But what you don't seem to get is that Apple is deliberately limiting us in our choice. You could say: buy another device, but that is not a valid argument, since the geeks here are rightfully concerned that increasing market share will eventually lead to a limiting computing experience.
Oops. Someone is either arrogant or doesn't understand how the market works.
If Apple's market share increases its, largely, because they are delivering what people want.
Over the years computing changes. What never ceases to amaze me are the number of luddites that exist within my industry and resist this change.
Apple excels at creating beauty, in both hardware and software (BTW, I'm using an Imac right now). This iPad is no exception. My only question is: Will I be able to put my own Operating System on it?
Why should Apple spend development time on something that only the vast minority of potential users, I'd estimate at >1%, will want to do?
That's the only relevant part of your post. However we are talking about different things. What you, and the majority of people posting here, don't get is that people want a simple interface. They want fewer choices. They want to be able to make simple decisions of what to do.
I have a TV. It has HDMI, it has component, it has VGA, it has SCART. I have cable STB which can output three of these. Now I know to use HDMI, but that's because I'm into technology. Not everyone knows, they have all of these different connectors, which is the best to use?
I have a PC laptop. It has serial, a mouse connector, and USB. What type of mouse should I buy to connect to it? More complicated questions for anyone that doesn't have a good grasp on technology.
What the geeks here don't get is that choice can be confusing. A vast array of different choices is a barrier to a lot of people. It challenges them to pick the right one when they don't have the requisite knowledge to make an informed choice. You can argue that they should get that knowledge but that's both elitist and unnecessary. As technologists it should be our aim to make technology more accessible not less. Apple get this, slashdot by and large doesn't.
Way 1: Appeals to geeks and those people that don't mind spending a while fixing something that did work because of the hack that they just installed.
Way 2: Appeals to everyone else. It works as it says it does and installing things doesn't, in general, run the risk of stopping everything working.
I know you don't get it, and are never going to get it. The general public doesn't buy into the FOSS crusade. All they want are things that do what they say they do and are simple to use.
The whole thing is completely unintuitive, has the same closed approach as iPhone and doesn't have any technical or usability options one would think would be good. Missing a pen too.
And no, I do not want to buy every single software from an App Store that I would like to use. I want there to be freeware and shareware programmers, and I WANT TO DEVELOP SOFTWARE MYSELF.
Like, what appears to be, the vast majority on slashdot you are missing the point.
The point is its not for you. Its not designed to address the requirement you list above. However, that doesn't mean that its fail. More likely it means that you are close minded.
I hate to rain on people's parade but technology is no longer exclusively for geeks. The Internet has made technology a part of most people's lives. Most people don't need your requirements. What they want is access to the Internet. Even then, they don't want the whole internet. They would be happy with the Web, Email and some sort of IM.
At the moment these people have PCs and they cause them no ends of issues. They get viruses, because they don't want to become enough of an expert to know how to avoid them. They get problems and have to call someone out to connect them back onto the Internet. They have 4 or 5 toolbars running in their browser. They don't know how they got there, and don't know how to get rid of them. They don't understand URLs and type them into Google. These are the people that the iPad is going to address.
Yes it has some limitations, no Flash means some sites won't render, but the majority of standards compliant sites will work. So what the iPad is doing is providing Internet access in a clean, protected, form for people that don't care about how things work, just that they do. If you are too rigid in your mindset to see this please, please, find another area to work in.
One of the reasons for the removal of the credits in about screens is reported to be headhunting. You got your name in the credits and bang, people calling you to offer mega-bucks to work elsewhere. I don't know how true this is but, given that the policy changed during IT boom years, it wouldn't surprise me if there wasn't an element of truth in it.
Erm. How about Google. Maybe people can't remember that far back but initially Google was just a search engine. Even now the ads aren't bold and brash, they appear to be just more results. Done right there is no reason why unobtrusive, but relevant, ads can't be placed in search results on the iPhone.
Because of pressure from pharma lobbies, and the leverage that the WHO has provided by declaring a pandemic, I am certain that the risks were not weighted and assessed objectively, and that precious health funds were squandered in a way that only benefited to the pharma industry.
My understanding is that all that a pandemic states is that the distribution is widespread. In effect that it is spread throughout the world. I think that a lack of understanding, or deliberate overstating, of the meaning of the term played an effect in the public hysteria around swine flu. People hear epidemic and think 'that means things are bad'. Then they hear pandemic and think that its worse. Its here were the media can take some of the blame. They are more concerned with being first, and on presentation, to worry about providing clear and concise explanations.
