There's no wheel-style iPod that lacks the four buttons: Menu, FF, REW, Play/pause. You press the Menu button to go back.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1353
They know, knew, and understand that you cannot fix a deficit or reduce the national debt without raising taxes.
Of course you can. You do it by spending less.
And the Walton's and Koch bro's are not going to save grandma, they aren't going to help you pay for your education, and they wont give you money to survive so you don't become a criminal hooligan when unemployed or laid off.
Why should the government save grandma? Paying for education... well, first there's the racket of Universities always increasing their tuition by the amount the government allows students to borrow, but more importantly it's the only kind of loan you can't discharge in bankruptcy. Student lending is a veritable goldmine for the government, and if they didn't have laws protecting their goldmine you can bet your bottom dollar that private banks would take up the mantle. Higher education is so lucrative it's ridiculous.
Unemployment? Well, that's insurance more or less. You pay an unemployment tax, and then if you later become unemployed you can collect. If the government didn't have a monopoly on that, too, I'd probably pay a private insurer for the same thing.
I mean this tax probably will suck and be annoying but its this or we lose social security, education, healthcare, and we get to watch grandma die.because you couldn't afford her medicine or treatment.
Losing social security? Fine by me. Let the workers take the ridiculous amount of money they pour into that system every paycheck and let them invest it on their own. Shoot, even mandate that you must invest a certain percent of your income somewhere if you're worried about people not doing it. Education? Well, see above. If you're in the U.S., you pay out the nose for it. Healthcare.. not really sure how taxes are related to that.
Espically in my field, education is very important (not just higher learning, but simply learning new technologies), and if you don't seem willing to even learn anything past the basics, it makes you a much less qualified applicant.
"Espically"... heh. I bet you'd have thrown out a resume with that error!
The correlation you're making is that people who are interested in learning new technologies are people who went to and graduated from college. I think this causal relationship is tenuous at best.
It places undue importance on implementation. Sure, BAD ideas are a dime a dozen, but good ideas, well thought-out ideas, ideas that are feasible and implementable, and can be executed in time, are NOT a dime a dozen. Those ideas are worth 1000x their implementation.
Good ideas that are well thought-out, feasible, implementable, and can be executed in time aren't ideas anymore; they're plans. If you throw finances, marketing, and market research in there, they're business plans. Business plans (that have legs) are not a dime a dozen, but they take a couple orders of magnitude more work than simple ideas.
Sometimes the business plan is dependent on the implementation anyway. What was Google's idea? Make the best damn search engine there is. Ok, cool idea. Anybody could have been Google, because that idea was so important and valuable, right? Wrong; like all good ideas, the valuable stuff was in the implementation. While maybe 20% of the population could say, "Here's a brilliant idea, let's improve search!", maybe 0.001% of the population have the chops to actually do anything about it.
In their case it's comparable to finding a corpse with a back full of bullets and refusing to accept that it's likely a case of murder - since no-one was there to witness it.
What's "likely" isn't really important, and is what leads to confirmation bias on both sides. Perhaps your fictitious corpse was a politician in the middle of a scandal who committed suicide, but their party thought a murder would be more sympathetic.
The anti-religious have an uncanny ability to accept things on faith when they agree with their worldview.
He could be talking about a low-end job, but to say "PHP/MySQL web programming is a low-end job" is uninformed. The Onion and their AV Club, for example, are both sites on a PHP/MySQL framework, and a guy with a month or two of PHP experience isn't going to get a whole lot accomplished in that environment.
Part of the East Bay is a 4G testing area. I just picked up a Sprint Overdrive, and it connects at 4G. The speeds are okay (3-4mbps) but not out-of-this-world like I was expecting.
The reason it was worth it is the unlimited data @ $60/month on 4G as opposed to the same price for 5gigs on 3G.
I think that's the point though. In a world where complicated is the norm yet we (claim to) want to bring computing to the masses, releasing a new service with yet another complex api seems counter to our goals (I say "complicated" in terms of volume, not in time-to-learn for someone familiar with APIs).
This is the company that brought real, effective search to the masses and collaborative document authoring/editing to companies full of PHBs. Google knows how to make complex things simple for the user. So given all this, I think the argument is rather the old standby: Do we need another X? In this case, do we need another cloud storage solution with nothing but APIs? S3 was bad enough. I don't see anything differentiating this service.... yet.
