Rubbish. The author will licence their work to be produced as an audiobook, and rightly expect a percentage back from the profits. If you're suggesting that once you've written a book, you lose all rights to it, then I'd counter by saying that the legions of knock-off audio books being sold at very low price (since all they've had to do is find someone with a nice voice and sit them in front of a mic for couple of days) would mean authors would not sell many paper books. End result? Less books get written.
The problem with your (fairly accurate, although I have heard Kindle 2 TTS output and it's not awful) assessment is that it's subject to change. Who's to say that Kindle 3 or 4 won't have much better TTS, able to convey more natural speech and even emotion based on context? There's a lot of very clever research going on in this area already.
I can easily imagine a future where the device is much better at reading in a more human, natural form, and you can buy Kindle celebrity voices (much like you can for your Sat Nav) to read to you. Could be a nice earner for Morgan Freeman...
Aaah, there's gotta be a site dedicated to this. There's various forums for similarly obsessive stuff like Every Day Carry of microtools and stuff (edcforums, multitool.org, candlepowerforums etc).
My best firmware flash was the ECU in my Skoda Superb 1.9TDI. Up from stock 150BHP to 193BHP plus 312ft/lbs torque. I did have help with that one, though...!
I had four freaking years uptime on a Novell box at my old job. For 3 of those, it wasn't doing anything useful, I just didn't want to turn it off. It's probably still there, clocking up the years...
This is a pretty good point. I don't expect it to last too long now they're 100% Lenovo but this is why the Thinkpads are great for corporate use: they're easy to field service, parts are cheap, and they have put some thought into making their products robust: my old X61s had *drainage holes* so that liquid spilt on the keyboard could exit without causing too much damage - and this is on an ultralight.
"Designed by engineers", not "engineered by designers" comes to mind...
If I were to compare your comment to a car, it would be a BMW 120D. More environmentally friendly than a Prius, better MPG, handles, practical but destined to be overlooked as despite it being bang on target, people just want Teh Shin3y and damn the specs...
You know, when they first announced this, I was in complete agreement. I was picturing some new super-battery that wrapped itself around the internals of the Mac making use of every last bit of space. Something like an armoured gel pack type of battery, I guess.
Now iFixit does a tear down and it's a regular looking rectangular lump. Can't really see how adding an access panel to it would be all *that* hard, although having said all this I don't have a major issue with it as:
1) I expect the battery to last for the year of the warranty
2) It looks simple enough to swap out myself with a screwdriver when the warranty's gone
Things I Have Done To My 2000UKP MacBook Pro Computer That I Couldn't Afford To Replace Anymore Whilst Drunk:
Replaced the stock hard disk with a larger one
Taken the screen apart and fitted a sheet of overhead transparency paper with the old Apple rainbow colours to make the Apple logo light up like an old Powerbook's
I'm also a big fan of flashing the firmware of anything you can get your hands on whilst under the influence of a 4 pack of beer. Nothing beats the buzz of half-assed hardware hacking!
Honestly, you won't have a problem with these things. They're like a transparent connection. No lag, jitter, interference etc. I've got cheap Comtrend 200meg ones in the house and once you've set them up, you can forget them - it's just like a wired (obviously non gigabit!) connection.
I use cheap, eBay-sourced Comtrend units, that cost me about 35UKP for a pair. They operate at 200 meg, and are easily fast enough to stream HD content. Faster than 802.11n, too. Plus they're rock solid reliable and need zero config, unless you want to configure more than 2 in a LAN (they have internal webservers where you can do this). They're great.
...and build that adaptor into the iPhone, so you don't have to carry another adaptor. You could have it accessible via a socket on the base. Oh, wait...
I'd put money on the reason Apple have done this (and the charging "OK" signal for the iPhone 3G is not just a wired data pin, it's quite a complex spec of resistance over multiple pins) is because the Macbook Air would spontaneously catch fire or something if you tried to pull >500ma out of its sockets...
And HTC also have a connector that's very similar, but not identical to, mini-USB. This allows both a standard mini USB cable to sync and charge, and also a not-so-standard version with an extra couple of pins to fit which covers headset functionality.
As did my P3300. A year or two back, when I was actively involved in xda-developers.com I do recall certain firmware revisions where charging was *not* supported when connected to a dumb charger like a car cigarette lighter->USB lead. The software in the phone does make a difference as to whether it wants the "dumb pin" connected.
WTF has Firewire got to do with anti-piracy? No DRM there.
FW cables and connectors come in two sorts: the full-fat, standard 6 pin one (4 pins for data, two for power) and small form-factor 4 pin (4 for data, no power). The latter is designed for use where space is an issue - e.g. on handheld camcorders. They are electrically compatible: i.e. cables with 4 pin on one end an 6 pin on the other are commonplace - you'll have got one in the box with your camcorder. (Passive) adaptors are freely available.
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Rubbish. The author will licence their work to be produced as an audiobook, and rightly expect a percentage back from the profits. If you're suggesting that once you've written a book, you lose all rights to it, then I'd counter by saying that the legions of knock-off audio books being sold at very low price (since all they've had to do is find someone with a nice voice and sit them in front of a mic for couple of days) would mean authors would not sell many paper books. End result? Less books get written.
