Of course they shouldn't be telling you lies, but if you say, "Ship as soon as possible," then they will do this (and charge you for it). If you say, "Ship in one shipment," then they will hold everything until its all ready and only then will they send it. Generally, at least.
It appears that some of the traditional differences between the "iBook" and "PowerBook" line are shrinking even more; I wouldn't be surprised if there was no 12" MacBook Pro based on the new MacBook's specifications.
And in at least one area, the MB beats the Pro. From the site:
Here's to having one less thing to worry about. Opening and closing your MacBook is a snap, thanks to a magnetic latch that catches without a catch. That means no moving parts to snag, jam, or break.
Nifty. No latch, just a depression to let you open the lid. I like it. Simple, yet elegant. And that's got Apple written all over it.
Re:Im gonna get killed for saying this...
on
Creative Sues Apple
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· Score: 2, Informative
Im sorry, as much as apple have done good things in the world of software, they're beginning to get a bit too much, for too less. i.e I'm outraged that the Nano (in the UK - dont know about other countries) doesn't come with a DC adapter, and you have to fork out over 10 pounds for one.
Why? Sorry, but most people that I know (including my own household) always charge from the computer. Why should the rest of us have to pay extra, and Apple have to manufacture more items (at both a financial and an enviromental cost) that will simply take up space both in homes and eventually in landfills, so that a few people can have an extra piece included "for free"?
And the patent for the "hierarchical" (and lets face it, really really obvious) way of organizing music on a mobile player is what they're settling on. The filing date is much earlier, though it was pushed back and re-examined many times. That whole "Artist->Album->Song" method? Creative "invented" it, and God help you if you try and use it yourself in a mobile player and subsequently gain market share over them. Nevermind that it's the fundamental way that files have been stored and sorted on computers since...well...since we left punch cards behind, slapping "mobile" on the patent makes it new! So does slapping "online" apparently...
Or, hell, that's the same way that music has been arranged ever since LPs were popular, and probably before. Of course, we all know that adding, "...on a computer." changes everything.
You'd probably laugh at somebody who bought a computer game and tried putting the DVD into a CD player. You'd expect them to know the difference, despite the fact that they are both just shiny round discs. You expect them to understand that the content is different. And yet you don't expect the same thing when they are trying to play multimedia files on a computer. Why?
Well, first off, using a computer instead of a simpler tool is supposed to reduce complexity. As software designers, that's our fsckin' job. The user just wants to play their disc. We can write software that lets them do that. Why shouldn't we?
But more to the point, why are new computers even coming with CD players these days? Or anything, for that matter? I can walk down the street and pick up a $40 "disc player" that will handle CD content, MP3-CD content, DVD content, VCD content, et cetera. This is what consumers want. This is what hardware manufacturers are already providing, today. So no, these days I don't expect them to know the difference unless they really want a separate CD player from their DVD player, in which case they undoubtably do know the difference.
It is not supposed to route around basic, essential knowledge required to operate a computer like windows does.
Hang on, wait a second. First of all, you're defining knowing what a codec is (and where to get it, and how to install it), as "essential knowledge." I'd argue with that one. But even granting that, how can something be essential knowldge required to operate a computer when the single most commonly used OS doesn't require someone to know it? Neither does OSX for that matter. Doesn't sound particularly essential to me...
Dear journalist, please continue using your tricicle then on your way to work, because obviously a car requires more expertise and attention.
Actually, these days, it doesn't. Just like a Windows PC doesn't, if you don't go out of your way to screw it up. Sure, Windows 10 years ago was crap. Arguably so was Linux, although crap in different areas. These days though, a basic XP-SP2 system with IE7 can do pretty much whatever you want to do. So can a Linux system. So can OSX. The difference is in the complexity that they expose to their users.
In this case, the complexity of Linux when asked to perform what, for a large number of people, are the core tasks that they use a computer for -- was high. Attacking the author of the article as you have done is not particularly helpful, and indeed makes it seem as if you realize the issues and have no useful solution for them.
