Odd. So do you think that people shouldn't be allowed to talk to other people on airplanes? It should be no easier or harder to block out than people talking on phones. Or is the problem that you can't listen to both ends of the conversation so it's no fun to eavesdrop when somebody is on the phone?
1) People talk at far higher than conversational levels into a cell phone. 2) Just looking at it statistically, most people don't talk on a plane because they often don't know their rowmates. Having a cell phone makes it guaranteed that many people will talk nonstop. 3) Trust me, I don't want to listen to the inane crap that most people will gab about while on a plane.
I'm thinking about the 5 hour cross country flight, sitting next to the the ass that is either so stupid that he can't figure out that a $.50 pair of ear plugs would solve his problems,
Game theory, buddy. You making your incessant inane calls gives you slight benefit while annoying the hell out of about 100 people around you. Thus, not worth it. If everyone talks constantly on their phones during a long flight it's worse for everyone.
or is so self centered that he thinks everybody else should modify their behavior in public places because trying to force his desired behavior on everyone else
It seems to be the desired behavior of the masses - I've never seen anyone who enjoyed listening to a cacophony of cell calls - so that's democracy for you. Forcing societal norms on assholes since 1776.
seems like a better idea than putting in a $.50 pair of ear plugs.
Sure does, that's not particularly comfortable. I don't want to have to stick shit in my ears for 5 hours because you can't shut the **** up for 10 consecutive minutes.
You're not so damned important that you can't wait until you get on the ground. In the rare case that someone is, their company will reimburse them for the exorbitant back-of-the-seat phone.
I just wish that airlines would start offering free ear plugs, so we could all stop listening to the incessant whining of a bunch of intellectually challenged self centered ass holes.
The self-centered one is the dipshit who thinks his desires are more important than those of the 100 people around him. That would be you.
The problem then is the contractural requirement that iTunes customers can only purchase from the iTunes store for their own country.
But there's no requirement to purchase from iTunes at all, and Apple doesn't have a monopoly on 1) music, or even 2) online music. This can onlt be considered a monopoly if you restrict the domain of competition to iTunes itself, which is of course an Apple product. Not to mention which, one can easily burn/re-rip anyway to get music in whatever format you desire. To me, this is pointless.
This has the makings of another big problem for the music labels / publishers and sweet music for Apple. Bets on if they have code tested and ready for when the EU comission strikes down those sections of the contract and Apple is forced to convert to a single EU iTunes. You know, I wonder if, somewhere in the background, someone from Apple was quietly lobbying the EU for this probe...
Just crazy enough to be true. It's certainly the kind of thing Steve would do.
Heh. As you can see, I'm not quite halfway through San Andreas. Looks like it gets a little more fun! I haven't made much mission progress, it's been too much fun exterminating the Ballers.
That was an April Fool's joke, I thought... Slashdot takes 4/1 fairly far every year;)
Yeah, maybe I'm pretty nerdy,but when the Slashdotit ratings were coming up as Avagadro's number and Faraday's constant (not to mention Jenny 867-5309), it was pretty clearly a joke.
"The mayor does not support any video game where you earn points for injuring or killing police officers."
Now I haven't played all the GTA games, but I've played a fair number of them, and I can't recall a mission that required me to kill a cop to pass. Am I remembering wrong? There was the one in San Andreas where I waste a bunch of National Guard I suppose, so perhaps that's semantics, but it wasn't cops. Anyone know of a cop-killing mission?
You mean you never glance down at the clock or the radio, or even your fuel gauge or speedometer? Most of us don't have a HUD.
Not much. I don't need to check the gas level much, and that's something I do before I move the car. The speedometer is designed to be just below your sightline on the road and require a glance of less than a third of a second. And, if you're any kind of decent driver, you should probably know about how fast you're going anyway.
. I can feel around for the window defroster button for a few seconds while not looking away from the road, but my mind is giving a lot of attention to remembering where the button is and what it feels like.
Best done while the car's not moving.
