Where are they claiming they're the first? There's no such claim on Apple's site about it - just lots of information about what it does. They're not claiming they were first, just that they have it as a major feature of the 4S. Show me in Apple's marketing where they are "trying to convince people they [were] first". They're not claiming that because they know that's not the case.
This is going to be an iPad thing all over again. Not the first tablet, but the first successful one - but then, they never claimed to have the first tablet either, just the best one for the market at the time in their opinion.
Also, when you claim something is revolutionary you don't necessarily have to be first - take semiconductors, for example. Bell labs certainly weren't the first to discover their properties or build working gates and junctions, but they did revolutionise the world with the transistor.
Or the steam engine. No one in their right mind will tell you that Trevithick was the "first" to make a steam engine, but he was the first to revolutionise the idea by using high pressure steam.
Revolution does not automatically imply "first", but it does imply a change in the way we view a technology. If Siri (which Apple did not invent or develop) spurs a surge of further development into voice recognition assistants that become widespread to the same sort of level as a PDA/Smartphone then that will have been a revolutionary step. Not because they invented it (who is claiming that?) but because they have packaged it in a way that makes it accessible and in a way that works, in the same way that Bell Labs did with the ideas behind the transistor.
So, you've learned nothing about it - Apple didn't invent Siri - they bought it, so "probably managed to get a patent on it" just belies your bias here.
The sentence is a little sensational - it's a smart system as far as voice recognition and organisation goes, but it's certainly not cutting edge AI.
Google has had voice search for quite awhile now, and the rest of the functions are what would have happened if you hooked up a voice recognition program to a virtual assistant. Unless I'm really misunderstanding this is something I could get running on my Android phone easily.
So, in the classic "Apple didnt do this first" troll rush that I knew would be the first few comments when I read the summary, *why* has no one "hooked up a voice recognition program to a virtual assistant" before now and pushed it as a new big feature?
The summary is accurate - before the 4S, this stuff was around in Android and other phones (hell, even the 3GS had voice control similar to what Android has, just without the ability to go much beyond the set phrases), but who was really talking about it? Now, it's a big thing and I guarantee that it will be touted as a big feature of every coming smartphone if the usefulness of the feature outlasts the novelty.
Just like "Apple didn't make the first mp3 player" and "Apple didn't make the first tablet" and "Apple didn't make the first home computer" they also "didn't make the first voice recognition assistant", but they were first to put it front and centre and refine it into something that can be very useful.
Ah yes, the electric car with all the issues of batteries and charging glossed over!
It's a car show. Not an electric car production showcase. From their end, electric cars are the solution. How the electricity is produced, transported and stored is Somebody Else's Problem, and that's a perfectly fine position to take when you're a car show and you're reviewing a car.
I changed a couple of words, and now it's apparently different!
Ah yes, the H2 fuelled car with all the issues of hydrogen storage glossed over!
I'm a huge fan of hydrogen fuel cells (and I know several people working on them and the associated problem of H2 storage), but that's just as bad as going the other way with electric cars. The problems are at least as severe for H2 as they are for pure electric. It's not a magic bullet. In this case, we have inconsistency!
I get it, but if you present an illustration as truth (as they did) you're not being honest. They made no assertion that they were illustrating what would happen when the battery ran flat, at least not until Tesla started calling them on it.
And what exactly are we meant to learn from this anyway? That it takes time to charge a battery? Or when any fuel source is exhausted that you need to push the vehicle off the track to a refuelling point? Have the viewers of Top Gear never seen a car before?
But they didn't say that - they implied they set off with full charge.
This is the point - it's all very well highlighting these important points, but you have to be honest about what you are doing. They're very quick to jump to the "entertainment" excuse as a shield for lying about what they're showing. If that was their point then *say so*. Don't just use it as an excuse when Nissan checks the car's logs and says "hey, you know you said you set off with full charge... well"
"well, err..... we were showing what happens if you forgot to charge your car! yes! that will cover us legally!"
Yes, if we can crack the energy density problem. They have at least as many problems as all-electric cars, yet they gloss over that. (Note, I know people working on this very problem - research is promising, but it all takes time).
They've decided "that's it, they fuel up like gasoline cars, problem solved!"
Hydrogen fuel cells are certainly remarkable and well understood (we flew them to the moon on Apollo and they were the primary source of electrical power), but storage of hydrogen is by no means solved yet due to its extremely low energy density.
Yes, I addressed that in my post - I'm not trying to say the electric car has no problems or that it should be directly compared to a petrol or diesel vehicle. What should be addressed is that people seem to think that the only way to charge it up is to wait 8 hours trickle charging it off a domestic socket.
No, I'm fine with illustration, and understand it fine. What I find annoying is that they implied a flat battery and then only jumped to the "we were making a point" excuse when Tesla pointed out that the car logged its charge state.
