The ipad will fade into obscurity and during that time your efforts could be better invested else where.
Yes, selling 300,000 units on the first day is a sure sign that the iPad will fade into obscurity any time soon.
Like it or not, the iPad is relevant. It obviously has a following and there will be devices that can imitate it and ride its coattails a bit. Perhaps these other devices can even improve on the design and become relevant in and of themselves. One thing is for certain, you completely ignore a popular device/platform at your own peril.
As they mention in TFA, even toasters and other appliances have screws on the back; you can take it apart and do what you want with it. If you want to see how all your appliances work, you can take them apart and put them back together.
You can take the iPad apart with a pointy stick. You can also take the iPad apart, see how it works, and put it back together.
The difference between a toaster and an iPad is the level of complexity that goes into making the device. Nearly everything in there is a block of EXTREMELY complex and miniaturized components. You can swap out components and maybe even integrate new ones but it's beyond anything but the most sophisticated labs to modify those components to do something different.
Once you get to the level of compact complexity of a device like the iPad you don't buy it for its ability to be modified. You buy it because its compact and convenient. If you want a device that can be modified then build your own computer from scratch. Just don't expect it to be as easily carried and used as the iPad is.
Re:Like Woz didn't move on a LONG time ago?
on
The Apple Two
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· Score: 5, Funny
As anyone who has ever watched Max Headroom in the 80's knows these things need to be kept separate by separate companies.
Yes, 80's TV shows taught me everything I need to know. The A-Team taught me that people don't die even if you shoot guns at them and blow things up. The Dukes of Hazard showed me that you can jump a nearly 2 ton car at ridiculous speeds numerous times and still have it drivable when it lands. MacGyver proved that you could solve any problem with a rubber band, a pen, and a paperclip.
These numbers are meaningless without the proper context.
First of all, what is the percentage of ownership, by driver age. In other words: Do a disproportionate amount of older people buy these cars?
Secondly, what is the comparable accident percentage, by car manufacturer and driver age. In other words: Do older people have a problem with all manufacturers or only Toyota?
Lastly, 24 incidents is way too few to make any kind of sane inference. Once you break it down by age category you have some categories that only have one to three members. At that low an amount they could simply represent random chance and not some sort of trend.
When you have such a low number you have two choices: ignore the problem or dig deeper beyond these simple statistics. Given that people's lives (and Toyota's reputation) are at stake I'd say that Toyota is doing the right thing by dissecting the cars and chasing every possible problem. If they find something then they can fix it, if they don't find anything then at least they gave it their best and can honestly say that these incidents seem to be user error.
The iPad isn't even double the price of the comperable Kindle. Take a look at the Kindle vs the iPad.
The only Kindle which comes close to the tech specs of the iPad is the Kindle DX, with a screen that is 9.7" diagonal. The Kindle DX costs $489, the iPad 3G costs $629 or 1.3 times as much. I'm using the iPad 3G for this comparison because the Kindle comes with 3G connectivity.
But yeah, the iPad does a TON more than the Kindle, you can't discount that. Perhaps the Kindle still wins in some areas, such as how the display reads under some situations and battery life, but the iPad knocks the Kindle around in most other aspects. The Kindle also has all the the design goodness of a vintage 70's calculator.
"Lacking in the early iPad reviews has been any screen shots or actual information on how a two-column small text PDF appears, typical in my scientific arena's journal articles
Well the good news is that pinch to zoom works just fine so you could easily expand one column to fill the screen and then just scroll. I know that viewing a PDF on the iPhone works pretty well with this method. The iPad, being much larger than the iPhone, should present no problems to anyone viewing a PDF.
The iPad also has a much better display than the iPhone so you should be able to resolve smaller text even without zooming in.
Let's see if this rings a bell. Buy up all of the finite resource (wireless spectrum) charge your customers outrageous prices to use said resource (wireless service) profit forever... yay CAPITALISM.
I'm not sure you understand exactly how the wireless auctions work but if you take a look at it you'll see that it's nearly impossible for such a thing to happen. It's actually set up pretty decently to avoid just this situation.
Besides which, I'm not exactly sure that this directly relates to my post. Perhaps you would care to go back, re-examine what I said, and elaborate? We'll all be waiting with bated breath, I'm sure...
See Tank Girl for a more entertaining journey into the wonderful nature of capitalism.
Yes, I often consult comic books to fulfill my intellectual needs. I mean, most times they closely mirror reality, right? I'll just ignore centuries of economics and philosophy thought on the matter since comic books are such better references.
China is doing a decent job demonstrating that it can work, at least in the near term.
I'm not sure any system is good enough over the really long haul, even the Romans couldn't make it persistent.