What about interviews?Being a geek, I give terrible interviews. I also seem to sit with bored interviewers, and trying to catch their interest is something that oft seems impossible.
Corrections in bold. Please don't take this wrong, but you really need to work on your spelling/syntax if you're looking for a serious job. Do you speak the way you write? Unless you're non-native (Indian? Eastern European?), in which case people will need to see that you're comfortable with the subject matter and your less-than-perfect English isn't going to be a hindrance to your doing a great job.
I wouldn't even try to post this from an iPad with one finger. It would take too long.
The iPad is inherently a consumption device, and almost exclusively a consumption device
Your points about a participatory internet are well taken; however, it's clear you haven't used an iPad for any reasonable length of time. I regularly compose and post multiple paragraphs of text from it, using the same typing techniques I use on my laptop. It is very much -not- a one-finger or even two-thumbs device.
In a nutshell: the question is not geeks X grandmothers
Followed by this:
the question is the right of doing what I want, when I want and the way I want with something I've paid for X giving more and more money for someone that IS transforming the market indeed - in a place where you don't own anything, you pay for the (supreme) honor of using someone's elses device.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the vast majority of the market couldn't care less, and they've said so with their wallets. It's a perfectly legitimate point of view for you to take -- I don't take issue with the validity of it. But "ok, so don't buy it" is also a perfectly legitimate response. iPad doesn't fit your needs; that much is certain. That's ok.
As far as business is concerned however, you're in the minority. Aggregate iPod + iPhone + iPad sales prove that much.
The "average consumer" also wants to play flash based games. Especially their younger children which seem to be drawn to those sort of things.
And they don't care if it's flash or not, just if it works or not.
I hear you, although I think your first statement contradicts your last statement a little bit. I'd rephrase it, "the average consumer wants to play simple games." The app store has boatloads of popcap-like games, many of them free.
True that they may not be able to play $THIS_SPECIFIC_GAME, no doubt. Although I've been thinking about how flash games would even translate to a touch-based interface. Would you have to just display a soft keyboard? It wouldn't be using the device's human interface well if it did. What about hover states? This is all very confusing.
The problem I have with all these technophiles decrying the iPad's lack of flash is this: are you not the same group that beats down any flash site? FFS, slashdot is the place that puts [PDF WARNING] next to links. If anyone was going to complain about the lack of flash, this is the absolute last group of people I would have expected.
I could get a $500 laptop with a dual-core x86 CPU, run just about every OS under the sun, full multitasking, cheap 'apps', full peripheral support, replaceable battery, etc.
As I said in reply to the OP, the problem is that full PCs are simply too much machine for what many people want to do (watch a show, check facebook, etc). A $99 iPad would be a true game-changer, and I think something along those lines is the next step. At this price point, people (like you) get confused because of the price and say (as you did), 'but... look at the sweet box I could buy for $500, I don't get it!' The point is that my mom and my wife and many like them don't care in the least if they have a sweet box. They care if they can "like" timmy's facebook status.
I use my netbook or laptop while sitting on the sofa all the time, if I want to really "consume media" I fire up my HTPC and put on a movie. If I want to play a game I fire up my 360 or modified Wii.
Your geek factor (Look at me! HTPC! Check me out! Modded Wii!) is what's keeping you from seeing this market. Not everyone uses computers the way you do, and not everyone derives the same satisfaction from setting up their own rad HTPC setup. My wife is perfectly content to watch DVDs, out of a box, on her laptop. I thought that was madness when I first saw it. Fact is, people compute in different ways.
[tablets don't have] any real advantages when it comes to getting work done than a regular Netbook or Laptop.
Getting Work Done isn't the primary use of computers for a very large slice of the market. This is where you and many others fundamentally misunderstand the tablet space. Traditionally the market problem is that full computers are too much machine for the everyday user -- they want to check their Facebook, emails, read the news, and catch up on that show they missed last night on ABC. The iPad does all these things adroitly. Mom knows to touch the little "ABC" icon and then touch her favorite show. Actually, screw mom, I know that too, and I don't have to futz with Silverlight or Flash or Growl notifications popping up or emails dinging in the middle of a show.
Open your mind. Not everyone uses a computer the way you do.
I noticed you linked to a Nextel page for that info. When I last visited sprint.com I couldn't find any info about 4g, despite the constant bombardment by Sprint's marketing department about it.
