That probably means that there is not much more upside for Apple shares. For the most part, they are selling expensive consumer toys that people can live without. Look at the products associated with the other companies on the list. If the consumer should ever lose discretionary spending power which company's products do you think they'd stop buying first?
Apparently not Apple, which reported their best quarters ever during the last year. This despite massive unemployment and loss of discretionary spending power due to the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression (so we keep hearing, anyway).
Luckily Slashdot is pretty much entirely broken on the iPhone (still!), so this issue hasn't come up.
What!? This is news to me and my iPhone 3G S. Are there a couple of annoyances, sure, but I have no problem reading stories here, unhiding comments, etc exactly as I would on a full computer.
Even reading nested comments isn't painful, because the deeper the nesting, the smaller the font is on my iPhone, so I just double-tap the comment block to magnify and auto-fit the comment up the width of the screen.
So there's no iPhone-specific Slashdot layout, but 9 times out of 10 I switch a site back to its normal layout anyway, to access some features (minus the obvious like Flash) that aren't available on the mobile layout.
Now, that said, there is nothing stopping someone from writing a virus specifically targetting the appstore or iPhone/iPods and I suspect very soon someone will have a valid implementation. When it happens, though, it will be the same with Windows users. People will take it as part of the process and will either allow themselves to get viruses or they will buy something to prevent it. It won't make any difference to the sales numbers, I guarantee it.
I daresay the current security models on iPhones/iPods are doing a splendid job stopping someone from writing a virus for them.
Writing a virus isn't as simple as Independence Day and other Hollywood drivel make it out to be. Not for a reasonably designed system, anyway. Malware writers have tried on OSX and iPhones/iPods already, and the furthest they've gotten are either proof of concept viruses that never spread, or trojan horses which no semi-open system can defend against that.
Or we could assume that at a certain level of the game, you'd better know what you're doing or you're going to get hurt.
Granted people in the sport must accept the risks that come with hurtling yourself down an ice track at 140+ km/h, but several experienced lugers had expressed concerns about this particular track. These are people who know what they're doing, rookies don't get to go to the Olympics.
No amount of padding in front of the beams would've made a difference, going from 140+ km/h to zero in a fraction of a second.
What they needed was a higher wall to deflect any crashing luger downward so they'd stay on the luge track itself.
Which, incidentally, is what the Olympic organizers did immediately after. While at the same time claiming the death wasn't caused by the track, but driver error. That just disgusted me; yeah, it may have been driver error, and it was a freak accident how he hit the inner wall just so to launch out of the track, but the track was not blameless no matter what the organizers say.
But isn't the fact that "it takes some getting used to" contradict the statement that the "interface is easy to use?"
I wouldn't say so. Physical keyboards are the most common input devices for computing devices, but someone who's used desktop keyboards all their life will have trouble at first with laptop keyboards (keys don't travel as far), or netbook keyboards (keys are physically smaller and closer together), and even more fun with cellphone keyboards (so small you normally only use your thumbs to type).
In all cases there's an adjustment period. Some people can adapt, some can't, but "takes some getting used to," on its own, has no bearing on how easy the interface itself is to use. If a large percentage take too long to adapt and give up, then we can start measuring whether it's easy to use or not.
You didn't really read what either the parent or the GP wrote.
The GP challenged that Apple didn't drive any standards.
The parent found a big one: USB. Parent never claimed Apple invented it, merely that their adoption of it on the original iMac kick-started a market that had been around a couple of years but hadn't seen much traction yet.
Is this shared folder functionality going to be available for iPhone/iPod touch apps too, or restricted to just the iPad?
Third-party desktop programs like DiskAid can already transfer files over USB to companion apps (FileApp in this case), so there's no real technological limitation to speak of.
Canada and even the US doesn't have absolute freedom of speech; limits can and have be imposed.
Federal election laws in Canada are unified (thank goodness), and do impose free speech restrictions on election reporting that cover most methods of mass communication/advertisement up to the start of the century: newspaper, radio, TV. In each of those cases, it costs serious money to put a political ad up, and thus can be accounted for.
Further, on election day they are forbidden from publishing the ballot results until polls across the country's six time zones are closed, the idea being to avoid influencing the vote or voter turnout in more westerly provinces (yes, we actually get all our election results inside of 6 hours).
Obviously this is at complete odds with the internet, and our election laws haven't yet been able to figure out how to handle it. However, that goes for political parties and their supporters too. Online ads aren't at all that effective. Youtube videos, being on-demand, only preach to the choir. Elections Canada probably doesn't keep too close an eye on money spent on political ads online.
