I've also streamed for several hours on the battery. Plugging it in is an option, of course. How long does a satellite radio last on battery power alone?
I have seven apps for streaming audio, and I'm pretty sure they were all free (or at most 99 cents). They work over WiFi or 3G or EDGE. Coverage i sisolated areas leaves something to be desired, but at the same time, AT&T's EDGE coverage footprint is hardly "microscopic."
Is the iPhone + streaming audio app a "satellite radio killer?" No, but it's not the uber-expensive, impractical solution you make it out to be either.
Since the other parts of your message have already been addressed elsewhere, I wanted to respond to these parts.
Battery: I would estimate about 14 days of 24/7 streaming before the battery gave out, possibly longer... I've never tested it.
AT&T's Edge coverage is microscopic when compared to satellite radio. The entirety of CONUS + a major portion of non-CONUS landmass and out in international waters is covered by Sirius/XM. When compared to the Edge coverage area, there's no comparison.
Ahh that's where I got the $60 a month number from. I switched carriers recently, and after talking to AT&T I laughed in their face and walked out when they quoted me $60 a month for what I wanted, when I could get the same thing from T-Mobile for $20 a month. Granted, I don't get the 3G, which does kind of suck, but 3G isn't worth an extra $40 a month to me, especially when adding another $60 ON TOP of what I would pay T-Mobile for the same number of minutes.
So going with AT&T for an extra $120 a month, I could get 3G, or go with T-Mobile and for $120 a month less than AT&T and do without 3G.
Is this serious? An iPhone able to replace satellite radio? Lets start with battery life, as in, there is none. Using WiFi to stream music on the iPhone will kill the battery in less than an hour or so depending on conditions. To solve that, I guess I could plug the thing in.
Now, let's use WiFi in my moving car. HAHAHA yeah, that's a total joke. So we'll use T-Mobiles network for $20 a month... umm, maybe not. Let's use AT&T's network. Streaming data plan? $60 a month. Better hope you're in one of the urban areas that support the high speed data! ORRRRRRR... you could buy a $50 Satellite receiver, pay $12 a month (or $6 if you know someone nice) and do away with a $60/mo data plan AND have access to the signal anywhere in the US.
Seriously... I live in a big urban area, where the idea of this would work. But the implementation would be marginally feasible at best. The battery life issue is huge. The cost is huge (but one could argue that one would already have those, making the cost a non-factor... but how many people have an iPhone + an AT&T data plan AND have Satellite radio? Not many I'll wager.). The available coverage area is absolutely tiny, microscopic really compared to satellite radio.
No... there's nothing about this idea that is even marginally viable on even a small scale.
The business model of XM/Sirius may be flawed, but iPhones and FStream are not going to be a factor in any way, shape or form, nor is WiFi and Streaming radio. Satellite radio is good for so many things that WiFi and Streaming radio can't and won't be touching anytime in the near future (remote listening, professional music selection/composition/presentation, uncensored programming, big name talk show people (bleh personally), professional sports, etc...). Streaming audio can't compete at the same level anytime soon, if for no other reason than it's not organized enough.
The Apple solution is simpler. There really is no question about it. The apple solution is consistent, and the functionality is always visually represented (instead of showing up only when the cursor is in the magic spot.
Now, having said that, I agree with you. I LIKE the windows solution better, because its more flexible and more powerful. But there is no question that the apple solution is simpler, easier to explain and understand, and more consistently implemented.
The implementation is not the issue here. The paradigm is. The Apple paradigm is outdated and less intuitive than the Windows one.
One (and only one) Corner (and only a corner) is less intuitive than stretching a window by pulling on it's frame. That's the issue. The Apple method is less intuitive and harder to explain. Now, the implementation of these paradigms might leave something to be desired, but that's a development flaw, not a design flaw. Apples fundamental design is flawed, SOME Windows designs are flawed, but the fundamental design is sound (at least more sound than Apples).
So the Apple solution is not simpler, it's more complex for the user (but less complex for the programmer, but it's the users we are talking about). From the users point of view it's either "Grab anywhere and pull" or "Grab only in this one spot (maybe you can see it, maybe you can't, if not, move the whole window so you can see that one spot). Now pull."
Putting aside the fact that most people aren't running multiple monitors (which may or may not be true), the assertion that the resize on lower right hand corner is "easier to understand" is questionable at best. How do you figure this?
As far as intuitiveness goes, my first instinct when trying to enlarge a frame would be to pull on the edges of the frame, not the corners, and most certainly not one specific corner.
No, it's not easier to understand. Windows definitely has the advantage here in terms of "easier to understand" and "more intuitive." The implementation may leave something to be desired in certain applications, as you said a lot of developers deviate from the guideline, but the design philosophy of it is far ahead of the legacy method OSX uses.
How about support the developers and buy the game but just download the no-DVD crack from game copy world. That's what I did for Crysis after I bought a new DVD burner and suck-rom hung when trying to launch.
Is this a serious suggestion?
You aren't supporting the developers, you are supporting the publishing house. Generally, it's not the developers putting DRM on the game, it's the publisher. If you do what you suggest, you send the message that DRM is ok. It's not. Not buying the game is the only solution. Whether or not you play it is immaterial to the solution, as long as you aren't funding the company to produce more DRM laden titles, mission accomplished.
"I want this game, and I took it for free. If you can find a more secure drm, you will make more money from me"
If you really wanted t protest DRM, you would NOT play the game at all, whilst emailing them to say so. When you pirate the game, you just get chalked up by the publisher as another pirate, not as some sort of anti-drm protest vote.
The people who pirated my games achieved fuck all in terms of removing DRM. I did that because people emailed me and made rational arguments about being in favour of drm-free games. If you actually want rockstar to ditch DRM, you need to tell them, not just act like the pirates who just want free stuff.
Your assertion is absolutely false. If for no other reason than the fact that you assume there would be a gained sale if there's a more secure DRM. That's not the case. If there's a more secure DRM, then I won't play the game. I _STILL_ won't purchase it.