I'm also wondering why they're so worried about airports. There are way more much easier ways to execute acts of terror than in such a limited environment. But maybe it's just that we want to protect people rich enough to actually fly. Tells you something 'bout who's important and who's not.
Its not about securing those people its about having a security theatre that disrupts as few people as possible. If you had similar measures on trains, or subways, etc. it would cause chaos to millions and the people wouldn't put up with it in the long run. For the most part air travel is something people do occasionally so don't really mind a little extra delay for their safety. The only people it hits hard are the rich, or folk who have to travel for work. The general public can sneer at them complaining because they deserve it for being able to fly that often.
having played the demo of gt5, i'm excited to see the whole game. personally, i don't think it needs some of the silliness that forza has added, but i haven't played anything past the first installment (ai drivers that drive race cars like bumper cars? what a waste).
Wow, way to state and invalidate your opinion in the same sentence.
I played GT, GT2, GT3 and GT4 to death. You can't honestly say anything about the AI in Forza. The AI in the GT series isn't exactly good.
This would be the case if the publishers of COD4 had the same attitude as EA. EA ruthlessly release yearly versions of games and drop the previous years. In the store at the weekend I noticed that I could still buy a new COD4 for the Xbox 360. There is no incentive to drop support for COD4 as they can still make money from downloadable maps on Xbox live. Likewise the same will be true for MW2.
EA's entire sports business model is based on the fact that people will spend money to buy essentially the same game with roster changes year after year. They've probably found that, with the recession, people have held off doing this for a couple of years and its hit their bottom line. Hence shutting down the servers. If you want to play online, buy the new version.
Re:"A decade after the Y2K crisis"
on
Y2.01K
·
· Score: 1
Yes there was a crisis. If the effort that was put in, hadn't been put in a huge number of important systems would have failed in Y2K.
The UK emergency services number (999) was one that would not have worked had we not spent the time upgrading and patch the systems and software it depended on.
Sadly, because there was no disaster, because the work was done to prevent it, people think there wasn't a problem. I suppose we should have left the 999 service. People would have died and we could have pointed to it as an example of the Y2K bug. I think we'd probably have been sued for not fixing it beforehand though.
It's called authoritarianism, you ignorant partisan fuck.
What a way with words you have. The level of control is authoritarian. I grew up listening to Labour supporters equating left wing with the former Soviet Bloc countries, as did the current Prime Minister. Those regimes would more properly have been described as authoritarian rather than left wing but that was the description used by them at the time. So the phrase was chosen with care, given its historic meaning within the Labour Party. In terms of the idealistic definitions of left and right wing it doesn't quite fit, so I'll give you that.
This is the labour party exercising its left wing credentials. It wants total control of the populous. They don't like the internet as it is as it allows people to bypass the laws they set up to police it. They don't want to stop it being used, but they want to control what people use if for, and to have something in place that is sufficiently vague that they can use for any purpose.
The worst thing is that the general population is that ignorant to what the government is doing that as long as this is spun as a measure to counter terrorism, or catching paedophiles, there will be no objection. After all, how could any sane person object to such a thing.
We currently have a government that is ruled by conceit. They know what is best for people and if we ignore what they tell us to do then its because we haven't understood rather than us having understood and rejected the advice. Their next resort is to legislate to force us to do what they want us to do, for our own good of course. HMG has forgotten that they are there to serve the people, rather than the other way around.
Very faithful except for the ending which is still faithful to the idea of the ending.
Saw it yesterday. After reflection I agree with Alan Moore. Its not possible to translate Watchmen from the graphic novel to the screen. Yes, it was a faithful representation, but I don't think it worked as a film. Perhaps it needed to take a few more liberties with the source material to produce a film that worked.
If you want a removable battery, then don't buy an apple. Buy a Dell, since they have that nifty system where you can plug a battery in to the drive bay giving you two batteries. That also means you can have a big stack of batteries and you can keep on hot-swapping them all day long, since you can hot-swap either of the batteries without losing power.
I suspect other manufacturers so this too.
My experience with Dells isn't recent. However I did find that the batteries on them stopped holding any sort of charge after a year or so. On that basis they *needed* to have a removable battery.
My experience with Apple laptops would say that they hold a decent charge for about twice as long.
I haven't played the game, but that said, how much of the heart of great games was the thrill of just squeaking by?
Not played the game, but still have an opinion on it. Thus is the way of the internet, people spouting off about things that they don't have any direct knowledge off. You aren't the only one though, it happens all the time.
