I look at my Sony Clie and my GBA-SP. Both have a tiny little screw that holds the battery cover on. Both my Clie and the GBA-SP are smaller than the iPod, and yet they still managed to provide user-access to the battery.
Also, the tiniest cell phones hase easily replaceable li-ion batteries.
What I find surprising is that almost nobody sees that the cell phone is going to become a general purpose personal computer in the next few years. The interface obviously still needs a lot of work. But many people always carry a cell phone everywhere, wheras laptops are still only brought along when necessary. Within a few years cell phones are our wearable computers.
This is all a big ploy, by Microsoft, to prevent "their" customers clicking on links which might take them to competitors' products. Sneaky! It might even be patentable!
What'll they think of next?
Maybe their next move is to declare all domains outside of msn.com to be "potentially insecure"...
Not really, because you didn't pay money. You bought a computer. You didn't buy an extended waranty. Your computer failed out of waranty, you decided to sell the computer. Apple owes you nothing. Now, had you paid for a repair, and it still failed, out of waranty and they wouldn't fix it again, then I would say they owe you something.
Following your reasoning they don't need to implement this "iBook Logic Board Repair Extension Program" at all. In your opinion they don't owe anyone anything after waranty. That they do it anyway makes them a classy company. In my opinion they are redressing their own faults, which any normal company should do. If they did anything less, knowing they made a design error, they would just be a sleazy company. About the extended AppleCare, I agree with Powerbook evangelist Charles Moore:
Having to pop up to 25 percent of the price of the computer for two extra years of warranty coverage because of strong odds you'll need it is not a fair or satisfactory solution to what is obviously a serious design or production quality defect.
[...]
Anything as expensive as a laptop computer, even a relatively low-priced one like the iBook, should be reasonably expected to work for much longer then the eight, 10, 12, 14 months that are being reported without suffering a major component failures. This is more than a routine warranty issue.
[...]
However, as I said, having to pay for AppleCare in lively expectation that you're going to need it cancels out much of the price advantage of buying an iBook instead of a PowerBook.
> And they're getting refunds so what's the problem?
The problem is this. Imagine you have one that broke in, say November, one month out of warantee, and you're told it costs $400 to fix. You couldn't afford it, or you decided that $400 is not good value (e.g., because you heard from a friend that the replacement board is likely to fail again). So you have an expensive doorstop for 2 months now. And just sold it as spare parts last week, only to hear today that they decided to repair it for free. Now if Apple only very recently discovered the problem, that's just tough luck for you. But if they have know the issue for a long time and just tried to whitewash the issue, don't you agree that there is a problem?
The repair extension program covers iBooks produced between May 2002 and April 2003, almost a full year production (and there are already lots of complains from people with the some problem with iBooks that fall outside these dates). Yet until very recently Apple maintained that there were "no known issues" with the iBook. How do they know there are no problems with the units produced after April 2003 then? If they corrected the problem, they must have known of it for at least over a half year now. I know that iBooks are outsourced to some Taiwanese ODM, but the design and reference come directly from Apple. If it was a manufacturing defect, I can't imagine that the plant silently corrected it in April last year and only informed Apple now.
> F makes more sense for temperature (not scientifically). 0 is damn cold, 100 is damn hot, and you can feel a change of a degree or two.
Well, in Celsius, 0 is freezing cold, 100 is boiling hot...
> In C, you have to go to something like -10 is cold and 30 is hot and you may change the thermostat by half a degree.
Normal room temperature here is around 20 C, which is 68.0 F. Increasing this to 20.5 C is an increase to 68.9 F. Can you feel the difference between 68.0 and 68.9 F ?
Could you please describe a typical work day at Bell Labs? What software do you use?
Dennis Ritchie: I tend to come in late unless there's a meeting, but spend a fair amount of time tending to e-mail communication. My own environment (on PC hardware) actually runs Windows NT, but it is used mainly as a graphics terminal connected to a Plan 9 server, in a way approximately analogous to an X windows client. The connection at home is now via cable modem (until last summer ISDN), and Ethernet at the office. Any editing, software work, and mail is done in this exported Plan 9. For stuff like getting Excel and Word things, plus much WWW browsing, I revert to NT.