I will purchase games without DRM (or light handed DRM like Steam), I will not purchase games with heavy handed DRM schemes. I will gladly play them through the pirated version. If there were no DRM on the title, I would have paid money for it. Since there is, I am not paying money for it. It's immaterial how "effective" the DRM is. If it's 1% effective or 100% effective, they still get no money from me. DRM directly equals a lost sale. No DRM directly equals a sale. It's pretty simple. DRM contributes to losing sales, while costing money to develop. No DRM contributes to gained sales and costs nothing to develop. Sounds like DRM is a bad business plan. Let the companies fail that go this route... in the meantime, I will still play their content and enjoy it for free. Or not, as the DRM allows or is unbroken.
It has been over a decade since the last time I used one.
Uh huh... and what did you use for that decade? Guess what, that has largely determined what you "intuitively" think now in terms of UI. In fact, you aren't even using intuition at all, you are simply applying your learned knowledge, and finding that it doesn't apply.
Apple's UI is intuitive to people who haven't used computers extensively, to people who don't have much experience to draw from.
Let's put aside the intuitiveness of the OS's for a moment and focus on just a couple of the MANY hostile user paradigms of OSX vs Windows.
The biggest one - The menu bar. I realize putting the menu bar on the top of the primary monitor is a MacOS legacy thing... but in todays world of multiple monitors, it is downright fucking HOSTILE to the user. That alone makes OSX unusable for people who do real work on real monitors. It's fine for Mom and Pop who only have one monitor and surf the web and read email... but when you have applications strung out over several monitors, having to scroll 3800 - 5000+ pixels to get to a menu is utterly, absolutely ridiculous.
The second biggest one - resize a window. Can't do it in OSX unless you have access to the bottom right hand corner of the window. User HOSTILE. Absolutely HOSTILE. There are times (and it happens often) when a user does not have access to that particular corner of a window... but they have access to most other parts of the frame.
There's plenty more... so intuitiveness aside, OSX is hostile to the users. Windows, meh. It's hostile in general, not just to users. OSX will run a user down in an alley and kick the shit out of them. Windows just flops around like a fat man on an airplane annoying everyone he comes into contact with, but at least he's not being hostile to you and flopping his fat belly on your head.
Notice that PC Pro had to unlock the phone, whereas Apple already had the phone unlocked. There are other instances in the video where the PC Pro demonstrator fumbled to press the right button. All of these things add up the time significantly. Apple didn't need any special effects at all to cut down on the time PC Pro gives us.
Oh please, you freaking shill. So he fumbled a few buttons... did he fumble FIVE TIMES AS LONG as the advert? Hell no, don't be an idiot.
The ad is a lie. Just like "It just works" campaign is a lie. Apple is full of lies.
Then I'd say (as you've discovered yourself) that OS X isn't the platform for you.
SMB has always been slow on the Mac - it;s one of my many complaints with it, but I have been using it to serve files to Windows boxes since OS X 10.2. All versions of OS X that I have used serve files to Windows boxes via SMB with no problems - I have one connected to this machine as we speak, so I'm not sure what happened with your attempts.
In the many long hours I spent trying to get it to work (and verifying that it's indeed a known problem with the versions of OSX I was using (10.5.2 to 10.5.4 I believe), I seem to vaguely recall that it was working as of 10.4, but then broken in 10.5 or something like that. The fact that it was broken at all, much less for 2 - 3 revs for such a monumentally important feature leads me to believe that Apple has no concept of quality control or customer focus when it comes to software.
I am struggling to think of a peripheral that doesn't just work on Mac (after a driver install) the same way as it "just works" on windows - even esoteric PS2 keyboard/serial adapters with no documentation have been persuaded to work on some of the macs I have owned. Every printer I've ever tried, every camera, ever scanner, external drive, memory card reader, gps positioning tool, colour calibrator, video camera has worked.
I think I came across a USB webcam once that didn't work on OS X, but that was a long time ago, and of course the data features and fast-capture aspects of Sony's Hi-MD, but that's about it.
I'm a long way from praising OS X from the be all and end all - right tool for the right job and so on, and it sounds like it's just not the thing for you.
Well, my printer/scanner, which works fine in Windows doesn't have a Mac driver, and those goofy third party drivers I found that every swears by left much to be desired. The printer in question is an Epson CX3810. Not exactly an uncommon printer.
Webcam - didn't work - Logitech Communicate CTX or something like that. Again, not an uncommon webcam.
Keyboard - Logitech G15. Works ok as a straight keyboard, but none of the features of the keyboard are usable.
I'm not saying this is necessarily the fault of OSX itself - it's the drivers that are lacking from the OEM. However, it illustrates the point that things don't "just work" on Mac, when they do "just work" on Windows. Good or bad, 99.9% of mainstream hardware sold just works (or at least is suppose to work) on Windows. You can't say that about the Mac... so the "It just works" campaign is total BS.
OS X is really a good middle ground between Windows and Linux. OS X supports many of the Windows Protocols (a lot better then linux in some ways)
What protocol(s) would that be? I haven't found any... in fact, I've found the opposite to be true. (SMB I'm looking at you)
as well there is a better selection of high quality closed source applications, then linux has.
This is absolutely true... thanks to legacy Mac software. I wish Adobe would make native stuff for Linux. But, the downside with Adobe is it doesn't work on OSX either... if you have HFS+, one of the more defining reasons to have OSX vs Windows NTFS.
However being Unix based it it is more stable then Windows and less prone to viruses and other malware.
I can't remember the last time my Windows XP box crashed. More stable? No, not even a little bit. I do a lot more with my XP box than I do with the Mac - the Mac has crashed a few times in the last 6 months - Windows XP, not so much, despite heavier usage. I'll take your word on Malware/viruses, since I don't do unsafe stupid shit like installing worthless Punch the Monkey applications.
Then combined with virtualization you can run Linux OS X and Windows all at the same time for cross testing your code.
Yeah, the virtualization on OSX is stellar. I wish Linux or Windows would have something even remotely close to Parallels.
It has a clean interface and performs well. You are not fussing with simple stuff. all in all it is good for development.
Clean interface? Not fussing with simple stuff? Are you joking? The OSX UI is all about fussing with simple stuff. Lets take a particular egregious example - the menu bar. Who thought this was a good idea to carry over from MacOS? Did someone really go "Hey, it's a good idea to have to move your mouse from one screen to another at 1920 or 2550 pixels PER SCREEN to get to the menu bar!" Sorry, no. The menu bar on OSX alone makes OSX a useless device for development, since a good portion of your time is spent scrolling the mouse across multiple monitors just to get at a menu function that doesn't have a hot-key/shortcut.
