Well, neither are cars. I can't fit one through a door for example.:D
Aside from just being playful (sorry if you don't enjoy that sort of thing) , the point I was making was that there is a hell of a lot of room for improvement even still, and people might benefit from a wider perspective in that the answer _may_ not be to buy a shiny new car, but to buy a shiny new bicycle instead.
I'm sure a cyclist's efficiency drops dramatically with 60mph of wind! You could mitigate that with a fairing and a fancy recumbent bicycle. (Cyclists have actually achieved that speed, with such equipment.) But they kept that up for a matter of minutes, not hours.
That said, you can always put your chosen system on top by messing with the parameters.
For example: BMW's 2014 i3 has a 38 mile range, but I've been known to go over a hundred miles on a bicycle in one day. So, factor in two charge cycles, and not only use less fuel, I might actually outrun the vehicle as well.
Fun aside:
Cheetahs are significantly faster than humans, but over a long range, humans on foot can actually catch up with a cheetah and overtake it. Somali tribesmen recently did this to catch a cheetah who was attacking their livestock. (Reference: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-... ) Walking on two legs is a hell of a lot more efficient than walking on four.
That cost chart happens to include capital cost (manufacturing a solar panel) but only barely factors in the environmental degradation cost (crap spewed into the atmosphere by a coal plant). The adjustment chosen - $15 per metric ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions - is very optimistic, and acknowledged to be arbitrary. That's why the only number that comes close in your short list is nuclear, which factors in disposal cost.
Personally, I'd be happy to increase up-front cost to save on the back end. And given the popularity of electric and hybrid cars, I'm not alone in that feeling.
I've been getting five or six times this efficiency for years!
"A person riding a bicycle at 15 miles per hour (24 km per hour) burns 0.049 calories per pound per minute. So a 175-pound (77-kg) person burns 515 calories in an hour, or about 34 calories per mile (about 21 calories per km). A gallon of gasoline (about 4 liters) contains about 31,000 calories. If a person could drink gasoline, then a person could ride about 912 miles on a gallon of gas (about 360 km per liter). ( Source: HowStuffWorks website )
Actually I can tell you from first-hand experience that a WHOLE LOT of tinkering goes on behind those doors. The real difference is this: When Apple comes up with something half-assed, it goes where it belongs: In the trash can. When Microsoft comes up with something half-assed, they ship it and try to make a buck before anyone (even their own management/engineers) can catch on.
Here's the point: We've all already begun to acknowledge the death of privacy. Most of us know that yes, we stand a chance of being recorded at any time, at any place. That's oooold news, Admiral Burrito. With this knowledge in hand, the point of contention is now, "How well is access to that information controlled?"
Consider Mr. J. Random Dork, in an Apple store, aggregating thousands of photos of strangers without consent, for his own purposes. He is showing people, by his own conduct, that he is not a very good steward of the information he is collecting. He didn't ask the subjects, he didn't ask the venue, he didn't ask legal counsel, he didn't even ask his peers. In fact he deliberately avoided all those responsible inquiries because he knew his project was objectionable to all of them from the outset. Directing anger at him is not "shooting the messenger". Once you're writing your own code, you've pretty much moved beyond the "messenger" role and into the "perpetrator" role.
The $C000 address space was used for softswitches. The areas you're thinking about are $2000-$3FFF and $4000-$4FFF, Hi-res pages 1 and 2 respectively.
Each page held 192 scanlines of data, with each scanline described from left to right in a continuous line of 40 bytes. The upper left corner of the screen was described in the first byte ($2000 or $4000).
So far, so good - but everything after that is madness.
$2000 is the upper left corner, yes. But the next scanline down is located at $2400. The one after that at $2800. And so on, through eight scanlines, with the eighth at $3C00, until the ninth which begins back at $2080. Then the routine of adding $400 each time goes for another 8 scanlines, until the 17th starts at $2100.
And it gets even worse. And don't even get me started on the whole "8th bit of every byte swaps the palette for the other 7 bits" thing...
Sorry; you must have mistaken me for an iOS developer. I am an end-user.
