3) I got my last iOS5 update over the air. The package had already been downloaded before I saw the a notification badge for the update on my System Prefs app icon. I did hold off for a few weeks, wanting to see what the jailbreak status on it was.
Two of the three carriers have contract-free options, so you can buy a high-end smartphone for $600-$700 (not necessarily unlocked though). So contracts are optional, which is fine, no one wants to actually make them illegal.
Problem is the 3-year contracts are unconscionable and pricing makes zero sense: a phone that's $150 on 3-year might be $550 for 2-year, $579 for 1-year, and $599 contract-free. $400 for a 1-year difference? Utter nonsense.
Prices may vary somewhat but this is across all smartphones; it's not just Apple strongarming the carriers for higher subsidies.
One of the big "innovations" people forget to credit Apple with is breaking carriers' control over phone features. Maybe this wasn't as big a problem in the rest of the world, but US/Canada (the markets I'm familiar with), handsets were often very well-featured for its time but the carrier installed custom firmware that either disabled stuff like Bluetooth outright, or required monthly fees to unlock.
Hell, a full year after the iPhone came out, RIM released the Blackberry Storm that didn't have wifi, just so carriers could continue charging an arm and leg for data plans!
Plus other fun tricks, like an easy-to-hit-by-accident button that launches the web browser and triggers data usage fees for that month, crap apps that can't be uninstalled, etc.
Apple denied the carriers all of this, even disallowing their branding on product box or phone itself.
Goole/Android and the handset makers, despite empowering the user more than iOS in some ways, are giving that power back to the carriers.
(yes iPhones have some built-in or carrier-based limitations on cell data usage, but nothing like the stuff I mentioned from the bad old days)
My question would be "How long is Google gonna pour a billion a year into a platform they have ZERO control over?" which is really what it comes down to. I mean why EXACTLY is there so much fragmentation in the Android section? Because CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) use Android on devices that can just BARELY support the version that it is running, so even if they open it up good luck on trying to get the latest version to limp along. There is a reason why Apple cuts off support for their older versions of iPhone folks, its because they would run like crap with the latest version of iOS installed.
Actually Apple only cut off the first two iPhones, the original and the 3G. The iPhone 3GS released in 2009, is still being sold new and still supported by the latest iOS. I had iOS5 running on my 3GS for a few months before I got a 4S, and it was surprisingly responsive given how bad the initial iOS4 releases ran on it. 80% of all iPhones ever sold are running iOS 5, and the 3GS will be supported by iOS 6.
No, older iPhones don't get all features of the latest iOS--sometimes for technical reasons, other times they're artificial limitations. That's nitpicking though--many older Android phones don't get official upgrades period, and installing Cyanogenmod is a) not done by most regular users, and b) conceptually no different than jailbreaking an iPhone to get those missing features.
CLI has a very specific meaning and should not be "adapted" for search engine/interpretation.
Typing stuff into a Google search box is NOT a command, they are merely the parameters for one. No one would ever refer to a browser's URL address bar, or search bar, or a merge of the two, as a "command line interface"--not regular end users, and certainly not technical users.
What is "click and wait"? Serious question--my only experience with tablets have been the iPad, and a Playbook a month after its release. The Playbook definitely had "click/tap and wait" issues but no worse than what I see every day on my work laptop (Win7 Lenovo laptop), and I presume it's been fixed in the year since.
I've never found iOS devices to have anything more than very occasional input stutter when they were new.
But, Apple doesn't tout their mobile devices as using "Mac OS RT", Apple clearly makes them distinct calling them Mac OS X and iOS, so there's zero confusion over whether things that run on one will run on the other.
Microsoft calling both their tablet-ready OSes "Windows [something]" on the other hand...
The iPhone and the LG prada were the natural progression (evolution) of phones, neither one revolutionary in their appearance or function.
Natural progression of phone *hardware* and basic appearance.
But in the "function" department, the iPhone simply blew the Prada away.
Watch a video review of the Prada. It still used T9 input. It had tiny scroll bars that the reviewer could barely get to work. The appsIt was basically a candybar phone interface with touchscreen over where the physical buttons would be. The browser was so bad the only reviews I found that mentioned it at all, said it was terrible.
In short, the only reason the Prada is remembered at all is because they got a full-size cap-touchscreen phone out first (announcement by 1 month; actual release by 2 or 3).
