The iphone doesn't have hardware buttons. It sucks for most games as a result. Tactile feedback is a must for most games.
Actually, it doesn't suck and it's not a must when you are talking about games on the iPhone.
You need tactile feedback when you are looking at a screen and your hands are not in view. If you are playing on an Xbox, computer, or a similar device then tactile feedback is important because it's incredibly difficult to watch both the screen and your hands at the same time.
Playing a game on an iPhone is very different since your input device and the screen is the same object. You can easily see exactly where you are putting your fingers and still follow the game action. Not only that but since a lot of games involve tilting and moving the iPhone you do get tactile feedback, albeit a different kind of feedback from how a button would feel. Many games are also taking advantage of the vibrate feature of the iPhone to provide tactile feedback.
There are tons of cool, fun, and definitely viable games that thrive on the iPhone despite the lack of physical buttons. It's a completely different gaming experience and the old saw of tactile feedback being necessary for games just doesn't apply.
So what's the hack this time chaps? How do we get free wifi without an iphone
Well, simple browser-agent swapping didn't work for me. I tried it on Safari switched to identify as Safari on the iPhone and I didn't get the same login screen as my iPhone did. They might be using the MAC address of the iPhone to determine if it is an iPhone in the first place. I'll try setting my laptop MAC address to be the same as my iPhone and give that a chance the next time I'm at a Starbucks.
Of course this still means you need to know the phone number of an AT&T account and have access to the phone so you get the SMS with the validation link so no free wifi for all, just AT&T customers.
Mac OS X is a good choice if you are 100% hardware compatible and you have a decent amount of RAM, around 640 MB or more in my experience. If your hardware isn't 100% compatible then you tend to run into issues with the power management features and your battery life will suffer.
Yes, the usability of Mac OS X is high, even on unsupported hardware, but I wouldn't recommend it to someone using an old, brand-x laptop. For this sort of situation I'd probably go with Ubuntu or similar. Power management can also be a bit tricky under Linux but it has a better chance at dealing with random stuff thrown at it and it has gotten a lot better with battery life in its last few iterations.
the 300 or so divisions for the 29-year old mentioned in the article, a rate of around 1 per year
Of course I had to make a miscalculation somewhere in that post. 300 divisions over 29 years is actually around 10 per year. The point still stands that it's a tiny number compared to the rate at which bacteria divide.
A more accurate representation of the whole picture is that bacteria divide at the rate of 8640 times per year and a human male's sperm-generating cells divide at the rate of 10 times per year. This means that a bacterium will have 864 times the generations that a human sperm-generating cell will have over the same period of time. Figure that in with exponential growth and you get bacteria evolving at tremendous rates.
Bacteria, for example, reproduce at age 1 hour, say, and have no trouble evolving.
Bacteria also reproduce in an exponential fashion, given an adequate supply of food. In one day a single bacterium will turn into 2^24 bacteria for a total number of 16,777,215 divisions per day or 6,123,683,475 times per year. That's far more than the 300 or so divisions for the 29-year old mentioned in the article, a rate of around 1 per year. This means that a single bacterium mutates around 6 billion times faster than a human.
Yes, this is an extreme (and simplified) estimate but it does give you an idea of the difference in scale between bacterial evolution and human evolution. It has nothing to do with absolute time, it has to do with the overall number of cell divisions over time.
Bacteria are also very good at picking up genes from other bacteria in their environment, which is another way that they evolve. Bacteria also often live in environments with little protection from outside influences such as chemicals and radiation. Our bodies have fairly complex mechanisms to prevent and weed out mutations but bacteria mostly lack this ability.
These are just some of the reasons that bacteria generally evolve much faster than humans.
Something tells me that CNet needs to hire a professional headline writer. Which headline would get the point of the article across more easily?
Motorola seeks to hire up to 300 Google Android developers
Motorola hiring developers for Google's Android
The second one leaves almost no room for confusion. You can read it and get on to the article without a second look. That's the point of a headline, you want it to catch people's attention, have them easily read it, and then move on to the article. Confusion in a headline just draws attention away from the article.
You also want a headline to be concise. The amount of developers doesn't really need to be in the headline unless the amount IS the news. It'd be different if Motorola was hiring 11 billion developers, that large an amount is headline news. Hiring 300 developers is a significant amount but it's probably better to just leave the amount to the actual article.
The last thing is you want a headline to be as dynamic as possible. There is little difference between "seeks to hire" and "is hiring" but the later is much more dynamic and catches people's attention better. It is also more concise, which fits in with what I've said previously.
And automatic updates? A sure sign that security is not built into the device. If anything ought to be automatic is that only deliberate, user-initiated changes negatively affect the product.
The updates are definitely not automatic. In order to update you need to run iTunes and plug your iPhone into your computer. If there is an update then iTunes will then tell you there's an update and give you the option of ignoring it, downloading it, or downloading and installing it. The user is informed of what is going on at every step and if anything is going to be changed the user has an opportunity to cancel.
Basically it's exactly like you said, only deliberate, user-initiated changes affect the product. If there are negative effects they are either accidental (glitch in the transfer, software bug, etc) or they are a result of the user modifying the system in a way not anticipated by the Apple developers. Accidents happen and we all try to avoid them but when the user makes a serious, deliberate change in their device and an update hoses it then it's user's fault and they should understand enough not to blame the device manufacturer.
Hopefully there is a way to resurrect the device (which is what happened with most of the hacked iPhones) but it's possible the hacks permanently damaged the device. In that case that's the risk the user took in hacking their device.
