say what you will but somehow I'd imagine the industry is more afraid of the combination of happy to volunteer law students, alumnae, professors etc of harvard than UT austin; not to mention the extremely large bankroll and wealth in the general population there. the other question of interest is where did the top brass / lawyers for MAFIAA get their degrees.
going lawsuit happy on the alma mater isn't usually looked upon to well. especially when on avarage harvard grads are a lot more likely to spend a whole lot more on MAFIAA products than the "average" UT grad. key word average. Plenty of great students and some great departments at UT, I may go there for grad work but as a whole? Although I do realize that UT Austin has one of the largest endowments (ifnot larget) for a public school.
but then again its not whats true as much as what "popular stereotypical belief" is.
are you kidding me? harvard has the largest endowment of any school. most people going there arent strapped for cash, and from what I've read most receive aid too. either the family has more money than you know what to do with, or the students often get financial aid.. in any event harvard is not one of the most expensive ivy's based us news & world reports reviews and numerous other publications.
if you are going to harvard shouldn't you be smart enough not to have a family you can't afford to support? or conversely have a solid plan on how you will (where harvard is a key part of it).
if you have to hope that your future earnings are enough (as opposed to know) then maybe you shouldnt be there eh? I would have thought that anyone who is deemed worthy of going there would be intelligent enough to understand/appreciate the inherent value of the investment in a 'harvard' education. mind you i didnt go there; but for any top tier school in that echelon if you didn't "know" that you were going to come out ahead either from common sense, in general or a risk/benefit analysis you really shouldn't have gotten in.
and since i'll likely hear a retort about a comedic exageration; look at the bright side.. diploma's can double as extremely expensive toilet paper.
if thats the cap, and its so high that you shouldnt be able to hit it then why make a big deal out of posting it. The other catch is that they generally dont event tend to be up to provide that rate for 31 days... the "contract / eula / agreements" for most of the cable companies expressly state that they make no claim or warranty of service quality and level which is more what seems to bug me. Before they go out and publish a cap I want them to publish a warrantied min. If you want to charge me extra for using too much you have to provide me the means to be Refunded when you don't provide me enough. Thats my gripe with it.
they of course dont like this because it somewhat prevents them from the paradise they are in now. they dont have or have to have the capacity they allegedly sell to consumer. They profit from lots of people who underuse their connections. It seems to me that somehow this is broken. If I am paying for a service then there needs to be a metric by which I can determine if said service is provided. They go out of the way to at least try to deny the existence of such a thing in the user agreements. This really isnt unique to comcast; if you think about it any of them could be doing it without telling you because they don't really seem to have to.
reminds me of something when i was younger. i was in the car with my father who went to the drive through atm at our bank. He was making a deposit or withdrawal (cant remember and it doesnt matter). I don't remember why or how it came up but for some reason the teller communicated to us that "there is a maximum amount of money" that could be withdrawn/deposited via the drive up atm. if you go over the limit you have to go inside to a real teller. Naturally my father asked, "whats the limit?" Her reply of course: "I'm sorry I'm not allowed to divulge that information, but don't worry you are well under it." The only way we would know we were over it apparently is when we try and they tell us you are over please come in, let me undo the in progress transaction and I hope you didnt (did) waste too much time in line for the drive up...
naturally we moved our safe deposit box, and accounts to another bank within a week or so.. and have been with the same bank (give or take name changes from mergers/buyouts) ever since. the bank we left was bought and then closed within a year. too bad that won't happen with a cable/isp these days. time warner / comcast seem to be able to do whatever they please
sorry to disappoint you that I'm not 12; and I have been on the internet since prodigy in the pre aol days. I think my problem is more along the lines of understanding what the difference is between "internet access" and WWW access. This of course hasn't been improved by your second post since all you have done is list things that you can do with WWW access, but without listing an item that falls under "Internet Access" that the WWW access doesnt give you. The one exception is non-browser based email... but given that you say ssh is possible that really shouldn't be a problem.
Especially with it being essential to the problem it would be helpful for you to define what you mean by internet access and how this differs from 'WWW access'. And to do so in a non self referencing fashion. I am well aware that there is more the internet than the WWW. By stating little no new information that I didn't already have I'm not sure why you expect me to magically understand the difference but in any event I don't. Perhaps you could provide an exemplar of some differences between the two.
My point was primarily centered on how meaningless a label is. How many "unlimited" cell phone plans are out there today? How many are actually "unlimited". Its a lot like blockbuster's "end of late fees" thing; all they really did was add a week to the deadline and convert it to a sale instead of a late fee.
Before I buy something I check that it provides the features and level of service that I expect and want. If we believed every word a salesperson / commercial told us then there would be no overweight, bald and poor people. A simple pass through the terms would likely tell you what they define their terminology to be. Is this bad? yes. Do I like this? no. but until all companies are forced to stop deceptive labeling all you can do is go in with the thought "is this really what they are saying or is this what they want the unaware consumer to believe"
except i dont think they really give a damn what you call them... call them cow dung.. they dont care as long as they get to charge you what they want.
web only access / internet accesss. what the heck did you expect? web access is internet access. do you even pretend to know what you are talking about?
labels dont do crap. And they wont help the consumer. sorry. Look at labels for harddrives; they dont tell you much at all.. whats a gig these days?
george carlin said it best; labels are just things schmucks create so they can make the bull plop they are selling you look/sound better. "When did a used car become a previously owned vehicle"
you know what would do something? the FCC / FTC / WHOEVER actually doing something like forcing them to do what they purport to do, or fining them, or doing something.
except for the minor fact that until ibm bought pcs from you guessed it IBM... thinkpads, thinkcentres and various servers... but you may have noticed they sold off thinkpad to lenova, and if not already would likely do the same with the thinkcentre desktop.
with more and more people not using windows, it can make sense. There are people who want the linux power but still have that user coddled feel and lack of maintenence that comes with osX.
if you think with your brain for a moment all that this really has to do with is laptops issued to employees. not workstations, not servers, etc. as in we are talking about macbook pro's, macbooks, and airs. not mac pros, imacs and mac minis...
yeah my favorite was windows whistler... which was supposed to come out instaed of ME... and then XP.. In all reality windows breaking binary compat with itself is probably as likely as their Singularity OS ending up on my parents laptop/desktop within 5 years;-p
for those not familliar its research os theyve already spent 12 years dev'ing and isnt ever targeted for consumers or laptops.
to be fair though I think underneath they have good reasons for not breaking binary compat with windows. A. the huge userbase. and B. if they do that its going to make it much easier / more likely for people to say ok perfect time for me to move to linux/mac... a big part of their ability to keep people from leaving is that consumers have all of this "stuff" for their windows machines that theyve purchased or can purchase knowing that its going to keep on working. if they were going to break it the time would have been with Vista.
That would have made sense and it would have done more to validate (and make the user feel justified) the need for the new hardware req's. the public was expecting a new windows. (I'm taking some liberties on version #'s here for effect) the way they did with win95 (Win4.1) and sorta did with winXP (win5, 5.1, 5.2 and now 5.3). Not the minor upgrade that was win98 (win4.4 and win4.4.2), win2000 (nt4.5?), winME (win4.5). XP was the merge of "WindowsNT" and "Windows OLD" trees and while adding a whole lot as an OS didn't strike the user enourmously as GUI change. It felt a lot more like the change a naive mac user saw between OSX10.x and 10.5.
