When I said BES just worked, it was from a user perspective. I'm not a BES admin, don't even play one on TV.
Was not aware that Exchange allows access to the intranet. I've never worked for a company that had this configured. (Unless it needs a Windows phone, but I had one of those for awhile too, and it didn't have that feature.)
But along with what you're saying, I don't carry a BB anymore because (funny story...) 14 hours after the company outsourced IT to offshore, BES went down hard and stayed down for weeks. By the time it was up again, I had already moved to Android. And I think most of the company had made the same move. So, with one extended public outage, Blackberry was dead at this company.
And interestingly enough, awhile back Blackberry had a four day global world wide outage. They had trained us for years on instant email gratification ("crackberry") and then made us all go cold turkey. It's hard to recover from that.
So now that I think about it, there's a lot in what you say. I suppose one can say that a possible root cause is the difficulty of administration. I'm in no position to say either way, being a mere customer.
And finally, now that I think about it, non-BB "push" email became more and more common, even for Android, even, and this was no longer a distinguishing feature of Blackberry.
The smoke was clearly coming out from under the hood, but BB appeared to be oblivious to the clanking noises.
Blackberry's business was built around mobile e-mail. Their transition from pager devices to smartphones brought along with it their original NIH, vendor lock-in strategy. They never *got* smartphones as flexible devices using open protocols because that's not how their business started and they didn't move fast enough to embrace changing market conditions.
I....'m not sure I agree. Granted, the dependence on BES does seem like a lock-in strategy. And maybe it is. But it was pretty cool having unfettered access to my company's intranet from anywhere I could get cell coverage. I have yet to see that on other smartphones. (Assuming an enterprise class, locked-down intranet.) The security wasn't in protocols or an app on the smartphone, it was built into the BES server. As long as you had competent admins, it just worked.
I would submit it wasn't lack of industry standard protocols that did them in, it was not seeing the full screen touch craze in time to adapt to it. And I could see how they could think that a touch screen keyboard wouldn't catch on -- even though I've had an Android phone for years now, I can still pick up a BB and type faster than my best speed tapping on glass. For text entry, the Blackberry had, and still has, the best keyboard in the business. Apparently this isn't as important as it once was, and BB was too slow to adapt.
Re:"We believed we knew better what customers need
on
How BlackBerry Blew It
·
· Score: 3, Funny
> Yeah, except Steve Jobs thought this too, and look where Apple is.
Difference is, Jobs was right. At least, enough of the time.
At this point dSLRs should only be used by professionals,
Thank you for pointing out your beliefs that only certain people should be able to use certain products. I guess your opinion is also that only those who drive for a professional living should be allowed to buy a Porsche or those who make their living from cooking should be allowed to buy $300 knives.
Apparently it's your belief people shouldn't be allowed to buy what they want with their own money just because they enjoy a product.
A dSLR camera is useless if no one sees your photos.
Yup, there's the confirmation.,
Did she really say those things? (The video won't play for me.)
So, really, all those prosumer and entry level DSLRs are only to be used by people who get paid to take photos? I think that would be news to... almost everyone, I'd guess.
I'm a professional photographer. (In that, I make part of my living from photography.) I got into the profession by buying a digital SLR and learning how to use it, in particular how it is different from the film cameras I had previously owned. I learned about post processing and presentation and how to sell photos off a website. I have my photos on display on three art-related websites and have my own website from which I sell photos. During this process, I purchased two professional digital SLR bodies for specific purposes -- one for sports photography (high FPS, good in low light) and one for portrait photography (slower FPS, higher resolution). My first body went to my daughter, who has her own website for displaying her artistic photos (but hasn't gotten paid for it, yet) and she recently upgraded to a prosumer body.
So.... how does one get started on a track that eventually leads one to professional photography, without a DSLR? The ability to change lenses is pretty important.