Nothing on your list gets within shooting distance of "misery" for me, except perhaps tethering, which is now a non-issue since Verizon changed their data plans. Now I tether effortlessly.
The non-Apple apps that I use the most are Fandango, Flickr, Zillow, Facebook, Kayak, and VLC. These were all free. You claim there is a disincentive to releasing free software, and though it's not apparent to me, I'm willing to take your word for it.
On the other hand, I understand developers like to get paid, and given that my nephews have had more than five hours of fun playing "So Long Oregon" on the iPad, I'm don't begrudge the author the two dollars they were asking for. I remember when all they wanted was Nintendo DS games and those cost thirty dollars each. Even now - today.
No competition with Apple apps? Look at it from my point of view: I don't care that there aren't ten different apps for playing music, seven for chatting, five for browsing the web, and three for reading email. To me, it's a challenge and an accomplishment to just get ONE DAMN SONG onto the thing, from my computer to the iPad, and get it to play. And hey! It turns out I don't have to. If I bought it on the computer, now it just shows up on the phone.
Do you understand my point of view? I am far from miserable. Maybe the traditional car metaphor will help. Playing music on this thing is as essential and obvious as a steering wheel is in a car. You're saying I should be miserable, because there isn't a thriving market for installing a second steering wheel in my car. I just do not care. And there are millllllliiions of me.
Sounds like that job I had at Wendy's when I was seventeen. Thank goodness I had the spare time and the local resources to train myself to write code. If I had only my JOB to train me, I would probably be putting in my 20th year as a "grill technician" right now.:D
raising up a billion people from poverty to the same level as the lowest American worker would devastate the sociological balance of the world
This "balance" is achieved by keeping billions in a state of devastating deprivation.
Your "hope" ignores the fact that this is all going on in China, which is not a free society. It has a very heavily vested interest in the status quo.
Oh, if only the forces "keeping" these people deprived were torn away - the power-mad junta or the corrupt government or the insidious state religion - the ordinary masses would rise like corks in the ocean, to bob in the daylight of prosperity and peace! They would draft up a Bill of Rights and immediately self-organize into law-abiding citizens, engaging in fair trade and cultural egalitarianism, thanks to the natural civilizing force just waiting to be unleashed within them!
Curse you, Chinese government, for being a reflection of the collective cultural history of your own nation! Here, let's just invade China and depose all those bastards in the "status quo", who have their boots on the necks of the citizenry. We'll reform their government into a model of our own, where even peasants get a fair shake, and the bullet trains all run on time.
Sure, it was an insane boondoggle when we tried it on Iraq. But this time it'll be different.
So? Foxconn would refuse the contract if it gave more than the standard crap. Foxconn does not. Foxconn gives the standard crap.
Luckily, even today's standard crap is a lot better than the situation 60 years ago, when no crap whatsoever was given, during, for example, the "Great Leap Forward".
You think an 80-hour factory workweek and a bunk in a dormitory is bad? How about having your land taken from you, then having you and your neighbors herded onto it like cattle, to work 80-hour weeks for the government, and sleep right there on the ground between shifts? This was what was going on in China, two generations ago.
Foxconn represents progress and the Chinese know it. What would you have them do differently (and why should they listen to you)?
I have to admit, I'm getting a bit confused by the "accepted" Slashdot stance that Android is preferred over iOS.
The usual endorsement of open-source is based on privacy protection, but Google's entire corporate structure, from foundation to rooftops, is about collecting and mining the crap out of everyone's data, personal or otherwise. That is their angle for producing Android in the first place.
Doesn't this obvious contradiction worry anyone here?
If you ended copyright, Apple's iTunes Music Store revenue would be cut by more than 90%, for example. That alone might be more than they could adapt to before going out of business.
What makes you think that ending copyright would have any effect whatsoever on the iTunes Music Store? Apple could simply stop paying the record industry, cut its prices by a third, and continue breaking even, selling the same DRM-free music that it already sells.
Then, if you made an album and put it online for free as some kind of snub to iTunes, Apple could rip it and drop it into their store anyway, and grow their business on your back, while you had no recourse to the law.
And then, when their pipe is the preferred conduit for loading music onto their devices - which it already is - they could just as easily quash your ability to promote yourself, by refusing to stock your album.