Vista was a bit like the change from win3.1 to win95 except not quite as incompatible. Not as strong a branch as os9 to osX was either. It probably is about time for MS to make a big step forward in terms of sweeping change as done in the above two examples. But with people clutching XP with the vulcan death grip (of life lol) and as much reluctance as there is everywhere towards Vista, I don't see now or in the next 2-3 years as a good time to 'move on' again until they either stabilize or give up on Vista and its adoption.
It really makes me think about what in the world MS has really been up to with the OS since XP was released (in '02?) yes i realize XP SP2 only came out in late '04 early '05.. but they were / had to have been working on windowsNext at that time.
thats enough.. closing random thought It still surprises me to hear time and time again that Vista's adoption rate is better/higher/larger than XP's was. Is this really true or is this a case of "75% of all statistics are wrong" sorta thing? (resulting from other factors like no new hardware needed for xp, bubble had just burst, people just bought the new machine for 95/98/ME and werent ready again; where as a machine you bought with XP in 2002 is now 6 years old so your more apt to buy a new one and thus one with vista?)
No they have a higher occurence of certain failures; the question back to you is if the same exact failure occuring multiple times is multiple failures... i.e. if product X has one failure where 1% of people see function y break from cause Z... is that one failure or 1% times market share? I'd say one failure for the purposes of this discussion. I don't care about how many times a failure occurred merely as a factor of how many of them are out there I care about the probability of a units failure. Sat The product that has only 1 sold that has one failure; the same failure is had by another that sold X million units each having that same exact failure.
I'd say the products were equally garbage; and they failed equally. Why does the units failure depend on it being sold?
perhaps more people experiance a failure. fine. but its still a different issue from the signficance of the failure. the fact that he just stated "more people equals more failures" is really what made it vague.... i went with something to make an interesting point... I fail to see anything insightful about your post.
wow worst insightful post ive seen in my whole life... should have been off topic or didnt read the memo....
Not really, unless you have a company full of morons.
1. I don't see how this has anything to do with a users workstation. if there is a critical data directory or file it should be on a critical company server and it should be backed up. No one said you had to let the users run free on the COMPANY machines; just their own. Remedy: fire yourself for being stupid and not using privelages on your file servers
2. if user is that unintelligent maybe you should delete them? If you give them these privelages they have to manage their own backup practices or deal with reinstall. or rescue. That said if your user manages to delete an "OS" directory you just learned they cant be trusted to stay out of things that arent their business and that they won't ask for help for things they dont understand.. fire them or lock down their machine...
3. I fail to see how this is affected at all by the topic. whether or not your laptop / local workstation is "MANAGED" by an IT dept is irrelevant. the damn thing is DEAD and gone either way. If your employee is too stupid to do any backup then again, fire them. very simple.
item 4 and 5: simple it doesnt matter what the user does on their end. Company has an email server and that email server doesnt delete documents. Period. user connects to server with whatever client they want that speaks pop or imap or whatever... but the SERVER dissallows actual deletion. problem solved.
6. Fire the user; they clearly aren't intelligent enough to be benefitial to you. or remove THAT user's privelages to maintain their computer. better yet just throw linux on his/her machine and laugh at them.
Centralized control has nothing to do with any of these issues in the context of this topic and thread. You don't need to centrally control a persons machine to achieve any of these things. You need some central presence and central controlled servers. This is very different from central control of EVERY MACHINE and the users machine.
Whether or not you lock down every single 'user' machine I would expect that you have a company email server, company firewall, and one or more file servers. You can also have policies that state clearly when backup should be performed, what should be backed up, and legal consequences for not doing so (esp if a case like this happens to you)
but i doubt youll have too many of these problems because many talented developers would never want to work at a company that short sighted.
As a developer I couldn't get anything done if I couldn't "manage" my own machine. Maybe that approach works great for random clerical people; but i feel like this wasnt aimed at that sector.
"Popular brands have more people and thus more failures, as long as they're not disproportionate there's really no news there"
popular brands have more failures? Gee, maybe you should tell that to Honda/Acura and Toyota/Lexus. They must have missed that memo.. they didn't know that they are supposed to be putting out more crappy broken products/cars instead of the ones they make. You know the ones that get best value and reliability and such ratings every year by consumer reports every year because they dont have broken hardware. Why are mac's becoming more popular? because among other things they "just work".
theory sounds like bs to me... the brand should get more popular because of a LACK of failures and problems. my only remaining question, is why is said "popular" thing still popular if its such a piece of junk... sounds like people are getting to lazy to vote with their feet/wallet?
as of today this works on linux I just tried it out on a RHEL5 Machine during my lunch break (only to check functionality not dumb enough to watch it here...) so score more points for comedy central and south park.
to be fair it would be very stupid for them not to because I find a very large number of so called "linux geeks" to be the most consistent consumers of ComCentral stuff among the people that I know. but I'm still happy pleased and impressed.
there are plenty of other better ways to do this; and there are still trails they can take to get to the information.. I'm well aware that this really has nothing to do with protecting consumers. it has to do with them being able to with minimal effort have a way to spy on you. nothing more nothing less. The real irony behind this if you ask me is that it basically helps them a lot more of broadband isp's like comcast, time warner, etc would just issue you an officially "static IP" as opposed to a dynamic IP which you pretty much always happen to get and thus isnt very dynamic. That part of a trade has value because if its not "truly" static you cant truly do certain things from your home without running through something like DynDns (your router and NAT aside).
The stupidity of it is that this "measure" is easily defeated. Make a very very simple password; like use the name of the access point.. now anyone can still connect to it and you can always claim well someone figured out the key i guess what now, are you going to mandate a Key Strength that I have to pass in order to use a wireless router? It raises some real questions about how badly our rights to privacy and due process are already being violated.
this is much more about anonymity and confidentiality then about censorship in my mind.
in that system for the primary you have the right to vote; your vote would be for primary of your party. its not everyone elses fault that the small party is smart/small enough not to have people running against one another publicly. If there were two green party members I suppose you could vote which one should represent the party as a whole. But if Dem's cant vote in the Rep primary and Rep's not in the dems, you shuoldn't be able to vote in theirs or them in yours.
Personally I just think that its absurd that every state has different rules and a different system. If the election is for a national office, then every state should have the same rules. Whether the two parties have the same rules might be a different issue; but within party the rules should be consistent state to state.... ideally all parties would have to abide by the same rules everywhere, but then politicians and analysts wouldn't have so much to whine about and the people could actually understand what the heck is really going on.
as great as our voting system is; its pretty screwed up. as soon as the rep's see that there candidate is decided the rest of them can to varying degrees use their votes to influence the democratic primary toward which ever candidate they think their Rep would more easily beat. It highlights two major problems:
1. all the primary votes should happen at the same time, on the same day. and no information regarding the outcome should be broadcast until the election is complete. 2. they need to fix and make consistent the voting options. Either everyone gets to vote for every parties primary (probably a very bad idea) or you can only pick one of them to vote for. The only problem is that its largely a 2 party system: so i would say that instead you should be able to vote in either the republican or the democratic primary (not both) in addition to any other parties that hold primaries which you are free to vote in.
actually even better idea, although it would require runoff election format for presidential: pick a primary to vote in; if the candidate you vote for in primary wins primary you are obligated to vote them as your #1 candidate in a runoff election. This prevents a republican from voting for democrat candidate Y who they think that republican candidate X has a better chance of beating then democrat Z in the primary; and then voting for republican X in the presidential. If you won't vote for the candidate you vote for in the primary than you shouldn't be able to influence the ability of others who will vote for the candidate to do so.
