Always amazes me how many/.ers exhibit Luddite tendencies.
I believe it's those who project "Status seeking" onto Mac, iPod, iPhone, and now iPad users. Interestingly, no Mac user would ever say "I'm a Mac", but a fairly significant number of people -- including corporation heads -- will say "I'm a PC", all the while projecting their identification with a product onto others. (And apparently not getting that the Mac/PC actors are actors playing anthropomorphic computers, not users of computers.)
Similarly, if I view my self-worth in terms of mastering technology, bending it to my exacting specifications, having three more checkboxes and 20% more widgetness for 30% less money, I certainly will talk about how much the iPad lacks and how gimmicky it is. I'd view any computing experience in terms of a desktop computer with a mouse/trackpad, keyboard, and upright screen, and lots-o-configuration I can/must do. (Even if I shrink the desktop down and join it together with a hinge, then substitute a stylus or the ever-trendy touch screen for the mouse.)
Most non-geeks look for an overall experience, including design, polish, "feel", perceived quality, etc, not just stats and checkboxes and an infinite variety of applications. We do it with cars, homes, clothes, watches, furniture, even things like what book we choose to read. Many geeks can also see that there are appliances and there are "computers" and not everything with a CPU in it needs to work like a desktop. The iPad will do well because of this, and we'll have fun someday posting these rants as you could do today with anti- Mac/iPod/iPhone rants from years gone by.
p>They forgot that laptops and netbooks already exist and are more versatile. So what you have is a turkey of a device. Crippled and limited. It's best use will be providing competition. Expect to see new laptops with accelerometers and perhaps touch screens built in. Apart from those two features and the ability to run iPhone apps, the iPad has NO advantages over a common laptop or netbook. As one reviewer said, it's an oversized iPhone without the phone.
"No advantages"? Hmm, let's see... add that nifty touchscreen and accelerometer to your netbook and you STILL have essentially a desktop form factor that's been shrunk down and then joined together with a hinge. Change the screen orientation? Nope. In addition, to keep costs down, you probably have a very poor off-angle viewing experience. Share the device with someone next to you? More like sharing a pair of binoculars than sharing photos. And that keyboard's SO useful while reading emails, browsing web pages, working on your calendar, working with photos, checking your stock prices,...
It's not your desktop computer -- or even your portable desktop computer (laptop, netbook). Since you cannot realize that, it has no advantages for you.
"nothing more than a giant iPhone"... OK. The size difference is a GOOD thing. Yes, the iPhone web browser is amazingly good, but it's SMALL. No way I'll sit there and read a website I care about, unless I'm pretty much desperately bored. The iPhone calendar is very useful, but it's SMALL. You can't see an entire day's activities, and certainly not a week- or month-at-a-glance with any meaningful content. Photos on the iPhone are handled well, but they're SMALL. More like passing a stack of drugstore prints than actual photos.
On the other hand, carrying my laptop for things like that is overkill. And the bulky form factor dictated by a keyboard just makes it worse.
THAT is where the iPad comes in handy: something that's simpler, significantly smaller, and a better form factor than a laptop/netbook, but with a large enough screen that I can see an entire day's worth of activity, I can read a web page basically as large as on my laptop, and I can see photos that are the size of photos. And read a book that's the size of a book: not the size of a deck of cards, and not the size of an old-school atlas.
So even if it were ONLY a giant iPhone (iPod Touch, really), it'd be a good and desirable device. But as far as I can tell, it's more than an iPhone/iPod in several ways, and it has untapped potential that we'll see more and more of in the next year.
Apple fought Apple Corps -- a similar David v Goliath battle (Apple is David) -- for decades before finally winning. Personally, I think the odds are about even in this fight.
Actually, Apple claims that the rules SHOULD apply to them, and that it is Nokia that is wanting to change the rules in the case of a competitor that scares them. Whether this is true or not will come out in court, I imagine.
