Seems it's cool to hate just about everything on slashdot, so to solve the image problem of the Volt among slashdot geeks they should just tell them that the navigation system runs Linux. Then it would be the greatest product ever created, and would "crush all those closed cars" that "you do not own!"
Whatever you did, it might as well be sorcery. Having tried to get into programming at a hobby level, I am lost at arrays and pointers and "simple stuff".
Writing a program for a computer I think is something that I am destined to never understand - my brain is just not wired that way. I can't even imagine how complex it gets when a GPU is involved.
That said, I'm a chemist, but I can never shake the feeling that a programmer could learn what I do with a little bit of book learning and some practice, but despite knowing how to solve the Schrodinger equation by hand (albeit only particle in a box for simplicity) I simply could not do it for the life of me on a computer, even in relatively high level stuff like Maple, let alone the classes that went on to use C to do "simple" chemistry stuff. I couldn't get past getting the computer to read a list of numbers into an array and sort them by size.
I'll stick to my fume hood, I think - theoretical chemistry is not for me:p
Yes, because stuff like the OP's post actually passes for fact and insightful commentary around here.
The OP has also posted a lot of Apple-bash material in the past - just like I'm recognised as the "usual Apple defender", I have replied to him quite a bit in the past.
Yes, and I expect the changes will be rolled into the format if Apple's venture is successful.
The key thing is that while it's not a literal ePub file (which was clear from the all the extra things the books can do), they used a base that enabled easier interoperation. They could have started with a totally alien format, but chose not to.
Because it does contain ways to handle extra data - like videos and animations and so on, that's why the iBooks format exists. It's ePub inside a container.
Sort of like how a.mov container can contain an H.264 (or other) video with subtitles in multiple languages etc.
So of course there is a difference. What it means is that it's not difficult to make a converter, or to support the format.
Well, it's an ePub inside a zip file with various other things like the videos (H.264) and animations included.
Assuming the other book viewers can be updated to handle the linking to the other materials, there's no reason a converter for these books couldn't be produced.
Oh dear, I am mixing my Lewises up. Sort of like how I'm always wondering which is a Lewis Acid and which is a Lewis Base. At this point in my career it should be obvious!
Yes, CS Lewis was the whole "Jesus as a Lion" and "Women will always let you down" story.
They're bumping the top speed up to 120Mb from February this year, and everyone else is getting a speed doubling for no price increase (triple speed up for those on 20Mb). I've been on their 50/5 Mb service for over a year and it has been fantastic with very little downtime and consistently high speeds. From next month the my package will be 100/10.
10 > 20 20 > 60 30 > 60 50 > 100 100 > 120
Virgin are telling everyone by email etc, but if you're on the 20Mb tier and you want to prepare, you might want to upgrade various hardware to wireless N since you'll soon be getting 60/5 Mb internet (Virgin will give you a "Superhub" router thing if you don't already have a capable home router). I think they'll give you one wireless N adapter for free too.
Their lawsuits are a major issue - I have said this multiple times (although I agreed with the Samsung copy suit, they are taking it to extremes. I do not agree with the HTC suit).
The Finder needs serious work. It has been sub-par since 10.2 and needs to be overhauled. It's better in Lion and SL now that it doesn't beachball if a single thread is busy, but it's still not where it should be.
iOS desperately needs a way to flip the various wireless features on and off from the main screen like Android has. Going in to the settings to turn Wifi off when it auto-joins a network is annoying. (Usually one of those mesh networks that blocks you and asks for payment to access it, or a network you have seen before and use occasionally but that still requires login - if the phone connects to a wifi signal, even without a path to the internet it *will not* fall back to 3G data, so you have to turn the wifi off in this situation - one or other of these things needs to be fixed. Ideally with a simple switch on the home or lock screen to turn the wifi on and off.
iOS needs swype. I've used it on Android and it's excellent. While we're on the subject of input, a more intuitive capslock would be nice, or a way to modify the layout to move more frequently used symbols onto the main keyboard.
The iPad needs an SD card for storage expansion. I mention this every time the topic comes up. I assume if it does get one on the iPad 3 it will ship in a working state unlike the Xoom, though.
The new Preview.app in Lion is a major step backwards. It used to be so fast and so useful and so stable. It's now slow to open, crashes frequently and is just a general pain.
