Lesson Learned: Do not show greedy executives what technology you are working on, or they will steal your idea and change it just enough to sell it legally for themselves.
While this type of theft has certainly happened in other cases, I don't buy it happening in this case. TiVo is such a simple idea that there is really no way that Echostar even had to copy TiVo. A PVR/DVR is simply a channel guide & timer integrated with a video digitizer-to-hard drive system. Many of us were digitizing video to HD long before TiVos came out; we just didn't have a program guide & timer. So TiVo putse these together and it's patentable? On the other hand, this is the USPTO we're talking about....
Thinner than the nano & holding the same amount of music & having a real user-interface (read: buttons a normal human can find and click)? Sorry, doesn't exist.
Have battery lives that match vendors claims.
The nano exceeds the vendor's battery life claim. Apple says 14 hours and many testers have gotten 15-18 hours out of it.
Allow music to be uploaded from any PC, without having install special software to do so.
All music players require "special software" if you are going to properly manage them (playlists, etc.) Besides, iTunes is free and is extremely easy to install & use--easier than anything else out there.
Dont attempt to lock users into Apples music format and the iTunes store.
Dont cost $50 to replace the failing battery.
Dont scratch.
Have integrated FM radios.
These are completely valid. I expect the last two to be solved in upcoming revisions, but don't hold your breath on the first two.:-/
Rumors of the iPhone started in Jan. 2003. I know, I bought into them and waited to get a cell phone that year, finally giving up in October and getting something else. So as much as I'd like the iPhone to be announced this Saturday, I'm definitely not holding my breath.
12" and 17" MacBooks are definitely due, so that's where I'd put my money if I were betting.
But Saturday would be a bizarre day of the week for Apple to do any product introduction, as they wouldn't get enough press coverage. Apple announcements are historically made on Tuesdays.
Saying that the market does not work because the consumer does not have perfect access to all information is akin to saying that democracy does not work because the voter does not have perfect access to all information.
Yes, that is a good analogy. Neither work if the average citizen is (kept) ignorant.
Furthermore, the fact that the voter does not have perfect access to information does not give anyone the right to abolish democracy.
Here's where you stray. In fact the founding fathers actually did believe that only informed, educated citizenry should vote. And I think you will have a hard time denying that voters who vote out of ignorance can cause an awful lot of trouble.
But the question is somewhat moot because nobody is proposing that we "abolish" capitalism. We are merely trying to modify it so that it works better. There is a long history of doing so, such as the regulation of the railroad, oil, steel, and telecommunications monopolies. Such actions did improve society, so it's odd to hear you denounce similar (albeit less aggressive & sweeping) action be taken now.
Not many of them, anymore. Have you seen tuition prices? Have you not seen the constant press about the Fed. and state governments constantly cutting back student loan support and other funding for education? Your "tax dollar" claim is ringing pretty hollow.
I thought about emailing the UW CIO to ask, but I've got better things to do.
Like posting defamatory claims about Dave on Slashdot?
In all the latest releases of OS X, the user will also receive the prompt "You are running for the first time. Are you sure you want to continue?" so that's *four* levels of security the user would have to specifically circumvent to be affected. At some point the responsibility has to reasonably be shifted from Apple to the user...
-Kurt
They are? Where? When? I work in the publishing industry and I can report that the general push to abandon Quark for InDesign is alive and well. What olive branch has Quark made lately? A beta release of Q7 doesn't count, for it doesn't fix any of the issues with Q6.5. Quark hasn't patched Q6.5 in a year, it's still horrifically overpriced for what you receive, they still charge 6-figures for their publishing system (QPS) even if all you want is versioning, Q6.5 still corrupts preferences at the drop of a hat (at least under OS X), it still has a huge AppleScript bug that is a major impediment to automating printing under Tiger...the list goes on.
Having met Mr. Pogue twice, I can say that he is most definitely not an idiot. On the contrary, he's one of the most cogent speakers I've ever heard and his writing style is refreshingly light yet fact-filled. -Kurt
But to rant about him disobeying signs is innane and childish. He honestly probably missed it and it cost him his life. I know in unfamiliar parts of town I have missed various signs because they have been placed in odd positions or near other obstructions.
