AT&T's customer service improved in the years running up to the iPhone launch. They sucked royally compared to T-Mobile in the Washington DC area in the late 1990's.
We switched to AT&T to get the iPhone 3G, and anticipated major pain and suffering. The droids in the AT&T store screwed up the initial order, but the phone support people were actually competent and polite, and fixed stuff.
Our recent upgrade to the iPhone 4S was handled correctly the first time at an AT&T store in Greenbelt MD.
Their human customer service has been OK in my experience.
Yes, there's a funded-through-2038 trust fund. However, the US Government as a whole collected that money, borrowed it, and spent it on other things. Remember those "surpluses" in the 1990s? They were counting baby boomer social security taxes as current revenue in that "surplus" computation - we were still going into long-term debt.
The US Government as a whole is in deep fiscal trouble. The social security surplus helped cover up the problem, and it is going to have to be part of the solution.
That was 25 years ago. Still hacking, and assuming NPPdoesn't fall over, will be gainfully employed for the foreseeable future (five years?).
I did have one advantage - I hacked Lisp all through school and for several years afterwards, so mainstream tools didn't really catch up until about the turn of the millennium.
... and not because of the natural-language-like syntax. AppleScript is a disease because it's brittle at its most critical task - driving other applications. It's far too easy for application writers to publish AppleScript interfaces that look like they can do a particular task, but actually can't because the creator for your particular object type or the accessor for a critical field is broken.
And don't get me started on AppleScript UI manipulation - if a critical button you need to push isn't connected to the root UI context, you can't access it from AppleScript. Buttons like that are also accessibility violations - VoiceOver can't find them.
(yes, I've been trying to automate stuff in Quicken Essentials, why do you ask?)
AppleScript is too arcane and non-orthogonal to be anywhere near a HyperCard replacement.
There could easily be something like CarrierIQ in the closed parts of iOS. However, it would not be useful to Apple unless it phoned home somehow, and that network activity is detectable whether or not the platform source is open.
HP wants to deploy a stealth wireless network around the world, so they secretly put an entire OS in each of their printers.
The printers mesh-network with each other, and the ones that have a real internetwork connection do the backhaul.
Think about it - how often have you looked for a wifi connection in the middle of nowhere, and all you could see was some poor lonely HP printer looking for some peer-to-peer action...
Those patents sound awfully similar to me. What happens in a case where the Patent Office grants two (or more than two) patents that cover the same "innovation"?
It's sort of second-order right now - NASA is one place where shifting activity to the private sector will almost certainly reduce costs, which will leave more money to be redirected elsewhere.
The Obama administration should be supported when they do the right thing, like at NASA, and flamed when they do the wrong thing, like basically everywhere else in tech.
As someone who works as a contractor at Goddard Space Flight Center (just outside the Washington DC Beltway), I can tell you that NASA spending in my district is heavily promoted by Senator Barbara A. Mikulski (D).
The Obama administration has a lot of problematic policies related to tech (Solyndra, Yucca Mountain, green energy, etc.) but as far as NASA and space is concerned, they for once have the right idea of buying services from the private sector.
Congress is the group that wants the return to the old NASA, primarily because that keeps the money flowing to the old NASA centers.
A similar way out of the automation trap was proposed by James Albus back in 1976. Albus died in April of 2011, but you can read about his proposal at www.peoplescapitalism.org.
To Relicense This Show, We Would Have To Raise Your Monthly Streaming Fee:
(change in yearly license fee) / (number of subscribers) / 12
Easy to compute, unbiased, and would separate the reasonable content owners from the greedy unrealistic scum
Netflix needs to make one more change
on
Netflix Kills Qwikster
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
They should stop removing content from their streaming index. If they have to stop streaming something because a license expires, their index should change the "Play" button to "Can't Play Right Now", and pushing or hovering over the button should pop up a window saying who owns the content, how the license changed, and HOW TO CONTACT THE CONTENT OWNER to request Netflix licensing.
Right now, as far as the customers are concerned, Netflix is the one hitting them over the head with the 2x4, and Netflix needs to make it clear to the customers that they're holding the stick, but the content owners are pulling the strings.
is getting away from pure commodity parts. They've been using some of their enormous pile of cash to fund manufacturing processes they like (unibody aluminum) and to fund fab lines in return for first dibs on their output (flash RAM - Apple has a significant fraction of world capacity contracted).
Other manufacturers have had trouble competing on price with Apple lately (which is a switch) because Apple has the best price on parts and processes.
Apple will have its hands full exploiting its current markets for the next year or two, by just making the obvious updates (iPhone with 4G and iPad with retina display, both likely next year), which should buy them enough time to create the next shiny object for our enjoyment.
Slashdot Mirror
AT&T's customer service improved in the years running up to the iPhone launch. They sucked royally compared to T-Mobile in the Washington DC area in the late 1990's.
We switched to AT&T to get the iPhone 3G, and anticipated major pain and suffering. The droids in the AT&T store screwed up the initial order, but the phone support people were actually competent and polite, and fixed stuff.
Our recent upgrade to the iPhone 4S was handled correctly the first time at an AT&T store in Greenbelt MD.
Their human customer service has been OK in my experience.
Their network still sucks rocks, though.
In the Washington DC area, one bar from T-Mobile means you can talk, and if you're not moving you probably won't drop the call.