Clean interface? Let's talk about resizing a window. You can only do it from the lower right hand corner! Can't get to that corner? Tough shit!
Clean interface? Try tabbing through a form while web browing. Aww, you can't tab into that drop down box? Your tabbing doesn't want to go to the box you expect? Why not? Who knows! The web page is W3C compliant, but the browser doesn't want to follow the order of the boxes laid out by the page!
No, clean interface is not one of the features of OSX. Fussing with small stuff is what OSX is all about. You spend a good portion of your time fighting with the UI in OSX. You may be use to it, but if you go to a more ergonomincally designed UI and then go back to OSX, the glaring flaws become apparent. Go on, give me any reasonable excuse for the menu bar problem or the resizing of a window in one corner only. There's more flaws just like that - as I said, you may be use to them, but that doesn't mean they aren't flaws.
Sweet Jesus, thank you for writing this. I thought I was the only admin that absolutely despises the administration tools and goofy UI decisions. I always feel like I'm fighting a sea of OSX fanboi's when I write about the problems of OSX... but at least someone out there runs into the same problems as I do.
>"Yet for many [who?], the Mac remains sluggish and poorly tuned for development [citation?].."
Umm, that would be me.
The SMB implementation in OSX through Finder is a total joke. Saying it's sluggish is kind. It's downright unusable when you need to switch through directories located in the root of the SMB share. It seems Apple forgot about a little thing called caching when establishing the connection. This makes trying to browse root level directories nearly impossible, unless you want to wait 5 seconds between each dive into a directory and going back up.
I tried using OSX as of 10.4 (I think, or was it 10.5?) as an SMB server, and that fell apart immediately. It seems that Apple forgot to test the SMB server when Windows boxes needed to connect to it - they couldn't. The SMB implementation was completely, 100% broken, unless you only wanted to connect as a guest user. Authenticated users could not connect to a share on an OSX box from a Windows box. Maybe this has since been fixed, but as of 6 months ago, it was not.
As a file server, OSX is utter crap. I re-relocated all the files that were on the OSX box back to the Linux box, and all is well.
The virtualization (via Parallels) for OSX is frigging awesome for the most part, I did like that. But there are so many UI flaws in OSX that make the OS a bitch to use for someone who does more than browse the web and send email, and the fact that there are so many peripherals that don't "just work" with OSX but "just work" in Windows, OSX really isn't a platform for power users. It's awesome for what it was designed for - Web browsing, email, content creation. But Windows does those things almost as well (I'd argue that content creation for 75% of content types are equal to OSX) and in some cases better, make OSX a limited use platform. It's great for Mom and Pop and little sister, but for the power user, it's nothing but one disappointment after another.
This is like saying something is "bricked" when it's just a bad firmware flash that can be fixed.
The phone isn't rooted. Rooted means someone gained root access through an exploit and/or installed a root kit. Running telnetd and then connecting as root is a normal method of logging in, no exploits required.
Or are they saying every UNIX system that has a method of remote access is rooted?
In common parlance, uploading means you are sending data and downloading means you are receiving data. There is no other definition, common or otherwise that is correct.
The initiator does come into play when speaking of proper usage.
If someone uploads some data to my ftp server. In my experience, it is NOT common (or even proper IMHO) to say that I downloaded that data. Rather one might say that the server received an upload of the data.
If I ever heard anyone say that an ftp server had downloaded data from them, I'd definitely consider them a newbie.;)
I agree with your specific example, however the initiator - while appearing to be important - really isn't in this context.
You are correct in so far as you would not say your server downloaded the data. But, the initiator is immaterial, since if you were describing the scenario above, you would say "Bob uploaded the files to my server." This is because Bob is the one performing the action, and English sentence structure would be awkward (if not outright incorrect) if you are applying the verb to an improper subject.
The opposite is also true. You would not say "My server downloaded the data to Bob." You would say "Bob downloaded the data from my server." Again, Bob is the one performing the action, so the verb applies to him, not the object (your server). Trying to shoehorn the verb onto the object is improper, and thus is why the initiator is immaterial even though it would seem to be important.
Serious semantics fail. Payloads are neither uploaded or downloaded -- mostly the wires are horizontal.
Ok, that's a farcical response, but -- when have un-anchored referential words like "up" or "down" ever meant anything in data communications without qualification? It's a bit like naming a file "newest_version.doc". Instant confusion.
Unless there is legal freight in the term, "uploading" has no meaning at all by itself. If it is used in a legally binding sense, it will need to be further qualified each time it is use in order to have meaning survive the essential enantiomorphism of the terms. More precise terms such as "source", "target" and a specific reference to the copy direction (or directions (plural), in P2P) are needed if unambiguous clarity of direction is to result.
Your assertion that "uploading" and "downloading" have no meaning at all by themselves is fallacious. Uploading can be simply equated to "sending data" and downloading is equated to "receiving data." So yes, they have a definition by themselves. A very well known and common definition. Your statement that they have no meaning is meaningless and incorrect.
In common parlance 'uploading' and 'downloading' refer not only to the direction of transfer but also the initiator of the transfer. The GP using words as the community uses them does not demonstrate a lack of 'solid grasp', it just means that they are able to converse in language everyone understands.
You are wholely and completely incorrect. In common parlance, uploading means you are sending data and downloading means you are receiving data. There is no other definition, common or otherwise that is correct.
You may believe other definitions are correct, but that does not make them common parlance, nor correct. You are wrong.
Your comments implying the driving slower may be more dangerous is laughable - like the tales told of people who got into accidents while trying to buckle their seatbelt.
As the average speed of the US driver has climbed, the death toll has risen as well - both in absolute numbers and in average deaths per mile travelled. There is no evidence that driving slower is more dangerous, notwithstanding your own personal feelings in the matter. And if somebody driving slow in front of you is enough to make you drive in a risky manner, you really shouldn't be driving, should you?
This is a commonly quoted myth. Please provide a single, CREDIBLE link to any study that indicates this. You won't find it... because every credible study that set out to prove this myth has returned the exact opposite results.
Here are the real facts, and just so you don't think I'm pulling this out of my ass, herearethelinks.
Fact: Slower drivers are involved in accidents more often than speeders. Fact: Speed differences are a more common cause of accidents vs high speeds. Fact: Speeders are generally more alert and cognisant of their surroundings than slower drivers. Fact: Raising speed limits shows a DECREASED injury and fatality rate.
