"A couple of years ago, she spent more than $8,000 to buy a computer, approved by Medicare".
The article suggests she's had to pay out for the devices. If her health insurance is providing for the device, I don't see the problem. Yes, it might be stupid that they pay out for $8,000 when she'd be satisfied with $300, but that's the company's own loss, not hers.
Now yes, I agree it's still a shame for her if the smaller devices are better for her disability. But the article is very confusing as to who's paying what, which is why I was asking for clarification.
(And what fucker is modding so many posts in this thread off-topic?)
I'm still a bit confused by the article - if she's paying for it herself, why does she need the insurance to pay for it? I presumed this must be about insurance that covers products being stolen?
Yes, the whole thing seems mad that insurers would prefer expensive products, but in some sense, she's still gained by moving technology: she can now spend $300 on a Samsung N110 or phone, instead of $8,000. Even if she can't get it insured, on average she'd still be better off - unless her device gets stolen over 26 times during its lifetime.
And how many of us here bother to spend insurance on electronic items (I know some do, but I don't think it's universal)? Or is the article on about something else altogether?
No one is calling for people to be punished for their PC being infected - the issue is that they are running malware which is now infecting other people.
If you want real life analogies:
Abuse victims who then go onto abuse other people most certainly are criminalised for their actions.
If someone stole your car and then drove dangerously around town, sure, you wouldn't be liable, but the police would try and get that car off the road.
People have been found guilty for infecting people with HIV without them knowing the possibility of a risk.
I would sure love to have a "real" camera from Nokia. Strap some proper optics to the Nokia Phone platform and you've got a killer product: photos automatically GPS tagged and seamlessly uploaded in the background to your photo library, with support via apps for any kind of online hosting, plus specialty stuff like time lapse or other artistic/scientific needs. Full HD video of course, perhaps even with wifi streaming to a TV for instant nostalgia. Price it to compete with entry level DSLR and they would capture a huge chunk of market share overnight. Maybe not the volume of the cell phone market, but great margins.
See? What's special about Apple here? If we're allowed to make up products, then it would be great if Amiga were to release a new quad-core Intel machine with the latest NVIDIA graphics, with 8GB RAM, and priced the same as a netbook. It'll capture a huge chunk of the market share overnight.
Aren't we such geniuses - why on earth aren't companies hiring us for our great ideas like these?
The stats I've seen show Blackberry leading on browser usage, though browser stats are notoriously unreliable anyway. Even my mum who has yet to work out how to use the phone's address book, happily does web browsing on her bog-standard non-smart phone. But I bet it doesn't show up on these stats, either because it's not one of the branded browsers, or because she most likely only visits a few sites offered by the network's web portal (in which case, the phone's stats are penalised because the network makes it easier for people).
The other big problem with mobile browser stats is that they completely ignore netbooks - e.g., it could be that most people who want to do large amounts of mobile browsing simply opt for a netbook, with the Apple fans going for the Iphone (because there is no Apple netbook). Do those browser stats include netbooks? No they don't. So therefore, the Iphone only looks good compared to casual users who don't want a netbook.
Personally I use my phone's web browser, but because I'm not on it all day long, I probably don't make much of a dent in the stats.
The real question about the market share of Symbian is, how many Symbian users *want* to be Symbian users? Out of the ~%47 or so, how many of them actually break into their phone's full features beyond camera, music and phone? Given the rates of users who are regular bluetooth users versus users who aren't, I'd be surprised if even 10% of Symbian users are of the variety,
Er - who cares? Sorry, aside from you having no evidence for your speculations (where on earth do you pull stats like 47% from?), why is this a relevant or useful statistic?
Presumably 100% of Symbian users wanted their phone when they bought it (well, discounting some unwanted gifts I suppose). If you're going to make claims about product satisfaction after that, you'll need to bring some hard evidence.
"Oh this thing? It's the crappy phone Verizon/AT&T/Sprint/Tmobile gave me for free."
Ah I see - I love how you twist the fact that other phones are offered free on contract, whilst the Iphone costs money, to be an advantage to the latter.
Nothing is given for free - people still have to pay for the contract, so people will still make a choice as to which network to use, and which phone on that network to pick.
