I agree totally that the problem is not the use of fax machines, but the use of paper.
The answer to the (paraphrased) question posed by the article, "Why do fax machines persist?", is that it remains the most convenient method of getting a piece of paper from one place to another.
The problem is, why do you want to get a piece of paper from one place to another?
I disagree with your opinion that digital signatures are more convenient though, at least at the present. Unlike a pen-and-paper signature, not everybody has one. Not everybody would know how to verify a digitally-signed document if they received one. The legal standing of a digital signature may be questionable (if only by the ignorant in certain jurisdictions). There's the difficulty of keeping your digital signature in a place that's both reasonably secure and useful. And then there's the problem of actually using it, especially when software isn't equipped to use it as standard.
A pen-and-paper signature may not afford any real security, but it's easy to use, well-understood, and legally acceptable. Digital signatures need to be all of these things before they will become a part of daily life.
Are you suggesting that somebody from Apple went round Samsung's booths removing Samsung products?
I haven't seen any evidence that suggests that Samsung were in any way forced to remove the 7.7 from the trade show. It wasn't for sale, so they weren't in breach of any injunctions. What it sounds like, is that Samsung have realised the publicity value of this whole situation, and removed the 7.7 from the show voluntarily in order to start a media feeding frenzy.
(6) Has never transformed overnight into several hundred blank pages of paper because of some corporate decision somewhere;
There's nothing to stop you from backing up your ebooks if you're really worried about this.
"Inability to make backups" is a mark against the physical book. If my house burns down with my Kindle in it, I can buy a new Kindle and my entire book collection is still there.
A friend of mine went to an Apple Store to try and get her 3rd generation iPod battery replaced. She was told that they didn't replace batteries for iPods that old any more, but she was offered an equivalent current-gen iPod Nano for the price that the battery replacement would have cost her (i.e. heavily discounted).
So 'decide to upgrade' isn't necessarily the most onerous option in the world.
The size of your camera is dictated by the lens, sensor, and handling considerations, to the point where there's nothing to be gained, in terms of size or rigidity, by not having the extra gubbins required for a removable battery. Not so with a PMP.
It depends on whether you take the word 'make' to mean design, or manufacture. They were pretty clear about the fact that they weren't satisfied that the technology at the time would allow them to create a compelling tablet, which is one of the reasons they switched to phones.
The BSD licence does not enable you to withhold any freedom that you yourself were granted.
Imagine that I put a piece of BSD licensed code on my website. You then create and distribute a piece of closed-source software based on my code. This act does not remove the code from my website, nor does it revoke the licence that I have attached to it.
The GPL, on the other hand, demands that additional freedoms to your code are granted to others.
It's only the parts of iCloud that relate to music that don't work outwith the USA. If you only use iTunes to back up your phone, then you can replace iTunes with iCloud no matter where you are.
That depends on a lot of factors. I'd guess that in a heavy traffic situation, a roundabout will still be better overall than traffic lights in terms of congestion. The problem is that it's much more difficult for a driver to navigate safely, given all the information that has to be processed, and in some cases, the bravery needed to use a gap in the traffic.
I used to have to drive through Aberdeen's Haudagain roundabout on a regular basis, so I know how much of a nightmare it can be!
But there are other advantages of railroads. First, railroads are largely weather-independent, but ships aren't. Northern seas also tend to freeze, but the cold air doesn't affect the railroad much.
Apple bungled the iPhone by going AT&T-only in the states. This meant that other device makers could sell to users on other networks, which provided a market for Android apps, which in turn made Android handsets a more attractive proposition for customers in other countries where iPhones were available on other carriers.
Simply saying that it happened with phones so it will happen with tablets, isn't good enough. Tablets don't need the mobile networks in the same way as phones, so Android tablet manufacturers can't rely on the route to market that was available to them when they were starting out with phones.
Dabs were selling them for £105 earlier today, which is the cheapest I've seen them in the UK. Even taking VAT into account, it was nowhere near as cheap as the ~£60 that Best Buy were selling them for in the US. That said, they've sold out despite the higher price, so there would have been nothing gained by going any cheaper.
If you're comparing platforms instead of phones, you should really also include devices that aren't smartphones like the iPod Touch and Samsung Galaxy S WiFi. You should probably also include tablets. Otherwise, you're counting the market segments in which Android is performing well, and ignoring the market segments at which Android is doing less well.
Everyone uses their own definition of 'content creation' in order to suit their argument. The fact is that 'content creation' covers a vast range of things. What's your definition?
I certainly believe that the production of child pornography should be illegal (and it is, under laws pertaining to child abuse) and therefore I don't really see an issue with distribution and possession of it also being illegal.
