Yes, you make a valid point. However your point is about a scenerio which (relatively) never exists. That is why some of the parents are talking about most of the time it doesn't matter which algorithm you use if you are using sufficiently small data sets (most cases in everyday coding). In fact, when this is the case, it is usually faster (in coding, and in finished binary) to choose the more straightforward algorithm even if it happens to be O(2^n). In many (most?) cases you will find that a low iteration speed in O(2^n) algorithms and a very high iteration time in the other "faster" one.
Scaleable algorithms don't mean anything unless you plan on scaling your application past the breaking point. And i just think the parents are talking about this scenerio (which is if not most of the time, at least a majority of the time).
"Just FYI, the iMac with external VGA output came out in 2000 (the DV series), but Apple switched their desktops to VGA as standard back in 1998 - with the PowerBook G3 and the first PowerMac G3 (blue&white)."
Actually, the first powerMac G3 was a beige, with DB15 in 1997! Still using DB15 in '97! They continued to ship these machines well into 1998! Still with DB15. BTW, the first PB g3 didn't have VGA either. it was with charchole keyboard. It wasn't until the black keyboard did it come out with a VGA port. This was in May 1998 that the first VGA came out on the mac.
It wasn't until Jan 1999 that the G3 blue and white came out with a VGA port - first time ever for an Apple desktop machine to come with VGA -- just to put this into perspective, DVI had already become the dominate LCD interface by now. By the end of 1999, DVI was in consumer cards such as Matrox G400 and nVidia TNT series cards. And apple was just now getting VGA.. just in time to see it die.
"You sound like a person who hasn't used a Mac since the Bad Old Days just before PowerPC chips came about."
Actually, that is when I first extensively used mac's.. was with the PPC. I came in seeing proprietary firmwares in the optical drives, proprietary DB15 ports with 45$ adapters for non-apple branded monitors. etc etc. When the new apples came out I thought apple had finally outgrown that trash. Turns out they just did the same thing again.
BTW, you are wrong about DVI. Apple used a DVI card BEFORE They shiped the ADC in their LCD lineup. You should check the facts. DVI was already popularized and in all major 3d cards, and nobody was using the older connectors in the LCD pannels for over a year by the time apple came out with ADC. It had NOTHING to do with timing. DVI had been out since 1998. ADC came out at the end of 2000 AFTER apple had already shipped DVI in large volumes.
"And DVI was just a niche connection until the last year or so "
Goes to show you what log you just came out from under... might that be steve jobbs terd? Because you obviously don't have a clue about DVI.. It only became "popular" to you because only 'about a year ago" did apple start using DVI... In fact, they have been shipping it since 2000 and it has been in their TiBook and all aluminum powerbooks since the begining. You might want to check your facts one more time. (not to mention that the entire PC industry had not only standardized it but flushed out all competitors by 1999).
There is also a problem with your analysis. Go ahead and factor in the longer lifetime of the print head. But don't forget to factor in the higher price of it. I have delt with these so called "lower TCO" canon printers. They usually end up costing more in the long run due to expensive print heads that don't last a ton of time and low volume ink carts that cost less but don't hold much ink.
Actually, equivilent printers for sale today from HP use the 56 black cartrige. This is about 17-21$ depending on where you go, and it has 19ml. I don't know which number cartrige you are using that only has 11, but it is definately for an older printer that is no longer manufactured. Only the 94/96/56/45 black cartriges are being used in current models from HP.
Dell printers are lexmark printers. Not many people realize this. I think I read somewhere that dell sells more printers now than lexmark does... I believe it.
" Think about timing. ADC was there before DVI took off in the market"
Sorry to inform you, but ADC came out YEARS after DVI flat pannels were already widespread. Also, dell and gateway (and I'm sure several others) were shipping DVI on all but their low end models... There is no timing issue with DVI. in fact, apple released DVI G4 computers _BEFORE_ they released ADC computers. This is not a valid argument.
Also, apple never "standardized" on lcd monitors. They still have a CRT machine for christs sake! Not only this but G4 machines which came out with ADC did not have a monitor by default. Instead, there was a dropdown menu on their website offering either an LCD or a CRT monitor. Ask anyone who does exentive business with apple. How can you even claim that they "standardised on LCD's first" PLEASE DUDE! That is an outrageous claim. NO PC manufacturer has _EVER_ standardized on LCD's. You can still get CRT's for all of them to this day! (including Apple's)
"The 15-pin monitor was a similar idea. Again, Apple introduced it at about the same time VGA first arrived." BZZt! Wrong again. VGA was already well defined and flooding the market way before this ever happened. It's the same thing as the ADC, only older. I'm sorry, but your alone here. you won't find too many apple heads who don't agree that ADC and DB15 were both stubborn moves by apple to force proprietary connectors.
