Never mind premium videos, I don't have Flash installed on my computer but YouTube has started refusing to automatically serve HTML5 versions on an increasingly large percentage of videos, none of which come close to qualifying as premium content.
Fortunately there are a few browser extensions which take care of that and force load the html5 versions, though they need to be kept updated in a cat-and-mouse game with google as they try blocking them. In an older version of one such extension, HTML5 video will actually load and start playing before some CSS and JavaScript overlays the video and blocks the audio, then blatantly lies with a bullshit error claiming Flash is required.
It used to be that big corporation only stole small company patents. Now they steal big corporations patents too - when those big corporations gets angry and wants to get payed for their patents - the abusers run to the government and hide behind their tailcoat
Note that Apple and Samsung (and others) have been on both the abusing and abuser side of this argument.
Quick, better tell Rush Limbaugh he's an elitist liberal, he seems to love everything about Apple.
(This in fact is probably contributing to many "liberals" shunning Apple. If Rush likes them so much, they must be bad, so "liberals" proceed to dig up mostly non-stories about the exceedingly rare labour problems and environmental issues while ignoring far worse violations by Apple's competitors.)
I've seen several of these flight sim projects. One part of me understands completely why the people who build them build them (I have enough hobbies that others think are a complete waste of time and money to understand entirely why people building flight sims like this want to do it), but another part of my brain is saying "for the money and time invested, you can actually build your own real, flying aircraft you can pilot yourself, and the graphics and frame rate are a lot lot better!".
You might be able to build or fly your own general-aviation aircraft, but you cannot build and fly your own 737 or any jetliner, which is the type of aircraft these guys are clearly interested in.
I flightsim myself, obviously not to such a degree, and there's another reason I do simming instead of actual flying, that I think they share as well: tinkering with the hardware and software is sometimes just as enjoyable as the actual flying. In their case it's the thrill of hunting for right parts and then integrating them into the system.
The article notes that in that particular quarter, manual sales actually increased from the usual 3-4%. I bought one myself 5 years ago... when I drove it off the lot I'd driven stick only 4 times (2 recent lessons, 2 test drives).
I'm sure you're right that the younger the driver is in North America, the less likely they know how to drive stick, but I'd say the percentage of North Americans who know how is around 10-15%, since there are many who for whatever reason (family, etc) just drive auto at the moment. Anecdotally, about 1/3 of my friends and family know how, too.
I tease my kids that their kids will not know how to drive a car..
Yep, bet they have never seen a manual transmission too.
You know the best theft protection these days is a clutch..
That's pretty region-specific... mainly North America, where manuals made up only 7% of sales in early 2012. And anyone targeting cars specifically would know how to drive stick, unlike say robbers trying to commandeer a running car as part of their escape (happened locally a few years ago).
For $150 more, you would get a shit-ton of goodwill by building them here in the US. Since most people get these phones financed by their cell phone companies, you wouldn't even notice the difference.
Unlikely. There was a business analyst on a Canadian news show just last week saying how he's not going to buy the next iPhone because he's not going to drop $900 on a new one. Never mind that this guy is a company chairman and venture capitalist who wouldn't think twice about such a small cost, so his righteous indignation was laughable. Also never mind he was referring to the highest-end iPhone, and that the entry-level one is $700 unsubsidized, and that the fully subsidized one is around $170 here.
So for $150 more, analysts with an agenda then get to bitch about how the iPhone costs over $1000, or people see the entry-level subsidized iPhone price almost double to over $300 (or the monthly plans are noticeably higher).
And then special interests find something new to complain about with the US-based factories.
Apple knows better than to rely on goodwill for their consumer products,
So if someone were to threaten to "not" torture you, just use some water boarding and the other "Cheney approved legal" horrors described, but did NOT explicitly threaten your family... you wouldn't have any psychological stresses?
The specific examples amoeba1911 lists as "torture" did not include the implied threats against Snowden himself. My comment addresses those examples only. You're trying to expand the scope and attacking a point I never made.
