So why did either of these people (especially the MIT girl, I can see this mail fraud case being slightly more of a grey area) get charged with something after the experts had been called in and ascertained that they hadn't done anything that the officers feared?
I don't know how recent a development it is, but MIT does require foreign students to take the SAT or ACT. I had my GCSE (they don't do O Levels anymore) and A Level grades but I still had to make arrangements to do the American tests for my application. Interestingly high A Level grades in Maths and Physics can be used to skip certain parts of the first year's work, but not in place of the SAT/ACT for applications.
The implication I got from that statement wasn't that Macs are hard to use in general, but that certain functions that a user may want to perform are difficult/impossible as a consequence of Apple's simplification of the task. I certainly don't agree with the majority of the GP post, and I've quite happily used a lot of Apple products, but that point did ring somewhat true with me - a personal example would be the "Smart album" feature in Aperture; it works well but there is simply no option that I know of to add a criterion for "Photo is not in album 'foo'", a relatively minor but certainly rather annoying feature to have absent (and requiring a kludgy workaround using tags).
You're misunderstanding what I meant (perhaps, again, because that's the only way things can be done in the US, I don't know). I didn't mean for Apple to run 'on top of' the existing networks, I meant for them to leave the decision of which network (in the US case, one of the two GSM carriers) up to the customer.
Customer buys iPhone from Apple -> Customer gets SIM card from chosen network on preferred contract/PAYG -> Customer puts SIM in iPhone and starts making calls
As I said, no need for Apple to have any contact whatsoever with carriers.
I would lean towards a fourth choice - leave the carriers out of it. You seem to be working on the assumption that Apple needs to have any kind of relationship with the networks, which I guess means that's the state of affairs in the US? As I said in my post above, the cash that AT&T are paying them makes a perfectly good business rationale for going exclusive, but from a consumer point of view I would've thought that just selling the phone as a standalone device in the Apple stores and allowing the customer to choose their provider (perhaps sans visual voicemail, I guess, but AFAIK all the other features are standard, meaning no software customisation or compatibility issues) would be perfectly acceptable as well as neatly avoiding the problems you outline.
I was actually going to make much the same post as yours. I just Googled it and Apple are indeed getting a substantial monthly payment from AT&T for iPhone users, so again from the standpoint of a business it does make sense to go exclusive (although this doesn't seem to benefit the consumer in any way I can imagine). As for a phone that works on all GSM networks (assuming you didn't mean that rhetorically), it is very much possible (needs to be quad-band if you want to use it anywhere in the world, due to different frequencies, but that's by no means unheard of) and the only network feature I know of that is entirely proprietary to the iPhone is visual voicemail.
Well, somehow this rule seems to apply to Apple phones only. Most other phones will be happy to play anything playable as a ringer.
Idiotic as I think the concept of paying twice for a song and the right to use it as a ringtone is, it would be true to say that Apple is the only phone company with a vested interest in not pissing off the music industry. I'm not saying I like the decisions Apple's made with the iPhone, but it does appear that in this case at least they were simply having their hand forced by the tenuous relationship they have with the recording companies.
Now I'd just like to know if they have any excuse for selling a phone that's network-locked even though it's cost is not subsidised by the network.
I think it's quite significant that you do not have to sign any kind of service contract when buying the iPhone - maybe I'm wrong it's just some kind of wrangle so that Apple can sell them in their stores without having any kind of legal junk with AT&T, but it seems like they're clearly differentiating the device (their product) from the service (someone else's product, may be crap "but poor defenseless Apple aren't responsible"). The soft unlocking was/is just a matter of time.
Apple have still displayed some acts of supreme asshattery (the ringtones that you PAY TWICE FOR being the one the really gets me, but lack of iPhone SDKs is a close second) which disappoints me as I tend to enjoy their products, but service lock in seems to be one that they skirted close to but cleverly (or coincidentally?) avoided.
As a side note, I do find it interesting that the lack of (officially sanctioned) third party apps on the iPhone annoys me greatly, yet when I saw the iPod touch it didn't even enter my head to ask. Despite the fact that they're essentially the same device, it feels as though they're taking something away when there are plenty of existing phones that I can install whatever I like on, yet it feels like they're adding something new when they position the device as an iPod with web browsing ability - all the existing features plus a new one. Then again, if I were to replace my existing phone and iPod with an iPhone I do stand to lose functionality overall (but also replace two devices with one), whereas if I just replaced my iPod with an iPod touch there would be a net gain in functionality, so I guess my thinking is based somewhat in truth. Either that or the RDF is getting to me.
