, I suppose. One symptom there is that despite the promise of e-ink not using energy other than when the page is being changed, their CPU doesn't really go to sleep, requiring daily recharging of the device and thoroughly defeating half of the purpose of a good ereader in the first place. I tried the Sony, it wasn't bad but nothing great.
If the Kindle should get credit for anything, it was the Sprint EVDO connection in the first and now 3G in the second without stupid monthly fees - it just being there. That alone will make it the winner in time, everything else stay the same.
If Apple had been keen on building their media empire, they'd should have gotten into ebooks when the 1st gen kindle was released tbh. The market was ready for something with a decent interface and good hardware/software integration. They already sell music, movies, tv shows, and this will consolidate the last major piece of the list. Before someone says "color" screens, or Plastic Logic's flexible screens or the like, that's precisely what upgrades are for. Now, I'm afraid, the worse is better philosophy won out again.
Other than screen size, this model looks like a winner.
like financial things, you compare the end product with the end product of the same calculation run either through the chip again or another chip (or increasingly likely another core).
By the time someone gets to university, you're usually no longer a child but an adult.
as to the world of software, not just that which you are ideologically in favor of.
Where do you get this "supposed to"? Universities are many things to many people. For some, they are to teach ideology. For others, training in a job. Seeing that a chef, during an apprenticeship, may not use the same sets of pots, pans, knives or even stove as in the commercial kitchen he end up is no failure of the place that trained him. A competent chef will get used and adapt to this new, different but similiar situation.
An incompetent one would have been tripped up by something else along the way anyway.
Are you really arguing that different office package the average person uses are that dramatically different? And the harder core stuff with real differences, such as compilers or the like, are usually taught to people who can grasp different software once exposed rather quickly.
My old school has cluster of 4-8 computers around campus, used for nothing but websurfing. Even locked down completely, IE would be loaded down with strange toolbars and what not every few weeks. I always thought it would been a great solution to have linux on them, perhaps 1 real computer and the others in that closely clustered group as dumb terminals.
Some type of way to introduce them and their cost savings to the administration at large without having it blow up in your face because of incompatibilities or someone's pet program won't run.
Well, I'm thinking of geothermal house heating cooling where you sink pipes in the ground to get at the constant temperature of the earth a few meters down in the ground.
Why does a firm wishing to enter the x86 market need to buy licenses, and if this is true, however did AMD come to own any if intel was the one who made x86 afaik?
Pretty much anything we are doing is unsustainable. The only thing sustainable ARE renewable energies, especially solar thermal (evacuated tubes), geothermal, and the like. For people who don't understand the energy crisis as a whole, I recommend this lecture by Dr. Bartlett:
traffic lights. Whether that means to have a big single-digit countdown clock (for last 10 seconds, usuable for any color light) or simply start blinking at a faster and faster rate last 10 seconds right before it changes (again, any color light).
It would also help with conserving gas, so from farther away you can adjust your speed by being given info on what that light will be 300ft down the road.
Perhaps he has to. He said he's the IT manager of a small company.
Send an email to the directors just confirming this is what they wish to do and that they don't want you to take any action on this matter.
It seems, by simply putting it in writing that might just put this small company in a sudden legal dilemma it wouldn't be otherwise if he just put his head down, shut up, and let it be. Yes, he won't be in trouble now, but assuming that he no power in the Beijing branch to begin with, it's not a situation he can really win anything by bringing it up to his superiors in such a big corporate manner for a small company. I don't see how a verbal talk to the superiors isn't just as good or better without forcing a decision (and possibly monetary expediture).
Slashdot Mirror
All this revolves around are audio books sales. Forget the fact that right now synthesized text to speech is painful to listen vs a human voice, this is just another case of technology slowly making one industry obsolete.
They might as well sue teachers or those libraries that offer children's programs by reading a book out loud.
They say nothing makes more problems than solutions, and I feel the concept of intellectual property taking this to extreme.
I don't know. Find me someone with only a room temp IQ that argues the point, and I will examine him.
If it didn't sell, Apple wouldn't be offering it for so long. They limit their offerings to what makes them money.
