Although the ASA eventually cleared the advert on the basis that Bud tastes so bad it actually becomes worse as it ages.
That implies that Bud tastes of something... Clearly false! NB: I've actually had some rather nice beers in the US (although they do tend to be from their mother's womb untimely ripp'd).
Back on topic, before USAians start talking about freedom of speech and censorship (personally, I couldn't care less if the adverts are censored as long as the bits in between them aren't) its worth noting that the ASA is an independent body, not an arm of Government, and the sanctions are usually limited to forcing the offending ad to be withdrawn.
Dell, however, should maybe study UK/EU adverts for expensive wrinkle creams to get some tips on how to sell snake oil without actually making any falsifiable claims (in surveys, 8 out of 10 people who's contact lenses we'd flushed down the loo thought the SuperTuboGraphics option reduced the seven signs of pixellation).
Yeah, its Stuff That Matters, but is it News for Nerds?
I don't normally come to Slashdot to read yesterday's BBC headlines.
Seriously, yes, this is important but it is all over the mundane news sites - if you start putting general political/financial news on Slashdot, where does it stop? Football results?
Is this a good move by Microsoft, or a leveraging of their monopoly as bad as bundling Internet Explorer?"
If the authorities feel they should "do something" about the MS monopoly then they should force them to spin off MS Office and other business apps as a separate business, look deeply into how their Windows licensing deals with OEMs work, and require open standards for all Government contracts. Without that, arguing over whether they can bundle minor utility "x" is just inconsequential.
Modern operating systems are expected to include a pretty comprehensive suite of utilities, protocol stacks and basic applications. Monopoly or no, its getting a bit silly if OS X, iOS, Android, and the major Linux distros can bundle a web browser (or, more specifically have HTTP and HTML APIs in their OS) but Windows can't.
If no one used this stuff then why are they still being sold?
Its not a case of "who uses this stuff?" its a case of "who uses it so often that they need one permanently bolted into their laptop or small form-factor system?".
I'll need a CD/DVD drive for the foreseeable future, but like hell do I need to lug one around with me every day. Also, I've found the slim-line CD players used in laptop/SFFs to be one of the most common points of failure (most of mine have packed up or ceased writing DVDs after a year or so - both in PCs and Macs). An external USB CD/DVD/RW drive costs peanuts (no need to buy the expensive Apple one) and can live in a nice dust-free cupboard apart from the occasional times it is needed - and if it does get borked I don't have to perform warranty-breaking surgery on my laptop.
I still occasionally play "real" CDs on my home hi-fi and watch "real" DVDs and Blu-Rays on my home TV - but the only reason I ever stick one into my computer is to rip it for use "on the move". Software on CD/DVD is just as likely to be DRM-encumbered as downloads (I've got several old games on CD that are useless because the copy protection is incompatible with modern systems) - often more restrictively than, say, Steam/App Store which let you run software you purchase on multiple machines.
Don't fret, just as you can still buy floppy drives if you need them, you'll be able to buy optical drives for your tower systems and external enclosures for a long time yet.
What is the proper pejorative word that's the opposite of Luddite? I'm tired of those gadget freaks who think the world revolves and them and the latest thing they bought.
Latest!? I've been using MP3s for any non-lounge-based listening for about 10 years, downloading software more often than getting CDs for at least 5 years and using CD/DVD for file exchange less and less for 2-3 years - partly because the half-life of a laptop optical drive seems to be about 6 months anyway, and with the emergence of services like DropBox (or good ol' ftp servers) for exchanging files too big to email. We're now talking about optical drives being optional for the next generation of ultra-portable laptops. Get some perspective.
Steam can't run in a sandbox so apple can lock them out if they move to more of a app store only system.
...and the same is true of MS Office, Adobe CS, Parallels/VMWare etc. So maybe, just maybe, Apple isn't going to lock down OS X until people are no longer buying Macs to run those applications.
Sure they could decide to go this way - in which case I could feed a Linux or Windows disc in my Mac and give Apple up as a bad job. Personally, I'd be more worried as to whether MS is going to push UEFI secure boot onto every OEM, making it hard to buy any hardware that let you choose which OS to run.
OTOH the App Store could develop as somewhere that it was safe for a non-Admin account (Grandad, kids, mere employees) to install software from. The whole system wouldn't need to be locked down.
I don't think those songs are that similar. Besides with the large number of sample based songs on the radio now, why pick on Lady Gaga?
Actually, I can see the vague similarity in the tune - but thats all it is, a vague similarity. She should do a proper cover version: she could wear a replica of a fighter jet made out of live badgers.