You should take a breath or two before you resort to ad hominems, they never help to make your point.
They are exploits because they took advantage of bugs in the iPhone in order to change the operating system. The operating system is normally locked down against customization in this manner.
Yes, you are changing the device you own. I never said I thought it was wrong to do so. All I am saying is that it is an exploitation of a bug, nothing more.
You do know that words can have several different meanings, right? Maybe you should try to pick the meaning which best matches the context of my post: exploit - Jargon File
n. [originally cracker slang] 1. A vulnerability in software that can be used for breaking security or otherwise attacking an Internet host over the network.
They would certainly deserve it for willfully bricking unlocked iPhones the way they did, but this is the US were talking about.
The thing is that these phones were unlocked through exploits which placed the iPhones in a indeterminate state as far as updates went. It was a crapshoot whether or not an update would cause the phone to be unbootable. Everyone who unlocked their iPhone either understood this or didn't know enough about what they were doing and shouldn't have been doing it in the first place.
If you hack ANYTHING then you should have no expectations that it will continue to be stable across software updates. You've made the choice to modify your device, you live with the fact that you may have broken it irreversibly. Now in the case of the iPhones it turns out that almost all of them were NOT bricked, they just had to be coaxed back to the factory software and you were good to go. There's even NEW unlocking software that you can apply for the latest version of the operating system. Of course the same caveat still applies: hack your device and you might ruin it.
Also most tabbed Preference dialogs have no keyboard access to the tabs themselves
You mean like control-F7 which does just this? I've just tried it on a bunch of standard windows with tabs, such as many of the preference dialogs in System Preferences and it works just fine for me.
You can keep on trying to come up with exceptions and I'm sure you'll eventually find SOMETHING but the point is that there is pretty damn good Universal Access in Mac OS X. I'm sure there are some non-standard applications out there which are broken and don't properly support people with disabilities but it's not for lack of Apple providing the tools to developers. The fact is most Apple developers are very good at creating applications which adhere to Apple's UI and programming guidelines which means most applications will work just fine with Apple's assistive technologies.
Lets face it, you have an axe to grind against Apple and you'll continue to nitpick to try to show them up. Your name here on Slashdot says it all, I would say that you're acting just as childish as the "whiny mac fanboys" that you mock. Apple is not perfect and there's quite a few things that I'm not happy with but they DO get a lot of stuff right. Support for people disabilities is one of them.
Notice that while the page you link to gives the impression that the OS is keyboard navigable, the above statement refers to navigating through a document, not all Operating System features.
You can navigate through all operating system features, not just documents. All I have to do is hit control-F2, for example, to control the main menu with the keyboard. This sort of thing exists for all UI elements, all you have to do is read the appropriate documentation and it spells it out very nicely and in a fairly logical manner.
Oh and if you have a menu open in this fashion you can just start typing the name of the menu item and it will select it. If there are two menu items with similar names just type another letter or two, it will select the first menu item it finds with those characters. It actually works pretty well.
Windows has always had superior accessibility because it was designed to support full keyboard navigation from its inception. It's impossible to create an application using standard controls that doesn't support the keyboard. Why Apple didn't make their OS work right in this regard with the move to OSX escapes me to this day.
Full Keyboard Navigation In Mac OS X, you can use the keyboard to navigate through a document. The Tab key lets you navigate to lists, text boxes, and other controls, and the space bar and Return key let you interact with them.
Keyboard Shortcuts Using keyboard shortcuts (or key combinations), you can quickly perform a wide range of tasks. In addition to the large number of predefined keyboard shortcuts included with Mac OS X, the Mac lets you customize existing shortcuts, create your own, or remove shortcuts you don't use. Shortcuts can be systemwide or made to work only in specific applications. Use the Keyboard Shortcuts tab in the Keyboard & Mouse pane of System Preferences to add or modify shortcuts.
Slow Keys If you have motor-skills disabilities, you can use Slow Keys to avoid typing errors and unintended multiple keystrokes.
Adjustable Key Repeat and Delay If you want to change the Key Repeat or Delay Until Repeat rate to suit your needs, you can do so using the Keyboard & Mouse settings in System Preferences. Used in conjunction with Slow Keys, these settings let you adapt the keyboard to match your abilities and use it more effectively.
Sticky Keys Using Sticky Keys, you can enter key combinations (called "chords") -- such as Command-Q (for Quit) or Shift-Option-8 (to enter the symbol) -- by pressing them in sequence instead of simultaneously.
When Sticky Keys is active, Mac OS X visually displays each key in the sequence in the upper-right corner of the screen, accompanied by a sound effect, so you can verify the sequence and correct it (if needed) before it's entered. When you press the last key in the sequence, Mac OS X enters the keys as a chord and the visual representation disappears.
Mouse Keys If you have difficulty controlling the mouse, you can use Mouse Keys to control the mouse pointer using the keys on a numeric keypad. With Mouse Keys, you can navigate menus, the Dock, windows, toolbars, palettes, and other controls by pressing keys.
In my case, Apple wants to charge $7.20 to upgrade two albums ($3.00 each) and four songs ($0.30 each) in my collection, ALL of which are available as iTunes Plus tracks at the same price as they were originally in their lower-quality, DRM'd form.
Write to them, maybe the store is charging you by mistake. I've bought a bunch of stuff from the iTunes store and occasionally there are mistakes made but I've had them quickly cleared up when I contacted Apple.