Nokia's evidently poured a lot of money into phone R&D, but looking at their phones almost none of this has extended to industrial design or user interface design. Even their "smart" phones look like a 1980's military design with a 1970's X-Windows user interface. And while they manage to have touch, they evidently never thought of using them as anything but 1980's style touch screens. So I do find it credible that they are treating Apple as a special threat.
You hit the nail on the head. Statstics is counter-intuitive and badly taught. But extremely important.
The worst grade I got in undergraduate studies was in Probability, and in graduate studies I've been exposed to statistics now for about the 4th time and it's finally sinking in... mostly... a lot.
That said, there is need for statistics in any programming endeavor where you are trying to come up with a new algorithm or trying to improve the performance of an existing one. I can think of the kind of pitiful "ran it several times and this one's faster" testing I would have done in the past, and all the logical hand-waving I would have done if questioned, "Can we be SURE it's faster?", and it's embarrassing. If you're just coding, perhaps no need, though a good feel for how real statistics and scientific experimentation is done is very helpful in programming.
I love the "ZuneHD is surprisingly popular" part. Did you leave out a smiley or something? The fact that it's "surprisingly" popular says a lot about previous generations of Zune, and therefore our expectations, don't you think?
I think you're taking the "me too" comment in isolation. If Microsoft and Apple popped onto the scene a year ago, no one would call Microsoft's "me too". But MS has a history of things like the Zune and Windows Mobile 6.5 which are definitely "look, we're as cool as Apple" products that are evidently only claim stakes they're putting down in a market they're not doing well in. So their tablet -- even if it's announced two weeks before Apple's -- will be perceived as "me too" that's simply been rushed up to beat Apple to the punch.
Also, "me too" need not refer to following Apple's lead, but rather to not distinguishing itself from the crowd. Tablets have existed -- and not caught on -- for many years now. It's assumed that Apple will put a different spin on their tablet, as they did on cellphones, which have also existed for many years. Contrast that with MS, who has a history of bland designs or of taking a leap to the "wild" side and ending up with things that are just silly.
Not to mention MS's propensity to say, "THIS time we got it right! Yeah, our previous version sucked so bad even we're encouraging you to dump it, but THIS TIME...", as they either wildly leap from one design to another, or simply do a little repackaging, rename it and say "This time..." loudly. (I'll never forget the ads for Windows XP that compared how often previous versions of Windows crashed to how often it crashed under XP. Of course, XP crashed orders of magnitude more often than UNIX, but...)
Class #1 sounds like the better of the two, and a better foundation for programming itself.
But I'll also add that I've been studying a lot about machine learning lately, and vectors/statistics are absolutely necessary. (And I've also found statistics to be the most counter-intuitive math I've been exposed to... it's taken SEVERAL exposures to it over the years to become reasonably comfortable.) And it's also quite important if you're doing any kind of research or if you're trying to KNOW whether method B actually improves on method A or not.
Yeah, X3 TC is what got me interested in trying EVE... Didn't like EVE, but still have X3... I did run into a bug in X3 that prevented saves from working -- perhaps due to the MARS targetting scripts -- but otherwise, enjoyable.
I would guess that the majority of tablets and convertibles you've supported ran Windows, which is poorly designed for a tablet. Your doubts sound a lot like people in the runup to the iPhone, who said that a phone without physical buttons -- even better a physical keyboard -- is a non-starter and would be useless. As always, Apple will change the game by what it does in the software combined with an elegant physical design.
You need to elaborate on the word "copy". The Mac interface took ideas from the Xerox Star, but made dramatic improvements like non-contiguous regions, pull-down menus, and drag-n-drop. Yes, Xerox had pop-up menus, icons, etc, but Apple made major improvements. Windows did not take the Mac interface and improve upon it.
As the old play review goes: "The parts that were good were not original, and the parts that were original were not good."
Sure. The 95% of the time that I carry my laptop for my own use only, I have a slimmer machine that I throw in my backpack. That's convenient.
When I might make a presentation, I can throw in a small cable and I have full-sized VGA. Another small cable gives me full-sized DVI. Other cables will come that provide other standards/sizes.