There are fucking plenty of fucking centralised app distribution places for other fucking platforms. Often it's offered by fucking networks.
Restricting it so that you can only fucking download from one fucking place doesn't count as "centralised" - I love how you spin that into a fucking feature!
This is the internet. You can think before you start typing. No need to type "Um", which usually means "I'm about to say something". If you're using text to speech, you can edit out those extra filler words to make your post more clear. Therefore, he clearly must have meant in it the sense of "I can't believe all of you are so completely stupid" sense.
Evidently you cared enough to make a straw man post about it.
For this story, perhaps, but the point is that coverage on phones on Slashdot, despite it supposedly being a general tech site, is almost only ever what Apple do. And new features are often presented as if it's the first phone that has done this (if someone points out it isn't, the claim is then back-pedalled to "But it's the first to do it well!")
and even that is only an innovation in so much as you have access to thousands of free, somewhat useful apps whereas on other phones you have to pay monthly for dozens of somewhat useful apps
Other phones can use loads of free apps, and the difference is they don't need corporate approval from a single private company.
I agree. And it's annoying the way they charge through the roof - I mean, you can get PAYG 3G mobile Internet on a USB stick for £15 per GB, but the same company on their PAYG phone charges me £1 per 15MB, with a 15MB/day cap. The only way to get better rates seems to be with a contract, but then you're stuck paying a load of money every month.
It's also why I can't get a smart phone, as they're all on expensive contracts. I'd rather just get a netbook and a 3G stick.
I have a phone from before the Iphone days, and it syncs with my PC fine. It also tethers with it fine, as it happens.
It is also much better than the phone I had previous to it, but note that I don't therefore make the false conclusion that therefore, my second phone must be the best phone ever. I realise there are plenty of phones I haven't tried, and more to the point, all phones in general get better with time, so it's hardly surprising if the latest phone you have is the best one you've had so far.
When the iPhone came out, I willing dumped Verizon and switched to AT&T.
Wait - so your original sample size was only phones on Verizon, but you made a switch for the Iphone? Perhaps the problem is just with the evidently poor choice of phones from Verizon.
I never said science could answer those things - yes, there are some things we can't give definite answers to.
What I question is the idea that there's some other thing - usually religion - that gives us these answers. So come on, what method can we use to provide objective answers to "How should people treat each other?" or "What should individuals and/or societies value most?"
The only answers will be answers that are a matter of opinion - and good opinions will still be those that are based on reason and scientific evidence. I don't know of any scientist who claims that science can provide definite answers to moral questions, so I think it's still a straw man.
Oh, I agree it's annoying the way that Intel graphics have become so widespread when they're not the best by far. But that wasn't what the OP was about.
And on the contrary, by this reasoning we should be glad if decent 3D hardware became a requirement for the web (even though I don't think it will), because that'll either force Intel to improve, or they'll lose market share to NVIDIA and AMD/ATI, either way it will be good for 3D graphics.
Another ridiculous study proving nothing. And an unfinished one no less.
As the poster above said... FUN is more important.
But it's what the OP said that would be completely useless - saying "fun makes a game good" is a complete tautology. The question is then what makes a game fun?
It's not at all necessarily obvious that say, social aspects are more important than plot.
Believe it or not, there are some people who might like an OS for reasons other than a knee-jerk "It's not MS" (especially hilarious given how many Mac users then run MS software on their Macs).
But even if that's true, you could say the same about OS X - why use that, now there's BeOS? You see, if all you can say about OS X is that it doesn't have the flaws on Windows, then that applies to all non-MS OSs that are released. If you want to suggest otherwise, the burden is upon you to show how OS X is better than all other OSs (including BeOS, and I guess Linux too), not just Windows.
And anyhow, who cares - do you post to every Linux story saying "This would be great news if..."? Or do you just think you can get away with it because it's BeOS? And imagine the annoyance of someone posting to every OS X story, saying "This would be great news, if only Windows didn't already exist"?
Believe it or not, some people have an interest in products other than Apple, around here. If you don't like it, skip the story. This is the first BeOS story in ages, whilst Apple stories appear several times a day - you're hardly losing out here!