Apparently, you can't even understand a simple sentence. I didn't say that it was useless to use artistic works as the basis of further reflection or creation. I said that if an author puts content into a work that takes others decades to decode, then the author did something wrong.
Ah I see. I guess I didn't decode your original sentence right away...
Any symbolic or allegorical content that requires decades to decode is of no interest or relevance to anyone. If that was the intent of the work, it has failed. When all is said and done, 2001 is a generally well-made (for the time) and entertaining SciFi that has some significant plot holes and problems.
Shakespeare's definitely of no interest or relevance to anyone then. His works have been analyzed, decoded and reinterpreted for *centuries*. Like Shakespeare (or art that's more abstract), you can walk away from 2001 it with just the surface story, or you can dig deeper to find additional layers of meaning. The meaning may or may not be what the creator intended, and can be shaped by biases of the person and what period they live in, but if it makes enough people sit back and seriously think about it, it has succeeded in ways that can't be measured by box office revenue.
I'm not saying 2001 deserves of all the praise it gets, but your main premises for both the movie and this analysis ("who cares"; "no interest or relevance"; "failed") are clearly wrong.
And if it has "some" significant plot holes and problems... that's still far fewer than most major sci-fi films in the last three decades.
Not trying to change the subject per se, just that your "total dick" opened the door to pointing out though a recently popular pun ("Jesus isn't a dick, so keep him out of my vagina") that a Republican admin would've not only been just as bad as Obama's when it comes to the Snowden affair (IMHO it'd be worse, the right is usually far more belligerent in international politics), on top of that it would claw back the rights of over half the population.
In other words, as bad as it is now, it could be even worse on two different fronts. IMHO of course.
The U.S. government is already torturing Snowden by revoking his citizenship, by making threats to any country that might let him stay.
The US government and some allies are already doing a fine job of redefining "torture" to exclude certain acts, don't water it down by trying to include actions that aren't. Revoking a passport and threatening potential host countries are causing stress and sleepless nights, but does not fit the definition of psychological torture any more than hunting down any other high-profile suspect (freezing assets, BOLOs or APBs, pictures on wanted posters).
To qualify as psychological torture, the US would at least need to threaten reprisals against his family, friends or former girlfriend if Snowden didn't return to the US.
I wouldn't say Obama is a total dick 100% of the time... but even when he is, at least he's not sticking it to women like the 2012 Republican administration hopefuls would be doing had they won (Paul Ryan would've been VP. Enough said).
Yeh. OCR has gotten so good that CAPTCHA developers have no choice but to make their images so distorted that even human pattern recognition can't easily make them out anymore.
That's why some captchas now have knowledge-based answers in the rotation, like showing an image of a brand name and asking what it's known for. Or assembling a small puzzle.
Obama was less likely to engage in this than any of the GOP options were.
The difference is, when Republicans do something like this, the media print stories about how it's bad and should be stopped and Democrats would never do such a thing. When Obama does something like this, the media print stories about how wonderful he is and nothing he does could ever be bad.
The difference is, it seems Democrats in discussion forums are far more likely to ignore or question what the media tells them, and will acknowledge their disappointment and disgust with Obama and his broken promises. Whereas you have a much harder time finding any Republicans who'll break solidarity and admit Bush had significant failures whatsoever, let alone express any disappointment or disgust with him.
Unlike "AppleTV", Google actually wants Chromecast used by as many platforms as possible, not just Android. Obviously there's advertising hooks in anything that passes through it so they can properly monetize it and keep the device itself cheap.
And Chrome is now the most popular desktop browser in much of the world. Limiting it to Android (or implying that limit) doesn't make sense.
That sounds like an unconstitutional bill of attainder to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder It is "an act of a legislature declaring a person or group of persons guilty of some crime and punishing them without privilege of a judicial trial." This is prohibited by Article I, Section 9 of the US Constitution.
Sorry, Article I, Section 9 of the US what?
They've violated so much of it already, I don't think some point of order like this will make them even blink.