There is plenty of evidence that slower drivers are FAR, FAR more dangerous than faster drivers. There are a number of reasons for this, but one of the biggest one is the fact that slower drivers are a minority on the road, and thus they constitute a MAJOR road hazard. As such, they are responsible for far more carnage than the fast drivers, since they are a majority. If you aren't driving with the majority of traffic, you are wrong. This isn't an opinion, it's simply a fact. If you are a slower driver and you're impeding traffic, even if the traffic is speeding, you are wrong. More and more state laws agree with this, as they ticket slower drivers, even if they are doing the speed limit (Hi Seattle and Colorado, and some others!).
And before you say saftey features in cars have improved (airbags, anti lock brakes, etc...), I've included injuries that would result from a crash. If car safety goes up, fatalities should drop but at the same time, injuries should go up... but the stats say otherwise.
Fatality rate for 100 million miles traveled: 1995 - 1.73 2006 - 1.41
Injury rate for 100 million miles traveled: 1995 - 143 2006 - 85
This is DESPITE 37 MILLION more drivers and 26 MILLION more cars.
If the injectors turn off, the engine doesn't continue to run. It's kinda dependent on getting fuel,duh. Now, an idle motor can run for an awful long time on a lot less fuel. We ran one car at idle with the A/C on (special purpose, don't complain), and what was a 2500 mile drive and 8 tanks of fuel in the vehicl doing the towing was about 1/8 of a tank in the one idle on the trailer. That was about 2 gallons for 2500 miles, or 1250mpg.:)
Engine breaking does bring the RPMs up, but the throttle is usually closed and the injectors are just spraying enough to keep it going at the given RPM. Being that you had to use engine braking means that you consumed more fuel than you needed to prior to braking. Your using some method to bleed off speed. If you shifted to neutral sooner, and made a comfortable slow deceleration, you would save fuel.
The only one smoking crack appears to be you. Why do you think the engine needs fuel to continue to run when you have all that kinetic energy just waiting to be used to turn the engine over? You don't. The ground whooshing by you as you travel down the road will do the job just fine in turning your engine over with no fuel.
Why would the injectors need to be "spraying just enough to keep it going at the given RPM" if your engine braking is ALREADY KEEPING IT GOING?
As an ex-mechanic, I wouldn't recommend coasting all the time with your clutch in, you're not doing it any favours. Stick the thing in neutral, it's far better for the longevity of your clutch, not to mention your spigot bearing.
You should be doing neither. You should be coasting in gear. You'll gain fuel efficiency while saving your clutch. Modern cars shut off fuel injections above certain RPMs when coasting. Putting it in neutral burns fuel to keep the engine turning.
I've gotten lazy with this. When I know a stop is coming up, I put the car in neutral and let it coast. After a while, my clutch leg starts to hurt, so it's easier this way. People may think I'm weird, but I do it up to a mile away. The car coasts really well, so I'm usually not going any slower than I should be anyways.:)
I know some people have already said this, or if they haven't, they will... They will tell you to leave the clutch in to be able to react to any problems that might crop up.
This is effectively a load of crap. But you SHOULD STILL LEAVE THE CAR IN GEAR. It has nothing to do with safety, and everything to do with fuel efficiency.
If you are driving a fairly modern car with fuel injectors, putting the car in neutral will INJECT FUEL to keep the motor turning. If you leave the gear engaged while you slow down, the momentum turns the engine and the ECU in the car will shut off fuel injection as long as the RPMs are above a certain amount. This saves you far, far more fuel than coasting in neutral.
I gain between 1 - 4 mpg (depending on where and how I'm driving) by coasting in gear when possible... but then again I get 50 mpg in my TDI anyway, so it's easier to get a 4 mpg gain than in a vehicle that gets 14mpg. But the point is the same... you will save a lot more fuel by coasting in gear.
he big barrier to ssl for small sites is cost - in some cases the cost of an ssl cert will exceed all other costs.
I would disagree. One of the biggest barriers to implementing SSL on my sites is the lack of IP addresses. I only have two IP addresses, yet I host 16 web sites. My understanding is that HTTPS requires IP based virtuals which would prevent me from hosting more than two sites if I were to use SSL for all of my sites.
Your understand is incorrect, but it's understandable that you'd have that impression.
SSL encryption itself does not require a unique IP address... What you're misunderstanding is the browser messages that pop-up when you have a self signed cert or a cert mismatch. You can SSL encrypt all 16 of your sites on the same IP, but 15 of them will have a mismatched certification. THIS IS OK if your goal is encryption only. The problem is, people view the security warning for a mismatched or self signed cert as something unconditionally bad. Yes, it can be bad if a site has been hijacked. Your bank should have a valid key, signed by a trusted authority that has verified that business entity.
Joe Bob's Ebay store does not need a certificate that's signed by TurboSSL - since there's little to no verification done for the party anyone can go out and buy a cheap cert. A signed cert proves exactly nothing - so you might as well be using a self signed one. The only thing a cheap cert does is keep the browser from popping up the warning - it does nothing to enhance security beyond what a self signed cert will do.
So - that was a round about explanation of why you don't need a unique IP to use SSL. The short explanation is, you only need a unique IP if you don't want a browser warning to pop-up. Otherwise, you can use SSL for just about everything.
Browser handling of SSL warnings are really what has prevented widespread adoption.
But black holes exist within the universe. If time inside a black hole is stopped relative to the rest of the universe, then shouldn't a black hole take infinitely long to form?
As a corollary, shouldn't you be able to look behind you and watch the end of the universe?
Essentially, yes... if you were able to "look out" onto the surrounding universe, the further you got into the gravity well, the faster the universe would appear to be aging.
If we are in a closed universe, you'd eventually see everything rushing towards you and compacting together (then you'd all be in the same temporal reference frame and things would return to normal temporally). If we are in an open universe, you'd see the heat death of the universe first, then your black hole would slowly start lose mass and cool, as time "speeds up" to match the rest of the now dead universe, since your gravity well is now evaporating.
In a closed universe, black holes will likely be the last sources of heat (and therefore energy) left in the universe.