This is somewhat off-topic, but I think it's important enough to post anyway. One of the nicest things about the classical free market perfect competition economy is that products are sold at the lowest possible prices. If one producer charges more, consumers would soon flock to another producer who is willing to take less profit, so prices soon drop to just above production costs. It should not be surprising that few producers like to operate in such a market, so very few consumer goods are traded in markets resembling perfect competition (perhaps generic hardware like brandless DRAM or ethernet cards?).
Most goods are produced/sold by a fairly limited number of parties, who often engage in some form of collusion (i.e., a block of producers acting together as a monopolist or cartel). This usually takes the form of price fixing, which may or may not be forbidden, depending on the exact market and the nature of the agreements. Other than boycotting the industry, there is little that individual consumers can do about collusion. Legislature on the subject is pretty complex, and proving tacit collusion is usually difficult.
The other way for producers to escape perfect competition is to differentiate the product, through quality, design or simply by promoting the brand. Notice that almost everything you buy has a brand? All marketing is designed to make you believe that that brand is *different*. The more different the brand name product is perceived to be, the more the supplier can act as a monopolist. Being a monopolist is not a binary state, as many people seem to think. A producer can act more as a monopolist if there are fewer substitutes, but there are few products for which no substitute exists at all. A singer has a monopoly on his/her voice, but if the price is too high, find another singer. The RIA may have monopoly pricing power on music CDs, if they set the price too high, find another medium for music. If alternative distribution channels are outlawed, find other forms of entertainment, like films, books, games. If entertainment products are priced too high, entertain yourself. The key is to realize that we have many many options, and there are very few products that we in fact cannot live without.
> A laptop solves these problems, but at the sacrifice of a lousier keyboard and mouse interface.
The keyboard on my old Thinkpad 600E is better than almost every desktop keyboard I've worked on. Unfortunately most of the newer Thinkpad keyboards are not as good (according to reviews the T40/T41 are pretty nice though). The mouse will be a non-issue in the future when (if?) Bluetooth replaces the current separate receivers for wireless mice. Still, I prefer a good trackpoint so I never have to take my hands from the keyboard. I think the problem of working with a laptop for long periods is that the screen position is usually too low. Something like a tablet pc with a good quality detachable Bluetooth keyboard might be a nice solution.
Have they identified offending lines in the kernel source or have they not. Darl claims they have already matched code to the Unixware code and now they can't seem to reproduce it for the court. What's wrong with this picture?
There are two different issues. 1. IBM contributed SMP, JFS, RCU, and NUMA code to linux. SCO claims these came from from AIX, and that they have right to everything IBM adds to AIX. They are sueing IBM for contract violation, not copyright infringment. They do not need to show any copied lines, only that the mentioned code come from AIX and that their original Unix contract gave them right over these technologies. 2. SCO claims in the press that they discovered line by line copying from SystemV in the Linux source code. They sent letters to companies, threatening to sue them if they don't buy a license from SCO. They show these lines to journalists and developers under NDA. They have NOT actually gone to court over this, so they do not actually need to prove copyright infringment. They are intentionally refering to both actions as "defending their IP". The idea is that since they have actually gone to court over one issue, the companies who received the letters for protection money will find their other threats more credible.
The release schedule is the *only* reason I can see for region encoding. And since everyone and their dog can strip their DVD player of region restrictions, it's a useless 'feature' anyway.
Can somebody please enlighten me as to the benefits of region encoding? I simply cannot see how the movie industry makes more money by selling to certain people earlier.
The industry can charge different prices to different customers ("price discrimination" in economics jargon)
Let's say in the US people are on average willing/able to pay a bit more for movies than in Asia. The profit maximizing price in the US will be higher than in Asia. Without region lock, merchants will just buy the legitimate Asian discs and sell them at a small profit in the US. This will force the Asian price up and/or the US price down, so in the end there is only one price for both markets (which are actually one market if there were no region lock). This is suboptimal (not profit maximizing) for the industry.