China is actually going away from being a pure communist state and adopting a bit of capitalism. We'll see if it works out or if they are just setting themselves up for problems. Remember that it's usually not during the most oppressive times that there's the most problems, it's usually when the people get a taste of freedom that they rail against their chains and cause havoc.
Over the long haul, yeah it's tough to find a truly stable system. The best you can hope for is to cycle between the various systems of government and try to avoid the extremes.
What part of "related to the government" didn't you understand. I didn't say "related to TV" or any other kind of relation, in fact I SPECIFICALLY referred to George Orwell's use of the term. (Since, after all, he's the one that coined it!) I hardly think that a TV show or a commercial truly fit the context of the article since it specifically refers to several terms used in the book.
Go read the book, then come back. I'll wait for ya...
Since those in government wish to maintain their power and their positions in government, they accept funding from private entities. In exchange for funding the government, private parties are granted exclusivity arrangements which enable monopoly control over sectors of the economy which are enforced by the government's ability to exercise use of force.
Whether corporations end up owning the government or the government swallows up the corporations it pretty much ends the same way, one monolithic entity controlling all production. This has been tried several ways in the past (India Trading Company and British Colonies are a close example, the Soviet Union is another) and really hasn't worked out well in the long-term. Without competition the monolithic entity tends to become inefficient and either collapses or is overthrown. Of course too much competition can be a bad thing too (could lead to a total lack of rule, ie: anarchy) so, as in most things, striking a certain balance is the best solution.
In 1984, there was no distinction of the Corporation. That's not really surprising: in Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and more recently in countries like Venezuela, there has been no distinction between the Corporation and the State because the Corporation is, essentially, dissolved into the state.
I'm not saying that a corporation CAN'T be Big Brother, just that this situation definitely doesn't fit with the concept.
Unless, of course, you are amazingly paranoid and think that the government owns everything and everyone. Except you, of course. Wait, how do you know that you aren't a hidden tool of government too? Hmm, you'd better be careful around yourself...
A corporation wants to make profits? *gasp* I've never heard of such a thing!
BTW, if you check out the submitter, snydeq, you can easily see that he is a mouthpiece for Infoworld, the corporation that is publishing the article in question. What sinister plans does Infoworld have for its latest push for profits?
Let's not over-characterize a company trying different ways to make profits as being "Big Brother". That term has a specific meaning related to the government, go read some George Orwell if you've forgotten exactly what it means. Yes, some companies may use slight-of-hand and other tricks to get more money out of you but it's far from being "Big Brother".
This is especially true when you spread your article out a few paragraphs at a time across 4 different pages. We know that trick, it's called padding your ad revenue with additional page views. Oooooh, who's the Big Brother corporation now Infoworld?
Wikipedia is an exercise in frustration. I made several edits to articles that were similar but missing something from each other. The edits were almost immediately undone, stating that the information was uncited. I then re-made those edits, noting the other Wikipedia article which had all the appropriate references. The edits were again undone, still saying that citation was necessary. I then went over several articles and noted numerous places where it was apparently just fine to cite another Wikipedia article that had valid citations. No dice there either, apparently that's ok if you are one of the favored editors but if you are out of luck if you are a new person trying to help out and maybe get into becoming a regular contributer.
In the end I threw up my hands and gave up on contributing to Wikipedia. It can continue to spin its web of lies, omissions, and half-truths. Some of the information is correct but a lot of it is slanted and misleading. The problem is that you have very little idea which is which. I mean, a lot of the citations are to web sites that themselves have no validation or citations. I could go out, create a bunch of official-sounding websites, use them to cite some "facts" in Wikipedia, and, if I was subtle enough, probably get away with it.
At least when you pay for reference material the buck stops somewhere and someone is directly responsible for the information which is presented. In Wikipedia you have to trust the hordes of mostly anonymous people who have their hands on the content. What sort of basis is that for solid information that you can use in a serious manner?
I'm not convinced that Wikipedia is anything but a pop reference guide in its current form. Either it needs to have a serious team of dedicated researchers validating articles or it needs to stick to its founding principles and be more open so at least you get in there and correct bad information. We have the worst of both worlds in Wikipedia's current state.
Have you ever tried making something this complex? It's not at all easy, the tolerances on a quality table are pretty tight and there are some complex cuts, measurements, and joins that need to be made. A professional carpenter can put a table like this together in a couple of weeks, it might take an amateur a couple or months or years. Not only that but an amateur will waste a lot of wood and probably end up with something that leans at a bit of an odd angle, is finished unevenly, and has to be re-glued and re-joined every few years.