And who will oversee the overseers? And how can the agencies be independent when they are being "overseen"?
you cannot totally rely on any single agency for anything. That's why you have indepenedent groups do indepenedent tests. Except, if they are all "overseen" by the same overseer, they are not independent. In fact, there is in effect only one agency.
That's why we have agencies like NIST, ASTM, SAE, UL, and others. They are independent, monitored by government agencies, and composed of a wide variety of groups so that they can't be easily subverted by any one group. It is these groups that certify laboratories and test procedures and ensure that testing is done in a rigorous and scientific fashion. Yes, you can't have 100% certainty that an agency is completely immune to influence but you can take reasonable steps to safeguard against it.
Oh and by the way, where did I say anything about a single agency or oversight group? The best would be several independent evaluations and oversights. Again, it's up to the consumer to judge the proper level of validation to which they feel comfortable about a product. To some people all it takes is a smiling face in a TV commercial, to others it will be many years of intense scrutiny. Personally, I tend toward the latter.
Did you try copying your DRM licence on to the other computer?
I've never had a problem using Apple's FairPlay but you can't just copy your license to another computer. You have up to 5 licenses available and you can de-authorize computers to free up licenses. In the case that you can't use the computer to de-authorize it you can just call Apple and have them reset it manually for you.
It's very easy and it mostly just gets out of your way but it is DRM no matter which way you slice it. That's why I'm glad Apple is pushing to remove it as a requirement for selling the music companies music.
You have to pay the price difference (which was 30 cents USD/CAD last time I checked).
It's true that if there is a price difference you'll pay the difference. However, most songs are offered at the same price now so in most cases it is a free download.
I don't see iTunes and FairPlay going anywhere anytime soon. Hell, even after their spat earlier in the year when NBC moved to Amazon after Apple said no to their pricing scheme is now back on iTunes. But then again, I've said Apple got it right years ago. Offers some kind of production the media companies want, yet once I download it, I am free do whatever I want, like burning to CD's, installing and playing on a number of PC's/MP3 players, etc. without a lot of hassles. In the end, consumers don't mind DRM so long as it is reasonable.
True but that being said, I'm glad that Apple is pushing the music companies for DRM-free music. iTunes Plus is a great thing, you get higher quality, DRM-free music for about the same price as the lower quality, DRM music. Apple even has a way for you to convert your old music to iTunes Plus so you don't have to worry about the old DRM stuff.
Now if they can only get all of the music companies on board so all of my songs could be DRM-free then I'd truly be happy. Until then I'll buy DRM-free stuff from iTunes and buy and rip CDs for the rest. Then again maybe I'll just altogether skip the companies that don't support iTunes Plus in the first place...
So we have to do extensive scientific testing on every two-bit invention and patent that comes along? I have to do testing before I can claim that the dozens of air intake fans don't help efficiency? That the "just keep the jar full of water and the car will run off of the H and O produced by electrolysis" is a scam?
Nope, all we have to do is demand that the group making the claims has done the proper, independent, and scientific testing before we buy it. If they want to sell a product then they have to do the legwork and spend the cash to prove their product claims are valid. Once they have done the testing and have made it available it is up to the consumer to look at the testing and judge for themselves if they trust the results. If, after all that, the person decides that the claims are valid then it's caveat emptor.
By the way, this does mean that there should be oversight of the certifying agencies that do the independent testing. After all, information is only as good as the methods with which it is produced. If we can't rely on standardized testing methods and agencies to perform the testing then the whole exercise is moot.
I find it hard to believe that they either -discovered a new kind of EM field -can create a field strong enough to polarize hydrocarbons without interfering with the operation of the vehicle or any other electronic device withing 1/4 mile
You might want to know that molecules are incredibly tiny things and can be affected by relatively small forces. You might also want to know that it is possible to focus an electromagnetic field fairly tightly and that it wouldn't take much to polarize hydrocarbons temporarily in a small area without much detectible energy even a few feet away. Now I'm not saying this device works, I haven't seen any evidence either way, but I can't just dismiss it out of hand simply because the claims are impressive. Once I see some independent testing then I'll be able to make a decision about this device.
I think you mean assign a charge to a molecule through fields - they're still considered to be non-polar molecules even if they pick up a charge or a charged adduct..
Actually you can induce non-polar molecules to become polar. That's most of the basis behind London forces. Again the question becomes does the effect last long enough to make a difference in droplet size.
This device could also be assigning charges by introducing or removing charged particles and there are also other possible effects such as inductive heating, thus reducing the viscosity and decreasing droplet size
We can spitball all we want about whether or not the device works but really we don't have enough information to say anything substantive either way. This is why all claims must be thoroughly tested in a independent scientific manner. Once that is done and we have the results in our hot little hands THEN we can debate over whether or not the device is worth having.
Now, we have this thing. I'm no physicist, at least one with a college degree, but I see one really big problem with this method. A bottleneck. Specifically, an injector. This is the exact same problem that is inherent in the design of the "Tornado"®. Sure, it'll spin the air into a neato vortex, but that vortex goes to hell (in a handbasket) once it tries to maneuver through the intake manifold, and you're right back to laminar flow. Well, it looked good on paper (and TV).
Well I'm a chemist and I have the degree to prove it. You are right and you are wrong. Just because the fluid moves past the point of disturbance doesn't mean that it automatically and immediately becomes laminar. There will be a period of time before the flow settles back down. The question becomes, is this "settling" time long enough for the fluid to make it past the injector and affect the droplet size? Well that's the million-dollar question and you can't say for sure until it is tested through experimentation.