Meanwhile, more suitable soundtracks for the EBS would be "Ninety Nine Red Baloons" by Nina, "Two Tribes" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, "Enola Gay" by OMD or, on a different tack, you can't go wrong with "Always Look On The Bright Side" (although theyd have to bleep out the s-word for US National Radio)
1. What is about this device that will attract the average, non-technical buyer? (How are all these awesome tech features useful)
As you've spotted, the public don't buy tablets on CPU/GPU power specs: tablet CPUs only come with two speeds: fast enough, or not fast enough.
The potential USP of this is the keyboard dock. However, methinks they need to get the price of the original Transformer plus the dock down to the iPad price of $499 rather than trying to sell on specs.
Must admit, the Asus tablet offerings have always looked more likely to tempt me away from an iPad to me than Samsung and Motorola's iPad clones - at least they're trying to distinguish themselves from Apple.
Their new "Full Screen Mode" is great, I suppose, on an iPad..
(Or an Air) Yes - that's the point - they should have called it "iPad mode" instead of "full screen" mode. Its for systems with small, single screens. If you have a multi-monitor setup, ignore full-screen mode and just maximize the window just like you did before Lion. In most apps, its a new feature that you don't have to use if you don't need it. There is a problem is with third-party apps that already had a full screen mode and which rushed to embrace Lion without thinking first - e.g. Parallels, in which "iPad mode" was not a substitute for full screen (they've fixed it now, to their credit).
The new scrollbars are an interface disaster. You should never make scrollbars smaller and harder to see and use
I think the idea there is that scrollbars are much less important than they used to be, now that people use scroll wheels or trackpad gestures to scroll rapidly.
For certain OS X applications, they changed the behavior to something far from the norm, by making documents auto-save, even when you don't want them to.
Well, the plan is that the new behavior will become the norm - which will be a bit of a culture shock, but the upside is automatic, OS-level versioning of documents. The payoff from that won't come until MS, Adobe et. al. (LibreOffice...?) have made this shift so that we can start to use it in the applications we work with day-to-day.
They should have worked harder to bring desktop functionality to their smaller devices, rather than dumbing down the desktop to the "lowest common denominator".
...but the whole take-home lesson from the iPad's success is that desktop functionality doesn't work on smaller devices: Windows tablet PCs that offered desktop functionality on a tablet had been going nowhere much, outside a few niche markets, for years. Lion has tended to add optional, tablet-esque ways of doing things without removing the original functionality. The Spaces/Expose changes are a matter of taste (I've tended to make more use of them since getting Lion and a Magic Trackpad) and adding OS-level automatic versioning and auto-save doesn't seem like a "lowest common denominator" to me. There seems to be a clear rationale behind most of the changes. They don't seem to have pulled out the rug the way Unity/Gnome 3 have.
Of course, its also possible that Apple will backtrack on some things if there is huge resistance - ISTR that there were a few Leopard features like transparent menu bars and the 3D dock that Apple made optional after user feedback.
And the people who applied for mortgages on houses they couldn't afford should also be guilty of fraud.
Of course, the reason these people couldn't afford to buy a house was because the prices had been inflated by banks handing out mortgages like sweets. Sure, there are many influences on housing prices, but "what the market can bear" is hugely influenced by the availability of credit.
Oh, and the reason they wanted to buy rather than rent is that, rather than people using capital to buy property and rent it, the banks were encouraging people with no capital to take out "buy to let" mortgages on the basis that their tenants would pay enough rent to cover the mortgage and maintenance and a little bit on the side, making renting more expensive month-on-month than paying a mortgage (and also inflating the sale price of what should have been low-cost housing).
Joe public was mainly guilty of naively assuming that his banker was a professional with some vestigial sense of ethics. The fraud started when the financial products salesman hung a label on his desk saying "Adviser".
The reason why there was an epidemic of such fraud was because the lenders, through their willful blindness, created an environment in which it flourished. Sure, that doesn't let the individuals who did make outright false statements off the hook completely, but then many of those people have found themselves homeless as a result. I'd still reserve most of my ire for the professionals who let it happen.
Yes, and with high frequency trading - and trading in general - being less profitable you can expect less liquidity, larger spreads between the bid and ask price, and much greater volatility in the markets. Well done.
Or, to put it another way, more incentive to hold on to shares as long term investment and maybe start giving a fuck about whether the enterprises they represent are actually creating sustainable wealth, and think about the wider consequences of the trades you make, rather than treating them as casino chips. But, hey, if it ain't broke don't fix it. Oh, wait, it is broke...
Plus, in case you haven't been reading the news for the last 3 years, the financial sector owes us some money.
You mean the port that means you always need a special cable? The port that proves that Apple's profit is way more important than user friendliness?
You mean the special cable that is so ubiquitous that it costs 50 cents? Heck, push the boat out and get the $1.50 one....
Hopefully your micro-USB chargers are the sensible sort with a full-size USB socket built into the adapter (like the Apple chargers) so you can also use them to charge older mini-USB devices as well as iDevices.
