The scalpers are scooping up tickets and skewing the price. MrKaos pointed out that out:
Before ticket sales via the net I never missed out on tickets, now I'm almost certain I'll never get the tickets I want because the scalpers are so effective.
With scalpers in action, he's unable to get tickets anymore and is forced to use scalpers. Without them, he's able to get his tickets directly even a few days after they went on sale.
The argument is Tivo vs. standard STB, and the STB doesn't allow you to download anything. If you want to extend this to MythTV, submit your own story to Slashdot.
Right or wrong, Tivo has to abide by the CableCard rules, and one of those covers transfer of shows.
With Comcast, the CableCard was free, and I'm paying $4.95 for my CC with FIOS. As for the monthly fees, they're about $8/mo if you pre pay for 3 years. In addition, there's built in access to Netflix, Amazon, Youtube, etc.
As for the Cable-provided set top boxes, yuck. None have the flexibility of what the Tivo can do, including the ability to transfer some shows to your PC. Not much access to anything outside what the Cable provider decides you should have, which is usually the on demand stuff and..uhm..that's it.
My Tivo HD is almost 3 years old and it's working well so far (well enough I'm considering upgrading the internal disk). I'm looking forward to the next box to see what its capabilities are.
In order to unlock the screen, you can use a gesture to unlock it. About 75% of the time, it works fine but the remainder of the time the gesture is not recorded correctly. There's a few games (word search) that often have issues marking an entire word.
Only owning an iPod Touch, it's hard for me to do a side-by-side comparison since I don't do the same things with the droid as I do the touch. All that aside, I love the Droid.
While buying out the top 20 developers (and I find it unlikely they could in the first place) wouldn't necessarily kill PostgreSQL, it would hamper development until the next 20 developers get up to speed with the code. Imagine what would happen if Microsoft were to buy out the top 20 Linux kernel developers - Linux wouldn't be dead, but it certainly would be stagnant for a while. There's also the real possibility of major changes, since the next group of developers would have a different way of doing things and different goals for the project.
Sorry, I have an iPod Touch and a HTC Hero - and while the latter isn't bad (and would seem amazing if you hadn't used an iProduct) it doesn't come anywhere near the iProduct for slickness and consistency. Principle mistake: if you're making a touch screen/accelerometer device, make it a touch screen/accelerometer device - don't randomly have some functions on the screen and others on physical back/menu/zoom buttons or trackballs. Make sure that all applications can be satisfactorily controlled by touch alone.
Oh, and a multitouch interface should be sufficiently responsive to give the illusion that you are actually dragging objects with your finger. In Android, you make a gesture and then something happens. Fail.
Well, I have an iPod Touch and a Droid. I don't experience any of the problems you mentioned, and multitouch is turned off (by default) because Apple has a patent for it.
As for OS upgrades, how's that Apple G5 desktop running Snow Leopard?
Right now it's all speculation if there will even be a tablet, but how we do know if Apple doesn't come up with something better. e-Readers use e-ink because it meets their ultra low power requirements. But the drawback is lack of color.
e-ink is used because the display is the closest thing to paper. Sure it uses less power, but it looks good in any lighting condition that you'd normally read a book at without making you go crosseyed while trying to read it.
Ah, but there are other big drains on tablets that don't necessarily exist on e-readers. The more powerful CPU and graphics chip plus the storage. They can be slow for e-readers because it doesn't matter thus being very low in power usage. On tablets, you want the responsiveness and capacity.
Suspend mode on my netbook will drain the battery in 3-4 days while I'd probably get 3-4 weeks in suspend mode on the kindle.
Interesting if they do use that. Though this brings up my other issue with the tablet vs kindle (okay, I'm biased) and that is the kindle lasts forever on a battery charge - I last charged mine last week leaving the cell service on and getting a newspaper daily and it's only 50% drained. With the cell turned off, I could easily go three weeks or more on a single charge. A tablet in kindle-only mode might get that, but if you're using it as a MID, the battery life is probably a lot less.
