Rotten attitude Microsoft has to call people who are still trying to figure out some way to give Microsoft yet more money for what I see as an overrated product. I have started to become aware that these companies really are disconnected with the understanding that it all really boils down to us, you and me and everyone reading this - ultimately handing CASH over to them for their product over other solutions that may be available. I will be charitable and say that Vista has "issues". Some people, actually many people, don't want to deal with these issues. XP has "issues" too , but people have over time worked with them and accepted all these negatives not to mention it works with the hardware they purchased already. Now, if you keep introducing negatives that are designed to only help Microsoft and its monopolistic ways and they outweigh the benefits of dealing with them you mean hit a point where customers will stop handing over their hard earned cash. I recently removed the last Microsoft product from my machines by erasing Windows XP in favor of a BSD system. I know this is not practical for most folks, as you don't really feel you have a choice because dealing with the hassles outweighs the hassles of a new system. But try to once in a while realize you always have the choice to put up with this sort of nonsense or not and these guys are only able to do what they do because we give them the money to do it (Microsoft tax aside).
By the way, my IQ has gone up since removing Windows from my computer.
I tend to agree with you with regards to the drive space, and we are not alone. This is a complaint I have heard many times before. I am not sure if it was a technical reason, but the drive space being a HUGE step down compared to ipod video etc was a deal breaker for me with regards to the touch, especially as it is touted as a video device. I am also not crazy about totally locked products either, I run Mac OS X on a few machines here and there are lots of nice software development houses out there who would probably develop very useful applications for such a device. I understand security concerns , but I have not had this sort of trouble with Mac OS X, so I have to wonder if its just being used an excuse to lock the system and provide only Apple and certain developers the opportunity to develop and profit from it beyond Apples initial sale of the device. The bottom line is if this attitude of locking stuff and limiting the hardware makes enough people not buy the thing. Not good for a company to have nice DRM and save money on drive costs but not actually sell much product because of these negatives. There is a limit to how many negatives a customer will accept. I *thought* Apple learned this lesson a while back, and I don't pretend to know all the research they do. They may be trying to walk a thin line here. It's sort of shame as I hate to see companies screw up (even Microsoft) as ultimately its not the customers or even the executives who suffer but the engineers and other employees who end up getting laid off!
Ok, this is a knee jerk response from someone not reading the article yet, so forgive me in that regard. I was to understand from someone else that every thread in Linux is actually a separate process and therefore carries with it a performance hit for multi-threaded applications VS say BSD systems. Thats second hand information from a Sun developer who thought it was a terrible idea.
I understand if you were doing research of any sort that would exploit this hardware - assuming you use ALL of it or can write the code to do so - the better bandwidth you have, the faster the results etc. I understand hardware like this being useful in this regard. I also understand it from the perspective of a software developer who may be developing with this hardware for a future product that will be released in a year or so, and this sort of hardware will be more standard at that time and affordable. But I am sort of baffled by people who spend hundreds upon hundreds of dollars for something that they will not use the bandwidth for until next year or later and then the thing will be down in price anyway. Its like buying terabytes of drive space, but then only filling the drive up after a year or two. I am sure that people are thinking that they actually use this stuff fully NOW, but I have to wonder if most of it is to play games with a slightly better resolution but a "lesser" card could have solved that immediate problem. Personally I think its silly to spend so much to play a $60 game, but I understand that it is a hobby and I am not necessarily criticizing that particular form of madness. I guess I am asking if folks have a practical and immediate need for this with software that is out today and that they personally use every day. I know scalability is built into most games and things, but that seems to be arrow relative to the difference in price between this sort of hardware and what is commonly available outside of specialized apps that demonstrably improve when given more powerful hardware now.
"Hacks"? It is the customers legal right to make the phone work with any carrier they wish to use the phone with. This has been decided in the courts much to the chagrin of cheapo phone providers like tracfone etc. I don't think any reasonable person is saying that Apple does not have the right to update the firmware in order to provide new functionality, the wrinkle is whether the whole goal of that new firmware or at least one of the goals is to do damage to a persons property. If intent to damage or malicious intent can be shown against someone for practicing what is there legal right, then Apple is certainly playing with fire here. You will notice that Apple is VERY careful to constantly keep stating to everyone that the have no INTENT to "brick" the phone, and that it is a technical side effect caused by the "hack" (to use your and Apples term). I imagine that will be confirmed or not over time.
There is another element to all of this which is far more important and I am afraid it is getting lost. Its about making money in the long term vs the short term and the health of Apple in the long term with this sort of behavior towards customers. Whether something is within Apples rights has to be balanced with what may ultimately be a shift towards an adversarial attitude towards customers.