I dont care how its done; the government has no place in telling us what to do with the internet access we pay for and on routers we pay for. If you don't want someone using your router thats your problem.. If they crack your encryption; obviously that falls into many already existing anti hacking laws (or make that the law)
adding any CRIMINAL or CIVIL law for someone connecting to your UNENCRYPTED access point only encourages stupidity, lack of reponsibility and negligence. If you left a hose running plugged into your house that extended to the driveway, and i was running by and was thirsty, I'd pick it up turn on the spiggot and drink some... if you dont want me to then do one of three things: turn the damn thing off at the end of your house; put the hose away; or waste money on some crazy lock on it lol. Suggesting that the government take on the problem is an exercise in futility; it will only waste our time and money and rights.
Furthermore suggesting that the "makers of the devices" do anything differently has a similar net result. It is not their problem; it is yours. Do with it what you want. If you are too unintelligent to push the "EZ Security" (re crappy unadjustable settings" button on a linksys; or follow the extremely basic guide in the instructions, and are also too unintelligent to either ask a friend for help, call tech support, or find help elsewhere then you have to deal with the consequences. There are a lot of reasons you probably dont want wep or name your security method enabled by default; namely setting the damn thing up. What do you do when your device is having a problem or you forget the password?
There are other interesting a better ways to go about the problem. MAC address filtering can work well, as can limiting the number of leases allowed.
The bottom line is that this is an area that the government has absolutely no business talking about, getting involved with, or passing laws regarding. Especially the federal government. They've got plenty of important things to waste their time on that ACTUALLY matter and should be decided by them. Lastly, how is being fined or sent to jail even remotely not get categorized as excessive punishment worse than the crime? If you pay anything at most it should be some factor of the cost of the fee for internet service paid by the place you stole it from.
just a small add on; even still the simple usage of the Vchip to filter out non tv-ma should be freaking good enough. The complaints and indecency stuff they cry about are always on shows that their "precious" little ones shouldnt be watching in the first place. If you dont want your kid watching the show; block it at your house dont go blocking it on everyone elses house too.
its incredibly simple: if you dont like the channel or the show or the content then block it. If you aren't familiar with it you have two options: block it until you get familiar with it and decide whether or not to let yuor kids watch OR accept that you dont know and let them watch and wave your right to complain. Your laziness and lack of parenting skills aren't my problem and shouldn't be affecting the TV I watch. When an expletive slips by on Sesame Street or SpongeBob or whatever the tykes are watching by all means go ballistic then. But if you are complaining about the language on a show marked tv-ma, or airing at late night, or a show whose name alone tells you the content (sex in the city, south park...) and you complain then shame on you for being less intelligent then your kid you claim shouldn't be watching it. You bought the TV, you pay the cable bill, its your responsibility.
Actually I have a better solution. After they complain about it, the cable co. should just black list you and refuse them service. I am SICK AND TIRED of the government and FCC running around posing as PARENTAL FIGURES and MORALITY POLICE. It is a waste of time, tax payer money, and energy. Let some private business go be an opt in censor for those who want their life censored for them. Leave the rest of us OUT!
its about time something intelligent was done in congress that was consistent with the constitution. I'm hopeful that this is the start of a trend in congress as the dem's finally gain more power, in which some of the BS laid down by the GOP gets thrown away... wishful thinking but maybe next they can revisit the patriot act, and the dmca. But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. they could very well tomorrow come back and try to repeal the 27th amendment so they can give themselves raises for doing such a good job.
i know, how awful it is for an on topic first post?
The optimus maximus, a once proud co-leader (duke nukem forever) had to be removed from this list for violating the rules of the club and actually getting released.
lol, excellent point, but replace half with 1/3 or less.. bentleys > 100K don't know the integra type R sticker price (and it may be much higher because of import problems) but at last release Acura RSX Type S U(y) [utility of] the problem is that people calculate the Utility function differently. you'd probably have something like U(x) = a*Power(x) + b*Luxury(x) - d*Price(x) + e*GasEfficiency(x) + f*Cargo(x) + g*Towing(x) the values of a-g not only vary widely, but their relative ordering will as well. further more the functions themselves vary as different people have different threshholds to diminishing return.
i think im far enough off topic that i should stop tho:-D
more on the lines of the parent but slight disagreement
not really, speed, price and all that jazz are all just inferences and interpretations of what makes the law significant or meaningful to you. The law itself is just about the "number of transistors doubling" etc... in essence its just about COMPLEXITY. You probably don't care how many transistors are on the chip, you just care about the result that provides. Because they use a relatively fixed size for the chips, its through increased transistor count (thus density) that they accomplish the performance / speed enhancements. Sure once in a while they come up with a new trick / idea on how to make better use of the transistors they have.. but in general its much more of a statement about chip manufacturing processes than anything else. Plus last I heard the law pretty much reached a death point as we haven't really made any sort of doubling as of late. Gets worse if you look at performance / speed. a fairly decent laptop in 2002 had like a 2ghz processor... a good laptop now has 2.4 core2duo, i dont know the transistor difference, and its hard to count the parallel speed benefit because thats somewhat of an algorithm change providing superscalar results. whatever back to the car thing
the car may not be more powerful, or cost less, but you have to ask yourself if that was ever the goal? people need faster computers in order to run the OS's and applications that are being developed and released.
Seeing as the speed limit has yet to go up there is no need for joe consumer to have a car with significantly more horsepower.. Additionally there are other reasons that they wouldnt want that. More ponies = less efficiency = more wasted gas. gas costs have been growing in case you havent noticed. What do you honestly plan on doing with that HP anyways? I'm not going to pretend to know much about cars and that stuff, but I'm pretty sure that unless you are racing, or towing (although there I think torque is much more important), I dont see why joe consumer ever has any USE for more than 200 horses... unless his car/truck is so heavy that they still cant get 0-60 in under 8 seconds.
Instead of focusing on that car innovation has in many ways been focused on gas efficiency and various compu/electronic components in engines, and luxuries. In the 1980's did you car have dual zone climate control, heated seats, heated mirrors, cruise control, digital stereo, nav, sleek ergonomic interrior, ultra-low emissions/exhaust, air bags, anti-lock, power steering, "assisted steering" (that seems to have a different name from every company), laser etched ignition keys with circuits in them or the rfid keys, useful keyfobs, variable intermittent wipers, etc etc..
cars have gotten lighter, stronger, more fuel efficient, and more functional, and generally better visibility (although thats been in a slight decline in the past several years compared to early-mid 90's
cars definately also become cheaper, look at the price gap between the blue book for buying a 'brand new' 3 year old car thats been on the lot for 3 years compared to the brand new model. not to the extent that various parts have gotten a lot cheaper, but i would imagine because the bulk of the parts dont really change. the chagnes in chip design make it easier and cheaper to produce the old variety and enable mass production of a higher density. That combined with demand and need to create demand contribute to pricing changes. The introduction of a new car seat to a car for example doesnt make it any more or less expensive to produce the old one because they dont have the same relationship as to what makes the new one 'better' than the old.
the problem is that too many of you self important people feel that you are somehow entitled to special treatment because you dont want to wait like everyone else, or because you are bringing more crap aboard than you are supposed to... or because you insist on dawdling in the aisles so that you can put everything you own in the overhead compartment. For clarity let me emphasize again I am not talking about those who ACTUALLY need the time, people with injuries, casts, wheel chairs, the elderly, someone with some other actual NEED to board early. Newsflash, they arent asking who WANTS to board early, they ask who needs to.
