*sigh* Yeah yeah, that's the year of Linux of the desktop, and when Apple Iphone gets to be a best selling phone.
For heaven's sake - ridiculing Android for not overtaking Iphone is about as meaningful as how someone would look in your eyes for ridiculing BSD for not overtaking Linux. Big deal.
Several companies (most notably, Nokia) are beating Apple. Why does Appledot, sorry, Slashdot give so much coverage to one company, as if they were #1 in the mobile market? It doesn't make sense - I thought this was supposed to be news for nerds, not an Apple site?
And these phones don't have just one app store, they have numerous - often provided by the networks, but the point is that any website lets you download an app. The idea of needing an "app store" is meaningless (just as it would be for Windows, or indeed OS X), and to require one is a restriction, that only in a wild Apple fan's mind could be spun to being an advantage.
but unfocused, dispersed competition is going to have a hard time beating Apple at their own game.
Apple trick #3167 - redefine the market to discount everyone doing better than them. As I said above, the Iphone is not a smartphone by any reasonable definition (if you disagree, please give me such a definition), unless you take one that includes all the other Internet capable Java phones anyway.
Nokia make smartphones, and they are still number one. Even if you mean by smart phone "expensive phones", they're still outdone by other phones such as Blackberry. And let's face it, the claim is as meaningless as that recent survey that claimed Apple sold the most successful computer seller in computers that cost over $1000 (or something like that). Well yes, hardly a ringing endorsement! Only an Apple fan could twist the expense of Apple's products into being a good thing - so they do fairly well at selling expensive things, so what? It's a minority of the mobile phone market, which sells billions.
Apple trick #3168 - backpedal from talking about actual market share, to talking about undefined and unmeasurable terms like "mindshare". Come back when you have a falsifiable definition, please?
Indeed, and it's also worth noticing that this feature list was impressive in bog standard phones, ooh, years ago. I guess the Iphone is playing catch-up yet again.
The bottom line is, the Iphone is not a smart phone. It doesn't belong in these comparsions of OSs. It doesn't run a branded off-the-shelf OS; it doesn't have smart phone features (such as cutting edge features before any other phone; or a keyboard; or behaving like a mobile computer that can multitask, or run applications installed from anywhere). No, the bottom line is it's a locked down feature phone, no different to billions of other feature phones, albeit one with an Apple logo, a high end price tag, and therefore a reasonable high end feature set - but nonetheless not in the smartphone category, unless you define the term broadly enough to include all feature phones too.
I suspect that claiming it to be a smart phone is done simply to inflate its market share ("it has X% of the 'smartphone' market", whatever that is), or to be able to list "Iphone OS" (whatever that is) alongside other actual smartphone OSs. It's a neat marketing trick - but one that could be said for any feature phone.
The sad thing is that if this was Apple, fans would be lapping it up, citing it as an example of how Apple were hip and Macs were cool, and how they'd introduced some new marketing innovation.
Indeed - I don't understand the way that discussion is only about Android and "Iphone OS", whilst ignoring the actual major players. Sure, Nokia don't have a branded name for their OS - but then neither is the Iphone!
So either we look at a comparison of off the shelf Operating Systems such as Symbian, Windows Mobile and Android - in which case, Iphone OS doesn't belong. Or we look at all phone OSs, in which case, sorry, but Iphone and Android are tiny compared to the hundreds of millions of phones sold by Nokia et al.
I agree - the idea that people would use this to actually watch for crime is mad, because the probability of seeing one and winning money is still going to be very small.
Think about it - if someone said you get £1000 for seeing a crime in real life, would anyone spend all day looking out their window? Of course not. I suppose you could monitor a few screens at once, but that still wouldn't make it likely. This scheme might rope in a few dumb hopefuls, but they'd soon get bored after a few days of seeing no crime at all.
I share your fears about what it will actually be used for. And what about people putting up clips of those things on YouTube?
Of course you might be able to use this to monitor the police, but if so, expect them to implement controls on that asap.
Indeed - given how outraged they get in the UK if you simply snap a photo in person of a police officer or police van, I can't help wondering if they might at least oppose this scheme.
We have similar censorship for adults in the UK - I don't know off hand if this game has been approved by the BBFC yet or not.
But the fun thing is that the Video Recordings Act 1984 (which makes it illegal to distribute games or video without a classification) was recently found to have never been enacted! So it's perfectly legal to sell this game in the UK, without worrying about any classification.