Without copyright, you are far more vulnerable, not less.
If you're a non-audiphile trying to learn how to detect the difference with your ears, I suggest this:
Rip a CD into ALAC. Then re-rip one of the tracks into 256k mp3. Open each track side-by-side in music player apps and set the volume the same. Play each version 10 seconds at a time, paying attention to the perceived location of each instrument in the room.
You may find that it is easier to perceive that location while listening to the ALAC track.
I won't bore you with the scientific details. GIYF.
The ethical issues - whether the ends justify the means - is a separate question, and not easily judged in retrospect
It's quite easily judged. Governments should not sacrifice the living for the sake of the unborn. Period. Whether talking massive pan-government labor projects, or a single woman's decision over birth control. "Die for your country" is just "Die for my enrichment" with a misleading label slapped onto it.
When the US was still keeping niggers on the fields and women in the kitchen, the Soviets were providing excellent technical education and opportunity according to merit.
Your selective reading of what the Soviets "provided" - until the near-dissolution of their state - has conveniently left out the stratospheric corruption, the ethnic cleansing, and the bread lines.
As for Cuba, I know Americans aren't allowed there (perhaps you'll be able to get in if you go via another country in the free world, like everyone else?), but it's a decent American country with good healthcare and fair education, doing thoroughly better than any other country which has been bombarded by US hate propaganda and embargo for the past half century.
Cuba is more a dictatorship than a communist state, and more a socialist state than both of those, and primarily driven by the engine of capitalism. The Cuban government is just as interested in keeping its own people on a particular brand of propaganda dog food than it is interested in advancing their quality of life. You and I agree that it's not as bad as North Korea, but that's damning praise. The embargo is as close to being lifted today as it has ever been, and the justifications are largely to empower the citizenry of Cuba in spite of it's government.
You know you wouldn't move there if given the choice, but if you really wanted to move there you could probably engineer a route.
NK, well... I know little about NK. As do you. Because it's really hard to get accurate information about NK. There's lots of propaganda, but very little verifiable information available to the general public. I'm sure you'll quote propaganda. Looks like a cultish dictatorship from the outside, but again, it's hard to say.
If no one can get good information, in this modern age, chances are, it's a cultish dictatorship, or something much closer to it than to a free marketplace of ideas. Worse yet, the North Korean government does not appear corrupt so much as it appears to be dangerously inbred.
China? Well, they're certainly the most successful nation on earth right now, if success is measured in actually producing rather than trading in invisibles.
Which it isn't. I could make a more sensible argument - one based on standard of living - that Norway is the most successful nation on Earth.
And, like in the US, a lovely place to live if you're part of the middle class (except its is growing while the US is losing its own).
The interesting thing about that comparison is, the US remains a lovely place to live even if you slump from the middle class down to the working class. Being in the lower class in the US does not, in general, mean that you forsake all formal education and become an iron-age farmer, or walk to your factory job wearing a face-mask.
I'm sure if you felt it would be an improvement to your current lot, you would be living in China.
China is undergoing an industrial revolution, and it's messy and exploitative. As the growth plateaus - as the remaining ex-peasants are routed off their land or lured into factories for the promise of a better nation - the voices asking the government very difficult questions about reformation and representation will become much louder. (This is happening already.) Again, I would not actually label China as a Communist state.
In fact, I don't agree with the parent poster's examples any more than you do - but I agree with the sentiment that a Communist system of government is a failed idea, and that one should vote with one's feet.
What I take issue with in YOUR post, is the odious and unnecessary anti-United-States bias in your writing.
It's not a question of whether anyone "would have" thought of it. It's a question of timing. The courts have been asked to judge whether Samsung has deliberately released a product that strongly reminds people of an iPhone, in order to encourage confusion between the two, and ride on the coattails of the enthusiasm the iPhone has garnered in the marketplace. Thank goodness the courts will be deciding this, and not J Random Slashdotter who didn't even care to read TFA before spouting off about "generic look-n-feel patents".