Even with the "zoned" boarding, it never fails that lots of people decide that they "need extra time to board" because they are asshats. what's my basis for saying this? because when I am in the first boarding group for a seat at the back of the plane there are always more than a handful of people who "rush" ahead of me in the boarding line that I walk past en route to the back of the plane. Many who are sitting in rows that arent even in the "middle" of the plane (there's always a couple people in the first nonFC row). these are not elderly people, or people who were walking with crutches or any impediments at all. these are usually random people mostly non elderly. more often than not somebody wearing a suit who is a business traveler, also frequent is the "just finished shopping for lots of crap" lady with multiple bags of shit. And yes I am aware that they board FC and Elite flyers at the same time and I watch and the either these are "Elite"'s who don't realize it until then (not likely) a couple arriving late (plausible) or mostly people I saw standing around near me waiting who didn't go up for Elite (because they aren't) but decide that the whole boarding in order thing doesnt apply to them.. It also never fails that one of these people causes a major delay when they go to sit in the like 5th aisle and dig through their bags before putting them all on the overhead and sitting down.
if they want to board faster they should board from the front and the rear of the plane simultaneously. they should also board first class last... which is actually what I would want if i was FC... I wouldnt want to spend a god damn extra minute on that plane if i could avoid it:-)
I've flown a lot this past year for a non business traveler and the most annoying thing is when they hide a delay by just boarding the plane and then having you sit there for an hour before doing anything other than disconnecting the boarding bridge and closing the hatch at which time of course we are instructed to turn off the cell's and electronics.
arriving late doesnt screw up jack, its the same as it is now. if you show up late and your section has already boarded you proceed on or otherwise you can wait at the back of the line. you dont cause any more of an inconvenience then anyone else. what would REALLY speed it up is if they didnt let as much come onto the plane for "carry on" luggage and had you check that stuff AT THE GATE to be reclaimed at the gate. its not that hard you walk on the plane, you shove a carryon up top and then you take your small 'personal item' or briefcase whatever and shove it under the seat in front if you.. if it cramps your legs then bring less stuff on board the plane. But I don't think people will much like that; myself included... theres something nice about keeping your baggage with you the whole time and not having to wait for the godly slow baggage claim.
I know not many will likely agree with me on this part (and understandably if you are traveling with a large family of youngsters for a long vacation) but I would be just happy to pick up my baggage right when i got off the plane and carry it through the airport.
on another note, let me know when he figures out a way to have plane that will prevent babies from crying on it. that or will someone PLEASE start an airline with a "NO BABY" policy. I'm aware that I was a baby m
you have the whole monopoly thing wrong... It is not illegal to be a monopoly; they exist. Get over it It is illegal to engage in monopolistic practices. By definition this kind of activity is exactly that.
mac uses the "secret hooks" to make a first product that is sufficiently better than the third party can possibly create. Then even if they do publish the 'secret hooks' and the 3rd party adopts, its too late because everyone is already hooked on the built in and already existing first party version Apple is doing with safari the exact same thing that Microsoft did with IE. The fact that safari is a good browser and is infinitely better than IE could ever dream to be is irrelevant in terms of the principles involved. They want to test the "SPI?" ok go write a BETA or use your test team or hire one. When the product you are selling encompasses that very thing you are taking a competitive advantage.
the real problem here is that you have a vertical monopoly waiting to happen, Apple makes the hardware, and they make the os and the software and can do whatever they want to keep anyone else out. in actuality there really isnt anything wrong with that because if you dont like it you will use or develop something else. Microsoft is sorta in the same boat, but they dont make the hardware (i dont count mouse and keyboards as hardware for sake of discussion and they barely pass the you can kick it test anyhow). more so the problem is that more and more what is being advertised as "the OS" is not the OS but is instead SOFTWARE... newsflash itunes is not osX and its not part of osX; its a piece of software that runs on osX... the same goes for iphoto and garageband and safari etc.... They are bundled software; good bundled software, but bundled software nonetheless. As long as apple continues to offer such large advantages to first party development you're not going to see as much commercial software target osX because every developer could take the rationale "i can make it, but theyll just clone it, use secret hooks to be faster and then embed it into the operating system to keep me out of business" It happens everyday.
bigger question: if apples software is so great why wont they release more versions of their software for windows and linux hmm? garageband for windows, garageband on linux.... I'd love to see iTunes on linux and finally be able to play m4p and itunes store purchased files on linux not to mention GOOD and Safe ipod support thats consistent when used on both linux/win/osX
a. if this was MS you'd be screaming bloody murderb. b. you are telling me that your beloved apple is putting experimental code on our machines? or code that might be experimental? I call bs... if they created an API they would have tested it,
for the sake of comedy lets pretend this was a new dish for the menu at a restaurant... the convo would go something like this "hey johnny try this new dish i cooked up, its fantastic but ummm.. it may or may not contain dog feces" "well which is it?" "I can't remember, can you just taste and tell me what you think?" "I have a better idea, lets just start selling this to customers and let them tell us" "fine, but we gotta figure it out so i can make more" sniffs "whatever just play it safe and use half as much feces as you think you may have used and we'll see if anyone complains"
yeah im guessing that would go over real well with consumers...
I hate to say it but a blanket statement saying "people from college X" are fantastic is pretty lame, and is sure NOT to find you the best. Cast aside the fact that I would think in general you might find better programmers from MIT, RPI, UMichigan, CalTech and UC-Berkeley... Although Northeastern does turn out students w/ a lot of "real world" experience as a result of their well designed co-op program / requirement.
THe problem with such statements is that often times the best programmers are too busy working on projects to deal with every little second of studying. I'm not talking about the kids who are so lost in projects and their own world that they fail out of school; I'm talking about the kids who instead of being insane perfectionists about their 'boring' assignments and obsessing over studying and memorizing every single term to get 100 on the tests they stop when they have it 'working' and they feel they know the material... what do they do then? They get to more programming, stuff they like to do and do it simply because they like it... they get involved in open source and contribute to it.
by contribute i mean acutally, not just being an advocate / power user and installing it on anyone and everyones machines for them. I mean things like start mirrors and managing packages, creating custom distros (knoppmyth from some guys at case western), etc...
I know what you are thinking, but those people will all become oss fiends and wont want to make commercial anything etc.. etcc... but heres what you might not appreciate. in order to get involved and contribute more often than not there is some preexisting 'stuff' stuff they have to learn how to work within. be it source control repository systems, bug trackers, code standards, reading other's code, fixing defects, build systems, etc. It exposes them to a lot of different things that as a new comer they wont have control over. and it shows that they can despite this make a mark on something and adapt to the system that they are within.
yes I'm 'new' to the game, I'm not someone whos been developing for 20-30 years. but you dont have to be around for long to appreciate the movement, the dynamic nature and the ever increasing importance of agility in software development. because those who are agile are not too stubborn or arrogant to see that the familiar way isnt always the best, easiest, or most efficient way to do things. change can be good, not change for the sake of change, but change to improve process.