More than that... standardizing on a single spot for the cable would also require standardizing on certain dimensions for the phone itself...
Apple accessory manufacturers get around that by using interchangeable plastic inserts for the docks, allowing them to take anything from a Nano to a Classic.
It's because Android devices are marketed for nerds, by nerds.
Actually, I don't think that's the problem.
Android (and Windows, and the new Nokia) are being marketed by marketing professionals to hypothetical groups of consumers as defined by marketing professionals.
The HTC "Bionic" is clearly being marketed to 40-somethings who grew up watching the 6 Million Dollar Man but, due to a tragic childhood accident involving a bottle of extra-strong cider and a packet of space dust, are frozen at the age of 13.
WIndows 7 is being marketed at people who are too stupid to realize that if something is available when they go "to the cloud" then it will probably work on their Mac or their 4-year-old Windows PC.
The new Nokia phone will, apparently, let me make huge collages of all my friends' faces and (presumably) help me find some schmuck to buy it as art. 'Cause that's what we all do with our phones.
The new Samsung can, apparently, remember birthdays/anniversaries let me order flowers and shit for my S.O. if I've forgotten it. Yeah, that's new. (oddly, my early 1990s Psion 3 could actually warn me 3 working days in advance of upcoming birthdays etc. so that sort of panic didn't happen).
Generally, the non-Apple ads aren't trying to sell on specifications or features, they're trying to sell the brand. They're trying to make people go into the store and say "I is wantin' an HTC because I is a kool happenin' dude!" or "I want a Nokia because I am a confident, independent woman" because they identify with the role models in the ads (yeuch!). Good luck with that, because the one thing that fanbois and haters have to agree on is that Apple are absolute bloody grand masters at making people say "I want an Apple because the product looks really swish".
So, what's wrong with USB anyway? I LIKE the fact that I can plug my android phone into a $2 car charger, and not have to buy the $35 sold at the phone store.
What? iDevices charge from a regular USB socket. Just get something like this which turns a car lighter socket into a USB A power socket - works fine with iDevices or Androids - just check the reviews to make sure it delivers enough juice.
Meanwhile, unlike standard USB, the iDevice dock connector also carries analog audio in/out and video, essential for the cheaper speakers/accessories.
I love reading the responses to this when I've just come from the hysteria that is microsoft requiring secure-boot UEFI. So anything done in the name of security is fine, as long as it's apple and not microsoft?
Lets say all the doom-mongers are correct about Apple, and next year they announce that as of OSX FluffyWhiteSupervillainCat , the App Store is compulsory and you'll no longer be able to install and run third-party software on your Mac.
Solution: if the worst happens, dump OS X and the problem will go away. Switch to Linux. It runs fine on your existing Mac hardware, and when you come to upgrade you can get pretty much any generic PC and install the OS of your choice.
However, if the doom-mongers are correct about Microsoft and secure-boot UEFI, then you won't have that option because all new PCs and motherboards will only boot approved operating systems, and with Windows still dominant, hardware manufacturers have no particular incentive to make 'unlockable' hardware. At the least, you might find yourself forced to buy more expensive hardware rather than cheap, generic PCs.
Of course, the doom-mongers in either or both cases may well be wrong, and just spreading FUD to sate their platform evangelism. Its just that the worst-case scenario for Apple is "don't buy Apple then" whereas UEFI secure-boot could restrict everybody's choice.
Its different in that the App store apparently attracts developers who think they should be able to start a business without risking the eye-wateringly large sum of $99/year, believe that they can get in, even on the bottom rung, of a big-brand retail channel without the retailer wanting a substantial cut, think that they can get away without doing any of their own publicity, and who, generally, have never heard the term "cost of sales".
Sorry guys, even for a "Mom'n'Pop" business, $99/year doesn't even count as "serious callers only" - and go ask your bank how much it will cost you to set up as a credit card merchant.
So, lets assume that means English words rather than 32 bit words. The rule-of-thumb for average word length is 5 characters, so lets say 6 to allow for a space or punctuation symbol.
That gives us 1000 words = 6000 characters = 6000 bytes of ASCII but, to be fair, that's wasting at least 1 bit per character, so you could easily reduce that to, say, 4000 bytes.
Now, 4000 bytes is 1333 pixels of 24 bit colour. Take the square root and that gives you a 36 x 36 pixel image, which gives you an image three-eighths of an inch square at the typical 96 ppi.
So, any image bigger than 3/8" square is officially a waste of space!
Ok, so you could use JPEG - but if you allow lossy compression for the picture yv gt t alw lssy cmpsn fr t wds 2.
So because the two things are similar in one respect they should be treated as if they are the same?