In this case it IS possible to form polar molecules and ions through the use of magnetism and electric fields. It will also take a period of time before these changes will be reversed. The questions are will these changes affect droplet size and can the magnitude of these changes be great enough by the time the fluid makes it past the injector. Those, again, are the million-dollar questions. The only thing which will answer these questions is thorough testing. Unless you have personally done scientifically valid testing on these claims you can't say for sure one way or the other whether this device will work.
Yes, in the past there have been a lot of "snake oil" devices but that doesn't mean that every device is a scam. The possibility exists that some might actually make a difference. We just have to rely on validatable testing so we can decide what is a scam and what will work.
what about other sources of mangentic interference (say the motor of an electric vehicle, etc.)?
This is no different than the head of a hard drive traveling over the disk surface. The magnets can be in a coded pattern that is encrypted a certain way that would be robust enough to overcome possible interference, whether accidental or intentional.
Yes, there are always risks of sabotage or an accident but this is no different than the risks of our current roadways. What's to stop someone from spreading caltrops across the road and causing a massive accident? How about the accidental interference of an oil spill or a bridge support giving way?
As with everything, you try to build redundancy and robustness into the system and limit the risks. Just because a system has the possibility of failing doesn't mean the idea is worthless.
What I don't get is why geeks would want someone as US President whose main focus will be to increase the role of government and tax the people who work hard. It seems to me that successful, hard-working professionals would rather have someone who will focus on less government and lower taxes rather than more government.
I mean lets look at McCain vs Obama on Taxes. McCain wants to keep taxes low across the board and cut federal spending. Obama wants to cut taxes for people earning less than $75k a year and increase taxes for those earning more than $250k a year and he says he will increase federal spending.
We already know that the government is terrible at managing money, why would we vote for anyone who wants the government to have MORE control over money? The candidate that is committed to REDUCING the US government is the one that I'll be voting for and that sure as hell isn't Barack Obama.
To those people who say "well what about the poor and unfortunate"? How about we, as a society, get off our butts and help our fellow man directly? I work at a non-profit agency that provides services to a poverty-stricken inner-city and I can tell you from experience that direct volunteers and assistance are FAR more effective than government intervention. The government is lazy, riddled with too many layers of bureaucracy, wasteful, slow, and ineffective. The organizations that do the best are the ones which get direct assistance from individual volunteers and corporate assistance. One of the main reasons we have so many problems with poverty is the fact that we want to government to solve all our problems.
The mindset of "let the government tax the successful and help the unfortunate" is the wrong idea. It squanders resources by passing them through multiple layers of bureaucracy and it encourages people gaming the system to their advantage. The problems of society will only be helped when more members of society take it upon themselves to directly help those around them. Passing this responsibility off to the government does nothing but further rot our already fragile country.
I'm sorry. There's a reason you failed. You called it Gleemax. Now, the internet is full of stupidly named stuff - a side-effect of trademark law, particularly in the American Corporate Reich, sorry "USA" - but gleemax is really dumb.
They actually wanted to call it Gleemonex but that was already taken.
"Gleemonex makes you feel like it's 72 degrees in your head...all the time!"
Regardless, it's been shown that Obama's tax cut plans would help the lower income brackets more than McCain's, and tax the rich more. This is obviously what a tax system is supposed to do.
Silly me, I thought the tax system was supposed to pay for the costs of running the government. You're saying that the tax system is supposed to punish the people who use their hard work, skills, and ingenuity to make more money? Since when did Robin Hood write the tax code?
I'm all in favor of a few deductions for necessities (food, clothing, housing, etc.) but past that everyone should be taxed the same. Ultimately the best tax system would be some form of a use tax where you pay for your share of the services that you use, with some extra to cover a modicum of common services that can't be pinned on any one group of citizens. That will never fly so I'd settle for a flat percentage of income after necessities are deducted.
Now I agree that part of society is that we do what we can to help those who are in need and some of our taxes should go towards that but we've gone way off the deep end. I work for an agency that provides services to the inner city and the vast majority of the people who use those services could easily do some meaningful work and improve their lot but they don't because they are given everything they need to live. In their minds they'd rather do almost no work and barely scrape by on social services than do an honest days work and get themselves out of poverty. They can do this because no one is properly held accountable for the money that is handed out.
What we need to do is to wean people off of handouts. Get them training if they need it, provide some limited assistance until they can get on their own two feet and then cut them off. Instead what we have is an institution where the masses demand free services and, because we live in a "democracy" (actually representative republic but not many understand the distinction) the politicians will give those masses whatever it takes to make the masses vote for them. This works great until it pushes the people who actually do work and earn more money to do something drastic, such as leaving the country. Then we all stand around and wonder why our economy is tanking - we drove away the people who had the money and who were providing jobs and spending that money in the United States.
Yes, it seems unfair that some people have more than others. The thing is that you can't legislate the distribution of wealth unless you want to follow the precepts of Karl Marx. Even then look at some of the nations that have embraced that philosophy:
The Soviet Union - collapsed under the weight of its failed economy where the disparity between the haves and the have-nots was every extreme.
China - despite claims that everyone is equal in that nation it is plain to see that there is a large gap between the common person and the elite.
The fact is that our current policies are backfiring on us. We have massive debt because of many things but one huge source is social services. We are falling down on education because we are encouraging generations of families that don't need to achieve in order to survive. Our health as a nation is poor because the bare necessities that our government has the money to pay for is barely enough to keep people off rock bottom. The answer is not to tax the high-earners more, it is to stop shifting the blame to them and instead to get off our lazy butts and make our own way in life.