Slashdot Mirror
say what you will but somehow I'd imagine the industry is more afraid of the combination of happy to volunteer law students, alumnae, professors etc of harvard than UT austin; not to mention the extremely large bankroll and wealth in the general population there. the other question of interest is where did the top brass / lawyers for MAFIAA get their degrees.
going lawsuit happy on the alma mater isn't usually looked upon to well. especially when on avarage harvard grads are a lot more likely to spend a whole lot more on MAFIAA products than the "average" UT grad. key word average. Plenty of great students and some great departments at UT, I may go there for grad work but as a whole? Although I do realize that UT Austin has one of the largest endowments (ifnot larget) for a public school.
but then again its not whats true as much as what "popular stereotypical belief" is.
are you kidding me? harvard has the largest endowment of any school. most people going there arent strapped for cash, and from what I've read most receive aid too. either the family has more money than you know what to do with, or the students often get financial aid.. in any event harvard is not one of the most expensive ivy's based us news & world reports reviews and numerous other publications.
/appreciate the inherent value of the investment in a 'harvard' education. mind you i didnt go there; but for any top tier school in that echelon if you didn't "know" that you were going to come out ahead either from common sense, in general or a risk/benefit analysis you really shouldn't have gotten in.
if you are going to harvard shouldn't you be smart enough not to have a family you can't afford to support? or conversely have a solid plan on how you will (where harvard is a key part of it).
if you have to hope that your future earnings are enough (as opposed to know) then maybe you shouldnt be there eh? I would have thought that anyone who is deemed worthy of going there would be intelligent enough to understand
and since i'll likely hear a retort about a comedic exageration; look at the bright side.. diploma's can double as extremely expensive toilet paper.
if thats the cap, and its so high that you shouldnt be able to hit it then why make a big deal out of posting it. The other catch is that they generally dont event tend to be up to provide that rate for 31 days... the "contract / eula / agreements" for most of the cable companies expressly state that they make no claim or warranty of service quality and level which is more what seems to bug me. Before they go out and publish a cap I want them to publish a warrantied min. If you want to charge me extra for using too much you have to provide me the means to be Refunded when you don't provide me enough. Thats my gripe with it.
they of course dont like this because it somewhat prevents them from the paradise they are in now. they dont have or have to have the capacity they allegedly sell to consumer. They profit from lots of people who underuse their connections. It seems to me that somehow this is broken. If I am paying for a service then there needs to be a metric by which I can determine if said service is provided. They go out of the way to at least try to deny the existence of such a thing in the user agreements. This really isnt unique to comcast; if you think about it any of them could be doing it without telling you because they don't really seem to have to.
reminds me of something when i was younger. i was in the car with my father who went to the drive through atm at our bank. He was making a deposit or withdrawal (cant remember and it doesnt matter). I don't remember why or how it came up but for some reason the teller communicated to us that "there is a maximum amount of money" that could be withdrawn/deposited via the drive up atm. if you go over the limit you have to go inside to a real teller. Naturally my father asked, "whats the limit?" Her reply of course: "I'm sorry I'm not allowed to divulge that information, but don't worry you are well under it." The only way we would know we were over it apparently is when we try and they tell us you are over please come in, let me undo the in progress transaction and I hope you didnt (did) waste too much time in line for the drive up...
naturally we moved our safe deposit box, and accounts to another bank within a week or so.. and have been with the same bank (give or take name changes from mergers/buyouts) ever since. the bank we left was bought and then closed within a year. too bad that won't happen with a cable/isp these days. time warner / comcast seem to be able to do whatever they please
didnt they already do this?
sorry to disappoint you that I'm not 12; and I have been on the internet since prodigy in the pre aol days. I think my problem is more along the lines of understanding what the difference is between "internet access" and WWW access. This of course hasn't been improved by your second post since all you have done is list things that you can do with WWW access, but without listing an item that falls under "Internet Access" that the WWW access doesnt give you. The one exception is non-browser based email... but given that you say ssh is possible that really shouldn't be a problem.
Especially with it being essential to the problem it would be helpful for you to define what you mean by internet access and how this differs from 'WWW access'. And to do so in a non self referencing fashion. I am well aware that there is more the internet than the WWW. By stating little no new information that I didn't already have I'm not sure why you expect me to magically understand the difference but in any event I don't. Perhaps you could provide an exemplar of some differences between the two.
My point was primarily centered on how meaningless a label is. How many "unlimited" cell phone plans are out there today? How many are actually "unlimited". Its a lot like blockbuster's "end of late fees" thing; all they really did was add a week to the deadline and convert it to a sale instead of a late fee.
Before I buy something I check that it provides the features and level of service that I expect and want. If we believed every word a salesperson / commercial told us then there would be no overweight, bald and poor people. A simple pass through the terms would likely tell you what they define their terminology to be. Is this bad? yes. Do I like this? no. but until all companies are forced to stop deceptive labeling all you can do is go in with the thought "is this really what they are saying or is this what they want the unaware consumer to believe"
except i dont think they really give a damn what you call them... call them cow dung.. they dont care as long as they get to charge you what they want.
/sound better. "When did a used car become a previously owned vehicle"
web only access / internet accesss. what the heck did you expect? web access is internet access. do you even pretend to know what you are talking about?
labels dont do crap. And they wont help the consumer. sorry. Look at labels for harddrives; they dont tell you much at all.. whats a gig these days?
george carlin said it best; labels are just things schmucks create so they can make the bull plop they are selling you look
you know what would do something? the FCC / FTC / WHOEVER actually doing something like forcing them to do what they purport to do, or fining them, or doing something.
except for the minor fact that until ibm bought pcs from you guessed it IBM... thinkpads, thinkcentres and various servers... but you may have noticed they sold off thinkpad to lenova, and if not already would likely do the same with the thinkcentre desktop.
with more and more people not using windows, it can make sense. There are people who want the linux power but still have that user coddled feel and lack of maintenence that comes with osX.
if you think with your brain for a moment all that this really has to do with is laptops issued to employees. not workstations, not servers, etc. as in we are talking about macbook pro's, macbooks, and airs. not mac pros, imacs and mac minis...
yeah my favorite was windows whistler... which was supposed to come out instaed of ME... and then XP.. In all reality windows breaking binary compat with itself is probably as likely as their Singularity OS ending up on my parents laptop/desktop within 5 years ;-p
for those not familliar its research os theyve already spent 12 years dev'ing and isnt ever targeted for consumers or laptops.
to be fair though I think underneath they have good reasons for not breaking binary compat with windows. A. the huge userbase. and B. if they do that its going to make it much easier / more likely for people to say ok perfect time for me to move to linux/mac... a big part of their ability to keep people from leaving is that consumers have all of this "stuff" for their windows machines that theyve purchased or can purchase knowing that its going to keep on working. if they were going to break it the time would have been with Vista.
That would have made sense and it would have done more to validate (and make the user feel justified) the need for the new hardware req's. the public was expecting a new windows. (I'm taking some liberties on version #'s here for effect) the way they did with win95 (Win4.1) and sorta did with winXP (win5, 5.1, 5.2 and now 5.3). Not the minor upgrade that was win98 (win4.4 and win4.4.2), win2000 (nt4.5?), winME (win4.5). XP was the merge of "WindowsNT" and "Windows OLD" trees and while adding a whole lot as an OS didn't strike the user enourmously as GUI change. It felt a lot more like the change a naive mac user saw between OSX10.x and 10.5.