When I'm going to a conference where I will make a presentation, I'll have my big laptop bag with all of those connectors, and I'll have a USB stick with my presentations on it, and a DVD, too, burned in PDF as a lowest-common-denominator.
Lugging around a laptop with a VGA (which size) port and also a DVI (which size) port on it all the time is inconvenient.
The idea is that the new standard goes on the laptop, and from that nicely small connector, you can adapt to any standard, including new ones with much higher capacity.
Want a VGA adapter? Done. Want ah DVI adapter? Done. Each $30 at the Apple Store, and soon probably cheaper elsewhere. Other adapters possible. More capacity in the standard, for other folks who want to hook up to something else. Small connection to help keep your laptop small.
The only reason you actually need an ungainly VGA connector on your laptop is if you either refuse to pay $30 for an adapter, or you expect that you might lose the adapter yet still have your laptop for that super-important presentation.
The discussion seems to assume that each country/region has a SINGLE plug standard for households, with the only mixed-use being countries that have adopted the SINGLE plug standard from two different regions. (Not talking industrial use here, only household use.)
This is certainly not true in the US, where there is the standard 110v household plug (3-prong and upward-compatible 2-prong variations), and then the 220v heavier-duty plug which is used for things like washing machines. We're not talking heavier-duty industrial twist-lock kinds of plugs, but rather two plugs for two kinds of uses within a household. Obviously, only a select few plugs in a US house will be 220v, but then again only one or two items in a house might require 220v.
Perhaps Britain only has one kind of plug (220v) for all uses in the house? Which, as others have remarked, is rather overkill for laptops, lights, and most anything that you could actually pick up and carry yourself.
How about comparing Apple's contribution to the Open Source community as compared to Nokia? Grand Central Dispatch, Darwin, WebKit, OpenCL, etc, compared to... ?
Or perhaps Nokia, which has totally dropped the ball in the North American market, and which is also now facing an unusually tough challenge in the smartphone market, is refusing to license to Apple under reasonable terms in order to try to slow down the iTrain?
Parent has it right: What you read about is that the film cost X in production costs and raked in Y in box office receipts, where Y > X. But from what I understand, no film has ever officially made a profit: it gets eaten up by all kinds of Byzantine expenses. The music industry is slightly less corrupt -- really big bands actually get a profit -- but it's incredible to read about how little a smash hit will make for the actual musicians who created and performed it.
Of course, that has nothing to do with the discussion at hand. And as others have said, that debate boils down to traditional (limited shelf space, therefore absolute numbers) versus online (unlimited shelf space, therefore percentages) sales models.
They are switching to this system in Arlington, Virginia, too. Reasons for the new system:
1. No "left over" time. When you pull out, the next person pays in full, even if you overpaid and had extra time when you got back to your car.
2. Fewer old guys walking a beat with a cart that has a special mechanism that the meter collection boxes will dump into.
3. Accepts credit cards.
4. Automatically gives you a receipt.
Item #1 obviously benefits the city, to the detriment of us parkers. (Could benefit tax payers, if politicians don't waste the extra money.) Item #2 is definitely a reduced cost, as long as they don't turn around and add more meter readers, which could benefit us the tax payers.Item #3 is nice, since I never carry change and only have it in the car if I specifically collect it. Not sure who'd take advantage of item #4.
Phone lines get power from the grid. You are correct that when the power goes out, the phones continue to work, and that is because they have massive banks of submarine batteries at the various exchanges to provide power for when the power is out. These batteries will not last forever, likely somewhere around 24 hours.
I was shocked to discover that the backup battery for FIOS will probably last longer the copper, given that the local station also gets hit by a power outage. (Obviously, we could have power out and the other end of the copper does not, but then again the opposite could happen.)
Or so we were told by a copper-line tech who came out in the process of our (painful) switch to FIOS.
Maybe I just don't understand their plan, but this seems like it would be close to a useless technology. It seems like it would be more expensive to develop and implement than a standard power cable, and you would have to set your device onto the power mat.