"and after they did[become popular] Apple joined them and moved to VGA connectors. "
They didn't release a SINGLE HDDB15 VGA connector until the iMac with external video came out. How can you say they conformed when in fact it took them till the END of the existance of HDDB15! How can you say they switched to VGA when it became popular when it took them several YEARS to do so?
"Yeah, they use their own firmware in their own drives - wah."
You obviously haven't had a CD-ROM drive go out in a mac before. If it had you would know that a 20$ CDROM could fix it. but instead you have to pay 400$ because apple charges that much for their firmware'd version. I think this is fixed in OS X but in all the classic OS's this has always been a problem.
"Apple supports a lot of external DVD burners with iDVD. They did it through an "easter egg""
Was is "supported or was it an "easter egg"? And declaring that it works now in the new off the hself boxed iLife is a big margin from it having worked before, where all the high and dry mac customers were forced to live without DVD burning when they didn't know they had to configure their powerbooks with superdrives otherwise it wouldn't burn. Please.
"because unlike on my PC I can reliably get the drive to open and close with a keystroke" Nice comeback about the button. Too bad you have to delete your cdrom drive to eject it (i mean throw it in the trash) how is that for reliability (did I forget to mention that you had to delete your flopy to eject it too?) and by the way, you obviously don't have much experience with mac's showing that you think it is reliable to hit the eject button on the keyboard and out comes a CD. Anything goes wrong with your mac (and i mean ANYTHING) software issue, bios prob, PRAM problem, and it won't eject.
" Apple hasn't made all infallible technical decisions."
I'm glad you admit it after defending their every mistake above. Why you defend their worst design mistakes rather than complement their best ones is beyond me. They actualy would have something going for them if their quality wasn't so piss poor.
"But when they do something different, it's usually because they feel they've got a better way. Not just to be proprietary."
And here comes the one true statement of the apple fanboy who wishes things were different. Go ahead, justify it to yourself like that. Steve Jobbs DROOLS over customers like yourself. I guess that is why you use their hardware and why they go after people like you.
"They also helped drive the move to USB, popularized Firewire, added standard Ethernet on everything before any x86 vendors, and added a dedicated slot and antenna for wireless before anyone."
They also helped drive ADC with 99$ DVI to ADC straight through adapters (all ADC is is DVI with a few pins extra for USB) When instead they could have just broke the cable out into 2 seperate connectors for a fraction of the cost, retail price, and for the sake of standards.
This isn't the only time they drove the market into the end with proprietary connectors. Look at the DB15 monitors legacy mac's use. 15 pin but uses a different shape because they wanted to charge more. (even though it is perfectly compatible with HDDB15 VGA connectors)
Lets not forget about their idiotic old style keyboard and mouse connectors...
You forgot: Apple INVENTED Firewire! lol. of course they popularized it. (with that whole entire 5% of the personal computer market!)
Your facts about the usb connectors standard are just plain wrong. Computers on windows were coming with multiple USB ports years before apple even considered putting it in there. They were too scared that firewire would fail if done so. You can add them to the list of "supported vendors" but you can't even start to talk about them pushing it into the mainstream. Intel had plenty of pull on their own for that.
Not to mention that apple puts/has put in the past special firmware in their internal Optical drives to make sure nobody replaces it with a 3rd party one... and then won't let you use an external burner with iDVD... Nevermind that there isn't a hardware eject button for most of their drives...
This isnt' to backup my previous post. Just to trash what you think is so awesome about apple in all their glory. Your right about one thing: Apple can do no wrong. No, they have too many fanboys to back them up.
Apple has been doing this with video and SCSI cards for YEARS. how is this new? All it means is that OEM's from the x86 world are becoming more proprietary. There is nothing you can do about it. Nobody complains about this on the mac so why is it a complaint on windows?
I boycott blizzard. For the exact same reason.. Only problem is my brother and his gf and her brother canceled out my vote 3 fold:(
Don't ask me how they are so lame that all 3 of them have concurrent accounts and are paying monthly fees and up front cost of the game and can still justify their existance.. pretty lame if you ask me.. cos the game is not that good.
And you need a reader for the transflash: a SD card adapter.
Your point doesn't make legitimate sence against my argument. It is still yet another "standard" card type that was created solely to lock users into that type. There is already a standard for ultra slim cards which are SD compatible: it is called miniSD. And they work in SD adapters just like transflash does. And they are ALREADY all over the place. There was no reason to create transflash. All it is is miniSD (something that already exists) in a different shape. All it is is bad for consumers. The more popular this card type gets the worse it is for everyone. It is a 'benefit' for transflash users at the expense of ALL flash memory customers. But it really isn't a benefit because miniSD ALREADY EXISTS. In other words, as a whole, transflash is a negative in the market and can only serve to one end: bad for the market.