I addressed that very point. It also doesn't take 8 hours to fast charge it if you have the necessary charging system (which you you would expect if you were using it for track days).
People assume that you will only ever trickle charge it off a 120V US home outlet (in the case of the UK, our outlets are 240V).
Yes, but on a track you're not running at 250+mph - maxing it is a very specific exercise. You trash the tyres on a track too, but in a different way. You'd be out of fuel a few times before you'd wrecked the tyres with normal track driving, unless you were being a total lunatic.
I saw the episode when it first aired. He said "[we wanted to do some more shots] but look what happened" in the VO that showed the car being pushed into the garage by hand, strongly implying that the battery was flat when it could easily have driven off the track under its own power, since it had 20% left.
They faked the battery being flat, in other words. They just didn't *say* "the battery went flat", which seems to be have all they needed to do to ensure they were legally "not lying".
How long does a Veyron last when driven like that on the track? It's not long, I assure you!
They're claiming a double standard in that case, since a high performance track car is going to guzzle fuel and you can "limp it off the track" on empty and refill it, certainly, just like you can roll the Tesla off the track and plug it into a high-cap charger to fill it up again. Yes, it takes longer to recharge the Tesla than it does to "recharge" a Veyron or an Elise etc, but it's not the 13 hours they like to suggest for the low-power trickle charge - there are fast charge systems available that bring that time right down.
Do we have a way to go before the convenience of gasoline? Absolutely, but you'd think with the way TG have it in for the electric car you'd think we were in the early days of steam locomotion "Smooth wheels on smooth rails?! How does that work then?! It'll never catch on!".
Open source licences are compatible with the App Store - the motivation here seems solely to be that if the source is still open, who will pay the $1.99 they want for the ready-compiled app on the store?
You seem to think that it's Apple "forcing" them to close up the source, but I think you should look closer to home (ie, the devs themselves) for that decision.
He also said some downright false things, for example that it had run totally flat and had to be pushed back into the garage by the crew to be recharged before they had finished filming when in reality the car had 20% charge at minimum, as logged by the onboard computer - in other words, they didn't manage to run it flat during the shoot, but the script (which Tesla saw) called for the ending of the piece to show the car "limping" off the track under human propulsion.
I saw the piece when it originally aired (I'm a Top Gear fan), but they really went for the throat at the end. The review was reasonably fair up to that point - they had a lot of positives to say about the car, along with some downsides. There was no need for them to lie at the end.
They did something similar in the latest electric car piece (with the Leaf and some other car [possibly a Peugeot]) where they "comically" ran out of juice in the middle of a town with nowhere to recharge after "setting off for a day's driving" - it was revealed that they set off with low charge in the cars to begin with.
Their position on electric cars seems to be "say some nice things, but then make sure we ram home the point that they have batteries that need to be charged, herp derp!".
Like I say, I'm a fan of the series and have been since before the current Clarkson/May/Hammond setup, but the stuff about anything that runs on alternative fuels is just getting tiresome.
No, it really isn't a country. The EFF just made itself look stupid, and it certainly can't use the "oh, well it's pretty much a country by definition" excuse. Doesn't anyone give a cursory proof read of their statements or does no one there actually know that the EU is not a country?
If there is a prize for amount of debt run up, GWB wins by a landslide (unlike his election to office by a handful of Americans dressed in black).
Look at it this way. A driver steers a bus onto a steep, icy hill and accelerates downwards. Then he hands over the driving duties to Obama, and Obama says "right, time to sort this out" and puts the brakes on. Who do you blame for the bus continuing to slide down the hill with the brakes on? What if the solution is to accelerate faster to clear a gap at the bottom?
Then you have issues like the Repubs in the back voting "no" on putting the brakes on (Bush tax cuts for wealthiest americans), or voting to accelerate even faster (defence budget, doubled since 9/11 from an already massive number). Then you discover that your brakes are in really poor shape because the rules on looking after them were slackened, making things much more profitable for the mechanics (global financial crisis triggered by irresponsible practices by Wall Street and major financial institutions).
Obama is in an unenviable position. Not only does he need to make major reforms in a recession, but he has a large number of people working against him *against their own interest* because they've been told he's "ruining America" by powerful vested interests. He's certainly no second coming, but I give him credit for being able to accomplish what he has managed to do already.
Slashdot Mirror
Where are they claiming they're the first? There's no such claim on Apple's site about it - just lots of information about what it does. They're not claiming they were first, just that they have it as a major feature of the 4S. Show me in Apple's marketing where they are "trying to convince people they [were] first". They're not claiming that because they know that's not the case.
This is going to be an iPad thing all over again. Not the first tablet, but the first successful one - but then, they never claimed to have the first tablet either, just the best one for the market at the time in their opinion.