Turns out it's available mostly in Texas with some random areas thrown in. Sorry, but if you advertise the availability of a high-tech product and skip the silicon valley completely, you're retarded.
Slashdot Mirror
There's no wheel-style iPod that lacks the four buttons: Menu, FF, REW, Play/pause. You press the Menu button to go back. http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1353
Of course you can. You do it by spending less.
Why should the government save grandma? Paying for education... well, first there's the racket of Universities always increasing their tuition by the amount the government allows students to borrow, but more importantly it's the only kind of loan you can't discharge in bankruptcy. Student lending is a veritable goldmine for the government, and if they didn't have laws protecting their goldmine you can bet your bottom dollar that private banks would take up the mantle. Higher education is so lucrative it's ridiculous.
Unemployment? Well, that's insurance more or less. You pay an unemployment tax, and then if you later become unemployed you can collect. If the government didn't have a monopoly on that, too, I'd probably pay a private insurer for the same thing.
Losing social security? Fine by me. Let the workers take the ridiculous amount of money they pour into that system every paycheck and let them invest it on their own. Shoot, even mandate that you must invest a certain percent of your income somewhere if you're worried about people not doing it. Education? Well, see above. If you're in the U.S., you pay out the nose for it. Healthcare.. not really sure how taxes are related to that.
"Espically"... heh. I bet you'd have thrown out a resume with that error!
The correlation you're making is that people who are interested in learning new technologies are people who went to and graduated from college. I think this causal relationship is tenuous at best.
It places undue importance on implementation. Sure, BAD ideas are a dime a dozen, but good ideas, well thought-out ideas, ideas that are feasible and implementable, and can be executed in time, are NOT a dime a dozen. Those ideas are worth 1000x their implementation.
Good ideas that are well thought-out, feasible, implementable, and can be executed in time aren't ideas anymore; they're plans. If you throw finances, marketing, and market research in there, they're business plans. Business plans (that have legs) are not a dime a dozen, but they take a couple orders of magnitude more work than simple ideas.
Sometimes the business plan is dependent on the implementation anyway. What was Google's idea? Make the best damn search engine there is. Ok, cool idea. Anybody could have been Google, because that idea was so important and valuable, right? Wrong; like all good ideas, the valuable stuff was in the implementation. While maybe 20% of the population could say, "Here's a brilliant idea, let's improve search!", maybe 0.001% of the population have the chops to actually do anything about it.
In their case it's comparable to finding a corpse with a back full of bullets and refusing to accept that it's likely a case of murder - since no-one was there to witness it.
What's "likely" isn't really important, and is what leads to confirmation bias on both sides. Perhaps your fictitious corpse was a politician in the middle of a scandal who committed suicide, but their party thought a murder would be more sympathetic.
The anti-religious have an uncanny ability to accept things on faith when they agree with their worldview.
Tell that to my wife.
He could be talking about a low-end job, but to say "PHP/MySQL web programming is a low-end job" is uninformed. The Onion and their AV Club, for example, are both sites on a PHP/MySQL framework, and a guy with a month or two of PHP experience isn't going to get a whole lot accomplished in that environment.
Not quite. "N" has its own position.
Although I admit I too was confused at first by the picture. It seems "N" and Tiptronic "+" should be on different planes.
OpenID is a festering turd of poorly executed nonsense. Federated identification is great in theory, but it never ends well. It just plain sucks.
Although don't get me wrong, I've seen Facebook Connect implementations that suck goats, too.
Part of the East Bay is a 4G testing area. I just picked up a Sprint Overdrive, and it connects at 4G. The speeds are okay (3-4mbps) but not out-of-this-world like I was expecting.
The reason it was worth it is the unlimited data @ $60/month on 4G as opposed to the same price for 5gigs on 3G.
You get the best service -- in MIDTOWN MANHATTAN -- from AT&T on an iPhone?
Someone up high is looking out for you.
I think that's the point though. In a world where complicated is the norm yet we (claim to) want to bring computing to the masses, releasing a new service with yet another complex api seems counter to our goals (I say "complicated" in terms of volume, not in time-to-learn for someone familiar with APIs).
This is the company that brought real, effective search to the masses and collaborative document authoring/editing to companies full of PHBs. Google knows how to make complex things simple for the user. So given all this, I think the argument is rather the old standby: Do we need another X? In this case, do we need another cloud storage solution with nothing but APIs? S3 was bad enough. I don't see anything differentiating this service.... yet.