Then again, if you're only carrying one device (the tablet) instead of two (MID and kindle), then you have more space to lug along bigger batteries.:)
I think it's safe to say the Apple Fanboys have high hopes, but Apple has a number of things going against them:
1) Android quickly catching up with Apple in terms of usefulness and it's working across a large set of diverse devices. ChromeOS will only make Apple's problem worse 2) If the expected price of $1000 is to be believed, it'll be a real turn off for anyone looking for a low cost MID. You can buy two (or three) netbooks for that price. 3) Let's be clear, if it's not e-ink or similar, this is in no way competition for the Kindle/Nook/Sony eReader
How well does it work? I have both the standard application and a third party app (TouchDown) installed on my Droid. I like Touchdown better as it supports the security models and offers a number of features that the native exchange client doesn't (like signatures).
The base e-mail app is quite good. Where Android is really shining for me is the integration. Contacts from gmail, exchange, and facebook get unified in one contact list. When you edit an individual contact, you see information for each of the sources, but if gmail and exchange have the same phone number for a contact, you'll only see it once. Each phone number can be called with one touch either from your cell phone # or google voice. The gesture-based screen locking is quite good and better than having to type in a password every time.
There's a few things the blackberry does better, but they mostly rely on the fact there's a separate blackberry server. For example, I can have messages sent to the blackberry with level 1 notification and have the blackberry treat that message differently. I can also set up pattern matching to select messages I *don't* want forwarded to the blackberry, but want to remain in outlook. The droid (and touchdown) isn't able to do either of these things yet, though that seems to be more a limitation of activesync than android itself since I understand the iPhone has the same problems.
Going to a solar/fuel cell economy allows for portions of the country (southwest) to be blanketed with solar panels, taking water from the Colorado river and cracking it into hydrogen. You can then transport that hydrogen across the country in presumably a more efficient manner than running power lines hundreds of miles. Since the energy that a house or city needs is already available, no new nuclear plants (or major electrical generation of any kind) would be needed.
To say that solar is expensive is currently true. The hope (and it's starting to happen) is that the per-watt cost of solar drops as there's new advancements and production of cells ramps up.
- 1/2 the country doesn't believe what scientists tell them: evolution, global warming, birth control/STDs. Why believe them now?
- No new nuclear plants have been built in 30-ish years.
- uranium was thought to be pretty much endless, so why do more research into thorium? (yes, U is getting in short supply now)
- nuclear power still has the stigma of 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl attached to it. It'll be tough to get public opinion on that changed, especially with advances in fuel cell and solar technologies
My kindle has a soft leather cover. I usually keep it on so the kindle itself is protected though I sometimes take it out.
I don't read pages two-at-a-time, so having two pages in front of me is not a big concern. Much like flipping a page or moving my eyes, I just press a button and get the next page. The time to get the next page is about the same as flipping a page.
Seriously, go find someone that has an ebook reader and try it out.
If 1984 were in the public domain, you may have a point. It isn't, so you don't.
Public domain books can be loaded on to the Kindle (and other e-readers) outside of the bookstore and it would likely be difficult for Amazon to know or remove books loaded in that manner.
I've had books published (one even reviewed here), but that was almost 10 years ago, so YMMV (but IAAA (I Am An Author)):
How much of a markup does a brick and morter store that sells dead tree books have? I've heard that it's about 70%, so what's their problem, anyway?
It's usually on the order of 100% markup (so a $10 book from the publisher goes for $20). I should also note that authors get a percentage of the publisher sales price, so if a book sells for 30% off or at full price, the publisher and author receive the same amount.
Despite all the problems with the Kindle -- poor PDF support, low-contrast screen, Orwellian fears..