If she's saying that the proles should be using pocket cameras, I would say it depends on what they use them for. Daughter now owns two DSLRs but also has a waterproof pocket digital camera and a gopro. The waterproof camera goes with her everywhere, because the best camera is the one you have on you. It's pretty good about deciding focus and exposure and will do things like macro and panoramic and HDR in software. But there's very little control of the photographic process. It's very good at taking average photos. She's managed to do interesting things with it, (through unusual composition or picking the "wrong" preset, tricking the camera into doing what she wants) but for certain kinds of photos there's no substitute for complete control over the process -- exposure, depth of field, white balance, and type of lens -- macro, extreme fisheye, (6mm) long telephoto (500mm) and very fast (f1.2). Not to mention quality of the glass. These are the places where pocket cameras fall short.
Point is, she doesn't get paid to do this, (although she may someday) she's working out her artistic flair.
When people ask me what kind of equipment to buy, my first question is "what kind of photos do you want to take?" It's a vital question. If they want snapshots, I recommend one of the rugged and/or waterproof pocket cameras. If they want any kind of creative control, the question gets a lot more complex.
"Only used by professionals"? Really?
"if no one sees your photos"... true, but... instagram, deviant art, flickr, hell even Facebook. Lots of opportunities to display your work. I guess I don't get it. (I really wish the video would work so I could see the comments in context.)
Or this becomes just one of many fuels we can use - tailored the specific job requirements. We don't *need* gasoline for daily trips around town. It is needed for things like military and other things where you don't have a corner station to fill up with.
Assuming this can scale to even 5%, that's a huge amount to put towards things that do actually need the energy density and quick refuel times.
I guess I could agree with that, but I suspect it won't ramp up anywhere near that high. We'll see.
And the volume expected from this process when it goes into widespread production, is what percentage of the world's consumption? I mean, is this viable in sufficient quantities, or is it another "coffee grounds into fuel" type deal? (See a slashdot article a couple years back.)
Although, mind you, this may appeal to survivalists. You may not be able to create enough gasoline for the entire countryside, but you might be able to eck out enough for a family.
I understand. One of the problems with socialism is that the customer doesn't get to choose. The government could convince themselves that IEEE 1284 was the right choice, perhaps because certain members made money off same, and you'll have to live with that. Actually, that would be very entertaining.
I tend towards libertarian, but I freely admit that Apple's attitude annoys me, and in this one case I'm looking forward to them having to deal with draconian government regulation. Although, I still think they'll grease the right hands and slip the requirement at the last moment. The interesting thing about overriding government control over everything is that government is just made of people, after all, and people can be corrupted.
Right right right.... it was a moon, wasn't it? I've tried to block a lot of "return of the jedi" out of my mind. There was a lot good about it -- the final conflict between father and son, a last desperate plan to overthrow the empire. Spoiled by too many minutes of overbearing cuteness. But I admit now I hadn't known what "overbearing cuteness" really meant until Episode 1 came out.
I know, right? When we saw it in theater, and they panned across the models on the Admiral's desk, I said "That's a Dreadnought!" Daughter whispered "Ok, dad. Calm down."
Wellll, they're trying to force a common connector across all devices. The micro-usb is the logical choice.
I fully admit that this is entirely an emotional observation, but I'd kinda like to see Apple dragged kicking and screaming towards compliance with a common standard, just for a change. But again, that's just me.
It's not "customer choice" if the customer is forced to use a proprietary connector if they want to use the product. My immediate family owns four ipods (no iphones, for reasons I won't enumerate here) and I'd be just tickled to see Apple forced to use a standard port in future products. They're, like, the last holdout on this nonsense of proprietary connectors.
C'mon, Berman was the king of plot holes. Back in the day, there were whole Usenet threads devoted to identifying all the abandoned threads in TNG. For just one, those creatures that lived inside people and controlled them, at the last they sent a message out into space... clearly meant to be followed up... never was. I found that extremely annoying and it contributed to me eventually abandoning TNG. Plot holes? It is to laugh.