Please, please show me where. I've been banging my head against a wall trying to do it. The carrier update hasn't worked in months.
Dude, I was trying to eat! Neat concept but super gross :P
Corrections in bold. Please don't take this wrong, but you really need to work on your spelling/syntax if you're looking for a serious job. Do you speak the way you write? Unless you're non-native (Indian? Eastern European?), in which case people will need to see that you're comfortable with the subject matter and your less-than-perfect English isn't going to be a hindrance to your doing a great job.
Just my $0.02.
Your points about a participatory internet are well taken; however, it's clear you haven't used an iPad for any reasonable length of time. I regularly compose and post multiple paragraphs of text from it, using the same typing techniques I use on my laptop. It is very much -not- a one-finger or even two-thumbs device.
Slashdot: words for nerds, adjectives that matter =D
Followed by this:
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the vast majority of the market couldn't care less, and they've said so with their wallets. It's a perfectly legitimate point of view for you to take -- I don't take issue with the validity of it. But "ok, so don't buy it" is also a perfectly legitimate response. iPad doesn't fit your needs; that much is certain. That's ok.
As far as business is concerned however, you're in the minority. Aggregate iPod + iPhone + iPad sales prove that much.
I hear you, although I think your first statement contradicts your last statement a little bit. I'd rephrase it, "the average consumer wants to play simple games." The app store has boatloads of popcap-like games, many of them free.
True that they may not be able to play $THIS_SPECIFIC_GAME, no doubt. Although I've been thinking about how flash games would even translate to a touch-based interface. Would you have to just display a soft keyboard? It wouldn't be using the device's human interface well if it did. What about hover states? This is all very confusing.
The problem I have with all these technophiles decrying the iPad's lack of flash is this: are you not the same group that beats down any flash site? FFS, slashdot is the place that puts [PDF WARNING] next to links. If anyone was going to complain about the lack of flash, this is the absolute last group of people I would have expected.
As I said in reply to the OP, the problem is that full PCs are simply too much machine for what many people want to do (watch a show, check facebook, etc). A $99 iPad would be a true game-changer, and I think something along those lines is the next step. At this price point, people (like you) get confused because of the price and say (as you did), 'but... look at the sweet box I could buy for $500, I don't get it!' The point is that my mom and my wife and many like them don't care in the least if they have a sweet box. They care if they can "like" timmy's facebook status.
Your geek factor (Look at me! HTPC! Check me out! Modded Wii!) is what's keeping you from seeing this market. Not everyone uses computers the way you do, and not everyone derives the same satisfaction from setting up their own rad HTPC setup. My wife is perfectly content to watch DVDs, out of a box, on her laptop. I thought that was madness when I first saw it. Fact is, people compute in different ways.
Getting Work Done isn't the primary use of computers for a very large slice of the market. This is where you and many others fundamentally misunderstand the tablet space. Traditionally the market problem is that full computers are too much machine for the everyday user -- they want to check their Facebook, emails, read the news, and catch up on that show they missed last night on ABC. The iPad does all these things adroitly. Mom knows to touch the little "ABC" icon and then touch her favorite show. Actually, screw mom, I know that too, and I don't have to futz with Silverlight or Flash or Growl notifications popping up or emails dinging in the middle of a show.
Open your mind. Not everyone uses a computer the way you do.
PPG is NOT HARMLESS
Did you even read what you linked? From the linked article:
The estimated acceptable daily intake is 25 mg/kg (17th Report of the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives, 1974)
I go through a 3ml (note ml, not mg) bottle in a week, and I vape a lot. Safe enough?
7.3 Carcinogenicity
No data available.
7.4 Teratogenicity
No teratogenic effects were seen in the rabbit (Schumacher et al, 1968).
7.5 Mutagenicity
No data available.
7.6 Interactions
No data available.
Again... safe enough?
Impossible. I'm stealth-vaping inside a cafe right now and nobody has said a word or even looked over.
I noticed you linked to a Nextel page for that info. When I last visited sprint.com I couldn't find any info about 4g, despite the constant bombardment by Sprint's marketing department about it. Turns out it's available mostly in Texas with some random areas thrown in. Sorry, but if you advertise the availability of a high-tech product and skip the silicon valley completely, you're retarded.
Sweet Lord, I wish I had mod points for you.