So don't buy it. He's not saying that its for everyone - quite the opposite, in fact. What you're implying is that its not for anyone, which I don't think is fair either. The GPL ensures that you can always use a different fork. It also gives him the right to do what he's doing. How are you hurt in the slightest by his actions?
Don't forget the idiots who built their shiny new computer room with the red button for the push-to-exit doors right next to the big red button for the EPO/Halon system... I was amazed they went as long as they did, and thankful that it wasn't me who pushed the wrong one.
Its worse than that. Usually, customers tell you the solution that they (mostly, but not always, incorrectly) assume would be the best way for you to solve what they think their needs are. Divining their true needs is really half of the core of product design; fulfilling those needs would be the other half.
Good product design, that is.
Think of the iPod. Before its release, if you asked people what they needed, they might talk about different folder layouts, or better search interfaces, or whatever. Apple showed that you can take a well designed interface and simply scroll through 60GB of music without that, bypassing obscene quantities of "customer solutions" that were attempting to solve a problem that they shouldn't even have had to solve.
4. Mr. Joe User believes that quality software is something that "just works" from his point of view. It might be the most inefficient, spyware-ridden piece of crap, but if it allows him to do task X with little or no effort, then it's "quality" as far as he's concerned and he doesn't want to know about better ways even if they will help him save money, and get the most out of his computer.
So the problem isn't with FOSS. The problem lies with the users....
FOSS doesn't exist to be popular. It exists to do a job and do it well.
Whoa. Time out. You were so close. Quality tools - and software packages are tools, especially in a business environment - need to get the job done as cheaply and effectively as possible. That is it. If they require a lot of additional work, be that in a steep training curve or even in the time necessary to de-crapware a computer, that goes against their cost. If they only do 2/3 of the job requiring a lot of manual work, that goes against their cost too. The one with the lowest cost wins.
So why on earth is this the problem of the users? If a user can get their job done effectively with a tool that has some side effects that do not affect them or their organization, why should they not use it? Is it their responsiblity to use the "elegant" solution that requires more time to install, train, and use, because its created in a more FOSS/popular way, or written in a particular language?
I mean, really. And people wonder why FOSS advocates have a bad reputation in some circles.
Besides, if "Joe User"'s software really does allow him to do hist tasks with little or low effort, why does he care about "getting the most from his computer?" That's not the problem he's trying to solve. As for saving money, never underestimate the expense of an employee who's not being productive. They cost way more than most computers, as any business owner could tell you.
On the other hand, Sun's Java compiler has always had broken dependancy tracking (at least since I started using it heavily in 1999). (If a build has an error, the set of output class files may be such that the next run of the compiler skips a source file which needs to be compiled; this is mainly that it can generate the public class without generating other classes in the same file.) I think it's likely that, if Sun does open source the JDK, they'll get fixes for a number of annoying flaws of that sort pretty quickly, and things that are clearly wrong but aren't considered worth working on will be improved substantially.
Of course, since the Java class format is standard, you can also use a compiler such as Jikes (or indeed the Java compiler of your choice, including one that took PHP files as source for that matter) with the current runtime. While open-sourcing would improve the standard Java compiler, its not like there's no other choices...
And if you liked that, I highly (really) recommend Josephine Tey's _Daughter of Time_. Its a mystery about a mystery, and covers that whole issue in detail (and with remarkably good writing at that).
Except that, with BofA, if you haven't already visited their site from your computer (actually a combination of a cookie (that can be passed on, natch) and at least coming from a domain block that you previously came from (not perfect, but a reasonable compromise) then you get a completely different page that warns you that -- if you think you're coming from a location you've visited from before -- you may be experiencing an attack, and has you go through some more convoluted procedures to proceed, including asking you some security questions that you previously set up on their site. Perfect? No, but much better than many.