You see this sort of behavior with cheap knock-off manufacturers all the time, and the behavior is damaging to consumers, disruptive to the target company, and not innovative in any way. The only reason it happens as often as it does is because of the legal costs involved with fighting these parasites. It is beneath Samsung, or should be at least, and perhaps this lawsuit will slap some sense into them.
You want to see the silver lining, but for some reason you're not willing to let yourself. Yes, once upon a time, written language was standardized by a handful of people who used and "protected it". Then technology provided the means for the masses to become writers and readers, and we saw an explosion in the use of written language as a learning, storytelling, and historical tool. Then, more technology provided the means for the masses to use the written word for everyday communication, even casual communication, and for communication in coordinated ways that were impossible for all but elite royalty and military commanders back in the old days. Any of us can write a single sentence and have it instantly readable by ten thousand 'followers'. It shows up on a device in their pocket. It's freaking magical.
The infrastructure, however, does not come for free, and there is an ongoing struggle for the providers of this technology to find new ways to extract money from their users, in order to pay for it and grow it. One way or the other, it has to be paid for.
There may come a day in the future when we all decide that cellular coverage is best managed as a public utility, a "natural monopoly", and take it under government control with strict policies on encryption and neutrality. Just as we do for water, gas, and electrical infrastructure now.
This issue is entirely separate from the issue of whether a given UI for a computing device is somehow evocative of, or provides unfettered access to, the hardware it runs on.
Twice. Once for the "high school hacker's notebook", and once for the 2004 followup to Neal Stephenson's "In The Beginning Was The Command Line". And you want something better? Fine. I built this last year.
Also, your logic is wrong. When you say something is inversely proportional to the lack of something, you are saying it is directly proportional.
Also, I wouldn't call this the "true geek spirit", but that's a matter of taste. I'd say it more of a rave-inspired thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Now if only mopeds weren't so noisy...
Well, neither are cars. I can't fit one through a door for example. :D
Aside from just being playful (sorry if you don't enjoy that sort of thing) , the point I was making was that there is a hell of a lot of room for improvement even still, and people might benefit from a wider perspective in that the answer _may_ not be to buy a shiny new car, but to buy a shiny new bicycle instead.
I'm sure a cyclist's efficiency drops dramatically with 60mph of wind! You could mitigate that with a fairing and a fancy recumbent bicycle. (Cyclists have actually achieved that speed, with such equipment.) But they kept that up for a matter of minutes, not hours.
That said, you can always put your chosen system on top by messing with the parameters.
For example: BMW's 2014 i3 has a 38 mile range, but I've been known to go over a hundred miles on a bicycle in one day. So, factor in two charge cycles, and not only use less fuel, I might actually outrun the vehicle as well.
Fun aside:
Cheetahs are significantly faster than humans, but over a long range, humans on foot can actually catch up with a cheetah and overtake it. Somali tribesmen recently did this to catch a cheetah who was attacking their livestock. (Reference: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-... ) Walking on two legs is a hell of a lot more efficient than walking on four.
That cost chart happens to include capital cost (manufacturing a solar panel) but only barely factors in the environmental degradation cost (crap spewed into the atmosphere by a coal plant). The adjustment chosen - $15 per metric ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions - is very optimistic, and acknowledged to be arbitrary. That's why the only number that comes close in your short list is nuclear, which factors in disposal cost.
Personally, I'd be happy to increase up-front cost to save on the back end. And given the popularity of electric and hybrid cars, I'm not alone in that feeling.
I've been getting five or six times this efficiency for years!
"A person riding a bicycle at 15 miles per hour (24 km per hour) burns 0.049 calories per pound per minute. So a 175-pound (77-kg) person burns 515 calories in an hour, or about 34 calories per mile (about 21 calories per km). A gallon of gasoline (about 4 liters) contains about 31,000 calories. If a person could drink gasoline, then a person could ride about 912 miles on a gallon of gas (about 360 km per liter).
( Source: HowStuffWorks website )
Actually I can tell you from first-hand experience that a WHOLE LOT of tinkering goes on behind those doors.
The real difference is this: When Apple comes up with something half-assed, it goes where it belongs: In the trash can.
When Microsoft comes up with something half-assed, they ship it and try to make a buck before anyone (even their own management/engineers) can catch on.