So I shouldn't complain when you blunder, wild eyed, through unfamiliar territory? Lurching heedlessly through professionally placed signs and markings
"Professionally" placed markings are not necessarily properly placed markings. I won a traffic court case a few years ago due to them only placing "No U-Turn" signs on one side of the roadway; the side where you'd be least likely looking as you were planning a safe U-turn. The law specifically required the signs be on both sides of the road, something that the sign placers apparently didn't know.
More recently, they placed pedestrian safety signs on my street--at a height of 10 feet where no pedestrian will ever see them. Sign-placers are very much capable of improperly performing their duties.
Genius Bar in Soho, NYC... used to be 1 -2 hour wait was minimum. Now I think you even need to make some sort of apointment.
It's not just huge metro areas like Manhattan. The Apple Store in little ol' Delaware usually has a long wait at the Genius Bar too unless you make a web reservation in advance. To be sure, this EasyPay is designed to keep things flowing in the store and thus give patrons a more positive feeling about Apple Stores than the impression of them being a "mob scene". Speaking for myself, I tend to avoid stores/restaurants/etc. where I know there will be lines and confusion. I'm not British; I'm not good at queuing.;-)
It's probably easier to teach it to avoid someone merging into its lane than it is to teach it how to tell what a turn signal means.
Especially when you consider those drivers who keep their turn signals blinking for 20 miles. One can imagine the motion sickness of the passengers as their computerized car continuously speeds up & slows down for the lane change that never comes.
Because law school is expensive and a lot of work, and legal counsel ina protracted case requires lots of booked hours. Most people don't want to get a law degree and end up working at $10/hr.
OK, let's assume they work at $100/hr, which is way the heck more than the average citizen earns. That still means he worked 240 hours on a case that he "can't imagine they'll win." Something's amiss there.
All that "gun control" achieves in practise is the disarmament of victims.
Arming the victims is the solution you're proposing to the gun violence problem?!? That would go a long way towards explaining why this country is so f--ed up. Folks with this attitude always conveniently forget to mention that guns purchased for home defense are nine times more likely to be fired in domestic disputes than in home defense. Oops. So, yes, preventing gun sales to everyone would indeed decrease the overall amount of gun violence. Of course, NRA members will refuse to believe this because it's not what they want to believe (see the "Cognitive Dissonance" and "Selection Bias" posts under the recent Mythbusters thread for more info.)
Having him violate his own rules doesn't inspire confidence in terms of making it a legit research tool.
And it would be a more legitimate research tool if its users left mistakes in there instead of correcting them because they valued the rules more than they valued accuracy?
Picking on kids because you don't like their demographic is not cool
Except we're not picking on them because they're teens, we're picking on them because they're loitering. If they continue to loiter into their 30's, we'll pick on them then too using some other device. Their age is irrelevant; their actions are what's relevant.
shouldn't they restart the mission for robotic repair of the Hubble telescope
It doesn't really exist. The "robot repair" was conceived and proposed by politicians with little grounding in the current state of the technology. It's not at all feasible to get such a mission designed let alown flown before the gyros on Hubble fail. Humans are really the only way to save it. We have astronauts chomping at the bit to go up and do it, yet our politicians are crying that "it's too dangerous". Why don't we let those actually flying the missions decide if the risk is worth it? They've only trained their whole lives for it.
Perhaps there are laws against it, but as Thomas Jefferson said, "Tis better to disobey a just law than obey an unjust one." I think that directly parallels efforts to defeat such incredible Big Brother intrusions on the citizenry.
I see a sudden market emerging for adhesive tape for modifying license plate numbers/letters to confuse the cameras. WIth little effort 5's make great 6's, 0's and 3's transmogrify into 8's, C's become 0's. And suddenly your car becomes anonymous.
*cough* Not that I advocate this of course.
-Kurt
the fact is that the true future of digital content distribution WILL be online
You're overlooking portability. All those parents who bought minivans with DVD players in them to keep the kids quiet during the 2 hour drive to grandma's house will want their movies on a portable disc, not accessible via ethernet or intermittent Wi-Fi. Ditto for commuters on trains or cross-country airline passengers; you want the movie in a physical, portable format without being online. Thus, it wouldn't seem that online distribution will ever be the end-all, be-all method; like radio & TV, there will always be a place for both.
