I wonder what the practice in most modern civilizations of burying the dead in caskets will mean for archeologists or alien explorers even 1000 years from now. A quick google suggests even bones disintegrate after a few hundred years, assuming a neutral environment within the casket.
Considering the odds against fossilization to begin with, it would be ironic if the ritual of burying the dead to preserve their memory, ends up ensuring little record of modern human biology remains for future civilizations to (re-)discover.
The cost of a purpose-built supercomputer is way more expensive and still technically superior in many ways over the best PC you can custom-build.
What you're talking about is *value*. The cheaper general-purpose PC is of more value (to you) than a supercomputer because you can actually do day-to-day things like run games, browse the internet, etc, while a supercomputer might only be able to do very specific tasks.
The end user doesn't have to care, but just because supporting IE6 or IE7 (for example) might be part of a web developer's job, doesn't mean their griping about supporting those two steaming piles of shit browsers aren't legitimate, and they can try taking steps to improve things (like raising awareness of Firefox, back in the dark days of 95% IE6 market share).
This is an iPhone, so the carrier doesn't have its own custom firmware. There's a few carrier-specific config settings that get updated from time to time, but that doesn't contain the lock/unlock status.
The jailbreak+unlock isn't available for all iPhones, especially newer ones or older iPhone models with an updated iOS and modem baseband.
Apple keeps a list of which IMEI numbers are locked to which company. Through this official unlock, Fido and Rogers customers, after satisfying far too many conditions, can pay the $50 so that the IMEI number is removed from the list. Next time it's synced or restored in iTunes, during device verification, you get a confirmation from Apple itself saying it's unlocked.
Gotta hand it to Apple, they're doing steps 2, 3, and a bit of 5 simultaneously *
* Reasoning: 2) Ignore the revolutionary vs evolutionary technology debate, they are following the accepted definition of "innovation" 3) Obvious 4) doesn't apply; Apple's not resting on their laurels, and while competition is catching up or surpassing them in some areas, their profits are not decreasing 5) lawsuits are against key players, not everyone under the sun
I'd assume this particular progression went: power off, access sim, put battery back in, power up, call service provider *using that phone*... but the owner called before the last step.
Also, although I've only ever dealt with a half dozen cell phones in my life where I had to interact with the SIM card, I never once had to enter the PIN after putting the SIM back in to get the phone working again. This ranged from older dumb phones to iPhones and Blackberries.
I'm trying to unlock an old Fido (subsidiary of Rogers) iPhone from a deactivated account. It's an official, permanent factory unlock that costs $50.
4 different customer service reps, 3 different courses of action. Two of them tried directing me to sketchy $15 unlocking services in malls--but I'm 99% certain that's just a jailbreak + unlock (which I could do myself), which is lost if ever the phone software is updated or restored.
I can't believe how many roadblocks I've run into trying to GIVE THEM $50.
I also thought using real names would naturally make people better behaved too, then I saw a few "discussions" that had similar levels of bile, intolerance, and juvenile behaviour. They were all using real names (not that I can verify), and seemed to all be mid-20s and older. It seems you can flame away with your real name as long as you think you'll never meet anyone you're trolling.
Then again, look at some of the popular Hollywood "reality" shows like Survivor, Jersey Shore, etc where shit attitudes and behaviour are not only tolerated, but encouraged. And we have our wonderful politicians setting examples for the rest of society.
Unlike most like/unlike, agree/disagree systems, a registered user does not always have moderation powers, and when they do it's limited to 5 or 15 points.
Like any system there are flaws and room for improvement, but there's a lot to like about the/. mod system and why I keep coming back here. I haven't seen a discussion system that comes even close, if you happen to know of one I'll check it out.
On another site I recently tried injecting some reasonable points into a story that had been hijacked by political comments, and non-registered trolls and flamers (all of whom were fundamentalist right-wing zealots) called me every name in the book and then some, and sneered at my attempts to keep things civil. The only reply that was remotely intelligent came from a registered user, even though we disagreed with each other.
"Vast majority" may apply where you are, it doesn't apply everywhere.
Canada has some of the stupidest carrier plans in the world. You think 2-year contracts are bad, here all smartphones by default are 3 year contracts. A couple carriers offer 2- and even 1-year plans, but they aren't properly pro-rated (example: typical smartphone with 3-year contract, $99. 2-year, $399. 1-year, $449. No contract (but still locked to carrier), $499. WTF??).