Time appears slow to the outside observer, for the object crossing the horizon it's business as usual, super fast acceleration, stretched out and sucked into oblivion. Lovely:)
Depending on the size of the event horizon, you may not even know you crossed it. Only smaller black holes will give you super fast acceleration, stretched out and suck you into oblivion.
The larger ones are more devious and draw you in slowly... you're already well past the point of no return before you realize you're even in trouble.
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Since the other parts of your message have already been addressed elsewhere, I wanted to respond to these parts.
Battery: I would estimate about 14 days of 24/7 streaming before the battery gave out, possibly longer... I've never tested it.
AT&T's Edge coverage is microscopic when compared to satellite radio. The entirety of CONUS + a major portion of non-CONUS landmass and out in international waters is covered by Sirius/XM. When compared to the Edge coverage area, there's no comparison.
Ahh that's where I got the $60 a month number from. I switched carriers recently, and after talking to AT&T I laughed in their face and walked out when they quoted me $60 a month for what I wanted, when I could get the same thing from T-Mobile for $20 a month. Granted, I don't get the 3G, which does kind of suck, but 3G isn't worth an extra $40 a month to me, especially when adding another $60 ON TOP of what I would pay T-Mobile for the same number of minutes.
So going with AT&T for an extra $120 a month, I could get 3G, or go with T-Mobile and for $120 a month less than AT&T and do without 3G.
Is this serious? An iPhone able to replace satellite radio? Lets start with battery life, as in, there is none. Using WiFi to stream music on the iPhone will kill the battery in less than an hour or so depending on conditions. To solve that, I guess I could plug the thing in.
Now, let's use WiFi in my moving car. HAHAHA yeah, that's a total joke. So we'll use T-Mobiles network for $20 a month... umm, maybe not. Let's use AT&T's network. Streaming data plan? $60 a month. Better hope you're in one of the urban areas that support the high speed data! ORRRRRRR... you could buy a $50 Satellite receiver, pay $12 a month (or $6 if you know someone nice) and do away with a $60/mo data plan AND have access to the signal anywhere in the US.
Seriously... I live in a big urban area, where the idea of this would work. But the implementation would be marginally feasible at best. The battery life issue is huge. The cost is huge (but one could argue that one would already have those, making the cost a non-factor... but how many people have an iPhone + an AT&T data plan AND have Satellite radio? Not many I'll wager.). The available coverage area is absolutely tiny, microscopic really compared to satellite radio.
No... there's nothing about this idea that is even marginally viable on even a small scale.
The business model of XM/Sirius may be flawed, but iPhones and FStream are not going to be a factor in any way, shape or form, nor is WiFi and Streaming radio. Satellite radio is good for so many things that WiFi and Streaming radio can't and won't be touching anytime in the near future (remote listening, professional music selection/composition/presentation, uncensored programming, big name talk show people (bleh personally), professional sports, etc...). Streaming audio can't compete at the same level anytime soon, if for no other reason than it's not organized enough.
The Apple solution is simpler. There really is no question about it. The apple solution is consistent, and the functionality is always visually represented (instead of showing up only when the cursor is in the magic spot.
Now, having said that, I agree with you. I LIKE the windows solution better, because its more flexible and more powerful. But there is no question that the apple solution is simpler, easier to explain and understand, and more consistently implemented.
The implementation is not the issue here. The paradigm is. The Apple paradigm is outdated and less intuitive than the Windows one.
One (and only one) Corner (and only a corner) is less intuitive than stretching a window by pulling on it's frame. That's the issue. The Apple method is less intuitive and harder to explain. Now, the implementation of these paradigms might leave something to be desired, but that's a development flaw, not a design flaw. Apples fundamental design is flawed, SOME Windows designs are flawed, but the fundamental design is sound (at least more sound than Apples).
So the Apple solution is not simpler, it's more complex for the user (but less complex for the programmer, but it's the users we are talking about). From the users point of view it's either "Grab anywhere and pull" or "Grab only in this one spot (maybe you can see it, maybe you can't, if not, move the whole window so you can see that one spot). Now pull."
Putting aside the fact that most people aren't running multiple monitors (which may or may not be true), the assertion that the resize on lower right hand corner is "easier to understand" is questionable at best. How do you figure this?
As far as intuitiveness goes, my first instinct when trying to enlarge a frame would be to pull on the edges of the frame, not the corners, and most certainly not one specific corner.
No, it's not easier to understand. Windows definitely has the advantage here in terms of "easier to understand" and "more intuitive." The implementation may leave something to be desired in certain applications, as you said a lot of developers deviate from the guideline, but the design philosophy of it is far ahead of the legacy method OSX uses.
How about support the developers and buy the game but just download the no-DVD crack from game copy world. That's what I did for Crysis after I bought a new DVD burner and suck-rom hung when trying to launch.
Is this a serious suggestion?
You aren't supporting the developers, you are supporting the publishing house. Generally, it's not the developers putting DRM on the game, it's the publisher. If you do what you suggest, you send the message that DRM is ok. It's not. Not buying the game is the only solution. Whether or not you play it is immaterial to the solution, as long as you aren't funding the company to produce more DRM laden titles, mission accomplished.
pirating the game just makes one statement:
"I want this game, and I took it for free. If you can find a more secure drm, you will make more money from me"
If you really wanted t protest DRM, you would NOT play the game at all, whilst emailing them to say so.
When you pirate the game, you just get chalked up by the publisher as another pirate, not as some sort of anti-drm protest vote.
The people who pirated my games achieved fuck all in terms of removing DRM. I did that because people emailed me and made rational arguments about being in favour of drm-free games. If you actually want rockstar to ditch DRM, you need to tell them, not just act like the pirates who just want free stuff.
Your assertion is absolutely false. If for no other reason than the fact that you assume there would be a gained sale if there's a more secure DRM. That's not the case. If there's a more secure DRM, then I won't play the game. I _STILL_ won't purchase it.
I will purchase games without DRM (or light handed DRM like Steam), I will not purchase games with heavy handed DRM schemes. I will gladly play them through the pirated version. If there were no DRM on the title, I would have paid money for it. Since there is, I am not paying money for it. It's immaterial how "effective" the DRM is. If it's 1% effective or 100% effective, they still get no money from me. DRM directly equals a lost sale. No DRM directly equals a sale. It's pretty simple. DRM contributes to losing sales, while costing money to develop. No DRM contributes to gained sales and costs nothing to develop. Sounds like DRM is a bad business plan. Let the companies fail that go this route... in the meantime, I will still play their content and enjoy it for free. Or not, as the DRM allows or is unbroken.