As with many things, it tends to boil down to using good judgment.
It does, but for city drivers a digital interface can't be used that often. It's about judgement, but if you exercise good judgement you can't usually use it. A better design would allow more functionality with less distraction, and I think that's what the thread is about - the BMW's distraction/functionality ratio is poor.
but after a week or two I could navigate the menus quickly and without fuss, and while mostly keeping my eyes on the road
As someone who drives near vehicles that might be BMWs, I have a problem with that 'mostly' bit. Any system that requires you to not look at the road to use it is broken.
Thirdly, about the criticisms that it's unsafe to use while driving? No shit sherlock. Neither is your cell phone. Or putting on makeup. Or shaving. Or eating lunch. But people do those without blaming the manufacturers or restaurants or stores that sell the necessary equipment.
Slight problem with that analogy: cell phones, makup and lunch are generally designed to be used in places that AREN'T CARS. Your iDrive isn't. There is a 100% chance that the driver is actually in the car while using it. Therefore, it should be designed to be used without looking.
Most treadmills will do at least 10% (incline? grade? I don't know), the good ones will go to 15. Unless you're trail running, you're not running up 20-30% grades. There are damn few roads over 18%, and most of the time that's for very short distances.
Indeed I am trail running! That's another thing I don't get on a treadmill: Dirt. In any event, I've never seen the point of paying well over a thousand dollars (with the incline capabilities you mention, I imagine) for something I can do for free by simply finding a trail. So we have: free and scenic, or expensive and boring. Gimme a pair of shoes and a trail any day.
It was supposed to be a unix clone, but actually came out useful in the end.
Well, I know Linux isn't particularly useful NOW, so I can only assume that you are from the future. Is your name Marty? Would you care to tell me who wins the Super Bowl in 2035?
4 Degrees? haven't you been to the gym, or watched Rocky IV? They go a bit more than 4 degrees. While I admit that actual running on actual hills it a lot harder on you, if you happen to live where there only is flat land, then the treadmill may be the best hill you have.
I don't run indoors. Too damned depressing. Also, all the Rocky movies after the first sucked. And I do live in a fairly hilly area, with some 20-30 degree hills, and I haven't seen the treadmill yet that can do that.
The person in charge of the project or division or whatever should have killed the feature when confronted with the reality that it couldn't be done properly.
Problem is by then, the decision makers lacked the creative vision to see WHY it sucked.
If it has the battery power to exchange crippled songs, it surely has the battery power to sync over wi-fi. The radio only needs to be powered up for the duration of the transfer anyway.
I wouldn't take that as an assumption - with these huge 30GB drives these days, syncing could involve a LOT of songs, whereas sharing is a song, or a handful of songs. One might suggest allowing limited syncing if there's only a difference of a few songs, but we'd be back at that lesson of "do it well, or not at all."
For other applications, a few other posters in this thread have posted lists of great ideas, so I'll just have to ask you to refer to them. One good one is listening to internet radio stations; not everything on the internet requires a web browser and keyboard/mouse.
I'd say that's the same lesson that Apple follows in not listening to most of the ideas of their fans, as they'd result in a completely unusable Frankenpod, with wifi, internet, FM, satellite radio, a phone, a PDA, internet radio, a remote control, and a tazer. I think the best idea here is for them to work on making a good music player. Period. Anyway, most people don't listen to internet radio (the reasons why are irrelevant to MS), so the payback on such a feature would be minimal.
Yes, I know this is Slashdot. But I'm a geek and a passionate marathon runner as well...
There's a big difference between running on a treadmill and on a road (besides the boring factor): the relative wind resistance you experience when you move has a very significant impact on your speed. A rule of thumb is that you have to subtract about 1 km/h to your treadmill speed in order to have an idea on how fast you can go on the road.
I run as well (and cycle), and there's just no comparison. Treadmill surfaces are a little bouncy and provide some restorative force. There's no hills (those little inclining treadmills at 4 degrees aren't like a real nasty hill. And there's the wind resistance as well.
