If what you mean is that Google is beholden to the law in the countries in which it operates. I agree fully.
Otherwise it's just sensationalist nonsense. Google is a company with an aim to generate income. However much of it's business deals are driven by the knowledge that google works in "good faith" with it's partners. (Many companies won't partner with Microsoft on new technologies because they don't want to be the next SGI/Fahrenheit sucker.)
Companies, universities and investors would not embrace google if it's practices were unfair on it's users. From reading the article we can see that Google actually made a decent decision and gave the anonymous user options before eventually releasing the details.
Google needs to appear as a reasonable entity to the courts. If google fights the courts to the last frontier in every case it is presented, it would not only be costly to the company, but give google a damaging litigious image. Instead google chooses it's battles wisely for the betterment of it's users allowing it to defend more important legal issues with success..
While not to distract from the importance of service packs working on expired betas that are probably being artificially maintained while yielding unpredictable results.
My eyes were first attracted to the word "bricked" only to realise that it was again not "bricked" but just someone aiming high with a sensationalist headline.
I feel that bricked = no longer functional with no redemption at all.. I.e your hardware might as well be a brick. The ability to extract your data and at worst having to then format the system and reinstall the OS is rather far from "bricking" and it's a pretty standard procedure in the event of a virus or OS-level corruption.
I have included a handy guide of examples of ways to brick your computer.
- Bring your computer swimming.
- Puncture your laptop battery and watch the fireworks, wait until computer is smoldering mess before extinguishing.
- Operate your machine in the near vicinity of high voltage Tesla coil.
- Drop your computer off some ridiculous glass walkway in the middle of the desert.
Just a note about the parent author, it's clearly a paid-for astroturf campaign. They are a recent joiner of slashdot, and have at the time of writing, posted only two comments which speak about amazon's new product. Both posts read like PR scripts, yet despite being posted within 30 minutes of each other: state that they have owned the device for 2 days yet have experienced 3-4 days of battery life.
Doing some quick math you can see that 6" with a 800x600px resolution yields a 4.8" x 3.6" screen with 166.6.. dpi resolution.
Combining this with a 4-tone grey screen. It's vastly insufficient for rendering serif typefaces which are the easiest to read. Rather the product imagery focusses heavily on block-serif or sanserif typefaces.
I suspect you are correct. I don't mean to throw water over this alluring tech toy. However possessing an 800x600 resolution screen on a device who's primary purpose is for reading is an obvious oversight. When screen resolutions are dense enough to render serif typefaces without hinting; only then will we have a device that can be often read without eye strain.
Also while there are many people who don't read books regularly, the people that do usually appreciate owning a bookshelf of their favourite novels. I feel it'll make a great reference device for things like dictionaries, encyclopedias and newspapers.
My last point is that when reading a novel, the reader is usually put into a deeper level of thinking which is annoying to be pulled out from. I'm curious if the device has a trivial way to flip pages that doesn't require the user to mentally escape the novel everytime they want to turn the page. (Or other annoyances like being told they have new email mid-reading.)
Maybe we've all been sucked into a black hole. The big bang was when we came out "the other side" and the expansion is just the gravity finally letting up on us. We're all in mama cass' belly.
I hope Amazon does well. Then the major music labels will be more inclined to organise more DRM free with iTunes Store. Nothing against amazon.. but I actually prefer AAC.
Judging from my experience with nokia phones. The user interface, performance and construction will still have significant gaps/compromise in order to keep the end price affordable and the handset profitable.(Apple earn their followers by producing thorough and seamless interfaces, this directly contradicts Nokia's business model.)
Plus in the hey-day of MP3 player competition: Apple rolled out new models twice a year. I doubt that the iPhone won't be following the same aggressive product development cycle.
I'm not dissing Nokia for duplicating the iPhone interface (and definitely extending it with their handset experience.) What I am saying however is that Nokia will produce every kind of phone out there in their usual jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none design ethos.
They know that profitability is not about having the best phone out there, but having something comparable and half the price. (I.e consumer choice.)
Additionally one can argue that the two companies work in different markets: Nokia rarely cut out seldom used/confusing features in the fear that they'll strike off a possible buyer. Apple on the other hand will only include the most desired features and reinvent them with their particular experience in usability.
no i'm against that too. MS should just know better since they can afford to pay for the typefaces. (Hell they could afford to make new innovative typefaces from scratch.)