I'm most of the way through the game on the Xbox 360. I like the mechanism, it prolongs the boss battles if you make mistakes. It does remove some of the suspense but that's more than made up for with the rest of the game. I've been gaming for well over 20 years and I'm enjoying PoP.
Karma be damned. Apple is just not a nice company. I got screwed over in the 1980s when Apple decided to stop selling their software in department stores. My parents had just bought me an overpriced Apple IIe and here I was, a kid who would have to spend hours getting to the nearest Apple dealer to buy software.
Dude that's a hell of a long time to bear a grudge. If you did the same with all companies I doubt you'd be able to find a single one that you could buy from.
Well they are talking about attracting developers in the long run. Which one is more appealing to a software company? An open platform that exposes itself to the world, or one that is closed?
If you are writing for the iPhone/iPod Touch you've got a fairly consistent target. This won't be the case with Android once the various companies get their phone out. This will lead to the same user experience issues that S60 has. It will require an awful lot of clever coding to get an app to work the same across all Android phones, especially with the varying input methods that will be on offer.
The $ cost of developing for Android may be less than the iPhone. The real cost could be much higher though. Only time will tell.
In the UK Vodafone are running an advert for the touch screen Blackberry Storm. They show the guy using it to fix a broken neon light he can see on a building opposite. Does this mean that it can do that? Wow!
Seriously the ASA needs to get a grip. The Apple advert was showing the things that could be done with an iPhone 3G. All of the things are possible, perhaps not within the time, but possible. The Blackberry Storm thing isn't possible. Which is banned?
Its a shame that the ASA doesn't come down with the same force on the incessant bombardment of beauty treatments we have with obviously fake material in them. I mean there is one for getting rid of deep set wrinkles, in the before shot the actress is frowning, in the after shot she's not. Viola! The wrinkles have gone!
I guess the problem is that the there isn't the degree of competitive scrutiny going on. All of the beauty companies pull the same trick so no one wants to upset the Apple cart.
I don't agree. Personal experience says that people that just buy a computer and don't have any real computer knowledge don't upgrade their operating system. They might buy a new copy because they've hosed their machine and lost the OEM copy that was on the special partition because a friend 'helped' them and formatted the disk. OS upgrades are few and far between though.
Slashdot Mirror
But what you don't seem to get is that Apple is deliberately limiting us in our choice. You could say: buy another device, but that is not a valid argument, since the geeks here are rightfully concerned that increasing market share will eventually lead to a limiting computing experience.
Oops. Someone is either arrogant or doesn't understand how the market works.
If Apple's market share increases its, largely, because they are delivering what people want.
Over the years computing changes. What never ceases to amaze me are the number of luddites that exist within my industry and resist this change.
Apple excels at creating beauty, in both hardware and software (BTW, I'm using an Imac right now). This iPad is no exception.
My only question is: Will I be able to put my own Operating System on it?
Why should Apple spend development time on something that only the vast minority of potential users, I'd estimate at >1%, will want to do?
Sigh, when do people get it.
That's the only relevant part of your post. However we are talking about different things. What you, and the majority of people posting here, don't get is that people want a simple interface. They want fewer choices. They want to be able to make simple decisions of what to do.
I have a TV. It has HDMI, it has component, it has VGA, it has SCART. I have cable STB which can output three of these. Now I know to use HDMI, but that's because I'm into technology. Not everyone knows, they have all of these different connectors, which is the best to use?
I have a PC laptop. It has serial, a mouse connector, and USB. What type of mouse should I buy to connect to it? More complicated questions for anyone that doesn't have a good grasp on technology.
What the geeks here don't get is that choice can be confusing. A vast array of different choices is a barrier to a lot of people. It challenges them to pick the right one when they don't have the requisite knowledge to make an informed choice. You can argue that they should get that knowledge but that's both elitist and unnecessary. As technologists it should be our aim to make technology more accessible not less. Apple get this, slashdot by and large doesn't.
You're right. There are two approaches:
Way 1: Appeals to geeks and those people that don't mind spending a while fixing something that did work because of the hack that they just installed.
Way 2: Appeals to everyone else. It works as it says it does and installing things doesn't, in general, run the risk of stopping everything working.
I know you don't get it, and are never going to get it. The general public doesn't buy into the FOSS crusade. All they want are things that do what they say they do and are simple to use.
The whole thing is completely unintuitive, has the same closed approach as iPhone and doesn't have any technical or usability options one would think would be good. Missing a pen too.
And no, I do not want to buy every single software from an App Store that I would like to use. I want there to be freeware and shareware programmers, and I WANT TO DEVELOP SOFTWARE MYSELF.
Like, what appears to be, the vast majority on slashdot you are missing the point.