The downside is that the Government have announced they'll be hurrying the law through - presumably therefore with no debate - using "emergency legislation" - which also means that in the meantime, most retailers will be unwilling to risk stocking it. It would be nice to see someone make a point about how the law was one of censorship, and not, as the Government claimed, about protecting children (most cuts required by the BBFC are in films targetted at adults, in the 18 and restricted categories, not those that could be viewed by children).
As of earlier this year, the UK has already started to criminalise simple possession of adult pr0n material it doesn't like, on the grounds that criminalising publication was no longer effective ("closing a loophole", they said).
The problem is that "goth" tells us nothing of use here - it could range anything from turning up as if dressed for a nightclub (which would be a problem for most people, whether alternative or not), to dressing smartly in suits that just happen to have more black in their colour (in which case, it's certainly not true to say they aren't dressing well, or aren't putting effort in, and they are surely "dressing the part"), with a whole range in between.
Unfortunately it's unclear what the OP actually dressed like. He seemed to conflate the issues, talking as if how he dressed was untidily, but also saying that he dressed well, and the only difference was that it was "just all black".
Dressing smartly, albeit in all black, is a long way from the experience of people who dress poorly (whatever colour they wear).
It's sad that so many people are bigotted even to the extent of colours worn by a person - and I fail to see how this means that it's that individual who has a problem!
stupid HR people (is there any other kind?),
Well actually they are to blame, if it turned out that their decisions were based on something as petty as this. Who's the "petulent child"?
I'm not saying that appearance is really a good indication of your abilities. It isn't; we all know that. What I'm saying is that it's like proper spelling: We value it not for what it is, but what it implies: This person gives a shit.
But it's not like that at all - that analogy might work for someone who was untidy or unclean, but as you said yourself, you dressed well, and the problem was simply your choice of colour and so on.
The idea that this means you and such people don't "give a shit" is untrue, and on the contrary, the very opposite is true: goths on average seem to care an awful lot more about dress!
It's a common bad stereotype to dismiss people as not caring, being untidy or unclear, when actually the problem is merely that they look different, and goths are exactly the perfect counter-example to that stereotype. (Similarly with the bad stereotype of long hair equalling untidyness... um except for 50% of the population of course.)
The analogy with bad spelling is also irrelevant - spelling serves the purpose of communication, and requires effort to get right. Tell me how clothing colour affects things, and requires effort?
so it's slacks and collared shirts for all.
Except not if they're black? Or would they be okay after all?
Of course I don't know how you really mean you dressed - I can understand if you meant you turned up like you were dressed for a nightclub, but then that could apply to anyone (e.g., a woman turning up in rather revealing clothing). But it's still possible to dress in a range of clothing, whilst still putting in effort and not looking a "freak", whether it's casual or smart (e.g., so-called "corpgoth").
Personally I'm doing fine so far at 30, and have yet to consider that I might advance my career more by dressing up like a rainbow.
I wonder if countries are now going to criminalise the sale and perhaps possession of candy.
I mean, given that such flimsy evidence (or even none at all) is sufficient grounds to restrict or criminalise images, video and computer games, as well as demonising certain kinds of music, surely the pro-censorship crowd should be demanding outright bans of candy! As flimsy as this evidence is, it's more than good enough for their standards.
But of course, they won't - just as we don't get laws banning religion when someone who happens to be religious commits a crime. It's only the unpopular things in society that get banned by these arguments.
What things can OS X do better, than no other OS can do?
Honest question - this is what people ask of other niche OSs whenever they're covered on Slashdot. But for Macs, we only hear criticisms against Windows, as if that somehow meant OS X was therefore the best. So let's ask the question for OS X?
Yeah, from people who also have to own a Windows PC...
(It doesn't surprise me that niche platforms will always have higher expectations, it's a fallacy to conclude that this says about the product. The point is that the vast majority don't care about computers, and moan about them - and these will almost all be using the dominant platform, biasing those results. Of course users of niche platforms are more likely to be fans.)
Completely unrelated product X is more expensive, and better, than product Y.
Therefore A is better than B.
That's your argument - and one that is repeated often on Slashdot. I had hoped that people would be less likely to fall for logical fallacies round here.
It never ceases to amaze me how people manage to twist more expensive products into being a good thing. I wish I'd thought of this tactic back in the 90s, when the Amiga was getting more expensive. "Well if you're not able to spend £2000 on an Amiga 4000, you're obviously not in their target market. You're not cool like me!"
Sure you have your guy who buys a car to lord it over people with cheaper cars, but most people who buy the more expensive one just happened to like it and felt the cost was worth it.