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The iphone doesn't have hardware buttons.
It sucks for most games as a result.
Tactile feedback is a must for most games.
Actually, it doesn't suck and it's not a must when you are talking about games on the iPhone.
You need tactile feedback when you are looking at a screen and your hands are not in view. If you are playing on an Xbox, computer, or a similar device then tactile feedback is important because it's incredibly difficult to watch both the screen and your hands at the same time.
Playing a game on an iPhone is very different since your input device and the screen is the same object. You can easily see exactly where you are putting your fingers and still follow the game action. Not only that but since a lot of games involve tilting and moving the iPhone you do get tactile feedback, albeit a different kind of feedback from how a button would feel. Many games are also taking advantage of the vibrate feature of the iPhone to provide tactile feedback.
There are tons of cool, fun, and definitely viable games that thrive on the iPhone despite the lack of physical buttons. It's a completely different gaming experience and the old saw of tactile feedback being necessary for games just doesn't apply.
So what's the hack this time chaps? How do we get free wifi without an iphone
Well, simple browser-agent swapping didn't work for me. I tried it on Safari switched to identify as Safari on the iPhone and I didn't get the same login screen as my iPhone did. They might be using the MAC address of the iPhone to determine if it is an iPhone in the first place. I'll try setting my laptop MAC address to be the same as my iPhone and give that a chance the next time I'm at a Starbucks.
Of course this still means you need to know the phone number of an AT&T account and have access to the phone so you get the SMS with the validation link so no free wifi for all, just AT&T customers.
I wonder why nobody suggested OS-X so far
Mac OS X is a good choice if you are 100% hardware compatible and you have a decent amount of RAM, around 640 MB or more in my experience. If your hardware isn't 100% compatible then you tend to run into issues with the power management features and your battery life will suffer.
Yes, the usability of Mac OS X is high, even on unsupported hardware, but I wouldn't recommend it to someone using an old, brand-x laptop. For this sort of situation I'd probably go with Ubuntu or similar. Power management can also be a bit tricky under Linux but it has a better chance at dealing with random stuff thrown at it and it has gotten a lot better with battery life in its last few iterations.
the 300 or so divisions for the 29-year old mentioned in the article, a rate of around 1 per year
Of course I had to make a miscalculation somewhere in that post. 300 divisions over 29 years is actually around 10 per year. The point still stands that it's a tiny number compared to the rate at which bacteria divide.
A more accurate representation of the whole picture is that bacteria divide at the rate of 8640 times per year and a human male's sperm-generating cells divide at the rate of 10 times per year. This means that a bacterium will have 864 times the generations that a human sperm-generating cell will have over the same period of time. Figure that in with exponential growth and you get bacteria evolving at tremendous rates.
Bacteria, for example, reproduce at age 1 hour, say, and have no trouble evolving.
Bacteria also reproduce in an exponential fashion, given an adequate supply of food. In one day a single bacterium will turn into 2^24 bacteria for a total number of 16,777,215 divisions per day or 6,123,683,475 times per year. That's far more than the 300 or so divisions for the 29-year old mentioned in the article, a rate of around 1 per year. This means that a single bacterium mutates around 6 billion times faster than a human.
Yes, this is an extreme (and simplified) estimate but it does give you an idea of the difference in scale between bacterial evolution and human evolution. It has nothing to do with absolute time, it has to do with the overall number of cell divisions over time.
Bacteria are also very good at picking up genes from other bacteria in their environment, which is another way that they evolve. Bacteria also often live in environments with little protection from outside influences such as chemicals and radiation. Our bodies have fairly complex mechanisms to prevent and weed out mutations but bacteria mostly lack this ability.
These are just some of the reasons that bacteria generally evolve much faster than humans.
Something tells me that CNet needs to hire a professional headline writer. Which headline would get the point of the article across more easily?
The second one leaves almost no room for confusion. You can read it and get on to the article without a second look. That's the point of a headline, you want it to catch people's attention, have them easily read it, and then move on to the article. Confusion in a headline just draws attention away from the article.
You also want a headline to be concise. The amount of developers doesn't really need to be in the headline unless the amount IS the news. It'd be different if Motorola was hiring 11 billion developers, that large an amount is headline news. Hiring 300 developers is a significant amount but it's probably better to just leave the amount to the actual article.
The last thing is you want a headline to be as dynamic as possible. There is little difference between "seeks to hire" and "is hiring" but the later is much more dynamic and catches people's attention better. It is also more concise, which fits in with what I've said previously.
And automatic updates? A sure sign that security is not built into the device. If anything ought to be automatic is that only deliberate, user-initiated changes negatively affect the product.
The updates are definitely not automatic. In order to update you need to run iTunes and plug your iPhone into your computer. If there is an update then iTunes will then tell you there's an update and give you the option of ignoring it, downloading it, or downloading and installing it. The user is informed of what is going on at every step and if anything is going to be changed the user has an opportunity to cancel.
Basically it's exactly like you said, only deliberate, user-initiated changes affect the product. If there are negative effects they are either accidental (glitch in the transfer, software bug, etc) or they are a result of the user modifying the system in a way not anticipated by the Apple developers. Accidents happen and we all try to avoid them but when the user makes a serious, deliberate change in their device and an update hoses it then it's user's fault and they should understand enough not to blame the device manufacturer.
Hopefully there is a way to resurrect the device (which is what happened with most of the hacked iPhones) but it's possible the hacks permanently damaged the device. In that case that's the risk the user took in hacking their device.