Anecdotal, I know, but all of the high school level ICT teachers I've come across honestly don't know as much as the geek contingent of their class. AFAICS the root of the problem is sending business studies teachers and the like into teaching kids how to use computers on the basis that they know how to use MS office - it means the teachers have the same issues as the kids you mention (although on a slightly different level, obviously): they can point and click to get a database in Access but look at you as if you have three heads if they see an SQL query.
Interestingly, too, I almost decided not to post this; I started to think that maybe I was being unfair to expect people with a class comprised (by definition) of mostly 'average' students who don't really care, suddenly to know more than those students who have a genuine interest in the subject. Then I realised that I've never seen a maths teacher fail to be able to work through a formula written by a particularly bright student, or a language teacher fail to understand a particularly complex sentence from a fluent speaker. I've seen a few in these areas who couldn't communicate a concept to save their lives, but at least they understand the concept themselves.
I really mean no disrespect to all the good teachers out there (and the parent poster certainly sounds like one of the good ones), I just think it's a shame that mediocrity in terms of knowledge seems to be accepted in the IT teaching field when it isn't in others.
The smaller denomination is the Jiao, but there are 10 of them to the Yuan rather than 100 (as in cents).
I still don't quite get why it's referred to as Ren Min Bi in a context like the summary though - the numbers they are talking about are quite specifically how many Yuan the software costs (You'd say "50 dollars", not "50 American currency"). I guess maybe it's just their linguistic convention and it sound odd to us.
A poster lower down mentions the actual US MSRP as $3199, leaving an extra $465 to play with on the pre-tax prices (even more on post-tax, but I don't think even Slashdot can manage to blame Sony for the UK's VAT rate).
I see what you mean, but I would tend to look at this from the "Teach a man a fish..." perspective. Rather than monitoring what the child is doing and making the decisions for them (which will simply leave them incapable of acting on their own), it seems to me that it is the job of the parent(s) to teach the child how to make the sensible decision on if it's really a good idea to meet random MySpace people at all, and if so who to meet, where to meet them and who to bring along. Once the child actually understands the point, they can decide for themselves, no monitoring needed.
Sorry, should've clarified - their service certainly isn't as fast as 12MB/s, so yes, it was meant to be 12Mb/s. Secondly, a megabyte isn't a measure of speed - the ad didn't mention any kind of timescale alongside the number.
Recently I saw an advert on TV for Sky Broadband; I assume the advert was made with technical advice from the Sky Broadband people. The voice over mentions "speeds of up to 12 megabytes". I know we all make mistakes, but that sentence contains two fundamental errors and it's placed in an ad that I'm sure was proofread multiple times, so it's a little harder to forgive.
That means your (I'm assuming) European bottle of beer is actually 1.69 "drinks", at least how I understand it.
I'm in the UK, and most bars serving American bottled beer (budweiser etc.) sell it in 330ml bottles, whereas quite a few of the more up-market imported European beers come in 630ml bottles. In practise most people drink pints (568ml, according to Wikipedia - not the same as a US pint) rather than bottles over here anyway though. The 'standard' cans that most people get in the shops and have in the house are almost always 500ml.
Just FYI, it might be worth your time getting the phone itself from Europe. Just as it's often cheaper for us Brits to pay international shipping on computer hardware from the states, it looks like you guys would probably be better of getting an unlocked RAZR (to use your example) for ~$150 from the UK and putting a local SIM card in it.
As the other reply said, using a VCR is IMO not worth the effort just to avoid the ads; obviously if it were a show I taped anyway then I would fast-forward through them, but since I got a DVR I'll just hit pause at the beginning of a show I am watching at that moment, or at the beginning of the first ad break, do something else for 10 or 15 minutes and then have an hour's worth of TV show with ads I can skip. Combined with the fact that series linking and having a single button to go from "hmm, that might be worth seeing" in the onscreen TV guide to actually recording something means that more shows get recorded and almost all live shows get shifted specifically for ad avoidance. I'd call that significant in comparison to VCRs.
I ask the following as a genuine question, and I really would appreciate an answer.
I assume you understand that your beliefs and morality are not necessarily shared by others, just as I understand that you probably do not share my opinions. From this, however, the only fair conclusion I can draw is that I have no right to interfere with your actions unless they are infringing on my ability to exist happily and in a way that does not affect you.
Your post seems to indicate that you believe people who do not follow your moral code should be punished - therein lies my question: if you believe it is right to punish those who disagree with you simply for acting in a way that you find objectionable, without interfering with you personally, why is it not equally right for others to punish you for your acting in a way that they find objectionable, even if you do not do so in a way that affects them?
Ironically, my PS3 preorder has just been cancelled automatically - I had one with Lik-Sang since I'm in Europe and I could eBay a PS3 at a decent profit, but looks like Sony's not getting any of my money now.