Comparatively cheap these days. Scripts for micro-blogging, standard blogging, etc? Freely available. Not just being another hype-follower? Priceless.
So why are you here on "trendy" Slashdot like the rest of us? Surely you're better off building your own site to post your opinions to, instead of following the hype, right?
I suspect their are arguments like "because people use it" and "because people know it" and "because people don't need to make separate registrations". All it means is that you get buried in junk instead, or force people who wouldn't otherwise bother with an account on one of these "trendy" services to get an account just to comment (while avoiding the rest of the spam).
But if you can be bothered to even RTFS, they do have a website ( http://beagle.vpro.nl/#/page/item/12/english/ ), for those people who don't want to sign up to Facebook or Twitter, etc. Those things are provided in addition, for the convencience of people who are on those sites.
Dawkins is one of the main faces of anti-Creationism / pro-evolution and he does exhibit Darwin worship. Sure, he's only one person but I've met many like him in their beliefs of evolution.
What acts do you mean by "Darwin worship"?
I think it's important to not put too much faith in the scientific method either.
Now that sounds like a straw man - do you have an example of this?
Most scientists, and atheists for that matter, are aware of the limits of science (the objection is just to people claim that if science can't answer something, there is something else that somehow can provide answers).
Dawkins himself did a programme on the dangers of misusing science, for example, people convicted of crimes solely on dodgy scientific evidence.
I was careful to say "can be", not "are always". By "matrix calculations" (not "manipulation") I include multiplication of a matrix with a vector, which can be hardware accelerated.
Whatever the OP meant by "fast matrix math", it's something that is handled by the API, and doesn't have to be done using Javascript, so I don't see how the speed of Javascript affects it. (Although I admit I meant to say "one advantage" rather than "the advantage".)
Think about it, far more complex data is encoded in standardized formats that a multitude of programs all process and exchange data through. Look at sound, still images, vector graphics, even video!
The problem here is not complexity, but variation. Sound, images and even video are all straightforward - you just have a waveform (for sound), or pixels and a number of frames. There simply isn't much variation - so the file formats can change how the data is represented, but what's represented is pretty obvious.
Now what do we represent formatted text as? How do we factor things such as tables, paragraphs, fonts etc? Do we want things fixed perfectly (like PDF) or the formatting to depend on the user settings (like HTML)? There's no end of possibilities. Even worse with a spreadsheet format.
A better analogy would not be sound, but file formats used for music composition software. Yeah, there's General MIDI, but that's very limited, because it fits to the lowest common denominator. Or an image file format that also sorts information about the creation of the image - different layers, undo history, etc. Is there a standard for that? Consider, why do products like PaintShop Pro and the GIMP have their own file formats (incompatible with each other)? Why doesn't GIMP just use PNG, instead of its own custom file format?
The flaw in your argument is that you're comparing the file format that the author wants, with the end document. If all you want is the end document, then why not print to PDF? See, there's your common format. Ah, but you say, that's no use to you if you want to go back an edit the document? Well precisely - just as your cited audio, image and video formats are no use to the creator of those documents.
Another example would be 3D file formats - no such standard there.
Javascript isn't a good language for fast matrix math.
The matrix calculations required for rendering are done by OpenGL, not the caller programming language (the advantage of doing this way is that it can be hardware accelerated).
Also, authoring tools will have to be developed. You can't effectively author 3D content in a text editor.
I'm unclear what sort of tools you refer to? Presumably people would use the same 3D modelling software they'd use for any other OpenGL application.
OpenGL has the advantage over the other things you list in that it's (a) an existing widely used API, and (b) it has hardware acceleration support.
You're right - I bet people were thinking making an online game with this, but now they've discovered that you alone will have this disabled, there's obviously no point doing it. It's a good thing you posted to let them know, and save them the trouble!
Slashdot Mirror
FTA:
"A couple of years ago, she spent more than $8,000 to buy a computer, approved by Medicare".
The article suggests she's had to pay out for the devices. If her health insurance is providing for the device, I don't see the problem. Yes, it might be stupid that they pay out for $8,000 when she'd be satisfied with $300, but that's the company's own loss, not hers.