One bar from AT&T means you might be able to connect, and you are very likely to drop the call if you do.
Yes, there's a funded-through-2038 trust fund. However, the US Government as a whole collected that money, borrowed it, and spent it on other things. Remember those "surpluses" in the 1990s? They were counting baby boomer social security taxes as current revenue in that "surplus" computation - we were still going into long-term debt.
The US Government as a whole is in deep fiscal trouble. The social security surplus helped cover up the problem, and it is going to have to be part of the solution.
That was 25 years ago. Still hacking, and assuming NPPdoesn't fall over, will be gainfully employed for the foreseeable future (five years?).
I did have one advantage - I hacked Lisp all through school and for several years afterwards, so mainstream tools didn't really catch up until about the turn of the millennium.
... and not because of the natural-language-like syntax. AppleScript is a disease because it's brittle at its most critical task - driving other applications. It's far too easy for application writers to publish AppleScript interfaces that look like they can do a particular task, but actually can't because the creator for your particular object type or the accessor for a critical field is broken.
And don't get me started on AppleScript UI manipulation - if a critical button you need to push isn't connected to the root UI context, you can't access it from AppleScript. Buttons like that are also accessibility violations - VoiceOver can't find them.
(yes, I've been trying to automate stuff in Quicken Essentials, why do you ask?)
AppleScript is too arcane and non-orthogonal to be anywhere near a HyperCard replacement.
Apple develops the hardware, the OS, and the debugger - and it is all closed source.
Most of iOS is open source.
There could easily be something like CarrierIQ in the closed parts of iOS. However, it would not be useful to Apple unless it phoned home somehow, and that network activity is detectable whether or not the platform source is open.
... at collection and integration of public data only. To go beyond that, there has to be oversight, preferably warrant-based.
HP wants to deploy a stealth wireless network around the world, so they secretly put an entire OS in each of their printers.
The printers mesh-network with each other, and the ones that have a real internetwork connection do the backhaul.
Think about it - how often have you looked for a wifi connection in the middle of nowhere, and all you could see was some poor lonely HP printer looking for some peer-to-peer action...
Don't dismiss McCaffrey if you only like hard SF. Consider that her Dragonrider series started out serialized in Analog.
Disney's market cap is ~ $60 billion. Either Apple or Google could buy half of that with their cash on hand.
Once they had control, they could make one major media player start acting in everyone's best interest.
Those patents sound awfully similar to me. What happens in a case where the Patent Office grants two (or more than two) patents that cover the same "innovation"?
A smaller scale version of the idea has been kicking around in the renewable energy area for many years - see ice ponds.
It's sort of second-order right now - NASA is one place where shifting activity to the private sector will almost certainly reduce costs, which will leave more money to be redirected elsewhere.
The Obama administration should be supported when they do the right thing, like at NASA, and flamed when they do the wrong thing, like basically everywhere else in tech.
As someone who works as a contractor at Goddard Space Flight Center (just outside the Washington DC Beltway), I can tell you that NASA spending in my district is heavily promoted by Senator Barbara A. Mikulski (D).
The Obama administration has a lot of problematic policies related to tech (Solyndra, Yucca Mountain, green energy, etc.) but as far as NASA and space is concerned, they for once have the right idea of buying services from the private sector.
Congress is the group that wants the return to the old NASA, primarily because that keeps the money flowing to the old NASA centers.
... you definitely need to read it. I will definitely plow through it soon.
They laughed at Galileo.
They laughed at Einstein.
They also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
You are thinking of this story.
A similar way out of the automation trap was proposed by James Albus back in 1976. Albus died in April of 2011, but you can read about his proposal at www.peoplescapitalism.org.
I've had this picture on my office door for ages.
How can I put a black border around that?
if they could have. At the time, Bell Labs was not allowed to sell software, and software was not patentable until 1981, so there was not a lot of incentive for Bell Labs to tie software-related stuff up legally.
should be of the form:
To Relicense This Show, We Would Have To Raise Your Monthly Streaming Fee:
(change in yearly license fee) / (number of subscribers) / 12
Easy to compute, unbiased, and would separate the reasonable content owners from the greedy unrealistic scum
They should stop removing content from their streaming index. If they have to stop streaming something because a license expires, their index should change the "Play" button to "Can't Play Right Now", and pushing or hovering over the button should pop up a window saying who owns the content, how the license changed, and HOW TO CONTACT THE CONTENT OWNER to request Netflix licensing.
Right now, as far as the customers are concerned, Netflix is the one hitting them over the head with the 2x4, and Netflix needs to make it clear to the customers that they're holding the stick, but the content owners are pulling the strings.
Which makes it a LIABILITY for Borders, as far as I'm concerned.
I already drive a '93 Saturn SL1, how much lower can I go?
'85 Geo Prizim?
1985 Yugo.
is getting away from pure commodity parts. They've been using some of their enormous pile of cash to fund manufacturing processes they like (unibody aluminum) and to fund fab lines in return for first dibs on their output (flash RAM - Apple has a significant fraction of world capacity contracted).
Other manufacturers have had trouble competing on price with Apple lately (which is a switch) because Apple has the best price on parts and processes.
Apple will have its hands full exploiting its current markets for the next year or two, by just making the obvious updates (iPhone with 4G and iPad with retina display, both likely next year), which should buy them enough time to create the next shiny object for our enjoyment.