The only real problem with the built-in screen capture is when you're trying to capture a window that extends below the screen... you need to take two screenshots and stitch them together... or buy something like SnagIt, which will do that in one step.
All the replies about using Paint as a workaround, and mocking downloaded solutions, is missing the point--that you need a workaround in the first place.
On a Mac it's Command-shift-4. Select area on screen. Done. (Optionally, press an extra modifier key if you want it to go straight to clipboard instead of a file).
On Windows I rely on a free utility called Screengrab Pro, which isn't nearly as elegant but the best free one I've found. The only time I'll waste using Paint as a go-between is if I'm trying to capture a pulled-down menu.
So a flight bound for Toronto, which might cross a very marginal section of US airspace, now diverts slightly to avoid it and therefore comply with Canadian privacy laws. The US now gets no info about passengers on that flight because of the slight detour, yet it still flies about the same distance, perhaps uses a bit more fuel.
How, exactly, does this new condition help security?
I live in Ottawa, so our snowfall is very comparable to Montreal's. Here, ploughs do indeed shove everything onto downtown sidewalks initially, and the sidewalk ploughs clear a path afterwards. Then, after enough ploughed snow has accumulated they'll remove it using giant snowblowing trucks which go down street after street (overnight parking bans would be in effect) and transfer them to dump trucks to take it to designated snow fields. There's almost always one dump truck being loaded and one waiting to take over, it's a fairly efficient operation from what I've seen.
It's also a standard. Mot really a problem. OTOH, in Florida people might be too stupid to figure that out.
They certainly weren't bright enough to know fast(er) lanes on the interstate are meant for passing, not pacing vehicles in the slower lanes. When I visited two years ago I kept getting stuck in such blocks of inconsiderate drivers for ten or fifteen minutes, finally break free of it, only to run into the block ahead of them a few minutes later.
You rapidly approach the point where increasing pixel density on a small screen size becomes pointless, when many users can't make out the finer detail without a magnifying lens.
Just try reading text that's set to font-size of 9px, on a page that's formatted for a 1024 pixel-wide screen (and no mobile-browser version), scaled so the width fits the iPhone screen. It's barely 1 mm tall! Most people can't comfortably read text that small even on a 600 dpi printout.
So, I think the small fighter craft would be nearly spherical, with a single main engine and a few guns or missiles facing generally forward.
Only if you don't plan on re-entry as a sphere is non-optimal for utilising the effect that shaceship one was supposed to use; that is using a flat surface to force a ubble of air to pool in front of the craft and buffer against the heat.
Isn't an ablative/heat-dissipating re-entry surface only needed because of limited fuel for propulsion?
If we assume that the propulsion problem is licked (as you did earlier), wouldn't you be able to use the engines to continually slow down as you descend lower into thicker atmosphere, thus avoiding the intense heat of friction braking?
About a dozen client machines. I don't know if CD installs onto client machines were an option with this product.
But you never know beforehand just how much time you're going to waste on tech support. I don't think he expected consumer-level support for an enterprise-level product.
Before trolls start yelling about how "OMGZ LINUX ISN'T SECURE HAHAHA" and things like that, let me tell you something: because GNU/Linux is so open and configurable, malware like this can be very easily removed. All you have to do is run a few commands in a terminal to remove this.
Before trolls start yelling about how "OMGZ WINDOZE AV SOFTWARE IS COMPLICATED HAHAHA" and things like that, let me tell you something: because Windows is so accessible, AV software like this can be very easily deployed. All you have to do is click a few icons in the Start Menu to remove this. Blah, blah, blah
On Linux and the like, everything is simple if you already know what you want to do. Otherwise, you have to trust unaccountable internet entities to provide you abstruse commands to run and hope they aren't trying to trick you into doing even more damage to your system. It should be obvious why that is a no way to combat malware.
Don't tell our IT manager that AV is very easily deployed after today.... He spent 2 frustrating hours on the phone with Symantec (plus 3 hours on hold before that--yay "enterprise"-level support) trying to get one of their products deployed across our small network.
Then change the parameters a bit. Instead of loading and offloading weapons onto "lockers," load and offload mercenaries (sorry, "private security companies" in Blackwater-speak) instead.
The mercs would be well motivated to keep their gear in order, if they fail their task and the ship gets boarded, the pirates would find and kill them before doing anything else. Even if they survived, they'd never be hired for protection detail again.