I can harp all day about the same things with sony memory stick and xD picture cards. They have no purpose except one thing: vendor lockin. transflash is on the slow boat to the same end.
You also forget that this is bad for people who buy transflash cards. because MOST retailers will have never heard of it, and will not care to carry it in stock. For those that buy online, fine. For those that don't, drive around until you can find it at a dramaticly jacked up price.
Not to talk crap about your suggestion, but most people who would be using iCalendar or Sunbird would not be using Exchange...
If I were in the market for a microsoft only solution, it might be a valid suggestion. But I just don't see that many people jumping into that boat (any new people, not to say there aren't already a lot there)
Calendaring is useless to everyone right now unless you are teathered to your desktop... Until they fix this problem I won't be bothering with any calendaring apps..
The problem seems to be that there is no implemented standards to sync PDA's to the calendar server without first going through your PC. While this might sound kinda "silly" to some of you, it really is a requirement. You see, Palm sells the Tungesten C which has built in WiFi. They also sell the Treo 600 and Treo 650 which has built in GPRS or CDMA internet access... So what is the use of this PDA if its PRIMARY FUNCTION cannot sync to your calendaring server directly?
All bundled up? Calendaring is a great idea. When they actually get PDAs and cellphones to sync with the central server, it will be of some use. Until then: forget it.
Are there hooks to install modules for "trusted" device drivers to allow them to run in kernel space faster for devices which require high performance? (Such as network cards in servers, 3D graphics, low latency Audio drivers, etc...)
Maybe it would be good to have a hybrid kernel which allows only userspace drivers in general but vendors who wish to certify their drivers and have them crypo signed can get them installed in high performance kernel space?
Is this a viable idea (in the longer term obviously) or is it just completely off the wall?
Someone already figured out that if you run a porn site (or other type of legitimate site which could possibly use CAPTCHAs) you can have legitimate users fill out the CAPTCHAs which you scrape from the site you want to crack, and then forward it back to the targetted site. Since there is a surplus of people filling out CAPTCHAs over bots wanting to crack them, there is plenty of room for cracking it...
In the end, it is only a deterrent. But it is definately not close to foolproof
(note that this technique does not have anything to do with cracking the CAPTCHAs, it only bypasses their decoding step by handing off the work to a real human being which doesn't know he is decoding an offsite CAPTCHA)
"Could the profit margins on iPods be WAY higher than we're lead to believe?"
What were you lead to believe? The retail price of the ipod is more than any other player in its MB range. Most iPods are purchased directly through apple. (some at BB, some through HP and its distributers. However I know for fact that HP distributers are required to sell it wholesale for no less than $270)
Either way, even assuming that the minimum price apple sells the ipod for is 270 for 20gb, that is still more expensive than the most expensive competitor's wholesale price.
Now, add to the fact that apple is also making money off iTunes, and apple sells more than any other individual competitor. and add to that that the iPod uses cheaper parts then their competitors... And you might get a reasonable picture of the order of margin apple sees in the ipod..
The problem is that dealers will not activate phones not sold through their store. It is the policy to train the sales people to only sell new phones, and thus contracts.
Another problem is that you cannot buy a plan in the US without a contract. Unless you buy "prepaid" minutes which expire within 30-60days. Not only this but pre-paid rate plans are more expensive. To buy 3-4 months of prepaid is about the same price as same mins/month plan for an entire year post paid. (price per minute is about 3-4x). I could start out today, and pay up front for a 1yr contract and that will be about the same amount of money as 3-4 months of prepaid. This is just ridiculous.
So even if you bring your own phone, you STILL have to sign the contract, and so you might as well take the "free" phone that comes with it.
Buying used is a good time. But then again, none of the US phone companies will allow you to unlock your phone. Many are not unlockable. Others are very hard to unlock. And I know for certain that Cingular requires you to use a cingular phone (even if it is a 3rd party unlocked phone) because of their roaming database programed into the phone. I have known people who get their service terminated for using a 3rd party unlocked phone because it was not programed to prioritize cingular towers while roaming...
This is only the tip of the iceberg... there are several problems that need to be resolved before we can start seeing cheap, reasonable phones in north america...
Re:A solution looking for a problem
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Cell Phone On A Chip
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· Score: 3, Interesting
No... the phones don't cost a lot too... Only in north america are the phones price fixed...
They are price fixed in the US by the service providers.. and then that price fix is subsidized by your 1 year contract...