You're assuming that the production, distribution and possession of child pornography all happens in the same country, which is rarely the case. If you were involved in law enforcement in a country where there is no production, but a lot of possession, what would be your response? Leave it, it's the other country's problem? Or go after the paedophiles in your own country who are providing a market to child abusers?
That depends on your perspective. If you're British, it was a secession. If you look at it from a purely American perspective, it was a revolution.
The same situation exists in China. The pre-PRC political system is still hanging on in Taiwan, but you'd be hard pressed to deny that mainland China underwent a revolution.
The problem with exceptions as constitutional amendments is that, although they're more difficult to create, they're also more difficult for a subsequent government to remove.
In theory, you could have all the processing done in the unit itself. A map of every road in the country, plus the pricing quotas for those roads, would fit on an SD card. The unit could process its location history and simply upload the bill.
That's not to say that it's how it will be done, but it's how I'd do it.
Those are figures for the US. You cannot assume that they apply equally to the Chinese market.
I keep having to point this out to my boss, who is a complete Android fanboy. Our company only does business in the UK, yet he is constantly citing irrelevant US market share figures in order to justify an increasing focus on his platform of choice. That's not to say that we shouldn't be writing Android apps, but his logic is badly flawed.
Also, it's only taking into account 'smartphone' marketshare, which artificially deflates iOS figures (which is doing well in devices that are not technically phones) at the expense of other platforms (which are not).
This is a little bit off-topic, but does anybody know if there's a Thunderbolt docking station in the pipeline, from any manufacturer?
The MacBook Air + Thunderbolt Display combination has piqued my interest, because it provides a relatively full array of ports when plugged in. But I don't need an external monitor, just the docking station, and I've got no desire to splash £899 on a monitor that I don't want or need.
It teaches you how to drive in low-friction environments. I think it's a mandatory part of the Finnish driving test. As somebody who has crashed a car after hitting oil on the road, I would've appreciated this training.
When did you pass your UK test, out of interest? I took mine in 2002... but they've changed fairly significantly since then. The theory test has a hazard perception section that you take on a computer, where you're shown a video and you have to click on anything that you perceive to be a hazard.
The practical test has some basic vehicle roadworthiness checks (nothing huge, just checking the oil and that kind of thing), and it also has a section where the examiner stops giving you constant instructions and just tells you to drive to a certain place using your own initiative.
The test still doesn't go as far as I think it should. There should definitely be a dual-carriageway (arm, divided highway?) section, although I guess that would be problematic if you were taking your test in Shetland. And a skid-pan course would be useful too.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree totally that the problem is not the use of fax machines, but the use of paper.
The answer to the (paraphrased) question posed by the article, "Why do fax machines persist?", is that it remains the most convenient method of getting a piece of paper from one place to another.
The problem is, why do you want to get a piece of paper from one place to another?
I disagree with your opinion that digital signatures are more convenient though, at least at the present. Unlike a pen-and-paper signature, not everybody has one. Not everybody would know how to verify a digitally-signed document if they received one. The legal standing of a digital signature may be questionable (if only by the ignorant in certain jurisdictions). There's the difficulty of keeping your digital signature in a place that's both reasonably secure and useful. And then there's the problem of actually using it, especially when software isn't equipped to use it as standard.
A pen-and-paper signature may not afford any real security, but it's easy to use, well-understood, and legally acceptable. Digital signatures need to be all of these things before they will become a part of daily life.
Are you suggesting that somebody from Apple went round Samsung's booths removing Samsung products?
I haven't seen any evidence that suggests that Samsung were in any way forced to remove the 7.7 from the trade show. It wasn't for sale, so they weren't in breach of any injunctions. What it sounds like, is that Samsung have realised the publicity value of this whole situation, and removed the 7.7 from the show voluntarily in order to start a media feeding frenzy.
There's nothing to stop you from backing up your ebooks if you're really worried about this.
"Inability to make backups" is a mark against the physical book. If my house burns down with my Kindle in it, I can buy a new Kindle and my entire book collection is still there.
A friend of mine went to an Apple Store to try and get her 3rd generation iPod battery replaced. She was told that they didn't replace batteries for iPods that old any more, but she was offered an equivalent current-gen iPod Nano for the price that the battery replacement would have cost her (i.e. heavily discounted).
So 'decide to upgrade' isn't necessarily the most onerous option in the world.
The size of your camera is dictated by the lens, sensor, and handling considerations, to the point where there's nothing to be gained, in terms of size or rigidity, by not having the extra gubbins required for a removable battery. Not so with a PMP.
It depends on whether you take the word 'make' to mean design, or manufacture. They were pretty clear about the fact that they weren't satisfied that the technology at the time would allow them to create a compelling tablet, which is one of the reasons they switched to phones.
My first thought was that it bears a passing resemblance to Nausicaä's mehve.
The BSD licence does not enable you to withhold any freedom that you yourself were granted.