-Kurt
Slashdot Mirror
-Kurt
-Kurt
Rumors of the iPhone started in Jan. 2003. I know, I bought into them and waited to get a cell phone that year, finally giving up in October and getting something else. So as much as I'd like the iPhone to be announced this Saturday, I'm definitely not holding my breath.
12" and 17" MacBooks are definitely due, so that's where I'd put my money if I were betting.
But Saturday would be a bizarre day of the week for Apple to do any product introduction, as they wouldn't get enough press coverage. Apple announcements are historically made on Tuesdays.
-Kurt
But the question is somewhat moot because nobody is proposing that we "abolish" capitalism. We are merely trying to modify it so that it works better. There is a long history of doing so, such as the regulation of the railroad, oil, steel, and telecommunications monopolies. Such actions did improve society, so it's odd to hear you denounce similar (albeit less aggressive & sweeping) action be taken now.
-Kurt
-- Lord Acton
-Kurt
-Kurt
-Kurt
-Kurt
-Kurt
In all the latest releases of OS X, the user will also receive the prompt "You are running for the first time. Are you sure you want to continue?" so that's *four* levels of security the user would have to specifically circumvent to be affected. At some point the responsibility has to reasonably be shifted from Apple to the user... -Kurt
-Kurt
If he wins, we'll end up with the iMayCauseLossOfMyHearingBecauseIAmDumb on store shelves.... -Kurt
Having met Mr. Pogue twice, I can say that he is most definitely not an idiot. On the contrary, he's one of the most cogent speakers I've ever heard and his writing style is refreshingly light yet fact-filled.
-Kurt
More recently, they placed pedestrian safety signs on my street--at a height of 10 feet where no pedestrian will ever see them. Sign-placers are very much capable of improperly performing their duties.
-Kurt
It's not just huge metro areas like Manhattan. The Apple Store in little ol' Delaware usually has a long wait at the Genius Bar too unless you make a web reservation in advance. To be sure, this EasyPay is designed to keep things flowing in the store and thus give patrons a more positive feeling about Apple Stores than the impression of them being a "mob scene". Speaking for myself, I tend to avoid stores/restaurants/etc. where I know there will be lines and confusion. I'm not British; I'm not good at queuing. ;-)
-Kurt
Especially when you consider those drivers who keep their turn signals blinking for 20 miles. One can imagine the motion sickness of the passengers as their computerized car continuously speeds up & slows down for the lane change that never comes.
-Kurt
OK, let's assume they work at $100/hr, which is way the heck more than the average citizen earns. That still means he worked 240 hours on a case that he "can't imagine they'll win." Something's amiss there.
-Kurt
Arming the victims is the solution you're proposing to the gun violence problem?!? That would go a long way towards explaining why this country is so f--ed up. Folks with this attitude always conveniently forget to mention that guns purchased for home defense are nine times more likely to be fired in domestic disputes than in home defense. Oops. So, yes, preventing gun sales to everyone would indeed decrease the overall amount of gun violence. Of course, NRA members will refuse to believe this because it's not what they want to believe (see the "Cognitive Dissonance" and "Selection Bias" posts under the recent Mythbusters thread for more info.)
-Kurt
And it would be a more legitimate research tool if its users left mistakes in there instead of correcting them because they valued the rules more than they valued accuracy?
-Kurt
Except we're not picking on them because they're teens, we're picking on them because they're loitering. If they continue to loiter into their 30's, we'll pick on them then too using some other device. Their age is irrelevant; their actions are what's relevant.
-Kurt
It doesn't really exist. The "robot repair" was conceived and proposed by politicians with little grounding in the current state of the technology. It's not at all feasible to get such a mission designed let alown flown before the gyros on Hubble fail. Humans are really the only way to save it. We have astronauts chomping at the bit to go up and do it, yet our politicians are crying that "it's too dangerous". Why don't we let those actually flying the missions decide if the risk is worth it? They've only trained their whole lives for it.
-Kurt
-Kurt
I see a sudden market emerging for adhesive tape for modifying license plate numbers/letters to confuse the cameras. WIth little effort 5's make great 6's, 0's and 3's transmogrify into 8's, C's become 0's. And suddenly your car becomes anonymous. *cough* Not that I advocate this of course. -Kurt