Except that "software is mathematics, and patent law specifically excludes mathematics" is a widely cited argument against software patents.
Of course, whatever the fundamental identity is, few bits of software are derived through formal mathematical methods - and in that case it just shifts the "inventive step" from writing the code to transforming the real-world problem you want to solve into a formal specification from which you can derive algorithms.
Plus, I'm sure that its been true for many years that any substantial bit of electronics probably started life as "software" for a simulator. Not to mention the grey area of things like Field Programmable Gate Arrays where the "circuit" is just a data file saying how to hook the gates together.
Of course, the whole proposition is non-falsifiable unless someone can come up with a testable definition of what "x 'is' mathematics/y 'is not' mathematics" actually means. For legal purposes, I suspect it depends on a court trying to guess the intentions of whoever originally excluded mathematics from patent law (most of the 'mathematics' involved in computing theory post-dates the idea of patents by a long chalk... anybody know when the 'mathematics' clauses showed up?)
As MattBecker82 points out below, the real issue is that patents are far more disruptive to software business models, which rely on 'zero marginal cost', than they are to hardware production. Plus, computing has long been plagued with monopolistic practices, even without patents. The point of patents is to promote innovation and industry - its pretty clear that they don't do that for software.
Don't bother watching the road - concentrate on remembering the speed limit and staring at your speedo.
1. You should be aware of your speed at all times, regardless of speed limits.
There's a difference between knowing your speed in terms of "too fast", "too slow" and knowing your absolute speed in mph. Personally, I trust the former rather more than the latter, since it takes account of traffic and conditions. There are plenty of places and situations where the posted speed limit is clearly too fast. NB: what's really pissing people off over speed limits is not people being nicked for doing 60 in a school zone, its people being fined for doing 36 in a badly-marked 30 zone (or unmarked because the streetlamps were less than 100m apart or whatever).
3. If the mental strain of remembering a speed limit is too much, you shouldn't be driving in the first place, as you are clearly as unsafe as a drunk driver.
There's such a thing as "cognitive load" - there's only so many things, however individually simple, that a mere mortal can concentrate on - and when you're driving, you're concentrating on a lot of things, almost all of which are more important than whether you're doing 29 or 32 mph.
Perhaps you missed out:
4. All drivers should be flawless supermen with similar qualifications to airline pilots and never drive when they're ill, tired or distracted. Of course, the first thing such professional drivers would ask for is a "co pilot" to provide a second pair of eyes, because everybody is fallible. Fine by me - then private cars would be uneconomical, we'd need better public transport and we could just get the bus everywhere.
I don't get why there is this push away from the program menu we have been using for over 15 years.
Apple. If Apple does it, everyone thinks it must be the right thing to do.
The problem is, people don't seem to understand why Apple does things.
On a Mac, a well-behaved application appears in Finder as a single, self-contained, double-click-to-run file (actually a directory, but that is disguised). You browse Applications in Finder just like any other file. You are free to re-arrange your Applications folder into subfolders as you see fit. You add desktop shortcuts, dock items just like you would for regular files. This is a major conceptual difference between Mac and both Linux and Windows, where application files live in special places and have to be somehow 'registered' with some sort of launcher on the desktop. Plus, there's that nice big, drag-n-drop Dock with lots of display and position options. Also, historically, Mac users have relied on file associations and tended to start applications by launching document files rather than (as on Windows) starting applications and loading file (Ive encountered Windows users who just dont use Explorer).
The Applications icon on the dock works the same way as any other folder dragged to the dock, and has several view options. Yes, 10.7 has added the iPad-like Launcher, and are gradually moving to an iOS -like application-centric view, but the default desktop screen is still pretty familiar and most of the old mechanisms are still there.
You should still follow posted speed limits, even if you don't agree with them.
Yeah, because driving around with some tw@ in an Audi following 6 inches from your rear bumper desperately blinking its lights at you and looking for the first opportunity to cut you up is so safe.
Or does that not happen in the USA when you try and observe the limit?
Or there's one stretch of road I know where the limit varies between 30, 40 and 50 umpteen times in the space of a mile, for no adequately observed reason. Don't bother watching the road - concentrate on remembering the speed limit and staring at your speedo.
Or what about roads with speed camera signs and no posted speed limit , at least on the stretch I drive (I think its 30, despite being quite wide with service roads on either side for the residents)?
Slashdot Mirror
what about circular polarization?
Then any joker with a pair of 2D Glasses (or someone with regular 3D glasses and one eye closed) could read them :-)
Seriously though - the hack relies on the fact that LCD displays use linearly polarized light internally.
Although the ASA eventually cleared the advert on the basis that Bud tastes so bad it actually becomes worse as it ages.
That implies that Bud tastes of something... Clearly false! NB: I've actually had some rather nice beers in the US (although they do tend to be from their mother's womb untimely ripp'd).