Here's the point: We've all already begun to acknowledge the death of privacy. Most of us know that yes, we stand a chance of being recorded at any time, at any place. That's oooold news, Admiral Burrito. With this knowledge in hand, the point of contention is now, "How well is access to that information controlled?"
Consider Mr. J. Random Dork, in an Apple store, aggregating thousands of photos of strangers without consent, for his own purposes. He is showing people, by his own conduct, that he is not a very good steward of the information he is collecting. He didn't ask the subjects, he didn't ask the venue, he didn't ask legal counsel, he didn't even ask his peers. In fact he deliberately avoided all those responsible inquiries because he knew his project was objectionable to all of them from the outset. Directing anger at him is not "shooting the messenger". Once you're writing your own code, you've pretty much moved beyond the "messenger" role and into the "perpetrator" role.
The $C000 address space was used for softswitches. The areas you're thinking about are $2000-$3FFF and $4000-$4FFF, Hi-res pages 1 and 2 respectively.
Each page held 192 scanlines of data, with each scanline described from left to right in a continuous line of 40 bytes. The upper left corner of the screen was described in the first byte ($2000 or $4000).
So far, so good - but everything after that is madness.
$2000 is the upper left corner, yes. But the next scanline down is located at $2400. The one after that at $2800. And so on, through eight scanlines, with the eighth at $3C00, until the ninth which begins back at $2080. Then the routine of adding $400 each time goes for another 8 scanlines, until the 17th starts at $2100.
And it gets even worse. And don't even get me started on the whole "8th bit of every byte swaps the palette for the other 7 bits" thing...
Sorry; you must have mistaken me for an iOS developer. I am an end-user.
Nothing on your list gets within shooting distance of "misery" for me, except perhaps tethering, which is now a non-issue since Verizon changed their data plans. Now I tether effortlessly.
The non-Apple apps that I use the most are Fandango, Flickr, Zillow, Facebook, Kayak, and VLC. These were all free. You claim there is a disincentive to releasing free software, and though it's not apparent to me, I'm willing to take your word for it.
On the other hand, I understand developers like to get paid, and given that my nephews have had more than five hours of fun playing "So Long Oregon" on the iPad, I'm don't begrudge the author the two dollars they were asking for. I remember when all they wanted was Nintendo DS games and those cost thirty dollars each. Even now - today.
No competition with Apple apps? Look at it from my point of view: I don't care that there aren't ten different apps for playing music, seven for chatting, five for browsing the web, and three for reading email. To me, it's a challenge and an accomplishment to just get ONE DAMN SONG onto the thing, from my computer to the iPad, and get it to play. And hey! It turns out I don't have to. If I bought it on the computer, now it just shows up on the phone.
Do you understand my point of view? I am far from miserable. Maybe the traditional car metaphor will help. Playing music on this thing is as essential and obvious as a steering wheel is in a car. You're saying I should be miserable, because there isn't a thriving market for installing a second steering wheel in my car. I just do not care. And there are millllllliiions of me.
Please define "misery" in this case?
Sounds like that job I had at Wendy's when I was seventeen. Thank goodness I had the spare time and the local resources to train myself to write code. If I had only my JOB to train me, I would probably be putting in my 20th year as a "grill technician" right now. :D
raising up a billion people from poverty to the same level as the lowest American worker would devastate the sociological balance of the world
This "balance" is achieved by keeping billions in a state of devastating deprivation.
Your "hope" ignores the fact that this is all going on in China, which is not a free society. It has a very heavily vested interest in the status quo.
Oh, if only the forces "keeping" these people deprived were torn away - the power-mad junta or the corrupt government or the insidious state religion - the ordinary masses would rise like corks in the ocean, to bob in the daylight of prosperity and peace! They would draft up a Bill of Rights and immediately self-organize into law-abiding citizens, engaging in fair trade and cultural egalitarianism, thanks to the natural civilizing force just waiting to be unleashed within them!
Curse you, Chinese government, for being a reflection of the collective cultural history of your own nation! Here, let's just invade China and depose all those bastards in the "status quo", who have their boots on the necks of the citizenry. We'll reform their government into a model of our own, where even peasants get a fair shake, and the bullet trains all run on time.