While we're on Lion, the "versions" save system where you never need to save anymore is all very well but *why did they remove Save As...*? I know you can duplicate the document and then save, but it's still less useful than it was before if you used that feature. There was no reason to remove it.
iCal has improved in some areas, but the sidebar is now gone, replaced with a pop up window. It was better before where you could see your calendars without having to bring this popup up, for example if you wanted to change the what calendar you had selected before making a new event. It's quicker now to simply make an event with the default calendar and just switch it manually while you're entering details. In other words, the UI is less functional than it was before.
The iMac lineup uses MXM 3.0 graphics cards - there is no reason that the top level card available in the 27" as a build to order couldn't be included in the 21" model as a build to order (the thermal output is the same as the card in the 21"). The only reason is to push you to get the 27" if you want that graphics card. That's cheap. Similarly, the CPU is socketed with intel's standard socket for Sandy Bridge i5/i7 so the selection limitation is purely to differentiate the models.
Apple should open the FaceTime protocol already - they said they were planning to do it, but so far have not. They should also licence the magsafe connector along the same lines as the mini-displayport.
That's just a few of the thoughts off the top of my head. I now I've talked about many of these on slashdot before, some of them for many years.
The problem I face is that if I'm positive about Apple for any reason without including a library of "supporting" evidence that shows I am also critical then "I'm a paid Apple shill" "a clueless fanboy sheeple" "a worthless Apple troll" etc etc. Slashdot is intolerant of positive commentary about companies and topics it considers to be "the enemy" of whatever it is they're pushing as the current flavour du jour. Right now that's Android, not long ago it was Ubuntu, then Firefox (which have both seemed to have fallen from favour).
Don't get me wrong, I'm more positive about Apple than negative (or why would I continue to use OS X and iOS?), but it doesn't mean I don't have criticisms of the products or the company as a whole. To suggest that I'm an Apple propagandist is to suffer from confirmation bias of the highest order.
Tablets were "wildly popular" before Apple came along?
Smartphones *maybe* - since Blackberry certainly had a good following, but it was nowhere near the market penetration that came when iPhone and Android were selling the "classic" touchscreen phone.
The mp3 player was certainly not "wildly popular" with the general public. Not even close. There were certainly portable mp3 players, but they were a niche product - if the iPod killed anything it was MiniDisc (in all countries except the US), the discman and the walkman. At the time, the concept of music as files on your computer was the realm of the extremely tech-savvy computer geek. Apple just took it mainstream.
You were doing well right up until claiming that "image" is Apple's only real product - to do so is a gross underestimation and, given that many other manufacturers seem to think as you do, why they have such problems creating products that compete favourably with Apple ones. Android manufacturers cottoned on to this pretty quickly and as a result have made some very good phones after listening to what their customers want (note: you don't need to copy Apple for Apple's model to work - Apple's method is to make something that people want to buy, so as long as you do that, you'll sell).
If Apple was "all image" then they might manage a large number of sales to start with, then they would quickly fall off as word of the product spread. This is also known as the "box office turd" effect, where the opening weekend is huge but then drops off like a rock. Apple's product sales are much more like the box office hit - big opening weekend, strong sales long into the run. If the products were not delivering on expectations (and not necessarily those of the slashdot geek who wants to compile Linux on his phone every 3 days) then they would not continue to sell in ever increasing numbers - marketing will not do that for you in the presence of a terrible product.
Slashdot Mirror
Seems it's cool to hate just about everything on slashdot, so to solve the image problem of the Volt among slashdot geeks they should just tell them that the navigation system runs Linux. Then it would be the greatest product ever created, and would "crush all those closed cars" that "you do not own!"
Yeah, I hear that Ford made the passenger cabin of the Ranger into a crumple zone - it dissipates energy really effectively!
The only downsides are slight crush injuries to your legs, arms, torso, feet, hands and head.
The EuroNCAP review of that Ranger is gone now, but it was hilariously bad and one of the very few "not even 1 star worthy" vehicles.
The extended cab folded like paper at the point between the front and rear seats.
Whatever you did, it might as well be sorcery. Having tried to get into programming at a hobby level, I am lost at arrays and pointers and "simple stuff".
Writing a program for a computer I think is something that I am destined to never understand - my brain is just not wired that way. I can't even imagine how complex it gets when a GPU is involved.