You really are bending backwards to explain away any evidence. In none of the books I mentioned, they changed "programme" to "program" or "colour" to "color", they were not Americanized like Harry Potter was. "Realize" is not an Americanism, it's neutral. Next thing you're going to argue that every British novel that I come up with, the author just has the US market in mind, while at the same time you insist that the -ize spellings makes them unacceptable in the UK. And that for some strange reason they are mixing British and American spelling as they don't change -our into -or but do -ise into -ize. Of the introductions, Emma's didn't list a date, but the others were written in 1990 and 1992.
I'll give a much simpler explanation than yours: these people, who wrote dissertations on English literature, actually know that -ize is correct, appropriate and acceptable. They did not change their -ises into -izes while leaving the -ours intentionally.
I you google for "ize" and "ise" and restrict your search to.uk domains, you will find exactly what I and Harper told you: The house rule is usually -ise, but some (I estimate about one in five) do prefer -ize, among which OUP. Do you really want me to dig up a dozen of links, so you can try to explain each of them or can you just accept that -ize is equally valid and the issue just a matter of publisher preference? The official EU guidelines (presumably free from US influence) state that in British spelling, both -ize and -ise are correct, but that -ise is more common. From my Collins Dictionary of English Usage (1991 edition):
Whether the ending -ise or -ize should be used for the spelling of certain verbs is a matter of some debate, because both these endings are favoured by different authorities. The spelling makes no difference to the pronunciation of the verb. In American English -ize is the preferred ending for many verbs. This form is followed by certain British newspapers, and by several leading dictionaries. This gives -ize an undoubted authority. The reason for this choice is based on word derivation. However, -ise is equally acceptable in British English and is the normal choice of many printers. A consistent use of the -ise ending is always acceptable. Certain words (chiefly those not formed by adding the suffix to an existing word) are, however, always spelled with -ize in both Britain and the US, e.g. advertise, advise, revise.
That -ize is an Americanism is a myth, which unfortunately gains a little truth every time a school teacher or magazine editor insists that -ize is "unacceptable".
The only thing that I am suggesting is that "-ise" is what's used almost universally throughout the British media, and "-ize" is almost universally regarded as an Americanisation (no pun intended). If you can find me one popular British publication that favours "-ize" over "-ise" or even one individual who hails from these shores who prefers the "-ize" form then I'd be amazed.
I'll say it for the third time: "-ize" may be acceptable in theory but in practice it is not.
Here's one on my bookshelf: Grant Naylor, Better than Life (sequel to Red Dwarf) (1990), lives in London, created and wrote Red Dwarf for BBC Television. Another one: John Fowles, The Collector (1963). Most British books on my shelves are a bit old, so if I find an -ize you'll probably argue that in the past that was the correct form. Fortunately, many have introductions written in the 1990, so here is some more:
- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, OUP World's Classics edition,
in the introduction by Cedric Watts, Professor of English at the University
of Sussex: "characterization, patronizing,
emphasizes, defamiliarization, conceptualizing"
- Jane Austen, Emma, Penguin Classics edition,
in the introduction by Fiona Stafford, graduate of Leicester University and Lincoln College, Oxford, Fellow and Tutor in English at Somerville College, Oxford:
"critisized, recognizing, characterized"
- Stoker, Dracula, Penguin Classics edition,
in the introduction by Maurice Hindle, born in Great Barr, near Birmingham, studied at
the Universities of Keele and Durham, PhD from Essex University, lives in Islington, London:
"serialized, moralizing, prioritizing, magnetizer"
I could probably find a lot more if I went to the library.
Frankly, as someone who writes and edits for a living, I'm far more aware of the everyday usage of the English language and its idiosyncrasies than most people. My evidence isn't "the stack of newspapers and magazines on [my] desk", it's over a decade of publishing experience. I said it before and I'll say it again: "-ize" may well be acceptable in theory but in practice it is not.