It has been over a decade since the last time I used one.
Uh huh... and what did you use for that decade? Guess what, that has largely determined what you "intuitively" think now in terms of UI. In fact, you aren't even using intuition at all, you are simply applying your learned knowledge, and finding that it doesn't apply.
Apple's UI is intuitive to people who haven't used computers extensively, to people who don't have much experience to draw from.
Let's put aside the intuitiveness of the OS's for a moment and focus on just a couple of the MANY hostile user paradigms of OSX vs Windows.
The biggest one - The menu bar. I realize putting the menu bar on the top of the primary monitor is a MacOS legacy thing... but in todays world of multiple monitors, it is downright fucking HOSTILE to the user. That alone makes OSX unusable for people who do real work on real monitors. It's fine for Mom and Pop who only have one monitor and surf the web and read email... but when you have applications strung out over several monitors, having to scroll 3800 - 5000+ pixels to get to a menu is utterly, absolutely ridiculous.
The second biggest one - resize a window. Can't do it in OSX unless you have access to the bottom right hand corner of the window. User HOSTILE. Absolutely HOSTILE. There are times (and it happens often) when a user does not have access to that particular corner of a window... but they have access to most other parts of the frame.
There's plenty more... so intuitiveness aside, OSX is hostile to the users. Windows, meh. It's hostile in general, not just to users. OSX will run a user down in an alley and kick the shit out of them. Windows just flops around like a fat man on an airplane annoying everyone he comes into contact with, but at least he's not being hostile to you and flopping his fat belly on your head.
Notice that PC Pro had to unlock the phone, whereas Apple already had the phone unlocked. There are other instances in the video where the PC Pro demonstrator fumbled to press the right button. All of these things add up the time significantly. Apple didn't need any special effects at all to cut down on the time PC Pro gives us.
Oh please, you freaking shill. So he fumbled a few buttons... did he fumble FIVE TIMES AS LONG as the advert? Hell no, don't be an idiot.
The ad is a lie. Just like "It just works" campaign is a lie. Apple is full of lies.
Then I'd say (as you've discovered yourself) that OS X isn't the platform for you.
SMB has always been slow on the Mac - it;s one of my many complaints with it, but I have been using it to serve files to Windows boxes since OS X 10.2. All versions of OS X that I have used serve files to Windows boxes via SMB with no problems - I have one connected to this machine as we speak, so I'm not sure what happened with your attempts.
In the many long hours I spent trying to get it to work (and verifying that it's indeed a known problem with the versions of OSX I was using (10.5.2 to 10.5.4 I believe), I seem to vaguely recall that it was working as of 10.4, but then broken in 10.5 or something like that. The fact that it was broken at all, much less for 2 - 3 revs for such a monumentally important feature leads me to believe that Apple has no concept of quality control or customer focus when it comes to software.
I am struggling to think of a peripheral that doesn't just work on Mac (after a driver install) the same way as it "just works" on windows - even esoteric PS2 keyboard/serial adapters with no documentation have been persuaded to work on some of the macs I have owned. Every printer I've ever tried, every camera, ever scanner, external drive, memory card reader, gps positioning tool, colour calibrator, video camera has worked.
I think I came across a USB webcam once that didn't work on OS X, but that was a long time ago, and of course the data features and fast-capture aspects of Sony's Hi-MD, but that's about it.
I'm a long way from praising OS X from the be all and end all - right tool for the right job and so on, and it sounds like it's just not the thing for you.
Well, my printer/scanner, which works fine in Windows doesn't have a Mac driver, and those goofy third party drivers I found that every swears by left much to be desired. The printer in question is an Epson CX3810. Not exactly an uncommon printer.
Webcam - didn't work - Logitech Communicate CTX or something like that. Again, not an uncommon webcam.
Keyboard - Logitech G15. Works ok as a straight keyboard, but none of the features of the keyboard are usable.
I'm not saying this is necessarily the fault of OSX itself - it's the drivers that are lacking from the OEM. However, it illustrates the point that things don't "just work" on Mac, when they do "just work" on Windows. Good or bad, 99.9% of mainstream hardware sold just works (or at least is suppose to work) on Windows. You can't say that about the Mac... so the "It just works" campaign is total BS.
OS X is really a good middle ground between Windows and Linux. OS X supports many of the Windows Protocols (a lot better then linux in some ways)
What protocol(s) would that be? I haven't found any... in fact, I've found the opposite to be true. (SMB I'm looking at you)
as well there is a better selection of high quality closed source applications, then linux has.
This is absolutely true... thanks to legacy Mac software. I wish Adobe would make native stuff for Linux. But, the downside with Adobe is it doesn't work on OSX either... if you have HFS+, one of the more defining reasons to have OSX vs Windows NTFS.
However being Unix based it it is more stable then Windows and less prone to viruses and other malware.
I can't remember the last time my Windows XP box crashed. More stable? No, not even a little bit. I do a lot more with my XP box than I do with the Mac - the Mac has crashed a few times in the last 6 months - Windows XP, not so much, despite heavier usage. I'll take your word on Malware/viruses, since I don't do unsafe stupid shit like installing worthless Punch the Monkey applications.
Then combined with virtualization you can run Linux OS X and Windows all at the same time for cross testing your code.
Yeah, the virtualization on OSX is stellar. I wish Linux or Windows would have something even remotely close to Parallels.
It has a clean interface and performs well. You are not fussing with simple stuff. all in all it is good for development.
Clean interface? Not fussing with simple stuff? Are you joking? The OSX UI is all about fussing with simple stuff. Lets take a particular egregious example - the menu bar. Who thought this was a good idea to carry over from MacOS? Did someone really go "Hey, it's a good idea to have to move your mouse from one screen to another at 1920 or 2550 pixels PER SCREEN to get to the menu bar!" Sorry, no. The menu bar on OSX alone makes OSX a useless device for development, since a good portion of your time is spent scrolling the mouse across multiple monitors just to get at a menu function that doesn't have a hot-key/shortcut.
Clean interface? Let's talk about resizing a window. You can only do it from the lower right hand corner! Can't get to that corner? Tough shit!