In other words, you are getting overcharged, and then they give you a discount.. There is nothing "expensive" about the process. I really hope more people in north america get enlightened about the state of affairs wrt cellphone contracts. Until customers start demanding a competative market for cellular service (and handset retailing) we won't be seeing anything any time soon.
Let me be clear here. Cheaper phones will not have a price discount passed on to the consumers in north america. They are already damn cheap to manufacture. those screens don't cost anything to make and the circuit boards are a dime a dozen. This isn't new technology. everywhere else in the world phones are actually based on their cost to manufacture rather than their features which are enabled/disabled by the service provider. The only person who will see a benefit for integrated chips on cellphones is the executives of cingular, verison, and sprint.
maybe in the long run you will see more reliable cellphones because of this. But that is all.
However, a significant majority of the people are nice enough to leave their client to seed for a short while after downloading. If everyone did this to achieve a 1:1 ratio or better by the time they stopped seeding, then everyone will get the speed of direct download.
It turns out that in friendly communities (such as bt.etree.org) the users are even nicer and leave their stuff on longer than 1:1 in which case most people get downloads in the range of 100KB/s+
Why are there so many mis-informed people on the internet that think P2P == a breeding ground for copyright infringement or illegal files? Bittorrent survives (currently) on a CENTRAL located server to act as a tracker. These people are just adding a central located seed to the mix to guarantee file availability (most tracker sites only keep a tracker and no seed).
What are they going to do with someone uploads illegal files? By golly, they will do the same thing as if someone uploaded an illegal file to their web host of FTP server for download. Ignore it until someone complains and then remove it in the event of notification (and possible prosecution). Just like the hosting business has ALWAYS been run.
Uploading illegal content to this service is NO DIFFERENT than uploading illegal content to your every day pay service hosting provider. Trying to make it out to be different is just plain silly. BTW: FTP as a pay service has existed for several years now.
"People don't use it because they don't give a shit about email security."
Maybe they don't use it because its not built in.. or it cant be installed without hacking software.... or it isn't enabled by default...
There are several reasons why people don't use GPG. The biggest reason: it isn't possible for every day people to install it.
end of story.
It doesn't matter how badly they want it, if they can't install it, they can't. period.
When you can double click on pgp.exe and it installs itself into outlook express AND it is installed by default into popular webmail servers AND it is possible to secure your email without configuring a buncha crap THEN people will use it. NO amount of education will change the fact that it isn't useable. The whole point of my previous post. Saying that people "don't care" is only a valid argument AFTER all these other issues are solved.
Ahh, but the new needs being addressed are there. You see, its usability is on the order of joe six pack and jane.
When you have a package for win32 that works with most popular email clients without technical knowledge for GPG, then you can start talking about "no new needs being addressed" until then, there seems to be plenty of room for friendly competition in this area. Because NOBODY has done it right yet.
Now, I'm not defending these people. I don't know if their software sux dick or what. But what their software does do is break new ground in user friendlyness in the email encryption front. It is only a matter of time that GPG or a spinoff variant must get off their asses and produce something useable or they will lose the market.
It is as simple as that. Like all software, if it is the best thing since sliced bread but nobody can use it, then what is the point? This new product will just bring new ideas to the stagnating developer mindset that is going on in GPG.
Hell, they (GPG) have a practical monopoly on the market and they STILL haven't gotten any significant numbers to use it... You call that a quality product?
"Did you miss the part of this being a single-use piece of hardware?"
No I didn't miss any part. It isn't a single use piece of hardware. It isn't advertised as only working with iTunes. iTunes isn't advertised as only working with iPod. and besides the point, Apple keeps saying that they control "80% of the market" So if it were a single use piece of hardware, they would actually be controlling 100% of that market. Your argument is FLAWED and it is exactly what you might expec from an Apple fanboy (which you are). Thus, I just replied to a trolling ranting apple customer who really doesn't know much of anything about coporate laws and even much less about technical aspects of the iPod and iTunes.
"Apple can do whatever the hell they want with it."
No they can't. Corporations can't do whatever the hell they want to do with their products. There are rules and regulations to keep one corporation from abusing its consumers, and its competition.
"They are in no way obligated to assist their rivals in competing with the iTMS."
I never said they were. They are however obligated to behave competatively. And not go out of their way to lock out their competitors provided they meet certain marketshare criteria (which will be determined in court)
Don't worry though. One day you will be enlightened.