Agreed--it's the whole anti-intellectual streak that's run through western culture the last 50 years rearing its head. Disappointed that Sergy went down that route, even if he's just acknowledging reality.
But have these anti-glasses people *seen* some of the glasses women wear now? Some of them are damn sexy and highlight their eyes far better than any shadowing or mascara can. And I'm talking fairly simple styles, not elaborate super-expensive designer pairs. Call it geek chic, sexy librarian fetish or whatever, but glasses are definitely making a comeback where I am.
To me, the real loophole is defining what a human is. If humanity is only considered in the sense of "20th century homo sapiens with a specific gene sequence", then we get into more of a problem as time goes on. A single robot will keep on going, theoretically, whereas humanity will grow and change and adapt and evolve. Will WW3 be the Robot Eugenics War?
As bad as the episode was, this reminds me of "Infection" from the first season of Babylon 5. An intelligent cybernetic organism, inactive until it bonded to a host, was programmed to wipe out any life form from its home planet who wasn't "pure" Ikaaran.
Except it was programmed by religious fanatics who gave it a list of stuff to qualify as ideologically "pure," which no one could hope to match, so they wiped out the sentients and all other life on the planet.
He doesn't mean MS fanbois are still talking about it even after Apple got rid of the one-button mouse, because of course the default is still one virtual button.
He means that they've been going on about it ever since the Windows PC world started using mice on a regular basis and claiming 2 and 3 buttons were better.
20 years ago places it smack dab at the start of the Windows 3.1 era. Win3.0, the first Windows version to see widespread use, was only 2 years older than that.
The current Mac mice and trackpads are still "one button" by default, but you can enable right-click (two-finger trackpad tap is my preference) on a per-account basis. Mac OSX has supported right mouse buttons (and scroll wheels IIRC) since its public beta in 2000.
The puck mouse was introduced in 1998 with the original iMac, and discontinued in 2000 for obvious reasons.
I think you missed the bit where I said it was mostly used only in Canada. There are references to "American aboriginal" and similar in google results for aboriginal, so I couldn't flat out say it was exclusive to Canada.
Anyway GP said he didn't know what the solution (alternative) to "Native American" might be. Aboriginal is at least an alternative to consider.
The US misses on the "mandatory male military service" bit, though, which is *why* they're given rifles to keep and trained on them in the first place.
Bonus: unlike Voyager/Enterprise and to a lesser extent DS9, special effects in space were still model-based so they were used sparingly, meaning the show had to be carried more on plot/character development.
Downside: Most of the first season of TNG is extremely painful to watch, especially after all this time but even when re-watching it in the early 90s. There's good reasons for it (starting production from scratch unlike later series, characters and technology hadn't been fully established by the writers yet, etc), but it's still painful.
BS. It would not be that hard to launch a nuke towards a lunar pole. Dark side might be a little more difficult since I'm assuming once you launch it would be hard to change the trajectory.
Plus...
Other than killing/destroying whatever is at the pole, detonating a nuke there would have no real consequences here on earth like fallout.
Hitting a target on the moon is nothing like lobbing a nuke at a country half a world away.
It took a rocket the size of a Saturn V to send a few tons to get to the moon in 3 days.
More recently, the Japanese sent SELENE to the moon on a rocket half the size and a third the mass of a Saturn V. It took 5-6 days.
Both of these were low energy approaches to save fuel, and used Earth's gravity well to add to their speed (i.e. needed a couple of orbits around Earth first). Apollo, they had to get there faster because life support only lasts so long, so they had to use and bring along more fuel, hence the Saturn V's much larger size and mass.
You will not launch a moon-bound nuke, either from Earth or Earth orbit, and have it get there in less than a day or two (faster = more fuel = more mass to bring up = even more fuel = ridiculous large launch vehicle). It will be in full view of everyone on Earth. That's lots of time for the country whose lunar assets you launched against, to retaliate against you.
Not quite. Siri has activated a number of times when the screen was still on and I put it in my pocket. Even if locked, e.g. I pull it out to check time, put it back in pocket before screen goes black. This hasn't resulted in a pocket dial yet, but it's at least possible.
I've long suspected swipe-passcodes are theoretically less secure than 4-number PIN, if for no other reason than the swipe leaves a single trail (only 2 possible paths based on finger smudge), whereas buttons you have thousands of possible numbers. Assuming the 4 numbers are all different of course.
Of course this all assumes the user started with a clean screen, entered the passcode/pattern, then immediately locked it and gave it to someone to guess. In real life other interaction will probably have obscured the code/pattern somewhat.