Hmm yes, that's why all these people also happen to have a Windows PC lying around. If your car analogy was really accurate, it would be like someone gloating over their expensive car they bought, whilst secretly also having to rely on a cheaper but useful car that they keep hidden away in the garage.
Of course I'm sure that Mac owners thought it was worth it. Just as Amiga owners etc are too. But believe it or not, so are owners of every PC - even those that, shock, don't run OS X. Yet for some reason we have to put up with a continual torrent of abuse, from this small niche of people who evidently do like to lord it over, for some reason thinking they're cool to be different (I mean, Apple once had a campaign over "Think Different", and now look at their insulting I'm a PC ads...)
Sure, a completely different argument, but one that's more relevant.
You might as well say "For the same hardware, Amigas aren't anymore expensive", because any 68040 machine would cost just as much today. The point is that, yes, I'm sure that a Mac Mini equivalent by another PC manufacturer would cost just as much, due to its use of more costly and lower performance laptop parts - but why bother with that in the first place? I'd rather either just get a laptop, or alternatively get a desktop that has cheaper and better desktop parts. And Apple have nothing in those markets, unless you spend much more money for a high end product.
But despite these alleged quality parts, it's interesting that they still need another brand of PC running Windows, but not vice versa.
You can get all of that for PCs, anyway. As the OP said, Apple are just yet another brand of PC maker these days, just using the "Mac" trademark. The actual Mac platform died years ago.
So is next year's going to be Season Five of "TNG", or Season One of something you have to think of yet another name for? (Next year will be new lead writer, new actors, even new logos - pretty much another reboot, albeit it with less of a wait.)
Slashdot Mirror
*sigh* Yeah yeah, that's the year of Linux of the desktop, and when Apple Iphone gets to be a best selling phone.
For heaven's sake - ridiculing Android for not overtaking Iphone is about as meaningful as how someone would look in your eyes for ridiculing BSD for not overtaking Linux. Big deal.
Several companies (most notably, Nokia) are beating Apple. Why does Appledot, sorry, Slashdot give so much coverage to one company, as if they were #1 in the mobile market? It doesn't make sense - I thought this was supposed to be news for nerds, not an Apple site?
And these phones don't have just one app store, they have numerous - often provided by the networks, but the point is that any website lets you download an app. The idea of needing an "app store" is meaningless (just as it would be for Windows, or indeed OS X), and to require one is a restriction, that only in a wild Apple fan's mind could be spun to being an advantage.
but unfocused, dispersed competition is going to have a hard time beating Apple at their own game.
I'll bite - what game is that, exactly?
Apple trick #3167 - redefine the market to discount everyone doing better than them. As I said above, the Iphone is not a smartphone by any reasonable definition (if you disagree, please give me such a definition), unless you take one that includes all the other Internet capable Java phones anyway.
Nokia make smartphones, and they are still number one. Even if you mean by smart phone "expensive phones", they're still outdone by other phones such as Blackberry. And let's face it, the claim is as meaningless as that recent survey that claimed Apple sold the most successful computer seller in computers that cost over $1000 (or something like that). Well yes, hardly a ringing endorsement! Only an Apple fan could twist the expense of Apple's products into being a good thing - so they do fairly well at selling expensive things, so what? It's a minority of the mobile phone market, which sells billions.
Apple trick #3168 - backpedal from talking about actual market share, to talking about undefined and unmeasurable terms like "mindshare". Come back when you have a falsifiable definition, please?
So, three years ago would you have predicted that Apple would be a dominant cell phone manufacturer?
Ha haa haa hahahaa haa hahahahaha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hahahahahaha haha hah ha ha ha.
Good one.
God, I wish I knew all these tricks back when I was advocating AmigaOS.
"Who cares what you think, Amiga are still the dominant computer manufacturer".
Keep it up.
Indeed, and it's also worth noticing that this feature list was impressive in bog standard phones, ooh, years ago. I guess the Iphone is playing catch-up yet again.
The bottom line is, the Iphone is not a smart phone. It doesn't belong in these comparsions of OSs. It doesn't run a branded off-the-shelf OS; it doesn't have smart phone features (such as cutting edge features before any other phone; or a keyboard; or behaving like a mobile computer that can multitask, or run applications installed from anywhere). No, the bottom line is it's a locked down feature phone, no different to billions of other feature phones, albeit one with an Apple logo, a high end price tag, and therefore a reasonable high end feature set - but nonetheless not in the smartphone category, unless you define the term broadly enough to include all feature phones too.