On the other hand we have FOSS software (thinking certain ubuntu installations in particular here). They often use two excuses to blatantly copy MS, Apple & others. The first reason: "It's trivially obvious, and we all came to it at the same time." (usually a bullshit excuse, as many of those developers don't seem to think that anything is good unless a major vendor does it first) the other excuse they have is that "they are trying to replicate an environment that consumers are familiar with" which is just a pisstake for half implementing the feature they're copying. What I find troubling with many FOSS dupes, is that they merely copy the eye-candy portion(again usually poorly), but then the backend to that is utter rubbish and a total inefficient hack. So it looks similarish to say Leopard stack's feature, but it's functional portion is severly lacking and grossly inefficient.
I find it ironic that Apple are paying MS for Arial.. when Arial was MS trying to make sure they didn't have to pay licensing for Helvetica. Apple license a number of fonts from their originating foundries(where available) instead of making near-duplicates which are considered by those in the industry as the equivalent of piracy.
A bit of history on why Arial is so awful (in short). It's a font called Grotesque built to the proportions of Helvetica (so that it can be substituted for Helvetica without changing the page length.) As a result it has terrible eveness and is generally avoided by designers not out of design-snobbery, but due to how Arial negatively affects "grey area".
Microsoft have a history of fucking with typefaces to avoid paying licensing fees. Repeating this act recently with a their new vista font "Segoe" which is almost a carbon-copy of Frutiger. It's subtle differences can only be seen when enlarging the type beyond the 16pt standard test for font similarity. (A test which Segoe failed against Frutiger, flunking it's attempt at registration with the EU trademark office.) Also in Vista the use of Segoe is at 8, 9 and 10 point, figures significantly smaller than the generous 16pt test EU test.
I think the demand for a SDK caught apple by surprise (possibly because the iPod didn't have many people hollering for a SDK, and since it's easy to see the iPhone as an iPod + phone functionality I can see how this was given a low priority.)
I do however believe that apple will now release a SDK for the iPhone (apple pretty much do anything the consumers want these days, even managed some drm music, something i thought would never come while the RIAA existed.)
I also believe apple stated ajax/web apps as the SDK because they didn't want to give people any reason to think the iPhone was incomplete (and hence to put off the purchase.)
While I have no doubt that worms etc can be created for OSX (or any OS, given enough time.) I'm not really fond of companies blowing their trumpet until they're certain. It's very rich to claim all that publicity without notifing the vendor, or even being 100% certain. Otherwise it comes across as yet another company that is trying to claim solely for the benefit of the massive attention that it will draw on the company. Whether it's a fiasco involving wifi hardware or an antivirus company claiming endless vulnerabilities to sell their "protection tools". The apple community is well versed in frauds and half-truths spun as a "massive vulnerability" who cry wolf.
Just a side curiosity about the article.. "Note: Figures do not add up to 100% because of rounding."
How is "rounding" an excuse for why the pie graph doesn't add to 100%? (It adds up to 99%)
The agreements provide value when taking into account two factors:
1. Microsoft release new software in the timeframe of the agreement. 2. Microsoft release upgrades that are worthwhile purchasing in that same time frame.
Since many companies don't really need upgrades (MS tend to roll out new ideas into new products, while giving lack lustre upgrades to existing products.) The only thing really pushing along MS upgrades is the fear falling so far behind in windows versions that MS stop releasing patches for them. (How many companies do you know that still believe windows 2000 was their peak?)
With numerous delays in Vista and the final product not having too much benefit over it's predecessor, it comes as no surprise that companies can't justify paying for another go on the merry-go-round.
It also makes me think of how complicated the simple "bandwidth test" will be should net neutrality get thrown out the window.
Already we juggle the factors of location, "paid for speed", shared bandwidth issues with daytime or peak traffic.. but then without some kind of neutrality we'd also be juggling whether or not the interconnects between yourself and the test site are all on a higher priority or lower priority pipe.(something we could never know)
Today your ISP can blame a bit of the slowdowns on network conditions, but ultimately it's obvious if your ISP is a slower provider.. but in the future they'll be able to knowingly serve you slow speeds while claiming it's just the low-priority sites you may be visiting.