With a flip phone, pull it out and open it (quick thumb motion) and say "hello?" With a modern iPhone/Android you have to fiddle with it to unlock it. This just removes the "fiddling with it" part, like the flip phone's cover did; pull it out and answer.
Answering an iPhone is also just a quick thumb motion. Passcode is only needed to dial out (except if emergency call button is pressed) or access apps. I imagine Android is similar.
And though placing your thumb on the right spot on the touchscreen might add a fraction of a second over flipping a physical cover, in normal use many people check who's calling first (call display assumed), so they'd need to look at the screen anyway unless the caller has been set to a custom ringtone (which are limited to a small number of contacts, and don't help when silenced or for the number is unknown).
Telus and Bell were exclusively CDMA until late 2009/early 2010; they partnered to introduce a GSM/HSPA network just in time for the Vancouver Winter Olympics, that way they didn't just let Rogers have all the fun charging millions of visitors massive international roaming charges. The only thing they didn't build in was the legacy EDGE system, so it's 3G (and better) or nothing.
They still sell some CDMA phones, but IIRC most of their new phones are GSM or its successors.
Yes it started off claiming to be socialist, but k(wi)r(kipedia) referred to "Nazi Germany", which did not exist until the 1930s, long after Hitler became its leader (in 1921).
All I'm doing is making sure the dangerous myth perpetuated by far-right, that Nazis were "socialist" (implication: dirty left wing liberal communists). Your latest comment is more moderate so that might not have been your intent, but your first post I replied to was certainly leaning that way.
We are in total agreement that they were batshit insane.
Microsoft makes a design decision you think is brain dead, which is (once again) the aping of a successful user interface but meant for a totally different device type... and you blame Apple??
Your beef is with Microsoft alone. Unlike Microsoft-Nokia, Apple doesn't have a loyal point man inside Microsoft making boneheaded decisions.
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3) I got my last iOS5 update over the air. The package had already been downloaded before I saw the a notification badge for the update on my System Prefs app icon. I did hold off for a few weeks, wanting to see what the jailbreak status on it was.
Two of the three carriers have contract-free options, so you can buy a high-end smartphone for $600-$700 (not necessarily unlocked though). So contracts are optional, which is fine, no one wants to actually make them illegal.
Problem is the 3-year contracts are unconscionable and pricing makes zero sense: a phone that's $150 on 3-year might be $550 for 2-year, $579 for 1-year, and $599 contract-free. $400 for a 1-year difference? Utter nonsense.
Prices may vary somewhat but this is across all smartphones; it's not just Apple strongarming the carriers for higher subsidies.
One of the big "innovations" people forget to credit Apple with is breaking carriers' control over phone features. Maybe this wasn't as big a problem in the rest of the world, but US/Canada (the markets I'm familiar with), handsets were often very well-featured for its time but the carrier installed custom firmware that either disabled stuff like Bluetooth outright, or required monthly fees to unlock.
Hell, a full year after the iPhone came out, RIM released the Blackberry Storm that didn't have wifi, just so carriers could continue charging an arm and leg for data plans!
Plus other fun tricks, like an easy-to-hit-by-accident button that launches the web browser and triggers data usage fees for that month, crap apps that can't be uninstalled, etc.
Apple denied the carriers all of this, even disallowing their branding on product box or phone itself.
Goole/Android and the handset makers, despite empowering the user more than iOS in some ways, are giving that power back to the carriers.
(yes iPhones have some built-in or carrier-based limitations on cell data usage, but nothing like the stuff I mentioned from the bad old days)
My question would be "How long is Google gonna pour a billion a year into a platform they have ZERO control over?" which is really what it comes down to. I mean why EXACTLY is there so much fragmentation in the Android section? Because CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) use Android on devices that can just BARELY support the version that it is running, so even if they open it up good luck on trying to get the latest version to limp along. There is a reason why Apple cuts off support for their older versions of iPhone folks, its because they would run like crap with the latest version of iOS installed.
Actually Apple only cut off the first two iPhones, the original and the 3G. The iPhone 3GS released in 2009, is still being sold new and still supported by the latest iOS. I had iOS5 running on my 3GS for a few months before I got a 4S, and it was surprisingly responsive given how bad the initial iOS4 releases ran on it. 80% of all iPhones ever sold are running iOS 5, and the 3GS will be supported by iOS 6.