Back on topic, before USAians start talking about freedom of speech and censorship (personally, I couldn't care less if the adverts are censored as long as the bits in between them aren't) its worth noting that the ASA is an independent body, not an arm of Government, and the sanctions are usually limited to forcing the offending ad to be withdrawn.
Dell, however, should maybe study UK/EU adverts for expensive wrinkle creams to get some tips on how to sell snake oil without actually making any falsifiable claims (in surveys, 8 out of 10 people who's contact lenses we'd flushed down the loo thought the SuperTuboGraphics option reduced the seven signs of pixellation).
Yeah, its Stuff That Matters, but is it News for Nerds?
I don't normally come to Slashdot to read yesterday's BBC headlines.
Seriously, yes, this is important but it is all over the mundane news sites - if you start putting general political/financial news on Slashdot, where does it stop? Football results?
I don't understand this quote, how do other devices interfere with sleeping patterns?
You can run Tetris/Bejeweled/Angry Birds/Plants v Zombies and view pr0n on them :-)
Is this a good move by Microsoft, or a leveraging of their monopoly as bad as bundling Internet Explorer?"
If the authorities feel they should "do something" about the MS monopoly then they should force them to spin off MS Office and other business apps as a separate business, look deeply into how their Windows licensing deals with OEMs work, and require open standards for all Government contracts. Without that, arguing over whether they can bundle minor utility "x" is just inconsequential.
Modern operating systems are expected to include a pretty comprehensive suite of utilities, protocol stacks and basic applications. Monopoly or no, its getting a bit silly if OS X, iOS, Android, and the major Linux distros can bundle a web browser (or, more specifically have HTTP and HTML APIs in their OS) but Windows can't.
If no one used this stuff then why are they still being sold?
Its not a case of "who uses this stuff?" its a case of "who uses it so often that they need one permanently bolted into their laptop or small form-factor system?".
I'll need a CD/DVD drive for the foreseeable future, but like hell do I need to lug one around with me every day. Also, I've found the slim-line CD players used in laptop/SFFs to be one of the most common points of failure (most of mine have packed up or ceased writing DVDs after a year or so - both in PCs and Macs). An external USB CD/DVD/RW drive costs peanuts (no need to buy the expensive Apple one) and can live in a nice dust-free cupboard apart from the occasional times it is needed - and if it does get borked I don't have to perform warranty-breaking surgery on my laptop.
I still occasionally play "real" CDs on my home hi-fi and watch "real" DVDs and Blu-Rays on my home TV - but the only reason I ever stick one into my computer is to rip it for use "on the move". Software on CD/DVD is just as likely to be DRM-encumbered as downloads (I've got several old games on CD that are useless because the copy protection is incompatible with modern systems) - often more restrictively than, say, Steam/App Store which let you run software you purchase on multiple machines.
Don't fret, just as you can still buy floppy drives if you need them, you'll be able to buy optical drives for your tower systems and external enclosures for a long time yet.
What is the proper pejorative word that's the opposite of Luddite? I'm tired of those gadget freaks who think the world revolves and them and the latest thing they bought.
Latest!? I've been using MP3s for any non-lounge-based listening for about 10 years, downloading software more often than getting CDs for at least 5 years and using CD/DVD for file exchange less and less for 2-3 years - partly because the half-life of a laptop optical drive seems to be about 6 months anyway, and with the emergence of services like DropBox (or good ol' ftp servers) for exchanging files too big to email. We're now talking about optical drives being optional for the next generation of ultra-portable laptops. Get some perspective.
In ye olden days of 5 digit /. UIDs, that was "Ford Prefect" from HHGTTG.
Thinking that transistors were made of either silicon or geranium didn't stop me reading science books as a kid.
Steam can't run in a sandbox so apple can lock them out if they move to more of a app store only system.
...and the same is true of MS Office, Adobe CS, Parallels/VMWare etc. So maybe, just maybe, Apple isn't going to lock down OS X until people are no longer buying Macs to run those applications.
Sure they could decide to go this way - in which case I could feed a Linux or Windows disc in my Mac and give Apple up as a bad job. Personally, I'd be more worried as to whether MS is going to push UEFI secure boot onto every OEM, making it hard to buy any hardware that let you choose which OS to run.
OTOH the App Store could develop as somewhere that it was safe for a non-Admin account (Grandad, kids, mere employees) to install software from. The whole system wouldn't need to be locked down.
I don't think those songs are that similar. Besides with the large number of sample based songs on the radio now, why pick on Lady Gaga?
Actually, I can see the vague similarity in the tune - but thats all it is, a vague similarity. She should do a proper cover version: she could wear a replica of a fighter jet made out of live badgers.