Of course, you then have to somehow ensure that the mercs aren't on the pirate's payroll.
Check out the launch video for STS-112, it has the rawest sounds from a live launch video I've ever heard, before or since. Usually the audio from the pad seems muffled or dampened, but not this one.
At T -15s you hear the clear whine of what I presume is the sound suppression system activating, and see water flood out of the fire trench (this was the first time a tank-mounted shuttle camera streamed launch video live). There's a sucking sound right as the shuttle's main engines ignite, but a second later the sound of pure, raw power cuts right through you as the SMEs reach full power. I get chills every time I see and hear this part of the clip.
Agree, absolutely incredible. Over the years there were lots of angles I'd wanted to see during a launch, this covered almost all of them (the remaining video would be of the tank actually burning up in the atmosphere).
I found it odd though that the now-regular footage from the camera mounted on the fuel tank was of much lower resolution than that from other cameras. I realize the tank-cam is live stream while other footage (e.g. on the SRBs) is retrieved later, but the tank-cam looks great on TV...
There are people in England that feel the BBC shouldn't be free to people outside of England. That can only grumble because there isn't a technically feasible way to do it practically.
There is nothing wrong with that, it's there site and the can limited.
While true, that would leave their American cousins being the sole highly-visibility source of English-language news to the world, diminishing the UK's influence on the world stage further. What do they think about that? Or are they too short-sighted to see this?
Most countries use tax money to promote themselves overseas. Tourism campaigns are the most visible and more measurable in the short-term, but license fees to help broadcast BBC and UK culture around the world has a much bigger and long-term impact that a year's worth of visitors.
You must live in far worse cities than I've been to then. Or you're not as sensitive to it.
Hong Kong, New York City, Toronto... all major cities with heavy traffic, and while the occasional exhaust from a poorly maintained engine makes me cough, cigarette smoke from a passing smoker still cuts through all of that and makes me gag.
I merely pointed out that there's already at least one private service mandated by law, which the OP said he'd shoot people for. No attempt at analogy was made beyond that.
Slashdot Mirror
That probably means that there is not much more upside for Apple shares. For the most part, they are selling expensive consumer toys that people can live without. Look at the products associated with the other companies on the list. If the consumer should ever lose discretionary spending power which company's products do you think they'd stop buying first?
Apparently not Apple, which reported their best quarters ever during the last year. This despite massive unemployment and loss of discretionary spending power due to the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression (so we keep hearing, anyway).
Luckily Slashdot is pretty much entirely broken on the iPhone (still!), so this issue hasn't come up.
What!? This is news to me and my iPhone 3G S. Are there a couple of annoyances, sure, but I have no problem reading stories here, unhiding comments, etc exactly as I would on a full computer.
Even reading nested comments isn't painful, because the deeper the nesting, the smaller the font is on my iPhone, so I just double-tap the comment block to magnify and auto-fit the comment up the width of the screen.
So there's no iPhone-specific Slashdot layout, but 9 times out of 10 I switch a site back to its normal layout anyway, to access some features (minus the obvious like Flash) that aren't available on the mobile layout.
What am I missing?
Now, that said, there is nothing stopping someone from writing a virus specifically targetting the appstore or iPhone/iPods and I suspect very soon someone will have a valid implementation. When it happens, though, it will be the same with Windows users. People will take it as part of the process and will either allow themselves to get viruses or they will buy something to prevent it. It won't make any difference to the sales numbers, I guarantee it.
I daresay the current security models on iPhones/iPods are doing a splendid job stopping someone from writing a virus for them.
Writing a virus isn't as simple as Independence Day and other Hollywood drivel make it out to be. Not for a reasonably designed system, anyway. Malware writers have tried on OSX and iPhones/iPods already, and the furthest they've gotten are either proof of concept viruses that never spread, or trojan horses which no semi-open system can defend against that.
Or we could assume that at a certain level of the game, you'd better know what you're doing or you're going to get hurt.
Granted people in the sport must accept the risks that come with hurtling yourself down an ice track at 140+ km/h, but several experienced lugers had expressed concerns about this particular track. These are people who know what they're doing, rookies don't get to go to the Olympics.
No amount of padding in front of the beams would've made a difference, going from 140+ km/h to zero in a fraction of a second.
What they needed was a higher wall to deflect any crashing luger downward so they'd stay on the luge track itself.