Regardless, in the scenario I'm speaking of it's not me that's holding up traffic in the left lane, but the cars in front of me, so the AC has no grounds for his all-encompassing demand that anyone in his way should move right.
I've not driven too many places, but the worst for synchronized (and slow) highway traffic was on the Florida turnpikes between Orlando and Tallahassee. There and back (rental car), even in sections with 3 or 4 lanes each direction, was a uniform speed, and that was exactly the speed limit (70 mph IIRC). It was a serious WTF experience. I'd run into the back of a pack of these, take almost 5 minutes of lane changes to advance within the pack (I remember another car doing the same) until finally breaking past the "front line," and then admittedly were speeding for a bit... only to run into the back of the next pack of cars a mile or two later.
I didn't understand why this behaviour was happening. I blew past at least two patrol cars while going 80mph or higher, so they obviously weren't enforcing the speed limit to the letter.
You must be that asshole in the left lane. MOVE OVER, and stop worrying about wtf is behind you!
I will not move over to let your sorry ass take my spot, no matter how impatient you are or how close you ride my bumper, if the car(s) in front of ME is what's actually holding up the left lane.
Blaming a device maker for your actions with it shows a complete lack of self-responsibility and requires a child-like understanding of one's own self-control. I can see this guy testifying before Congress or whomever in favor of legal requirements for some sort of restricted mode, because he can't control himself, so everyone else should have to bear a burden of increased cost.
Nah, think further back in the chain. Make it illegal for women to appear unclothed or in some state of undress. Not just on-screen, in public too. Cover the hair and eyes, too. Guys like him can't control their urges, after all, so dammit others should have the responsibility to ensure he's not titillated and commits a sin in the process.
The "holding it wrong" response by Jobs was inappropriate because Apple's own promo materials starting with the 2007 iPhone showed a user's left hand holding it naturally in exactly the way that could cause antenna issues.
On the other hand, if you can't easily take a picture using the on-screen button with one hand in at least portrait mode, then yes, you're holding it wrong.
Anyway, the assertion was that it was a design flaw and listed reasons why. One is no longer valid (even if the button isn't "dedicated" to just the camera), another is easily proven false. The last is a toss-up; he says "pushing" the screen causes more camera shake, I say a physical button does. Both are true, it depends on how you do it and how a physical button is implemented.
Funny thing, I came to the exact opposite conclusion you did... maybe it's because you're "pushing" the screen? If you're using the same amount of force on the virtual button as you do on a physical one, you're using too much (unless your phone has a poor-quality touch sensor).
On my iPhone 5 I don't need to firmly tap the virtual button, the barest touch will trigger it, meaning no additional motion gets added. Meanwhile, pressing a physical button can't help but introduce a lateral motion as it clicks, making it more likely to make photos blurry.
Anyway it's rather moot, the volume-up button on iPhones now acts as a camera trigger so you have both options. I don't remember the last time I used it, though.
It is also dead-simple to take photos one-handed on an iPhone, and that's what I do most of the time. In portrait mode it should be a no-brainer: index to pinkie fingers on one side, other side rests on palm, thumb free to move around. For landscape mode, extend fingers, then bring index and pinkie closer to you. These go on bottom side edges of the phone, and fingers 3 and 4 support the back to hold it in place, leaving the thumb free to press the virtual button.
You can also start by holding it like you would taking one-handed portrait photos, then turn it 90 degrees clockwise (counter-clockwise for lefties) and slide grip down a bit so pinkie is now on the bottom edge. The thumb then automatically hovers right above the trigger button.
Tell that to the Wright brothers after they made their first powered flight. Orville Wright lived another 4 decades afterward, but didn't get to see anything fulfilling all your conditions.
Not saying that Solar Impulse will ever lead to anything comparable, but loading it with such lofty requirements is uncalled for.
Slashdot Mirror
Never mind premium videos, I don't have Flash installed on my computer but YouTube has started refusing to automatically serve HTML5 versions on an increasingly large percentage of videos, none of which come close to qualifying as premium content.
