Actually from my admittedly limited experience, FAA and airplane mfgrs are downright obsessive about making connections idiot proof and failsafe. It's pretty difficult to find places in an airplane where it's possible to plug the wrong things together or backwards.
Given that, I was astonished when I watched the Mayday episode about Tuninter Flight 1153. The fuel quantity indicator for an ATR 42 had been installed onto the larger ATR 72, giving false indicators there was more fuel on board than there actually was. The equipment was physically identical and electronically compatible. According to the episode the only exterior difference was a single digit in the model number, in tiny font (the wiki article merely mentions "different marking" on the front), which wasn't noticed by the maintenance tech who replaced it the night before.
Let's be honest here. Apple doesn't dislike Flash and Java because of security. They dislike them because people can use them to play games and use apps without Apple getting their 30% cut.
Yes, because Apple had an app store in 2007 when the first iPhone came out without Flash support. Even after the store came around, all those free apps though... 30% of nothing is—let me do the math here. Nothing into nothin'. Carry the nothin'...
Let's be honest here. Apple doesn't like Flash and Java IN PART because people could then use them to play games and use apps without Apple getting a 30% cut, IN PART because of security issues, and IN PART because the user experience on mobile for existing content was bad. Bad enough that even Adobe finally killed mobile Flash development, despite Flash-capable Android rising to prominence.
(Yes, new content could be developed targeting mobile Flash, but let's be honest again--the main reason people wanted Flash on their mobile devices was to access *existing* content, despite their mouse-oriented UI)
Multitouch? They had that in the original surface, the table not that tablet, before the iPhone existed. Died.
The rest of your points are valid, but your history here is wrong. The iPhone "existed" to the public before the Surface table, not the other way around.
Per wikipedia, Surface (PixelSense) 1.0 was announced to the public May 29, 2007, and shipped April 17, 2008.
First iPhone was announced to the public January 9, 2007, and shipped June 29 the same year--ten months before the Surface Table did.
There's vague mention of it being demoed in 2006 at a Microsoft company meeting in Quest Stadium, but that means nothing because it wasn't public knowledge at the time. The iPhone was most definitely being tested and demoed internally in 2006, too, just to a much smaller audience.
USB is sufficient now, and the proprietary connector seems a bit outdated. I would hope that Apple would put a simple micro USB.
That ship has sailed, unfortunately. By introducing the Lightning connector last fall, Apple's made it clear they won't be using micro USB on any of their current or upcoming portable devices.
Oh, but I did think it all the way through. My first comment had most of the disclaimer seen in my second. It survived two previews then got deleted because 1) it should have been obvious people aren't paying $5/gal for *municipal* sourced water; 2) it was inconsistent with the bit about nearby taps and water fountains (municipal water), which served to drive home the actual point I was making in my first comment: how ridiculous people look when they bitch about gas prices even as they regularly buy bottled water at a higher rate, often using "convenience" as an excuse for laziness or unwillingness to prepare ahead of time.
("Convenience" excludes things like airport security or nightclubs which prevent you bringing along your own water or reusable bottle, or can't refill it. Obviously there's other valid reasons to use disposable water bottles, e.g. natural disaster aid)
As you've clearly demonstrated, including that disclaimer also would've detracted and distracted from the actual point I was making. The comparison was deliberately restricted to drinking water, since I look down on habitual use of disposable water bottles for "convenience" sake and was calling people out on that. Per your sig, that's my opinion and I'm entitled to it.
You don't get car gasoline piped into your home like you do municipal water. The comparison is for liquids you must go out to buy at a distributor local to you.
For example, when faced with a dilemma of either eradicating a species or facing an epidemic of disease caused by that species, a conservationist would wipe out the pest while a tree-hugger would not.
Mosquitoes are people too!
You're confusing mosquitoes with mega-corporations. Understandable mistake though, they're both blood-sucking parasites...
And if you are willing to pay $5/gallon water won't be a problem either.
People already regularly pay more than that. Willingly, without a second thought, while bitching about paying $3-4/gal for gas. They even do it when the water is freely available out of nearby taps and water fountains, thinking it's somehow cleaner, purer, or from a mountain spring like the label on the bottle says.
The public opinion of the Progress Bar would be considerably more favorable if programmers would simply treat 100% as if it were 75%.
In other words, do all the stuff you have to do, measuring progress and whatnot, but when you're actually at 80%, report yourself at 60%. Likewise, when you're at 95%, say you're at 70%.
Then, only when you really are completely finished, you jump from 75% to 100% in under a second.
