The author is probably presuming computer equipment, but I'm mostly a musician that dabbles heavily in computer tech enough that I am a bit of a computer geek. In my studio, I still a lot of vintage gear for my sound. I love my vintage Marshall amps and my Laney. My main guitars are a 1957 Les Paul, a 1959 Les Paul, then I have a bunch of '80s era Kramers and Charvel superstrats. I use MXR script pedals often as well as vintage overdrives. These days, a lot of musicians have moved on to all digital effects with a lot of amp modelling, and they're getting pretty good sound. I am gradually moving to computer based production. For a lot of musicians, a Mac laptop or tower running Pro Tools sits alongside amps, pedals, and guitars that are 30+ years old, and you get this anachronistic combination of ancient microphones and new DAWs. Visually, it's enjoyable. I also like vintage synthesizers, particularly the Roland, Korgs, and the Yamaha DX7 keyboard. Today, many keyboardists use computer based synths and samplers to mimic the sounds of these old keyboards. On my iPad alone, I've got a virtual keyboard app that does FM synthesis and may possibly read in the patches from the DX7. I'm also using a virtual app that emulates the old Fairlight CMI. I still have no idea what to do with it.
I still love analog recordings. I in fact prefer them to digital, so I've got a turntable setup that feeds into my desktop, making my music collection a combination of miniDisc, cassettes recorded on a Nak, FLAC and AC3 made from vinyl sources that were run through a tube preamp, and then the regular assortment of MP3/AC3 and FLAC you collect from across the Internet. I'm also a photographer, so I've got a collection of very old manual focus K-mount and F-mount lenses that I use on dSLRs today.
I also still have old game consoles plus DOS era video game diskettes, but most of the software has been virtualized by now, so maybe that doesn't count for much.
I can't say I'm one of those practical types that enjoys reusing old things for the sake of it. I have very few of the many computers I've owned for example. I'm just very much stuck on what I like.
On certain things, yes, every other company does get a free pass. Look at the Foxconn story. To this day, Apple is associated with Foxconn, and every now and then, someone will bring up Apple's labor abuses in China. Nevermind the fact that Microsoft, Google (Motorola), Sony, Nintendo, Samsung, and a slew of other companies have work done by Foxconn in China too. It would at least make me a little happier if journalists would do better to fairly explain who Foxconn are and point out their role in the whole industry. Granted, consumers should do their own research, but after a while the joke gets old, and it becomes tiring hearing about how horrible Apple because of Foxconn from some idiot typing on a Samsung.
Actually, I don't think that was the goal of "Designed by Apple in California". I believe it's been more to stir up emotions about California and California culture. It's a point of pride thing. Made in the USA isn't something I'd associate as mattering to people who buy Apple products. I'm not suggesting Macintosh owners don't love America - I own many Apple products, including many Macs, but for me "Made in USA" is usually at best an empty phrase and at worst a grave concern about quality. This comes from me being a guitarist. All of my Les Paul guitars are made in the USA, particularly Kalamazoo, though I've had a Nashville here and there, maybe a Memphis too. I have had a lot of guitars that had a made in the USA label on them, or some variant. This isn't the official stamped "Made in USA" logo with a flag though that wound up on Wal-Mart type products. In fact, many of these guitars were made in Japan and Korea during the 1980s, then sent to the US to be either assembled or "finished". In fact, some guitar makers would have "Los Angeles, CA" or "Fort Worth" on the neck plates for guitars that were brought over from Korea and Japan.
Maybe there were then, but I certainly wasn't thinking of desktop computer software. I had a slew of those earlier MP3 players (the devices). I hated every one of them. Somehow I never got around to buying any of the Creative ones, so maybe that would have swayed me. Admittedly, I was pretty biased against MP3 to begin with.
I feel this has less to do with Microsoft and more to do with The Verge. Reading the article again, it spends as much time talking about Apple as it does talking about Windows 8 not sucking. Hollister makes a point to mention that Apple did not invent the first MP3 player or the first touchscreen smartphone, or the first graphical user interface, or the first solid state drive in a laptop. As an Apple fan myself, my gut instinct it to just dismiss the statement as typical of Apple haters that sell the fictitious storyline that Apple and Apple's fans claim invention above all else as opposed to taking existing things that aren't being used right and then making them work seamlessly. Then, Hollister immediately follows by pointing out that Apple likes to wait for a technology to mature, then "swoop" in and perfect then popularize it. Putting aside the fact that I've never seen mature MP3 players, GUIs, or touchscreen smartphones prior to Apple getting involved, the writing is designed to generate talk which, in turn, generates clicks.