I can't speak to the others, but for the Nova comment, let's see what Snopes has to say, shall we? In part:
First of all, the phrase "no va" (literally "doesn't go") and the word "nova" are distinct entities with different pronunciations in Spanish: the former is two words and is pronounced with the accent on the second word; the latter is one word with the accent on the first syllable. Assuming that Spanish speakers would naturally see the word "nova" as equivalent to the phrase "no va" and think "Hey, this car doesn't go!" is akin to assuming that English speakers woud spurn a dinette set sold under the name Notable because nobody wants a dinette set that doesn't include a table. ...
The truth is that the Chevrolet Nova's name didn't significantly affect its sales: it sold well in both its primary Spanish-language markets, Mexico and Venezuela. (Its Venezuelan sales figures actually surpassed GM's expectations.) ...
The one bit of supporting evidence offered to back up this legend is spurious as well. General Motors, we're told, finally wised up and changed the model name of their automobile from Nova to Caribe, after which sales of the car "took off." One small problem with this claim: the Caribe sold in Mexico was manufactured by Volkswagen, not General Motors. (The Caribe was the model name used by VW in Mexico for the car more commonly known in the USA as the Volkswagen Golf.) The Nova's model name was never changed for the Spanish-speaking market.
So, I'd say that pretty much does it for that story. I wouldn't be surprised if a couple of the ones you listed were accurate, but I wouldn't be surprised if none of them were either, all things considered.
Yeah, they had both gesture recognition and the idea of scanning by holding images up to the display and then peeling them back, leaving a (reversed for correctness) copy on the screen that could then be moved around, emailed, etc. Who knows, maybe its not such a bad idea after all.
That's funny. I've worked IT for over 15 years now, and the Windows Firewall still confuses me from time to time. "Run DLL as an App has requested access to the internet. Allow or Deny?" Heck, I don't know, that's not enough information to make the decision. I denied it, but I'm still curious. Add to that the number of times that product installation will be interrupted with a (non-taskbar-visible) Firewall window and will fail, and I can see why an awful lot of non-computer-people would be confused and alarmed.
If you constrained the accidents to avoid all of these factors (which are controllable), the accident rate and fatality rate would go way down.
Well, duh. And if you eliminated all of the autombile accidents that were caused by any one or more of those factors, their percentage would go way down as well. Nothing you said leads me to believe that the 10:1 ratio would be different, unless you're saying that 10 times more motorcyclists ride drunk than automobile drivers drive drunk...
So any computer which an attacker can perform an account escalation on, or has physical access to, is vulnerable.
Who said anything about physical access? In a lot of environments, like your average office setup, you won't have access to the machine that stores the passwords (in whatever format). You have to access through the API. Even if you have root (or whatever) on a local machine, it doesn't give you any special benefit in cracking someone's network password. So if the password server locks the account after 500 invalid attempts, you're still fine.
I'm not arguing about local machine passwords, but that's not the type of environment we've been discussing anyway.
This produced a net -5500 MWe of power because they consume more power filling their reservoirs than they generate by emptying them.
Right, which is why they work as load-balancers and promote financial efficiency rather than actually promoting power efficiency. Thankfully the main generating systems have already tied financial efficiency to their, somewhat more fluctuating power efficiency, so it all works out.
Although its truly amazing how many people in the US think that their house is made of bricks, when it isn't. The vast, vast majority of "brick" houses (at least those built in the last 50 years or so, probably a lot longer) are stick-framed houses with a thin brick veneer, bearing only a superficial resembalence to real brick houses as known in the rest of the world.
(spoken as a British ex-pat who still gets amused after 20+ years in the 'States)
do you people have any clue how a brute-force attack is carried out?
One does not use the password entry UI of the system.
What's your point? This has nothing to do with the number of attacks it takes for the password verification component to lock the account, no matter what your backend architecture.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course they shouldn't be telling you lies, but if you say, "Ship as soon as possible," then they will do this (and charge you for it). If you say, "Ship in one shipment," then they will hold everything until its all ready and only then will they send it. Generally, at least.