Clean interface? Try tabbing through a form while web browing. Aww, you can't tab into that drop down box? Your tabbing doesn't want to go to the box you expect? Why not? Who knows! The web page is W3C compliant, but the browser doesn't want to follow the order of the boxes laid out by the page!
No, clean interface is not one of the features of OSX. Fussing with small stuff is what OSX is all about. You spend a good portion of your time fighting with the UI in OSX. You may be use to it, but if you go to a more ergonomincally designed UI and then go back to OSX, the glaring flaws become apparent. Go on, give me any reasonable excuse for the menu bar problem or the resizing of a window in one corner only. There's more flaws just like that - as I said, you may be use to them, but that doesn't mean they aren't flaws.
Sweet Jesus, thank you for writing this. I thought I was the only admin that absolutely despises the administration tools and goofy UI decisions. I always feel like I'm fighting a sea of OSX fanboi's when I write about the problems of OSX... but at least someone out there runs into the same problems as I do.
>"Yet for many [who?], the Mac remains sluggish and poorly tuned for development [citation?].."
Umm, that would be me.
The SMB implementation in OSX through Finder is a total joke. Saying it's sluggish is kind. It's downright unusable when you need to switch through directories located in the root of the SMB share. It seems Apple forgot about a little thing called caching when establishing the connection. This makes trying to browse root level directories nearly impossible, unless you want to wait 5 seconds between each dive into a directory and going back up.
I tried using OSX as of 10.4 (I think, or was it 10.5?) as an SMB server, and that fell apart immediately. It seems that Apple forgot to test the SMB server when Windows boxes needed to connect to it - they couldn't. The SMB implementation was completely, 100% broken, unless you only wanted to connect as a guest user. Authenticated users could not connect to a share on an OSX box from a Windows box. Maybe this has since been fixed, but as of 6 months ago, it was not.
As a file server, OSX is utter crap. I re-relocated all the files that were on the OSX box back to the Linux box, and all is well.
The virtualization (via Parallels) for OSX is frigging awesome for the most part, I did like that. But there are so many UI flaws in OSX that make the OS a bitch to use for someone who does more than browse the web and send email, and the fact that there are so many peripherals that don't "just work" with OSX but "just work" in Windows, OSX really isn't a platform for power users. It's awesome for what it was designed for - Web browsing, email, content creation. But Windows does those things almost as well (I'd argue that content creation for 75% of content types are equal to OSX) and in some cases better, make OSX a limited use platform. It's great for Mom and Pop and little sister, but for the power user, it's nothing but one disappointment after another.
This is like saying something is "bricked" when it's just a bad firmware flash that can be fixed.
The phone isn't rooted. Rooted means someone gained root access through an exploit and/or installed a root kit. Running telnetd and then connecting as root is a normal method of logging in, no exploits required.
Or are they saying every UNIX system that has a method of remote access is rooted?
The initiator does come into play when speaking of proper usage.
If someone uploads some data to my ftp server. In my experience, it is NOT common (or even proper IMHO) to say that I downloaded that data. Rather one might say that the server received an upload of the data.
If I ever heard anyone say that an ftp server had downloaded data from them, I'd definitely consider them a newbie. ;)
I agree with your specific example, however the initiator - while appearing to be important - really isn't in this context.
You are correct in so far as you would not say your server downloaded the data. But, the initiator is immaterial, since if you were describing the scenario above, you would say "Bob uploaded the files to my server." This is because Bob is the one performing the action, and English sentence structure would be awkward (if not outright incorrect) if you are applying the verb to an improper subject.
The opposite is also true. You would not say "My server downloaded the data to Bob." You would say "Bob downloaded the data from my server." Again, Bob is the one performing the action, so the verb applies to him, not the object (your server). Trying to shoehorn the verb onto the object is improper, and thus is why the initiator is immaterial even though it would seem to be important.
Serious semantics fail. Payloads are neither uploaded or downloaded -- mostly the wires are horizontal.
Ok, that's a farcical response, but -- when have un-anchored referential words like "up" or "down" ever meant anything in data communications without qualification? It's a bit like naming a file "newest_version.doc". Instant confusion.
Unless there is legal freight in the term, "uploading" has no meaning at all by itself. If it is used in a legally binding sense, it will need to be further qualified each time it is use in order to have meaning survive the essential enantiomorphism of the terms. More precise terms such as "source", "target" and a specific reference to the copy direction (or directions (plural), in P2P) are needed if unambiguous clarity of direction is to result.
Your assertion that "uploading" and "downloading" have no meaning at all by themselves is fallacious. Uploading can be simply equated to "sending data" and downloading is equated to "receiving data." So yes, they have a definition by themselves. A very well known and common definition. Your statement that they have no meaning is meaningless and incorrect.
In common parlance 'uploading' and 'downloading' refer not only to the direction of transfer but also the initiator of the transfer. The GP using words as the community uses them does not demonstrate a lack of 'solid grasp', it just means that they are able to converse in language everyone understands.
You are wholely and completely incorrect. In common parlance, uploading means you are sending data and downloading means you are receiving data. There is no other definition, common or otherwise that is correct.
You may believe other definitions are correct, but that does not make them common parlance, nor correct. You are wrong.
I will donate $25 to his punch fund.
Your comments implying the driving slower may be more dangerous is laughable - like the tales told of people who got into accidents while trying to buckle their seatbelt.
As the average speed of the US driver has climbed, the death toll has risen as well - both in absolute numbers and in average deaths per mile travelled. There is no evidence that driving slower is more dangerous, notwithstanding your own personal feelings in the matter. And if somebody driving slow in front of you is enough to make you drive in a risky manner, you really shouldn't be driving, should you?
This is a commonly quoted myth. Please provide a single, CREDIBLE link to any study that indicates this. You won't find it... because every credible study that set out to prove this myth has returned the exact opposite results.
Here are the real facts, and just so you don't think I'm pulling this out of my ass, here are the links.
Fact: Slower drivers are involved in accidents more often than speeders.
Fact: Speed differences are a more common cause of accidents vs high speeds.
Fact: Speeders are generally more alert and cognisant of their surroundings than slower drivers.
Fact: Raising speed limits shows a DECREASED injury and fatality rate.