I would urge anyone who gets at least 8 hours of sleep a night and still continues to fall sleep to get a sleep screening for sleep apnea. Most insurance will pay for the study with a doctor referral. With the number of overweight Americans higher than ever I suspect this is becoming more and more common.
Some rumor sites are asking for a whistle blower to come forward with regards to Apples directives on this patch. If there is one document , conversation or request within Apple or AT&T which shows intent to damage peoples property then a crime will have been committed (even if the patch is not sent out!). Apple is very smart to say they are not intending on damaging peoples phones in the press, but if one manager told a coder to do this, I suspect the story will leak. Apples intentions is the important point in regards to this patch. People legally have a right to use the phone with other carriers, Apple has a legal right to patch there product. Apple does not have a legal right to intentionally damage someone's phone as "payback" for not signing up with AT&T. Its tough to keep a conspiracy between two people, so I would just wait and see with this one.
The actions of a nation of idiot managers who never could hack a Science or Engineering degree and have outsourced the jobs of people who did, and it is going to bite the US in the butt when they need so many more of these people to be Americans as competition begins in Space and industry. USA invested the last years and gave away her best technologies for the quick buck in Asia, now its are about to get paid back as Asia rises up and the sun sets on the good old USA. You think Toyota bitch slapping GM is bad? You have no idea what's coming you uneducated idiots! Want to suddenly a create a nation again interested in Science and Engineering , as it was in the late 50's/60's with the space race. Keep dreaming America!
Without Internet connection you wont have to waste time reading stupid articles about a guy living in a log cabin who cant get Internet as if it was "Stuff That Matters".
Another non-news worthy story. What exactly is the point of this, companies lower the price on product because they think they are not selling enough and are not meeting sales goals? Wow, please fill is in on some other great insight, oh great and wise masters of the economically obvious. What other revelations will be allowed to discover today for your great book of technology industry insight? That you can use Eclipse to develop Java applications on the Mac? Wow, I had no idea that it was possible and the news is so timely, its only been going on for years.
Perhaps we should have a "news" article that Visual Studio makes C# development easy on Windows, or that Linux is an operating system that is PC compatible and could run on your own PC?
Men on fire, flying through the air. Live leak is going to have a never ending supply of video content for free if this ever comes to market (doubt it).
Saw this one coming, they are already becoming completely out of touch with solving a problem and more into showing us old solutions in a new wrapper looking for problems. This is classic big company arrogance, and seeing them fall victim to this virus is wonderful. Search for something on Google lately and notice the plethora of commercial sites that come back as "hits" masked in obfuscated justification as to why they are relevant. Google does not have a crystal ball, and I personally don't want them laying out a road map for me even if the could design future products without evolving (they cant). The world/the web/internet is not a hand maiden to Google and its proprietary vision of interoperability. Personally I think its wonderful they are showing this weakness, perhaps its the ghosts of some of the people they and yahoo have handed over to governments that are cursing this Minitrue scourge that we so sheepishly suck from the foul teat of for tainted for profit information.
C'mon what are you talking about? You can buy a Mac from Macmall.com a major Mac reseller if you so desire with windows tax firmly in place. But you already knew that didnt you Mr. Troll?
Has anyone been arrested, sued or whatever for making a single backup copy of a dvd or cd etc that they own? What is the point of this editorial? Do they want to see people who make a backup copy of a disk and never share it arrested or something? Is that the strategy to deal with pirates?!!? What sort of resources do they think they have if they want to take on the whole world now by calling everyone a "pirate", including the people who are currently giving them money (the consumer)? . Perhaps they need a new spokesman, because this is just dumb to broadcast your product has limited use to the legitimate consumer (who has all money they want to get their grubby little hands on). Even car salesman try to hide the limitations of sales in fast running commercial scrollers. The entertainment industry are actually paying these guys to broadcast how the legit product is limited! I just see a whole industry of anti-pirate consultants raping Hollywood, I have faith that eventually the industry will wise up to how much this is actually costing them (its a fortune directly to the pirates though!).
Its interesting you mention this, there is a long history of hacking on Apple products by customers going back to the inception of the original Mac OS. This practice continues today (I suspect Audio Hijack Pro is using injection to 'do its thing'), and Cocoa is just a playground for messing with 3rd party code. What is also interesting is that Apple has over the years rolled the functionality that these hacks provide into later versions of the actual product! I suspect Apple is turning a blind eye to the plight of poor AT&T *sob*. Its funny but companies can seem like they develop personality traits.
ice as if it is.