The problem with your (fairly accurate, although I have heard Kindle 2 TTS output and it's not awful) assessment is that it's subject to change. Who's to say that Kindle 3 or 4 won't have much better TTS, able to convey more natural speech and even emotion based on context? There's a lot of very clever research going on in this area already.
I can easily imagine a future where the device is much better at reading in a more human, natural form, and you can buy Kindle celebrity voices (much like you can for your Sat Nav) to read to you. Could be a nice earner for Morgan Freeman...
Can we adopt the:
4) Also, fuck you
as our new group meme?
Yes. And now they're angry...
"both work very well for reading but they are not quite reliable for writing."
Cool! Where do I sign up?
Remember Angelfire?
Were you 12 at the time?
Aaah, there's gotta be a site dedicated to this. There's various forums for similarly obsessive stuff like Every Day Carry of microtools and stuff (edcforums, multitool.org, candlepowerforums etc).
My best firmware flash was the ECU in my Skoda Superb 1.9TDI. Up from stock 150BHP to 193BHP plus 312ft/lbs torque. I did have help with that one, though...!
I am in the back seat of a cop car, you insensitive clod!
I had four freaking years uptime on a Novell box at my old job. For 3 of those, it wasn't doing anything useful, I just didn't want to turn it off. It's probably still there, clocking up the years...
This is a pretty good point. I don't expect it to last too long now they're 100% Lenovo but this is why the Thinkpads are great for corporate use: they're easy to field service, parts are cheap, and they have put some thought into making their products robust: my old X61s had *drainage holes* so that liquid spilt on the keyboard could exit without causing too much damage - and this is on an ultralight.
"Designed by engineers", not "engineered by designers" comes to mind...
I suspect the only reason that they'll let you through with that one is that no TSA employee wants to take home a knifeless Leatherman.
If I were to compare your comment to a car, it would be a BMW 120D. More environmentally friendly than a Prius, better MPG, handles, practical but destined to be overlooked as despite it being bang on target, people just want Teh Shin3y and damn the specs...
Well, in 3 years I'd be interested in buying one off eBay with a dead battery and doing a relatively simple replacement myself for cheap.
You know, when they first announced this, I was in complete agreement. I was picturing some new super-battery that wrapped itself around the internals of the Mac making use of every last bit of space. Something like an armoured gel pack type of battery, I guess.
Now iFixit does a tear down and it's a regular looking rectangular lump. Can't really see how adding an access panel to it would be all *that* hard, although having said all this I don't have a major issue with it as:
1) I expect the battery to last for the year of the warranty
2) It looks simple enough to swap out myself with a screwdriver when the warranty's gone
Things I Have Done To My 2000UKP MacBook Pro Computer That I Couldn't Afford To Replace Anymore Whilst Drunk:
Replaced the stock hard disk with a larger one
Taken the screen apart and fitted a sheet of overhead transparency paper with the old Apple rainbow colours to make the Apple logo light up like an old Powerbook's
I'm also a big fan of flashing the firmware of anything you can get your hands on whilst under the influence of a 4 pack of beer. Nothing beats the buzz of half-assed hardware hacking!
Honestly, you won't have a problem with these things. They're like a transparent connection. No lag, jitter, interference etc. I've got cheap Comtrend 200meg ones in the house and once you've set them up, you can forget them - it's just like a wired (obviously non gigabit!) connection.
I use cheap, eBay-sourced Comtrend units, that cost me about 35UKP for a pair. They operate at 200 meg, and are easily fast enough to stream HD content. Faster than 802.11n, too. Plus they're rock solid reliable and need zero config, unless you want to configure more than 2 in a LAN (they have internal webservers where you can do this). They're great.
I still have to mail everyone using Lotus Notes, you insensitive clod!
...and build that adaptor into the iPhone, so you don't have to carry another adaptor. You could have it accessible via a socket on the base. Oh, wait...
In theory, theory and practice are the same thing.
In practice, they're not.
I'd put money on the reason Apple have done this (and the charging "OK" signal for the iPhone 3G is not just a wired data pin, it's quite a complex spec of resistance over multiple pins) is because the Macbook Air would spontaneously catch fire or something if you tried to pull >500ma out of its sockets...
And HTC also have a connector that's very similar, but not identical to, mini-USB. This allows both a standard mini USB cable to sync and charge, and also a not-so-standard version with an extra couple of pins to fit which covers headset functionality.
As did my P3300. A year or two back, when I was actively involved in xda-developers.com I do recall certain firmware revisions where charging was *not* supported when connected to a dumb charger like a car cigarette lighter->USB lead. The software in the phone does make a difference as to whether it wants the "dumb pin" connected.
WTF has Firewire got to do with anti-piracy? No DRM there.
FW cables and connectors come in two sorts: the full-fat, standard 6 pin one (4 pins for data, two for power) and small form-factor 4 pin (4 for data, no power). The latter is designed for use where space is an issue - e.g. on handheld camcorders. They are electrically compatible: i.e. cables with 4 pin on one end an 6 pin on the other are commonplace - you'll have got one in the box with your camcorder. (Passive) adaptors are freely available.