Sports is a great example for those who may never have watched a launch. Many have lots of clock-stopping plays, time-outs, and even soccer's perpetually running clock usually runs past "100%" with extra minutes added at the end.
Yes and it's those--as well as those that dance left and right for no damn reason--that really piss me off.
There's one worse: A single progress bar animation that seems like it's working normally, gets to the end.... and then *starts over* (not the entire process, just the progress bar).
That's worse than useless, it's utterly misleading. Either code a proper progress bar, add a second progress bar to indicate overall progress (assuming the first bar keeps resetting for every sub-task), or use one of those "indeterminate" animations. The "dance left and right" bars are attempts at one, but visually make no sense. The "barber-pole" style animations that Macs started using over two decades ago are a decent implementation.
The only reason Bill C-30 didn't go through was because Harper and his crew didn't like the negative press that was received by the bill (Facebook posts, Michael Geist blogs, etc..); the conservatives COULD have passed it but ultimately they'd like to win another election again. So they can this bill due to public outcry (damage control), but simply try to sneak in the same provisions in Bill C-55. On the same day no less.
"Negative press"? Hardly. Harper couldn't give any less a damn to any of that.
What did happen was that Minister Toews stirred up a hornet's nest within the Conservative party itself and their major supporters. Oddly enough, when many on the right opposed the bill along with left, they didn't appreciate being labeled by Toews as supporters of child pornographers.
At that point C-30 was poisoned and could not pass under that name, and they had to transplant most of the provisions into a new one.
Wikipedia mentioned [Juneteenth] as international.
From what I could see, it's "celebrated" internationally thanks to the efforts of a relatively small though dedicated group of people. While a worthwhile effort, Wikipedia does *not* mention it (nor the World Day of Reconciliation & Healing) as being a holiday anywhere else in the world, and international events are relatively few.
Outside the US, Earth Hour is probably "celebrated world-wide now", as you say, by far more people than Juneteenth is.
(Here in BC the Liberal government, desperate to do anything that might rescue a few votes, has launched a February holiday called "Family Day." I guess that it goes without saying this comes after years of hacking away at any program that actually benefited real working class families.)
They're only catching up to Alberta, Ontario, Saskatchewan, and PEI, which has had Family Day for several years now... but only for non-federal government workers since their unions maxed out the number of annual stat holidays already.
Not sure why Apple never fixed this shortcoming -- maybe a patent issue. Or perhaps a reason as lame as that the mute is an actual hardware on/off switch on the side of the phone, and they thought it would break the beauty and elegance for the software state not to match the hardware state, or something. Anyway, Apple settled for inferiority/inconvenience on that one, and it annoys me.
I suspect it's the very common Apple practice of introducing the basics of a new feature, get "normal" people used to it, then add capabilities in the next major iOS as part of the "200 new features" bullet points.
iOS Mail has gone through 6 versions now and you *still* can't set a Priority flag when composing an email...
Given that Android phones are usually a lot cheaper than iPhones, people can upgrade by buying a new phone and still come out ahead financially.
The environment thanks you for this wonderful continuation of the notion that electronics should be cheap and disposable./sarcasm
Yes, you're advocating their disposal (or recycling, which still has costs) because if it's not secure enough for you to keep using it, and you can't update it, it would be utterly selfish/irresponsible to sell or pass it on to someone else.
Every single iPhone I've personally had or managed at work (about a dozen) is still in use and updated to the latest iOS with all its security fixes. My 2009 iPhone 3GS is now on its third owner.
And it's no wonder that several European countries believe that RIM (now Blackberry) is just a front for the US/UK/Canadian/Australian Echelon program.
You lost me at this point. Tinfoil hat and stating that RIM is now Blackberry(RIM makes Blackberry phones, that's like saying Apple is now Mac/iPhone).
An accounting friend said it was a bad thing too... back in 2006 when Apple had about $10 billion in the bank.
The streak can't go on forever, and certainly Steve Jobs was a major factor, but Apple has defied conventional market wisdom (such as it is) for the last decade. I'm not too worried yet.
But Nokia didn't have $130bn just lying around. $130bn changes everything.
Repeat after me: It's all on paper.
Amazing how little a company is worth when the stock starts sliding.
Yes, amazing how little Apple is worth without its stock. Hint: it's about $137 billion, all in the bank (well, various banks around the world).
The stock value or market cap, which is what you really meant, is $430 billion at time of this writing. Meaning almost 1/3 of the current stock value is backed by actual cash in the bank.