You should take a breath or two before you resort to ad hominems, they never help to make your point.
They are exploits because they took advantage of bugs in the iPhone in order to change the operating system. The operating system is normally locked down against customization in this manner.
Yes, you are changing the device you own. I never said I thought it was wrong to do so. All I am saying is that it is an exploitation of a bug, nothing more.
You do know that words can have several different meanings, right? Maybe you should try to pick the meaning which best matches the context of my post:
exploit - Jargon File
n. [originally cracker slang]
1. A vulnerability in software that can be used for breaking security or otherwise attacking an Internet host over the network.
They would certainly deserve it for willfully bricking unlocked iPhones the way they did, but this is the US were talking about.
The thing is that these phones were unlocked through exploits which placed the iPhones in a indeterminate state as far as updates went. It was a crapshoot whether or not an update would cause the phone to be unbootable. Everyone who unlocked their iPhone either understood this or didn't know enough about what they were doing and shouldn't have been doing it in the first place.
If you hack ANYTHING then you should have no expectations that it will continue to be stable across software updates. You've made the choice to modify your device, you live with the fact that you may have broken it irreversibly. Now in the case of the iPhones it turns out that almost all of them were NOT bricked, they just had to be coaxed back to the factory software and you were good to go. There's even NEW unlocking software that you can apply for the latest version of the operating system. Of course the same caveat still applies: hack your device and you might ruin it.
Wernstrom: "Ladies and gentlemen, my Killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Also most tabbed Preference dialogs have no keyboard access to the tabs themselves
You mean like control-F7 which does just this? I've just tried it on a bunch of standard windows with tabs, such as many of the preference dialogs in System Preferences and it works just fine for me.
You can keep on trying to come up with exceptions and I'm sure you'll eventually find SOMETHING but the point is that there is pretty damn good Universal Access in Mac OS X. I'm sure there are some non-standard applications out there which are broken and don't properly support people with disabilities but it's not for lack of Apple providing the tools to developers. The fact is most Apple developers are very good at creating applications which adhere to Apple's UI and programming guidelines which means most applications will work just fine with Apple's assistive technologies.
Lets face it, you have an axe to grind against Apple and you'll continue to nitpick to try to show them up. Your name here on Slashdot says it all, I would say that you're acting just as childish as the "whiny mac fanboys" that you mock. Apple is not perfect and there's quite a few things that I'm not happy with but they DO get a lot of stuff right. Support for people disabilities is one of them.
Notice that while the page you link to gives the impression that the OS is keyboard navigable, the above statement refers to navigating through a document, not all Operating System features.
You can navigate through all operating system features, not just documents. All I have to do is hit control-F2, for example, to control the main menu with the keyboard. This sort of thing exists for all UI elements, all you have to do is read the appropriate documentation and it spells it out very nicely and in a fairly logical manner.
Oh and if you have a menu open in this fashion you can just start typing the name of the menu item and it will select it. If there are two menu items with similar names just type another letter or two, it will select the first menu item it finds with those characters. It actually works pretty well.
Windows has always had superior accessibility because it was designed to support full keyboard navigation from its inception. It's impossible to create an application using standard controls that doesn't support the keyboard. Why Apple didn't make their OS work right in this regard with the move to OSX escapes me to this day.
You mean like this:
Full Keyboard Navigation
In Mac OS X, you can use the keyboard to navigate through a document. The Tab key lets you navigate to lists, text boxes, and other controls, and the space bar and Return key let you interact with them.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Using keyboard shortcuts (or key combinations), you can quickly perform a wide range of tasks. In addition to the large number of predefined keyboard shortcuts included with Mac OS X, the Mac lets you customize existing shortcuts, create your own, or remove shortcuts you don't use. Shortcuts can be systemwide or made to work only in specific applications. Use the Keyboard Shortcuts tab in the Keyboard & Mouse pane of System Preferences to add or modify shortcuts.
Slow Keys
If you have motor-skills disabilities, you can use Slow Keys to avoid typing errors and unintended multiple keystrokes.
Adjustable Key Repeat and Delay
If you want to change the Key Repeat or Delay Until Repeat rate to suit your needs, you can do so using the Keyboard & Mouse settings in System Preferences. Used in conjunction with Slow Keys, these settings let you adapt the keyboard to match your abilities and use it more effectively.
Sticky Keys
Using Sticky Keys, you can enter key combinations (called "chords") -- such as Command-Q (for Quit) or Shift-Option-8 (to enter the symbol) -- by pressing them in sequence instead of simultaneously.
When Sticky Keys is active, Mac OS X visually displays each key in the sequence in the upper-right corner of the screen, accompanied by a sound effect, so you can verify the sequence and correct it (if needed) before it's entered. When you press the last key in the sequence, Mac OS X enters the keys as a chord and the visual representation disappears.
Mouse Keys
If you have difficulty controlling the mouse, you can use Mouse Keys to control the mouse pointer using the keys on a numeric keypad. With Mouse Keys, you can navigate menus, the Dock, windows, toolbars, palettes, and other controls by pressing keys.
In my case, Apple wants to charge $7.20 to upgrade two albums ($3.00 each) and four songs ($0.30 each) in my collection, ALL of which are available as iTunes Plus tracks at the same price as they were originally in their lower-quality, DRM'd form.
Write to them, maybe the store is charging you by mistake. I've bought a bunch of stuff from the iTunes store and occasionally there are mistakes made but I've had them quickly cleared up when I contacted Apple.