Sure, it was an insane boondoggle when we tried it on Iraq. But this time it'll be different.
So? Foxconn would refuse the contract if it gave more than the standard crap. Foxconn does not. Foxconn gives the standard crap.
Luckily, even today's standard crap is a lot better than the situation 60 years ago, when no crap whatsoever was given, during, for example, the "Great Leap Forward".
You think an 80-hour factory workweek and a bunk in a dormitory is bad? How about having your land taken from you, then having you and your neighbors herded onto it like cattle, to work 80-hour weeks for the government, and sleep right there on the ground between shifts? This was what was going on in China, two generations ago.
Foxconn represents progress and the Chinese know it. What would you have them do differently (and why should they listen to you)?
I have to admit, I'm getting a bit confused by the "accepted" Slashdot stance that Android is preferred over iOS.
The usual endorsement of open-source is based on privacy protection, but Google's entire corporate structure, from foundation to rooftops, is about collecting and mining the crap out of everyone's data, personal or otherwise. That is their angle for producing Android in the first place.
Doesn't this obvious contradiction worry anyone here?
If you ended copyright, Apple's iTunes Music Store revenue would be cut by more than 90%, for example. That alone might be more than they could adapt to before going out of business.
What makes you think that ending copyright would have any effect whatsoever on the iTunes Music Store? Apple could simply stop paying the record industry, cut its prices by a third, and continue breaking even, selling the same DRM-free music that it already sells.
Then, if you made an album and put it online for free as some kind of snub to iTunes, Apple could rip it and drop it into their store anyway, and grow their business on your back, while you had no recourse to the law.
And then, when their pipe is the preferred conduit for loading music onto their devices - which it already is - they could just as easily quash your ability to promote yourself, by refusing to stock your album.
Without copyright, you are far more vulnerable, not less.
If you're a non-audiphile trying to learn how to detect the difference with your ears, I suggest this:
Rip a CD into ALAC. Then re-rip one of the tracks into 256k mp3. Open each track side-by-side in music player apps and set the volume the same. Play each version 10 seconds at a time, paying attention to the perceived location of each instrument in the room.
You may find that it is easier to perceive that location while listening to the ALAC track.
I won't bore you with the scientific details. GIYF.
Stiffer competition in the authoring tools sector, since HTML5 is an open standard, and Flash is(was) not.
Better to continue redefining Flash as "what you use when HTML5 won't cut it". And for 3D games, HTML5 won't cut it.
Don't feed the trolls, please.
The ethical issues - whether the ends justify the means - is a separate question, and not easily judged in retrospect
It's quite easily judged. Governments should not sacrifice the living for the sake of the unborn. Period. Whether talking massive pan-government labor projects, or a single woman's decision over birth control. "Die for your country" is just "Die for my enrichment" with a misleading label slapped onto it.
When the US was still keeping niggers on the fields and women in the kitchen, the Soviets were providing excellent technical education and opportunity according to merit.
Your selective reading of what the Soviets "provided" - until the near-dissolution of their state - has conveniently left out the stratospheric corruption, the ethnic cleansing, and the bread lines.
As for Cuba, I know Americans aren't allowed there (perhaps you'll be able to get in if you go via another country in the free world, like everyone else?), but it's a decent American country with good healthcare and fair education, doing thoroughly better than any other country which has been bombarded by US hate propaganda and embargo for the past half century.
Cuba is more a dictatorship than a communist state, and more a socialist state than both of those, and primarily driven by the engine of capitalism. The Cuban government is just as interested in keeping its own people on a particular brand of propaganda dog food than it is interested in advancing their quality of life. You and I agree that it's not as bad as North Korea, but that's damning praise. The embargo is as close to being lifted today as it has ever been, and the justifications are largely to empower the citizenry of Cuba in spite of it's government.
You know you wouldn't move there if given the choice, but if you really wanted to move there you could probably engineer a route.