The average user does not like cables.
You are just not the average user.
The average user does not like cables.
You are just not the average user.
Not to mention that, the parent mentions a "standard power cable". Please tell me what power cable is standard for portable devices. For desktops, yes, I have a drawer full of them, but for portables, you get everything from custom sync connectors that charge to USB, mini-USB and more.
The 2010 Prius certainly doesn't do this. Never heard of earlier Prius years doing it, but the 2010 doesn't even have a serpentine belt -- all the accessories are electrically-driven.
Intelligent people do not need the kind of rubberstamp advice you find in self-help books. As long you remain honest, open and calm, you are very well off. Not doing stupid thing like playing WoW (ATTN! compare to watching football with you buddies and sipping beer) through your anniversary helps, too.
It's not quite that simple. Not sure that most self-help books are any good, but my wife and I got married in a church that had an extensive pre-marital program and we've really, really appreciated it. Having a few tools in your toolbox and knowing that various things that happen are not unexpected or unique to you is pretty powerful. Especially up front, where you can be ambushed by an issue and say/do things that set a bad tone early on.
And I definitely disagree with the "it's common sense" philosophy I've seen in a couple of postings. It's often the fact that "common sense" for you and "common sense" for her (basically family/cultural norms) will differ but you won't be able to see it since "common sense" is so "obvious" so how could anyone sincerely and sanely disagree. If I had to give soundbites, I'd say "don't act in fear", "know your limitations", "negotiate", "what she's doing makes sense to her", "why are you doing what you're doing?", and "seek to understand before being understood", or something like that.
On low battery, the car goes into a special "turtle" mode whereby one cannot drive quickly. I've driven an extra 20 miles at about 15 mph in this mode after the gauges registered zero. Was unable to drain the batteries because I got bored trying.
If that happened in these here parts, and if it weren't between midnight and 3 AM, you would definitely not be bored when you slowed everyone behind you to 15 MPH. You'd experience heart-racing, life-in-your-hands terror.
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Always amazes me how many /.ers exhibit Luddite tendencies.
I believe it's those who project "Status seeking" onto Mac, iPod, iPhone, and now iPad users. Interestingly, no Mac user would ever say "I'm a Mac", but a fairly significant number of people -- including corporation heads -- will say "I'm a PC", all the while projecting their identification with a product onto others. (And apparently not getting that the Mac/PC actors are actors playing anthropomorphic computers, not users of computers.)
Similarly, if I view my self-worth in terms of mastering technology, bending it to my exacting specifications, having three more checkboxes and 20% more widgetness for 30% less money, I certainly will talk about how much the iPad lacks and how gimmicky it is. I'd view any computing experience in terms of a desktop computer with a mouse/trackpad, keyboard, and upright screen, and lots-o-configuration I can/must do. (Even if I shrink the desktop down and join it together with a hinge, then substitute a stylus or the ever-trendy touch screen for the mouse.)
Most non-geeks look for an overall experience, including design, polish, "feel", perceived quality, etc, not just stats and checkboxes and an infinite variety of applications. We do it with cars, homes, clothes, watches, furniture, even things like what book we choose to read. Many geeks can also see that there are appliances and there are "computers" and not everything with a CPU in it needs to work like a desktop. The iPad will do well because of this, and we'll have fun someday posting these rants as you could do today with anti- Mac/iPod/iPhone rants from years gone by.
p>They forgot that laptops and netbooks already exist and are more versatile. So what you have is a turkey of a device. Crippled and limited. It's best use will be providing competition. Expect to see new laptops with accelerometers and perhaps touch screens built in. Apart from those two features and the ability to run iPhone apps, the iPad has NO advantages over a common laptop or netbook. As one reviewer said, it's an oversized iPhone without the phone.