From this day, it shall be called: Open Source Energy. Now we need a giant cartel to claim that it infringes on 250 of their energy patents. BUT! we won't tell you which ones! OH what a devilish plan, muwahaha!
Your Honour, it's evolutionary proof that you're supposed to hit them on the head and drag em back to your cave. See the article; they're built for it!
Actually, it was a hyperbole to point out that since not even Microsoft Zune is supported on 64bit windows(http://www.zune.net/en-us/meetzune/softwar e/minsystemreqs.htm) - Then I doubt apple are going to bother porting, quicktime, safari and itunes to the tiny marketshare that is windows 64 bit editions.
Also porting to 64bit windows is not a trivial matter of clicking a few check boxes in some kind of combined dev environment and choosing recompile, 64 bit windows is an entirely different animal.
Also OS X is a threat to Linux, not so much vice versa. If Apple actually saw Linux as a threat to OS X they'd start enforcing some of the numerous patents which linux distros are infringing (such as those which copy even recent OS X features such as "expose".)
Also porting any OSX technology to Linux is actually easier than porting to windows, since Linux shares much of the same *NIX underpinnings. (Hence why it's also so easy to run "Linux software" on Mac OS X.)
All in all, not even Microsoft give a fuck about the consumer space of Windows 64 bit editon.
Honestly, this is incredibly petty, I wouldn't bash any company for this.
I'd be concerned if Apple were actually hiding this information. (but it's their advantage not to annoy iPhone purchasers.)
However Apple (and plenty of vendors) will remove comments from discussion boards which are just people who can't read the box, listen to the apple-store staff, read the manual/ online documentation or any one of the multitude of other places where the system requirements are written.
There is no use in clogging a comments board with gripes that any well-researched consumer would have already known.(I'd hope some research went into buying a $600 device.)
Following that point, the iPhone is not a small purchase, at least read the system requirements list. Apple aren't hiding this fact, e.g. here is the system requirements that you'll find in the various places described above: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305 703 (noting the creation dates predate the iPhone launch by weeks, it's not late breaking news.) They also make quite a point about checking the system requirements before purchase.
I'd agree there, there is nothing evil about an advertising company selling it's wares. Plus all the talk about health care will only force change. Google is where it is because they have foresight and will ride each wave as appropriate.
The matters involving China are unfortunate, it's the only way they can get Google. It's a sneaky ploy by google as many services are available which help remove some power from the chinese authority. Such as the now old trick of using google as a proxy via the translate service.
a few tech sites have been giving it "stress testing" i.e dropping it (on carpet, flooring and cement), trying to scratch it with common household items (keys etc) It's holding up pretty well, better than most glass-screen devices. (i.e superficial scratches on the metal exterior.)
As for using the iphone while performing the running of the bulls.. well that's a test I don't think the iphone would pass.
That and Apple is a company that waged a lot by entering the mobile handset market.. I think the obvious problems, such as dropping and scratching, were already thought about and prepared for. (Apple execs often answered interviewers who asked this question by throwing the devices about or onto the floor and then showing them unharmed.)
Slashdot Mirror
Otherwise it's just sensationalist nonsense. Google is a company with an aim to generate income. However much of it's business deals are driven by the knowledge that google works in "good faith" with it's partners. (Many companies won't partner with Microsoft on new technologies because they don't want to be the next SGI/Fahrenheit sucker.)
Companies, universities and investors would not embrace google if it's practices were unfair on it's users. From reading the article we can see that Google actually made a decent decision and gave the anonymous user options before eventually releasing the details.
Google needs to appear as a reasonable entity to the courts. If google fights the courts to the last frontier in every case it is presented, it would not only be costly to the company, but give google a damaging litigious image. Instead google chooses it's battles wisely for the betterment of it's users allowing it to defend more important legal issues with success..
My eyes were first attracted to the word "bricked" only to realise that it was again not "bricked" but just someone aiming high with a sensationalist headline.
I feel that bricked = no longer functional with no redemption at all.. I.e your hardware might as well be a brick. The ability to extract your data and at worst having to then format the system and reinstall the OS is rather far from "bricking" and it's a pretty standard procedure in the event of a virus or OS-level corruption.
I have included a handy guide of examples of ways to brick your computer.
- Bring your computer swimming.
- Puncture your laptop battery and watch the fireworks, wait until computer is smoldering mess before extinguishing.