The point is its not for you. Its not designed to address the requirement you list above. However, that doesn't mean that its fail. More likely it means that you are close minded.
I hate to rain on people's parade but technology is no longer exclusively for geeks. The Internet has made technology a part of most people's lives. Most people don't need your requirements. What they want is access to the Internet. Even then, they don't want the whole internet. They would be happy with the Web, Email and some sort of IM.
At the moment these people have PCs and they cause them no ends of issues. They get viruses, because they don't want to become enough of an expert to know how to avoid them. They get problems and have to call someone out to connect them back onto the Internet. They have 4 or 5 toolbars running in their browser. They don't know how they got there, and don't know how to get rid of them. They don't understand URLs and type them into Google. These are the people that the iPad is going to address.
Yes it has some limitations, no Flash means some sites won't render, but the majority of standards compliant sites will work. So what the iPad is doing is providing Internet access in a clean, protected, form for people that don't care about how things work, just that they do. If you are too rigid in your mindset to see this please, please, find another area to work in.
One of the reasons for the removal of the credits in about screens is reported to be headhunting. You got your name in the credits and bang, people calling you to offer mega-bucks to work elsewhere. I don't know how true this is but, given that the policy changed during IT boom years, it wouldn't surprise me if there wasn't an element of truth in it.
Erm. How about Google. Maybe people can't remember that far back but initially Google was just a search engine. Even now the ads aren't bold and brash, they appear to be just more results. Done right there is no reason why unobtrusive, but relevant, ads can't be placed in search results on the iPhone.
There is a noticeable difference in image clarity when going to 480p via composite. If you can't see this on your TV perhaps you bought the wrong TV?
Because of pressure from pharma lobbies, and the leverage that the WHO has provided by declaring a pandemic, I am certain that the risks were not weighted and assessed objectively, and that precious health funds were squandered in a way that only benefited to the pharma industry.
My understanding is that all that a pandemic states is that the distribution is widespread. In effect that it is spread throughout the world. I think that a lack of understanding, or deliberate overstating, of the meaning of the term played an effect in the public hysteria around swine flu. People hear epidemic and think 'that means things are bad'. Then they hear pandemic and think that its worse. Its here were the media can take some of the blame. They are more concerned with being first, and on presentation, to worry about providing clear and concise explanations.
I'm also wondering why they're so worried about airports. There are way more much easier ways to execute acts of terror than in such a limited environment. But maybe it's just that we want to protect people rich enough to actually fly. Tells you something 'bout who's important and who's not.
Its not about securing those people its about having a security theatre that disrupts as few people as possible. If you had similar measures on trains, or subways, etc. it would cause chaos to millions and the people wouldn't put up with it in the long run. For the most part air travel is something people do occasionally so don't really mind a little extra delay for their safety. The only people it hits hard are the rich, or folk who have to travel for work. The general public can sneer at them complaining because they deserve it for being able to fly that often.
having played the demo of gt5, i'm excited to see the whole game. personally, i don't think it needs some of the silliness that forza has added, but i haven't played anything past the first installment (ai drivers that drive race cars like bumper cars? what a waste).
Wow, way to state and invalidate your opinion in the same sentence.
I played GT, GT2, GT3 and GT4 to death. You can't honestly say anything about the AI in Forza. The AI in the GT series isn't exactly good.
Are you trying to say that only one-fourth of Americans are retarded?
There. I fixed it for you.
This would be the case if the publishers of COD4 had the same attitude as EA. EA ruthlessly release yearly versions of games and drop the previous years. In the store at the weekend I noticed that I could still buy a new COD4 for the Xbox 360. There is no incentive to drop support for COD4 as they can still make money from downloadable maps on Xbox live. Likewise the same will be true for MW2.
EA's entire sports business model is based on the fact that people will spend money to buy essentially the same game with roster changes year after year. They've probably found that, with the recession, people have held off doing this for a couple of years and its hit their bottom line. Hence shutting down the servers. If you want to play online, buy the new version.
Yes there was a crisis. If the effort that was put in, hadn't been put in a huge number of important systems would have failed in Y2K.
The UK emergency services number (999) was one that would not have worked had we not spent the time upgrading and patch the systems and software it depended on.
Sadly, because there was no disaster, because the work was done to prevent it, people think there wasn't a problem. I suppose we should have left the 999 service. People would have died and we could have pointed to it as an example of the Y2K bug. I think we'd probably have been sued for not fixing it beforehand though.
Must be good to live in a world where all life's problems can be solved by OSS software. Sadly, life just isn't that simple.