Vista was a bit like the change from win3.1 to win95 except not quite as incompatible. Not as strong a branch as os9 to osX was either. It probably is about time for MS to make a big step forward in terms of sweeping change as done in the above two examples. But with people clutching XP with the vulcan death grip (of life lol) and as much reluctance as there is everywhere towards Vista, I don't see now or in the next 2-3 years as a good time to 'move on' again until they either stabilize or give up on Vista and its adoption.
It really makes me think about what in the world MS has really been up to with the OS since XP was released (in '02?) yes i realize XP SP2 only came out in late '04 early '05.. but they were / had to have been working on windowsNext at that time.
thats enough.. closing random thought It still surprises me to hear time and time again that Vista's adoption rate is better/higher/larger than XP's was. Is this really true or is this a case of "75% of all statistics are wrong" sorta thing? (resulting from other factors like no new hardware needed for xp, bubble had just burst, people just bought the new machine for 95/98/ME and werent ready again; where as a machine you bought with XP in 2002 is now 6 years old so your more apt to buy a new one and thus one with vista?)
enjoy
No they have a higher occurence of certain failures; the question back to you is if the same exact failure occuring multiple times is multiple failures... i.e. if product X has one failure where 1% of people see function y break from cause Z... is that one failure or 1% times market share? I'd say one failure for the purposes of this discussion. I don't care about how many times a failure occurred merely as a factor of how many of them are out there I care about the probability of a units failure. Sat The product that has only 1 sold that has one failure; the same failure is had by another that sold X million units each having that same exact failure.
I'd say the products were equally garbage; and they failed equally. Why does the units failure depend on it being sold?
perhaps more people experiance a failure. fine. but its still a different issue from the signficance of the failure.
the fact that he just stated "more people equals more failures" is really what made it vague.... i went with something to make an interesting point... I fail to see anything insightful about your post.
wow worst insightful post ive seen in my whole life... should have been off topic or didnt read the memo....
Not really, unless you have a company full of morons.
1. I don't see how this has anything to do with a users workstation. if there is a critical data directory or file it should be on a critical company server and it should be backed up. No one said you had to let the users run free on the COMPANY machines; just their own. Remedy: fire yourself for being stupid and not using privelages on your file servers
2. if user is that unintelligent maybe you should delete them? If you give them these privelages they have to manage their own backup practices or deal with reinstall. or rescue. That said if your user manages to delete an "OS" directory you just learned they cant be trusted to stay out of things that arent their business and that they won't ask for help for things they dont understand.. fire them or lock down their machine...
3. I fail to see how this is affected at all by the topic. whether or not your laptop / local workstation is "MANAGED" by an IT dept is irrelevant. the damn thing is DEAD and gone either way. If your employee is too stupid to do any backup then again, fire them. very simple.
item 4 and 5: simple it doesnt matter what the user does on their end. Company has an email server and that email server doesnt delete documents. Period. user connects to server with whatever client they want that speaks pop or imap or whatever... but the SERVER dissallows actual deletion. problem solved.
6. Fire the user; they clearly aren't intelligent enough to be benefitial to you. or remove THAT user's privelages to maintain their computer. better yet just throw linux on his/her machine and laugh at them.
Centralized control has nothing to do with any of these issues in the context of this topic and thread. You don't need to centrally control a persons machine to achieve any of these things. You need some central presence and central controlled servers. This is very different from central control of EVERY MACHINE and the users machine.
Whether or not you lock down every single 'user' machine I would expect that you have a company email server, company firewall, and one or more file servers. You can also have policies that state clearly when backup should be performed, what should be backed up, and legal consequences for not doing so (esp if a case like this happens to you)
but i doubt youll have too many of these problems because many talented developers would never want to work at a company that short sighted.
As a developer I couldn't get anything done if I couldn't "manage" my own machine. Maybe that approach works great for random clerical people; but i feel like this wasnt aimed at that sector.
and if not there is of course "the ubuntu book" that they themselves write and which got a fantastic review on /. only a handful of months ago :-)
"Popular brands have more people and thus more failures, as long as they're not disproportionate there's really no news there"
/wallet?
popular brands have more failures? Gee, maybe you should tell that to Honda/Acura and Toyota/Lexus. They must have missed that memo.. they didn't know that they are supposed to be putting out more crappy broken products/cars instead of the ones they make. You know the ones that get best value and reliability and such ratings every year by consumer reports every year because they dont have broken hardware. Why are mac's becoming more popular? because among other things they "just work".
theory sounds like bs to me... the brand should get more popular because of a LACK of failures and problems.
my only remaining question, is why is said "popular" thing still popular if its such a piece of junk... sounds like people are getting to lazy to vote with their feet
as of today this works on linux I just tried it out on a RHEL5 Machine during my lunch break (only to check functionality not dumb enough to watch it here...) so score more points for comedy central and south park.
to be fair it would be very stupid for them not to because I find a very large number of so called "linux geeks" to be the most consistent consumers of ComCentral stuff among the people that I know. but I'm still happy pleased and impressed.
there are plenty of other better ways to do this; and there are still trails they can take to get to the information.. I'm well aware that this really has nothing to do with protecting consumers. it has to do with them being able to with minimal effort have a way to spy on you. nothing more nothing less. The real irony behind this if you ask me is that it basically helps them a lot more of broadband isp's like comcast, time warner, etc would just issue you an officially "static IP" as opposed to a dynamic IP which you pretty much always happen to get and thus isnt very dynamic. That part of a trade has value because if its not "truly" static you cant truly do certain things from your home without running through something like DynDns (your router and NAT aside). The stupidity of it is that this "measure" is easily defeated. Make a very very simple password; like use the name of the access point.. now anyone can still connect to it and you can always claim well someone figured out the key i guess what now, are you going to mandate a Key Strength that I have to pass in order to use a wireless router? It raises some real questions about how badly our rights to privacy and due process are already being violated. this is much more about anonymity and confidentiality then about censorship in my mind.
in that system for the primary you have the right to vote; your vote would be for primary of your party. its not everyone elses fault that the small party is smart/small enough not to have people running against one another publicly. If there were two green party members I suppose you could vote which one should represent the party as a whole. But if Dem's cant vote in the Rep primary and Rep's not in the dems, you shuoldn't be able to vote in theirs or them in yours.
Personally I just think that its absurd that every state has different rules and a different system. If the election is for a national office, then every state should have the same rules. Whether the two parties have the same rules might be a different issue; but within party the rules should be consistent state to state.... ideally all parties would have to abide by the same rules everywhere, but then politicians and analysts wouldn't have so much to whine about and the people could actually understand what the heck is really going on.
as great as our voting system is; its pretty screwed up. as soon as the rep's see that there candidate is decided the rest of them can to varying degrees use their votes to influence the democratic primary toward which ever candidate they think their Rep would more easily beat. It highlights two major problems:
1. all the primary votes should happen at the same time, on the same day. and no information regarding the outcome should be broadcast until the election is complete.
2. they need to fix and make consistent the voting options. Either everyone gets to vote for every parties primary (probably a very bad idea) or you can only pick one of them to vote for. The only problem is that its largely a 2 party system: so i would say that instead you should be able to vote in either the republican or the democratic primary (not both) in addition to any other parties that hold primaries which you are free to vote in.
actually even better idea, although it would require runoff election format for presidential:
pick a primary to vote in; if the candidate you vote for in primary wins primary you are obligated to vote them as your #1 candidate in a runoff election. This prevents a republican from voting for democrat candidate Y who they think that republican candidate X has a better chance of beating then democrat Z in the primary; and then voting for republican X in the presidential. If you won't vote for the candidate you vote for in the primary than you shouldn't be able to influence the ability of others who will vote for the candidate to do so.
