"... occasionally trapped by errant spam filters..."
You don't think, once they have these mechanisms in place, that they're not going to tighten down the filters and dramtically increase the chance that your email is blocked? Especially when the alternative is to transfer you to a system where you pay them for the privilage of sending their members email?
The "problem" is that there are a ton of non-profits, news sites, news groups, blogs, lists, whatever-of-the-day sites, schools, churches, and other organizations that send out a lot of requested put-me-on-the-list email to their members.
Have a decent-sized list on which you're doing a daily run, and even at a quarter of a cent you're suddenly looking at thousands of dollars a month out of pocket.
So now all of those sites and services and lists either: A) Stop sending email and/or go out of business, or B) Start charging for the stuff you used to get for free.
Is it so hard for people to figure this stuff out? Apply a cost somewhere and--one way or another--you're going to pay it.
"It is the bits of these images we want to preserve, not the printed photos."
Agreed, but I have recorded CDRs that can no longer be read. Same for Iomega ZIP and JAZ disks (no drives). I have Apple DOS 5.25 floppies and 3.5 inch ProDos discs. Heck, I even have some tapes and an 8" floppy from a PDP-11. All containing "bits" that can no longer be retrieved by the average person.
Will your grandson stumble one day on a DVD-R in your attic labeled "family photos", but have no way to retrieve them?
8GB let's me get a good selection of music and audiobooks, a couple of TV shows, a movie, and some pictures on it while leaving space for contacts and for the 2MP camera to do it's thing.
Only having 2GB would cut out nearly all of the wide-screen video capabilities, as there'd be no room at all for the files. One movie is a gig-plus all by itself.
Besides, I'd say there's a slim chance (20%) that it will ship out of the gate with more than 8GB. Underpromise and overdeliver.
The article says that there's a lack of FOSS that runs on the Mac/OS X, and as such you have to buy Office and Photoshop and so on.
But to me that's one of the advantages of the Mac as opposed to Linux or BSD, in that those commercial packages ARE available on a 'nix platform for those that need those types of "professional-grade" tools.
Not to mention the fact that Apple has several applications like Final Cut which are best-of-class and not available on any other platform. And with Parallels one pretty much has access to anything else needed as well.
The flip side of replacing an entire computer is that you have an entire computer to sell to a friend, thus subsidizing the cost of the replacement. And Macs hold their value pretty well.
"... but I rather suspect that CMYK has persisted because it makes people think that they look clever and to get people to hand over cash for something that now shouldn't exist."
Go look up additive and subtractive color systems and the circumstances under which each is used. Then come back when you have something not unimaginably dumb to contribute to the conversation.
People need to watch what numbers they're throwing around. $2,500 is the price of Photoshop AND Illustrator AND InDesign AND Dreamweaver AND Flash AND Fireworks AND Acrobat Professional AND Bridge AND Contribute AND a bunch of other tools. In other words, the entire suite.
Photoshop by itself can be had for much cheaper, especially the student version.
"Casual Windows users will use any operating system that is loaded on their machine."
And if they upgrade, will try to scrimp by on the existing amount of memory. Most people don't know that they'd probably get a dramtic performance increase for the price of a single stick of RAM.
"The tactile feedback you get from real buttons tell you both where you are in the UI relative to other elements..."
Yeah, I'm really going to know on a Treo that I'm on C and not V. Lots of tactile feedback in dozens of identical little buttons.
"Basically, you'll have to concentrate harder to use it."
Assumption. And probably totally ignores all of the other things one does on a "normal" phone like handling voicemail, or diving down in the menu tree to change a setting, or things like multiway conference calls that no one does on their existing phone because they never read the manual and memorized the procedure.
But hey. You've convinced yourself you're not going to like it. Fine. Horses for courses. And one less person ahead of me in line...
Every time I've seen it demo'ed pressing "home" brings up the standard 4 options at the bottom of the screen. "Phone" is always lower left. After that Favorites is two over.... and so on.
As long long as the interface is responsive, "muscle memory" wouldn't seem to be an issue.
And while I'm at it, I have a MBP that supports two-finger scrolling gestures on the trackpad... and I have to tell you that brushing up or down is now so natural it makes click and scroll wheels seem "quaint" and archaic. And "tactile" pg-up/dn buttons? Please. Watch the demos and notice the "flicking" gestures used to scroll and navigate. Watch how the "scroll" speed matches the velocity at which your fingers move. Gestures are intuitive as hell.
And texting? Watch someone text sometime. Very few people (even on Treos) are "touch-text'ists", and most are starting intently at the phone while they're doing it. And if you're moving to the iPhone from a RAZR or some other phone that has a standard 12-key-pad, having separate letter "keys" (even virtual ones) would be a godsend over having to hit "7" four times to get an "S", or waiting for the last letter to "enter" up so you can get a "A" after you've entered a "B". Thanks, but no thanks.