And who will oversee the overseers? And how can the agencies be independent when they are being "overseen"?
you cannot totally rely on any single agency for anything. That's why you have indepenedent groups do indepenedent tests. Except, if they are all "overseen" by the same overseer, they are not independent. In fact, there is in effect only one agency.
That's why we have agencies like NIST, ASTM, SAE, UL, and others. They are independent, monitored by government agencies, and composed of a wide variety of groups so that they can't be easily subverted by any one group. It is these groups that certify laboratories and test procedures and ensure that testing is done in a rigorous and scientific fashion. Yes, you can't have 100% certainty that an agency is completely immune to influence but you can take reasonable steps to safeguard against it.
Oh and by the way, where did I say anything about a single agency or oversight group? The best would be several independent evaluations and oversights. Again, it's up to the consumer to judge the proper level of validation to which they feel comfortable about a product. To some people all it takes is a smiling face in a TV commercial, to others it will be many years of intense scrutiny. Personally, I tend toward the latter.
Did you try copying your DRM licence on to the other computer?
I've never had a problem using Apple's FairPlay but you can't just copy your license to another computer. You have up to 5 licenses available and you can de-authorize computers to free up licenses. In the case that you can't use the computer to de-authorize it you can just call Apple and have them reset it manually for you.
It's very easy and it mostly just gets out of your way but it is DRM no matter which way you slice it. That's why I'm glad Apple is pushing to remove it as a requirement for selling the music companies music.
You have to pay the price difference (which was 30 cents USD/CAD last time I checked).
It's true that if there is a price difference you'll pay the difference. However, most songs are offered at the same price now so in most cases it is a free download.
I don't see iTunes and FairPlay going anywhere anytime soon. Hell, even after their spat earlier in the year when NBC moved to Amazon after Apple said no to their pricing scheme is now back on iTunes. But then again, I've said Apple got it right years ago. Offers some kind of production the media companies want, yet once I download it, I am free do whatever I want, like burning to CD's, installing and playing on a number of PC's/MP3 players, etc. without a lot of hassles. In the end, consumers don't mind DRM so long as it is reasonable.
True but that being said, I'm glad that Apple is pushing the music companies for DRM-free music. iTunes Plus is a great thing, you get higher quality, DRM-free music for about the same price as the lower quality, DRM music. Apple even has a way for you to convert your old music to iTunes Plus so you don't have to worry about the old DRM stuff.
Now if they can only get all of the music companies on board so all of my songs could be DRM-free then I'd truly be happy. Until then I'll buy DRM-free stuff from iTunes and buy and rip CDs for the rest. Then again maybe I'll just altogether skip the companies that don't support iTunes Plus in the first place...
So we have to do extensive scientific testing on every two-bit invention and patent that comes along? I have to do testing before I can claim that the dozens of air intake fans don't help efficiency? That the "just keep the jar full of water and the car will run off of the H and O produced by electrolysis" is a scam?
Nope, all we have to do is demand that the group making the claims has done the proper, independent, and scientific testing before we buy it. If they want to sell a product then they have to do the legwork and spend the cash to prove their product claims are valid. Once they have done the testing and have made it available it is up to the consumer to look at the testing and judge for themselves if they trust the results. If, after all that, the person decides that the claims are valid then it's caveat emptor.
By the way, this does mean that there should be oversight of the certifying agencies that do the independent testing. After all, information is only as good as the methods with which it is produced. If we can't rely on standardized testing methods and agencies to perform the testing then the whole exercise is moot.
I find it hard to believe that they either
-discovered a new kind of EM field
-can create a field strong enough to polarize hydrocarbons without interfering with the operation of the vehicle or any other electronic device withing 1/4 mile
You might want to know that molecules are incredibly tiny things and can be affected by relatively small forces. You might also want to know that it is possible to focus an electromagnetic field fairly tightly and that it wouldn't take much to polarize hydrocarbons temporarily in a small area without much detectible energy even a few feet away. Now I'm not saying this device works, I haven't seen any evidence either way, but I can't just dismiss it out of hand simply because the claims are impressive. Once I see some independent testing then I'll be able to make a decision about this device.
I think you mean assign a charge to a molecule through fields - they're still considered to be non-polar molecules even if they pick up a charge or a charged adduct..
Actually you can induce non-polar molecules to become polar. That's most of the basis behind London forces. Again the question becomes does the effect last long enough to make a difference in droplet size.
This device could also be assigning charges by introducing or removing charged particles and there are also other possible effects such as inductive heating, thus reducing the viscosity and decreasing droplet size
We can spitball all we want about whether or not the device works but really we don't have enough information to say anything substantive either way. This is why all claims must be thoroughly tested in a independent scientific manner. Once that is done and we have the results in our hot little hands THEN we can debate over whether or not the device is worth having.
Now, we have this thing. I'm no physicist, at least one with a college degree, but I see one really big problem with this method. A bottleneck. Specifically, an injector. This is the exact same problem that is inherent in the design of the "Tornado"®. Sure, it'll spin the air into a neato vortex, but that vortex goes to hell (in a handbasket) once it tries to maneuver through the intake manifold, and you're right back to laminar flow. Well, it looked good on paper (and TV).
Well I'm a chemist and I have the degree to prove it. You are right and you are wrong. Just because the fluid moves past the point of disturbance doesn't mean that it automatically and immediately becomes laminar. There will be a period of time before the flow settles back down. The question becomes, is this "settling" time long enough for the fluid to make it past the injector and affect the droplet size? Well that's the million-dollar question and you can't say for sure until it is tested through experimentation.