- Operate your machine in the near vicinity of high voltage Tesla coil.
- Drop your computer off some ridiculous glass walkway in the middle of the desert.
Just a note about the parent author, it's clearly a paid-for astroturf campaign. They are a recent joiner of slashdot, and have at the time of writing, posted only two comments which speak about amazon's new product. Both posts read like PR scripts, yet despite being posted within 30 minutes of each other: state that they have owned the device for 2 days yet have experienced 3-4 days of battery life.
Doing some quick math you can see that 6" with a 800x600px resolution yields a 4.8" x 3.6" screen with 166.6.. dpi resolution. Combining this with a 4-tone grey screen. It's vastly insufficient for rendering serif typefaces which are the easiest to read. Rather the product imagery focusses heavily on block-serif or sanserif typefaces.
Also while there are many people who don't read books regularly, the people that do usually appreciate owning a bookshelf of their favourite novels. I feel it'll make a great reference device for things like dictionaries, encyclopedias and newspapers.
My last point is that when reading a novel, the reader is usually put into a deeper level of thinking which is annoying to be pulled out from. I'm curious if the device has a trivial way to flip pages that doesn't require the user to mentally escape the novel everytime they want to turn the page. (Or other annoyances like being told they have new email mid-reading.)
Maybe we've all been sucked into a black hole. The big bang was when we came out "the other side" and the expansion is just the gravity finally letting up on us. We're all in mama cass' belly.
I hope Amazon does well. Then the major music labels will be more inclined to organise more DRM free with iTunes Store. Nothing against amazon.. but I actually prefer AAC.
Actually the article summary has been misled/mistaken.. since the Titanium Powerbooks actually went to 1GHz before being discontinued.
Plus in the hey-day of MP3 player competition: Apple rolled out new models twice a year. I doubt that the iPhone won't be following the same aggressive product development cycle.
I'm not dissing Nokia for duplicating the iPhone interface (and definitely extending it with their handset experience.) What I am saying however is that Nokia will produce every kind of phone out there in their usual jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none design ethos.
They know that profitability is not about having the best phone out there, but having something comparable and half the price. (I.e consumer choice.)
Additionally one can argue that the two companies work in different markets: Nokia rarely cut out seldom used/confusing features in the fear that they'll strike off a possible buyer. Apple on the other hand will only include the most desired features and reinvent them with their particular experience in usability.
On the other hand we have FOSS software (thinking certain ubuntu installations in particular here). They often use two excuses to blatantly copy MS, Apple & others. The first reason: "It's trivially obvious, and we all came to it at the same time." (usually a bullshit excuse, as many of those developers don't seem to think that anything is good unless a major vendor does it first) the other excuse they have is that "they are trying to replicate an environment that consumers are familiar with" which is just a pisstake for half implementing the feature they're copying. What I find troubling with many FOSS dupes, is that they merely copy the eye-candy portion(again usually poorly), but then the backend to that is utter rubbish and a total inefficient hack. So it looks similarish to say Leopard stack's feature, but it's functional portion is severly lacking and grossly inefficient.
A bit of history on why Arial is so awful (in short). It's a font called Grotesque built to the proportions of Helvetica (so that it can be substituted for Helvetica without changing the page length.) As a result it has terrible eveness and is generally avoided by designers not out of design-snobbery, but due to how Arial negatively affects "grey area".
Microsoft have a history of fucking with typefaces to avoid paying licensing fees. Repeating this act recently with a their new vista font "Segoe" which is almost a carbon-copy of Frutiger. It's subtle differences can only be seen when enlarging the type beyond the 16pt standard test for font similarity. (A test which Segoe failed against Frutiger, flunking it's attempt at registration with the EU trademark office.) Also in Vista the use of Segoe is at 8, 9 and 10 point, figures significantly smaller than the generous 16pt test EU test.
I do however believe that apple will now release a SDK for the iPhone (apple pretty much do anything the consumers want these days, even managed some drm music, something i thought would never come while the RIAA existed.)
I also believe apple stated ajax/web apps as the SDK because they didn't want to give people any reason to think the iPhone was incomplete (and hence to put off the purchase.)