That said, I'm a chemist, but I can never shake the feeling that a programmer could learn what I do with a little bit of book learning and some practice, but despite knowing how to solve the Schrodinger equation by hand (albeit only particle in a box for simplicity) I simply could not do it for the life of me on a computer, even in relatively high level stuff like Maple, let alone the classes that went on to use C to do "simple" chemistry stuff. I couldn't get past getting the computer to read a list of numbers into an array and sort them by size.
I'll stick to my fume hood, I think - theoretical chemistry is not for me :p
Sorry, this is wildly offtopic.
Yes, because stuff like the OP's post actually passes for fact and insightful commentary around here.
The OP has also posted a lot of Apple-bash material in the past - just like I'm recognised as the "usual Apple defender", I have replied to him quite a bit in the past.
Ah, so it's *Apple's* fault.
Of course, if they actually did as you suggested then they'd be demonised for "sanitising and curating the experience".
Alternatively the user can just switch off auto-joining networks in the preferences.
This post getting +5 insightful perfectly encapsulates what's wrong with many software developers.
Yes, and I expect the changes will be rolled into the format if Apple's venture is successful.
The key thing is that while it's not a literal ePub file (which was clear from the all the extra things the books can do), they used a base that enabled easier interoperation. They could have started with a totally alien format, but chose not to.
You forgot to log in.
You forgot to log in.
Nothing stopping you writing a converter.
Give them a break - they announced it *today* and are giving the tools and reading software away for free.
Because it does contain ways to handle extra data - like videos and animations and so on, that's why the iBooks format exists. It's ePub inside a container.
Sort of like how a .mov container can contain an H.264 (or other) video with subtitles in multiple languages etc.
So of course there is a difference. What it means is that it's not difficult to make a converter, or to support the format.
Well, it's an ePub inside a zip file with various other things like the videos (H.264) and animations included.
Assuming the other book viewers can be updated to handle the linking to the other materials, there's no reason a converter for these books couldn't be produced.
So current textbooks cost $14.99*0.7 at the moment?
Can you point me in the direction of your supplier please?
A closed format like.... ePub.
Mmmmm.
Try again.
Free authoring tools, free app, HTML5-based books...
Totally the opposite direction to free and available!
Good job they decided to use ePub then, isn't it?
What are you smoking? The iBooks format *already is ePub* - why would you need to "export" to it?
And it is. iBooks uses ePub, which is HTML5.
It's a zip file with the files inside it.
Oh dear, I am mixing my Lewises up. Sort of like how I'm always wondering which is a Lewis Acid and which is a Lewis Base. At this point in my career it should be obvious!
Yes, CS Lewis was the whole "Jesus as a Lion" and "Women will always let you down" story.
That doesn't make it right though.
C.S. Lewis fiddled with kids, but that doesn't give me carte blanche to hook up with 9 year olds.
"Myriad", not "myriad of".
Anyway, I see you remembered to log out this time GreatBunzinni. Well done.
They're bumping the top speed up to 120Mb from February this year, and everyone else is getting a speed doubling for no price increase (triple speed up for those on 20Mb). I've been on their 50/5 Mb service for over a year and it has been fantastic with very little downtime and consistently high speeds. From next month the my package will be 100/10.
10 > 20
20 > 60
30 > 60
50 > 100
100 > 120
Virgin are telling everyone by email etc, but if you're on the 20Mb tier and you want to prepare, you might want to upgrade various hardware to wireless N since you'll soon be getting 60/5 Mb internet (Virgin will give you a "Superhub" router thing if you don't already have a capable home router). I think they'll give you one wireless N adapter for free too.
You're missing the word "commonly" that is in the summary.
I see you remembered to check the "post anonymously" option this time GreatBunzinni!
How's that going?
Whoops, you forgot to log out!
Oh dear. What's the universal hand signal for egg on face?
Their lawsuits are a major issue - I have said this multiple times (although I agreed with the Samsung copy suit, they are taking it to extremes. I do not agree with the HTC suit).