"No advantages"? Hmm, let's see... add that nifty touchscreen and accelerometer to your netbook and you STILL have essentially a desktop form factor that's been shrunk down and then joined together with a hinge. Change the screen orientation? Nope. In addition, to keep costs down, you probably have a very poor off-angle viewing experience. Share the device with someone next to you? More like sharing a pair of binoculars than sharing photos. And that keyboard's SO useful while reading emails, browsing web pages, working on your calendar, working with photos, checking your stock prices, ...
It's not your desktop computer -- or even your portable desktop computer (laptop, netbook). Since you cannot realize that, it has no advantages for you.
"nothing more than a giant iPhone"... OK. The size difference is a GOOD thing. Yes, the iPhone web browser is amazingly good, but it's SMALL. No way I'll sit there and read a website I care about, unless I'm pretty much desperately bored. The iPhone calendar is very useful, but it's SMALL. You can't see an entire day's activities, and certainly not a week- or month-at-a-glance with any meaningful content. Photos on the iPhone are handled well, but they're SMALL. More like passing a stack of drugstore prints than actual photos.
On the other hand, carrying my laptop for things like that is overkill. And the bulky form factor dictated by a keyboard just makes it worse.
THAT is where the iPad comes in handy: something that's simpler, significantly smaller, and a better form factor than a laptop/netbook, but with a large enough screen that I can see an entire day's worth of activity, I can read a web page basically as large as on my laptop, and I can see photos that are the size of photos. And read a book that's the size of a book: not the size of a deck of cards, and not the size of an old-school atlas.
So even if it were ONLY a giant iPhone (iPod Touch, really), it'd be a good and desirable device. But as far as I can tell, it's more than an iPhone/iPod in several ways, and it has untapped potential that we'll see more and more of in the next year.
Apple fought Apple Corps -- a similar David v Goliath battle (Apple is David) -- for decades before finally winning. Personally, I think the odds are about even in this fight.
Actually, Apple claims that the rules SHOULD apply to them, and that it is Nokia that is wanting to change the rules in the case of a competitor that scares them. Whether this is true or not will come out in court, I imagine.
Nokia's evidently poured a lot of money into phone R&D, but looking at their phones almost none of this has extended to industrial design or user interface design. Even their "smart" phones look like a 1980's military design with a 1970's X-Windows user interface. And while they manage to have touch, they evidently never thought of using them as anything but 1980's style touch screens. So I do find it credible that they are treating Apple as a special threat.
You hit the nail on the head. Statstics is counter-intuitive and badly taught. But extremely important.
The worst grade I got in undergraduate studies was in Probability, and in graduate studies I've been exposed to statistics now for about the 4th time and it's finally sinking in... mostly... a lot.
That said, there is need for statistics in any programming endeavor where you are trying to come up with a new algorithm or trying to improve the performance of an existing one. I can think of the kind of pitiful "ran it several times and this one's faster" testing I would have done in the past, and all the logical hand-waving I would have done if questioned, "Can we be SURE it's faster?", and it's embarrassing. If you're just coding, perhaps no need, though a good feel for how real statistics and scientific experimentation is done is very helpful in programming.
I love the "ZuneHD is surprisingly popular" part. Did you leave out a smiley or something? The fact that it's "surprisingly" popular says a lot about previous generations of Zune, and therefore our expectations, don't you think?
I think you're taking the "me too" comment in isolation. If Microsoft and Apple popped onto the scene a year ago, no one would call Microsoft's "me too". But MS has a history of things like the Zune and Windows Mobile 6.5 which are definitely "look, we're as cool as Apple" products that are evidently only claim stakes they're putting down in a market they're not doing well in. So their tablet -- even if it's announced two weeks before Apple's -- will be perceived as "me too" that's simply been rushed up to beat Apple to the punch.
Also, "me too" need not refer to following Apple's lead, but rather to not distinguishing itself from the crowd. Tablets have existed -- and not caught on -- for many years now. It's assumed that Apple will put a different spin on their tablet, as they did on cellphones, which have also existed for many years. Contrast that with MS, who has a history of bland designs or of taking a leap to the "wild" side and ending up with things that are just silly.