I dont care how its done; the government has no place in telling us what to do with the internet access we pay for and on routers we pay for. If you don't want someone using your router thats your problem.. If they crack your encryption; obviously that falls into many already existing anti hacking laws (or make that the law)
adding any CRIMINAL or CIVIL law for someone connecting to your UNENCRYPTED access point only encourages stupidity, lack of reponsibility and negligence. If you left a hose running plugged into your house that extended to the driveway, and i was running by and was thirsty, I'd pick it up turn on the spiggot and drink some... if you dont want me to then do one of three things: turn the damn thing off at the end of your house; put the hose away; or waste money on some crazy lock on it lol. Suggesting that the government take on the problem is an exercise in futility; it will only waste our time and money and rights.
Furthermore suggesting that the "makers of the devices" do anything differently has a similar net result. It is not their problem; it is yours. Do with it what you want. If you are too unintelligent to push the "EZ Security" (re crappy unadjustable settings" button on a linksys; or follow the extremely basic guide in the instructions, and are also too unintelligent to either ask a friend for help, call tech support, or find help elsewhere then you have to deal with the consequences. There are a lot of reasons you probably dont want wep or name your security method enabled by default; namely setting the damn thing up. What do you do when your device is having a problem or you forget the password?
There are other interesting a better ways to go about the problem. MAC address filtering can work well, as can limiting the number of leases allowed.
The bottom line is that this is an area that the government has absolutely no business talking about, getting involved with, or passing laws regarding. Especially the federal government. They've got plenty of important things to waste their time on that ACTUALLY matter and should be decided by them. Lastly, how is being fined or sent to jail even remotely not get categorized as excessive punishment worse than the crime? If you pay anything at most it should be some factor of the cost of the fee for internet service paid by the place you stole it from.
just a small add on; even still the simple usage of the Vchip to filter out non tv-ma should be freaking good enough. The complaints and indecency stuff they cry about are always on shows that their "precious" little ones shouldnt be watching in the first place. If you dont want your kid watching the show; block it at your house dont go blocking it on everyone elses house too.
its incredibly simple: if you dont like the channel or the show or the content then block it. If you aren't familiar with it you have two options: block it until you get familiar with it and decide whether or not to let yuor kids watch OR accept that you dont know and let them watch and wave your right to complain. Your laziness and lack of parenting skills aren't my problem and shouldn't be affecting the TV I watch. When an expletive slips by on Sesame Street or SpongeBob or whatever the tykes are watching by all means go ballistic then. But if you are complaining about the language on a show marked tv-ma, or airing at late night, or a show whose name alone tells you the content (sex in the city, south park...) and you complain then shame on you for being less intelligent then your kid you claim shouldn't be watching it. You bought the TV, you pay the cable bill, its your responsibility.
Actually I have a better solution. After they complain about it, the cable co. should just black list you and refuse them service. I am SICK AND TIRED of the government and FCC running around posing as PARENTAL FIGURES and MORALITY POLICE. It is a waste of time, tax payer money, and energy. Let some private business go be an opt in censor for those who want their life censored for them. Leave the rest of us OUT!
its about time something intelligent was done in congress that was consistent with the constitution. I'm hopeful that this is the start of a trend in congress as the dem's finally gain more power, in which some of the BS laid down by the GOP gets thrown away... wishful thinking but maybe next they can revisit the patriot act, and the dmca. But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. they could very well tomorrow come back and try to repeal the 27th amendment so they can give themselves raises for doing such a good job.
i know, how awful it is for an on topic first post?
The optimus maximus, a once proud co-leader (duke nukem forever) had to be removed from this list for violating the rules of the club and actually getting released.
lol, excellent point, but replace half with 1/3 or less..
:-D
bentleys > 100K
don't know the integra type R sticker price (and it may be much higher because of import problems) but at last release
Acura RSX Type S U(y) [utility of]
the problem is that people calculate the Utility function differently.
you'd probably have something like U(x) = a*Power(x) + b*Luxury(x) - d*Price(x) + e*GasEfficiency(x) + f*Cargo(x) + g*Towing(x)
the values of a-g not only vary widely, but their relative ordering will as well.
further more the functions themselves vary as different people have different threshholds to diminishing return.
i think im far enough off topic that i should stop tho
more on the lines of the parent but slight disagreement
not really, speed, price and all that jazz are all just inferences and interpretations of what makes the law significant or meaningful to you. The law itself is just about the "number of transistors doubling" etc... in essence its just about COMPLEXITY. You probably don't care how many transistors are on the chip, you just care about the result that provides. Because they use a relatively fixed size for the chips, its through increased transistor count (thus density) that they accomplish the performance / speed enhancements. Sure once in a while they come up with a new trick / idea on how to make better use of the transistors they have.. but in general its much more of a statement about chip manufacturing processes than anything else. Plus last I heard the law pretty much reached a death point as we haven't really made any sort of doubling as of late. Gets worse if you look at performance / speed. a fairly decent laptop in 2002 had like a 2ghz processor... a good laptop now has 2.4 core2duo, i dont know the transistor difference, and its hard to count the parallel speed benefit because thats somewhat of an algorithm change providing superscalar results. whatever back to the car thing
the car may not be more powerful, or cost less, but you have to ask yourself if that was ever the goal? people need faster computers in order to run the OS's and applications that are being developed and released.
Seeing as the speed limit has yet to go up there is no need for joe consumer to have a car with significantly more horsepower.. Additionally there are other reasons that they wouldnt want that. More ponies = less efficiency = more wasted gas. gas costs have been growing in case you havent noticed. What do you honestly plan on doing with that HP anyways? I'm not going to pretend to know much about cars and that stuff, but I'm pretty sure that unless you are racing, or towing (although there I think torque is much more important), I dont see why joe consumer ever has any USE for more than 200 horses... unless his car/truck is so heavy that they still cant get 0-60 in under 8 seconds.
Instead of focusing on that car innovation has in many ways been focused on gas efficiency and various compu/electronic components in engines, and luxuries. In the 1980's did you car have dual zone climate control, heated seats, heated mirrors, cruise control, digital stereo, nav, sleek ergonomic interrior, ultra-low emissions/exhaust, air bags, anti-lock, power steering, "assisted steering" (that seems to have a different name from every company), laser etched ignition keys with circuits in them or the rfid keys, useful keyfobs, variable intermittent wipers, etc etc..
cars have gotten lighter, stronger, more fuel efficient, and more functional, and generally better visibility (although thats been in a slight decline in the past several years compared to early-mid 90's
cars definately also become cheaper, look at the price gap between the blue book for buying a 'brand new' 3 year old car thats been on the lot for 3 years compared to the brand new model. not to the extent that various parts have gotten a lot cheaper, but i would imagine because the bulk of the parts dont really change. the chagnes in chip design make it easier and cheaper to produce the old variety and enable mass production of a higher density. That combined with demand and need to create demand contribute to pricing changes. The introduction of a new car seat to a car for example doesnt make it any more or less expensive to produce the old one because they dont have the same relationship as to what makes the new one 'better' than the old.
the problem is that too many of you self important people feel that you are somehow entitled to special treatment because you dont want to wait like everyone else, or because you are bringing more crap aboard than you are supposed to... or because you insist on dawdling in the aisles so that you can put everything you own in the overhead compartment. For clarity let me emphasize again I am not talking about those who ACTUALLY need the time, people with injuries, casts, wheel chairs, the elderly, someone with some other actual NEED to board early. Newsflash, they arent asking who WANTS to board early, they ask who needs to.