I'm not saying that you NEED a professional to make a quality piece of furniture, just that a professional will be far more efficient at it and the final product is likely to be of much higher quality. This is one of the cases where, if you value your time properly, it might actually be less expensive to have a pro do it. Yes, if you are a hobbiest carpenter then your time building this is your leisure time so that doesn't matter as much. Just don't think you will save that much money by building it yourself. Put in some overtime at your job and buy the thing, you'll probably make out on the deal.
And notice it says 3 to 8% of the wholesale price, not retail. In this case, you can count on the wholesale price being 40% of the retail price. So 3 to 8% of 40% is not going to be the end of the hobby saw industry -- as you seem to imply.
That's only the price of the license. You then have to actually engineer and BUILD the device into your current designs. That most likely adds in a lot more than 3% to 8% of the wholesale price.
Judging from the price of the replacement parts for the SawStop saw ($169) I'm betting the cost of the device will add in somewhere around $100 to a tablesaw. Considering that you can get a decent tablesaw for anywhere from $200 to $1000 that's 50% to 10% additional cost to the tablesaw. It might be more or less than that but it's definitely appreciable.
Apple stops releasing security updates shortly after new releases
Actually Apple releases updates for the last version as well as the current version of Mac OS X and they've been known to release security updates for even earlier versions.
Also who the fuck was the moron at Apple who decided that using command-w was a good way to close windows and tabs?
Like most key commands it's a mnemonic device.
N - new document (or window, windows are generally documents in Mac OS) T - tab (open a new tab in the window) W - window (close window) Q - quit (quit application) A - all (select all) C - copy (copy selection to the clipboard) X - cut (like a pair of scissors, also next to C for cut) V - paste (like an insertion carat in editing, also next to C for cut)
And so on.
Yes, some of these keyboard shortcuts are close to other ones. If that bothers you then just change the shortcut to something else.
I was referring to the fact that a GUI element on the edge (or corner) of a screen has, in effect, infinite size in the given dimension by virtue of the fact that the cursor cannot leave the screen, and thus, any overshot of the cursor in that direction will still leave the cursor over the GUI element.
I believe it's most commonly referenced as an implication of Fitts' Law
Except Fitts' Law doesn't work for window edges because you CAN overshoot a window corner. Fitt's Law only only applies to SCREEN edges where the mouse stops at the edge of the screen. The idea is that you can throw the mouse at the edge and no matter how much you try you can't overshoot the edge. It gives the pixels at the edge effectively infinite width (for a horizontal edge) or height (for a vertical edge).
It also ONLY works for the pixels at the absolute edge of the screen. If your button is separated from the edge of the screen by even one pixel then Fitt's Law doesn't apply because it's the non-clickable pixels that get the infinite size, not the button's pixels. Normally under Windows even maximized windows don't benefit from Fitt's Law. Of course, I believe that Microsoft might have fudged that here and there so that it benefits even when it normally shouldn't.
By the way, this is a big reason to have a single universal menu at the top of the screen rather than a menu at the top of each window, every menu item at the screen edge benefits from Fitt's Law. The other big reason to have a single menu is that you save screen real estate since each individual window doesn't need part of its display area taken up with a menu bar, instead every window can save that space and have their controls at the top of the screen in a standard, easily-accessible spot.
Spider isn't Microsoft's flagship product being sold to consumers. Spider is a (if I'm reading the article correctly) is to handle TCP/IP stacks, not run the entire core. You could remove Spider from Windows and it would still function (sans TCP/IP, but would in all effects still run.) Same can't be said for OSX and BSD/Mach Kernel. A part isn't comparable to a whole product
It's just one example, there are many parts of Windows that were developed elsewhere and then incorporated into the whole. Quite a bit of Windows has roots in BSD and other open-source projects and a lot of Windows contains commercial software that was bought and incorporated. If you some digging around you'll find many examples of this.
Apple is not alone in using 3rd party code in the core of their operating system.
In addition, the majority of Mac OS X does consist of code developed at Apple. Browse through the Darwin kernal (it's released under an open source license) and you can see for yourself just how much of it was written by Apple and not by a 3rd party. Pretty much the entire userland and GUI which runs on top of Darwin is also Apple-generated code.
In the case of Apple, I would hope to use their own 'lovely, mature' OS they wrote from scratch in 1984 to power their original machines, like Microsoft. Not drop all of their own work and use someone else's 17 years later. Think of the uproar if Microsoft did this.
Microsoft DOES also do this. Take a look at this article:
Now, some of Spider's code (possibly all of it) was based on the TCP/IP stack in the BSD flavors of Unix. These are open source, but distributed under the BSD license, not the GPL that Linux is released under. Whereas the GPL states that any software derived from GPL'ed software must also be released under the GPL, the BSD license basically says, "here's the source, you can do whatever you want, just give credit to the original author."