Now yes, I agree it's still a shame for her if the smaller devices are better for her disability. But the article is very confusing as to who's paying what, which is why I was asking for clarification.
(And what fucker is modding so many posts in this thread off-topic?)
I'm still a bit confused by the article - if she's paying for it herself, why does she need the insurance to pay for it? I presumed this must be about insurance that covers products being stolen?
Yes, the whole thing seems mad that insurers would prefer expensive products, but in some sense, she's still gained by moving technology: she can now spend $300 on a Samsung N110 or phone, instead of $8,000. Even if she can't get it insured, on average she'd still be better off - unless her device gets stolen over 26 times during its lifetime.
And how many of us here bother to spend insurance on electronic items (I know some do, but I don't think it's universal)? Or is the article on about something else altogether?
No one is calling for people to be punished for their PC being infected - the issue is that they are running malware which is now infecting other people.
If you want real life analogies:
Abuse victims who then go onto abuse other people most certainly are criminalised for their actions.
If someone stole your car and then drove dangerously around town, sure, you wouldn't be liable, but the police would try and get that car off the road.
People have been found guilty for infecting people with HIV without them knowing the possibility of a risk.
I would sure love to have a "real" camera from Nokia. Strap some proper optics to the Nokia Phone platform and you've got a killer product: photos automatically GPS tagged and seamlessly uploaded in the background to your photo library, with support via apps for any kind of online hosting, plus specialty stuff like time lapse or other artistic/scientific needs. Full HD video of course, perhaps even with wifi streaming to a TV for instant nostalgia. Price it to compete with entry level DSLR and they would capture a huge chunk of market share overnight. Maybe not the volume of the cell phone market, but great margins.
See? What's special about Apple here? If we're allowed to make up products, then it would be great if Amiga were to release a new quad-core Intel machine with the latest NVIDIA graphics, with 8GB RAM, and priced the same as a netbook. It'll capture a huge chunk of the market share overnight.
Aren't we such geniuses - why on earth aren't companies hiring us for our great ideas like these?
The stats I've seen show Blackberry leading on browser usage, though browser stats are notoriously unreliable anyway. Even my mum who has yet to work out how to use the phone's address book, happily does web browsing on her bog-standard non-smart phone. But I bet it doesn't show up on these stats, either because it's not one of the branded browsers, or because she most likely only visits a few sites offered by the network's web portal (in which case, the phone's stats are penalised because the network makes it easier for people).
The other big problem with mobile browser stats is that they completely ignore netbooks - e.g., it could be that most people who want to do large amounts of mobile browsing simply opt for a netbook, with the Apple fans going for the Iphone (because there is no Apple netbook). Do those browser stats include netbooks? No they don't. So therefore, the Iphone only looks good compared to casual users who don't want a netbook.
Personally I use my phone's web browser, but because I'm not on it all day long, I probably don't make much of a dent in the stats.
The real question about the market share of Symbian is, how many Symbian users *want* to be Symbian users? Out of the ~%47 or so, how many of them actually break into their phone's full features beyond camera, music and phone? Given the rates of users who are regular bluetooth users versus users who aren't, I'd be surprised if even 10% of Symbian users are of the variety,
Er - who cares? Sorry, aside from you having no evidence for your speculations (where on earth do you pull stats like 47% from?), why is this a relevant or useful statistic?
Presumably 100% of Symbian users wanted their phone when they bought it (well, discounting some unwanted gifts I suppose). If you're going to make claims about product satisfaction after that, you'll need to bring some hard evidence.
"Oh this thing? It's the crappy phone Verizon/AT&T/Sprint/Tmobile gave me for free."
Ah I see - I love how you twist the fact that other phones are offered free on contract, whilst the Iphone costs money, to be an advantage to the latter.
Nothing is given for free - people still have to pay for the contract, so people will still make a choice as to which network to use, and which phone on that network to pick.
And if you don't like the answers it gives you, just try a different one.
Your definitions of definite and objective seem to differ from mine.
Centralized app distribution(Google doesn't fucking count)?
There are fucking plenty of fucking centralised app distribution places for other fucking platforms. Often it's offered by fucking networks.
Restricting it so that you can only fucking download from one fucking place doesn't count as "centralised" - I love how you spin that into a fucking feature!