According to the folks at HarperCollins, it mostly depends the field and publisher. Oxford and Harper favour -ize, Cambridge -ise. Are you suggesting that the output of OUP or Harper is unacceptable? Or that the main heading in almost every major dictionary in the UK is unacceptable for print?
If you keep that in mind, how hard do you suppose it will be to WMDs?
Maybe they should issue a $25 million reward for finding the WMD. Inventive Iraqi's will probably produce some WMD just to claim the reward. Then everybody will be happy (except the French of course).
Perhaps you'd care to peruse British media, including books,
Do books published by the OUP count? Academic journals?
newspapers, magazines and websites, that will leave you in no doubt that "-ise" rather than "-ize" is the appropriate spelling in the UK.
[...]
The OED link that you provide might well suggest that "-ize" is acceptable in theory but in practice it is not.
I did not dispute that realise is more common, but to claim that realize is unappropriate or unacceptable is foolish.
I just checked Oxford, Macmillan, Longman, Penguin and Cambridge dictionaries. All indicated that realize is the appropriate spelling. Realise is given as a British alternative, but each has the major entry under realize.
I didn't have a Collins at hand, but according to the second link I gave, HarperCollins' house style is -ize. In fact, that link directly contradicts your claim:
"The z form on the other hand is used equally in British and American sources, but hardly at all in some sources (eg the Times, the Economist). Clearly these two want to emphasise their Britishness rather than seeming international."
This answer was based on the
Cobuild Bank of English database.
"Realized"? Oh dear. Worse than using Americanisms is using American spellings. Outside North America the word is spelt "realised". Perhaps if you actually were from the UK you'd have learnt that.
While realised may be more common in the UK, realized is perfectly acceptable and actually recommended by the OED, as revealed by a
minute Googling.
Slashdot Mirror
What I find surprising is that almost nobody sees that the cell phone is going to become a general purpose personal computer in the next few years. The interface obviously still needs a lot of work. But many people always carry a cell phone everywhere, wheras laptops are still only brought along when necessary. Within a few years cell phones are our wearable computers.
> And they're getting refunds so what's the problem?
The problem is this. Imagine you have one that broke in, say November, one month out of warantee, and you're told it costs $400 to fix. You couldn't afford it, or you decided that $400 is not good value (e.g., because you heard from a friend that the replacement board is likely to fail again). So you have an expensive doorstop for 2 months now. And just sold it as spare parts last week, only to hear today that they decided to repair it for free. Now if Apple only very recently discovered the problem, that's just tough luck for you. But if they have know the issue for a long time and just tried to whitewash the issue, don't you agree that there is a problem?
The repair extension program covers iBooks produced between May 2002 and April 2003, almost a full year production (and there are already lots of complains from people with the some problem with iBooks that fall outside these dates). Yet until very recently Apple maintained that there were "no known issues" with the iBook. How do they know there are no problems with the units produced after April 2003 then? If they corrected the problem, they must have known of it for at least over a half year now. I know that iBooks are outsourced to some Taiwanese ODM, but the design and reference come directly from Apple. If it was a manufacturing defect, I can't imagine that the plant silently corrected it in April last year and only informed Apple now.
Yes, I've hundreds of seen these 'captchas' in the last weeks when I was surfing, ..., uhm, ah, well, never mind.
> F makes more sense for temperature (not scientifically). 0 is damn cold, 100 is damn hot, and you can feel a change of a degree or two.
Well, in Celsius, 0 is freezing cold, 100 is boiling hot...
> In C, you have to go to something like -10 is cold and 30 is hot and you may change the thermostat by half a degree.
Normal room temperature here is around 20 C, which is 68.0 F. Increasing this to 20.5 C is an increase to 68.9 F. Can you feel the difference between 68.0 and 68.9 F ?
- 1.000.000,00 - 1,000,000.00
> 1 Ton = 1000 kg
In SI this would be 1 Mg.