Meanwhile, more suitable soundtracks for the EBS would be "Ninety Nine Red Baloons" by Nina, "Two Tribes" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, "Enola Gay" by OMD or, on a different tack, you can't go wrong with "Always Look On The Bright Side" (although theyd have to bleep out the s-word for US National Radio)
1. What is about this device that will attract the average, non-technical buyer? (How are all these awesome tech features useful)
As you've spotted, the public don't buy tablets on CPU/GPU power specs: tablet CPUs only come with two speeds: fast enough, or not fast enough.
The potential USP of this is the keyboard dock. However, methinks they need to get the price of the original Transformer plus the dock down to the iPad price of $499 rather than trying to sell on specs.
Must admit, the Asus tablet offerings have always looked more likely to tempt me away from an iPad to me than Samsung and Motorola's iPad clones - at least they're trying to distinguish themselves from Apple.
Their new "Full Screen Mode" is great, I suppose, on an iPad. .
(Or an Air) Yes - that's the point - they should have called it "iPad mode" instead of "full screen" mode. Its for systems with small, single screens. If you have a multi-monitor setup, ignore full-screen mode and just maximize the window just like you did before Lion. In most apps, its a new feature that you don't have to use if you don't need it. There is a problem is with third-party apps that already had a full screen mode and which rushed to embrace Lion without thinking first - e.g. Parallels, in which "iPad mode" was not a substitute for full screen (they've fixed it now, to their credit).
The new scrollbars are an interface disaster. You should never make scrollbars smaller and harder to see and use
I think the idea there is that scrollbars are much less important than they used to be, now that people use scroll wheels or trackpad gestures to scroll rapidly.
For certain OS X applications, they changed the behavior to something far from the norm, by making documents auto-save, even when you don't want them to.
Well, the plan is that the new behavior will become the norm - which will be a bit of a culture shock, but the upside is automatic, OS-level versioning of documents. The payoff from that won't come until MS, Adobe et. al. (LibreOffice...?) have made this shift so that we can start to use it in the applications we work with day-to-day.
They should have worked harder to bring desktop functionality to their smaller devices, rather than dumbing down the desktop to the "lowest common denominator".
...but the whole take-home lesson from the iPad's success is that desktop functionality doesn't work on smaller devices: Windows tablet PCs that offered desktop functionality on a tablet had been going nowhere much, outside a few niche markets, for years. Lion has tended to add optional, tablet-esque ways of doing things without removing the original functionality. The Spaces/Expose changes are a matter of taste (I've tended to make more use of them since getting Lion and a Magic Trackpad) and adding OS-level automatic versioning and auto-save doesn't seem like a "lowest common denominator" to me. There seems to be a clear rationale behind most of the changes. They don't seem to have pulled out the rug the way Unity/Gnome 3 have.
Of course, its also possible that Apple will backtrack on some things if there is huge resistance - ISTR that there were a few Leopard features like transparent menu bars and the 3D dock that Apple made optional after user feedback.
And the people who applied for mortgages on houses they couldn't afford should also be guilty of fraud.
Of course, the reason these people couldn't afford to buy a house was because the prices had been inflated by banks handing out mortgages like sweets. Sure, there are many influences on housing prices, but "what the market can bear" is hugely influenced by the availability of credit.
Oh, and the reason they wanted to buy rather than rent is that, rather than people using capital to buy property and rent it, the banks were encouraging people with no capital to take out "buy to let" mortgages on the basis that their tenants would pay enough rent to cover the mortgage and maintenance and a little bit on the side, making renting more expensive month-on-month than paying a mortgage (and also inflating the sale price of what should have been low-cost housing).
Joe public was mainly guilty of naively assuming that his banker was a professional with some vestigial sense of ethics. The fraud started when the financial products salesman hung a label on his desk saying "Adviser".
The reason why there was an epidemic of such fraud was because the lenders, through their willful blindness, created an environment in which it flourished. Sure, that doesn't let the individuals who did make outright false statements off the hook completely, but then many of those people have found themselves homeless as a result. I'd still reserve most of my ire for the professionals who let it happen.
Yes, and with high frequency trading - and trading in general - being less profitable you can expect less liquidity, larger spreads between the bid and ask price, and much greater volatility in the markets. Well done.
Or, to put it another way, more incentive to hold on to shares as long term investment and maybe start giving a fuck about whether the enterprises they represent are actually creating sustainable wealth, and think about the wider consequences of the trades you make, rather than treating them as casino chips. But, hey, if it ain't broke don't fix it. Oh, wait, it is broke...
Plus, in case you haven't been reading the news for the last 3 years, the financial sector owes us some money.
You mean the port that means you always need a special cable? The port that proves that Apple's profit is way more important than user friendliness?