While I have no doubt that worms etc can be created for OSX (or any OS, given enough time.) I'm not really fond of companies blowing their trumpet until they're certain. It's very rich to claim all that publicity without notifing the vendor, or even being 100% certain. Otherwise it comes across as yet another company that is trying to claim solely for the benefit of the massive attention that it will draw on the company. Whether it's a fiasco involving wifi hardware or an antivirus company claiming endless vulnerabilities to sell their "protection tools". The apple community is well versed in frauds and half-truths spun as a "massive vulnerability" who cry wolf.
Just a side curiosity about the article..
"Note: Figures do not add up to 100% because of rounding."
How is "rounding" an excuse for why the pie graph doesn't add to 100%? (It adds up to 99%)
1. Microsoft release new software in the timeframe of the agreement.
2. Microsoft release upgrades that are worthwhile purchasing in that same time frame.
Since many companies don't really need upgrades (MS tend to roll out new ideas into new products, while giving lack lustre upgrades to existing products.) The only thing really pushing along MS upgrades is the fear falling so far behind in windows versions that MS stop releasing patches for them. (How many companies do you know that still believe windows 2000 was their peak?)
With numerous delays in Vista and the final product not having too much benefit over it's predecessor, it comes as no surprise that companies can't justify paying for another go on the merry-go-round.
Already we juggle the factors of location, "paid for speed", shared bandwidth issues with daytime or peak traffic.. but then without some kind of neutrality we'd also be juggling whether or not the interconnects between yourself and the test site are all on a higher priority or lower priority pipe.(something we could never know)
Today your ISP can blame a bit of the slowdowns on network conditions, but ultimately it's obvious if your ISP is a slower provider.. but in the future they'll be able to knowingly serve you slow speeds while claiming it's just the low-priority sites you may be visiting.
From this day, it shall be called: Open Source Energy. Now we need a giant cartel to claim that it infringes on 250 of their energy patents. BUT! we won't tell you which ones! OH what a devilish plan, muwahaha!
Your Honour, it's evolutionary proof that you're supposed to hit them on the head and drag em back to your cave. See the article; they're built for it!
If the make-or-break difference is $50, then they're probably not buying a laptop. Even so, you can get cheaper laptops at other vendors than Dell.
But to keep the fuse burning:
NOW THAT WOULD BE TAKING HOLD OF MY DREAMS!!!1111SIN(90)
..or build it yourself and save a few hundred dollars.
Also porting to 64bit windows is not a trivial matter of clicking a few check boxes in some kind of combined dev environment and choosing recompile, 64 bit windows is an entirely different animal.
Also OS X is a threat to Linux, not so much vice versa. If Apple actually saw Linux as a threat to OS X they'd start enforcing some of the numerous patents which linux distros are infringing (such as those which copy even recent OS X features such as "expose".)
Also porting any OSX technology to Linux is actually easier than porting to windows, since Linux shares much of the same *NIX underpinnings. (Hence why it's also so easy to run "Linux software" on Mac OS X.)
All in all, not even Microsoft give a fuck about the consumer space of Windows 64 bit editon.
I'd be concerned if Apple were actually hiding this information. (but it's their advantage not to annoy iPhone purchasers.)
However Apple (and plenty of vendors) will remove comments from discussion boards which are just people who can't read the box, listen to the apple-store staff, read the manual/ online documentation or any one of the multitude of other places where the system requirements are written.
There is no use in clogging a comments board with gripes that any well-researched consumer would have already known.(I'd hope some research went into buying a $600 device.)
Following that point, the iPhone is not a small purchase, at least read the system requirements list. Apple aren't hiding this fact, e.g. here is the system requirements that you'll find in the various places described above: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305 703 (noting the creation dates predate the iPhone launch by weeks, it's not late breaking news.) They also make quite a point about checking the system requirements before purchase.
Apple would address linux before 64 bit windows. With that said, the manual says it in quite a few places that it's not supported.
The matters involving China are unfortunate, it's the only way they can get Google. It's a sneaky ploy by google as many services are available which help remove some power from the chinese authority. Such as the now old trick of using google as a proxy via the translate service.
As for using the iphone while performing the running of the bulls.. well that's a test I don't think the iphone would pass.
That and Apple is a company that waged a lot by entering the mobile handset market.. I think the obvious problems, such as dropping and scratching, were already thought about and prepared for. (Apple execs often answered interviewers who asked this question by throwing the devices about or onto the floor and then showing them unharmed.)