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Yes, you make a valid point. However your point is about a scenerio which (relatively) never exists. That is why some of the parents are talking about most of the time it doesn't matter which algorithm you use if you are using sufficiently small data sets (most cases in everyday coding). In fact, when this is the case, it is usually faster (in coding, and in finished binary) to choose the more straightforward algorithm even if it happens to be O(2^n). In many (most?) cases you will find that a low iteration speed in O(2^n) algorithms and a very high iteration time in the other "faster" one.
Scaleable algorithms don't mean anything unless you plan on scaling your application past the breaking point. And i just think the parents are talking about this scenerio (which is if not most of the time, at least a majority of the time).
"Just FYI, the iMac with external VGA output came out in 2000 (the DV series), but Apple switched their desktops to VGA as standard back in 1998 - with the PowerBook G3 and the first PowerMac G3 (blue&white)."
Actually, the first powerMac G3 was a beige, with DB15 in 1997! Still using DB15 in '97! They continued to ship these machines well into 1998! Still with DB15. BTW, the first PB g3 didn't have VGA either. it was with charchole keyboard. It wasn't until the black keyboard did it come out with a VGA port. This was in May 1998 that the first VGA came out on the mac.
It wasn't until Jan 1999 that the G3 blue and white came out with a VGA port - first time ever for an Apple desktop machine to come with VGA -- just to put this into perspective, DVI had already become the dominate LCD interface by now. By the end of 1999, DVI was in consumer cards such as Matrox G400 and nVidia TNT series cards. And apple was just now getting VGA.. just in time to see it die.
"You sound like a person who hasn't used a Mac since the Bad Old Days just before PowerPC chips came about."
Actually, that is when I first extensively used mac's.. was with the PPC. I came in seeing proprietary firmwares in the optical drives, proprietary DB15 ports with 45$ adapters for non-apple branded monitors. etc etc. When the new apples came out I thought apple had finally outgrown that trash. Turns out they just did the same thing again.
BTW, you are wrong about DVI. Apple used a DVI card BEFORE They shiped the ADC in their LCD lineup. You should check the facts. DVI was already popularized and in all major 3d cards, and nobody was using the older connectors in the LCD pannels for over a year by the time apple came out with ADC. It had NOTHING to do with timing. DVI had been out since 1998. ADC came out at the end of 2000 AFTER apple had already shipped DVI in large volumes.
"And DVI was just a niche connection until the last year or so "
Goes to show you what log you just came out from under... might that be steve jobbs terd? Because you obviously don't have a clue about DVI.. It only became "popular" to you because only 'about a year ago" did apple start using DVI... In fact, they have been shipping it since 2000 and it has been in their TiBook and all aluminum powerbooks since the begining. You might want to check your facts one more time. (not to mention that the entire PC industry had not only standardized it but flushed out all competitors by 1999).
There is also a problem with your analysis. Go ahead and factor in the longer lifetime of the print head. But don't forget to factor in the higher price of it. I have delt with these so called "lower TCO" canon printers. They usually end up costing more in the long run due to expensive print heads that don't last a ton of time and low volume ink carts that cost less but don't hold much ink.
Actually, equivilent printers for sale today from HP use the 56 black cartrige. This is about 17-21$ depending on where you go, and it has 19ml. I don't know which number cartrige you are using that only has 11, but it is definately for an older printer that is no longer manufactured. Only the 94/96/56/45 black cartriges are being used in current models from HP.
Doubtfull:
Dell printers are lexmark printers. Not many people realize this. I think I read somewhere that dell sells more printers now than lexmark does... I believe it.
" Think about timing. ADC was there before DVI took off in the market"
Sorry to inform you, but ADC came out YEARS after DVI flat pannels were already widespread. Also, dell and gateway (and I'm sure several others) were shipping DVI on all but their low end models... There is no timing issue with DVI. in fact, apple released DVI G4 computers _BEFORE_ they released ADC computers. This is not a valid argument.
Also, apple never "standardized" on lcd monitors. They still have a CRT machine for christs sake! Not only this but G4 machines which came out with ADC did not have a monitor by default. Instead, there was a dropdown menu on their website offering either an LCD or a CRT monitor. Ask anyone who does exentive business with apple. How can you even claim that they "standardised on LCD's first" PLEASE DUDE! That is an outrageous claim. NO PC manufacturer has _EVER_ standardized on LCD's. You can still get CRT's for all of them to this day! (including Apple's)
"The 15-pin monitor was a similar idea. Again, Apple introduced it at about the same time VGA first arrived." BZZt! Wrong again. VGA was already well defined and flooding the market way before this ever happened. It's the same thing as the ADC, only older. I'm sorry, but your alone here. you won't find too many apple heads who don't agree that ADC and DB15 were both stubborn moves by apple to force proprietary connectors.