I think you're dramtically over-estimating the benefits of tatile feedback, and ignoring how interface action, responsives, and audible feedback can compensate, or even improve on the experience.
You can also get the Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2B for System Builders version from Amazon and save yourself $115 over the standard version ($154 vs $269). The existence of the system builder edition is one of Microsoft's better kept secrets. I think there's a Vista SB version as well.
Parallels doesn't require you to repartition your drive, "wasting space" on a 30GB partition that may or may not ever get filled up. Plus I can clone VM's for testing (web developer), back them up, archive them, run Windows IE6 at the same time as I'm developing to test for compatibility, and so on.
Sorry, but it's BootCamp that's at a disadvantage here, not Parallels.
Given that refinery capacity is the current raison de jour to justify high prices at the pump, and given that oil companies are still enjoying year-over-year record profits dispite said "lack of capacity", I have to stand by my analysis. Of course, it's equally likely that they could in fact build more capacity... and then charge still higher prices in order to "recoup" their multi-billion dollar investment.
Personally, I think most of them realize that the winds are shifting, and that this is their big chance to make a killing before alternative fuels and methods hit the market. And if I was "really" cynical, I'd say that the only reason we had a dip between last summer and this one was the fact we had an election in November...
So true. Back when I used a PC I'd occassionally run torrent and suddenly see firewall attacks peak like no one's business. Port probes, UDP probes, service attacks. Yuck.
It wouldn't surprise me at all to find many of the largest "information wants to be free" torrent sites being run by black hats in order to gather IP addresses and routing information for attacks.
If your Sunfire gets 35MPG you're lucky, or it too had a stong tailwind and you were going downhill in both directions. EPA estimates are 21/30, and your Jeep likewise, at 14/16. (You realize an Escalade or full-blown Navigator gets better mileage than that jeep, right?)
But 30MPG is nothing to sneeze at, and is still 50% better than the average SUV. And hopefully in 5-7 years you'll be able to replace it with something that does 40/80 at least...
Huh? A new one starts at about $22K, whereas a new Camry starts at $20K, and nearly every full-size SUV starts around $26K-28K. And forget the $40K plus luxury SUVs. In short, a Prius is about median when compared with other new car prices.
As to the rest, give it a year or two. All of those new efficient hybrids and diesels will work themselves down the food chain in a few years and begin to replace the gas-aholic 100K-200K mile clunkers many are driving now as those cars in turn die out and are replaced. Keep gas prices high and people will have even more incentive to do so.
And in case you haven't noticed, it seems that many couples and new families are buying into a Yaris or Fit or Versa or other small-but-cheap fuel-efficient vehicle, the modern equivalent of the VW Bug. (Speaking of which, it's almost impossible to find a used New Beetle around here. They've all been snapped up.) In short, the transition is already occurring, and is the main reason why Toyota has taken over the title of automotive kingpin while Ford, GM, and Chevy are hemoraging money and have been caught flat-footed... again.
Now, GM in particular could have stepped to the plate and saved their behind had they kept the EV1 around and in production... but again, they made a series of short-sighted decisions and dropped the ball. (Boy, did they drop the ball.) But hey. I'm sure hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicle they're backing will be here any day now (assuming GM is still around, of course).
BTW, rumor has it that the 2009 Prius will step up the bar even higher, at nearly 100MPG.
"But efficiency alone won't do it. We also need to increase energy production as well. This means nuclear, solar, wind, as well as more coal and oil production with research in making them cleaner and more efficient."
First, the current high gas prices are almost exclusively due to lack of refinery capacity, and the oil companies have a major disincentive in increasing it. You see, by investing money in refinery capacity and increasing supply they'd be expected to "reduce" prices. What idiot would spend money to make less?
Second, efficiency would do most of it. We can drive five Priuses for the amount of gasoline used by one Hummer or Escalade or Yukon. Increase fuel efficiency by 10% nationwide, and it would equal the estimated contents of the entire Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Replace our entire fleet of gas guzzlers with hybrids and electrics, and we WOULD be energy independent.
Then again, oil companies don't make money selling us LESS oil and gasoline, do they?
Slashdot Mirror
Tell them one out of ten customers who walk through the door won't be able to buy anything...
It's pretty obvious that some people don't like having their religion criticized...
"You have to pay them anyhow."
One might assume that there's other work that they were already doing, and that they're no longer doing now that they're doing something else...
"... occasionally trapped by errant spam filters..."
You don't think, once they have these mechanisms in place, that they're not going to tighten down the filters and dramtically increase the chance that your email is blocked? Especially when the alternative is to transfer you to a system where you pay them for the privilage of sending their members email?