Although after yesterday - biking at 15-25mph into another 25mph of headwind - I'd have settled for a 1km/h hit. I was getting about a 12 kph hit. Ugh.
It wasn't even that good an idea. It was a novel idea, I'll admit, but just not very well thought out.
Well, yeah...it's in that "thought out" part where the up-fuckery occurred.;)
1) How many people actually want to share music with their friends? Not that many, except teenagers. Adults using these while exercising, at work, on the airplane, etc. have little to no desire to share music with random passersby. But I can see how it might be an occasionally useful feature...
Well, for one, teenagers - and I'd count twentysomethings there too - is probably most of the market for this thing. So a lot. But in addition, I'd bet that a certain voyeuristic quality would persuade others to peruse the music of their neighbors. I'd do it, and I'm a teenager twice over.
2)...if it didn't have stupid limits on it. The whole 3x3 thing just kills the idea. If you can't implement the feature without this stupid restriction because of real legal liability, then just throw in the towel and don't bother.
Yeah, I think that's pretty much the core of the upfuckery. We have to remember though, that MS isn't a single monolithic entity. It's a lot of different people. And what I bet happened was that a group of developers came up with a great idea and implemented it into a good design, only to have legal or whatever shit on it due to piracy fears or lawsuits or whatever. They may have feared that the studios would have killed their goals for an iTMS clone if they tried unlimited sharing. What we see was probably the neutered compromise that resulted.
3) If they just *had* to have the Wi-Fi built-in, they could have at least made more use of it. Why didn't they allow wireless synchronization with your computer, instead of having to mess around with USB cables? Major oversight. They could have also had it access the internet. All the hardware's there for these things.
For the first part...I don't think anybody knows why they didn't do it unless it wouldn't have the battery storage to power syncing over wifi. As for accessing the internet, interesting...but it has no keypad, so they may have thought why bother?
Lots of people have Cingular. I have it and I don't think it sucks.
I know lots of people who plan to buy this thing just for visual voice mail.
Well, that's the thing - there are places where Cingular is good, and places where it sucks. Coverage-wise. It's just part of why it's hard to break in to the cell phone business, especially tying yourself to a single carrier. First, no carrier has good coverage everywhere. Second, most people at any time are locked into a contract. So at any given time, most people simply can't or won't just go out and get the new iPhone.
Compare to the iPod - everybody has music, there's no adoption barrier there.
I think the WiFi was a good idea, but it doesn't have the sexiness or ease of use of the iPod.
Well, that's Microsoft for you. Even when they come up with a good idea and are first to market with it - and that's rare for them these days - they completely f*** it up.
Namely nine out of every ten Apple devotees who love their Macs and have loved them for years.
By definition, that's about whatever their market share was during the dark days of 1996ish, which is around 2%. That will not equate with success. Need a lot more people.
Oh, and probably 3 out of ten iPod owners who think it would be cool to have their iPod and phone all in one.
This is obviously the market they're going for. Problem is, by definition these are people who would need to chuck their current iPod and phone and buy this device. For that reason, I think uptake will be somewhat on the slow side. Additionally, this thing will have to do some seriously good stuff that's more than just a phone and a music player thrown together - that device has been made many times and can now be had rather cheaply. Will the iPhone end up being more than the sum of those two parts? Dunno.
The main obvious problem with the iPhone, of course, is that it's tied to Cingular. And in a lot of the country/world, Cingular sucks. Apple can't do anything about that.
Now, before you go flaming on my for pissing in your kool-aid, I own and like my Powerbook G4, and my iPod mini. And because I already have my iPod mini and a serviceable cell phone, I'm not willing to pay $600 and 2 years of servitude to Cingular just to have a little extra room in my pocket.
Hear hear! I've been using KDE for years, and every once in a while I experiment with Gnome. I like it, but the lack of some utility (quick and simple file operations across SFTP / SMB / local filesystems using Konqueror springs immediately to mind here) always sends me back to KDE
You know, there's no need to use KDE to use Konqueror. I use Konqueror with Fluxbox, for Chrissakes.