"and after they did[become popular] Apple joined them and moved to VGA connectors. "
They didn't release a SINGLE HDDB15 VGA connector until the iMac with external video came out. How can you say they conformed when in fact it took them till the END of the existance of HDDB15! How can you say they switched to VGA when it became popular when it took them several YEARS to do so?
"Yeah, they use their own firmware in their own drives - wah."
You obviously haven't had a CD-ROM drive go out in a mac before. If it had you would know that a 20$ CDROM could fix it. but instead you have to pay 400$ because apple charges that much for their firmware'd version. I think this is fixed in OS X but in all the classic OS's this has always been a problem.
"Apple supports a lot of external DVD burners with iDVD. They did it through an "easter egg""
Was is "supported or was it an "easter egg"? And declaring that it works now in the new off the hself boxed iLife is a big margin from it having worked before, where all the high and dry mac customers were forced to live without DVD burning when they didn't know they had to configure their powerbooks with superdrives otherwise it wouldn't burn. Please.
"because unlike on my PC I can reliably get the drive to open and close with a keystroke"
Nice comeback about the button. Too bad you have to delete your cdrom drive to eject it (i mean throw it in the trash) how is that for reliability (did I forget to mention that you had to delete your flopy to eject it too?) and by the way, you obviously don't have much experience with mac's showing that you think it is reliable to hit the eject button on the keyboard and out comes a CD. Anything goes wrong with your mac (and i mean ANYTHING) software issue, bios prob, PRAM problem, and it won't eject.
" Apple hasn't made all infallible technical decisions."
I'm glad you admit it after defending their every mistake above. Why you defend their worst design mistakes rather than complement their best ones is beyond me. They actualy would have something going for them if their quality wasn't so piss poor.
"But when they do something different, it's usually because they feel they've got a better way. Not just to be proprietary."
And here comes the one true statement of the apple fanboy who wishes things were different. Go ahead, justify it to yourself like that. Steve Jobbs DROOLS over customers like yourself. I guess that is why you use their hardware and why they go after people like you.
"They also helped drive the move to USB, popularized Firewire, added standard Ethernet on everything before any x86 vendors, and added a dedicated slot and antenna for wireless before anyone."
They also helped drive ADC with 99$ DVI to ADC straight through adapters (all ADC is is DVI with a few pins extra for USB) When instead they could have just broke the cable out into 2 seperate connectors for a fraction of the cost, retail price, and for the sake of standards.
This isn't the only time they drove the market into the end with proprietary connectors. Look at the DB15 monitors legacy mac's use. 15 pin but uses a different shape because they wanted to charge more. (even though it is perfectly compatible with HDDB15 VGA connectors)
Lets not forget about their idiotic old style keyboard and mouse connectors...
You forgot: Apple INVENTED Firewire! lol. of course they popularized it. (with that whole entire 5% of the personal computer market!)
Your facts about the usb connectors standard are just plain wrong. Computers on windows were coming with multiple USB ports years before apple even considered putting it in there. They were too scared that firewire would fail if done so. You can add them to the list of "supported vendors" but you can't even start to talk about them pushing it into the mainstream. Intel had plenty of pull on their own for that.
Not to mention that apple puts/has put in the past special firmware in their internal Optical drives to make sure nobody replaces it with a 3rd party one... and then won't let you use an external burner with iDVD... Nevermind that there isn't a hardware eject button for most of their drives...
This isnt' to backup my previous post. Just to trash what you think is so awesome about apple in all their glory. Your right about one thing: Apple can do no wrong. No, they have too many fanboys to back them up.
Apple has been doing this with video and SCSI cards for YEARS. how is this new? All it means is that OEM's from the x86 world are becoming more proprietary. There is nothing you can do about it. Nobody complains about this on the mac so why is it a complaint on windows?
Does Steve Jobbs own it?
Are they called "Apple"
Can they be found on google by entering miserable failure
I boycott blizzard. For the exact same reason.. Only problem is my brother and his gf and her brother canceled out my vote 3 fold :(
Don't ask me how they are so lame that all 3 of them have concurrent accounts and are paying monthly fees and up front cost of the game and can still justify their existance.. pretty lame if you ask me.. cos the game is not that good.
" Yes, but I need a reader for those"
And you need a reader for the transflash: a SD card adapter.
Your point doesn't make legitimate sence against my argument. It is still yet another "standard" card type that was created solely to lock users into that type. There is already a standard for ultra slim cards which are SD compatible: it is called miniSD. And they work in SD adapters just like transflash does. And they are ALREADY all over the place. There was no reason to create transflash. All it is is miniSD (something that already exists) in a different shape. All it is is bad for consumers. The more popular this card type gets the worse it is for everyone. It is a 'benefit' for transflash users at the expense of ALL flash memory customers. But it really isn't a benefit because miniSD ALREADY EXISTS. In other words, as a whole, transflash is a negative in the market and can only serve to one end: bad for the market.