They nickel-and-dime you everything. Some plans include unlimited text, but even my own smartphone plan only has 250 texts, which I easily blew past over the Christmas/new year billing period. And it's $0.20 per outgoing message over the limit.
With iMessage and other 3rd party data messaging apps, carriers are claiming they "lost" billions of dollars (in the same way piracy "loses" the recording and movie industries billions every year). If it's impacting carrier's bottom lines that much (taken with a full bag of salt, of course), one can easily say it's making a huge difference on many people's bills.
Apple only sells the latest-generation iPod touch in their store. Authorized resellers may still have older generations in stock, so they might refer to them as 4th and 3rd generation to distinguish them.
The iPod touch (and iMac, MacBook, etc) also does not receive the same degree of upgrades between generations--or at least not enough that people are lining up for days to get the new releases.
It's not that there will be mass confusion and riots on the street. Just saying there was a happy middle ground between soulless model numbers and no official, friendly distinguisher between generations.
Apple's definition of "retina display" factors in typical viewing distances. Since iPads are held further away than the iPhone in normal usage, pixel density can be lower, and the average human eye still cannot distinguish individual pixels.
Well, every new iMac since 1998 has been "The new iMac" and that seems to have gone OK.
Of course, Apple should really take a tip from proper, grown-up consumer electronics manufacturers like Sony or Samsung and give its products proper, grown-up names like the "IPD2048-16B2(W)/A":-)
Which IMHO isn't appropriate for either iPhone or iPad the way they're currently sold.
iMacs, Macbooks, etc have no common identifier. You have to rely on the product ID or when it was released (not necessarily when you bought it), e.g. "iMac aluminum mid-2007".
Apple officially pulls the previous generations of these from their online store, though. But with the iPhone and iPad, they still sell the previous generation (2 previous generations in the case of iPhone) at a lower price.
So what exactly will they call the next-generation iPad, when the iPad 2 is withdrawn and the now-new iPad becomes the low-end model? Today's new iPad will undoubtedly be referred to as the iPad 2012 (barring an unlikey refresh later this year).
The iPad and iPhone was a happy middle between the alphabet soup model numbers of commodity computers and lower-end cell phones, and their hard-to-distinguish-generations naming on every other modern Apple product.
If you've tracked Apple at all through the last decade, their stock *always* runs up ahead of an announcement, whether it's a product launch or earnings announcement. They then tank as overinflated rumours and expectations are let down. And yet months later they announce massive sales of whatever they just announced.
The only exception was their January financial announcement, they blew past estimates by so much (especially after the below-expectation financials the previous quarter) that everyone was scrambling to jump on the bandwagon.
That it dipped during today's announcement is not a surprise. That it closed above yesterday's close, is.
A 1-day stock chart is no indicator of what stage of growth the iPad is in. The earnings report for April-June will tell the tale (the one for Jan-March will only include 2 weeks of new iPad sales).
Forget the "hip" scroll wheel and user interface then. Was there a competitor at the time the iPod was launched that at least had USB2, so transferring 5GB of music wouldn't take an hour at USB1.1's 12 Mbps? And how big (physically) were those Nomads again?
But sure, it's all marketing. Give at least some credit where it's due.
Forget Nixon, REAGAN would be lambasted as a RINO if he went into the Republican race today. Like all hero worship, the actions that don't conform to current ideology are conveniently ignored.
It's not scaring enough Canadians, even after they've kept doing what they do best since betraying the Progressive Conservatives when the Reform/Canadian Alliance takeover happened. Despite betraying seniors (pension reform), slandering veterans (Conservative MP called card-carrying Conservative veterans communists and Putin lovers after they complained he'd nodded off during a veterans affairs committee meeting), calling half their conservative base pedophiles for opposing massive privacy intrusions, evidence of significant election fraud scandal that forms the basis for our entire damn democracy... and yet Conservative approval ratings are still high.
Seriously, are those on the right THAT blinded by ideology that anything other than the so-called Conservatives are evil?
1) people shirking this duty just like when they get a jury summons 1a) first act of each new session is voting themselves a raise, for putting up with this duty which pulls them away from family, other work, etc 1b) corruption by newfound powers and influence.