Not to mention MS's propensity to say, "THIS time we got it right! Yeah, our previous version sucked so bad even we're encouraging you to dump it, but THIS TIME...", as they either wildly leap from one design to another, or simply do a little repackaging, rename it and say "This time..." loudly. (I'll never forget the ads for Windows XP that compared how often previous versions of Windows crashed to how often it crashed under XP. Of course, XP crashed orders of magnitude more often than UNIX, but...)
Class #1 sounds like the better of the two, and a better foundation for programming itself.
But I'll also add that I've been studying a lot about machine learning lately, and vectors/statistics are absolutely necessary. (And I've also found statistics to be the most counter-intuitive math I've been exposed to... it's taken SEVERAL exposures to it over the years to become reasonably comfortable.) And it's also quite important if you're doing any kind of research or if you're trying to KNOW whether method B actually improves on method A or not.
Yeah, X3 TC is what got me interested in trying EVE... Didn't like EVE, but still have X3... I did run into a bug in X3 that prevented saves from working -- perhaps due to the MARS targetting scripts -- but otherwise, enjoyable.
I would guess that the majority of tablets and convertibles you've supported ran Windows, which is poorly designed for a tablet. Your doubts sound a lot like people in the runup to the iPhone, who said that a phone without physical buttons -- even better a physical keyboard -- is a non-starter and would be useless. As always, Apple will change the game by what it does in the software combined with an elegant physical design.
You need to elaborate on the word "copy". The Mac interface took ideas from the Xerox Star, but made dramatic improvements like non-contiguous regions, pull-down menus, and drag-n-drop. Yes, Xerox had pop-up menus, icons, etc, but Apple made major improvements. Windows did not take the Mac interface and improve upon it.
As the old play review goes: "The parts that were good were not original, and the parts that were original were not good."
Sure. The 95% of the time that I carry my laptop for my own use only, I have a slimmer machine that I throw in my backpack. That's convenient.
When I might make a presentation, I can throw in a small cable and I have full-sized VGA. Another small cable gives me full-sized DVI. Other cables will come that provide other standards/sizes.
When I'm going to a conference where I will make a presentation, I'll have my big laptop bag with all of those connectors, and I'll have a USB stick with my presentations on it, and a DVD, too, burned in PDF as a lowest-common-denominator.
Lugging around a laptop with a VGA (which size) port and also a DVI (which size) port on it all the time is inconvenient.
The idea is that the new standard goes on the laptop, and from that nicely small connector, you can adapt to any standard, including new ones with much higher capacity.
Want a VGA adapter? Done. Want ah DVI adapter? Done. Each $30 at the Apple Store, and soon probably cheaper elsewhere. Other adapters possible. More capacity in the standard, for other folks who want to hook up to something else. Small connection to help keep your laptop small.
The only reason you actually need an ungainly VGA connector on your laptop is if you either refuse to pay $30 for an adapter, or you expect that you might lose the adapter yet still have your laptop for that super-important presentation.
The discussion seems to assume that each country/region has a SINGLE plug standard for households, with the only mixed-use being countries that have adopted the SINGLE plug standard from two different regions. (Not talking industrial use here, only household use.)
This is certainly not true in the US, where there is the standard 110v household plug (3-prong and upward-compatible 2-prong variations), and then the 220v heavier-duty plug which is used for things like washing machines. We're not talking heavier-duty industrial twist-lock kinds of plugs, but rather two plugs for two kinds of uses within a household. Obviously, only a select few plugs in a US house will be 220v, but then again only one or two items in a house might require 220v.
Perhaps Britain only has one kind of plug (220v) for all uses in the house? Which, as others have remarked, is rather overkill for laptops, lights, and most anything that you could actually pick up and carry yourself.
How about comparing Apple's contribution to the Open Source community as compared to Nokia? Grand Central Dispatch, Darwin, WebKit, OpenCL, etc, compared to ... ?