I can harp all day about the same things with sony memory stick and xD picture cards. They have no purpose except one thing: vendor lockin. transflash is on the slow boat to the same end.
You also forget that this is bad for people who buy transflash cards. because MOST retailers will have never heard of it, and will not care to carry it in stock. For those that buy online, fine. For those that don't, drive around until you can find it at a dramaticly jacked up price.
Excuse me?
xD, Sony, SD, CF, tranflash, mini SD, MMC, SmartCard, etc are ALL compatible with USB... so what is your point?
Except that SD Micro is already out and already a standard. There was no reason except lockin to ever create Transflash.
It is equivilent to xD and sony memory stick. It's only reason for existance was to lock in users. Period.
Not to talk crap about your suggestion, but most people who would be using iCalendar or Sunbird would not be using Exchange...
If I were in the market for a microsoft only solution, it might be a valid suggestion. But I just don't see that many people jumping into that boat (any new people, not to say there aren't already a lot there)
Calendaring is useless to everyone right now unless you are teathered to your desktop... Until they fix this problem I won't be bothering with any calendaring apps..
The problem seems to be that there is no implemented standards to sync PDA's to the calendar server without first going through your PC. While this might sound kinda "silly" to some of you, it really is a requirement. You see, Palm sells the Tungesten C which has built in WiFi. They also sell the Treo 600 and Treo 650 which has built in GPRS or CDMA internet access... So what is the use of this PDA if its PRIMARY FUNCTION cannot sync to your calendaring server directly?
All bundled up? Calendaring is a great idea. When they actually get PDAs and cellphones to sync with the central server, it will be of some use. Until then: forget it.
Are there hooks to install modules for "trusted" device drivers to allow them to run in kernel space faster for devices which require high performance? (Such as network cards in servers, 3D graphics, low latency Audio drivers, etc...)
Maybe it would be good to have a hybrid kernel which allows only userspace drivers in general but vendors who wish to certify their drivers and have them crypo signed can get them installed in high performance kernel space?
Is this a viable idea (in the longer term obviously) or is it just completely off the wall?
Someone already figured out that if you run a porn site (or other type of legitimate site which could possibly use CAPTCHAs) you can have legitimate users fill out the CAPTCHAs which you scrape from the site you want to crack, and then forward it back to the targetted site. Since there is a surplus of people filling out CAPTCHAs over bots wanting to crack them, there is plenty of room for cracking it...
In the end, it is only a deterrent. But it is definately not close to foolproof
(note that this technique does not have anything to do with cracking the CAPTCHAs, it only bypasses their decoding step by handing off the work to a real human being which doesn't know he is decoding an offsite CAPTCHA)
"Could the profit margins on iPods be WAY higher than we're lead to believe?"
What were you lead to believe? The retail price of the ipod is more than any other player in its MB range. Most iPods are purchased directly through apple. (some at BB, some through HP and its distributers. However I know for fact that HP distributers are required to sell it wholesale for no less than $270)
Either way, even assuming that the minimum price apple sells the ipod for is 270 for 20gb, that is still more expensive than the most expensive competitor's wholesale price.
Now, add to the fact that apple is also making money off iTunes, and apple sells more than any other individual competitor. and add to that that the iPod uses cheaper parts then their competitors... And you might get a reasonable picture of the order of margin apple sees in the ipod..
The problem is that dealers will not activate phones not sold through their store. It is the policy to train the sales people to only sell new phones, and thus contracts.
Another problem is that you cannot buy a plan in the US without a contract. Unless you buy "prepaid" minutes which expire within 30-60days. Not only this but pre-paid rate plans are more expensive. To buy 3-4 months of prepaid is about the same price as same mins/month plan for an entire year post paid. (price per minute is about 3-4x). I could start out today, and pay up front for a 1yr contract and that will be about the same amount of money as 3-4 months of prepaid. This is just ridiculous.
So even if you bring your own phone, you STILL have to sign the contract, and so you might as well take the "free" phone that comes with it.
Buying used is a good time. But then again, none of the US phone companies will allow you to unlock your phone. Many are not unlockable. Others are very hard to unlock. And I know for certain that Cingular requires you to use a cingular phone (even if it is a 3rd party unlocked phone) because of their roaming database programed into the phone. I have known people who get their service terminated for using a 3rd party unlocked phone because it was not programed to prioritize cingular towers while roaming...
This is only the tip of the iceberg... there are several problems that need to be resolved before we can start seeing cheap, reasonable phones in north america...