(a and b of course happens already, but without the "if I have to put up with this, I'm going to make it worth my while; I'm only here one term anyway" factor)
2) those who actually want power gaming the lottery system to pick them
Oh and the fact that Senators were appointed by the states to represent the states meant you had one part of the legislature that didn't have to run campaigns, didn't have to worry about the way the wind was blowing, and could actually vote their conscience. Changing that was a bad idea. It was an important check against the soundbite-driven (well really headline-driven, back then) world we know today.
Here in Canada there's a growing trend favouring an elected senate, but for all the wrong reasons.
Our senate's problem is that although technically representing the provinces and territories, they're not appointed by the them--they are "recommended" by whoever the prime minister happens to be when an existing senator retires, and the recommendation is rubber-stamped by the monarch's figurehead representative. Also unlike the US, the number of senators is different per province/territory, based on population and whatever legal agreement was struck when they joined Canada. This gives the central provinces disproportionate representation.
An elected senate would fix nothing, aside giving us the ability to sometimes turf an unpopular senator instead of waiting for him/her to retire or die. In return we'd get useless elections deciding who to represent us, and they'll likely be from the same party as whoever we voted in for the lower House. There is no "sober second thought" in such a setup, if we're not going to have even a token check on power, just eliminate the damn Senate and save tens of millions of dollars a year (and a few HUNDRED million every few years for senate elections, based on how much our 2011 general election cost).
There's also some whining about how judges here should be elected too, because some made unpopular decisions. This is all manner of retarded and no amount of logic seems to penetrate the heads of this scheme's supporters.
That's like saying the USS Enterprise is just a good copy of the USS Constitution, Galaxy and Sovereign for which those starship classes were named, when we all know it's the *second* ship in each of those classes that's worth following around with a a film crew and documenting everything.
I know about the deflector dish, even started writing about it to cover my bases, but finally left it out because I was adding to a comment that specifically mentioned collecting particles as usable energy.
IIRC from the TNG Tech Manual, the deflector dish and warp fields were even configured to allow specific particles (deuterium, hydrogen, etc) to funnel into the collectors while at warp.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder what the practice in most modern civilizations of burying the dead in caskets will mean for archeologists or alien explorers even 1000 years from now. A quick google suggests even bones disintegrate after a few hundred years, assuming a neutral environment within the casket.
Considering the odds against fossilization to begin with, it would be ironic if the ritual of burying the dead to preserve their memory, ends up ensuring little record of modern human biology remains for future civilizations to (re-)discover.
The cost of a purpose-built supercomputer is way more expensive and still technically superior in many ways over the best PC you can custom-build.
What you're talking about is *value*. The cheaper general-purpose PC is of more value (to you) than a supercomputer because you can actually do day-to-day things like run games, browse the internet, etc, while a supercomputer might only be able to do very specific tasks.
The end user doesn't have to care, but just because supporting IE6 or IE7 (for example) might be part of a web developer's job, doesn't mean their griping about supporting those two steaming piles of shit browsers aren't legitimate, and they can try taking steps to improve things (like raising awareness of Firefox, back in the dark days of 95% IE6 market share).
That principle applies to any job.
This is an iPhone, so the carrier doesn't have its own custom firmware. There's a few carrier-specific config settings that get updated from time to time, but that doesn't contain the lock/unlock status.
The jailbreak+unlock isn't available for all iPhones, especially newer ones or older iPhone models with an updated iOS and modem baseband.
Apple keeps a list of which IMEI numbers are locked to which company. Through this official unlock, Fido and Rogers customers, after satisfying far too many conditions, can pay the $50 so that the IMEI number is removed from the list. Next time it's synced or restored in iTunes, during device verification, you get a confirmation from Apple itself saying it's unlocked.
Gotta hand it to Apple, they're doing steps 2, 3, and a bit of 5 simultaneously *
* Reasoning:
2) Ignore the revolutionary vs evolutionary technology debate, they are following the accepted definition of "innovation"
3) Obvious
4) doesn't apply; Apple's not resting on their laurels, and while competition is catching up or surpassing them in some areas, their profits are not decreasing
5) lawsuits are against key players, not everyone under the sun
I'd assume this particular progression went: power off, access sim, put battery back in, power up, call service provider *using that phone*... but the owner called before the last step.
Also, although I've only ever dealt with a half dozen cell phones in my life where I had to interact with the SIM card, I never once had to enter the PIN after putting the SIM back in to get the phone working again. This ranged from older dumb phones to iPhones and Blackberries.
They can't even keep their own policies straight.