You're completely correct about absentee ballots. I've done it that way in the past, and it just makes my point that much more valid. People don't vote because they're lazy, not because they can't.
I'm a little less willing to call someone lazy. I have twins, they're a year old. There are days where I don't have time to take a shit, let alone remember to request an absentee ballot. I plan to do so before the 2008 election, but I forgot to do so in advance of our Senate race this past November. So in effect, you're calling me lazy, and I can tell you there you're way off on that one. I'm simply completely overwhelmed, there's a significant difference.
Seriously. I don't know who gave anyone the impression that virtualization was a performance booster. Management improver? Sure. Stability insurance? Why not? But if you don't get that virtualizing your servers imposes a bit of overhead, then you're probably not paying attention.
Well, I think the point was that he attached an actual number to the amount of the performance hit, which is relevant. That's called research; quantifying and proving that which seems 'obvious'.
Perhaps a PC could be given three prices, so the purchaser has a proper choice:
1. Windows, without promotional crapplets 2. Windows, with promotional crapplets 3. Linux, with drivers
Clearly, options 2 and 3 would be lower cost than option 1
3) will cost at least as much as 1), and both will be more expensive than 2). The subsidized windows machine will cost the least due to the crapplets as well as economy of scale. The Linux machine will probably be more than the crapplet-free Windows machine because a) from what I've heard, selling a few machines without windows doesn't really save the OEM any money from MS, and b) again, the economy of scale with Windows.
So there needs to be a shift in thinking: asking for Linux on a Dell is *not* a way to get a computer from Dell cheaper than they already are. It's possibly a way to get a machine pre-installed with Linux, and probably more importantly to get a machine with components that are guaranteed to work with Linux.
You can't be serious. Voting begins at 0800 or earlier in most places, and runs until well after "normal" work hours. And employers are legally obligated to let you leave the office to go vote any time you choose throughout the day. Saying you "don't have time" to vote is just a bullshit cop-out.
I can be serious. They have to let you go, but it's useless if you don't work partiicularly near where you live. Unfortunately, they don't let you vote just anywhere. My job begins at 0800, so that's not an option, and after work the lines are horrendously long - and I don't have the time to bail out of taking care of my kids to sit in line for 3 hours after work.
The preferred answer is to remember to request an absentee ballot.
Being too lazy to vote is simply that, laziness. It has nothing to do with difficulty getting to the booths because you "work 10+ hours a day and have kids to take care of when they get home".
If you don't have 2 kids under the age of 2, you don't know what the hell you're talking about.
Any politician who thinks he's going to get votes by making a myspace account deserves whatever he gets dished. Reminds me of the clueless professor from Real Genius who thought his students like it when he would "get down, verbally" with them.
Except the myspace demographic seems to now encompass people who will be 18 by Nov 2008. This is a smart move, sadly. And while we may think the people on myspace on pathetic losers, a vote from a pathetic loser is counted the same as those from the urbane sophisticated readers of slashdot.
Reminds me more of MTV's "Rock the Vote" campaign. While they may be often apathetic, teenagers usually have the free time and lack of responsibility needed to actually vote. That's why campaigns heavily hit teenagers (don't have 9-5s yet, usually), soccer-moms (large proportion of stay-at-homes), welfare bums (vote whenever you want when you don't work!), and retireees (ditto). Politicians don't campaign as hard towards people who work 10+ hours a day and have kids to take care of when they get home; when the hell are we going to vote?
Screw tradition, it's time to move the election to the weekend. Allow voting all day Sat. and Sun. Watch voter turnout jump.
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Odd. So do you think that people shouldn't be allowed to talk to other people on airplanes? It should be no easier or harder to block out than people talking on phones. Or is the problem that you can't listen to both ends of the conversation so it's no fun to eavesdrop when somebody is on the phone?