Fortunately there are a few browser extensions which take care of that and force load the html5 versions, though they need to be kept updated in a cat-and-mouse game with google as they try blocking them. In an older version of one such extension, HTML5 video will actually load and start playing before some CSS and JavaScript overlays the video and blocks the audio, then blatantly lies with a bullshit error claiming Flash is required.
It used to be that big corporation only stole small company patents. Now they steal big corporations patents too - when those big corporations gets angry and wants to get payed for their patents - the abusers run to the government and hide behind their tailcoat
Note that Apple and Samsung (and others) have been on both the abusing and abuser side of this argument.
Elitist liberals love iPhones.
Quick, better tell Rush Limbaugh he's an elitist liberal, he seems to love everything about Apple.
(This in fact is probably contributing to many "liberals" shunning Apple. If Rush likes them so much, they must be bad, so "liberals" proceed to dig up mostly non-stories about the exceedingly rare labour problems and environmental issues while ignoring far worse violations by Apple's competitors.)
Apple doesn't actually donate much to politicians at all...
And yet judges and presidents seem to display a consistent bias. Funny that.
Yes, very funny... especially since the bias is against Apple.
(That's not even including the decisions that led to needing this overruling in the first place).
I've seen several of these flight sim projects. One part of me understands completely why the people who build them build them (I have enough hobbies that others think are a complete waste of time and money to understand entirely why people building flight sims like this want to do it), but another part of my brain is saying "for the money and time invested, you can actually build your own real, flying aircraft you can pilot yourself, and the graphics and frame rate are a lot lot better!".
You might be able to build or fly your own general-aviation aircraft, but you cannot build and fly your own 737 or any jetliner, which is the type of aircraft these guys are clearly interested in.
I flightsim myself, obviously not to such a degree, and there's another reason I do simming instead of actual flying, that I think they share as well: tinkering with the hardware and software is sometimes just as enjoyable as the actual flying. In their case it's the thrill of hunting for right parts and then integrating them into the system.
The article notes that in that particular quarter, manual sales actually increased from the usual 3-4%. I bought one myself 5 years ago... when I drove it off the lot I'd driven stick only 4 times (2 recent lessons, 2 test drives).
I'm sure you're right that the younger the driver is in North America, the less likely they know how to drive stick, but I'd say the percentage of North Americans who know how is around 10-15%, since there are many who for whatever reason (family, etc) just drive auto at the moment. Anecdotally, about 1/3 of my friends and family know how, too.
I tease my kids that their kids will not know how to drive a car. .
Yep, bet they have never seen a manual transmission too.
You know the best theft protection these days is a clutch..
That's pretty region-specific... mainly North America, where manuals made up only 7% of sales in early 2012. And anyone targeting cars specifically would know how to drive stick, unlike say robbers trying to commandeer a running car as part of their escape (happened locally a few years ago).
For $150 more, you would get a shit-ton of goodwill by building them here in the US. Since most people get these phones financed by their cell phone companies, you wouldn't even notice the difference.
Unlikely. There was a business analyst on a Canadian news show just last week saying how he's not going to buy the next iPhone because he's not going to drop $900 on a new one. Never mind that this guy is a company chairman and venture capitalist who wouldn't think twice about such a small cost, so his righteous indignation was laughable. Also never mind he was referring to the highest-end iPhone, and that the entry-level one is $700 unsubsidized, and that the fully subsidized one is around $170 here.
So for $150 more, analysts with an agenda then get to bitch about how the iPhone costs over $1000, or people see the entry-level subsidized iPhone price almost double to over $300 (or the monthly plans are noticeably higher).
And then special interests find something new to complain about with the US-based factories.
Apple knows better than to rely on goodwill for their consumer products,
So if someone were to threaten to "not" torture you, just use some water boarding and the other "Cheney approved legal" horrors described, but did NOT explicitly threaten your family... you wouldn't have any psychological stresses?
The specific examples amoeba1911 lists as "torture" did not include the implied threats against Snowden himself. My comment addresses those examples only. You're trying to expand the scope and attacking a point I never made.