I suspect that claiming it to be a smart phone is done simply to inflate its market share ("it has X% of the 'smartphone' market", whatever that is), or to be able to list "Iphone OS" (whatever that is) alongside other actual smartphone OSs. It's a neat marketing trick - but one that could be said for any feature phone.
The Motorola is ahead because of the apps and the highly capable hardware. Plus you can run apps anywhere from anyone.
The sad thing is that if this was Apple, fans would be lapping it up, citing it as an example of how Apple were hip and Macs were cool, and how they'd introduced some new marketing innovation.
Indeed - I don't understand the way that discussion is only about Android and "Iphone OS", whilst ignoring the actual major players. Sure, Nokia don't have a branded name for their OS - but then neither is the Iphone!
So either we look at a comparison of off the shelf Operating Systems such as Symbian, Windows Mobile and Android - in which case, Iphone OS doesn't belong. Or we look at all phone OSs, in which case, sorry, but Iphone and Android are tiny compared to the hundreds of millions of phones sold by Nokia et al.
I agree - the idea that people would use this to actually watch for crime is mad, because the probability of seeing one and winning money is still going to be very small.
Think about it - if someone said you get £1000 for seeing a crime in real life, would anyone spend all day looking out their window? Of course not. I suppose you could monitor a few screens at once, but that still wouldn't make it likely. This scheme might rope in a few dumb hopefuls, but they'd soon get bored after a few days of seeing no crime at all.
I share your fears about what it will actually be used for. And what about people putting up clips of those things on YouTube?
Of course you might be able to use this to monitor the police, but if so, expect them to implement controls on that asap.
Indeed - given how outraged they get in the UK if you simply snap a photo in person of a police officer or police van, I can't help wondering if they might at least oppose this scheme.
We have similar censorship for adults in the UK - I don't know off hand if this game has been approved by the BBFC yet or not.
But the fun thing is that the Video Recordings Act 1984 (which makes it illegal to distribute games or video without a classification) was recently found to have never been enacted! So it's perfectly legal to sell this game in the UK, without worrying about any classification.
The downside is that the Government have announced they'll be hurrying the law through - presumably therefore with no debate - using "emergency legislation" - which also means that in the meantime, most retailers will be unwilling to risk stocking it. It would be nice to see someone make a point about how the law was one of censorship, and not, as the Government claimed, about protecting children (most cuts required by the BBFC are in films targetted at adults, in the 18 and restricted categories, not those that could be viewed by children).
Don't give them ideas! ;)
As of earlier this year, the UK has already started to criminalise simple possession of adult pr0n material it doesn't like, on the grounds that criminalising publication was no longer effective ("closing a loophole", they said).
The problem is that "goth" tells us nothing of use here - it could range anything from turning up as if dressed for a nightclub (which would be a problem for most people, whether alternative or not), to dressing smartly in suits that just happen to have more black in their colour (in which case, it's certainly not true to say they aren't dressing well, or aren't putting effort in, and they are surely "dressing the part"), with a whole range in between.
Unfortunately it's unclear what the OP actually dressed like. He seemed to conflate the issues, talking as if how he dressed was untidily, but also saying that he dressed well, and the only difference was that it was "just all black".
Dressing smartly, albeit in all black, is a long way from the experience of people who dress poorly (whatever colour they wear).
Those IBM'ers who are already hopeless "penguins" do of course have Suit avatars.
Aren't they the ones where a meeting in Second Life ends up looking like the Matrix, with millions of Agent Smith clones?
Not This.
Since when were goths that segment of society who didn't care about appearance ... the complete opposite is true if you ask me!
Don't confuse dressing differently, with whatever lack of appearance and effort you portrayed in the past.
It's sad that so many people are bigotted even to the extent of colours worn by a person - and I fail to see how this means that it's that individual who has a problem!
stupid HR people (is there any other kind?),
Well actually they are to blame, if it turned out that their decisions were based on something as petty as this. Who's the "petulent child"?
I'm not saying that appearance is really a good indication of your abilities. It isn't; we all know that. What I'm saying is that it's like proper spelling: We value it not for what it is, but what it implies: This person gives a shit.
But it's not like that at all - that analogy might work for someone who was untidy or unclean, but as you said yourself, you dressed well, and the problem was simply your choice of colour and so on.
The idea that this means you and such people don't "give a shit" is untrue, and on the contrary, the very opposite is true: goths on average seem to care an awful lot more about dress!