No, older iPhones don't get all features of the latest iOS--sometimes for technical reasons, other times they're artificial limitations. That's nitpicking though--many older Android phones don't get official upgrades period, and installing Cyanogenmod is a) not done by most regular users, and b) conceptually no different than jailbreaking an iPhone to get those missing features.
CLI has a very specific meaning and should not be "adapted" for search engine/interpretation.
Typing stuff into a Google search box is NOT a command, they are merely the parameters for one. No one would ever refer to a browser's URL address bar, or search bar, or a merge of the two, as a "command line interface"--not regular end users, and certainly not technical users.
What is "click and wait"? Serious question--my only experience with tablets have been the iPad, and a Playbook a month after its release. The Playbook definitely had "click/tap and wait" issues but no worse than what I see every day on my work laptop (Win7 Lenovo laptop), and I presume it's been fixed in the year since.
I've never found iOS devices to have anything more than very occasional input stutter when they were new.
But, Apple doesn't tout their mobile devices as using "Mac OS RT", Apple clearly makes them distinct calling them Mac OS X and iOS, so there's zero confusion over whether things that run on one will run on the other.
Microsoft calling both their tablet-ready OSes "Windows [something]" on the other hand...
The iPhone and the LG prada were the natural progression (evolution) of phones, neither one revolutionary in their appearance or function.
Natural progression of phone *hardware* and basic appearance.
But in the "function" department, the iPhone simply blew the Prada away.
Watch a video review of the Prada. It still used T9 input. It had tiny scroll bars that the reviewer could barely get to work. The appsIt was basically a candybar phone interface with touchscreen over where the physical buttons would be. The browser was so bad the only reviews I found that mentioned it at all, said it was terrible.
In short, the only reason the Prada is remembered at all is because they got a full-size cap-touchscreen phone out first (announcement by 1 month; actual release by 2 or 3).
How soon one forgets...
$500 was half the price analysts thought an Apple tablet would cost. Except "tablet" meant a different thing before the iPad came out.
Agreed--it's the whole anti-intellectual streak that's run through western culture the last 50 years rearing its head. Disappointed that Sergy went down that route, even if he's just acknowledging reality.
But have these anti-glasses people *seen* some of the glasses women wear now? Some of them are damn sexy and highlight their eyes far better than any shadowing or mascara can. And I'm talking fairly simple styles, not elaborate super-expensive designer pairs. Call it geek chic, sexy librarian fetish or whatever, but glasses are definitely making a comeback where I am.
To me, the real loophole is defining what a human is. If humanity is only considered in the sense of "20th century homo sapiens with a specific gene sequence", then we get into more of a problem as time goes on. A single robot will keep on going, theoretically, whereas humanity will grow and change and adapt and evolve. Will WW3 be the Robot Eugenics War?
As bad as the episode was, this reminds me of "Infection" from the first season of Babylon 5. An intelligent cybernetic organism, inactive until it bonded to a host, was programmed to wipe out any life form from its home planet who wasn't "pure" Ikaaran.
Except it was programmed by religious fanatics who gave it a list of stuff to qualify as ideologically "pure," which no one could hope to match, so they wiped out the sentients and all other life on the planet.
So, nothing has changed. Bill Gates is still stealing the best of Steve Jobs' ideas, and presenting a watered-down version to the masses as his own :-)
(laugh, it's just a joke)
He doesn't mean MS fanbois are still talking about it even after Apple got rid of the one-button mouse, because of course the default is still one virtual button.
He means that they've been going on about it ever since the Windows PC world started using mice on a regular basis and claiming 2 and 3 buttons were better.
20 years ago places it smack dab at the start of the Windows 3.1 era. Win3.0, the first Windows version to see widespread use, was only 2 years older than that.
The current Mac mice and trackpads are still "one button" by default, but you can enable right-click (two-finger trackpad tap is my preference) on a per-account basis. Mac OSX has supported right mouse buttons (and scroll wheels IIRC) since its public beta in 2000.
The puck mouse was introduced in 1998 with the original iMac, and discontinued in 2000 for obvious reasons.
I think you missed the bit where I said it was mostly used only in Canada. There are references to "American aboriginal" and similar in google results for aboriginal, so I couldn't flat out say it was exclusive to Canada.
Anyway GP said he didn't know what the solution (alternative) to "Native American" might be. Aboriginal is at least an alternative to consider.