Your link is utterly irrelevant because no one denied that Apple does actual product placement, and does it well. No one denies Apple *does* pay for advertising, but product placement is a specific form of advertising that Apple claims they don't pay money for.
Link after link including from respectable news sites saying Apple says/insists/claims they don't pay [money] for their prolific product placement. That is more than enough reputable second-hand sources to cover the fact you know perfectly well Apple won't have an official written statement about it on their website, so your demand for an "official source" is a red herring. How about you provide an official source where Apple confirms they do pay money for product placement?
Heck I'll make it easier for you. Find me some reputable second-hand sources saying Apple does pay money for product placement. Loaning or other in-lieu doesn't count.
hairfeet: "Actually most of the products you can identify in movies have either had the rights paid for by the movie company or if the movie is a big name flick will often get money from the company in return for showing their product in a favorable light. Why do you think every person that uses a laptop in a movie is always using a MacBook when IRL that is less than 10% of the population? Product placement."
Me: "Apple has repeatedly said/claimed that they don't pay for product placement, so your implication that Apple pays for the placement is incorrect."
You: "Providing free products to be in a movie is a type of payment...they have kept inventory on hand to loan out to studios "
Ok, I see where why this went off track. My first reply was focused on the "money from the company" (since the production company obviously didn't pay Apple anything) but I didn't specify "money" when I used the word "pay" (though I did in the second comment you replied to). Money was absolutely and obviously implied in the part I first quoted and now bolded above.
To head off a rebuttal by anyone that loaning something out (or cross-promo) is the same as paying actual money:
Example: Time-in-lieu is a "type of" payment for overtime work, instead of actual money. Time-in-lieu doesn't help pay your bills though. Nor do you report it as actual income when you do your taxes.
Slashdot Mirror
Real-life proof. Even better, it's one of Microsoft's own offices.
Actually from my admittedly limited experience, FAA and airplane mfgrs are downright obsessive about making connections idiot proof and failsafe. It's pretty difficult to find places in an airplane where it's possible to plug the wrong things together or backwards.
Given that, I was astonished when I watched the Mayday episode about Tuninter Flight 1153. The fuel quantity indicator for an ATR 42 had been installed onto the larger ATR 72, giving false indicators there was more fuel on board than there actually was. The equipment was physically identical and electronically compatible. According to the episode the only exterior difference was a single digit in the model number, in tiny font (the wiki article merely mentions "different marking" on the front), which wasn't noticed by the maintenance tech who replaced it the night before.
Let's be honest here. Apple doesn't dislike Flash and Java because of security. They dislike them because people can use them to play games and use apps without Apple getting their 30% cut.
Yes, because Apple had an app store in 2007 when the first iPhone came out without Flash support. Even after the store came around, all those free apps though... 30% of nothing is—let me do the math here. Nothing into nothin'. Carry the nothin'...
Let's be honest here. Apple doesn't like Flash and Java IN PART because people could then use them to play games and use apps without Apple getting a 30% cut, IN PART because of security issues, and IN PART because the user experience on mobile for existing content was bad. Bad enough that even Adobe finally killed mobile Flash development, despite Flash-capable Android rising to prominence.
(Yes, new content could be developed targeting mobile Flash, but let's be honest again--the main reason people wanted Flash on their mobile devices was to access *existing* content, despite their mouse-oriented UI)
Multitouch? They had that in the original surface, the table not that tablet, before the iPhone existed. Died.
The rest of your points are valid, but your history here is wrong. The iPhone "existed" to the public before the Surface table, not the other way around.
Per wikipedia, Surface (PixelSense) 1.0 was announced to the public May 29, 2007, and shipped April 17, 2008.
First iPhone was announced to the public January 9, 2007, and shipped June 29 the same year--ten months before the Surface Table did.
There's vague mention of it being demoed in 2006 at a Microsoft company meeting in Quest Stadium, but that means nothing because it wasn't public knowledge at the time. The iPhone was most definitely being tested and demoed internally in 2006, too, just to a much smaller audience.
There's also absolutely no mention of it in another employee's post-meeting blog post, so either this reinforces the strictly internal-only nature of the unveiling... or suggests that the first story's account of the 2006 unveiling is false.
That person must get really incensed by Airbus, then, whose planes love to say "retard!" at the pilots several times moments before they land...
Whaddya mean, Han shot "first"? Han was the *only* one who shot.
USB is sufficient now, and the proprietary connector seems a bit outdated. I would hope that Apple would put a simple micro USB.
