A story submitter, on Slashdot, humbly and openly admitting a mistake. My hat is off to you, sir. Here's hoping some of the people responsible for the more absurdly sensationalist summaries (your submission is certainly _not_ one of those, just to be clear) that creep onto the front page take your precedent as an example. I won't be holding my breath, though.
...was a call in service, long before it was an Android app - and an iPhone app before Android even existed (in the mainstream, anyway). Why is it singled out as an android app?
"MobileMe" has got to be one of the worst names for a product to ever come out of Apple
No argument there - I'd put it one step down from the "iPad" as far as bad product names go. You do have to admit, though, that me.com is a pretty good domain for an email address.
Ah the word "hipster". It has evolved in such a way that it can refer to a very specific demographic (really, any number of specific demographics), or a very general demographic, depending on how you want to use it. In this case - you're using it to describe the young/naive (and into the "cool", green, enviro friendly) demographic - next time use those words. In "The Real World" there are more than a few "hipster" engineers, who would not give up after a few (or even a lot) of pitfalls/roadblocks, if they're actually committed to a project (even if they are just a lowly student). Share your lawn, buddy, and spread a little encouragement (or even advice, since you seem think you're quite informed as to what, exactly the "many pitfalls/roadblocks" are in a project such as this. Why don't you enumerate them? God forbid you tell him anything other than - "you're young and stupid - this project is too hard for you").
The iPhone costs the same[1] as any other (new) Android smartphone. Less, even, depending on how you calculate it. Now there is the fact that the data plan is no longer unlimited, but I dunno, 2GB is more than twice the volume of the most mobile data I've ever used in a month (even with tethering). But then, I operate with an ad and flash blocker, so I'd imagine others' results would vary.
I think it's far more likely that the hand that people use is determined by whether they are left- or right-*eared* rather than left- or right-handed. I cannot comfortably use a phone against my left ear for more than a minute or two - I'm right-handed, and right-eared, I'd have no issue using the iPhone 4 (i think, I don't know as I haven't used one).
I can actually believe that the signal indicator has been incorrectly reporting the signal strength. My boss and I have a running joke whenever AT&T drops a call between us - "I guess I need to find better reception, I've only got five bars". I have found that the likelihood of a dropped call has no relationship with the reported signal strength on my phone. Whether this will fix the iPhone 4's hardware design issue remains to be seen (yeah, probably not), but I am certainly looking forward to an improvement in the accuracy of the reported signal strength on my 3G.
My question about the whole benefits of yeast produced ethanol thing is whether, in the long term, it can actually produce enough energy to make the whole process carbon neutral. Can we power all the devices that produce the industrial byproducts with all of the energy from those by products?
I get that theoretically , the whole thing is carbon neutral (at least it seems so to me) - as the yeast is releasing carbon sequestered in plant material via ethanol and carbon dioxide (and that eventually gets converted to CO2 as well) which will then get turned into other plant material and go through the same cycle. But are there enough spare hydrocarbons to really go around? It seems to me as though there is so much efficiency lost in such a roundabout process that the whole cycle can't actually be sustainable.
Does it even make sense, in the long term, to invest the time, money, and fossil fuels in the process of developing this type of technology (biofuels, in general) in favor of more direct methods of harnessing the Sun's energy (like solar panels (and thus necessarily batteries/fuel cells), and sort of by extension, fusion)?
Yeah they do, particularly the older ones. I remember working with a friend/coworker of mine at (another) friend's apartment, where, whenever the (15+ year old) microwave was running, would take out all wifi connectivity in the 2 AP powered, small, 2 bedroom New York apartment. It was maddening.
This is very interesting - I've been experiencing extreme wifi interference issues since I moved to my new place (about a year ago) in Brooklyn. My neighborhood is not known as one of the more crime free boroughs in the city, and presumably as a result of that reputation, the neighboring building's backyard has an always-on sodium light at the ground floor (of the brightness and sickening color of your typical street-side sodium lamp). My bedroom (also on the ground floor, facing the backyard) experiences the worst effects of a very obvious latent interference in the area, that is lesser (but not gone) in the 5GHz range, but renders wifi nearly unusable in the 2.4GHz band (with the added interference of several other networks in that frequencey range close by - though there is 3 channel free band). I wonder if the sodium lamp is the issue...
That was the only reason I wanted Android -- no big brother overseeing.