Having owned a Kindle 2 for the past two months, the PDF support doesn't bother me (and is apparently fixed in the latest release). The screen and form factor are FAR better than I thought they'd be. It's easy to read in just about any light, and it's as easy to hold as a thin paperback book. As for the Orwellian fears, I have to admit the first thing I'm doing with the Kindle is getting books I already own, but want to reread so I can donate the book to the library or some charitable organization - did I mention I have a LOT of books?. As long as the Kindle and my e-books will be around for a long time, it doesn't matter if I have the physical book anymore. So I'm more worried about Amazon going out of business or getting out of the ebook business and my ebooks become unusable.
First, our infrastructure in a lot of places is in dire need of repair. Use money to stimulate that kind of infrastructure improvements and get money and jobs going again.
Second, you do need to put signs up so that it's known where the money for this is coming from. People see the government is paying for the improvements and constituents see that money is being sent back to their district.
In the case of putting up signs advertising that this is paid for with stimulus money, the cost of the signs is likely minimal compared to the cost of the project (certainly not a $20k/$50k balance). In my area, a multi-mile stretch of highway was repaved and there were two signs, one on each direction of the highway at the start of the repaving area. I find it highly unlikely that those two signs cost anywhere near what it would cost to pave 1 yard of highway.
If they improve their standing in the advertised area enough and they gain $100k in new business as a result, everyone wins. The charity gets $20k, the company is up $30k.
Oh, and don't forget that the $70k is a tax writeoff. $20k for the donation and $50k for business expenses.
Not much in the way of tricks (a few extra repository lines). Debian backports (and I'm sure Ubuntu backports as well) are versioned such that when you upgrade to a new Debian release, the backport is replaced with the correct version.
- we used to have a prof who had chalk in the right hand, and an eraser in the left. He'd start writing and erasing almost simultaneously, so you had to be really quick to write down notes. At least a powerpoint can be downloaded and viewed later.
- Am I the only one that had the slide projectors in grade school? That had a record or cassette along with it that would ding when you went to the next slide? Or am I just showing my age?
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Well, TicketMaster *is* the box office.
Uhh, ok
I think you missed the point.
The scalpers are scooping up tickets and skewing the price. MrKaos pointed out that out:
With scalpers in action, he's unable to get tickets anymore and is forced to use scalpers. Without them, he's able to get his tickets directly even a few days after they went on sale.
The argument is Tivo vs. standard STB, and the STB doesn't allow you to download anything. If you want to extend this to MythTV, submit your own story to Slashdot.
Right or wrong, Tivo has to abide by the CableCard rules, and one of those covers transfer of shows.
With Comcast, the CableCard was free, and I'm paying $4.95 for my CC with FIOS. As for the monthly fees, they're about $8/mo if you pre pay for 3 years. In addition, there's built in access to Netflix, Amazon, Youtube, etc.
As for the Cable-provided set top boxes, yuck. None have the flexibility of what the Tivo can do, including the ability to transfer some shows to your PC. Not much access to anything outside what the Cable provider decides you should have, which is usually the on demand stuff and..uhm..that's it.
My Tivo HD is almost 3 years old and it's working well so far (well enough I'm considering upgrading the internal disk). I'm looking forward to the next box to see what its capabilities are.
As a Droid user, I think I can answer this.
In order to unlock the screen, you can use a gesture to unlock it. About 75% of the time, it works fine but the remainder of the time the gesture is not recorded correctly. There's a few games (word search) that often have issues marking an entire word.
Only owning an iPod Touch, it's hard for me to do a side-by-side comparison since I don't do the same things with the droid as I do the touch. All that aside, I love the Droid.
Ogod. I almost forgot about BIFF. Almost.
While buying out the top 20 developers (and I find it unlikely they could in the first place) wouldn't necessarily kill PostgreSQL, it would hamper development until the next 20 developers get up to speed with the code. Imagine what would happen if Microsoft were to buy out the top 20 Linux kernel developers - Linux wouldn't be dead, but it certainly would be stagnant for a while. There's also the real possibility of major changes, since the next group of developers would have a different way of doing things and different goals for the project.