Daily Iphone headline stories - fine - but a mere comment about Windows, the (like or not) most used OS on the planet, and you blow a fuse.
But yes, Android does look interesting, not that we ever hear about that either.
This is the internet. You can think before you start typing. No need to type "Um", which usually means "I'm about to say something". If you're using text to speech, you can edit out those extra filler words to make your post more clear. Therefore, he clearly must have meant in it the sense of "I can't believe all of you are so completely stupid" sense.
Evidently you cared enough to make a straw man post about it.
For this story, perhaps, but the point is that coverage on phones on Slashdot, despite it supposedly being a general tech site, is almost only ever what Apple do. And new features are often presented as if it's the first phone that has done this (if someone points out it isn't, the claim is then back-pedalled to "But it's the first to do it well!")
and even that is only an innovation in so much as you have access to thousands of free, somewhat useful apps whereas on other phones you have to pay monthly for dozens of somewhat useful apps
Other phones can use loads of free apps, and the difference is they don't need corporate approval from a single private company.
There is real innovation going on in the mobile world whereas MS hasn't had a single major change to their interface since 2002.
Indeed - it's just a shame we never hear about the innovation in the mobile world, as Slashdot focuses on Apple.
I agree. And it's annoying the way they charge through the roof - I mean, you can get PAYG 3G mobile Internet on a USB stick for £15 per GB, but the same company on their PAYG phone charges me £1 per 15MB, with a 15MB/day cap. The only way to get better rates seems to be with a contract, but then you're stuck paying a load of money every month.
It's also why I can't get a smart phone, as they're all on expensive contracts. I'd rather just get a netbook and a 3G stick.
I have a phone from before the Iphone days, and it syncs with my PC fine. It also tethers with it fine, as it happens.
It is also much better than the phone I had previous to it, but note that I don't therefore make the false conclusion that therefore, my second phone must be the best phone ever. I realise there are plenty of phones I haven't tried, and more to the point, all phones in general get better with time, so it's hardly surprising if the latest phone you have is the best one you've had so far.
When the iPhone came out, I willing dumped Verizon and switched to AT&T.
Wait - so your original sample size was only phones on Verizon, but you made a switch for the Iphone? Perhaps the problem is just with the evidently poor choice of phones from Verizon.
I never said science could answer those things - yes, there are some things we can't give definite answers to.
What I question is the idea that there's some other thing - usually religion - that gives us these answers. So come on, what method can we use to provide objective answers to "How should people treat each other?" or "What should individuals and/or societies value most?"
The only answers will be answers that are a matter of opinion - and good opinions will still be those that are based on reason and scientific evidence. I don't know of any scientist who claims that science can provide definite answers to moral questions, so I think it's still a straw man.
Oh, I agree it's annoying the way that Intel graphics have become so widespread when they're not the best by far. But that wasn't what the OP was about.
And on the contrary, by this reasoning we should be glad if decent 3D hardware became a requirement for the web (even though I don't think it will), because that'll either force Intel to improve, or they'll lose market share to NVIDIA and AMD/ATI, either way it will be good for 3D graphics.
Another ridiculous study proving nothing. And an unfinished one no less.
As the poster above said... FUN is more important.
But it's what the OP said that would be completely useless - saying "fun makes a game good" is a complete tautology. The question is then what makes a game fun?
It's not at all necessarily obvious that say, social aspects are more important than plot.
Believe it or not, there are some people who might like an OS for reasons other than a knee-jerk "It's not MS" (especially hilarious given how many Mac users then run MS software on their Macs).
But even if that's true, you could say the same about OS X - why use that, now there's BeOS? You see, if all you can say about OS X is that it doesn't have the flaws on Windows, then that applies to all non-MS OSs that are released. If you want to suggest otherwise, the burden is upon you to show how OS X is better than all other OSs (including BeOS, and I guess Linux too), not just Windows.
And anyhow, who cares - do you post to every Linux story saying "This would be great news if ..."? Or do you just think you can get away with it because it's BeOS? And imagine the annoyance of someone posting to every OS X story, saying "This would be great news, if only Windows didn't already exist"?