From an interview:
Could you please describe a typical work day at Bell Labs? What software do you use?
Dennis Ritchie: I tend to come in late unless there's a meeting, but spend a fair amount of time tending to e-mail communication. My own environment (on PC hardware) actually runs Windows NT, but it is used mainly as a graphics terminal connected to a Plan 9 server, in a way approximately analogous to an X windows client. The connection at home is now via cable modem (until last summer ISDN), and Ethernet at the office. Any editing, software work, and mail is done in this exported Plan 9. For stuff like getting Excel and Word things, plus much WWW browsing, I revert to NT.
For more information, see Wikipedia
> Just out of curiosity, on average how many DVDs that you watch are made for regions other than the one you live in?
Posting such a question here is not very useful. You'll only get replies from people who have a lot of DVDs from other regions.
This is somewhat off-topic, but I think it's important enough to post anyway. One of the nicest things about the classical free market perfect competition economy is that products are sold at the lowest possible prices. If one producer charges more, consumers would soon flock to another producer who is willing to take less profit, so prices soon drop to just above production costs. It should not be surprising that few producers like to operate in such a market,
so very few consumer goods are traded in markets resembling perfect competition (perhaps generic hardware like brandless DRAM or ethernet cards?).
Most goods are produced/sold by a fairly limited number of parties, who often engage in some form of collusion (i.e., a block of producers acting together as a monopolist or cartel). This usually takes the form of price fixing, which may or may not be forbidden, depending on the exact market and the nature of the agreements. Other than boycotting the industry, there is little that individual consumers can do about collusion. Legislature on the subject is pretty complex, and proving tacit collusion is usually difficult.
The other way for producers to escape perfect competition is to differentiate the product, through quality, design or simply by promoting the brand. Notice that almost everything you buy has a brand? All marketing is designed to make you believe that that brand is *different*. The more different the brand name product is perceived to be, the more the supplier can act as a monopolist. Being a monopolist is not a binary state, as many people seem to think. A producer can act more as a monopolist if there are fewer substitutes, but there are few products for which no substitute exists at all.
A singer has a monopoly on his/her voice, but if the price is too high, find another singer. The RIA may have monopoly pricing power on music CDs, if they set the price too high, find another medium for music. If alternative distribution channels are outlawed, find other forms of entertainment, like films, books, games. If entertainment products are priced too high, entertain yourself. The key is to realize that we have many many options, and there are very few products that we in fact cannot live without.
> A laptop solves these problems, but at the sacrifice of a lousier keyboard and mouse interface.
The keyboard on my old Thinkpad 600E is better than almost every desktop keyboard I've worked on. Unfortunately most of the newer Thinkpad keyboards are not as good (according to reviews the T40/T41 are pretty nice though). The mouse will be a non-issue in the future when (if?) Bluetooth replaces the current separate receivers for wireless mice. Still, I prefer a good trackpoint so I never have to take my hands from the keyboard. I think the problem of working with a laptop for long periods is that the screen position is usually too low. Something like a tablet pc with a good quality detachable Bluetooth keyboard might be a nice solution.
But it is not particular cheap either. It's comparable to the other mini-HD based players.
I you google for "ize" and "ise" and restrict your search to
- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, OUP World's Classics edition, in the introduction by Cedric Watts, Professor of English at the University of Sussex: "characterization, patronizing, emphasizes, defamiliarization, conceptualizing"
- Jane Austen, Emma, Penguin Classics edition, in the introduction by Fiona Stafford, graduate of Leicester University and Lincoln College, Oxford, Fellow and Tutor in English at Somerville College, Oxford: "critisized, recognizing, characterized"
- Stoker, Dracula, Penguin Classics edition, in the introduction by Maurice Hindle, born in Great Barr, near Birmingham, studied at the Universities of Keele and Durham, PhD from Essex University, lives in Islington, London: "serialized, moralizing, prioritizing, magnetizer"
I could probably find a lot more if I went to the library.