And in at least one area, the MB beats the Pro. From the site:
Nifty. No latch, just a depression to let you open the lid. I like it. Simple, yet elegant. And that's got Apple written all over it.
Im sorry, as much as apple have done good things in the world of software, they're beginning to get a bit too much, for too less. i.e I'm outraged that the Nano (in the UK - dont know about other countries) doesn't come with a DC adapter, and you have to fork out over 10 pounds for one.
Why? Sorry, but most people that I know (including my own household) always charge from the computer. Why should the rest of us have to pay extra, and Apple have to manufacture more items (at both a financial and an enviromental cost) that will simply take up space both in homes and eventually in landfills, so that a few people can have an extra piece included "for free"?
And the patent for the "hierarchical" (and lets face it, really really obvious) way of organizing music on a mobile player is what they're settling on. The filing date is much earlier, though it was pushed back and re-examined many times. That whole "Artist->Album->Song" method? Creative "invented" it, and God help you if you try and use it yourself in a mobile player and subsequently gain market share over them. Nevermind that it's the fundamental way that files have been stored and sorted on computers since...well...since we left punch cards behind, slapping "mobile" on the patent makes it new! So does slapping "online" apparently...
Or, hell, that's the same way that music has been arranged ever since LPs were popular, and probably before. Of course, we all know that adding, "...on a computer." changes everything.
You'd probably laugh at somebody who bought a computer game and tried putting the DVD into a CD player. You'd expect them to know the difference, despite the fact that they are both just shiny round discs. You expect them to understand that the content is different. And yet you don't expect the same thing when they are trying to play multimedia files on a computer. Why?
Well, first off, using a computer instead of a simpler tool is supposed to reduce complexity. As software designers, that's our fsckin' job. The user just wants to play their disc. We can write software that lets them do that. Why shouldn't we?
But more to the point, why are new computers even coming with CD players these days? Or anything, for that matter? I can walk down the street and pick up a $40 "disc player" that will handle CD content, MP3-CD content, DVD content, VCD content, et cetera. This is what consumers want. This is what hardware manufacturers are already providing, today. So no, these days I don't expect them to know the difference unless they really want a separate CD player from their DVD player, in which case they undoubtably do know the difference.
It is not supposed to route around basic, essential knowledge required to operate a computer like windows does.
Hang on, wait a second. First of all, you're defining knowing what a codec is (and where to get it, and how to install it), as "essential knowledge." I'd argue with that one. But even granting that, how can something be essential knowldge required to operate a computer when the single most commonly used OS doesn't require someone to know it? Neither does OSX for that matter. Doesn't sound particularly essential to me...
Dear journalist, please continue using your tricicle then on your way to work, because obviously a car requires more expertise and attention.
Actually, these days, it doesn't. Just like a Windows PC doesn't, if you don't go out of your way to screw it up. Sure, Windows 10 years ago was crap. Arguably so was Linux, although crap in different areas. These days though, a basic XP-SP2 system with IE7 can do pretty much whatever you want to do. So can a Linux system. So can OSX. The difference is in the complexity that they expose to their users.
In this case, the complexity of Linux when asked to perform what, for a large number of people, are the core tasks that they use a computer for -- was high. Attacking the author of the article as you have done is not particularly helpful, and indeed makes it seem as if you realize the issues and have no useful solution for them.
So don't buy it. He's not saying that its for everyone - quite the opposite, in fact. What you're implying is that its not for anyone, which I don't think is fair either. The GPL ensures that you can always use a different fork. It also gives him the right to do what he's doing. How are you hurt in the slightest by his actions?
You may want to check out this post earlier in the thread -- it looks like it does what you're wanting.
Don't forget the idiots who built their shiny new computer room with the red button for the push-to-exit doors right next to the big red button for the EPO/Halon system... I was amazed they went as long as they did, and thankful that it wasn't me who pushed the wrong one.