Eventually the new, from scratch TCP/IP stack was done and shipped with NT 3.5 (the second version, despite the number) in late 1994. The same stack was also included with Windows 95.
However, it looks like some of those Unix utilities were never rewritten. If you look at the executables, you can still see the copyright notice from the regents of the University of California (BSD is short for Berkeley Software Distrubution, Berkeley being a branch of the University of California, for some reason referred to as "Berkeley" on the East Coast and "California" on the West Coast...and "Berkeley" is one of those words that starts to look real funny if you stare at it too long - but I digress).
Keep in mind there is no reason to rewrite that code. If your ftp client works fine (no comments from the peanut gallery!) then why change it? Microsoft has other fish to fry. And the software was licensed perfectly legally, since the inclusion of the copyright notice satisfied the BSD license.
Microsoft doesn't advertise it but they have freely used BSD code in the past. They did NOT write all of their own code from scratch. In the end it really doesn't matter who wrote the code, so long as it's being used properly according to the license. The BSD code is released under and open license that allows you to do just about anything you want with it so there's very little trouble there.
Though as for Apple freely mentioning about it, show me a 'I'm a PC, I'm a Mac' that states it openly, and not in some of the more finer print like most company's do to 'publicly' hide information. Your one link is for developers (not a general public location), the other one looks like you have to know about BSD to learn about BSD.
Right on their What is Mac OS X page, a "general public location":
Mac OS X is the world's most advanced operating system. Built on a rock-solid UNIX foundation and designed to be simple and intuitive, it's what makes the Mac innovative, highly secure, compatible, and easy to use.
On that page they also link to this pdf which tells you just about everything you'd want to know about the technologies that go into Mac OS X, including BSD and Mach.
Of course Apple is not going to throw around terms like BSD and Mach in its commercials and such because those terms are meaningless to Joe Average. However, they do talk about them in their literature where the ordinary consumer can be more easily informed as to what those terms mean. Apple is by no means hiding the fact that they are building upon technology developed outside of Apple.
Apple used the Xerox technology and made it successful, and then started suing other companies for infringement. Xerox, as the legitimate inventor of the technology, tried to license it to other companies, and they all said, "You don't own that technology. Apple does." So, it was a dick move to take over intellectual property that they didn't develop.
At that point Apple had done considerable development on the concept of a GUI and had many innovations that were not part of the original Xerox intellectual property. It was those new developments that formed most of the basis for the lawsuit between Microsoft and Apple, and between HP and Apple. Perhaps Xerox was finding it difficult to license its IP to other companies because of Apple's bought and developed IP but they didn't make it an issue until they had a chance to cash in on the conflict between Microsoft and Apple by diverting an Apple win into their own coffers.
In the end, Xerox didn't have a case. They had to pursue the wrong case because of their deal with Apple and the fact that they allowed Apple to do so much development on Xerox's IP before they sued that there was almost no resemblance to the original.
Anyways, the original point of all of this was that Apple DID pay Xerox for their IP. It really doesn't matter that later on the involved companies fought for a bigger slice of the GUI pie. In the end they all failed and their original agreements held just as they were when they were made.
And if we were having this conversation about Microsoft, you wouldn't care either.
Keep up with those ad hominem attacks! You have no idea what I'd do if this involved Microsoft and, frankly, it's not pertinent to this discussion. It if makes you feel better then go ahead and keep trying to defame and attack me. I just think it's funny, attacking your opponent only serves to weaken the strength of your own argument.
That doesn't take into consideration that all of their devices run on a form of OSX ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osx [wikipedia.org] ) which is made from BSD (made by University of California, Berkeley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bsd [wikipedia.org] ) and Mach Kernal (made by Carnegie Mellon University http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_kernel [wikipedia.org] ). Just because it was freely available doesn't make it theirs. They stood on giants and made it appear if it was their own, only geeks know that OSX is a mostly a cut-n-paste job, the public thinks its unique programming on Apples part.
You mean the BSD whose license deliberately lets you do anything you want with the source code, including making it entirely into your own product? The BSD that Apple freely mentions in its own literature? At no point does Apple claim that BSD is theirs, they rightfully say that they developed Mac OS X and Darwin on top of BSD and Mach. To Apple's credit they have "payed it forward" by enhancing and releasing a lot of open source stuff to other developers.
Yeah, the average user is clueless as to what BSD and Mach are and that they form a basis for Mac OS X. The average user is clueless about a lot of stuff and it really doesn't matter at all. Truth to be told, there is a ton of "unique programming on Apple's part" in Mac OS X so the public wouldn't be too far off in believing that.
Slashdot Mirror
More importantly: will it blend?