You mean the special cable that is so ubiquitous that it costs 50 cents? Heck, push the boat out and get the $1.50 one....
Hopefully your micro-USB chargers are the sensible sort with a full-size USB socket built into the adapter (like the Apple chargers) so you can also use them to charge older mini-USB devices as well as iDevices.
More than that... standardizing on a single spot for the cable would also require standardizing on certain dimensions for the phone itself...
Apple accessory manufacturers get around that by using interchangeable plastic inserts for the docks, allowing them to take anything from a Nano to a Classic.
It's because Android devices are marketed for nerds, by nerds.
Actually, I don't think that's the problem.
Android (and Windows, and the new Nokia) are being marketed by marketing professionals to hypothetical groups of consumers as defined by marketing professionals.
The HTC "Bionic" is clearly being marketed to 40-somethings who grew up watching the 6 Million Dollar Man but, due to a tragic childhood accident involving a bottle of extra-strong cider and a packet of space dust, are frozen at the age of 13.
WIndows 7 is being marketed at people who are too stupid to realize that if something is available when they go "to the cloud" then it will probably work on their Mac or their 4-year-old Windows PC.
The new Nokia phone will, apparently, let me make huge collages of all my friends' faces and (presumably) help me find some schmuck to buy it as art. 'Cause that's what we all do with our phones.
The new Samsung can, apparently, remember birthdays/anniversaries let me order flowers and shit for my S.O. if I've forgotten it. Yeah, that's new. (oddly, my early 1990s Psion 3 could actually warn me 3 working days in advance of upcoming birthdays etc. so that sort of panic didn't happen).
Generally, the non-Apple ads aren't trying to sell on specifications or features, they're trying to sell the brand. They're trying to make people go into the store and say "I is wantin' an HTC because I is a kool happenin' dude!" or "I want a Nokia because I am a confident, independent woman" because they identify with the role models in the ads (yeuch!). Good luck with that, because the one thing that fanbois and haters have to agree on is that Apple are absolute bloody grand masters at making people say "I want an Apple because the product looks really swish".
So, what's wrong with USB anyway? I LIKE the fact that I can plug my android phone into a $2 car charger, and not have to buy the $35 sold at the phone store.
What? iDevices charge from a regular USB socket. Just get something like this which turns a car lighter socket into a USB A power socket - works fine with iDevices or Androids - just check the reviews to make sure it delivers enough juice.
Meanwhile, unlike standard USB, the iDevice dock connector also carries analog audio in/out and video, essential for the cheaper speakers/accessories.
I love reading the responses to this when I've just come from the hysteria that is microsoft requiring secure-boot UEFI. So anything done in the name of security is fine, as long as it's apple and not microsoft?
Lets say all the doom-mongers are correct about Apple, and next year they announce that as of OSX FluffyWhiteSupervillainCat , the App Store is compulsory and you'll no longer be able to install and run third-party software on your Mac.
Solution: if the worst happens, dump OS X and the problem will go away. Switch to Linux. It runs fine on your existing Mac hardware, and when you come to upgrade you can get pretty much any generic PC and install the OS of your choice.
However, if the doom-mongers are correct about Microsoft and secure-boot UEFI, then you won't have that option because all new PCs and motherboards will only boot approved operating systems, and with Windows still dominant, hardware manufacturers have no particular incentive to make 'unlockable' hardware. At the least, you might find yourself forced to buy more expensive hardware rather than cheap, generic PCs.
Of course, the doom-mongers in either or both cases may well be wrong, and just spreading FUD to sate their platform evangelism. Its just that the worst-case scenario for Apple is "don't buy Apple then" whereas UEFI secure-boot could restrict everybody's choice.
This is different from any other market how?
Its different in that the App store apparently attracts developers who think they should be able to start a business without risking the eye-wateringly large sum of $99/year, believe that they can get in, even on the bottom rung, of a big-brand retail channel without the retailer wanting a substantial cut, think that they can get away without doing any of their own publicity, and who, generally, have never heard the term "cost of sales".
Sorry guys, even for a "Mom'n'Pop" business, $99/year doesn't even count as "serious callers only" - and go ask your bank how much it will cost you to set up as a credit card merchant.
So, lets assume that means English words rather than 32 bit words. The rule-of-thumb for average word length is 5 characters, so lets say 6 to allow for a space or punctuation symbol.
That gives us 1000 words = 6000 characters = 6000 bytes of ASCII but, to be fair, that's wasting at least 1 bit per character, so you could easily reduce that to, say, 4000 bytes.
Now, 4000 bytes is 1333 pixels of 24 bit colour. Take the square root and that gives you a 36 x 36 pixel image, which gives you an image three-eighths of an inch square at the typical 96 ppi.
So, any image bigger than 3/8" square is officially a waste of space!