Apparently, you can't even understand a simple sentence. I didn't say that it was useless to use artistic works as the basis of further reflection or creation. I said that if an author puts content into a work that takes others decades to decode, then the author did something wrong.
Ah I see. I guess I didn't decode your original sentence right away...
Any symbolic or allegorical content that requires decades to decode is of no interest or relevance to anyone. If that was the intent of the work, it has failed. When all is said and done, 2001 is a generally well-made (for the time) and entertaining SciFi that has some significant plot holes and problems.
Shakespeare's definitely of no interest or relevance to anyone then. His works have been analyzed, decoded and reinterpreted for *centuries*. Like Shakespeare (or art that's more abstract), you can walk away from 2001 it with just the surface story, or you can dig deeper to find additional layers of meaning. The meaning may or may not be what the creator intended, and can be shaped by biases of the person and what period they live in, but if it makes enough people sit back and seriously think about it, it has succeeded in ways that can't be measured by box office revenue.
I'm not saying 2001 deserves of all the praise it gets, but your main premises for both the movie and this analysis ("who cares"; "no interest or relevance"; "failed") are clearly wrong.
And if it has "some" significant plot holes and problems... that's still far fewer than most major sci-fi films in the last three decades.
Not trying to change the subject per se, just that your "total dick" opened the door to pointing out though a recently popular pun ("Jesus isn't a dick, so keep him out of my vagina") that a Republican admin would've not only been just as bad as Obama's when it comes to the Snowden affair (IMHO it'd be worse, the right is usually far more belligerent in international politics), on top of that it would claw back the rights of over half the population.
In other words, as bad as it is now, it could be even worse on two different fronts. IMHO of course.
The U.S. government is already torturing Snowden by revoking his citizenship, by making threats to any country that might let him stay.
The US government and some allies are already doing a fine job of redefining "torture" to exclude certain acts, don't water it down by trying to include actions that aren't. Revoking a passport and threatening potential host countries are causing stress and sleepless nights, but does not fit the definition of psychological torture any more than hunting down any other high-profile suspect (freezing assets, BOLOs or APBs, pictures on wanted posters).
To qualify as psychological torture, the US would at least need to threaten reprisals against his family, friends or former girlfriend if Snowden didn't return to the US.
I wouldn't say Obama is a total dick 100% of the time... but even when he is, at least he's not sticking it to women like the 2012 Republican administration hopefuls would be doing had they won (Paul Ryan would've been VP. Enough said).
Yeh. OCR has gotten so good that CAPTCHA developers have no choice but to make their images so distorted that even human pattern recognition can't easily make them out anymore.
That's why some captchas now have knowledge-based answers in the rotation, like showing an image of a brand name and asking what it's known for. Or assembling a small puzzle.
Obama was less likely to engage in this than any of the GOP options were.
The difference is, when Republicans do something like this, the media print stories about how it's bad and should be stopped and Democrats would never do such a thing. When Obama does something like this, the media print stories about how wonderful he is and nothing he does could ever be bad.
The difference is, it seems Democrats in discussion forums are far more likely to ignore or question what the media tells them, and will acknowledge their disappointment and disgust with Obama and his broken promises. Whereas you have a much harder time finding any Republicans who'll break solidarity and admit Bush had significant failures whatsoever, let alone express any disappointment or disgust with him.
Main use case != only use case.
Unlike "AppleTV", Google actually wants Chromecast used by as many platforms as possible, not just Android. Obviously there's advertising hooks in anything that passes through it so they can properly monetize it and keep the device itself cheap.
And Chrome is now the most popular desktop browser in much of the world. Limiting it to Android (or implying that limit) doesn't make sense.
That sounds like an unconstitutional bill of attainder to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder
It is "an act of a legislature declaring a person or group of persons guilty of some crime and punishing them without privilege of a judicial trial." This is prohibited by Article I, Section 9 of the US Constitution.
Sorry, Article I, Section 9 of the US what?
They've violated so much of it already, I don't think some point of order like this will make them even blink.