In this case it IS possible to form polar molecules and ions through the use of magnetism and electric fields. It will also take a period of time before these changes will be reversed. The questions are will these changes affect droplet size and can the magnitude of these changes be great enough by the time the fluid makes it past the injector. Those, again, are the million-dollar questions. The only thing which will answer these questions is thorough testing. Unless you have personally done scientifically valid testing on these claims you can't say for sure one way or the other whether this device will work.
Yes, in the past there have been a lot of "snake oil" devices but that doesn't mean that every device is a scam. The possibility exists that some might actually make a difference. We just have to rely on validatable testing so we can decide what is a scam and what will work.
what about other sources of mangentic interference (say the motor of an electric vehicle, etc.)?
This is no different than the head of a hard drive traveling over the disk surface. The magnets can be in a coded pattern that is encrypted a certain way that would be robust enough to overcome possible interference, whether accidental or intentional.
Yes, there are always risks of sabotage or an accident but this is no different than the risks of our current roadways. What's to stop someone from spreading caltrops across the road and causing a massive accident? How about the accidental interference of an oil spill or a bridge support giving way?
As with everything, you try to build redundancy and robustness into the system and limit the risks. Just because a system has the possibility of failing doesn't mean the idea is worthless.
What I don't get is why geeks would want someone as US President whose main focus will be to increase the role of government and tax the people who work hard. It seems to me that successful, hard-working professionals would rather have someone who will focus on less government and lower taxes rather than more government.
I mean lets look at McCain vs Obama on Taxes. McCain wants to keep taxes low across the board and cut federal spending. Obama wants to cut taxes for people earning less than $75k a year and increase taxes for those earning more than $250k a year and he says he will increase federal spending.
We already know that the government is terrible at managing money, why would we vote for anyone who wants the government to have MORE control over money? The candidate that is committed to REDUCING the US government is the one that I'll be voting for and that sure as hell isn't Barack Obama.
To those people who say "well what about the poor and unfortunate"? How about we, as a society, get off our butts and help our fellow man directly? I work at a non-profit agency that provides services to a poverty-stricken inner-city and I can tell you from experience that direct volunteers and assistance are FAR more effective than government intervention. The government is lazy, riddled with too many layers of bureaucracy, wasteful, slow, and ineffective. The organizations that do the best are the ones which get direct assistance from individual volunteers and corporate assistance. One of the main reasons we have so many problems with poverty is the fact that we want to government to solve all our problems.
The mindset of "let the government tax the successful and help the unfortunate" is the wrong idea. It squanders resources by passing them through multiple layers of bureaucracy and it encourages people gaming the system to their advantage. The problems of society will only be helped when more members of society take it upon themselves to directly help those around them. Passing this responsibility off to the government does nothing but further rot our already fragile country.
I'm sorry. There's a reason you failed. You called it Gleemax.
Now, the internet is full of stupidly named stuff - a side-effect of trademark law, particularly in the American Corporate Reich, sorry "USA" - but gleemax is really dumb.
They actually wanted to call it Gleemonex but that was already taken.
"Gleemonex makes you feel like it's 72 degrees in your head...all the time!"
Regardless, it's been shown that Obama's tax cut plans would help the lower income brackets more than McCain's, and tax the rich more. This is obviously what a tax system is supposed to do.
Silly me, I thought the tax system was supposed to pay for the costs of running the government. You're saying that the tax system is supposed to punish the people who use their hard work, skills, and ingenuity to make more money? Since when did Robin Hood write the tax code?
I'm all in favor of a few deductions for necessities (food, clothing, housing, etc.) but past that everyone should be taxed the same. Ultimately the best tax system would be some form of a use tax where you pay for your share of the services that you use, with some extra to cover a modicum of common services that can't be pinned on any one group of citizens. That will never fly so I'd settle for a flat percentage of income after necessities are deducted.
Now I agree that part of society is that we do what we can to help those who are in need and some of our taxes should go towards that but we've gone way off the deep end. I work for an agency that provides services to the inner city and the vast majority of the people who use those services could easily do some meaningful work and improve their lot but they don't because they are given everything they need to live. In their minds they'd rather do almost no work and barely scrape by on social services than do an honest days work and get themselves out of poverty. They can do this because no one is properly held accountable for the money that is handed out.
What we need to do is to wean people off of handouts. Get them training if they need it, provide some limited assistance until they can get on their own two feet and then cut them off. Instead what we have is an institution where the masses demand free services and, because we live in a "democracy" (actually representative republic but not many understand the distinction) the politicians will give those masses whatever it takes to make the masses vote for them. This works great until it pushes the people who actually do work and earn more money to do something drastic, such as leaving the country. Then we all stand around and wonder why our economy is tanking - we drove away the people who had the money and who were providing jobs and spending that money in the United States.
Yes, it seems unfair that some people have more than others. The thing is that you can't legislate the distribution of wealth unless you want to follow the precepts of Karl Marx. Even then look at some of the nations that have embraced that philosophy:
The fact is that our current policies are backfiring on us. We have massive debt because of many things but one huge source is social services. We are falling down on education because we are encouraging generations of families that don't need to achieve in order to survive. Our health as a nation is poor because the bare necessities that our government has the money to pay for is barely enough to keep people off rock bottom. The answer is not to tax the high-earners more, it is to stop shifting the blame to them and instead to get off our lazy butts and make our own way in life.