Other than price (on which Apple are rarely the lowest anyway), why would it be superior to the existing 23" Cinema Display with the same resolution as this new iMac? All you're getting from the extra inch is slightly fewer DPI, which seems to me to be counterproductive.
Slashdot Mirror
But why didn't they do that in the US, I wonder?
So why did either of these people (especially the MIT girl, I can see this mail fraud case being slightly more of a grey area) get charged with something after the experts had been called in and ascertained that they hadn't done anything that the officers feared?
I don't know how recent a development it is, but MIT does require foreign students to take the SAT or ACT. I had my GCSE (they don't do O Levels anymore) and A Level grades but I still had to make arrangements to do the American tests for my application. Interestingly high A Level grades in Maths and Physics can be used to skip certain parts of the first year's work, but not in place of the SAT/ACT for applications.
The implication I got from that statement wasn't that Macs are hard to use in general, but that certain functions that a user may want to perform are difficult/impossible as a consequence of Apple's simplification of the task. I certainly don't agree with the majority of the GP post, and I've quite happily used a lot of Apple products, but that point did ring somewhat true with me - a personal example would be the "Smart album" feature in Aperture; it works well but there is simply no option that I know of to add a criterion for "Photo is not in album 'foo'", a relatively minor but certainly rather annoying feature to have absent (and requiring a kludgy workaround using tags).
You're misunderstanding what I meant (perhaps, again, because that's the only way things can be done in the US, I don't know). I didn't mean for Apple to run 'on top of' the existing networks, I meant for them to leave the decision of which network (in the US case, one of the two GSM carriers) up to the customer.
Customer buys iPhone from Apple -> Customer gets SIM card from chosen network on preferred contract/PAYG -> Customer puts SIM in iPhone and starts making calls
As I said, no need for Apple to have any contact whatsoever with carriers.
I would lean towards a fourth choice - leave the carriers out of it. You seem to be working on the assumption that Apple needs to have any kind of relationship with the networks, which I guess means that's the state of affairs in the US? As I said in my post above, the cash that AT&T are paying them makes a perfectly good business rationale for going exclusive, but from a consumer point of view I would've thought that just selling the phone as a standalone device in the Apple stores and allowing the customer to choose their provider (perhaps sans visual voicemail, I guess, but AFAIK all the other features are standard, meaning no software customisation or compatibility issues) would be perfectly acceptable as well as neatly avoiding the problems you outline.
I was actually going to make much the same post as yours. I just Googled it and Apple are indeed getting a substantial monthly payment from AT&T for iPhone users, so again from the standpoint of a business it does make sense to go exclusive (although this doesn't seem to benefit the consumer in any way I can imagine). As for a phone that works on all GSM networks (assuming you didn't mean that rhetorically), it is very much possible (needs to be quad-band if you want to use it anywhere in the world, due to different frequencies, but that's by no means unheard of) and the only network feature I know of that is entirely proprietary to the iPhone is visual voicemail.
What, you mean like this?
Now I'd just like to know if they have any excuse for selling a phone that's network-locked even though it's cost is not subsidised by the network.
No they aren't.
I think it's quite significant that you do not have to sign any kind of service contract when buying the iPhone - maybe I'm wrong it's just some kind of wrangle so that Apple can sell them in their stores without having any kind of legal junk with AT&T, but it seems like they're clearly differentiating the device (their product) from the service (someone else's product, may be crap "but poor defenseless Apple aren't responsible"). The soft unlocking was/is just a matter of time.
Apple have still displayed some acts of supreme asshattery (the ringtones that you PAY TWICE FOR being the one the really gets me, but lack of iPhone SDKs is a close second) which disappoints me as I tend to enjoy their products, but service lock in seems to be one that they skirted close to but cleverly (or coincidentally?) avoided.
As a side note, I do find it interesting that the lack of (officially sanctioned) third party apps on the iPhone annoys me greatly, yet when I saw the iPod touch it didn't even enter my head to ask. Despite the fact that they're essentially the same device, it feels as though they're taking something away when there are plenty of existing phones that I can install whatever I like on, yet it feels like they're adding something new when they position the device as an iPod with web browsing ability - all the existing features plus a new one. Then again, if I were to replace my existing phone and iPod with an iPhone I do stand to lose functionality overall (but also replace two devices with one), whereas if I just replaced my iPod with an iPod touch there would be a net gain in functionality, so I guess my thinking is based somewhat in truth. Either that or the RDF is getting to me.