Imagine that I put a piece of BSD licensed code on my website. You then create and distribute a piece of closed-source software based on my code. This act does not remove the code from my website, nor does it revoke the licence that I have attached to it.
The GPL, on the other hand, demands that additional freedoms to your code are granted to others.
It's only the parts of iCloud that relate to music that don't work outwith the USA. If you only use iTunes to back up your phone, then you can replace iTunes with iCloud no matter where you are.
That depends on a lot of factors. I'd guess that in a heavy traffic situation, a roundabout will still be better overall than traffic lights in terms of congestion. The problem is that it's much more difficult for a driver to navigate safely, given all the information that has to be processed, and in some cases, the bravery needed to use a gap in the traffic.
I used to have to drive through Aberdeen's Haudagain roundabout on a regular basis, so I know how much of a nightmare it can be!
That's not necessarily the case, especially where a tunnel is involved.
Apple bungled the iPhone by going AT&T-only in the states. This meant that other device makers could sell to users on other networks, which provided a market for Android apps, which in turn made Android handsets a more attractive proposition for customers in other countries where iPhones were available on other carriers.
Simply saying that it happened with phones so it will happen with tablets, isn't good enough. Tablets don't need the mobile networks in the same way as phones, so Android tablet manufacturers can't rely on the route to market that was available to them when they were starting out with phones.
Dabs were selling them for £105 earlier today, which is the cheapest I've seen them in the UK. Even taking VAT into account, it was nowhere near as cheap as the ~£60 that Best Buy were selling them for in the US. That said, they've sold out despite the higher price, so there would have been nothing gained by going any cheaper.
If you're comparing platforms instead of phones, you should really also include devices that aren't smartphones like the iPod Touch and Samsung Galaxy S WiFi. You should probably also include tablets. Otherwise, you're counting the market segments in which Android is performing well, and ignoring the market segments at which Android is doing less well.
Everyone uses their own definition of 'content creation' in order to suit their argument. The fact is that 'content creation' covers a vast range of things. What's your definition?
You can filter your stream by circles, so you could switch to a stream that contains posts only by those two people you actually know.
You're assuming that the production, distribution and possession of child pornography all happens in the same country, which is rarely the case. If you were involved in law enforcement in a country where there is no production, but a lot of possession, what would be your response? Leave it, it's the other country's problem? Or go after the paedophiles in your own country who are providing a market to child abusers?
That depends on your perspective. If you're British, it was a secession. If you look at it from a purely American perspective, it was a revolution.
The same situation exists in China. The pre-PRC political system is still hanging on in Taiwan, but you'd be hard pressed to deny that mainland China underwent a revolution.
The problem with exceptions as constitutional amendments is that, although they're more difficult to create, they're also more difficult for a subsequent government to remove.
In theory, you could have all the processing done in the unit itself. A map of every road in the country, plus the pricing quotas for those roads, would fit on an SD card. The unit could process its location history and simply upload the bill.
That's not to say that it's how it will be done, but it's how I'd do it.
"There are more serious crimes than this one, so we should ignore this one altogether." Classic bullshit argument.
Those are figures for the US. You cannot assume that they apply equally to the Chinese market.
I keep having to point this out to my boss, who is a complete Android fanboy. Our company only does business in the UK, yet he is constantly citing irrelevant US market share figures in order to justify an increasing focus on his platform of choice. That's not to say that we shouldn't be writing Android apps, but his logic is badly flawed.
Also, it's only taking into account 'smartphone' marketshare, which artificially deflates iOS figures (which is doing well in devices that are not technically phones) at the expense of other platforms (which are not).
This is a little bit off-topic, but does anybody know if there's a Thunderbolt docking station in the pipeline, from any manufacturer?
The MacBook Air + Thunderbolt Display combination has piqued my interest, because it provides a relatively full array of ports when plugged in. But I don't need an external monitor, just the docking station, and I've got no desire to splash £899 on a monitor that I don't want or need.
It teaches you how to drive in low-friction environments. I think it's a mandatory part of the Finnish driving test. As somebody who has crashed a car after hitting oil on the road, I would've appreciated this training.
When did you pass your UK test, out of interest? I took mine in 2002... but they've changed fairly significantly since then. The theory test has a hazard perception section that you take on a computer, where you're shown a video and you have to click on anything that you perceive to be a hazard.
The practical test has some basic vehicle roadworthiness checks (nothing huge, just checking the oil and that kind of thing), and it also has a section where the examiner stops giving you constant instructions and just tells you to drive to a certain place using your own initiative.
The test still doesn't go as far as I think it should. There should definitely be a dual-carriageway (arm, divided highway?) section, although I guess that would be problematic if you were taking your test in Shetland. And a skid-pan course would be useful too.