Also, when you claim something is revolutionary you don't necessarily have to be first - take semiconductors, for example. Bell labs certainly weren't the first to discover their properties or build working gates and junctions, but they did revolutionise the world with the transistor.
Or the steam engine. No one in their right mind will tell you that Trevithick was the "first" to make a steam engine, but he was the first to revolutionise the idea by using high pressure steam.
Revolution does not automatically imply "first", but it does imply a change in the way we view a technology. If Siri (which Apple did not invent or develop) spurs a surge of further development into voice recognition assistants that become widespread to the same sort of level as a PDA/Smartphone then that will have been a revolutionary step. Not because they invented it (who is claiming that?) but because they have packaged it in a way that makes it accessible and in a way that works, in the same way that Bell Labs did with the ideas behind the transistor.
So, you've learned nothing about it - Apple didn't invent Siri - they bought it, so "probably managed to get a patent on it" just belies your bias here.
The sentence is a little sensational - it's a smart system as far as voice recognition and organisation goes, but it's certainly not cutting edge AI.
I would say "never".
Just a wild guess.
Google has had voice search for quite awhile now, and the rest of the functions are what would have happened if you hooked up a voice recognition program to a virtual assistant. Unless I'm really misunderstanding this is something I could get running on my Android phone easily.
So, in the classic "Apple didnt do this first" troll rush that I knew would be the first few comments when I read the summary, *why* has no one "hooked up a voice recognition program to a virtual assistant" before now and pushed it as a new big feature?
The summary is accurate - before the 4S, this stuff was around in Android and other phones (hell, even the 3GS had voice control similar to what Android has, just without the ability to go much beyond the set phrases), but who was really talking about it? Now, it's a big thing and I guarantee that it will be touted as a big feature of every coming smartphone if the usefulness of the feature outlasts the novelty.
Just like "Apple didn't make the first mp3 player" and "Apple didn't make the first tablet" and "Apple didn't make the first home computer" they also "didn't make the first voice recognition assistant", but they were first to put it front and centre and refine it into something that can be very useful.
It's a car show. Not an electric car production showcase. From their end, electric cars are the solution. How the electricity is produced, transported and stored is Somebody Else's Problem, and that's a perfectly fine position to take when you're a car show and you're reviewing a car.
I changed a couple of words, and now it's apparently different!
Ah yes, the H2 fuelled car with all the issues of hydrogen storage glossed over!
I'm a huge fan of hydrogen fuel cells (and I know several people working on them and the associated problem of H2 storage), but that's just as bad as going the other way with electric cars. The problems are at least as severe for H2 as they are for pure electric. It's not a magic bullet. In this case, we have inconsistency!
I get it, but if you present an illustration as truth (as they did) you're not being honest. They made no assertion that they were illustrating what would happen when the battery ran flat, at least not until Tesla started calling them on it.
And what exactly are we meant to learn from this anyway? That it takes time to charge a battery? Or when any fuel source is exhausted that you need to push the vehicle off the track to a refuelling point? Have the viewers of Top Gear never seen a car before?
Interesting that you tell me what I am a fan of. You must know me so well!
Tell me, what else am I not a fan of?
Log in first, can't be arsed to cite if you can't be arsed to log in.
But they didn't say that - they implied they set off with full charge.
This is the point - it's all very well highlighting these important points, but you have to be honest about what you are doing. They're very quick to jump to the "entertainment" excuse as a shield for lying about what they're showing. If that was their point then *say so*. Don't just use it as an excuse when Nissan checks the car's logs and says "hey, you know you said you set off with full charge... well"
"well, err..... we were showing what happens if you forgot to charge your car! yes! that will cover us legally!"
Yes, if we can crack the energy density problem. They have at least as many problems as all-electric cars, yet they gloss over that. (Note, I know people working on this very problem - research is promising, but it all takes time).
They've decided "that's it, they fuel up like gasoline cars, problem solved!"
Hydrogen fuel cells are certainly remarkable and well understood (we flew them to the moon on Apollo and they were the primary source of electrical power), but storage of hydrogen is by no means solved yet due to its extremely low energy density.
Yes, I addressed that in my post - I'm not trying to say the electric car has no problems or that it should be directly compared to a petrol or diesel vehicle. What should be addressed is that people seem to think that the only way to charge it up is to wait 8 hours trickle charging it off a domestic socket.
No, I'm fine with illustration, and understand it fine. What I find annoying is that they implied a flat battery and then only jumped to the "we were making a point" excuse when Tesla pointed out that the car logged its charge state.
I addressed that very point. It also doesn't take 8 hours to fast charge it if you have the necessary charging system (which you you would expect if you were using it for track days).
People assume that you will only ever trickle charge it off a 120V US home outlet (in the case of the UK, our outlets are 240V).