It's a common bad stereotype to dismiss people as not caring, being untidy or unclear, when actually the problem is merely that they look different, and goths are exactly the perfect counter-example to that stereotype. (Similarly with the bad stereotype of long hair equalling untidyness ... um except for 50% of the population of course.)
The analogy with bad spelling is also irrelevant - spelling serves the purpose of communication, and requires effort to get right. Tell me how clothing colour affects things, and requires effort?
so it's slacks and collared shirts for all.
Except not if they're black? Or would they be okay after all?
Of course I don't know how you really mean you dressed - I can understand if you meant you turned up like you were dressed for a nightclub, but then that could apply to anyone (e.g., a woman turning up in rather revealing clothing). But it's still possible to dress in a range of clothing, whilst still putting in effort and not looking a "freak", whether it's casual or smart (e.g., so-called "corpgoth").
Personally I'm doing fine so far at 30, and have yet to consider that I might advance my career more by dressing up like a rainbow.
I wonder if countries are now going to criminalise the sale and perhaps possession of candy.
I mean, given that such flimsy evidence (or even none at all) is sufficient grounds to restrict or criminalise images, video and computer games, as well as demonising certain kinds of music, surely the pro-censorship crowd should be demanding outright bans of candy! As flimsy as this evidence is, it's more than good enough for their standards.
But of course, they won't - just as we don't get laws banning religion when someone who happens to be religious commits a crime. It's only the unpopular things in society that get banned by these arguments.
Yes, we should wait until after 2036, when we can give the probability of it hitting as either being 0 in 1,000,000, or 1 in 1.
What things can OS X do better, than no other OS can do?
Honest question - this is what people ask of other niche OSs whenever they're covered on Slashdot. But for Macs, we only hear criticisms against Windows, as if that somehow meant OS X was therefore the best. So let's ask the question for OS X?
Indeed - $1.92 million in damages sounds about right.
And if any of those companies have an office in the UK, I do hope the UK Government will be disconnecting their Internet connections?
Yeah, from people who also have to own a Windows PC...
(It doesn't surprise me that niche platforms will always have higher expectations, it's a fallacy to conclude that this says about the product. The point is that the vast majority don't care about computers, and moan about them - and these will almost all be using the dominant platform, biasing those results. Of course users of niche platforms are more likely to be fans.)
A is more expensive than B.
Completely unrelated product X is more expensive, and better, than product Y.
Therefore A is better than B.
That's your argument - and one that is repeated often on Slashdot. I had hoped that people would be less likely to fall for logical fallacies round here.
It never ceases to amaze me how people manage to twist more expensive products into being a good thing. I wish I'd thought of this tactic back in the 90s, when the Amiga was getting more expensive. "Well if you're not able to spend £2000 on an Amiga 4000, you're obviously not in their target market. You're not cool like me!"
Sure you have your guy who buys a car to lord it over people with cheaper cars, but most people who buy the more expensive one just happened to like it and felt the cost was worth it.
Hmm yes, that's why all these people also happen to have a Windows PC lying around. If your car analogy was really accurate, it would be like someone gloating over their expensive car they bought, whilst secretly also having to rely on a cheaper but useful car that they keep hidden away in the garage.
Of course I'm sure that Mac owners thought it was worth it. Just as Amiga owners etc are too. But believe it or not, so are owners of every PC - even those that, shock, don't run OS X. Yet for some reason we have to put up with a continual torrent of abuse, from this small niche of people who evidently do like to lord it over, for some reason thinking they're cool to be different (I mean, Apple once had a campaign over "Think Different", and now look at their insulting I'm a PC ads...)
Sure, a completely different argument, but one that's more relevant.
You might as well say "For the same hardware, Amigas aren't anymore expensive", because any 68040 machine would cost just as much today. The point is that, yes, I'm sure that a Mac Mini equivalent by another PC manufacturer would cost just as much, due to its use of more costly and lower performance laptop parts - but why bother with that in the first place? I'd rather either just get a laptop, or alternatively get a desktop that has cheaper and better desktop parts. And Apple have nothing in those markets, unless you spend much more money for a high end product.
But despite these alleged quality parts, it's interesting that they still need another brand of PC running Windows, but not vice versa.
You can get all of that for PCs, anyway. As the OP said, Apple are just yet another brand of PC maker these days, just using the "Mac" trademark. The actual Mac platform died years ago.
So is next year's going to be Season Five of "TNG", or Season One of something you have to think of yet another name for? (Next year will be new lead writer, new actors, even new logos - pretty much another reboot, albeit it with less of a wait.)