Likewise true.
Its worse than that. Usually, customers tell you the solution that they (mostly, but not always, incorrectly) assume would be the best way for you to solve what they think their needs are. Divining their true needs is really half of the core of product design; fulfilling those needs would be the other half.
Good product design, that is.
Think of the iPod. Before its release, if you asked people what they needed, they might talk about different folder layouts, or better search interfaces, or whatever. Apple showed that you can take a well designed interface and simply scroll through 60GB of music without that, bypassing obscene quantities of "customer solutions" that were attempting to solve a problem that they shouldn't even have had to solve.
It's the sound EVERYONE (if you don't, you're not American) makes going down a slide...
Wow. That's quite a specific definition for Everyone you have there. But, I'll grant you, a great example of the American definition thereof.
...
...
4. Mr. Joe User believes that quality software is something that "just works" from his point of view. It might be the most inefficient, spyware-ridden piece of crap, but if it allows him to do task X with little or no effort, then it's "quality" as far as he's concerned and he doesn't want to know about better ways even if they will help him save money, and get the most out of his computer.
So the problem isn't with FOSS. The problem lies with the users.
FOSS doesn't exist to be popular. It exists to do a job and do it well.
Whoa. Time out. You were so close. Quality tools - and software packages are tools, especially in a business environment - need to get the job done as cheaply and effectively as possible. That is it. If they require a lot of additional work, be that in a steep training curve or even in the time necessary to de-crapware a computer, that goes against their cost. If they only do 2/3 of the job requiring a lot of manual work, that goes against their cost too. The one with the lowest cost wins.
So why on earth is this the problem of the users? If a user can get their job done effectively with a tool that has some side effects that do not affect them or their organization, why should they not use it? Is it their responsiblity to use the "elegant" solution that requires more time to install, train, and use, because its created in a more FOSS/popular way, or written in a particular language?
I mean, really. And people wonder why FOSS advocates have a bad reputation in some circles.
Besides, if "Joe User"'s software really does allow him to do hist tasks with little or low effort, why does he care about "getting the most from his computer?" That's not the problem he's trying to solve. As for saving money, never underestimate the expense of an employee who's not being productive. They cost way more than most computers, as any business owner could tell you.
On the other hand, Sun's Java compiler has always had broken dependancy tracking (at least since I started using it heavily in 1999). (If a build has an error, the set of output class files may be such that the next run of the compiler skips a source file which needs to be compiled; this is mainly that it can generate the public class without generating other classes in the same file.) I think it's likely that, if Sun does open source the JDK, they'll get fixes for a number of annoying flaws of that sort pretty quickly, and things that are clearly wrong but aren't considered worth working on will be improved substantially.
Of course, since the Java class format is standard, you can also use a compiler such as Jikes (or indeed the Java compiler of your choice, including one that took PHP files as source for that matter) with the current runtime. While open-sourcing would improve the standard Java compiler, its not like there's no other choices...
And if you liked that, I highly (really) recommend Josephine Tey's _Daughter of Time_. Its a mystery about a mystery, and covers that whole issue in detail (and with remarkably good writing at that).
Except that, with BofA, if you haven't already visited their site from your computer (actually a combination of a cookie (that can be passed on, natch) and at least coming from a domain block that you previously came from (not perfect, but a reasonable compromise) then you get a completely different page that warns you that -- if you think you're coming from a location you've visited from before -- you may be experiencing an attack, and has you go through some more convoluted procedures to proceed, including asking you some security questions that you previously set up on their site. Perfect? No, but much better than many.
I can't speak to the others, but for the Nova comment, let's see what Snopes has to say, shall we? In part:
...
...