Ok, so you could use JPEG - but if you allow lossy compression for the picture yv gt t alw lssy cmpsn fr t wds 2.
So because the two things are similar in one respect they should be treated as if they are the same?
Except that "software is mathematics, and patent law specifically excludes mathematics" is a widely cited argument against software patents.
Of course, whatever the fundamental identity is, few bits of software are derived through formal mathematical methods - and in that case it just shifts the "inventive step" from writing the code to transforming the real-world problem you want to solve into a formal specification from which you can derive algorithms.
Plus, I'm sure that its been true for many years that any substantial bit of electronics probably started life as "software" for a simulator. Not to mention the grey area of things like Field Programmable Gate Arrays where the "circuit" is just a data file saying how to hook the gates together.
Of course, the whole proposition is non-falsifiable unless someone can come up with a testable definition of what "x 'is' mathematics/y 'is not' mathematics" actually means. For legal purposes, I suspect it depends on a court trying to guess the intentions of whoever originally excluded mathematics from patent law (most of the 'mathematics' involved in computing theory post-dates the idea of patents by a long chalk... anybody know when the 'mathematics' clauses showed up?)
As MattBecker82 points out below, the real issue is that patents are far more disruptive to software business models, which rely on 'zero marginal cost', than they are to hardware production. Plus, computing has long been plagued with monopolistic practices, even without patents. The point of patents is to promote innovation and industry - its pretty clear that they don't do that for software.
Don't bother watching the road - concentrate on remembering the speed limit and staring at your speedo.
1. You should be aware of your speed at all times, regardless of speed limits.
There's a difference between knowing your speed in terms of "too fast", "too slow" and knowing your absolute speed in mph. Personally, I trust the former rather more than the latter, since it takes account of traffic and conditions. There are plenty of places and situations where the posted speed limit is clearly too fast. NB: what's really pissing people off over speed limits is not people being nicked for doing 60 in a school zone, its people being fined for doing 36 in a badly-marked 30 zone (or unmarked because the streetlamps were less than 100m apart or whatever).
3. If the mental strain of remembering a speed limit is too much, you shouldn't be driving in the first place, as you are clearly as unsafe as a drunk driver.
There's such a thing as "cognitive load" - there's only so many things, however individually simple, that a mere mortal can concentrate on - and when you're driving, you're concentrating on a lot of things, almost all of which are more important than whether you're doing 29 or 32 mph.
Perhaps you missed out:
4. All drivers should be flawless supermen with similar qualifications to airline pilots and never drive when they're ill, tired or distracted. Of course, the first thing such professional drivers would ask for is a "co pilot" to provide a second pair of eyes, because everybody is fallible. Fine by me - then private cars would be uneconomical, we'd need better public transport and we could just get the bus everywhere.
I don't get why there is this push away from the program menu we have been using for over 15 years.
Apple. If Apple does it, everyone thinks it must be the right thing to do.
The problem is, people don't seem to understand why Apple does things.
On a Mac, a well-behaved application appears in Finder as a single, self-contained, double-click-to-run file (actually a directory, but that is disguised). You browse Applications in Finder just like any other file. You are free to re-arrange your Applications folder into subfolders as you see fit. You add desktop shortcuts, dock items just like you would for regular files. This is a major conceptual difference between Mac and both Linux and Windows, where application files live in special places and have to be somehow 'registered' with some sort of launcher on the desktop. Plus, there's that nice big, drag-n-drop Dock with lots of display and position options. Also, historically, Mac users have relied on file associations and tended to start applications by launching document files rather than (as on Windows) starting applications and loading file (Ive encountered Windows users who just dont use Explorer).
The Applications icon on the dock works the same way as any other folder dragged to the dock, and has several view options. Yes, 10.7 has added the iPad-like Launcher, and are gradually moving to an iOS -like application-centric view, but the default desktop screen is still pretty familiar and most of the old mechanisms are still there.
You should still follow posted speed limits, even if you don't agree with them.
Yeah, because driving around with some tw@ in an Audi following 6 inches from your rear bumper desperately blinking its lights at you and looking for the first opportunity to cut you up is so safe.
Or does that not happen in the USA when you try and observe the limit?
Or there's one stretch of road I know where the limit varies between 30, 40 and 50 umpteen times in the space of a mile, for no adequately observed reason. Don't bother watching the road - concentrate on remembering the speed limit and staring at your speedo.
Or what about roads with speed camera signs and no posted speed limit , at least on the stretch I drive (I think its 30, despite being quite wide with service roads on either side for the residents)?
1. Place sample here
2. Fold here
3. Fold here
4. Tightly twist the blue-printed area
5. Light the blue touchpaper and stand well clear.
Presence of explosives is indicated by loud "fwoosh!" noise, bright light and subsequent absence of eyebrows.