1) People talk at far higher than conversational levels into a cell phone. 2) Just looking at it statistically, most people don't talk on a plane because they often don't know their rowmates. Having a cell phone makes it guaranteed that many people will talk nonstop. 3) Trust me, I don't want to listen to the inane crap that most people will gab about while on a plane.
I'm thinking about the 5 hour cross country flight, sitting next to the the ass that is either so stupid that he can't figure out that a $.50 pair of ear plugs would solve his problems,
Game theory, buddy. You making your incessant inane calls gives you slight benefit while annoying the hell out of about 100 people around you. Thus, not worth it. If everyone talks constantly on their phones during a long flight it's worse for everyone.
or is so self centered that he thinks everybody else should modify their behavior in public places because trying to force his desired behavior on everyone else
It seems to be the desired behavior of the masses - I've never seen anyone who enjoyed listening to a cacophony of cell calls - so that's democracy for you. Forcing societal norms on assholes since 1776.
seems like a better idea than putting in a $.50 pair of ear plugs.
Sure does, that's not particularly comfortable. I don't want to have to stick shit in my ears for 5 hours because you can't shut the **** up for 10 consecutive minutes.
You're not so damned important that you can't wait until you get on the ground. In the rare case that someone is, their company will reimburse them for the exorbitant back-of-the-seat phone.
I just wish that airlines would start offering free ear plugs, so we could all stop listening to the incessant whining of a bunch of intellectually challenged self centered ass holes.
The self-centered one is the dipshit who thinks his desires are more important than those of the 100 people around him. That would be you.
Why does he have to have something replaced that worked just to put up with this shit?
Shhh! If everybody sold good stuff with decent specs and security enabled, you'd be out of business and serving me my lunch. (joking, of course).
Oh, and before I get modded into oblivion by the MS fanboys, look into your hearts. You know I'm right.
Who are you, Darth Vader? Search your feelings, Bill...
The problem then is the contractural requirement that iTunes customers can only purchase from the iTunes store for their own country.
But there's no requirement to purchase from iTunes at all, and Apple doesn't have a monopoly on 1) music, or even 2) online music. This can onlt be considered a monopoly if you restrict the domain of competition to iTunes itself, which is of course an Apple product. Not to mention which, one can easily burn/re-rip anyway to get music in whatever format you desire. To me, this is pointless.
This has the makings of another big problem for the music labels / publishers and sweet music for Apple. Bets on if they have code tested and ready for when the EU comission strikes down those sections of the contract and Apple is forced to convert to a single EU iTunes. You know, I wonder if, somewhere in the background, someone from Apple was quietly lobbying the EU for this probe...
Just crazy enough to be true. It's certainly the kind of thing Steve would do.
Heh. As you can see, I'm not quite halfway through San Andreas. Looks like it gets a little more fun! I haven't made much mission progress, it's been too much fun exterminating the Ballers.
That was an April Fool's joke, I thought... Slashdot takes 4/1 fairly far every year ;)
Yeah, maybe I'm pretty nerdy,but when the Slashdotit ratings were coming up as Avagadro's number and Faraday's constant (not to mention Jenny 867-5309), it was pretty clearly a joke.
"The mayor does not support any video game where you earn points for injuring or killing police officers."
Now I haven't played all the GTA games, but I've played a fair number of them, and I can't recall a mission that required me to kill a cop to pass. Am I remembering wrong? There was the one in San Andreas where I waste a bunch of National Guard I suppose, so perhaps that's semantics, but it wasn't cops. Anyone know of a cop-killing mission?
You mean you never glance down at the clock or the radio, or even your fuel gauge or speedometer? Most of us don't have a HUD.
Not much. I don't need to check the gas level much, and that's something I do before I move the car. The speedometer is designed to be just below your sightline on the road and require a glance of less than a third of a second. And, if you're any kind of decent driver, you should probably know about how fast you're going anyway.
. I can feel around for the window defroster button for a few seconds while not looking away from the road, but my mind is giving a lot of attention to remembering where the button is and what it feels like.