I'm trying to unlock an old Fido (subsidiary of Rogers) iPhone from a deactivated account. It's an official, permanent factory unlock that costs $50.
4 different customer service reps, 3 different courses of action. Two of them tried directing me to sketchy $15 unlocking services in malls--but I'm 99% certain that's just a jailbreak + unlock (which I could do myself), which is lost if ever the phone software is updated or restored.
I can't believe how many roadblocks I've run into trying to GIVE THEM $50.
I also thought using real names would naturally make people better behaved too, then I saw a few "discussions" that had similar levels of bile, intolerance, and juvenile behaviour. They were all using real names (not that I can verify), and seemed to all be mid-20s and older. It seems you can flame away with your real name as long as you think you'll never meet anyone you're trolling.
Then again, look at some of the popular Hollywood "reality" shows like Survivor, Jersey Shore, etc where shit attitudes and behaviour are not only tolerated, but encouraged. And we have our wonderful politicians setting examples for the rest of society.
Unlike most like/unlike, agree/disagree systems, a registered user does not always have moderation powers, and when they do it's limited to 5 or 15 points.
Like any system there are flaws and room for improvement, but there's a lot to like about the /. mod system and why I keep coming back here. I haven't seen a discussion system that comes even close, if you happen to know of one I'll check it out.
On another site I recently tried injecting some reasonable points into a story that had been hijacked by political comments, and non-registered trolls and flamers (all of whom were fundamentalist right-wing zealots) called me every name in the book and then some, and sneered at my attempts to keep things civil. The only reply that was remotely intelligent came from a registered user, even though we disagreed with each other.
"Vast majority" may apply where you are, it doesn't apply everywhere.
Canada has some of the stupidest carrier plans in the world. You think 2-year contracts are bad, here all smartphones by default are 3 year contracts. A couple carriers offer 2- and even 1-year plans, but they aren't properly pro-rated (example: typical smartphone with 3-year contract, $99. 2-year, $399. 1-year, $449. No contract (but still locked to carrier), $499. WTF??).
They nickel-and-dime you everything. Some plans include unlimited text, but even my own smartphone plan only has 250 texts, which I easily blew past over the Christmas/new year billing period. And it's $0.20 per outgoing message over the limit.
With iMessage and other 3rd party data messaging apps, carriers are claiming they "lost" billions of dollars (in the same way piracy "loses" the recording and movie industries billions every year). If it's impacting carrier's bottom lines that much (taken with a full bag of salt, of course), one can easily say it's making a huge difference on many people's bills.
Apple only sells the latest-generation iPod touch in their store. Authorized resellers may still have older generations in stock, so they might refer to them as 4th and 3rd generation to distinguish them.
The iPod touch (and iMac, MacBook, etc) also does not receive the same degree of upgrades between generations--or at least not enough that people are lining up for days to get the new releases.
It's not that there will be mass confusion and riots on the street. Just saying there was a happy middle ground between soulless model numbers and no official, friendly distinguisher between generations.
No it does not.
Apple's definition of "retina display" factors in typical viewing distances. Since iPads are held further away than the iPhone in normal usage, pixel density can be lower, and the average human eye still cannot distinguish individual pixels.
You can get two desktops for the price of one cheap laptop. Doesn't mean the former gives you what the latter provides.
Oh, and the name--iPad, iPad 2, The new iPad.
Well, every new iMac since 1998 has been "The new iMac" and that seems to have gone OK.
Of course, Apple should really take a tip from proper, grown-up consumer electronics manufacturers like Sony or Samsung and give its products proper, grown-up names like the "IPD2048-16B2(W)/A" :-)
Just wrote my thoughts about that. The iPad and iPhone is/was a happy middle between the two extremes.
Which IMHO isn't appropriate for either iPhone or iPad the way they're currently sold.
iMacs, Macbooks, etc have no common identifier. You have to rely on the product ID or when it was released (not necessarily when you bought it), e.g. "iMac aluminum mid-2007".
Apple officially pulls the previous generations of these from their online store, though. But with the iPhone and iPad, they still sell the previous generation (2 previous generations in the case of iPhone) at a lower price.
So what exactly will they call the next-generation iPad, when the iPad 2 is withdrawn and the now-new iPad becomes the low-end model? Today's new iPad will undoubtedly be referred to as the iPad 2012 (barring an unlikey refresh later this year).