A little off topic, but is it me or does AT&T have an adversarial attitude towards its customers? I think Apple is shooting itself in the foot for a quick subsidy from AT&T. I can not think of too many partnerships (other than the Steves) that ever worked out in the long run for Apple.
You would not believe the poor quality of developers that these companies hire (mostly from outsourcing firms). I am not surprised they are stealing code left and right, there is no way they could write many of these things themselves. The interest in writing innovative software is not a variable with these companies and they hire developers who have little or no ability (Learn VB in 24 hours).
"No Crap?". Nice response.
I did not say possessing a mind makes you unique, I said its the mind that makes you unique.
"Without a mind, you would only be piece of meat". You are already a piece of meat, whether you have a mind or not. Climb into the lion cage at the zoo during feeding time. Without a mind, you would not amount to much more than a piece of meat. That, is interesting.
It is common. I have had some first hand experience with my Father on this one. It seems like many of his old friends either have this or vascular dementia as well (which looks similar but is different). Its not a scientific observation, but I kind of get the feeling if you manage to not kill yourself or get killed, and avoid the the heart attack and cancer route in your old age, you may find this at the end of the road. Your right about younger people getting it, I know that a politician recently contracted it at a very young age. I would venture the vast majority of people who have it though are say over 60, which is a rather nasty retirement gift.
I feel strongly that your mind is the most important part of your body. Its truly what makes you unique,. This research progress is great news. I just wish there was some way to get my Father treatment. Someone once told me that one of the toughest time for a child is when he realizes his parents are mortal. Over the last couple of years I have had to watch a brilliant man slowly disintegrate into a shell of his former self (all the while knowing what was happening to him and that he really had no where to escape to). If you have a heart attack, you sometimes can do something about it, with better lifestyle eating etc. or even cancer, you can fight it with therapy and perhaps have the hope to be free of it. Not the case with this disease, and the worst part is that you know its happening to you as its slowly robs you and your loved ones of your last sanctuary, yourself. Dealing with this first hand has certainly had an effects on me and my outlook on life in ways that were not apparent to me at first. Any kind of progress against this disease simply makes my day.
Slashdot Mirror
Rotten attitude Microsoft has to call people who are still trying to figure out some way to give Microsoft yet more money for what I see as an overrated product. I have started to become aware that these companies really are disconnected with the understanding that it all really boils down to us, you and me and everyone reading this - ultimately handing CASH over to them for their product over other solutions that may be available. I will be charitable and say that Vista has "issues". Some people, actually many people, don't want to deal with these issues. XP has "issues" too , but people have over time worked with them and accepted all these negatives not to mention it works with the hardware they purchased already. Now, if you keep introducing negatives that are designed to only help Microsoft and its monopolistic ways and they outweigh the benefits of dealing with them you mean hit a point where customers will stop handing over their hard earned cash. I recently removed the last Microsoft product from my machines by erasing Windows XP in favor of a BSD system. I know this is not practical for most folks, as you don't really feel you have a choice because dealing with the hassles outweighs the hassles of a new system. But try to once in a while realize you always have the choice to put up with this sort of nonsense or not and these guys are only able to do what they do because we give them the money to do it (Microsoft tax aside). By the way, my IQ has gone up since removing Windows from my computer.
I tend to agree with you with regards to the drive space, and we are not alone. This is a complaint I have heard many times before. I am not sure if it was a technical reason, but the drive space being a HUGE step down compared to ipod video etc was a deal breaker for me with regards to the touch, especially as it is touted as a video device. I am also not crazy about totally locked products either, I run Mac OS X on a few machines here and there are lots of nice software development houses out there who would probably develop very useful applications for such a device. I understand security concerns , but I have not had this sort of trouble with Mac OS X, so I have to wonder if its just being used an excuse to lock the system and provide only Apple and certain developers the opportunity to develop and profit from it beyond Apples initial sale of the device. The bottom line is if this attitude of locking stuff and limiting the hardware makes enough people not buy the thing. Not good for a company to have nice DRM and save money on drive costs but not actually sell much product because of these negatives. There is a limit to how many negatives a customer will accept. I *thought* Apple learned this lesson a while back, and I don't pretend to know all the research they do. They may be trying to walk a thin line here. It's sort of shame as I hate to see companies screw up (even Microsoft) as ultimately its not the customers or even the executives who suffer but the engineers and other employees who end up getting laid off!
Ok, this is a knee jerk response from someone not reading the article yet, so forgive me in that regard. I was to understand from someone else that every thread in Linux is actually a separate process and therefore carries with it a performance hit for multi-threaded applications VS say BSD systems. Thats second hand information from a Sun developer who thought it was a terrible idea.