Apple wants margins. One could argue selling quantity will help the operating system, but I assume they don't find OS sales enticing. Perhaps 20 years ago they could have gone the microsoft route, but today it's arguable if it was worth it by the time they build such a thing up.
That's more than most keyboard and mouse combos cost that people actually buy. I always replace the keyboard a PC comes with (probably a cheap $5-10) with a Microsoft Comfort Curve that costs $20. A decent wireless optical mouse cost $10 although I go for a more expensive laser (mid-level laser microsoft mouse + keyboard still is only $60 together when on sale)
I often see the Mini paired up with the keyboard, mouse, and monitor that person already had.
This should be more of an indictment of the state of journalism rather than wikipedia which is a free non-profit service.
Sigh.
http://www.pcmech.com/article/is-the-mac-overpriced/
"While the Atom needs 132.8 seconds to display simple HTML pages, the Nano does it in 70.1 seconds."
I was thinking of getting a netbook, but damn, not with that performance. Over 2 minutes? Is this a big miscalculation somehow?
While I can fully appreciate that, I'm not thinking of an ereader to fully eradicate hardcopies but to actually supplement them. Lets face it, I don't think an author can talk about writing his book proudly without holding up a copy of it in his hand in public, at least once. Somehow, showing off a multi-megabyte file contained in a USB stick is going to really cut it in this instance.
But I came from a household with thousands and thousands of books and publications. For those few special ones that were there, they always got lost in the pile. I would fully love to show off a special book on my shelf that I cherish, signed by the author or what not. A kindle on the other side of it, containing the other 2000 books, magazines, and newspaper that are nothing special to me and which would otherwise crowd it (or be rotting down in the basement) doesn't sound so bad either.
Especially at moving time;)
Since you are at a university, how do you find the kindle sized screen for textbooks. I'm thinking the normally large math sized textbooks.
Do you realize your entire argument could have been based around a backstage pass, having your boxed CD or Vinyl Record, and being glad that they signed it and vowing to never turn that in for one of those new-fangled iPod thingies with the same basic effect, right?
While I hate proprietary DRM formats, the proprietary device charge may not be true:
http://www.macworld.com/article/138696/2009/02/kindle_iphone.html
Especially since this story:
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2009/1/printing-the-nyt-costs-twice-as-much-as-sending-every-subscriber-a-free-kindle
Printing (and sending) The New York Times (over a year) Costs Twice As Much As Sending Every Subscriber A Free Kindle
with the release of the original Kindle. Perhaps they still can.
The Kindle here is somewhat of a disappointment to me but its aesthetics are much better than than the first generation. Yet, the screen is only usable for fiction novels and the like, and the form factor is such that the keyboard takes up half the space. Either way, they should have eliminated the physical keyboard for an onscreen version (really, you can't exactly type a thesis with that thing as it is now) for that searching or annotation convenience. For serious annotation, the iRex iLiad and DR1000S have a wacom enabled screen with stylus. In this way, you can really go for a small reader that fits in a purse, or use that existing or slightly bigger form for 10x8 screen, allowing to display 11x8.5 pages sans margins.
I don't know how they sell the new york times on something like that. I can see it on the even smaller iPhone but only because of multitouch and reverse pinching (zoom in) to the exact story someone wants. But I would not pay for an ereader at current prices in the fiction novel page size; I would glady pay money for something that allows me to read reference guides and textbooks without scrolling horizontally, perhaps not vertically.
All the other readers I see on the market are toys. Like iRex, which sells there models as finished products but are woefully in the prototype stage even after years of development and being on the market because lack of serious money behind it, I suppose. One symptom there is that despite the promise of e-ink not using energy other than when the page is being changed, their CPU doesn't really go to sleep, requiring daily recharging of the device and thoroughly defeating half of the purpose of a good ereader in the first place. I tried the Sony, it wasn't bad but nothing great.
If the Kindle should get credit for anything, it was the Sprint EVDO connection in the first and now 3G in the second without stupid monthly fees - it just being there. That alone will make it the winner in time, everything else stay the same.