Let me get this straight, you wanted to avoid big brother, so you bought a phone loaded with software developed by Google, and integrated with Google's services? Forgive me if I don't see Google as some bastion for privacy and user empowerment in the same way that you do...
Actually the iPhone has the exact same "kill switch" for the exact same purpose.
Indeed it does. The amusing thing about this situation is that Apple has never used it - even for apps that are no longer offered and that violate both Apple's and AT&T's terms of service (NetShare, e.g.). I got a kick out of the GGP's "nuking an applications without asking first is what Steve Jobs does and that Google is not supposed to do," for precisely that reason. Nuking an app from orbit is what people in the Slashdot community expect from Steve Jobs, and yet it is Google that does it first, on the darling platform of those who view the iPhone and its walled garden as "evil".
Being anti-RIAA does not imply being anti-IP. I'm the same way - I want my software protected by copyright, but I'm not going to be a dick about it and sue a technologically illiterate grandmother for orders of magnitude more than the offense is really worth if I think there's a *chance* she got a copy of my software illegally. Besides, why are you being so hard on Mr. Beckerman? At least he contributes meaningfully to the discussion (unlike your little rant here (and my response to it, for that matter)).
I'd recommend watching the interview with Jobs at D8 (by Mossberg and some other WSJ journalist), it's available (free) on iTunes. He made an excellent car analogy, equating the PC (as in personal computer, not PC/Mac) to trucks in the early days of the automobile market. Basically - the analogy was that back when automobiles were new, the vast majority of cars were trucks, designed for getting work done. As that technology trickled down into the popular market, the car became more user friendly (automatic transmissions, air conditioning, radio, etc.) and less like trucks. Jobs essentially equated MacOS and iOS with trucks and sedans. Ultimately, his point was that there are still trucks now (implying that Apple has no intention of killing their entry in the PC market). As I see it - Apple would love for MacOS marketshare to stay exactly where it is for the foreseeable future (5%) and replace the other 93ish% with iOS. Jobs is not a fool - he knows that we need trucks; I do not believe that Apple has any intention of killing MacOS.
One may run an open AP out of: incompetence, convenience:does it mean somebody is entitled to sniff traffic? nope
Google was sniffing wifi packets so they could later analyze the wifi networks against their mapping data. They, inadvertently or not, also captured payload data at the same time. `iwlist {interface} scan" would not be well suited to their purposes, as there would need to be a daemon attached to it firing the scan command periodically. Google's solution undoubtedly involved putting their wireless NIC(s) into a passive mode that would collect the information from the packets as soon as the packet was encountered, which would produce much better data for their purposes. So, they forgot to turn off the payload logging, big deal. I do not believe there is much (if any) actual utility to even a privacy averse company such as Google for a fraction of fragmented, unencrypted wifi data. All the really sensitive information (credit card numbers, e.g) was undoubtedly encrypted (via SSL) as it was flying through the air (not that Google would have much use for that data anyway). Worst case, Google captured a few minutes worth of traffic from a given AP, on average probably only a few seconds. Is morality even an issue here? Who would have the fortitude to actually distill interesting signal out of the undoubtedly mountain of wifi noise they collected? Even if you were very targeted in looking for a specific AP in a specific location, the odds that you can find any interesting information in the log from that location are still very small.
Is it immoral for me, in my own apartment, to run a wifi scanner that is also capturing payload information (from the half dozen open networks broadcasting in range)? Wifi security, while not completely part of public knowledge, is certainly well on it's way there. The dead tree news companies have certainly scared consumers with the risks of running an open network, and nearly every device on the market now, if not enabled with security by default, requires you to explicitly opt out of it in the setup process. I'm of the firm opinion that if you're brazenly bathing my network antenna with your unencrypted, non-ionizing radiation - I am fully entitled to let my wireless NIC listen in.
Yeah, as always - the summary is a little off. Shatner is by no means on the "short list". The "short list" has three people (who look like they're actually appropriate candidates) on it, the article happens to also mention two entries from the much longer list of "who the internet thinks it would be funny if they were nominated for this position".
Presuming a non-boneheaded implementation, the amount of fuel it requires to move a car 100 ft would likely power the thing for days. I'm guessing the total impact on your fuel bill will be less than a tenth of a percent.
....why? Do you prefer rectangles to circles? They're the same damn game. The differences between them are only the music selection (though they do have quite an overlap, at least across different, not necessarily contemporary, versions). Any other differences are indistinguishable from statistical noise. (I own several versions of both, and the controllers for either work on both).