The US misses on the "mandatory male military service" bit, though, which is *why* they're given rifles to keep and trained on them in the first place.
I thought "Aboriginal" was the North American term for its native peoples (Australia's term is Aborigine). Two fewer syllables.
But, it turns out Aboriginal is mostly used only in Canada. The term includes Inuit (formerly known as Eskimo) and Metis.
Bonus: unlike Voyager/Enterprise and to a lesser extent DS9, special effects in space were still model-based so they were used sparingly, meaning the show had to be carried more on plot/character development.
Downside: Most of the first season of TNG is extremely painful to watch, especially after all this time but even when re-watching it in the early 90s. There's good reasons for it (starting production from scratch unlike later series, characters and technology hadn't been fully established by the writers yet, etc), but it's still painful.
BS. It would not be that hard to launch a nuke towards a lunar pole. Dark side might be a little more difficult since I'm assuming once you launch it would be hard to change the trajectory.
Plus...
Other than killing/destroying whatever is at the pole, detonating a nuke there would have no real consequences here on earth like fallout.
Hitting a target on the moon is nothing like lobbing a nuke at a country half a world away.
It took a rocket the size of a Saturn V to send a few tons to get to the moon in 3 days.
More recently, the Japanese sent SELENE to the moon on a rocket half the size and a third the mass of a Saturn V. It took 5-6 days.
Both of these were low energy approaches to save fuel, and used Earth's gravity well to add to their speed (i.e. needed a couple of orbits around Earth first). Apollo, they had to get there faster because life support only lasts so long, so they had to use and bring along more fuel, hence the Saturn V's much larger size and mass.
You will not launch a moon-bound nuke, either from Earth or Earth orbit, and have it get there in less than a day or two (faster = more fuel = more mass to bring up = even more fuel = ridiculous large launch vehicle). It will be in full view of everyone on Earth. That's lots of time for the country whose lunar assets you launched against, to retaliate against you.
Not quite. Siri has activated a number of times when the screen was still on and I put it in my pocket. Even if locked, e.g. I pull it out to check time, put it back in pocket before screen goes black. This hasn't resulted in a pocket dial yet, but it's at least possible.
I've long suspected swipe-passcodes are theoretically less secure than 4-number PIN, if for no other reason than the swipe leaves a single trail (only 2 possible paths based on finger smudge), whereas buttons you have thousands of possible numbers. Assuming the 4 numbers are all different of course.
Seems the math backs this up.
Of course this all assumes the user started with a clean screen, entered the passcode/pattern, then immediately locked it and gave it to someone to guess. In real life other interaction will probably have obscured the code/pattern somewhat.
With a flip phone, pull it out and open it (quick thumb motion) and say "hello?" With a modern iPhone/Android you have to fiddle with it to unlock it. This just removes the "fiddling with it" part, like the flip phone's cover did; pull it out and answer.
Answering an iPhone is also just a quick thumb motion. Passcode is only needed to dial out (except if emergency call button is pressed) or access apps. I imagine Android is similar.
And though placing your thumb on the right spot on the touchscreen might add a fraction of a second over flipping a physical cover, in normal use many people check who's calling first (call display assumed), so they'd need to look at the screen anyway unless the caller has been set to a custom ringtone (which are limited to a small number of contacts, and don't help when silenced or for the number is unknown).
Telus and Bell were exclusively CDMA until late 2009/early 2010; they partnered to introduce a GSM/HSPA network just in time for the Vancouver Winter Olympics, that way they didn't just let Rogers have all the fun charging millions of visitors massive international roaming charges. The only thing they didn't build in was the legacy EDGE system, so it's 3G (and better) or nothing.
They still sell some CDMA phones, but IIRC most of their new phones are GSM or its successors.
Yes it started off claiming to be socialist, but k(wi)r(kipedia) referred to "Nazi Germany", which did not exist until the 1930s, long after Hitler became its leader (in 1921).
All I'm doing is making sure the dangerous myth perpetuated by far-right, that Nazis were "socialist" (implication: dirty left wing liberal communists). Your latest comment is more moderate so that might not have been your intent, but your first post I replied to was certainly leaning that way.
We are in total agreement that they were batshit insane.
Microsoft makes a design decision you think is brain dead, which is (once again) the aping of a successful user interface but meant for a totally different device type... and you blame Apple??
Your beef is with Microsoft alone. Unlike Microsoft-Nokia, Apple doesn't have a loyal point man inside Microsoft making boneheaded decisions.