The Finder needs serious work. It has been sub-par since 10.2 and needs to be overhauled. It's better in Lion and SL now that it doesn't beachball if a single thread is busy, but it's still not where it should be.
iOS desperately needs a way to flip the various wireless features on and off from the main screen like Android has. Going in to the settings to turn Wifi off when it auto-joins a network is annoying. (Usually one of those mesh networks that blocks you and asks for payment to access it, or a network you have seen before and use occasionally but that still requires login - if the phone connects to a wifi signal, even without a path to the internet it *will not* fall back to 3G data, so you have to turn the wifi off in this situation - one or other of these things needs to be fixed. Ideally with a simple switch on the home or lock screen to turn the wifi on and off.
iOS needs swype. I've used it on Android and it's excellent. While we're on the subject of input, a more intuitive capslock would be nice, or a way to modify the layout to move more frequently used symbols onto the main keyboard.
The iPad needs an SD card for storage expansion. I mention this every time the topic comes up. I assume if it does get one on the iPad 3 it will ship in a working state unlike the Xoom, though.
The new Preview.app in Lion is a major step backwards. It used to be so fast and so useful and so stable. It's now slow to open, crashes frequently and is just a general pain.
While we're on Lion, the "versions" save system where you never need to save anymore is all very well but *why did they remove Save As...*? I know you can duplicate the document and then save, but it's still less useful than it was before if you used that feature. There was no reason to remove it.
iCal has improved in some areas, but the sidebar is now gone, replaced with a pop up window. It was better before where you could see your calendars without having to bring this popup up, for example if you wanted to change the what calendar you had selected before making a new event. It's quicker now to simply make an event with the default calendar and just switch it manually while you're entering details. In other words, the UI is less functional than it was before.
The iMac lineup uses MXM 3.0 graphics cards - there is no reason that the top level card available in the 27" as a build to order couldn't be included in the 21" model as a build to order (the thermal output is the same as the card in the 21"). The only reason is to push you to get the 27" if you want that graphics card. That's cheap. Similarly, the CPU is socketed with intel's standard socket for Sandy Bridge i5/i7 so the selection limitation is purely to differentiate the models.
Apple should open the FaceTime protocol already - they said they were planning to do it, but so far have not. They should also licence the magsafe connector along the same lines as the mini-displayport.
That's just a few of the thoughts off the top of my head. I now I've talked about many of these on slashdot before, some of them for many years.
The problem I face is that if I'm positive about Apple for any reason without including a library of "supporting" evidence that shows I am also critical then "I'm a paid Apple shill" "a clueless fanboy sheeple" "a worthless Apple troll" etc etc. Slashdot is intolerant of positive commentary about companies and topics it considers to be "the enemy" of whatever it is they're pushing as the current flavour du jour. Right now that's Android, not long ago it was Ubuntu, then Firefox (which have both seemed to have fallen from favour).
Don't get me wrong, I'm more positive about Apple than negative (or why would I continue to use OS X and iOS?), but it doesn't mean I don't have criticisms of the products or the company as a whole. To suggest that I'm an Apple propagandist is to suffer from confirmation bias of the highest order.
Tablets were "wildly popular" before Apple came along?
Smartphones *maybe* - since Blackberry certainly had a good following, but it was nowhere near the market penetration that came when iPhone and Android were selling the "classic" touchscreen phone.
The mp3 player was certainly not "wildly popular" with the general public. Not even close. There were certainly portable mp3 players, but they were a niche product - if the iPod killed anything it was MiniDisc (in all countries except the US), the discman and the walkman. At the time, the concept of music as files on your computer was the realm of the extremely tech-savvy computer geek. Apple just took it mainstream.
You were doing well right up until claiming that "image" is Apple's only real product - to do so is a gross underestimation and, given that many other manufacturers seem to think as you do, why they have such problems creating products that compete favourably with Apple ones. Android manufacturers cottoned on to this pretty quickly and as a result have made some very good phones after listening to what their customers want (note: you don't need to copy Apple for Apple's model to work - Apple's method is to make something that people want to buy, so as long as you do that, you'll sell).
If Apple was "all image" then they might manage a large number of sales to start with, then they would quickly fall off as word of the product spread. This is also known as the "box office turd" effect, where the opening weekend is huge but then drops off like a rock. Apple's product sales are much more like the box office hit - big opening weekend, strong sales long into the run. If the products were not delivering on expectations (and not necessarily those of the slashdot geek who wants to compile Linux on his phone every 3 days) then they would not continue to sell in ever increasing numbers - marketing will not do that for you in the presence of a terrible product.