It's called authoritarianism, you ignorant partisan fuck.
What a way with words you have. The level of control is authoritarian. I grew up listening to Labour supporters equating left wing with the former Soviet Bloc countries, as did the current Prime Minister. Those regimes would more properly have been described as authoritarian rather than left wing but that was the description used by them at the time. So the phrase was chosen with care, given its historic meaning within the Labour Party. In terms of the idealistic definitions of left and right wing it doesn't quite fit, so I'll give you that.
This is the labour party exercising its left wing credentials. It wants total control of the populous. They don't like the internet as it is as it allows people to bypass the laws they set up to police it. They don't want to stop it being used, but they want to control what people use if for, and to have something in place that is sufficiently vague that they can use for any purpose.
The worst thing is that the general population is that ignorant to what the government is doing that as long as this is spun as a measure to counter terrorism, or catching paedophiles, there will be no objection. After all, how could any sane person object to such a thing.
We currently have a government that is ruled by conceit. They know what is best for people and if we ignore what they tell us to do then its because we haven't understood rather than us having understood and rejected the advice. Their next resort is to legislate to force us to do what they want us to do, for our own good of course. HMG has forgotten that they are there to serve the people, rather than the other way around.
Very faithful except for the ending which is still faithful to the idea of the ending.
Saw it yesterday. After reflection I agree with Alan Moore. Its not possible to translate Watchmen from the graphic novel to the screen. Yes, it was a faithful representation, but I don't think it worked as a film. Perhaps it needed to take a few more liberties with the source material to produce a film that worked.
If you want a removable battery, then don't buy an apple. Buy a Dell, since they have that nifty system where you can plug a battery in to the drive bay giving you two batteries. That also means you can have a big stack of batteries and you can keep on hot-swapping them all day long, since you can hot-swap either of the batteries without losing power.
I suspect other manufacturers so this too.
My experience with Dells isn't recent. However I did find that the batteries on them stopped holding any sort of charge after a year or so. On that basis they *needed* to have a removable battery.
My experience with Apple laptops would say that they hold a decent charge for about twice as long.
This could all have changed.
I haven't played the game, but that said, how much of the heart of great games was the thrill of just squeaking by?
Not played the game, but still have an opinion on it. Thus is the way of the internet, people spouting off about things that they don't have any direct knowledge off. You aren't the only one though, it happens all the time.
I'm most of the way through the game on the Xbox 360. I like the mechanism, it prolongs the boss battles if you make mistakes. It does remove some of the suspense but that's more than made up for with the rest of the game. I've been gaming for well over 20 years and I'm enjoying PoP.
Karma be damned. Apple is just not a nice company. I got screwed over in the 1980s when Apple decided to stop selling their software in department stores. My parents had just bought me an overpriced Apple IIe and here I was, a kid who would have to spend hours getting to the nearest Apple dealer to buy software.
Dude that's a hell of a long time to bear a grudge. If you did the same with all companies I doubt you'd be able to find a single one that you could buy from.
Well they are talking about attracting developers in the long run. Which one is more appealing to a software company? An open platform that exposes itself to the world, or one that is closed?
If you are writing for the iPhone/iPod Touch you've got a fairly consistent target. This won't be the case with Android once the various companies get their phone out. This will lead to the same user experience issues that S60 has. It will require an awful lot of clever coding to get an app to work the same across all Android phones, especially with the varying input methods that will be on offer.
The $ cost of developing for Android may be less than the iPhone. The real cost could be much higher though. Only time will tell.
In the UK Vodafone are running an advert for the touch screen Blackberry Storm. They show the guy using it to fix a broken neon light he can see on a building opposite. Does this mean that it can do that? Wow!
Seriously the ASA needs to get a grip. The Apple advert was showing the things that could be done with an iPhone 3G. All of the things are possible, perhaps not within the time, but possible. The Blackberry Storm thing isn't possible. Which is banned?
Its a shame that the ASA doesn't come down with the same force on the incessant bombardment of beauty treatments we have with obviously fake material in them. I mean there is one for getting rid of deep set wrinkles, in the before shot the actress is frowning, in the after shot she's not. Viola! The wrinkles have gone!
I guess the problem is that the there isn't the degree of competitive scrutiny going on. All of the beauty companies pull the same trick so no one wants to upset the Apple cart.
I don't agree. Personal experience says that people that just buy a computer and don't have any real computer knowledge don't upgrade their operating system. They might buy a new copy because they've hosed their machine and lost the OEM copy that was on the special partition because a friend 'helped' them and formatted the disk. OS upgrades are few and far between though.