It's like watching a 5-year old having a temper tantrum.
These clowns don't have anything more important to work on?
It's like watching China or North Korea having a temper tantrum. It's embarrassing to see.
Regardless, in the scenario I'm speaking of it's not me that's holding up traffic in the left lane, but the cars in front of me, so the AC has no grounds for his all-encompassing demand that anyone in his way should move right.
I've not driven too many places, but the worst for synchronized (and slow) highway traffic was on the Florida turnpikes between Orlando and Tallahassee. There and back (rental car), even in sections with 3 or 4 lanes each direction, was a uniform speed, and that was exactly the speed limit (70 mph IIRC). It was a serious WTF experience. I'd run into the back of a pack of these, take almost 5 minutes of lane changes to advance within the pack (I remember another car doing the same) until finally breaking past the "front line," and then admittedly were speeding for a bit... only to run into the back of the next pack of cars a mile or two later.
I didn't understand why this behaviour was happening. I blew past at least two patrol cars while going 80mph or higher, so they obviously weren't enforcing the speed limit to the letter.
You must be that asshole in the left lane. MOVE OVER, and stop worrying about wtf is behind you!
I will not move over to let your sorry ass take my spot, no matter how impatient you are or how close you ride my bumper, if the car(s) in front of ME is what's actually holding up the left lane.
Don't tailgate, period.
Blaming a device maker for your actions with it shows a complete lack of self-responsibility and requires a child-like understanding of one's own self-control. I can see this guy testifying before Congress or whomever in favor of legal requirements for some sort of restricted mode, because he can't control himself, so everyone else should have to bear a burden of increased cost.
Nah, think further back in the chain. Make it illegal for women to appear unclothed or in some state of undress. Not just on-screen, in public too. Cover the hair and eyes, too. Guys like him can't control their urges, after all, so dammit others should have the responsibility to ensure he's not titillated and commits a sin in the process.
The "holding it wrong" response by Jobs was inappropriate because Apple's own promo materials starting with the 2007 iPhone showed a user's left hand holding it naturally in exactly the way that could cause antenna issues.
On the other hand, if you can't easily take a picture using the on-screen button with one hand in at least portrait mode, then yes, you're holding it wrong.
Anyway, the assertion was that it was a design flaw and listed reasons why. One is no longer valid (even if the button isn't "dedicated" to just the camera), another is easily proven false. The last is a toss-up; he says "pushing" the screen causes more camera shake, I say a physical button does. Both are true, it depends on how you do it and how a physical button is implemented.
Funny thing, I came to the exact opposite conclusion you did... maybe it's because you're "pushing" the screen? If you're using the same amount of force on the virtual button as you do on a physical one, you're using too much (unless your phone has a poor-quality touch sensor).
On my iPhone 5 I don't need to firmly tap the virtual button, the barest touch will trigger it, meaning no additional motion gets added. Meanwhile, pressing a physical button can't help but introduce a lateral motion as it clicks, making it more likely to make photos blurry.
Anyway it's rather moot, the volume-up button on iPhones now acts as a camera trigger so you have both options. I don't remember the last time I used it, though.
It is also dead-simple to take photos one-handed on an iPhone, and that's what I do most of the time. In portrait mode it should be a no-brainer: index to pinkie fingers on one side, other side rests on palm, thumb free to move around. For landscape mode, extend fingers, then bring index and pinkie closer to you. These go on bottom side edges of the phone, and fingers 3 and 4 support the back to hold it in place, leaving the thumb free to press the virtual button.
You can also start by holding it like you would taking one-handed portrait photos, then turn it 90 degrees clockwise (counter-clockwise for lefties) and slide grip down a bit so pinkie is now on the bottom edge. The thumb then automatically hovers right above the trigger button.
Tell that to the Wright brothers after they made their first powered flight. Orville Wright lived another 4 decades afterward, but didn't get to see anything fulfilling all your conditions.
Not saying that Solar Impulse will ever lead to anything comparable, but loading it with such lofty requirements is uncalled for.