The article is garbage. It's premise about touchpad laptops not sucking despite what Steve Jobs said isn't even accurate in context. Touch screens have existed for years. Anyone working at a steakhouse now could have pointed that out. Jobs' problem with touchpad laptops in 2010 was that 2010 era laptops were loud, hot, and big. Hand-writing recognition sucked. Jobs was correct. All those Windows powered touch screen laptops did suck, and they didn't want to be used vertically. Almost three years later, things have changed. We have Surface, Transformer, and ultrabook laptops, and higher pixel density screens. So no, NOT surprisingly touch screen laptops don't suck. That said, about the only use I have for a touch screen ultrabook type laptop is by my beside as a kind of info kiosk and Skype interface for when I'm on the road. Anywhere else where I want a laptop, I can use a real laptop with far better performance.
Hollister should have concluded with it a GOTO 10 statement. And as one person above already put it: cheetos. Cheetos are a reason touch screens suck and I don't want them on my laptops. As it is now, I'm constantly polishing my phone and iPad.
I wouldn't count out Microsoft yet. Surface and Windows Phone 8 are exciting. So Microsoft has to settle for being third in the mobile space for a while, so what? There's still Windows and Xbox. The people who use those products either love them or are in some way forced to use them.
I would, but I have an especial interest in infinite game worlds. I'm finally getting around to "Dear Esther" which is not infinite, but the aim of the game is to travel and experience the game's narrative. I've always liked exploring game environments for the sake of appreciating the virtual world. Grand Theft Auto Vice City and games like Midtown Madness and Test Drive remain favorites for that reason. I wouldn't even call the activity meta gaming as I might for my activities in EVE Online where I enjoy exploring deep space most. I would be interesting in exploring a PG infinite world providing the world was immersive. Skyrim with all the high res water and flora mods is beautiful to explore and take in. Something has to happen though, and for me it has to be more than just a random encounter. It would be fun to explore an infinite map in Skyrim and happen upon something unique and cool, like say a UFO crash site a la Fallout. I have to wonder if game like that could be made by anyone other than an indie. Who would spend AAA money to develop a game like a GTA Vice City that focuses only on cruising a photorealistic 1986 Miami for what has to be a niche within a niche market of consumers?
I'm not playing word games. I mentioned the Libertarian party losing elections because your last remark about my ignorance of the libertarian movement being irrelevant made me wonder if you were trying to argue that the Libertarian party has had an impact. What do you by "whatever that may be"? I made it pretty clear that the modern libertarian movement consists of people from across the board. You've only restated my points here. I never said that libertarian minded voters don't have an impact, I said that mainstream popular libertarian movement, which has been defined by the Tea Party, should not be listened to, and I am correct. So far, they (the Tea Party) have been an embarrassment. They constantly show that they haven't put much out int their beliefs and they are mostly a reactionary element that has no real direction. yes, of course, there are other kinds of libertarians, and I pointed that out already. If you weren't so fast to foe me, you might have noticed that we don't disagree with each other on those points, instead you kept in with assumptions.
Take a break from slapping bumper stickers on your car and look at what I wrote. Where did I imply that either of the major parties are automatically run by saints or scholars or intellectuals? If you require citations that show that the Tea Party libertarian movement is compromised mostly of self-described political amateurs who only recently took an interest in politics, pick your favorite cable news network and watch one of their documentaries on them. With the exception of MSNBC's tendency to underplay the role of socially liberal pro-legalization voters and overplay the input of super-rich svengalies, the three cable nets have been virtually identical in pointing out that the Tea Party movement is a populist movement of outsiders. Also, nowhere do I say that the libertarian movement is irrelevant. You might have read into my calling the Libertarian party inconsequential. If you think they aren't, count their successes at swaying ideology or just winning major elections. What I did say is that there is little value in what the Tea Party stands for when you pin them down to specifics, and I stand by that.