</ramble>
Anecdotal, I know, but all of the high school level ICT teachers I've come across honestly don't know as much as the geek contingent of their class. AFAICS the root of the problem is sending business studies teachers and the like into teaching kids how to use computers on the basis that they know how to use MS office - it means the teachers have the same issues as the kids you mention (although on a slightly different level, obviously): they can point and click to get a database in Access but look at you as if you have three heads if they see an SQL query.
Interestingly, too, I almost decided not to post this; I started to think that maybe I was being unfair to expect people with a class comprised (by definition) of mostly 'average' students who don't really care, suddenly to know more than those students who have a genuine interest in the subject. Then I realised that I've never seen a maths teacher fail to be able to work through a formula written by a particularly bright student, or a language teacher fail to understand a particularly complex sentence from a fluent speaker. I've seen a few in these areas who couldn't communicate a concept to save their lives, but at least they understand the concept themselves.
I really mean no disrespect to all the good teachers out there (and the parent poster certainly sounds like one of the good ones), I just think it's a shame that mediocrity in terms of knowledge seems to be accepted in the IT teaching field when it isn't in others.
Just wondering, does anyone know why they make manhole covers out of metal rather than (say) cast concrete in places where theft is a real problem?
The smaller denomination is the Jiao, but there are 10 of them to the Yuan rather than 100 (as in cents).
I still don't quite get why it's referred to as Ren Min Bi in a context like the summary though - the numbers they are talking about are quite specifically how many Yuan the software costs (You'd say "50 dollars", not "50 American currency"). I guess maybe it's just their linguistic convention and it sound odd to us.
A poster lower down mentions the actual US MSRP as $3199, leaving an extra $465 to play with on the pre-tax prices (even more on post-tax, but I don't think even Slashdot can manage to blame Sony for the UK's VAT rate).
Yay.
I see what you mean, but I would tend to look at this from the "Teach a man a fish..." perspective. Rather than monitoring what the child is doing and making the decisions for them (which will simply leave them incapable of acting on their own), it seems to me that it is the job of the parent(s) to teach the child how to make the sensible decision on if it's really a good idea to meet random MySpace people at all, and if so who to meet, where to meet them and who to bring along. Once the child actually understands the point, they can decide for themselves, no monitoring needed.
Clearly the voice of someone who's never seen Random Hall's laundry server :)
Sorry, should've clarified - their service certainly isn't as fast as 12MB/s, so yes, it was meant to be 12Mb/s. Secondly, a megabyte isn't a measure of speed - the ad didn't mention any kind of timescale alongside the number.
Recently I saw an advert on TV for Sky Broadband; I assume the advert was made with technical advice from the Sky Broadband people. The voice over mentions "speeds of up to 12 megabytes". I know we all make mistakes, but that sentence contains two fundamental errors and it's placed in an ad that I'm sure was proofread multiple times, so it's a little harder to forgive.
Just FYI, it might be worth your time getting the phone itself from Europe. Just as it's often cheaper for us Brits to pay international shipping on computer hardware from the states, it looks like you guys would probably be better of getting an unlocked RAZR (to use your example) for ~$150 from the UK and putting a local SIM card in it.
As the other reply said, using a VCR is IMO not worth the effort just to avoid the ads; obviously if it were a show I taped anyway then I would fast-forward through them, but since I got a DVR I'll just hit pause at the beginning of a show I am watching at that moment, or at the beginning of the first ad break, do something else for 10 or 15 minutes and then have an hour's worth of TV show with ads I can skip. Combined with the fact that series linking and having a single button to go from "hmm, that might be worth seeing" in the onscreen TV guide to actually recording something means that more shows get recorded and almost all live shows get shifted specifically for ad avoidance. I'd call that significant in comparison to VCRs.
I ask the following as a genuine question, and I really would appreciate an answer.
I assume you understand that your beliefs and morality are not necessarily shared by others, just as I understand that you probably do not share my opinions. From this, however, the only fair conclusion I can draw is that I have no right to interfere with your actions unless they are infringing on my ability to exist happily and in a way that does not affect you.
Your post seems to indicate that you believe people who do not follow your moral code should be punished - therein lies my question: if you believe it is right to punish those who disagree with you simply for acting in a way that you find objectionable, without interfering with you personally, why is it not equally right for others to punish you for your acting in a way that they find objectionable, even if you do not do so in a way that affects them?
Ironically, my PS3 preorder has just been cancelled automatically - I had one with Lik-Sang since I'm in Europe and I could eBay a PS3 at a decent profit, but looks like Sony's not getting any of my money now.
Other than price (on which Apple are rarely the lowest anyway), why would it be superior to the existing 23" Cinema Display with the same resolution as this new iMac? All you're getting from the extra inch is slightly fewer DPI, which seems to me to be counterproductive.