NK, well... I know little about NK. As do you. Because it's really hard to get accurate information about NK. There's lots of propaganda, but very little verifiable information available to the general public. I'm sure you'll quote propaganda. Looks like a cultish dictatorship from the outside, but again, it's hard to say.
If no one can get good information, in this modern age, chances are, it's a cultish dictatorship, or something much closer to it than to a free marketplace of ideas. Worse yet, the North Korean government does not appear corrupt so much as it appears to be dangerously inbred.
China? Well, they're certainly the most successful nation on earth right now, if success is measured in actually producing rather than trading in invisibles.
Which it isn't. I could make a more sensible argument - one based on standard of living - that Norway is the most successful nation on Earth.
And, like in the US, a lovely place to live if you're part of the middle class (except its is growing while the US is losing its own).
The interesting thing about that comparison is, the US remains a lovely place to live even if you slump from the middle class down to the working class. Being in the lower class in the US does not, in general, mean that you forsake all formal education and become an iron-age farmer, or walk to your factory job wearing a face-mask.
I'm sure if you felt it would be an improvement to your current lot, you would be living in China.
China is undergoing an industrial revolution, and it's messy and exploitative. As the growth plateaus - as the remaining ex-peasants are routed off their land or lured into factories for the promise of a better nation - the voices asking the government very difficult questions about reformation and representation will become much louder. (This is happening already.) Again, I would not actually label China as a Communist state.
In fact, I don't agree with the parent poster's examples any more than you do - but I agree with the sentiment that a Communist system of government is a failed idea, and that one should vote with one's feet.
What I take issue with in YOUR post, is the odious and unnecessary anti-United-States bias in your writing.
It's not a question of whether anyone "would have" thought of it. It's a question of timing. The courts have been asked to judge whether Samsung has deliberately released a product that strongly reminds people of an iPhone, in order to encourage confusion between the two, and ride on the coattails of the enthusiasm the iPhone has garnered in the marketplace. Thank goodness the courts will be deciding this, and not J Random Slashdotter who didn't even care to read TFA before spouting off about "generic look-n-feel patents".
You see this sort of behavior with cheap knock-off manufacturers all the time, and the behavior is damaging to consumers, disruptive to the target company, and not innovative in any way. The only reason it happens as often as it does is because of the legal costs involved with fighting these parasites. It is beneath Samsung, or should be at least, and perhaps this lawsuit will slap some sense into them.
You want to see the silver lining, but for some reason you're not willing to let yourself. Yes, once upon a time, written language was standardized by a handful of people who used and "protected it". Then technology provided the means for the masses to become writers and readers, and we saw an explosion in the use of written language as a learning, storytelling, and historical tool. Then, more technology provided the means for the masses to use the written word for everyday communication, even casual communication, and for communication in coordinated ways that were impossible for all but elite royalty and military commanders back in the old days. Any of us can write a single sentence and have it instantly readable by ten thousand 'followers'. It shows up on a device in their pocket. It's freaking magical.
The infrastructure, however, does not come for free, and there is an ongoing struggle for the providers of this technology to find new ways to extract money from their users, in order to pay for it and grow it. One way or the other, it has to be paid for.
There may come a day in the future when we all decide that cellular coverage is best managed as a public utility, a "natural monopoly", and take it under government control with strict policies on encryption and neutrality. Just as we do for water, gas, and electrical infrastructure now.
This issue is entirely separate from the issue of whether a given UI for a computing device is somehow evocative of, or provides unfettered access to, the hardware it runs on.
Two words for you.
Boot Camp.
Twice. Once for the "high school hacker's notebook", and once for the 2004 followup to Neal Stephenson's "In The Beginning Was The Command Line". And you want something better? Fine. I built this last year.
Also, your logic is wrong. When you say something is inversely proportional to the lack of something, you are saying it is directly proportional.
Also, I wouldn't call this the "true geek spirit", but that's a matter of taste. I'd say it more of a rave-inspired thing.
Also, I don't think you're actually sorry.
Hater haters gonna hate.
Yeah, nobody has ever heard of the Apple 2. Right.
Apple II
Get it right. There a pedants lurking about.
Apple ][
Get it right. There a pedants lurking about.
APPLE ][
Get it right. There a pedants lurking about.