Calm down everyone. You're all confusing three distinct phenomena: classic libertarianism, an inconsequential modern political third party, and the contemporary mainstream Randian wannabe sociopolitical movement of the same name that at best is nothing more than a reactionary coalition of political, social, and civic amateurs, some of which are actual liberal pro-legalization college kids that think they are brilliant scholars because they got an A in poli-sci and soc, and in-fact sociopolitical conservative moralists that are anti-tax because they either fear their money going to welfare or are borderline confederacy-seeking states rightists that want a Fed so small they can drown it in a bathtub. Add in a dash of actual anarcho-capitalist industrialists and entrepreneurs and crazed gold standard pushers of alternative currencies for flavor. By and large, the libertarian movement as it is popularized today is a caricature of the original libertarian movement, but populated by low information people that don't read enough, that get all their news from pundits, and who only recently in the last 8 years have taken a real interest in domestic policy and macroeconomics. To put it simply, they don't know what they don't know.
To put it another way, I have recently in the last decade taken a refreshed interest in physics after sleep walking through it as a student and a professional. But, much of my new learning comes from advocacy sources like Michio Kaku. I enjoy doing fun things with magnets and lasers. My teleportation machine is awesome, but I assure you, none of you should use it no matter how much I tell you I've worked out all the kinks because I'm a physics tourist and my input should be taken as if it came from an enthusiastic child that still believes in Santa.
There's no reason to worry here. This article is not news. Of course Apple is looking at alternatives to Intel. Apple is always looking at alternatives. It's part of the company's culture and plan for for evolving. Apple didn't just switch from PowerPC. A decision that big made that fast can be disastrous to a hardware company. Apple long had an Intel based Macintosh back when there wasn't public talk about IBM and Motorola not delivering the clock speeds. Assuredly, Apple has an ARM Macintosh right now. Apple very likely has another PowerPC Mac too. I'm worried too about Macintosh becoming iOS but I have more faith in Apple that this won't happen.
The kid in me is fascinated with living forever as an ever-evolving robot, much like Ray Kurzweil hopes. I want to believe that the universe is ever-expanding and that I will be able to witness the birth of stars; that someday, an advanced AI me (and indeed us all) will see an amazing future for humans and meet new races, or maybe just travel the world doing all the things I've wanted to do. It's a silly dream - I realize this, but then even learning that Gliese 581 g is too far away to ever reach within a generation, also made me sad. But, I suppose on the the upside, it's good that I can still romanticize space travel as bitter as I can get about everything else!
I miss the days when I got real installation media and driver disks that contained drivers for other operating systems I didn't even have, and I hated the 90's era of recovery discs that factory restored all that bloatware I deleted immediately, but Apple's way of handling media-free installation has made me a convert. I ruined my partition on my Macintosh. I booted, and when the computer couldn't find any usable partitions, it connected online and downloaded enough to make the machine bootable, and from there, downloaded the rest of the OS and installed. Of course, I saved the installation files to a new recovery partition as well as a USB and FireWire portable drive. I even have an emergency file system on a FireWire drive in case my internal drive ever dies. This is a smarter way of doing things. My worst case scenario is having no connection and no access to my backup drives. The fact is, people lose their installation discs all the time and the only option has been paying for replacement discs or hunting down files online on some horrible support site.
If installation media were ever to return, I hope it will be exclusively in the form of rewritable flash memory. I'll be blunt, read-only optical media is shit and has always been shit. If I buy boxed software, put it on flash media so I can transfer the contents to my larger mass storage and then reuse the flash drive like I did floppy diskettes.
Microsoft is marketing the Surface as something more than a tablet. It is a hybrid of tablet and ultra book, hence it is made for people like myself who really need more than what a tablet can do (I have an iPad) but don't really want to se a laptop unless I just happen to want to. This is why the keyboard cover is so much a part of the Surface "experience".
Because no third party app that translates Office formats or opens them does so with complete accuracy. If you depend on the more advanced features of MS Office (things other than text processing), then anything less than the real MS Office is a frustrating compromise.
Not every Cousin Nerd is truly knowledgeable on these things. He's just a little bit more savvy than Joe Sixpack because he's younger and follows trends better and is a l33t hax0r because he cleverly found a way to hack the firmware of the his phone by downloading an program off the Internet.
- Smoother performance (less an issue perhaps vs Jelly Bean) - Good multitasking - full MS Office (beyond Office 365 in a browser) - XBox Live integration - D3D development, Visual Basic too - Higher likelihood of timely OS updates - external storage - freedom from iTunes
I can't argue for more and better software. Obviously there are some advantages to already having Windows programming experience in Direct 3D, C++, XAML, VB, etc. However, there's only a subset of.NET in RT, and there's no Win32 or XNA or anything else that would really unlock the potential of Surface RT. Surface Pro will have XNA and every other development system you could use under Windows 7. That is the clear winner over iPad for me, but I'm looking for a tablet now and RT is going to be a difficult sell when there's not even side loading unless you're enterprise.