I understand if you were doing research of any sort that would exploit this hardware - assuming you use ALL of it or can write the code to do so - the better bandwidth you have, the faster the results etc. I understand hardware like this being useful in this regard. I also understand it from the perspective of a software developer who may be developing with this hardware for a future product that will be released in a year or so, and this sort of hardware will be more standard at that time and affordable. But I am sort of baffled by people who spend hundreds upon hundreds of dollars for something that they will not use the bandwidth for until next year or later and then the thing will be down in price anyway. Its like buying terabytes of drive space, but then only filling the drive up after a year or two. I am sure that people are thinking that they actually use this stuff fully NOW, but I have to wonder if most of it is to play games with a slightly better resolution but a "lesser" card could have solved that immediate problem. Personally I think its silly to spend so much to play a $60 game, but I understand that it is a hobby and I am not necessarily criticizing that particular form of madness. I guess I am asking if folks have a practical and immediate need for this with software that is out today and that they personally use every day. I know scalability is built into most games and things, but that seems to be arrow relative to the difference in price between this sort of hardware and what is commonly available outside of specialized apps that demonstrably improve when given more powerful hardware now.
Actually you should get 10-12 hours. But then you can not play with Xbox 360, whatever.
"Hacks"? It is the customers legal right to make the phone work with any carrier they wish to use the phone with. This has been decided in the courts much to the chagrin of cheapo phone providers like tracfone etc. I don't think any reasonable person is saying that Apple does not have the right to update the firmware in order to provide new functionality, the wrinkle is whether the whole goal of that new firmware or at least one of the goals is to do damage to a persons property. If intent to damage or malicious intent can be shown against someone for practicing what is there legal right, then Apple is certainly playing with fire here. You will notice that Apple is VERY careful to constantly keep stating to everyone that the have no INTENT to "brick" the phone, and that it is a technical side effect caused by the "hack" (to use your and Apples term). I imagine that will be confirmed or not over time.
There is another element to all of this which is far more important and I am afraid it is getting lost. Its about making money in the long term vs the short term and the health of Apple in the long term with this sort of behavior towards customers. Whether something is within Apples rights has to be balanced with what may ultimately be a shift towards an adversarial attitude towards customers.
I would urge anyone who gets at least 8 hours of sleep a night and still continues to fall sleep to get a sleep screening for sleep apnea. Most insurance will pay for the study with a doctor referral. With the number of overweight Americans higher than ever I suspect this is becoming more and more common.
Some rumor sites are asking for a whistle blower to come forward with regards to Apples directives on this patch. If there is one document , conversation or request within Apple or AT&T which shows intent to damage peoples property then a crime will have been committed (even if the patch is not sent out!). Apple is very smart to say they are not intending on damaging peoples phones in the press, but if one manager told a coder to do this, I suspect the story will leak. Apples intentions is the important point in regards to this patch. People legally have a right to use the phone with other carriers, Apple has a legal right to patch there product. Apple does not have a legal right to intentionally damage someone's phone as "payback" for not signing up with AT&T. Its tough to keep a conspiracy between two people, so I would just wait and see with this one.
The actions of a nation of idiot managers who never could hack a Science or Engineering degree and have outsourced the jobs of people who did, and it is going to bite the US in the butt when they need so many more of these people to be Americans as competition begins in Space and industry. USA invested the last years and gave away her best technologies for the quick buck in Asia, now its are about to get paid back as Asia rises up and the sun sets on the good old USA. You think Toyota bitch slapping GM is bad? You have no idea what's coming you uneducated idiots! Want to suddenly a create a nation again interested in Science and Engineering , as it was in the late 50's/60's with the space race. Keep dreaming America!
Without Internet connection you wont have to waste time reading stupid articles about a guy living in a log cabin who cant get Internet as if it was "Stuff That Matters".
Another non-news worthy story. What exactly is the point of this, companies lower the price on product because they think they are not selling enough and are not meeting sales goals? Wow, please fill is in on some other great insight, oh great and wise masters of the economically obvious. What other revelations will be allowed to discover today for your great book of technology industry insight? That you can use Eclipse to develop Java applications on the Mac? Wow, I had no idea that it was possible and the news is so timely, its only been going on for years. Perhaps we should have a "news" article that Visual Studio makes C# development easy on Windows, or that Linux is an operating system that is PC compatible and could run on your own PC?
The dollar is turning into toilet paper? Apparently Slashot is full of financial know it alls too.
Get to know your kids better.
Men on fire, flying through the air. Live leak is going to have a never ending supply of video content for free if this ever comes to market (doubt it).