If Apple had been keen on building their media empire, they'd should have gotten into ebooks when the 1st gen kindle was released tbh. The market was ready for something with a decent interface and good hardware/software integration. They already sell music, movies, tv shows, and this will consolidate the last major piece of the list. Before someone says "color" screens, or Plastic Logic's flexible screens or the like, that's precisely what upgrades are for. Now, I'm afraid, the worse is better philosophy won out again.
Other than screen size, this model looks like a winner.
Are you sure? I heard that his dancing partner will be called "Ginger" >.>
If it was aimed at college students, they did a poor job of advertising it (using Pandora here).
How to Think like a Mathematician:
http://www.amazon.com/How-Think-Like-Mathematician-Undergraduate/dp/0521895464
Online here (for how much longer?):
http://www.maths.leeds.ac.uk/~khouston/httlam.html
I bought this in the discount bin for $1 somewhere, I think it's (Playthinks) really good to develop logic and just try a little bit of every mathematical discipline:
http://www.amazon.com/Big-Book-Brain-Games-Mathematics/dp/0761134662
This isn't pure math, but lisp, but since Lisp is inspired by lambda calculus, perhaps it'll inspire more programming (shrugs):
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/LispBook/index.html
like financial things, you compare the end product with the end product of the same calculation run either through the chip again or another chip (or increasingly likely another core).
Still would be faster too.
By the time someone gets to university, you're usually no longer a child but an adult.
Where do you get this "supposed to"? Universities are many things to many people. For some, they are to teach ideology. For others, training in a job. Seeing that a chef, during an apprenticeship, may not use the same sets of pots, pans, knives or even stove as in the commercial kitchen he end up is no failure of the place that trained him. A competent chef will get used and adapt to this new, different but similiar situation.
An incompetent one would have been tripped up by something else along the way anyway.
Are you really arguing that different office package the average person uses are that dramatically different? And the harder core stuff with real differences, such as compilers or the like, are usually taught to people who can grasp different software once exposed rather quickly.
where you can anticipate few bumps in the road.
My old school has cluster of 4-8 computers around campus, used for nothing but websurfing. Even locked down completely, IE would be loaded down with strange toolbars and what not every few weeks. I always thought it would been a great solution to have linux on them, perhaps 1 real computer and the others in that closely clustered group as dumb terminals.
Some type of way to introduce them and their cost savings to the administration at large without having it blow up in your face because of incompatibilities or someone's pet program won't run.
Well, I'm thinking of geothermal house heating cooling where you sink pipes in the ground to get at the constant temperature of the earth a few meters down in the ground.
Why does a firm wishing to enter the x86 market need to buy licenses, and if this is true, however did AMD come to own any if intel was the one who made x86 afaik?
Just wondering.
Pretty much anything we are doing is unsustainable. The only thing sustainable ARE renewable energies, especially solar thermal (evacuated tubes), geothermal, and the like. For people who don't understand the energy crisis as a whole, I recommend this lecture by Dr. Bartlett:
Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY
Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb3JI8F9LQQ
Part 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFyOw9IgtjY
Part 4:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQd-VGYX3-E
Part 5:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHuwgxrTKPo
Part 6:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3y7UlHdhAU
Part 7:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyseLQVpJEI
Part 8:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoiiVnQadwE
I heard that they just used Elisa Media center....
http://elisa.fluendo.com/
traffic lights. Whether that means to have a big single-digit countdown clock (for last 10 seconds, usuable for any color light) or simply start blinking at a faster and faster rate last 10 seconds right before it changes (again, any color light).
It would also help with conserving gas, so from farther away you can adjust your speed by being given info on what that light will be 300ft down the road.
Maybe we should stop paying for Chinese goods? Because obviously some factory boss in China is getting rich off of his exploited workers.
Besides, besides Windows it's hard to argue that any software company has an absolute monopoly.
Perhaps he has to. He said he's the IT manager of a small company.
It seems, by simply putting it in writing that might just put this small company in a sudden legal dilemma it wouldn't be otherwise if he just put his head down, shut up, and let it be. Yes, he won't be in trouble now, but assuming that he no power in the Beijing branch to begin with, it's not a situation he can really win anything by bringing it up to his superiors in such a big corporate manner for a small company. I don't see how a verbal talk to the superiors isn't just as good or better without forcing a decision (and possibly monetary expediture).
Small companies are not like megacorps.