First rule of a bureaucracy: Spend ALL of your budget. Spend more if you can.
Because if you (shudder) spend less, the powers that be might actually CUT your budget to what you actually need.
".. In areas where you have competent IT staff and are willing to do the work yourself .."
Yeah, I'm sure having your IT staff doing all of that work entails a great cost savings. I mean, it's not like they're paid employees or anything...
TANSTAAFL
The "problem" is that there are a ton of non-profits, news sites, news groups, blogs, lists, whatever-of-the-day sites, schools, churches, and other organizations that send out a lot of requested put-me-on-the-list email to their members.
Have a decent-sized list on which you're doing a daily run, and even at a quarter of a cent you're suddenly looking at thousands of dollars a month out of pocket.
So now all of those sites and services and lists either: A) Stop sending email and/or go out of business, or B) Start charging for the stuff you used to get for free.
Is it so hard for people to figure this stuff out? Apply a cost somewhere and--one way or another--you're going to pay it.
"It is the bits of these images we want to preserve, not the printed photos."
Agreed, but I have recorded CDRs that can no longer be read. Same for Iomega ZIP and JAZ disks (no drives). I have Apple DOS 5.25 floppies and 3.5 inch ProDos discs. Heck, I even have some tapes and an 8" floppy from a PDP-11. All containing "bits" that can no longer be retrieved by the average person.
Will your grandson stumble one day on a DVD-R in your attic labeled "family photos", but have no way to retrieve them?
8GB let's me get a good selection of music and audiobooks, a couple of TV shows, a movie, and some pictures on it while leaving space for contacts and for the 2MP camera to do it's thing.
Only having 2GB would cut out nearly all of the wide-screen video capabilities, as there'd be no room at all for the files. One movie is a gig-plus all by itself.
Besides, I'd say there's a slim chance (20%) that it will ship out of the gate with more than 8GB. Underpromise and overdeliver.
The article says that there's a lack of FOSS that runs on the Mac/OS X, and as such you have to buy Office and Photoshop and so on.
But to me that's one of the advantages of the Mac as opposed to Linux or BSD, in that those commercial packages ARE available on a 'nix platform for those that need those types of "professional-grade" tools.
Not to mention the fact that Apple has several applications like Final Cut which are best-of-class and not available on any other platform. And with Parallels one pretty much has access to anything else needed as well.
The flip side of replacing an entire computer is that you have an entire computer to sell to a friend, thus subsidizing the cost of the replacement. And Macs hold their value pretty well.
"... but I rather suspect that CMYK has persisted because it makes people think that they look clever and to get people to hand over cash for something that now shouldn't exist."
Go look up additive and subtractive color systems and the circumstances under which each is used. Then come back when you have something not unimaginably dumb to contribute to the conversation.
People need to watch what numbers they're throwing around. $2,500 is the price of Photoshop AND Illustrator AND InDesign AND Dreamweaver AND Flash AND Fireworks AND Acrobat Professional AND Bridge AND Contribute AND a bunch of other tools. In other words, the entire suite.
Photoshop by itself can be had for much cheaper, especially the student version.
"Casual Windows users will use any operating system that is loaded on their machine."
And if they upgrade, will try to scrimp by on the existing amount of memory. Most people don't know that they'd probably get a dramtic performance increase for the price of a single stick of RAM.
Cool. Seen this? Could be a nice little add-on to your Prius...
h ybrid-a-hybrid+hybrid-with-solar-power-265635.php
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/hippies/make-your-
"The tactile feedback you get from real buttons tell you both where you are in the UI relative to other elements..."
Yeah, I'm really going to know on a Treo that I'm on C and not V. Lots of tactile feedback in dozens of identical little buttons.
"Basically, you'll have to concentrate harder to use it."
Assumption. And probably totally ignores all of the other things one does on a "normal" phone like handling voicemail, or diving down in the menu tree to change a setting, or things like multiway conference calls that no one does on their existing phone because they never read the manual and memorized the procedure.
But hey. You've convinced yourself you're not going to like it. Fine. Horses for courses. And one less person ahead of me in line...
Every time I've seen it demo'ed pressing "home" brings up the standard 4 options at the bottom of the screen. "Phone" is always lower left. After that Favorites is two over.... and so on.
As long long as the interface is responsive, "muscle memory" wouldn't seem to be an issue.
And while I'm at it, I have a MBP that supports two-finger scrolling gestures on the trackpad... and I have to tell you that brushing up or down is now so natural it makes click and scroll wheels seem "quaint" and archaic. And "tactile" pg-up/dn buttons? Please. Watch the demos and notice the "flicking" gestures used to scroll and navigate. Watch how the "scroll" speed matches the velocity at which your fingers move. Gestures are intuitive as hell.