Believe it or not, some people have an interest in products other than Apple, around here. If you don't like it, skip the story. This is the first BeOS story in ages, whilst Apple stories appear several times a day - you're hardly losing out here!
Comparatively cheap these days. Scripts for micro-blogging, standard blogging, etc? Freely available. Not just being another hype-follower? Priceless.
So why are you here on "trendy" Slashdot like the rest of us? Surely you're better off building your own site to post your opinions to, instead of following the hype, right?
I suspect their are arguments like "because people use it" and "because people know it" and "because people don't need to make separate registrations". All it means is that you get buried in junk instead, or force people who wouldn't otherwise bother with an account on one of these "trendy" services to get an account just to comment (while avoiding the rest of the spam).
But if you can be bothered to even RTFS, they do have a website ( http://beagle.vpro.nl/#/page/item/12/english/ ), for those people who don't want to sign up to Facebook or Twitter, etc. Those things are provided in addition, for the convencience of people who are on those sites.
Dawkins is one of the main faces of anti-Creationism / pro-evolution and he does exhibit Darwin worship. Sure, he's only one person but I've met many like him in their beliefs of evolution.
What acts do you mean by "Darwin worship"?
I think it's important to not put too much faith in the scientific method either.
Now that sounds like a straw man - do you have an example of this?
Most scientists, and atheists for that matter, are aware of the limits of science (the objection is just to people claim that if science can't answer something, there is something else that somehow can provide answers).
Dawkins himself did a programme on the dangers of misusing science, for example, people convicted of crimes solely on dodgy scientific evidence.
I was careful to say "can be", not "are always". By "matrix calculations" (not "manipulation") I include multiplication of a matrix with a vector, which can be hardware accelerated.
Whatever the OP meant by "fast matrix math", it's something that is handled by the API, and doesn't have to be done using Javascript, so I don't see how the speed of Javascript affects it. (Although I admit I meant to say "one advantage" rather than "the advantage".)
Well I'm sure that game companies will be distressed to hear that the apathetic segment of the market is not interested.
And wait - the apathetic user group will be bothering to go through their settings and have this disabled, except for sites where they need it?
What about PDF?
Think about it, far more complex data is encoded in standardized formats that a multitude of programs all process and exchange data through. Look at sound, still images, vector graphics, even video!
The problem here is not complexity, but variation. Sound, images and even video are all straightforward - you just have a waveform (for sound), or pixels and a number of frames. There simply isn't much variation - so the file formats can change how the data is represented, but what's represented is pretty obvious.
Now what do we represent formatted text as? How do we factor things such as tables, paragraphs, fonts etc? Do we want things fixed perfectly (like PDF) or the formatting to depend on the user settings (like HTML)? There's no end of possibilities. Even worse with a spreadsheet format.
A better analogy would not be sound, but file formats used for music composition software. Yeah, there's General MIDI, but that's very limited, because it fits to the lowest common denominator. Or an image file format that also sorts information about the creation of the image - different layers, undo history, etc. Is there a standard for that? Consider, why do products like PaintShop Pro and the GIMP have their own file formats (incompatible with each other)? Why doesn't GIMP just use PNG, instead of its own custom file format?
The flaw in your argument is that you're comparing the file format that the author wants, with the end document. If all you want is the end document, then why not print to PDF? See, there's your common format. Ah, but you say, that's no use to you if you want to go back an edit the document? Well precisely - just as your cited audio, image and video formats are no use to the creator of those documents.
Another example would be 3D file formats - no such standard there.
Javascript isn't a good language for fast matrix math.
The matrix calculations required for rendering are done by OpenGL, not the caller programming language (the advantage of doing this way is that it can be hardware accelerated).
Also, authoring tools will have to be developed. You can't effectively author 3D content in a text editor.
I'm unclear what sort of tools you refer to? Presumably people would use the same 3D modelling software they'd use for any other OpenGL application.
OpenGL has the advantage over the other things you list in that it's (a) an existing widely used API, and (b) it has hardware acceleration support.
You're right - I bet people were thinking making an online game with this, but now they've discovered that you alone will have this disabled, there's obviously no point doing it. It's a good thing you posted to let them know, and save them the trouble!