First of all, the phrase "no va" (literally "doesn't go") and the word "nova" are distinct entities with different pronunciations in Spanish: the former is two words and is pronounced with the accent on the second word; the latter is one word with the accent on the first syllable. Assuming that Spanish speakers would naturally see the word "nova" as equivalent to the phrase "no va" and think "Hey, this car doesn't go!" is akin to assuming that English speakers woud spurn a dinette set sold under the name Notable because nobody wants a dinette set that doesn't include a table.
The truth is that the Chevrolet Nova's name didn't significantly affect its sales: it sold well in both its primary Spanish-language markets, Mexico and Venezuela. (Its Venezuelan sales figures actually surpassed GM's expectations.)
The one bit of supporting evidence offered to back up this legend is spurious as well. General Motors, we're told, finally wised up and changed the model name of their automobile from Nova to Caribe, after which sales of the car "took off." One small problem with this claim: the Caribe sold in Mexico was manufactured by Volkswagen, not General Motors. (The Caribe was the model name used by VW in Mexico for the car more commonly known in the USA as the Volkswagen Golf.) The Nova's model name was never changed for the Spanish-speaking market.
So, I'd say that pretty much does it for that story. I wouldn't be surprised if a couple of the ones you listed were accurate, but I wouldn't be surprised if none of them were either, all things considered.
The "Wii" is still a stupid name, though.
While I didn't know Mr. Head, I did go to school with a Michael Hunt. Went by Mike, naturally.
Yeah, they had both gesture recognition and the idea of scanning by holding images up to the display and then peeling them back, leaving a (reversed for correctness) copy on the screen that could then be moved around, emailed, etc. Who knows, maybe its not such a bad idea after all.
Think of a bathroom mirror with zoom functionality, image enhancement functions...
Great... so now we'll get spam about new mirrors designed to make us look like we don't need Viagra? Ah, the joys of the 21st century.
That's funny. I've worked IT for over 15 years now, and the Windows Firewall still confuses me from time to time. "Run DLL as an App has requested access to the internet. Allow or Deny?" Heck, I don't know, that's not enough information to make the decision. I denied it, but I'm still curious. Add to that the number of times that product installation will be interrupted with a (non-taskbar-visible) Firewall window and will fail, and I can see why an awful lot of non-computer-people would be confused and alarmed.
If you constrained the accidents to avoid all of these factors (which are controllable), the accident rate and fatality rate would go way down.
Well, duh. And if you eliminated all of the autombile accidents that were caused by any one or more of those factors, their percentage would go way down as well. Nothing you said leads me to believe that the 10:1 ratio would be different, unless you're saying that 10 times more motorcyclists ride drunk than automobile drivers drive drunk...
So any computer which an attacker can perform an account escalation on, or has physical access to, is vulnerable.
Who said anything about physical access? In a lot of environments, like your average office setup, you won't have access to the machine that stores the passwords (in whatever format). You have to access through the API. Even if you have root (or whatever) on a local machine, it doesn't give you any special benefit in cracking someone's network password. So if the password server locks the account after 500 invalid attempts, you're still fine.
I'm not arguing about local machine passwords, but that's not the type of environment we've been discussing anyway.
This produced a net -5500 MWe of power because they consume more power filling their reservoirs than they generate by emptying them.
Right, which is why they work as load-balancers and promote financial efficiency rather than actually promoting power efficiency. Thankfully the main generating systems have already tied financial efficiency to their, somewhat more fluctuating power efficiency, so it all works out.
Although its truly amazing how many people in the US think that their house is made of bricks, when it isn't. The vast, vast majority of "brick" houses (at least those built in the last 50 years or so, probably a lot longer) are stick-framed houses with a thin brick veneer, bearing only a superficial resembalence to real brick houses as known in the rest of the world.
(spoken as a British ex-pat who still gets amused after 20+ years in the 'States)
do you people have any clue how a brute-force attack is carried out?
One does not use the password entry UI of the system.
What's your point? This has nothing to do with the number of attacks it takes for the password verification component to lock the account, no matter what your backend architecture.