Or perhaps Nokia, which has totally dropped the ball in the North American market, and which is also now facing an unusually tough challenge in the smartphone market, is refusing to license to Apple under reasonable terms in order to try to slow down the iTrain?
Parent has it right: What you read about is that the film cost X in production costs and raked in Y in box office receipts, where Y > X. But from what I understand, no film has ever officially made a profit: it gets eaten up by all kinds of Byzantine expenses. The music industry is slightly less corrupt -- really big bands actually get a profit -- but it's incredible to read about how little a smash hit will make for the actual musicians who created and performed it.
Of course, that has nothing to do with the discussion at hand. And as others have said, that debate boils down to traditional (limited shelf space, therefore absolute numbers) versus online (unlimited shelf space, therefore percentages) sales models.
They are switching to this system in Arlington, Virginia, too. Reasons for the new system:
1. No "left over" time. When you pull out, the next person pays in full, even if you overpaid and had extra time when you got back to your car.
2. Fewer old guys walking a beat with a cart that has a special mechanism that the meter collection boxes will dump into.
3. Accepts credit cards.
4. Automatically gives you a receipt.
Item #1 obviously benefits the city, to the detriment of us parkers. (Could benefit tax payers, if politicians don't waste the extra money.) Item #2 is definitely a reduced cost, as long as they don't turn around and add more meter readers, which could benefit us the tax payers.Item #3 is nice, since I never carry change and only have it in the car if I specifically collect it. Not sure who'd take advantage of item #4.
I'm still waiting for my flying car. This other futuristic stuff can wait until then.
Phone lines get power from the grid. You are correct that when the power goes out, the phones continue to work, and that is because they have massive banks of submarine batteries at the various exchanges to provide power for when the power is out. These batteries will not last forever, likely somewhere around 24 hours.
I was shocked to discover that the backup battery for FIOS will probably last longer the copper, given that the local station also gets hit by a power outage. (Obviously, we could have power out and the other end of the copper does not, but then again the opposite could happen.)
Or so we were told by a copper-line tech who came out in the process of our (painful) switch to FIOS.
Maybe I just don't understand their plan, but this seems like it would be close to a useless technology. It seems like it would be more expensive to develop and implement than a standard power cable, and you would have to set your device onto the power mat.
The average user does not like cables.
You are just not the average user.
The average user does not like cables.
You are just not the average user.
Not to mention that, the parent mentions a "standard power cable". Please tell me what power cable is standard for portable devices. For desktops, yes, I have a drawer full of them, but for portables, you get everything from custom sync connectors that charge to USB, mini-USB and more.
The 2010 Prius certainly doesn't do this. Never heard of earlier Prius years doing it, but the 2010 doesn't even have a serpentine belt -- all the accessories are electrically-driven.
Intelligent people do not need the kind of rubberstamp advice you find in self-help books. As long you remain honest, open and calm, you are very well off. Not doing stupid thing like playing WoW (ATTN! compare to watching football with you buddies and sipping beer) through your anniversary helps, too.
It's not quite that simple. Not sure that most self-help books are any good, but my wife and I got married in a church that had an extensive pre-marital program and we've really, really appreciated it. Having a few tools in your toolbox and knowing that various things that happen are not unexpected or unique to you is pretty powerful. Especially up front, where you can be ambushed by an issue and say/do things that set a bad tone early on.
Personally, I highly recommend the book Love & Respect
And I definitely disagree with the "it's common sense" philosophy I've seen in a couple of postings. It's often the fact that "common sense" for you and "common sense" for her (basically family/cultural norms) will differ but you won't be able to see it since "common sense" is so "obvious" so how could anyone sincerely and sanely disagree. If I had to give soundbites, I'd say "don't act in fear", "know your limitations", "negotiate", "what she's doing makes sense to her", "why are you doing what you're doing?", and "seek to understand before being understood", or something like that.
If that happened in these here parts, and if it weren't between midnight and 3 AM, you would definitely not be bored when you slowed everyone behind you to 15 MPH. You'd experience heart-racing, life-in-your-hands terror.