Saw this one coming, they are already becoming completely out of touch with solving a problem and more into showing us old solutions in a new wrapper looking for problems. This is classic big company arrogance, and seeing them fall victim to this virus is wonderful. Search for something on Google lately and notice the plethora of commercial sites that come back as "hits" masked in obfuscated justification as to why they are relevant. Google does not have a crystal ball, and I personally don't want them laying out a road map for me even if the could design future products without evolving (they cant). The world/the web/internet is not a hand maiden to Google and its proprietary vision of interoperability. Personally I think its wonderful they are showing this weakness, perhaps its the ghosts of some of the people they and yahoo have handed over to governments that are cursing this Minitrue scourge that we so sheepishly suck from the foul teat of for tainted for profit information.
I wonder if these things break as often as the HP junk printer I have staring at me unpluggeed in the corner.
This will be great for you folks crazy enough to use Gmail and think for a second you have any privacy when doing so.
C'mon what are you talking about? You can buy a Mac from Macmall.com a major Mac reseller if you so desire with windows tax firmly in place. But you already knew that didnt you Mr. Troll?
You on the other hand, you never do that?? Practice what YOU preach scumbag.
Has anyone been arrested, sued or whatever for making a single backup copy of a dvd or cd etc that they own? What is the point of this editorial? Do they want to see people who make a backup copy of a disk and never share it arrested or something? Is that the strategy to deal with pirates?!!? What sort of resources do they think they have if they want to take on the whole world now by calling everyone a "pirate", including the people who are currently giving them money (the consumer)? . Perhaps they need a new spokesman, because this is just dumb to broadcast your product has limited use to the legitimate consumer (who has all money they want to get their grubby little hands on). Even car salesman try to hide the limitations of sales in fast running commercial scrollers. The entertainment industry are actually paying these guys to broadcast how the legit product is limited! I just see a whole industry of anti-pirate consultants raping Hollywood, I have faith that eventually the industry will wise up to how much this is actually costing them (its a fortune directly to the pirates though!).
Its interesting you mention this, there is a long history of hacking on Apple products by customers going back to the inception of the original Mac OS. This practice continues today (I suspect Audio Hijack Pro is using injection to 'do its thing'), and Cocoa is just a playground for messing with 3rd party code. What is also interesting is that Apple has over the years rolled the functionality that these hacks provide into later versions of the actual product! I suspect Apple is turning a blind eye to the plight of poor AT&T *sob*. Its funny but companies can seem like they develop personality traits. ice as if it is. A little off topic, but is it me or does AT&T have an adversarial attitude towards its customers? I think Apple is shooting itself in the foot for a quick subsidy from AT&T. I can not think of too many partnerships (other than the Steves) that ever worked out in the long run for Apple.
You would not believe the poor quality of developers that these companies hire (mostly from outsourcing firms). I am not surprised they are stealing code left and right, there is no way they could write many of these things themselves. The interest in writing innovative software is not a variable with these companies and they hire developers who have little or no ability (Learn VB in 24 hours).
"No Crap?". Nice response. I did not say possessing a mind makes you unique, I said its the mind that makes you unique. "Without a mind, you would only be piece of meat". You are already a piece of meat, whether you have a mind or not. Climb into the lion cage at the zoo during feeding time. Without a mind, you would not amount to much more than a piece of meat. That, is interesting.
It is common. I have had some first hand experience with my Father on this one. It seems like many of his old friends either have this or vascular dementia as well (which looks similar but is different). Its not a scientific observation, but I kind of get the feeling if you manage to not kill yourself or get killed, and avoid the the heart attack and cancer route in your old age, you may find this at the end of the road. Your right about younger people getting it, I know that a politician recently contracted it at a very young age. I would venture the vast majority of people who have it though are say over 60, which is a rather nasty retirement gift.
I feel strongly that your mind is the most important part of your body. Its truly what makes you unique,. This research progress is great news. I just wish there was some way to get my Father treatment. Someone once told me that one of the toughest time for a child is when he realizes his parents are mortal. Over the last couple of years I have had to watch a brilliant man slowly disintegrate into a shell of his former self (all the while knowing what was happening to him and that he really had no where to escape to). If you have a heart attack, you sometimes can do something about it, with better lifestyle eating etc. or even cancer, you can fight it with therapy and perhaps have the hope to be free of it. Not the case with this disease, and the worst part is that you know its happening to you as its slowly robs you and your loved ones of your last sanctuary, yourself. Dealing with this first hand has certainly had an effects on me and my outlook on life in ways that were not apparent to me at first. Any kind of progress against this disease simply makes my day.