The ipad will fade into obscurity and during that time your efforts could be better invested else where.
Yes, selling 300,000 units on the first day is a sure sign that the iPad will fade into obscurity any time soon.
Like it or not, the iPad is relevant. It obviously has a following and there will be devices that can imitate it and ride its coattails a bit. Perhaps these other devices can even improve on the design and become relevant in and of themselves. One thing is for certain, you completely ignore a popular device/platform at your own peril.
As they mention in TFA, even toasters and other appliances have screws on the back; you can take it apart and do what you want with it. If you want to see how all your appliances work, you can take them apart and put them back together.
You can take the iPad apart with a pointy stick. You can also take the iPad apart, see how it works, and put it back together.
The difference between a toaster and an iPad is the level of complexity that goes into making the device. Nearly everything in there is a block of EXTREMELY complex and miniaturized components. You can swap out components and maybe even integrate new ones but it's beyond anything but the most sophisticated labs to modify those components to do something different.
Once you get to the level of compact complexity of a device like the iPad you don't buy it for its ability to be modified. You buy it because its compact and convenient. If you want a device that can be modified then build your own computer from scratch. Just don't expect it to be as easily carried and used as the iPad is.
As anyone who has ever watched Max Headroom in the 80's knows these things need to be kept separate by separate companies.
Yes, 80's TV shows taught me everything I need to know. The A-Team taught me that people don't die even if you shoot guns at them and blow things up. The Dukes of Hazard showed me that you can jump a nearly 2 ton car at ridiculous speeds numerous times and still have it drivable when it lands. MacGyver proved that you could solve any problem with a rubber band, a pen, and a paperclip.
These numbers are meaningless without the proper context.
First of all, what is the percentage of ownership, by driver age. In other words: Do a disproportionate amount of older people buy these cars?
Secondly, what is the comparable accident percentage, by car manufacturer and driver age. In other words: Do older people have a problem with all manufacturers or only Toyota?
Lastly, 24 incidents is way too few to make any kind of sane inference. Once you break it down by age category you have some categories that only have one to three members. At that low an amount they could simply represent random chance and not some sort of trend.
When you have such a low number you have two choices: ignore the problem or dig deeper beyond these simple statistics. Given that people's lives (and Toyota's reputation) are at stake I'd say that Toyota is doing the right thing by dissecting the cars and chasing every possible problem. If they find something then they can fix it, if they don't find anything then at least they gave it their best and can honestly say that these incidents seem to be user error.
The iPad isn't even double the price of the comperable Kindle. Take a look at the Kindle vs the iPad.
The only Kindle which comes close to the tech specs of the iPad is the Kindle DX, with a screen that is 9.7" diagonal. The Kindle DX costs $489, the iPad 3G costs $629 or 1.3 times as much. I'm using the iPad 3G for this comparison because the Kindle comes with 3G connectivity.
But yeah, the iPad does a TON more than the Kindle, you can't discount that. Perhaps the Kindle still wins in some areas, such as how the display reads under some situations and battery life, but the iPad knocks the Kindle around in most other aspects. The Kindle also has all the the design goodness of a vintage 70's calculator.
"Lacking in the early iPad reviews has been any screen shots or actual information on how a two-column small text PDF appears, typical in my scientific arena's journal articles
Well the good news is that pinch to zoom works just fine so you could easily expand one column to fill the screen and then just scroll. I know that viewing a PDF on the iPhone works pretty well with this method. The iPad, being much larger than the iPhone, should present no problems to anyone viewing a PDF.
The iPad also has a much better display than the iPhone so you should be able to resolve smaller text even without zooming in.
Let's see if this rings a bell. Buy up all of the finite resource (wireless spectrum) charge your customers outrageous prices to use said resource (wireless service) profit forever... yay CAPITALISM.
I'm not sure you understand exactly how the wireless auctions work but if you take a look at it you'll see that it's nearly impossible for such a thing to happen. It's actually set up pretty decently to avoid just this situation.
Besides which, I'm not exactly sure that this directly relates to my post. Perhaps you would care to go back, re-examine what I said, and elaborate? We'll all be waiting with bated breath, I'm sure...
See Tank Girl for a more entertaining journey into the wonderful nature of capitalism.
Yes, I often consult comic books to fulfill my intellectual needs. I mean, most times they closely mirror reality, right? I'll just ignore centuries of economics and philosophy thought on the matter since comic books are such better references.
China is doing a decent job demonstrating that it can work, at least in the near term.
I'm not sure any system is good enough over the really long haul, even the Romans couldn't make it persistent.