I'm thinking, one of those phones for old folks, with big buttons. Alternately, I saw an ad for a phone a long time ago made specifically for young children. It had two big buttons -- "Mom" and "Dad". Probably would be considered not inclusive enough in this day and age.
My daughter got her first phone at eleven. I only regretted it once, when she loaned it to a friend who racked up $100+ in text charges. It took her a long time to pay that off from her allowance.
Well the problem is that the second movie _didn't_ take advantage of that since it's a mere rewrite of The Wrath of Kahn, where the rewritten parts is about adding the superhuman powers that is common in the modern mutant/superheroe movies.
I respectfully disagree. The first movie not only set up the alternate timeline, but it set up the push for a militarized Federation, which was, I think, explored fairly well in the second film. I submit that this was the real plot, and the Kahn elements were more like collateral damage.
Not to seem too much of a Trek geek (I was such in TOS days, lost it in the Berman days, and regained it in the Bad Robot days) but I see the second film as having a lot of elements from Carey's TOS novel "Dreadnought". A giant battleship built in secret, a civil war within the federation, a strong female lead trying to make things right, and an starfleet admiral as the bad guy. It worked for me.
But it doesn't have to work for you -- that's why they make different kinds of movies, because there are different tastes. You'll always have the Berman-era series and films. I'm looking forward to the next film. And I'm guardedly (very guardedly) looking forward to the next SW film.
Not to mention, taking Star Trek back to the old OLD series, when it was still, you know, exciting. There's what, two generations now?...for whom Star Trek had always been long meetings in dark boardrooms. It's natural for 90's fans to view an action and adventure Trek with distaste. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been fans of the Berman shows in the first place. Qu'est-ce que c'est.
Similarly (and somewhat frighteningly) there are probably two generations now for whom Star Wars is a hyperactive kaleidoscope of overly cutesy and somewhat racist characters in a non-engaging, overly complicated storyline. Going back to a frontier storyline where futuristic technology is old, shoddy and nearly falling apart [1] instead of reflective, sparkling and new, will be jarring for some.
What I want to see is pretty specific. A throw-away line: "Gungans? Destroyed utterly. I think their star went supernova or something." And: "Endor? Hit by a comet, I think. Wiped out the entire race."
[1] It was said of the original Star Wars all those years ago that it had a gritty look to it "like it was shot on location, in space". Something that was completely lost in the prequels. Even Tatooine sparkled. (Side note: Now that Disney owns Star Wars, is it possible for someone with a sense of propriety go back to the prequels and *take out* special effects?)
Yes, I do miss the Star Wars that was before, you know, Lucas lost his mind.
Another rule: The prequels did not exist. It's not necessary to include any information from the prequels that wasn't already alluded to in the original three films. They were never made. Forget them. Destroy the artwork........Forget...... Oh, sorry, wrong franchise.
Really well done, and really good points. I would like to be the first to say, except for the ewoks. I don't ever want to see those again. I mean, ever.
A cable that most EU users simply don't need, since they just use the cable that comes with the device and attach it to any number of standard USB ports.
However, the adapter does exist if you really must use your micro-USB charger with your iPhone, assuming that you don;t have access to a normal USB port anywhere else.
My understanding of TFA is to mandate a micro-usb port on the device itself, so that you don't have to have a proprietary cable in order to charge. The idea is to be able to charge any device with a standard usb to micro usb cable, or a standard micro usb plug-in charger. (If I'm wrong, please correct me, but please include a reference.) Apple has resisted this hugely in the past, and I expect them to work on some kind of exception this time, which will probably take the form of a female micro-usb to whatever-port-apple-uses adapter cable. With smart circuitry, to shut out third party providers.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, you can change the "sent from my pretentious bling phone" to a different message.
Mine says: "Stupidity should hurt".
I'm not really popular at work.
> The similar "Sent from my iPhone" message today reads like an apology.
A: I’m gangster. I’m a straight up G, the hamster life is the life for me. STUPID AUTO CORRECT!!!
B: Been spendin’ most of their lives in the hamster paradise.