Which, incidentally, is what the Olympic organizers did immediately after. While at the same time claiming the death wasn't caused by the track, but driver error. That just disgusted me; yeah, it may have been driver error, and it was a freak accident how he hit the inner wall just so to launch out of the track, but the track was not blameless no matter what the organizers say.
But isn't the fact that "it takes some getting used to" contradict the statement that the "interface is easy to use?"
I wouldn't say so. Physical keyboards are the most common input devices for computing devices, but someone who's used desktop keyboards all their life will have trouble at first with laptop keyboards (keys don't travel as far), or netbook keyboards (keys are physically smaller and closer together), and even more fun with cellphone keyboards (so small you normally only use your thumbs to type).
In all cases there's an adjustment period. Some people can adapt, some can't, but "takes some getting used to," on its own, has no bearing on how easy the interface itself is to use. If a large percentage take too long to adapt and give up, then we can start measuring whether it's easy to use or not.
Most cars in the US are automatic, and their drivers wouldn't know what a clutch was, much less how to use it if they got into a manual car.
You didn't really read what either the parent or the GP wrote.
The GP challenged that Apple didn't drive any standards.
The parent found a big one: USB. Parent never claimed Apple invented it, merely that their adoption of it on the original iMac kick-started a market that had been around a couple of years but hadn't seen much traction yet.
Is this shared folder functionality going to be available for iPhone/iPod touch apps too, or restricted to just the iPad?
Third-party desktop programs like DiskAid can already transfer files over USB to companion apps (FileApp in this case), so there's no real technological limitation to speak of.
Canada and even the US doesn't have absolute freedom of speech; limits can and have be imposed.
Federal election laws in Canada are unified (thank goodness), and do impose free speech restrictions on election reporting that cover most methods of mass communication/advertisement up to the start of the century: newspaper, radio, TV. In each of those cases, it costs serious money to put a political ad up, and thus can be accounted for.
Further, on election day they are forbidden from publishing the ballot results until polls across the country's six time zones are closed, the idea being to avoid influencing the vote or voter turnout in more westerly provinces (yes, we actually get all our election results inside of 6 hours).
Obviously this is at complete odds with the internet, and our election laws haven't yet been able to figure out how to handle it. However, that goes for political parties and their supporters too. Online ads aren't at all that effective. Youtube videos, being on-demand, only preach to the choir. Elections Canada probably doesn't keep too close an eye on money spent on political ads online.
The only real problem with the built-in screen capture is when you're trying to capture a window that extends below the screen... you need to take two screenshots and stitch them together... or buy something like SnagIt, which will do that in one step.
All the replies about using Paint as a workaround, and mocking downloaded solutions, is missing the point--that you need a workaround in the first place.
On a Mac it's Command-shift-4. Select area on screen. Done. (Optionally, press an extra modifier key if you want it to go straight to clipboard instead of a file).
On Windows I rely on a free utility called Screengrab Pro, which isn't nearly as elegant but the best free one I've found. The only time I'll waste using Paint as a go-between is if I'm trying to capture a pulled-down menu.
So a flight bound for Toronto, which might cross a very marginal section of US airspace, now diverts slightly to avoid it and therefore comply with Canadian privacy laws. The US now gets no info about passengers on that flight because of the slight detour, yet it still flies about the same distance, perhaps uses a bit more fuel.
How, exactly, does this new condition help security?
I live in Ottawa, so our snowfall is very comparable to Montreal's. Here, ploughs do indeed shove everything onto downtown sidewalks initially, and the sidewalk ploughs clear a path afterwards. Then, after enough ploughed snow has accumulated they'll remove it using giant snowblowing trucks which go down street after street (overnight parking bans would be in effect) and transfer them to dump trucks to take it to designated snow fields. There's almost always one dump truck being loaded and one waiting to take over, it's a fairly efficient operation from what I've seen.
How does Montreal do it?
yes, and the are left to right. RYG.
It's also a standard. Mot really a problem. OTOH, in Florida people might be too stupid to figure that out.
They certainly weren't bright enough to know fast(er) lanes on the interstate are meant for passing, not pacing vehicles in the slower lanes. When I visited two years ago I kept getting stuck in such blocks of inconsiderate drivers for ten or fifteen minutes, finally break free of it, only to run into the block ahead of them a few minutes later.
You rapidly approach the point where increasing pixel density on a small screen size becomes pointless, when many users can't make out the finer detail without a magnifying lens.