:-)
Even with the "zoned" boarding, it never fails that lots of people decide that they "need extra time to board" because they are asshats. what's my basis for saying this? because when I am in the first boarding group for a seat at the back of the plane there are always more than a handful of people who "rush" ahead of me in the boarding line that I walk past en route to the back of the plane. Many who are sitting in rows that arent even in the "middle" of the plane (there's always a couple people in the first nonFC row). these are not elderly people, or people who were walking with crutches or any impediments at all. these are usually random people mostly non elderly. more often than not somebody wearing a suit who is a business traveler, also frequent is the "just finished shopping for lots of crap" lady with multiple bags of shit. And yes I am aware that they board FC and Elite flyers at the same time and I watch and the either these are "Elite"'s who don't realize it until then (not likely) a couple arriving late (plausible) or mostly people I saw standing around near me waiting who didn't go up for Elite (because they aren't) but decide that the whole boarding in order thing doesnt apply to them.. It also never fails that one of these people causes a major delay when they go to sit in the like 5th aisle and dig through their bags before putting them all on the overhead and sitting down.
if they want to board faster they should board from the front and the rear of the plane simultaneously. they should also board first class last... which is actually what I would want if i was FC... I wouldnt want to spend a god damn extra minute on that plane if i could avoid it
I've flown a lot this past year for a non business traveler and the most annoying thing is when they hide a delay by just boarding the plane and then having you sit there for an hour before doing anything other than disconnecting the boarding bridge and closing the hatch at which time of course we are instructed to turn off the cell's and electronics.
arriving late doesnt screw up jack, its the same as it is now. if you show up late and your section has already boarded you proceed on or otherwise you can wait at the back of the line. you dont cause any more of an inconvenience then anyone else. what would REALLY speed it up is if they didnt let as much come onto the plane for "carry on" luggage and had you check that stuff AT THE GATE to be reclaimed at the gate. its not that hard you walk on the plane, you shove a carryon up top and then you take your small 'personal item' or briefcase whatever and shove it under the seat in front if you.. if it cramps your legs then bring less stuff on board the plane. But I don't think people will much like that; myself included... theres something nice about keeping your baggage with you the whole time and not having to wait for the godly slow baggage claim.
I know not many will likely agree with me on this part (and understandably if you are traveling with a large family of youngsters for a long vacation) but I would be just happy to pick up my baggage right when i got off the plane and carry it through the airport.
on another note, let me know when he figures out a way to have plane that will prevent babies from crying on it. that or will someone PLEASE start an airline with a "NO BABY" policy. I'm aware that I was a baby m
you have the whole monopoly thing wrong...
It is not illegal to be a monopoly; they exist. Get over it
It is illegal to engage in monopolistic practices.
By definition this kind of activity is exactly that.
mac uses the "secret hooks" to make a first product that is sufficiently better than the third party can possibly create. Then even if they do publish the 'secret hooks' and the 3rd party adopts, its too late because everyone is already hooked on the built in and already existing first party version
Apple is doing with safari the exact same thing that Microsoft did with IE. The fact that safari is a good browser and is infinitely better than IE could ever dream to be is irrelevant in terms of the principles involved. They want to test the "SPI?" ok go write a BETA or use your test team or hire one. When the product you are selling encompasses that very thing you are taking a competitive advantage.
the real problem here is that you have a vertical monopoly waiting to happen, Apple makes the hardware, and they make the os and the software and can do whatever they want to keep anyone else out. in actuality there really isnt anything wrong with that because if you dont like it you will use or develop something else. Microsoft is sorta in the same boat, but they dont make the hardware (i dont count mouse and keyboards as hardware for sake of discussion and they barely pass the you can kick it test anyhow).
more so the problem is that more and more what is being advertised as "the OS" is not the OS but is instead SOFTWARE... newsflash itunes is not osX and its not part of osX; its a piece of software that runs on osX... the same goes for iphoto and garageband and safari etc.... They are bundled software; good bundled software, but bundled software nonetheless. As long as apple continues to offer such large advantages to first party development you're not going to see as much commercial software target osX because every developer could take the rationale "i can make it, but theyll just clone it, use secret hooks to be faster and then embed it into the operating system to keep me out of business" It happens everyday.
bigger question: if apples software is so great why wont they release more versions of their software for windows and linux hmm? garageband for windows, garageband on linux.... I'd love to see iTunes on linux and finally be able to play m4p and itunes store purchased files on linux not to mention GOOD and Safe ipod support thats consistent when used on both linux/win/osX
smells like fanboy
a. if this was MS you'd be screaming bloody murderb.
b. you are telling me that your beloved apple is putting experimental code on our machines? or code that might be experimental? I call bs... if they created an API they would have tested it,
for the sake of comedy lets pretend this was a new dish for the menu at a restaurant... the convo would go something like this
"hey johnny try this new dish i cooked up, its fantastic but ummm.. it may or may not contain dog feces"
"well which is it?"
"I can't remember, can you just taste and tell me what you think?"
"I have a better idea, lets just start selling this to customers and let them tell us"
"fine, but we gotta figure it out so i can make more"
sniffs
"whatever just play it safe and use half as much feces as you think you may have used and we'll see if anyone complains"
yeah im guessing that would go over real well with consumers...
I hate to say it but a blanket statement saying "people from college X" are fantastic is pretty lame, and is sure NOT to find you the best. Cast aside the fact that I would think in general you might find better programmers from MIT, RPI, UMichigan, CalTech and UC-Berkeley... Although Northeastern does turn out students w/ a lot of "real world" experience as a result of their well designed co-op program / requirement.
THe problem with such statements is that often times the best programmers are too busy working on projects to deal with every little second of studying. I'm not talking about the kids who are so lost in projects and their own world that they fail out of school; I'm talking about the kids who instead of being insane perfectionists about their 'boring' assignments and obsessing over studying and memorizing every single term to get 100 on the tests they stop when they have it 'working' and they feel they know the material... what do they do then? They get to more programming, stuff they like to do and do it simply because they like it... they get involved in open source and contribute to it.
by contribute i mean acutally, not just being an advocate / power user and installing it on anyone and everyones machines for them. I mean things like start mirrors and managing packages, creating custom distros (knoppmyth from some guys at case western), etc...
I know what you are thinking, but those people will all become oss fiends and wont want to make commercial anything etc.. etcc...
but heres what you might not appreciate. in order to get involved and contribute more often than not there is some preexisting 'stuff' stuff they have to learn how to work within. be it source control repository systems, bug trackers, code standards, reading other's code, fixing defects, build systems, etc. It exposes them to a lot of different things that as a new comer they wont have control over. and it shows that they can despite this make a mark on something and adapt to the system that they are within.
yes I'm 'new' to the game, I'm not someone whos been developing for 20-30 years. but you dont have to be around for long to appreciate the movement, the dynamic nature and the ever increasing importance of agility in software development. because those who are agile are not too stubborn or arrogant to see that the familiar way isnt always the best, easiest, or most efficient way to do things. change can be good, not change for the sake of change, but change to improve process.