China is actually going away from being a pure communist state and adopting a bit of capitalism. We'll see if it works out or if they are just setting themselves up for problems. Remember that it's usually not during the most oppressive times that there's the most problems, it's usually when the people get a taste of freedom that they rail against their chains and cause havoc.
Over the long haul, yeah it's tough to find a truly stable system. The best you can hope for is to cycle between the various systems of government and try to avoid the extremes.
What part of "related to the government" didn't you understand. I didn't say "related to TV" or any other kind of relation, in fact I SPECIFICALLY referred to George Orwell's use of the term. (Since, after all, he's the one that coined it!) I hardly think that a TV show or a commercial truly fit the context of the article since it specifically refers to several terms used in the book.
Go read the book, then come back. I'll wait for ya...
Since those in government wish to maintain their power and their positions in government, they accept funding from private entities. In exchange for funding the government, private parties are granted exclusivity arrangements which enable monopoly control over sectors of the economy which are enforced by the government's ability to exercise use of force.
Whether corporations end up owning the government or the government swallows up the corporations it pretty much ends the same way, one monolithic entity controlling all production. This has been tried several ways in the past (India Trading Company and British Colonies are a close example, the Soviet Union is another) and really hasn't worked out well in the long-term. Without competition the monolithic entity tends to become inefficient and either collapses or is overthrown. Of course too much competition can be a bad thing too (could lead to a total lack of rule, ie: anarchy) so, as in most things, striking a certain balance is the best solution.
In 1984, there was no distinction of the Corporation. That's not really surprising: in Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and more recently in countries like Venezuela, there has been no distinction between the Corporation and the State because the Corporation is, essentially, dissolved into the state.
I'm not saying that a corporation CAN'T be Big Brother, just that this situation definitely doesn't fit with the concept.
Unless, of course, you are amazingly paranoid and think that the government owns everything and everyone. Except you, of course. Wait, how do you know that you aren't a hidden tool of government too? Hmm, you'd better be careful around yourself...
*grin*
A corporation wants to make profits? *gasp* I've never heard of such a thing!
BTW, if you check out the submitter, snydeq, you can easily see that he is a mouthpiece for Infoworld, the corporation that is publishing the article in question. What sinister plans does Infoworld have for its latest push for profits?
Let's not over-characterize a company trying different ways to make profits as being "Big Brother". That term has a specific meaning related to the government, go read some George Orwell if you've forgotten exactly what it means. Yes, some companies may use slight-of-hand and other tricks to get more money out of you but it's far from being "Big Brother".
This is especially true when you spread your article out a few paragraphs at a time across 4 different pages. We know that trick, it's called padding your ad revenue with additional page views. Oooooh, who's the Big Brother corporation now Infoworld?
Wikipedia is an exercise in frustration. I made several edits to articles that were similar but missing something from each other. The edits were almost immediately undone, stating that the information was uncited. I then re-made those edits, noting the other Wikipedia article which had all the appropriate references. The edits were again undone, still saying that citation was necessary. I then went over several articles and noted numerous places where it was apparently just fine to cite another Wikipedia article that had valid citations. No dice there either, apparently that's ok if you are one of the favored editors but if you are out of luck if you are a new person trying to help out and maybe get into becoming a regular contributer.
In the end I threw up my hands and gave up on contributing to Wikipedia. It can continue to spin its web of lies, omissions, and half-truths. Some of the information is correct but a lot of it is slanted and misleading. The problem is that you have very little idea which is which. I mean, a lot of the citations are to web sites that themselves have no validation or citations. I could go out, create a bunch of official-sounding websites, use them to cite some "facts" in Wikipedia, and, if I was subtle enough, probably get away with it.
At least when you pay for reference material the buck stops somewhere and someone is directly responsible for the information which is presented. In Wikipedia you have to trust the hordes of mostly anonymous people who have their hands on the content. What sort of basis is that for solid information that you can use in a serious manner?
I'm not convinced that Wikipedia is anything but a pop reference guide in its current form. Either it needs to have a serious team of dedicated researchers validating articles or it needs to stick to its founding principles and be more open so at least you get in there and correct bad information. We have the worst of both worlds in Wikipedia's current state.
Another analysis of this from the LA Times:
A not-so-convincing case that high fructose corn syrup is worse for you than sugar
Have you ever tried making something this complex? It's not at all easy, the tolerances on a quality table are pretty tight and there are some complex cuts, measurements, and joins that need to be made. A professional carpenter can put a table like this together in a couple of weeks, it might take an amateur a couple or months or years. Not only that but an amateur will waste a lot of wood and probably end up with something that leans at a bit of an odd angle, is finished unevenly, and has to be re-glued and re-joined every few years.