There are no browser specific tags. There are some webkit specific CSS properties (-webkit-box-reflect, -webkit-transform, etc.) but the tags are all HTML 5. The HTML behind the demos is very slim (as it should be), and the javascript is pretty standard and readable (they use script.aculo.us and Prototype to power most of the javascript). The script powering the TRON flavored video demo is only about 200 lines.
HTML5 is still a work in progress. They could have made a demo that only uses those features which are already widely supported, but it wouldn't have been as impressive.
Spot on. This is a Safari demo - they appear to be desperately trying to demonstrate why they aren't allowing Flash on their iDevices. At the very bottom of the page, there are two image/link thingys, one that says "iPad Ready" and another that says "Thoughts on Flash". Apple's goal here was to provide the shiniest, flashiest (but not Flashiest) html 5 demonstration they possible could, and only show it to the browser that will render it all perfectly. They're using published standards, that other browsers can (and probably will, eventually) support, and they're publishing the source code for all of the demos.
I really don't understand what all the vitriol is about on this thread. When your browser of choice can do the things with HTML 5 that Safari can in these demos, you'll be thrilled. What the hell is wrong with Apple pushing open standards? Okay - I get that the h.264 standard, while in some senses open, has some issues, but still - isn't this a good thing? Isn't it good for everyone that Apple is using some of that mountain of money they're sitting on to push an open standard, and at the very least reduce the necessity of the beast that is Flash?
What, do you live in a windmill powered cabin in the woods? Unless you live completely off the grid (impossible, in your case, as you post to slashdot) nearly every company you do trade with uses Microsoft products.
You are, of course, quite correct. My presumption in that statement was that the average handgun owner bought the handgun with the intent of keeping it for self-defense (whether they use it for target shooting on the range as well is irrelevant, given that presumption, as owning a weapon for self defense does require that you keep up your skills in the event you should need to use it for self-defense). As I have no data to back up that presumption, I withdraw my statement.
Slashdot Mirror
A story submitter, on Slashdot, humbly and openly admitting a mistake. My hat is off to you, sir. Here's hoping some of the people responsible for the more absurdly sensationalist summaries (your submission is certainly _not_ one of those, just to be clear) that creep onto the front page take your precedent as an example. I won't be holding my breath, though.
...was a call in service, long before it was an Android app - and an iPhone app before Android even existed (in the mainstream, anyway). Why is it singled out as an android app?
"MobileMe" has got to be one of the worst names for a product to ever come out of Apple
No argument there - I'd put it one step down from the "iPad" as far as bad product names go. You do have to admit, though, that me.com is a pretty good domain for an email address.
Ah the word "hipster". It has evolved in such a way that it can refer to a very specific demographic (really, any number of specific demographics), or a very general demographic, depending on how you want to use it. In this case - you're using it to describe the young/naive (and into the "cool", green, enviro friendly) demographic - next time use those words. In "The Real World" there are more than a few "hipster" engineers, who would not give up after a few (or even a lot) of pitfalls/roadblocks, if they're actually committed to a project (even if they are just a lowly student). Share your lawn, buddy, and spread a little encouragement (or even advice, since you seem think you're quite informed as to what, exactly the "many pitfalls/roadblocks" are in a project such as this. Why don't you enumerate them? God forbid you tell him anything other than - "you're young and stupid - this project is too hard for you").
I can have a trendy, overpriced device
The iPhone costs the same[1] as any other (new) Android smartphone. Less, even, depending on how you calculate it. Now there is the fact that the data plan is no longer unlimited, but I dunno, 2GB is more than twice the volume of the most mobile data I've ever used in a month (even with tethering). But then, I operate with an ad and flash blocker, so I'd imagine others' results would vary.
[1] AnandTech: Apple's iPhone 4: Thoroughly Reviewed
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
It's all fun and games until someone hoses the nightly build.
I think it's far more likely that the hand that people use is determined by whether they are left- or right-*eared* rather than left- or right-handed. I cannot comfortably use a phone against my left ear for more than a minute or two - I'm right-handed, and right-eared, I'd have no issue using the iPhone 4 (i think, I don't know as I haven't used one).
I can actually believe that the signal indicator has been incorrectly reporting the signal strength. My boss and I have a running joke whenever AT&T drops a call between us - "I guess I need to find better reception, I've only got five bars". I have found that the likelihood of a dropped call has no relationship with the reported signal strength on my phone. Whether this will fix the iPhone 4's hardware design issue remains to be seen (yeah, probably not), but I am certainly looking forward to an improvement in the accuracy of the reported signal strength on my 3G.