Best done while the car's not moving.
As with many things, it tends to boil down to using good judgment.
It does, but for city drivers a digital interface can't be used that often. It's about judgement, but if you exercise good judgement you can't usually use it. A better design would allow more functionality with less distraction, and I think that's what the thread is about - the BMW's distraction/functionality ratio is poor.
but after a week or two I could navigate the menus quickly and without fuss, and while mostly keeping my eyes on the road
As someone who drives near vehicles that might be BMWs, I have a problem with that 'mostly' bit. Any system that requires you to not look at the road to use it is broken.
Thirdly, about the criticisms that it's unsafe to use while driving? No shit sherlock. Neither is your cell phone. Or putting on makeup. Or shaving. Or eating lunch. But people do those without blaming the manufacturers or restaurants or stores that sell the necessary equipment.
Slight problem with that analogy: cell phones, makup and lunch are generally designed to be used in places that AREN'T CARS. Your iDrive isn't. There is a 100% chance that the driver is actually in the car while using it. Therefore, it should be designed to be used without looking.
You'll probably be modded troll, but this made me laugh out loud.
Yeah, these bastards have no sense of humor. Naturally, I'm using Linux RIGHT NOW.
Most treadmills will do at least 10% (incline? grade? I don't know), the good ones will go to 15. Unless you're trail running, you're not running up 20-30% grades. There are damn few roads over 18%, and most of the time that's for very short distances.
Indeed I am trail running! That's another thing I don't get on a treadmill: Dirt. In any event, I've never seen the point of paying well over a thousand dollars (with the incline capabilities you mention, I imagine) for something I can do for free by simply finding a trail. So we have: free and scenic, or expensive and boring. Gimme a pair of shoes and a trail any day.
It was supposed to be a unix clone, but actually came out useful in the end.
Well, I know Linux isn't particularly useful NOW, so I can only assume that you are from the future. Is your name Marty? Would you care to tell me who wins the Super Bowl in 2035?
4 Degrees? haven't you been to the gym, or watched Rocky IV? They go a bit more than 4 degrees. While I admit that actual running on actual hills it a lot harder on you, if you happen to live where there only is flat land, then the treadmill may be the best hill you have.
I don't run indoors. Too damned depressing. Also, all the Rocky movies after the first sucked. And I do live in a fairly hilly area, with some 20-30 degree hills, and I haven't seen the treadmill yet that can do that.
The person in charge of the project or division or whatever should have killed the feature when confronted with the reality that it couldn't be done properly.
Problem is by then, the decision makers lacked the creative vision to see WHY it sucked.
If it has the battery power to exchange crippled songs, it surely has the battery power to sync over wi-fi. The radio only needs to be powered up for the duration of the transfer anyway.
I wouldn't take that as an assumption - with these huge 30GB drives these days, syncing could involve a LOT of songs, whereas sharing is a song, or a handful of songs. One might suggest allowing limited syncing if there's only a difference of a few songs, but we'd be back at that lesson of "do it well, or not at all."
For other applications, a few other posters in this thread have posted lists of great ideas, so I'll just have to ask you to refer to them. One good one is listening to internet radio stations; not everything on the internet requires a web browser and keyboard/mouse.
I'd say that's the same lesson that Apple follows in not listening to most of the ideas of their fans, as they'd result in a completely unusable Frankenpod, with wifi, internet, FM, satellite radio, a phone, a PDA, internet radio, a remote control, and a tazer. I think the best idea here is for them to work on making a good music player. Period. Anyway, most people don't listen to internet radio (the reasons why are irrelevant to MS), so the payback on such a feature would be minimal.
Yes, I know this is Slashdot. But I'm a geek and a passionate marathon runner as well... There's a big difference between running on a treadmill and on a road (besides the boring factor): the relative wind resistance you experience when you move has a very significant impact on your speed. A rule of thumb is that you have to subtract about 1 km/h to your treadmill speed in order to have an idea on how fast you can go on the road.