And texting? Watch someone text sometime. Very few people (even on Treos) are "touch-text'ists", and most are starting intently at the phone while they're doing it. And if you're moving to the iPhone from a RAZR or some other phone that has a standard 12-key-pad, having separate letter "keys" (even virtual ones) would be a godsend over having to hit "7" four times to get an "S", or waiting for the last letter to "enter" up so you can get a "A" after you've entered a "B". Thanks, but no thanks.
I think you're dramtically over-estimating the benefits of tatile feedback, and ignoring how interface action, responsives, and audible feedback can compensate, or even improve on the experience.
An OEM version that checks for a specific vendor's HW (e.g. Dell) won't do, but the System Builder version works just fine.
You can also get the Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2B for System Builders version from Amazon and save yourself $115 over the standard version ($154 vs $269). The existence of the system builder edition is one of Microsoft's better kept secrets. I think there's a Vista SB version as well.
Parallels doesn't require you to repartition your drive, "wasting space" on a 30GB partition that may or may not ever get filled up. Plus I can clone VM's for testing (web developer), back them up, archive them, run Windows IE6 at the same time as I'm developing to test for compatibility, and so on.
Sorry, but it's BootCamp that's at a disadvantage here, not Parallels.
Given that refinery capacity is the current raison de jour to justify high prices at the pump, and given that oil companies are still enjoying year-over-year record profits dispite said "lack of capacity", I have to stand by my analysis. Of course, it's equally likely that they could in fact build more capacity... and then charge still higher prices in order to "recoup" their multi-billion dollar investment.
Personally, I think most of them realize that the winds are shifting, and that this is their big chance to make a killing before alternative fuels and methods hit the market. And if I was "really" cynical, I'd say that the only reason we had a dip between last summer and this one was the fact we had an election in November...
So true. Back when I used a PC I'd occassionally run torrent and suddenly see firewall attacks peak like no one's business. Port probes, UDP probes, service attacks. Yuck.
It wouldn't surprise me at all to find many of the largest "information wants to be free" torrent sites being run by black hats in order to gather IP addresses and routing information for attacks.
If your Sunfire gets 35MPG you're lucky, or it too had a stong tailwind and you were going downhill in both directions. EPA estimates are 21/30, and your Jeep likewise, at 14/16. (You realize an Escalade or full-blown Navigator gets better mileage than that jeep, right?)
But 30MPG is nothing to sneeze at, and is still 50% better than the average SUV. And hopefully in 5-7 years you'll be able to replace it with something that does 40/80 at least...
"... the expensive-as-hell Prius..."
Huh? A new one starts at about $22K, whereas a new Camry starts at $20K, and nearly every full-size SUV starts around $26K-28K. And forget the $40K plus luxury SUVs. In short, a Prius is about median when compared with other new car prices.
As to the rest, give it a year or two. All of those new efficient hybrids and diesels will work themselves down the food chain in a few years and begin to replace the gas-aholic 100K-200K mile clunkers many are driving now as those cars in turn die out and are replaced. Keep gas prices high and people will have even more incentive to do so.
And in case you haven't noticed, it seems that many couples and new families are buying into a Yaris or Fit or Versa or other small-but-cheap fuel-efficient vehicle, the modern equivalent of the VW Bug. (Speaking of which, it's almost impossible to find a used New Beetle around here. They've all been snapped up.) In short, the transition is already occurring, and is the main reason why Toyota has taken over the title of automotive kingpin while Ford, GM, and Chevy are hemoraging money and have been caught flat-footed... again.
Now, GM in particular could have stepped to the plate and saved their behind had they kept the EV1 around and in production... but again, they made a series of short-sighted decisions and dropped the ball. (Boy, did they drop the ball.) But hey. I'm sure hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicle they're backing will be here any day now (assuming GM is still around, of course).
BTW, rumor has it that the 2009 Prius will step up the bar even higher, at nearly 100MPG.
"But efficiency alone won't do it. We also need to increase energy production as well. This means nuclear, solar, wind, as well as more coal and oil production with research in making them cleaner and more efficient."
First, the current high gas prices are almost exclusively due to lack of refinery capacity, and the oil companies have a major disincentive in increasing it. You see, by investing money in refinery capacity and increasing supply they'd be expected to "reduce" prices. What idiot would spend money to make less?
Second, efficiency would do most of it. We can drive five Priuses for the amount of gasoline used by one Hummer or Escalade or Yukon. Increase fuel efficiency by 10% nationwide, and it would equal the estimated contents of the entire Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Replace our entire fleet of gas guzzlers with hybrids and electrics, and we WOULD be energy independent.
Then again, oil companies don't make money selling us LESS oil and gasoline, do they?