A: Don’t make fun of me
When I said BES just worked, it was from a user perspective. I'm not a BES admin, don't even play one on TV.
Was not aware that Exchange allows access to the intranet. I've never worked for a company that had this configured. (Unless it needs a Windows phone, but I had one of those for awhile too, and it didn't have that feature.)
But along with what you're saying, I don't carry a BB anymore because (funny story...) 14 hours after the company outsourced IT to offshore, BES went down hard and stayed down for weeks. By the time it was up again, I had already moved to Android. And I think most of the company had made the same move. So, with one extended public outage, Blackberry was dead at this company.
And interestingly enough, awhile back Blackberry had a four day global world wide outage. They had trained us for years on instant email gratification ("crackberry") and then made us all go cold turkey. It's hard to recover from that.
So now that I think about it, there's a lot in what you say. I suppose one can say that a possible root cause is the difficulty of administration. I'm in no position to say either way, being a mere customer.
And finally, now that I think about it, non-BB "push" email became more and more common, even for Android, even, and this was no longer a distinguishing feature of Blackberry.
The smoke was clearly coming out from under the hood, but BB appeared to be oblivious to the clanking noises.
Blackberry's business was built around mobile e-mail. Their transition from pager devices to smartphones brought along with it their original NIH, vendor lock-in strategy. They never *got* smartphones as flexible devices using open protocols because that's not how their business started and they didn't move fast enough to embrace changing market conditions.
I....'m not sure I agree. Granted, the dependence on BES does seem like a lock-in strategy. And maybe it is. But it was pretty cool having unfettered access to my company's intranet from anywhere I could get cell coverage. I have yet to see that on other smartphones. (Assuming an enterprise class, locked-down intranet.) The security wasn't in protocols or an app on the smartphone, it was built into the BES server. As long as you had competent admins, it just worked.
I would submit it wasn't lack of industry standard protocols that did them in, it was not seeing the full screen touch craze in time to adapt to it. And I could see how they could think that a touch screen keyboard wouldn't catch on -- even though I've had an Android phone for years now, I can still pick up a BB and type faster than my best speed tapping on glass. For text entry, the Blackberry had, and still has, the best keyboard in the business. Apparently this isn't as important as it once was, and BB was too slow to adapt.
> Yeah, except Steve Jobs thought this too, and look where Apple is.
Difference is, Jobs was right. At least, enough of the time.
I see now that the comments were from another commenter, not TFA. I think (some of) my comments still stand, though.
At this point dSLRs should only be used by professionals,
Thank you for pointing out your beliefs that only certain people should be able to use certain products. I guess your opinion is also that only those who drive for a professional living should be allowed to buy a Porsche or those who make their living from cooking should be allowed to buy $300 knives.
Apparently it's your belief people shouldn't be allowed to buy what they want with their own money just because they enjoy a product.
A dSLR camera is useless if no one sees your photos.
Yup, there's the confirmation.,
Did she really say those things? (The video won't play for me.)
So, really, all those prosumer and entry level DSLRs are only to be used by people who get paid to take photos? I think that would be news to... almost everyone, I'd guess.
I'm a professional photographer. (In that, I make part of my living from photography.) I got into the profession by buying a digital SLR and learning how to use it, in particular how it is different from the film cameras I had previously owned. I learned about post processing and presentation and how to sell photos off a website. I have my photos on display on three art-related websites and have my own website from which I sell photos. During this process, I purchased two professional digital SLR bodies for specific purposes -- one for sports photography (high FPS, good in low light) and one for portrait photography (slower FPS, higher resolution). My first body went to my daughter, who has her own website for displaying her artistic photos (but hasn't gotten paid for it, yet) and she recently upgraded to a prosumer body.
So.... how does one get started on a track that eventually leads one to professional photography, without a DSLR? The ability to change lenses is pretty important.