They equated the two by using Sandusky as the example. They might as well have made a Hitler reference too. The goal was a psychological effect with some political consequences, planting the notion in the minds of people who don't understand climate science and who have no informed opinion either way on global warming, that Mann is somehow preserve, a danger to children and society at large, criminal. The person making this comparison is counting on the inability of readers to see two distinct situations and be able to separate them from each other when placed adjacent to one another. There are plenty of cases of institutional white washing in academia, industry, and government that would have made for a better 1:1 comparison. He could have used the classic Cantor's Dilemma as a literary device at a stretch. No, this was an attempt at character assassination.
I'm curious though whether there is a real case because the harm would be that notable, thinking, professionals and academicians might believe Mann committed fraud or even associate him with some deeply disturbing criminal behavior, but considering the source and the target audience, isn't this like if a Orly Taitz ran around challenging people's birth certificates whilst Alex Jones accused you of personally funding the development of weather controlling satellites that are operated by FEMA and Major League Baseball whilst simultaneously conducting research with Rosie O'Donnell to learn whether it is possible to harvest gold from the bone marrow of late term aborted babies. I'm just suggesting that not all defamation is legally actionable when you're dealing with accusers that aren't playing with all their Lego bricks.
Windows is a negative brand name to Macintosh and UNIX fans and that last group of Amiga holdouts, but overall, Windows is a pretty strong brand despite Microsoft's efforts to dilute it by slapping "Windows" on every web service they offer. People do have a choice: Macintosh, iOS/Android, Linux, UNIX. It's not 1995. Here's a reason to use a Windows tablet: you can run real Windows applications and games on it. I've used a Windows tablet already. Ignoring the horrible, but unavoidable form factor (laptop components, fans, heat dissipation, weight, etc), the value was there. If you don't like Android or iOS, or you just want to remain in the Windows ecosystem with the ability to reuse software, data formats, and platform programming skills (.NET, WPF, XNA, etc), then a WinRT based tablet can be very useful. As for Windows RT, I'm skeptical about that one. I don't think I would have made an ARM-based Windows platform because I don't believe consumers will understand to disassociate Windows RT with Windows proper. It seems like versus Windows RT, an Android or IOS based device would be a better choice because of the established software base. I plan on waiting for the full "Surface Pro" version. There's still a lot of specifics we don't know because Microsoft is keeping everything under wraps, including the fucking SDKs.
You're not entirely correct, but nor is the AC above you. First off, fan fiction is clearly derivative work under copyright law. "Harry Potter and the Mixed Blood Prince" could possibly allowed on sale under Fair Use as a parody. In Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin Co., "Wind Done Gone" was ultimately considered a critical parody of "Gone With the Wind", and its fair use claims could be defended point by point. But the case doesn't create solid precedent because fan fiction seems to be very case by case. If AC is merely retelling the same story, not doing something critically different or making critical commentary on the original, his Harry Potter could not sell. "50 Shades of Grey" is a popular derivative work. It began as Twilight fan fiction. The sadder tale is that the author plagiarized the fan fiction of other authors borrowing from other stories. 50 Shades author has developed a reputation for plagiarism in the fan-fic community. Yet, her novel is doing very well, and with the support of Twilight's author.
It's actually hard to tell whether one could get away with using existing characters. There's two standard tests at work: "Distinctly Delineated" and "Story Being Told". The latter seems to be really difficult even for judges to work through. The first is also difficult to apply. It says that the more developed a character is, the more protectable it is. Harry Potter would be. There's a long-standing series of novels as well as supplemental materials that flesh out Harry Potter. Anderson v. Stallone, about the character Rocky Balboa, says that in certain cases, very developed characters can be protected, which would mean using that character would not be legal. On top of the copyright issues, there are the trademark issues. Decades ago, Disney went after daycare centers that used Disney characters. You could not make a Tarzan story because Tarzan was copyright protected and trademark. Also, look at Charlie Aplin, which was ruled an unfair competition attempt to deceive moviegoers into believing they were see Charlie Chaplin. Basically, this is a mess, not because of the usual problems with copyright and trademark we complain about here, but because there's a lot of issue separating a fictional character from its original story since characters tend to develop over the course of the work or are so general that they can't really exist absent the work.