I run as well (and cycle), and there's just no comparison. Treadmill surfaces are a little bouncy and provide some restorative force. There's no hills (those little inclining treadmills at 4 degrees aren't like a real nasty hill. And there's the wind resistance as well.
Although after yesterday - biking at 15-25mph into another 25mph of headwind - I'd have settled for a 1km/h hit. I was getting about a 12 kph hit. Ugh.
It wasn't even that good an idea. It was a novel idea, I'll admit, but just not very well thought out.
Well, yeah...it's in that "thought out" part where the up-fuckery occurred. ;)
1) How many people actually want to share music with their friends? Not that many, except teenagers. Adults using these while exercising, at work, on the airplane, etc. have little to no desire to share music with random passersby. But I can see how it might be an occasionally useful feature...
Well, for one, teenagers - and I'd count twentysomethings there too - is probably most of the market for this thing. So a lot. But in addition, I'd bet that a certain voyeuristic quality would persuade others to peruse the music of their neighbors. I'd do it, and I'm a teenager twice over.
2) ...if it didn't have stupid limits on it. The whole 3x3 thing just kills the idea. If you can't implement the feature without this stupid restriction because of real legal liability, then just throw in the towel and don't bother.
Yeah, I think that's pretty much the core of the upfuckery. We have to remember though, that MS isn't a single monolithic entity. It's a lot of different people. And what I bet happened was that a group of developers came up with a great idea and implemented it into a good design, only to have legal or whatever shit on it due to piracy fears or lawsuits or whatever. They may have feared that the studios would have killed their goals for an iTMS clone if they tried unlimited sharing. What we see was probably the neutered compromise that resulted.
3) If they just *had* to have the Wi-Fi built-in, they could have at least made more use of it. Why didn't they allow wireless synchronization with your computer, instead of having to mess around with USB cables? Major oversight. They could have also had it access the internet. All the hardware's there for these things.
For the first part...I don't think anybody knows why they didn't do it unless it wouldn't have the battery storage to power syncing over wifi. As for accessing the internet, interesting...but it has no keypad, so they may have thought why bother?
Lots of people have Cingular. I have it and I don't think it sucks. I know lots of people who plan to buy this thing just for visual voice mail.
Well, that's the thing - there are places where Cingular is good, and places where it sucks. Coverage-wise. It's just part of why it's hard to break in to the cell phone business, especially tying yourself to a single carrier. First, no carrier has good coverage everywhere. Second, most people at any time are locked into a contract. So at any given time, most people simply can't or won't just go out and get the new iPhone.
Compare to the iPod - everybody has music, there's no adoption barrier there.
I think the WiFi was a good idea, but it doesn't have the sexiness or ease of use of the iPod.
Well, that's Microsoft for you. Even when they come up with a good idea and are first to market with it - and that's rare for them these days - they completely f*** it up.
Namely nine out of every ten Apple devotees who love their Macs and have loved them for years.
By definition, that's about whatever their market share was during the dark days of 1996ish, which is around 2%. That will not equate with success. Need a lot more people.
Oh, and probably 3 out of ten iPod owners who think it would be cool to have their iPod and phone all in one.
This is obviously the market they're going for. Problem is, by definition these are people who would need to chuck their current iPod and phone and buy this device. For that reason, I think uptake will be somewhat on the slow side. Additionally, this thing will have to do some seriously good stuff that's more than just a phone and a music player thrown together - that device has been made many times and can now be had rather cheaply. Will the iPhone end up being more than the sum of those two parts? Dunno.
The main obvious problem with the iPhone, of course, is that it's tied to Cingular. And in a lot of the country/world, Cingular sucks. Apple can't do anything about that.
Now, before you go flaming on my for pissing in your kool-aid, I own and like my Powerbook G4, and my iPod mini. And because I already have my iPod mini and a serviceable cell phone, I'm not willing to pay $600 and 2 years of servitude to Cingular just to have a little extra room in my pocket.