If she's saying that the proles should be using pocket cameras, I would say it depends on what they use them for. Daughter now owns two DSLRs but also has a waterproof pocket digital camera and a gopro. The waterproof camera goes with her everywhere, because the best camera is the one you have on you. It's pretty good about deciding focus and exposure and will do things like macro and panoramic and HDR in software. But there's very little control of the photographic process. It's very good at taking average photos. She's managed to do interesting things with it, (through unusual composition or picking the "wrong" preset, tricking the camera into doing what she wants) but for certain kinds of photos there's no substitute for complete control over the process -- exposure, depth of field, white balance, and type of lens -- macro, extreme fisheye, (6mm) long telephoto (500mm) and very fast (f1.2). Not to mention quality of the glass. These are the places where pocket cameras fall short.
Point is, she doesn't get paid to do this, (although she may someday) she's working out her artistic flair.
When people ask me what kind of equipment to buy, my first question is "what kind of photos do you want to take?" It's a vital question. If they want snapshots, I recommend one of the rugged and/or waterproof pocket cameras. If they want any kind of creative control, the question gets a lot more complex.
"Only used by professionals"? Really?
"if no one sees your photos"... true, but... instagram, deviant art, flickr, hell even Facebook. Lots of opportunities to display your work. I guess I don't get it. (I really wish the video would work so I could see the comments in context.)
Please slashdot, direct me to $200 good anything...
It depends very much on one's definition of "good".
I'm just encouraged that it may no longer be a capital offense to publicly disagree with an Imam/Mullah in Wahabbi territory.
Or, these are really brave people.
Or this becomes just one of many fuels we can use - tailored the specific job requirements. We don't *need* gasoline for daily trips around town. It is needed for things like military and other things where you don't have a corner station to fill up with.
Assuming this can scale to even 5%, that's a huge amount to put towards things that do actually need the energy density and quick refuel times.
I guess I could agree with that, but I suspect it won't ramp up anywhere near that high. We'll see.
Coffee grounds are better fed to red worms and used as highly enriched soil to grow plants in.
Agreed. We use coffee grounds for fertilizer. It's a better use than burning in a car.
And the volume expected from this process when it goes into widespread production, is what percentage of the world's consumption? I mean, is this viable in sufficient quantities, or is it another "coffee grounds into fuel" type deal? (See a slashdot article a couple years back.)
Although, mind you, this may appeal to survivalists. You may not be able to create enough gasoline for the entire countryside, but you might be able to eck out enough for a family.
I understand. One of the problems with socialism is that the customer doesn't get to choose. The government could convince themselves that IEEE 1284 was the right choice, perhaps because certain members made money off same, and you'll have to live with that. Actually, that would be very entertaining.
I tend towards libertarian, but I freely admit that Apple's attitude annoys me, and in this one case I'm looking forward to them having to deal with draconian government regulation. Although, I still think they'll grease the right hands and slip the requirement at the last moment. The interesting thing about overriding government control over everything is that government is just made of people, after all, and people can be corrupted.
Right right right.... it was a moon, wasn't it? I've tried to block a lot of "return of the jedi" out of my mind. There was a lot good about it -- the final conflict between father and son, a last desperate plan to overthrow the empire. Spoiled by too many minutes of overbearing cuteness. But I admit now I hadn't known what "overbearing cuteness" really meant until Episode 1 came out.
I know, right? When we saw it in theater, and they panned across the models on the Admiral's desk, I said "That's a Dreadnought!" Daughter whispered "Ok, dad. Calm down."
Wellll, they're trying to force a common connector across all devices. The micro-usb is the logical choice.
I fully admit that this is entirely an emotional observation, but I'd kinda like to see Apple dragged kicking and screaming towards compliance with a common standard, just for a change. But again, that's just me.
It's not "customer choice" if the customer is forced to use a proprietary connector if they want to use the product. My immediate family owns four ipods (no iphones, for reasons I won't enumerate here) and I'd be just tickled to see Apple forced to use a standard port in future products. They're, like, the last holdout on this nonsense of proprietary connectors.