The iPad and iPhone was a happy middle between the alphabet soup model numbers of commodity computers and lower-end cell phones, and their hard-to-distinguish-generations naming on every other modern Apple product.
If you've tracked Apple at all through the last decade, their stock *always* runs up ahead of an announcement, whether it's a product launch or earnings announcement. They then tank as overinflated rumours and expectations are let down. And yet months later they announce massive sales of whatever they just announced.
The only exception was their January financial announcement, they blew past estimates by so much (especially after the below-expectation financials the previous quarter) that everyone was scrambling to jump on the bandwagon.
That it dipped during today's announcement is not a surprise. That it closed above yesterday's close, is.
A 1-day stock chart is no indicator of what stage of growth the iPad is in. The earnings report for April-June will tell the tale (the one for Jan-March will only include 2 weeks of new iPad sales).
Forget the "hip" scroll wheel and user interface then. Was there a competitor at the time the iPod was launched that at least had USB2, so transferring 5GB of music wouldn't take an hour at USB1.1's 12 Mbps? And how big (physically) were those Nomads again?
But sure, it's all marketing. Give at least some credit where it's due.
Damn, I used up all my mod points this morning. Parent deserves a +5 Insightful
Forget Nixon, REAGAN would be lambasted as a RINO if he went into the Republican race today. Like all hero worship, the actions that don't conform to current ideology are conveniently ignored.
It's not scaring enough Canadians, even after they've kept doing what they do best since betraying the Progressive Conservatives when the Reform/Canadian Alliance takeover happened. Despite betraying seniors (pension reform), slandering veterans (Conservative MP called card-carrying Conservative veterans communists and Putin lovers after they complained he'd nodded off during a veterans affairs committee meeting), calling half their conservative base pedophiles for opposing massive privacy intrusions, evidence of significant election fraud scandal that forms the basis for our entire damn democracy... and yet Conservative approval ratings are still high.
Seriously, are those on the right THAT blinded by ideology that anything other than the so-called Conservatives are evil?
So what prevents
1) people shirking this duty just like when they get a jury summons
1a) first act of each new session is voting themselves a raise, for putting up with this duty which pulls them away from family, other work, etc
1b) corruption by newfound powers and influence.
(a and b of course happens already, but without the "if I have to put up with this, I'm going to make it worth my while; I'm only here one term anyway" factor)
2) those who actually want power gaming the lottery system to pick them
Oh and the fact that Senators were appointed by the states to represent the states meant you had one part of the legislature that didn't have to run campaigns, didn't have to worry about the way the wind was blowing, and could actually vote their conscience. Changing that was a bad idea. It was an important check against the soundbite-driven (well really headline-driven, back then) world we know today.
Here in Canada there's a growing trend favouring an elected senate, but for all the wrong reasons.
Our senate's problem is that although technically representing the provinces and territories, they're not appointed by the them--they are "recommended" by whoever the prime minister happens to be when an existing senator retires, and the recommendation is rubber-stamped by the monarch's figurehead representative. Also unlike the US, the number of senators is different per province/territory, based on population and whatever legal agreement was struck when they joined Canada. This gives the central provinces disproportionate representation.
An elected senate would fix nothing, aside giving us the ability to sometimes turf an unpopular senator instead of waiting for him/her to retire or die. In return we'd get useless elections deciding who to represent us, and they'll likely be from the same party as whoever we voted in for the lower House. There is no "sober second thought" in such a setup, if we're not going to have even a token check on power, just eliminate the damn Senate and save tens of millions of dollars a year (and a few HUNDRED million every few years for senate elections, based on how much our 2011 general election cost).
There's also some whining about how judges here should be elected too, because some made unpopular decisions. This is all manner of retarded and no amount of logic seems to penetrate the heads of this scheme's supporters.
Your /. ID alone conveys a limitation. You never know if you're alive or dead (or whatever applies for hats) until someone observes you.
That's like saying the USS Enterprise is just a good copy of the USS Constitution, Galaxy and Sovereign for which those starship classes were named, when we all know it's the *second* ship in each of those classes that's worth following around with a a film crew and documenting everything.
I know about the deflector dish, even started writing about it to cover my bases, but finally left it out because I was adding to a comment that specifically mentioned collecting particles as usable energy.
IIRC from the TNG Tech Manual, the deflector dish and warp fields were even configured to allow specific particles (deuterium, hydrogen, etc) to funnel into the collectors while at warp.