That ship has sailed, unfortunately. By introducing the Lightning connector last fall, Apple's made it clear they won't be using micro USB on any of their current or upcoming portable devices.
Oh, but I did think it all the way through. My first comment had most of the disclaimer seen in my second. It survived two previews then got deleted because 1) it should have been obvious people aren't paying $5/gal for *municipal* sourced water; 2) it was inconsistent with the bit about nearby taps and water fountains (municipal water), which served to drive home the actual point I was making in my first comment: how ridiculous people look when they bitch about gas prices even as they regularly buy bottled water at a higher rate, often using "convenience" as an excuse for laziness or unwillingness to prepare ahead of time.
("Convenience" excludes things like airport security or nightclubs which prevent you bringing along your own water or reusable bottle, or can't refill it. Obviously there's other valid reasons to use disposable water bottles, e.g. natural disaster aid)
As you've clearly demonstrated, including that disclaimer also would've detracted and distracted from the actual point I was making. The comparison was deliberately restricted to drinking water, since I look down on habitual use of disposable water bottles for "convenience" sake and was calling people out on that. Per your sig, that's my opinion and I'm entitled to it.
You don't get car gasoline piped into your home like you do municipal water. The comparison is for liquids you must go out to buy at a distributor local to you.
For example, when faced with a dilemma of either eradicating a species or facing an epidemic of disease caused by that species, a conservationist would wipe out the pest while a tree-hugger would not.
Mosquitoes are people too!
You're confusing mosquitoes with mega-corporations. Understandable mistake though, they're both blood-sucking parasites...
And if you are willing to pay $5/gallon water won't be a problem either.
People already regularly pay more than that. Willingly, without a second thought, while bitching about paying $3-4/gal for gas. They even do it when the water is freely available out of nearby taps and water fountains, thinking it's somehow cleaner, purer, or from a mountain spring like the label on the bottle says.
The public opinion of the Progress Bar would be considerably more favorable if programmers would simply treat 100% as if it were 75%.
In other words, do all the stuff you have to do, measuring progress and whatnot, but when you're actually at 80%, report yourself at 60%. Likewise, when you're at 95%, say you're at 70%.
Then, only when you really are completely finished, you jump from 75% to 100% in under a second.
Complaints gone.
Or not...
Sports is a great example for those who may never have watched a launch. Many have lots of clock-stopping plays, time-outs, and even soccer's perpetually running clock usually runs past "100%" with extra minutes added at the end.
Yes and it's those--as well as those that dance left and right for no damn reason--that really piss me off.
There's one worse: A single progress bar animation that seems like it's working normally, gets to the end.... and then *starts over* (not the entire process, just the progress bar).
That's worse than useless, it's utterly misleading. Either code a proper progress bar, add a second progress bar to indicate overall progress (assuming the first bar keeps resetting for every sub-task), or use one of those "indeterminate" animations. The "dance left and right" bars are attempts at one, but visually make no sense. The "barber-pole" style animations that Macs started using over two decades ago are a decent implementation.
The only reason Bill C-30 didn't go through was because Harper and his crew didn't like the negative press that was received by the bill (Facebook posts, Michael Geist blogs, etc..); the conservatives COULD have passed it but ultimately they'd like to win another election again. So they can this bill due to public outcry (damage control), but simply try to sneak in the same provisions in Bill C-55. On the same day no less.
"Negative press"? Hardly. Harper couldn't give any less a damn to any of that.
What did happen was that Minister Toews stirred up a hornet's nest within the Conservative party itself and their major supporters. Oddly enough, when many on the right opposed the bill along with left, they didn't appreciate being labeled by Toews as supporters of child pornographers.
At that point C-30 was poisoned and could not pass under that name, and they had to transplant most of the provisions into a new one.
Wikipedia mentioned [Juneteenth] as international.
From what I could see, it's "celebrated" internationally thanks to the efforts of a relatively small though dedicated group of people. While a worthwhile effort, Wikipedia does *not* mention it (nor the World Day of Reconciliation & Healing) as being a holiday anywhere else in the world, and international events are relatively few.
Outside the US, Earth Hour is probably "celebrated world-wide now", as you say, by far more people than Juneteenth is.
(Here in BC the Liberal government, desperate to do anything that might rescue a few votes, has launched a February holiday called "Family Day." I guess that it goes without saying this comes after years of hacking away at any program that actually benefited real working class families.)
They're only catching up to Alberta, Ontario, Saskatchewan, and PEI, which has had Family Day for several years now... but only for non-federal government workers since their unions maxed out the number of annual stat holidays already.