Just try reading text that's set to font-size of 9px, on a page that's formatted for a 1024 pixel-wide screen (and no mobile-browser version), scaled so the width fits the iPhone screen. It's barely 1 mm tall! Most people can't comfortably read text that small even on a 600 dpi printout.
Only if you don't plan on re-entry as a sphere is non-optimal for utilising the effect that shaceship one was supposed to use; that is using a flat surface to force a ubble of air to pool in front of the craft and buffer against the heat.
Isn't an ablative/heat-dissipating re-entry surface only needed because of limited fuel for propulsion?
If we assume that the propulsion problem is licked (as you did earlier), wouldn't you be able to use the engines to continually slow down as you descend lower into thicker atmosphere, thus avoiding the intense heat of friction braking?
About a dozen client machines. I don't know if CD installs onto client machines were an option with this product.
But you never know beforehand just how much time you're going to waste on tech support. I don't think he expected consumer-level support for an enterprise-level product.
Before trolls start yelling about how "OMGZ LINUX ISN'T SECURE HAHAHA" and things like that, let me tell you something: because GNU/Linux is so open and configurable, malware like this can be very easily removed. All you have to do is run a few commands in a terminal to remove this.
Before trolls start yelling about how "OMGZ WINDOZE AV SOFTWARE IS COMPLICATED HAHAHA" and things like that, let me tell you something: because Windows is so accessible, AV software like this can be very easily deployed. All you have to do is click a few icons in the Start Menu to remove this. Blah, blah, blah
On Linux and the like, everything is simple if you already know what you want to do. Otherwise, you have to trust unaccountable internet entities to provide you abstruse commands to run and hope they aren't trying to trick you into doing even more damage to your system. It should be obvious why that is a no way to combat malware.
Don't tell our IT manager that AV is very easily deployed after today.... He spent 2 frustrating hours on the phone with Symantec (plus 3 hours on hold before that--yay "enterprise"-level support) trying to get one of their products deployed across our small network.
Then change the parameters a bit. Instead of loading and offloading weapons onto "lockers," load and offload mercenaries (sorry, "private security companies" in Blackwater-speak) instead.
The mercs would be well motivated to keep their gear in order, if they fail their task and the ship gets boarded, the pirates would find and kill them before doing anything else. Even if they survived, they'd never be hired for protection detail again.
Of course, you then have to somehow ensure that the mercs aren't on the pirate's payroll.
Check out the launch video for STS-112, it has the rawest sounds from a live launch video I've ever heard, before or since. Usually the audio from the pad seems muffled or dampened, but not this one.
At T -15s you hear the clear whine of what I presume is the sound suppression system activating, and see water flood out of the fire trench (this was the first time a tank-mounted shuttle camera streamed launch video live). There's a sucking sound right as the shuttle's main engines ignite, but a second later the sound of pure, raw power cuts right through you as the SMEs reach full power. I get chills every time I see and hear this part of the clip.
Agree, absolutely incredible. Over the years there were lots of angles I'd wanted to see during a launch, this covered almost all of them (the remaining video would be of the tank actually burning up in the atmosphere).
I found it odd though that the now-regular footage from the camera mounted on the fuel tank was of much lower resolution than that from other cameras. I realize the tank-cam is live stream while other footage (e.g. on the SRBs) is retrieved later, but the tank-cam looks great on TV...
There are people in England that feel the BBC shouldn't be free to people outside of England. That can only grumble because there isn't a technically feasible way to do it practically.
There is nothing wrong with that, it's there site and the can limited.
While true, that would leave their American cousins being the sole highly-visibility source of English-language news to the world, diminishing the UK's influence on the world stage further. What do they think about that? Or are they too short-sighted to see this?
Most countries use tax money to promote themselves overseas. Tourism campaigns are the most visible and more measurable in the short-term, but license fees to help broadcast BBC and UK culture around the world has a much bigger and long-term impact that a year's worth of visitors.
You must live in far worse cities than I've been to then. Or you're not as sensitive to it.
Hong Kong, New York City, Toronto... all major cities with heavy traffic, and while the occasional exhaust from a poorly maintained engine makes me cough, cigarette smoke from a passing smoker still cuts through all of that and makes me gag.
Far be it for me to be pedantic over a +4 Funny post, but he did answer the question. At length, and almost an hour before the one you replied to.
I merely pointed out that there's already at least one private service mandated by law, which the OP said he'd shoot people for. No attempt at analogy was made beyond that.