My question about the whole benefits of yeast produced ethanol thing is whether, in the long term, it can actually produce enough energy to make the whole process carbon neutral. Can we power all the devices that produce the industrial byproducts with all of the energy from those by products?
I get that theoretically , the whole thing is carbon neutral (at least it seems so to me) - as the yeast is releasing carbon sequestered in plant material via ethanol and carbon dioxide (and that eventually gets converted to CO2 as well) which will then get turned into other plant material and go through the same cycle. But are there enough spare hydrocarbons to really go around? It seems to me as though there is so much efficiency lost in such a roundabout process that the whole cycle can't actually be sustainable.
Does it even make sense, in the long term, to invest the time, money, and fossil fuels in the process of developing this type of technology (biofuels, in general) in favor of more direct methods of harnessing the Sun's energy (like solar panels (and thus necessarily batteries/fuel cells), and sort of by extension, fusion)?
microwaves ... They leak like mad
Yeah they do, particularly the older ones. I remember working with a friend/coworker of mine at (another) friend's apartment, where, whenever the (15+ year old) microwave was running, would take out all wifi connectivity in the 2 AP powered, small, 2 bedroom New York apartment. It was maddening.
This is very interesting - I've been experiencing extreme wifi interference issues since I moved to my new place (about a year ago) in Brooklyn. My neighborhood is not known as one of the more crime free boroughs in the city, and presumably as a result of that reputation, the neighboring building's backyard has an always-on sodium light at the ground floor (of the brightness and sickening color of your typical street-side sodium lamp). My bedroom (also on the ground floor, facing the backyard) experiences the worst effects of a very obvious latent interference in the area, that is lesser (but not gone) in the 5GHz range, but renders wifi nearly unusable in the 2.4GHz band (with the added interference of several other networks in that frequencey range close by - though there is 3 channel free band). I wonder if the sodium lamp is the issue...
That was the only reason I wanted Android -- no big brother overseeing.
Let me get this straight, you wanted to avoid big brother, so you bought a phone loaded with software developed by Google, and integrated with Google's services? Forgive me if I don't see Google as some bastion for privacy and user empowerment in the same way that you do...
Actually the iPhone has the exact same "kill switch" for the exact same purpose.
Indeed it does. The amusing thing about this situation is that Apple has never used it - even for apps that are no longer offered and that violate both Apple's and AT&T's terms of service (NetShare, e.g.). I got a kick out of the GGP's "nuking an applications without asking first is what Steve Jobs does and that Google is not supposed to do," for precisely that reason. Nuking an app from orbit is what people in the Slashdot community expect from Steve Jobs, and yet it is Google that does it first, on the darling platform of those who view the iPhone and its walled garden as "evil".
Being anti-RIAA does not imply being anti-IP. I'm the same way - I want my software protected by copyright, but I'm not going to be a dick about it and sue a technologically illiterate grandmother for orders of magnitude more than the offense is really worth if I think there's a *chance* she got a copy of my software illegally. Besides, why are you being so hard on Mr. Beckerman? At least he contributes meaningfully to the discussion (unlike your little rant here (and my response to it, for that matter)).
I'd recommend watching the interview with Jobs at D8 (by Mossberg and some other WSJ journalist), it's available (free) on iTunes. He made an excellent car analogy, equating the PC (as in personal computer, not PC/Mac) to trucks in the early days of the automobile market. Basically - the analogy was that back when automobiles were new, the vast majority of cars were trucks, designed for getting work done. As that technology trickled down into the popular market, the car became more user friendly (automatic transmissions, air conditioning, radio, etc.) and less like trucks. Jobs essentially equated MacOS and iOS with trucks and sedans. Ultimately, his point was that there are still trucks now (implying that Apple has no intention of killing their entry in the PC market). As I see it - Apple would love for MacOS marketshare to stay exactly where it is for the foreseeable future (5%) and replace the other 93ish% with iOS. Jobs is not a fool - he knows that we need trucks; I do not believe that Apple has any intention of killing MacOS.