Sorry, I have an iPod Touch and a HTC Hero - and while the latter isn't bad (and would seem amazing if you hadn't used an iProduct) it doesn't come anywhere near the iProduct for slickness and consistency. Principle mistake: if you're making a touch screen/accelerometer device, make it a touch screen/accelerometer device - don't randomly have some functions on the screen and others on physical back/menu/zoom buttons or trackballs. Make sure that all applications can be satisfactorily controlled by touch alone.
Oh, and a multitouch interface should be sufficiently responsive to give the illusion that you are actually dragging objects with your finger. In Android, you make a gesture and then something happens. Fail.
Well, I have an iPod Touch and a Droid. I don't experience any of the problems you mentioned, and multitouch is turned off (by default) because Apple has a patent for it.
As for OS upgrades, how's that Apple G5 desktop running Snow Leopard?
Right now it's all speculation if there will even be a tablet, but how we do know if Apple doesn't come up with something better. e-Readers use e-ink because it meets their ultra low power requirements. But the drawback is lack of color.
e-ink is used because the display is the closest thing to paper. Sure it uses less power, but it looks good in any lighting condition that you'd normally read a book at without making you go crosseyed while trying to read it.
Ah, but there are other big drains on tablets that don't necessarily exist on e-readers. The more powerful CPU and graphics chip plus the storage. They can be slow for e-readers because it doesn't matter thus being very low in power usage. On tablets, you want the responsiveness and capacity.
Suspend mode on my netbook will drain the battery in 3-4 days while I'd probably get 3-4 weeks in suspend mode on the kindle.
Interesting if they do use that. Though this brings up my other issue with the tablet vs kindle (okay, I'm biased) and that is the kindle lasts forever on a battery charge - I last charged mine last week leaving the cell service on and getting a newspaper daily and it's only 50% drained. With the cell turned off, I could easily go three weeks or more on a single charge. A tablet in kindle-only mode might get that, but if you're using it as a MID, the battery life is probably a lot less.
Then again, if you're only carrying one device (the tablet) instead of two (MID and kindle), then you have more space to lug along bigger batteries. :)
I think it's safe to say the Apple Fanboys have high hopes, but Apple has a number of things going against them:
1) Android quickly catching up with Apple in terms of usefulness and it's working across a large set of diverse devices. ChromeOS will only make Apple's problem worse
2) If the expected price of $1000 is to be believed, it'll be a real turn off for anyone looking for a low cost MID. You can buy two (or three) netbooks for that price.
3) Let's be clear, if it's not e-ink or similar, this is in no way competition for the Kindle/Nook/Sony eReader
Separate server? No. Works with ActiveSync
How well does it work? I have both the standard application and a third party app (TouchDown) installed on my Droid. I like Touchdown better as it supports the security models and offers a number of features that the native exchange client doesn't (like signatures).
The base e-mail app is quite good. Where Android is really shining for me is the integration. Contacts from gmail, exchange, and facebook get unified in one contact list. When you edit an individual contact, you see information for each of the sources, but if gmail and exchange have the same phone number for a contact, you'll only see it once. Each phone number can be called with one touch either from your cell phone # or google voice. The gesture-based screen locking is quite good and better than having to type in a password every time.
There's a few things the blackberry does better, but they mostly rely on the fact there's a separate blackberry server. For example, I can have messages sent to the blackberry with level 1 notification and have the blackberry treat that message differently. I can also set up pattern matching to select messages I *don't* want forwarded to the blackberry, but want to remain in outlook. The droid (and touchdown) isn't able to do either of these things yet, though that seems to be more a limitation of activesync than android itself since I understand the iPhone has the same problems.
And yet I don't see anyone protesting *for* nuclear power in their backyard.
Going to a solar/fuel cell economy allows for portions of the country (southwest) to be blanketed with solar panels, taking water from the Colorado river and cracking it into hydrogen. You can then transport that hydrogen across the country in presumably a more efficient manner than running power lines hundreds of miles. Since the energy that a house or city needs is already available, no new nuclear plants (or major electrical generation of any kind) would be needed.