I'm not saying that you NEED a professional to make a quality piece of furniture, just that a professional will be far more efficient at it and the final product is likely to be of much higher quality. This is one of the cases where, if you value your time properly, it might actually be less expensive to have a pro do it. Yes, if you are a hobbiest carpenter then your time building this is your leisure time so that doesn't matter as much. Just don't think you will save that much money by building it yourself. Put in some overtime at your job and buy the thing, you'll probably make out on the deal.
And notice it says 3 to 8% of the wholesale price, not retail. In this case, you can count on the wholesale price being 40% of the retail price. So 3 to 8% of 40% is not going to be the end of the hobby saw industry -- as you seem to imply.
That's only the price of the license. You then have to actually engineer and BUILD the device into your current designs. That most likely adds in a lot more than 3% to 8% of the wholesale price.
Judging from the price of the replacement parts for the SawStop saw ($169) I'm betting the cost of the device will add in somewhere around $100 to a tablesaw. Considering that you can get a decent tablesaw for anywhere from $200 to $1000 that's 50% to 10% additional cost to the tablesaw. It might be more or less than that but it's definitely appreciable.
Apple stops releasing security updates shortly after new releases
Actually Apple releases updates for the last version as well as the current version of Mac OS X and they've been known to release security updates for even earlier versions.
Also who the fuck was the moron at Apple who decided that using command-w was a good way to close windows and tabs?
Like most key commands it's a mnemonic device.
N - new document (or window, windows are generally documents in Mac OS)
T - tab (open a new tab in the window)
W - window (close window)
Q - quit (quit application)
A - all (select all)
C - copy (copy selection to the clipboard)
X - cut (like a pair of scissors, also next to C for cut)
V - paste (like an insertion carat in editing, also next to C for cut)
And so on.
Yes, some of these keyboard shortcuts are close to other ones. If that bothers you then just change the shortcut to something else.
I was referring to the fact that a GUI element on the edge (or corner) of a screen has, in effect, infinite size in the given dimension by virtue of the fact that the cursor cannot leave the screen, and thus, any overshot of the cursor in that direction will still leave the cursor over the GUI element.
I believe it's most commonly referenced as an implication of Fitts' Law
Except Fitts' Law doesn't work for window edges because you CAN overshoot a window corner. Fitt's Law only only applies to SCREEN edges where the mouse stops at the edge of the screen. The idea is that you can throw the mouse at the edge and no matter how much you try you can't overshoot the edge. It gives the pixels at the edge effectively infinite width (for a horizontal edge) or height (for a vertical edge).
It also ONLY works for the pixels at the absolute edge of the screen. If your button is separated from the edge of the screen by even one pixel then Fitt's Law doesn't apply because it's the non-clickable pixels that get the infinite size, not the button's pixels. Normally under Windows even maximized windows don't benefit from Fitt's Law. Of course, I believe that Microsoft might have fudged that here and there so that it benefits even when it normally shouldn't.
By the way, this is a big reason to have a single universal menu at the top of the screen rather than a menu at the top of each window, every menu item at the screen edge benefits from Fitt's Law. The other big reason to have a single menu is that you save screen real estate since each individual window doesn't need part of its display area taken up with a menu bar, instead every window can save that space and have their controls at the top of the screen in a standard, easily-accessible spot.
Spider isn't Microsoft's flagship product being sold to consumers. Spider is a (if I'm reading the article correctly) is to handle TCP/IP stacks, not run the entire core. You could remove Spider from Windows and it would still function (sans TCP/IP, but would in all effects still run.) Same can't be said for OSX and BSD/Mach Kernel. A part isn't comparable to a whole product
It's just one example, there are many parts of Windows that were developed elsewhere and then incorporated into the whole. Quite a bit of Windows has roots in BSD and other open-source projects and a lot of Windows contains commercial software that was bought and incorporated. If you some digging around you'll find many examples of this.
Apple is not alone in using 3rd party code in the core of their operating system.
In addition, the majority of Mac OS X does consist of code developed at Apple. Browse through the Darwin kernal (it's released under an open source license) and you can see for yourself just how much of it was written by Apple and not by a 3rd party. Pretty much the entire userland and GUI which runs on top of Darwin is also Apple-generated code.
In the case of Apple, I would hope to use their own 'lovely, mature' OS they wrote from scratch in 1984 to power their original machines, like Microsoft. Not drop all of their own work and use someone else's 17 years later. Think of the uproar if Microsoft did this.
Microsoft DOES also do this. Take a look at this article:
Now, some of Spider's code (possibly all of it) was based on the TCP/IP stack in the BSD flavors of Unix. These are open source, but distributed under the BSD license, not the GPL that Linux is released under. Whereas the GPL states that any software derived from GPL'ed software must also be released under the GPL, the BSD license basically says, "here's the source, you can do whatever you want, just give credit to the original author."