C'mon, Berman was the king of plot holes. Back in the day, there were whole Usenet threads devoted to identifying all the abandoned threads in TNG. For just one, those creatures that lived inside people and controlled them, at the last they sent a message out into space... clearly meant to be followed up... never was. I found that extremely annoying and it contributed to me eventually abandoning TNG. Plot holes? It is to laugh.
I'm thinking, one of those phones for old folks, with big buttons. Alternately, I saw an ad for a phone a long time ago made specifically for young children. It had two big buttons -- "Mom" and "Dad". Probably would be considered not inclusive enough in this day and age.
My daughter got her first phone at eleven. I only regretted it once, when she loaned it to a friend who racked up $100+ in text charges. It took her a long time to pay that off from her allowance.
Well the problem is that the second movie _didn't_ take advantage of that since it's a mere rewrite of The Wrath of Kahn, where the rewritten parts is about adding the superhuman powers that is common in the modern mutant/superheroe movies.
I respectfully disagree. The first movie not only set up the alternate timeline, but it set up the push for a militarized Federation, which was, I think, explored fairly well in the second film. I submit that this was the real plot, and the Kahn elements were more like collateral damage.
Not to seem too much of a Trek geek (I was such in TOS days, lost it in the Berman days, and regained it in the Bad Robot days) but I see the second film as having a lot of elements from Carey's TOS novel "Dreadnought". A giant battleship built in secret, a civil war within the federation, a strong female lead trying to make things right, and an starfleet admiral as the bad guy. It worked for me.
But it doesn't have to work for you -- that's why they make different kinds of movies, because there are different tastes. You'll always have the Berman-era series and films. I'm looking forward to the next film. And I'm guardedly (very guardedly) looking forward to the next SW film.
Not to mention, taking Star Trek back to the old OLD series, when it was still, you know, exciting. There's what, two generations now? ...for whom Star Trek had always been long meetings in dark boardrooms. It's natural for 90's fans to view an action and adventure Trek with distaste. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been fans of the Berman shows in the first place. Qu'est-ce que c'est.
Similarly (and somewhat frighteningly) there are probably two generations now for whom Star Wars is a hyperactive kaleidoscope of overly cutesy and somewhat racist characters in a non-engaging, overly complicated storyline. Going back to a frontier storyline where futuristic technology is old, shoddy and nearly falling apart [1] instead of reflective, sparkling and new, will be jarring for some.
What I want to see is pretty specific. A throw-away line: "Gungans? Destroyed utterly. I think their star went supernova or something." And: "Endor? Hit by a comet, I think. Wiped out the entire race."
[1] It was said of the original Star Wars all those years ago that it had a gritty look to it "like it was shot on location, in space". Something that was completely lost in the prequels. Even Tatooine sparkled. (Side note: Now that Disney owns Star Wars, is it possible for someone with a sense of propriety go back to the prequels and *take out* special effects?)
Yes, I do miss the Star Wars that was before, you know, Lucas lost his mind.
Another rule: The prequels did not exist. It's not necessary to include any information from the prequels that wasn't already alluded to in the original three films. They were never made. Forget them. Destroy the artwork. .......Forget...... Oh, sorry, wrong franchise.
And Han ALWAYS shoots first!
Really well done, and really good points. I would like to be the first to say, except for the ewoks. I don't ever want to see those again. I mean, ever.
A cable that most EU users simply don't need, since they just use the cable that comes with the device and attach it to any number of standard USB ports.
However, the adapter does exist if you really must use your micro-USB charger with your iPhone, assuming that you don;t have access to a normal USB port anywhere else.
My understanding of TFA is to mandate a micro-usb port on the device itself, so that you don't have to have a proprietary cable in order to charge. The idea is to be able to charge any device with a standard usb to micro usb cable, or a standard micro usb plug-in charger. (If I'm wrong, please correct me, but please include a reference.) Apple has resisted this hugely in the past, and I expect them to work on some kind of exception this time, which will probably take the form of a female micro-usb to whatever-port-apple-uses adapter cable. With smart circuitry, to shut out third party providers.