To say that solar is expensive is currently true. The hope (and it's starting to happen) is that the per-watt cost of solar drops as there's new advancements and production of cells ramps up.
- 1/2 the country doesn't believe what scientists tell them: evolution, global warming, birth control/STDs. Why believe them now?
- No new nuclear plants have been built in 30-ish years.
- uranium was thought to be pretty much endless, so why do more research into thorium? (yes, U is getting in short supply now)
- nuclear power still has the stigma of 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl attached to it. It'll be tough to get public opinion on that changed, especially with advances in fuel cell and solar technologies
My kindle has a soft leather cover. I usually keep it on so the kindle itself is protected though I sometimes take it out.
I don't read pages two-at-a-time, so having two pages in front of me is not a big concern. Much like flipping a page or moving my eyes, I just press a button and get the next page. The time to get the next page is about the same as flipping a page.
Seriously, go find someone that has an ebook reader and try it out.
If 1984 were in the public domain, you may have a point. It isn't, so you don't.
Public domain books can be loaded on to the Kindle (and other e-readers) outside of the bookstore and it would likely be difficult for Amazon to know or remove books loaded in that manner.
The recent software update for the Kindle apparently allows it to read PDF natively, though I've never had a use for it.
As for open document formats, it supports MOBI, TXT...aww heck, it's right on the first page of the review! Go read it.
I've had books published (one even reviewed here), but that was almost 10 years ago, so YMMV (but IAAA (I Am An Author)):
How much of a markup does a brick and morter store that sells dead tree books have? I've heard that it's about 70%, so what's their problem, anyway?
It's usually on the order of 100% markup (so a $10 book from the publisher goes for $20). I should also note that authors get a percentage of the publisher sales price, so if a book sells for 30% off or at full price, the publisher and author receive the same amount.
Despite all the problems with the Kindle -- poor PDF support, low-contrast screen, Orwellian fears..
Having owned a Kindle 2 for the past two months, the PDF support doesn't bother me (and is apparently fixed in the latest release). The screen and form factor are FAR better than I thought they'd be. It's easy to read in just about any light, and it's as easy to hold as a thin paperback book. As for the Orwellian fears, I have to admit the first thing I'm doing with the Kindle is getting books I already own, but want to reread so I can donate the book to the library or some charitable organization - did I mention I have a LOT of books?. As long as the Kindle and my e-books will be around for a long time, it doesn't matter if I have the physical book anymore. So I'm more worried about Amazon going out of business or getting out of the ebook business and my ebooks become unusable.
The recovery is twofold.
First, our infrastructure in a lot of places is in dire need of repair. Use money to stimulate that kind of infrastructure improvements and get money and jobs going again.
Second, you do need to put signs up so that it's known where the money for this is coming from. People see the government is paying for the improvements and constituents see that money is being sent back to their district.
In the case of putting up signs advertising that this is paid for with stimulus money, the cost of the signs is likely minimal compared to the cost of the project (certainly not a $20k/$50k balance). In my area, a multi-mile stretch of highway was repaved and there were two signs, one on each direction of the highway at the start of the repaving area. I find it highly unlikely that those two signs cost anywhere near what it would cost to pave 1 yard of highway.
It depends.
If they improve their standing in the advertised area enough and they gain $100k in new business as a result, everyone wins. The charity gets $20k, the company is up $30k.
Oh, and don't forget that the $70k is a tax writeoff. $20k for the donation and $50k for business expenses.
Not much in the way of tricks (a few extra repository lines). Debian backports (and I'm sure Ubuntu backports as well) are versioned such that when you upgrade to a new Debian release, the backport is replaced with the correct version.
I see not much has changed:
- we used to have a prof who had chalk in the right hand, and an eraser in the left. He'd start writing and erasing almost simultaneously, so you had to be really quick to write down notes. At least a powerpoint can be downloaded and viewed later.
- Am I the only one that had the slide projectors in grade school? That had a record or cassette along with it that would ding when you went to the next slide? Or am I just showing my age?