If you enable WebGL on Google Maps, I'm almost certain that the streetview is WebGL too, not flash.
You are correct; just enabled WebGL on my Flash-less Safari, and was pleasantly surprised. No need to switch to Chrome for Street View anymore!
Not sure why Apple never fixed this shortcoming -- maybe a patent issue. Or perhaps a reason as lame as that the mute is an actual hardware on/off switch on the side of the phone, and they thought it would break the beauty and elegance for the software state not to match the hardware state, or something. Anyway, Apple settled for inferiority/inconvenience on that one, and it annoys me.
I suspect it's the very common Apple practice of introducing the basics of a new feature, get "normal" people used to it, then add capabilities in the next major iOS as part of the "200 new features" bullet points.
iOS Mail has gone through 6 versions now and you *still* can't set a Priority flag when composing an email...
Given that Android phones are usually a lot cheaper than iPhones, people can upgrade by buying a new phone and still come out ahead financially.
The environment thanks you for this wonderful continuation of the notion that electronics should be cheap and disposable. /sarcasm
Yes, you're advocating their disposal (or recycling, which still has costs) because if it's not secure enough for you to keep using it, and you can't update it, it would be utterly selfish/irresponsible to sell or pass it on to someone else.
Every single iPhone I've personally had or managed at work (about a dozen) is still in use and updated to the latest iOS with all its security fixes. My 2009 iPhone 3GS is now on its third owner.
And it's no wonder that several European countries believe that RIM (now Blackberry) is just a front for the US/UK/Canadian/Australian Echelon program.
You lost me at this point. Tinfoil hat and stating that RIM is now Blackberry(RIM makes Blackberry phones, that's like saying Apple is now Mac/iPhone).
RIM announced their name change to Blackberry during the official launch.
If you had a greater understanding of this subject, you would not have made such an egregious insinuation.
Just because you use slightly fancier words doesn't mean you actually know what you're talking about.
An accounting friend said it was a bad thing too... back in 2006 when Apple had about $10 billion in the bank.
The streak can't go on forever, and certainly Steve Jobs was a major factor, but Apple has defied conventional market wisdom (such as it is) for the last decade. I'm not too worried yet.
But Nokia didn't have $130bn just lying around. $130bn changes everything.
Repeat after me: It's all on paper.
Amazing how little a company is worth when the stock starts sliding.
Yes, amazing how little Apple is worth without its stock. Hint: it's about $137 billion, all in the bank (well, various banks around the world).
The stock value or market cap, which is what you really meant, is $430 billion at time of this writing. Meaning almost 1/3 of the current stock value is backed by actual cash in the bank.
Your link is utterly irrelevant because no one denied that Apple does actual product placement, and does it well. No one denies Apple *does* pay for advertising, but product placement is a specific form of advertising that Apple claims they don't pay money for.
Google for "apple pays for product placement"
Link after link including from respectable news sites saying Apple says/insists/claims they don't pay [money] for their prolific product placement. That is more than enough reputable second-hand sources to cover the fact you know perfectly well Apple won't have an official written statement about it on their website, so your demand for an "official source" is a red herring. How about you provide an official source where Apple confirms they do pay money for product placement?
Heck I'll make it easier for you. Find me some reputable second-hand sources saying Apple does pay money for product placement. Loaning or other in-lieu doesn't count.
hairfeet: "Actually most of the products you can identify in movies have either had the rights paid for by the movie company or if the movie is a big name flick will often get money from the company in return for showing their product in a favorable light. Why do you think every person that uses a laptop in a movie is always using a MacBook when IRL that is less than 10% of the population? Product placement."
Me: "Apple has repeatedly said/claimed that they don't pay for product placement, so your implication that Apple pays for the placement is incorrect."
You: "Providing free products to be in a movie is a type of payment...they have kept inventory on hand to loan out to studios "
Ok, I see where why this went off track. My first reply was focused on the "money from the company" (since the production company obviously didn't pay Apple anything) but I didn't specify "money" when I used the word "pay" (though I did in the second comment you replied to). Money was absolutely and obviously implied in the part I first quoted and now bolded above.
To head off a rebuttal by anyone that loaning something out (or cross-promo) is the same as paying actual money:
Definition of in lieu: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/in_lieu
Example: Time-in-lieu is a "type of" payment for overtime work, instead of actual money. Time-in-lieu doesn't help pay your bills though. Nor do you report it as actual income when you do your taxes.