No... the phones don't cost a lot too... Only in north america are the phones price fixed...
They are price fixed in the US by the service providers.. and then that price fix is subsidized by your 1 year contract...
In other words, you are getting overcharged, and then they give you a discount.. There is nothing "expensive" about the process. I really hope more people in north america get enlightened about the state of affairs wrt cellphone contracts. Until customers start demanding a competative market for cellular service (and handset retailing) we won't be seeing anything any time soon.
Let me be clear here. Cheaper phones will not have a price discount passed on to the consumers in north america. They are already damn cheap to manufacture. those screens don't cost anything to make and the circuit boards are a dime a dozen. This isn't new technology. everywhere else in the world phones are actually based on their cost to manufacture rather than their features which are enabled/disabled by the service provider. The only person who will see a benefit for integrated chips on cellphones is the executives of cingular, verison, and sprint.
maybe in the long run you will see more reliable cellphones because of this. But that is all.
However, a significant majority of the people are nice enough to leave their client to seed for a short while after downloading. If everyone did this to achieve a 1:1 ratio or better by the time they stopped seeding, then everyone will get the speed of direct download.
It turns out that in friendly communities (such as bt.etree.org) the users are even nicer and leave their stuff on longer than 1:1 in which case most people get downloads in the range of 100KB/s+
Why are there so many mis-informed people on the internet that think P2P == a breeding ground for copyright infringement or illegal files? Bittorrent survives (currently) on a CENTRAL located server to act as a tracker. These people are just adding a central located seed to the mix to guarantee file availability (most tracker sites only keep a tracker and no seed).
What are they going to do with someone uploads illegal files? By golly, they will do the same thing as if someone uploaded an illegal file to their web host of FTP server for download. Ignore it until someone complains and then remove it in the event of notification (and possible prosecution). Just like the hosting business has ALWAYS been run.
Uploading illegal content to this service is NO DIFFERENT than uploading illegal content to your every day pay service hosting provider. Trying to make it out to be different is just plain silly. BTW: FTP as a pay service has existed for several years now.
"People don't use it because they don't give a shit about email security."
Maybe they don't use it because its not built in.. or it cant be installed without hacking software.... or it isn't enabled by default...
There are several reasons why people don't use GPG. The biggest reason: it isn't possible for every day people to install it.
end of story.
It doesn't matter how badly they want it, if they can't install it, they can't. period.
When you can double click on pgp.exe and it installs itself into outlook express AND it is installed by default into popular webmail servers AND it is possible to secure your email without configuring a buncha crap THEN people will use it. NO amount of education will change the fact that it isn't useable. The whole point of my previous post. Saying that people "don't care" is only a valid argument AFTER all these other issues are solved.
"...no new needs being addressed..."
Ahh, but the new needs being addressed are there. You see, its usability is on the order of joe six pack and jane.
When you have a package for win32 that works with most popular email clients without technical knowledge for GPG, then you can start talking about "no new needs being addressed" until then, there seems to be plenty of room for friendly competition in this area. Because NOBODY has done it right yet.
Now, I'm not defending these people. I don't know if their software sux dick or what. But what their software does do is break new ground in user friendlyness in the email encryption front. It is only a matter of time that GPG or a spinoff variant must get off their asses and produce something useable or they will lose the market.
It is as simple as that. Like all software, if it is the best thing since sliced bread but nobody can use it, then what is the point? This new product will just bring new ideas to the stagnating developer mindset that is going on in GPG.
Hell, they (GPG) have a practical monopoly on the market and they STILL haven't gotten any significant numbers to use it... You call that a quality product?
Troll feeding time:
"Did you miss the part of this being a single-use piece of hardware?"
No I didn't miss any part. It isn't a single use piece of hardware. It isn't advertised as only working with iTunes. iTunes isn't advertised as only working with iPod. and besides the point, Apple keeps saying that they control "80% of the market" So if it were a single use piece of hardware, they would actually be controlling 100% of that market. Your argument is FLAWED and it is exactly what you might expec from an Apple fanboy (which you are). Thus, I just replied to a trolling ranting apple customer who really doesn't know much of anything about coporate laws and even much less about technical aspects of the iPod and iTunes.
"Apple can do whatever the hell they want with it."
No they can't. Corporations can't do whatever the hell they want to do with their products. There are rules and regulations to keep one corporation from abusing its consumers, and its competition.
"They are in no way obligated to assist their rivals in competing with the iTMS."
I never said they were. They are however obligated to behave competatively. And not go out of their way to lock out their competitors provided they meet certain marketshare criteria (which will be determined in court)
Don't worry though. One day you will be enlightened.