One may run an open AP out of: incompetence, convenience:does it mean somebody is entitled to sniff traffic? nope
Google was sniffing wifi packets so they could later analyze the wifi networks against their mapping data. They, inadvertently or not, also captured payload data at the same time. `iwlist {interface} scan" would not be well suited to their purposes, as there would need to be a daemon attached to it firing the scan command periodically. Google's solution undoubtedly involved putting their wireless NIC(s) into a passive mode that would collect the information from the packets as soon as the packet was encountered, which would produce much better data for their purposes. So, they forgot to turn off the payload logging, big deal. I do not believe there is much (if any) actual utility to even a privacy averse company such as Google for a fraction of fragmented, unencrypted wifi data. All the really sensitive information (credit card numbers, e.g) was undoubtedly encrypted (via SSL) as it was flying through the air (not that Google would have much use for that data anyway). Worst case, Google captured a few minutes worth of traffic from a given AP, on average probably only a few seconds. Is morality even an issue here? Who would have the fortitude to actually distill interesting signal out of the undoubtedly mountain of wifi noise they collected? Even if you were very targeted in looking for a specific AP in a specific location, the odds that you can find any interesting information in the log from that location are still very small.
Is it immoral for me, in my own apartment, to run a wifi scanner that is also capturing payload information (from the half dozen open networks broadcasting in range)? Wifi security, while not completely part of public knowledge, is certainly well on it's way there. The dead tree news companies have certainly scared consumers with the risks of running an open network, and nearly every device on the market now, if not enabled with security by default, requires you to explicitly opt out of it in the setup process. I'm of the firm opinion that if you're brazenly bathing my network antenna with your unencrypted, non-ionizing radiation - I am fully entitled to let my wireless NIC listen in.
Yeah, as always - the summary is a little off. Shatner is by no means on the "short list". The "short list" has three people (who look like they're actually appropriate candidates) on it, the article happens to also mention two entries from the much longer list of "who the internet thinks it would be funny if they were nominated for this position".
Presuming a non-boneheaded implementation, the amount of fuel it requires to move a car 100 ft would likely power the thing for days. I'm guessing the total impact on your fuel bill will be less than a tenth of a percent.
I think Android's popularity might have more to do with it being available on a network other than AT&T.
Forget Guitar Hero... Rock Band is better.
....why? Do you prefer rectangles to circles? They're the same damn game. The differences between them are only the music selection (though they do have quite an overlap, at least across different, not necessarily contemporary, versions). Any other differences are indistinguishable from statistical noise. (I own several versions of both, and the controllers for either work on both).
the use of browser specific tags
There are no browser specific tags. There are some webkit specific CSS properties (-webkit-box-reflect, -webkit-transform, etc.) but the tags are all HTML 5. The HTML behind the demos is very slim (as it should be), and the javascript is pretty standard and readable (they use script.aculo.us and Prototype to power most of the javascript). The script powering the TRON flavored video demo is only about 200 lines.
HTML5 is still a work in progress. They could have made a demo that only uses those features which are already widely supported, but it wouldn't have been as impressive.
Spot on. This is a Safari demo - they appear to be desperately trying to demonstrate why they aren't allowing Flash on their iDevices. At the very bottom of the page, there are two image/link thingys, one that says "iPad Ready" and another that says "Thoughts on Flash". Apple's goal here was to provide the shiniest, flashiest (but not Flashiest) html 5 demonstration they possible could, and only show it to the browser that will render it all perfectly. They're using published standards, that other browsers can (and probably will, eventually) support, and they're publishing the source code for all of the demos.
I really don't understand what all the vitriol is about on this thread. When your browser of choice can do the things with HTML 5 that Safari can in these demos, you'll be thrilled. What the hell is wrong with Apple pushing open standards? Okay - I get that the h.264 standard, while in some senses open, has some issues, but still - isn't this a good thing? Isn't it good for everyone that Apple is using some of that mountain of money they're sitting on to push an open standard, and at the very least reduce the necessity of the beast that is Flash?
What, do you live in a windmill powered cabin in the woods? Unless you live completely off the grid (impossible, in your case, as you post to slashdot) nearly every company you do trade with uses Microsoft products.
Good lord I thought you were joking. The top three reviews are _hilarious_. Oh, and people here are usually a fan of that fancy little <a> tag.
You are, of course, quite correct. My presumption in that statement was that the average handgun owner bought the handgun with the intent of keeping it for self-defense (whether they use it for target shooting on the range as well is irrelevant, given that presumption, as owning a weapon for self defense does require that you keep up your skills in the event you should need to use it for self-defense). As I have no data to back up that presumption, I withdraw my statement.