Eventually the new, from scratch TCP/IP stack was done and shipped with NT 3.5 (the second version, despite the number) in late 1994. The same stack was also included with Windows 95.
However, it looks like some of those Unix utilities were never rewritten. If you look at the executables, you can still see the copyright notice from the regents of the University of California (BSD is short for Berkeley Software Distrubution, Berkeley being a branch of the University of California, for some reason referred to as "Berkeley" on the East Coast and "California" on the West Coast...and "Berkeley" is one of those words that starts to look real funny if you stare at it too long - but I digress).
Keep in mind there is no reason to rewrite that code. If your ftp client works fine (no comments from the peanut gallery!) then why change it? Microsoft has other fish to fry. And the software was licensed perfectly legally, since the inclusion of the copyright notice satisfied the BSD license.
Microsoft doesn't advertise it but they have freely used BSD code in the past. They did NOT write all of their own code from scratch. In the end it really doesn't matter who wrote the code, so long as it's being used properly according to the license. The BSD code is released under and open license that allows you to do just about anything you want with it so there's very little trouble there.
Though as for Apple freely mentioning about it, show me a 'I'm a PC, I'm a Mac' that states it openly, and not in some of the more finer print like most company's do to 'publicly' hide information. Your one link is for developers (not a general public location), the other one looks like you have to know about BSD to learn about BSD.
Right on their What is Mac OS X page, a "general public location":
Mac OS X is the world's most advanced operating system. Built on a rock-solid UNIX foundation and designed to be simple and intuitive, it's what makes the Mac innovative, highly secure, compatible, and easy to use.
On that page they also link to this pdf which tells you just about everything you'd want to know about the technologies that go into Mac OS X, including BSD and Mach.
Of course Apple is not going to throw around terms like BSD and Mach in its commercials and such because those terms are meaningless to Joe Average. However, they do talk about them in their literature where the ordinary consumer can be more easily informed as to what those terms mean. Apple is by no means hiding the fact that they are building upon technology developed outside of Apple.
Apple used the Xerox technology and made it successful, and then started suing other companies for infringement. Xerox, as the legitimate inventor of the technology, tried to license it to other companies, and they all said, "You don't own that technology. Apple does." So, it was a dick move to take over intellectual property that they didn't develop.
At that point Apple had done considerable development on the concept of a GUI and had many innovations that were not part of the original Xerox intellectual property. It was those new developments that formed most of the basis for the lawsuit between Microsoft and Apple, and between HP and Apple. Perhaps Xerox was finding it difficult to license its IP to other companies because of Apple's bought and developed IP but they didn't make it an issue until they had a chance to cash in on the conflict between Microsoft and Apple by diverting an Apple win into their own coffers.
In the end, Xerox didn't have a case. They had to pursue the wrong case because of their deal with Apple and the fact that they allowed Apple to do so much development on Xerox's IP before they sued that there was almost no resemblance to the original.
Anyways, the original point of all of this was that Apple DID pay Xerox for their IP. It really doesn't matter that later on the involved companies fought for a bigger slice of the GUI pie. In the end they all failed and their original agreements held just as they were when they were made.
And if we were having this conversation about Microsoft, you wouldn't care either.
Keep up with those ad hominem attacks! You have no idea what I'd do if this involved Microsoft and, frankly, it's not pertinent to this discussion. It if makes you feel better then go ahead and keep trying to defame and attack me. I just think it's funny, attacking your opponent only serves to weaken the strength of your own argument.
That doesn't take into consideration that all of their devices run on a form of OSX ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osx [wikipedia.org] ) which is made from BSD (made by University of California, Berkeley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bsd [wikipedia.org] ) and Mach Kernal (made by Carnegie Mellon University http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_kernel [wikipedia.org] ). Just because it was freely available doesn't make it theirs. They stood on giants and made it appear if it was their own, only geeks know that OSX is a mostly a cut-n-paste job, the public thinks its unique programming on Apples part.
You mean the BSD whose license deliberately lets you do anything you want with the source code, including making it entirely into your own product? The BSD that Apple freely mentions in its own literature? At no point does Apple claim that BSD is theirs, they rightfully say that they developed Mac OS X and Darwin on top of BSD and Mach. To Apple's credit they have "payed it forward" by enhancing and releasing a lot of open source stuff to other developers.
Yeah, the average user is clueless as to what BSD and Mach are and that they form a basis for Mac OS X. The average user is clueless about a lot of stuff and it really doesn't matter at all. Truth to be told, there is a ton of "unique programming on Apple's part" in Mac OS X so the public wouldn't be too far off in believing that.