There is plenty of evidence that slower drivers are FAR, FAR more dangerous than faster drivers. There are a number of reasons for this, but one of the biggest one is the fact that slower drivers are a minority on the road, and thus they constitute a MAJOR road hazard. As such, they are responsible for far more carnage than the fast drivers, since they are a majority. If you aren't driving with the majority of traffic, you are wrong. This isn't an opinion, it's simply a fact. If you are a slower driver and you're impeding traffic, even if the traffic is speeding, you are wrong. More and more state laws agree with this, as they ticket slower drivers, even if they are doing the speed limit (Hi Seattle and Colorado, and some others!).
And before you say saftey features in cars have improved (airbags, anti lock brakes, etc...), I've included injuries that would result from a crash. If car safety goes up, fatalities should drop but at the same time, injuries should go up... but the stats say otherwise.
Fatality rate for 100 million miles traveled:
1995 - 1.73
2006 - 1.41
Injury rate for 100 million miles traveled:
1995 - 143
2006 - 85
This is DESPITE 37 MILLION more drivers and 26 MILLION more cars.
You must really be smoking crack.
If the injectors turn off, the engine doesn't continue to run. It's kinda dependent on getting fuel,duh. Now, an idle motor can run for an awful long time on a lot less fuel. We ran one car at idle with the A/C on (special purpose, don't complain), and what was a 2500 mile drive and 8 tanks of fuel in the vehicl doing the towing was about 1/8 of a tank in the one idle on the trailer. That was about 2 gallons for 2500 miles, or 1250mpg. :)
Engine breaking does bring the RPMs up, but the throttle is usually closed and the injectors are just spraying enough to keep it going at the given RPM. Being that you had to use engine braking means that you consumed more fuel than you needed to prior to braking. Your using some method to bleed off speed. If you shifted to neutral sooner, and made a comfortable slow deceleration, you would save fuel.
The only one smoking crack appears to be you. Why do you think the engine needs fuel to continue to run when you have all that kinetic energy just waiting to be used to turn the engine over? You don't. The ground whooshing by you as you travel down the road will do the job just fine in turning your engine over with no fuel.
Why would the injectors need to be "spraying just enough to keep it going at the given RPM" if your engine braking is ALREADY KEEPING IT GOING?
As an ex-mechanic, I wouldn't recommend coasting all the time with your clutch in, you're not doing it any favours. Stick the thing in neutral, it's far better for the longevity of your clutch, not to mention your spigot bearing.
You should be doing neither. You should be coasting in gear. You'll gain fuel efficiency while saving your clutch. Modern cars shut off fuel injections above certain RPMs when coasting. Putting it in neutral burns fuel to keep the engine turning.
I've gotten lazy with this. When I know a stop is coming up, I put the car in neutral and let it coast. After a while, my clutch leg starts to hurt, so it's easier this way. People may think I'm weird, but I do it up to a mile away. The car coasts really well, so I'm usually not going any slower than I should be anyways. :)
I know some people have already said this, or if they haven't, they will... They will tell you to leave the clutch in to be able to react to any problems that might crop up.
This is effectively a load of crap. But you SHOULD STILL LEAVE THE CAR IN GEAR. It has nothing to do with safety, and everything to do with fuel efficiency.
If you are driving a fairly modern car with fuel injectors, putting the car in neutral will INJECT FUEL to keep the motor turning. If you leave the gear engaged while you slow down, the momentum turns the engine and the ECU in the car will shut off fuel injection as long as the RPMs are above a certain amount. This saves you far, far more fuel than coasting in neutral.
I gain between 1 - 4 mpg (depending on where and how I'm driving) by coasting in gear when possible... but then again I get 50 mpg in my TDI anyway, so it's easier to get a 4 mpg gain than in a vehicle that gets 14mpg. But the point is the same... you will save a lot more fuel by coasting in gear.
he big barrier to ssl for small sites is cost - in some cases the cost of an ssl cert will exceed all other costs.
I would disagree. One of the biggest barriers to implementing SSL on my sites is the lack of IP addresses. I only have two IP addresses, yet I host 16 web sites. My understanding is that HTTPS requires IP based virtuals which would prevent me from hosting more than two sites if I were to use SSL for all of my sites.
Your understand is incorrect, but it's understandable that you'd have that impression.
SSL encryption itself does not require a unique IP address ... What you're misunderstanding is the browser messages that pop-up when you have a self signed cert or a cert mismatch. You can SSL encrypt all 16 of your sites on the same IP, but 15 of them will have a mismatched certification. THIS IS OK if your goal is encryption only. The problem is, people view the security warning for a mismatched or self signed cert as something unconditionally bad. Yes, it can be bad if a site has been hijacked. Your bank should have a valid key, signed by a trusted authority that has verified that business entity.
Joe Bob's Ebay store does not need a certificate that's signed by TurboSSL - since there's little to no verification done for the party anyone can go out and buy a cheap cert. A signed cert proves exactly nothing - so you might as well be using a self signed one. The only thing a cheap cert does is keep the browser from popping up the warning - it does nothing to enhance security beyond what a self signed cert will do.
So - that was a round about explanation of why you don't need a unique IP to use SSL. The short explanation is, you only need a unique IP if you don't want a browser warning to pop-up. Otherwise, you can use SSL for just about everything.
Browser handling of SSL warnings are really what has prevented widespread adoption.
But black holes exist within the universe. If time inside a black hole is stopped relative to the rest of the universe, then shouldn't a black hole take infinitely long to form?
As a corollary, shouldn't you be able to look behind you and watch the end of the universe?
Essentially, yes... if you were able to "look out" onto the surrounding universe, the further you got into the gravity well, the faster the universe would appear to be aging.
If we are in a closed universe, you'd eventually see everything rushing towards you and compacting together (then you'd all be in the same temporal reference frame and things would return to normal temporally). If we are in an open universe, you'd see the heat death of the universe first, then your black hole would slowly start lose mass and cool, as time "speeds up" to match the rest of the now dead universe, since your gravity well is now evaporating.
In a closed universe, black holes will likely be the last sources of heat (and therefore energy) left in the universe.
Time appears slow to the outside observer, for the object crossing the horizon it's business as usual, super fast acceleration, stretched out and sucked into oblivion. Lovely :)
Depending on the size of the event horizon, you may not even know you crossed it. Only smaller black holes will give you super fast acceleration, stretched out and suck you into oblivion.
The larger ones are more devious and draw you in slowly... you're already well past the point of no return before you realize you're even in trouble.