Yes, but on a track you're not running at 250+mph - maxing it is a very specific exercise. You trash the tyres on a track too, but in a different way. You'd be out of fuel a few times before you'd wrecked the tyres with normal track driving, unless you were being a total lunatic.
I saw the episode when it first aired. He said "[we wanted to do some more shots] but look what happened" in the VO that showed the car being pushed into the garage by hand, strongly implying that the battery was flat when it could easily have driven off the track under its own power, since it had 20% left.
They faked the battery being flat, in other words. They just didn't *say* "the battery went flat", which seems to be have all they needed to do to ensure they were legally "not lying".
How long does a Veyron last when driven like that on the track? It's not long, I assure you!
They're claiming a double standard in that case, since a high performance track car is going to guzzle fuel and you can "limp it off the track" on empty and refill it, certainly, just like you can roll the Tesla off the track and plug it into a high-cap charger to fill it up again. Yes, it takes longer to recharge the Tesla than it does to "recharge" a Veyron or an Elise etc, but it's not the 13 hours they like to suggest for the low-power trickle charge - there are fast charge systems available that bring that time right down.
Do we have a way to go before the convenience of gasoline? Absolutely, but you'd think with the way TG have it in for the electric car you'd think we were in the early days of steam locomotion "Smooth wheels on smooth rails?! How does that work then?! It'll never catch on!".
Why?
Open source licences are compatible with the App Store - the motivation here seems solely to be that if the source is still open, who will pay the $1.99 they want for the ready-compiled app on the store?
You seem to think that it's Apple "forcing" them to close up the source, but I think you should look closer to home (ie, the devs themselves) for that decision.
So the criticism they need to act on is "your car ran out of power"?
"But it has 20% left in the batteries, see this computer monitors the car, or didn't you think we'd look at the car's systems?"
"whatever, it ran out of power!"
Top Gear modification: reports 0% charge when there is 20% left. Genius!
(I am a fan of the show, but they were serious dicks over this whole thing).
He also said some downright false things, for example that it had run totally flat and had to be pushed back into the garage by the crew to be recharged before they had finished filming when in reality the car had 20% charge at minimum, as logged by the onboard computer - in other words, they didn't manage to run it flat during the shoot, but the script (which Tesla saw) called for the ending of the piece to show the car "limping" off the track under human propulsion.
I saw the piece when it originally aired (I'm a Top Gear fan), but they really went for the throat at the end. The review was reasonably fair up to that point - they had a lot of positives to say about the car, along with some downsides. There was no need for them to lie at the end.
They did something similar in the latest electric car piece (with the Leaf and some other car [possibly a Peugeot]) where they "comically" ran out of juice in the middle of a town with nowhere to recharge after "setting off for a day's driving" - it was revealed that they set off with low charge in the cars to begin with.
Their position on electric cars seems to be "say some nice things, but then make sure we ram home the point that they have batteries that need to be charged, herp derp!".
Like I say, I'm a fan of the series and have been since before the current Clarkson/May/Hammond setup, but the stuff about anything that runs on alternative fuels is just getting tiresome.
Why? Because there's no record of spending ever helping to get a country out of recession... you're right... oh wait... the other thing.
Is your user name a Dark City reference?
1) No one does that. [bash on about how Android is open and other phone OSes are closed, thus making Android superior]
AHAHAHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.
Oh wait, you were serious, let me laugh even harder.
What website are you reading?!
No, it really isn't a country. The EFF just made itself look stupid, and it certainly can't use the "oh, well it's pretty much a country by definition" excuse. Doesn't anyone give a cursory proof read of their statements or does no one there actually know that the EU is not a country?
No, he really hasn't.
If there is a prize for amount of debt run up, GWB wins by a landslide (unlike his election to office by a handful of Americans dressed in black).
Look at it this way. A driver steers a bus onto a steep, icy hill and accelerates downwards. Then he hands over the driving duties to Obama, and Obama says "right, time to sort this out" and puts the brakes on. Who do you blame for the bus continuing to slide down the hill with the brakes on? What if the solution is to accelerate faster to clear a gap at the bottom?
Then you have issues like the Repubs in the back voting "no" on putting the brakes on (Bush tax cuts for wealthiest americans), or voting to accelerate even faster (defence budget, doubled since 9/11 from an already massive number). Then you discover that your brakes are in really poor shape because the rules on looking after them were slackened, making things much more profitable for the mechanics (global financial crisis triggered by irresponsible practices by Wall Street and major financial institutions).
Obama is in an unenviable position. Not only does he need to make major reforms in a recession, but he has a large number of people working against him *against their own interest* because they've been told he's "ruining America" by powerful vested interests. He's certainly no second coming, but I give him credit for being able to accomplish what he has managed to do already.