Hear hear! I've been using KDE for years, and every once in a while I experiment with Gnome. I like it, but the lack of some utility (quick and simple file operations across SFTP / SMB / local filesystems using Konqueror springs immediately to mind here) always sends me back to KDE
You know, there's no need to use KDE to use Konqueror. I use Konqueror with Fluxbox, for Chrissakes.
You're completely correct about absentee ballots. I've done it that way in the past, and it just makes my point that much more valid. People don't vote because they're lazy, not because they can't.
I'm a little less willing to call someone lazy. I have twins, they're a year old. There are days where I don't have time to take a shit, let alone remember to request an absentee ballot. I plan to do so before the 2008 election, but I forgot to do so in advance of our Senate race this past November. So in effect, you're calling me lazy, and I can tell you there you're way off on that one. I'm simply completely overwhelmed, there's a significant difference.
Seriously. I don't know who gave anyone the impression that virtualization was a performance booster. Management improver? Sure. Stability insurance? Why not? But if you don't get that virtualizing your servers imposes a bit of overhead, then you're probably not paying attention.
Well, I think the point was that he attached an actual number to the amount of the performance hit, which is relevant. That's called research; quantifying and proving that which seems 'obvious'.
Perhaps a PC could be given three prices, so the purchaser has a proper choice:
1. Windows, without promotional crapplets
2. Windows, with promotional crapplets
3. Linux, with drivers
Clearly, options 2 and 3 would be lower cost than option 1
3) will cost at least as much as 1), and both will be more expensive than 2). The subsidized windows machine will cost the least due to the crapplets as well as economy of scale. The Linux machine will probably be more than the crapplet-free Windows machine because a) from what I've heard, selling a few machines without windows doesn't really save the OEM any money from MS, and b) again, the economy of scale with Windows.
So there needs to be a shift in thinking: asking for Linux on a Dell is *not* a way to get a computer from Dell cheaper than they already are. It's possibly a way to get a machine pre-installed with Linux, and probably more importantly to get a machine with components that are guaranteed to work with Linux.
You can't be serious. Voting begins at 0800 or earlier in most places, and runs until well after "normal" work hours. And employers are legally obligated to let you leave the office to go vote any time you choose throughout the day. Saying you "don't have time" to vote is just a bullshit cop-out.
I can be serious. They have to let you go, but it's useless if you don't work partiicularly near where you live. Unfortunately, they don't let you vote just anywhere. My job begins at 0800, so that's not an option, and after work the lines are horrendously long - and I don't have the time to bail out of taking care of my kids to sit in line for 3 hours after work.
The preferred answer is to remember to request an absentee ballot.
Being too lazy to vote is simply that, laziness. It has nothing to do with difficulty getting to the booths because you "work 10+ hours a day and have kids to take care of when they get home".
If you don't have 2 kids under the age of 2, you don't know what the hell you're talking about.
Any politician who thinks he's going to get votes by making a myspace account deserves whatever he gets dished. Reminds me of the clueless professor from Real Genius who thought his students like it when he would "get down, verbally" with them.
Except the myspace demographic seems to now encompass people who will be 18 by Nov 2008. This is a smart move, sadly. And while we may think the people on myspace on pathetic losers, a vote from a pathetic loser is counted the same as those from the urbane sophisticated readers of slashdot.
Reminds me more of MTV's "Rock the Vote" campaign. While they may be often apathetic, teenagers usually have the free time and lack of responsibility needed to actually vote. That's why campaigns heavily hit teenagers (don't have 9-5s yet, usually), soccer-moms (large proportion of stay-at-homes), welfare bums (vote whenever you want when you don't work!), and retireees (ditto). Politicians don't campaign as hard towards people who work 10+ hours a day and have kids to take care of when they get home; when the hell are we going to vote?
Screw tradition, it's time to move the election to the weekend. Allow voting all day Sat. and Sun. Watch voter turnout jump.