In exactly what ways is Facebook a technology platform leader that can be placed adjacent to Apple, Google, or Amazon. I'll buy Amazon. They have Kindle, but even without Kindle there's Amazon's web and cloud services, plus their supply chain management with all the technology that supports it, but Facebook? Facebook is still nothing more than a virtual platform that depends completely on existing platforms. Apple, Google, and Amazon can coexist independently in their own spaces. Facebook is a download, whether it's via browser to your personal computer or to your mobile device, it's still a download. Facebook does have its tech too. Something has made Zynga games successful and a seamless experience on Facebook, but Facebook has nothing that its competitors or its contemporaries lack except clicks. MySpace's luck with clicks and Facebook's constant stock devaluation illustrates just how easy it can be for Facebook to slip away. Microsoft has numerous platforms that interact with each other and is showing signs of realizing that today's market wants enterprise connectivity with consumer style, something Google and Apple have known. I would say that this "gang of four technology platform leaders" would best be described as a "gang of four attention leaders".
There isn't a reason for custom iOS ROMs as there is for custom Android ROMs. iOS doesn't come loaded with bloatware. I'd need that custom Android ROM just so I can cut the bloat that Motorola and Verizon added to stock Android, maybe even remove anything else the carrier added to handicap the phone. This is where Apple is superior as a company. It was the only company that could strong-arm the carriers to keep their grimy hands off the phone. I jailbroke my iPhone once. I don't recall being able to totally change the UI. I think the Android users still edge out when it comes to customization.
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The author is probably presuming computer equipment, but I'm mostly a musician that dabbles heavily in computer tech enough that I am a bit of a computer geek. In my studio, I still a lot of vintage gear for my sound. I love my vintage Marshall amps and my Laney. My main guitars are a 1957 Les Paul, a 1959 Les Paul, then I have a bunch of '80s era Kramers and Charvel superstrats. I use MXR script pedals often as well as vintage overdrives. These days, a lot of musicians have moved on to all digital effects with a lot of amp modelling, and they're getting pretty good sound. I am gradually moving to computer based production. For a lot of musicians, a Mac laptop or tower running Pro Tools sits alongside amps, pedals, and guitars that are 30+ years old, and you get this anachronistic combination of ancient microphones and new DAWs. Visually, it's enjoyable. I also like vintage synthesizers, particularly the Roland, Korgs, and the Yamaha DX7 keyboard. Today, many keyboardists use computer based synths and samplers to mimic the sounds of these old keyboards. On my iPad alone, I've got a virtual keyboard app that does FM synthesis and may possibly read in the patches from the DX7. I'm also using a virtual app that emulates the old Fairlight CMI. I still have no idea what to do with it.
I still love analog recordings. I in fact prefer them to digital, so I've got a turntable setup that feeds into my desktop, making my music collection a combination of miniDisc, cassettes recorded on a Nak, FLAC and AC3 made from vinyl sources that were run through a tube preamp, and then the regular assortment of MP3/AC3 and FLAC you collect from across the Internet. I'm also a photographer, so I've got a collection of very old manual focus K-mount and F-mount lenses that I use on dSLRs today.
I also still have old game consoles plus DOS era video game diskettes, but most of the software has been virtualized by now, so maybe that doesn't count for much.
I can't say I'm one of those practical types that enjoys reusing old things for the sake of it. I have very few of the many computers I've owned for example. I'm just very much stuck on what I like.
On certain things, yes, every other company does get a free pass. Look at the Foxconn story. To this day, Apple is associated with Foxconn, and every now and then, someone will bring up Apple's labor abuses in China. Nevermind the fact that Microsoft, Google (Motorola), Sony, Nintendo, Samsung, and a slew of other companies have work done by Foxconn in China too. It would at least make me a little happier if journalists would do better to fairly explain who Foxconn are and point out their role in the whole industry. Granted, consumers should do their own research, but after a while the joke gets old, and it becomes tiring hearing about how horrible Apple because of Foxconn from some idiot typing on a Samsung.
Actually, I don't think that was the goal of "Designed by Apple in California". I believe it's been more to stir up emotions about California and California culture. It's a point of pride thing. Made in the USA isn't something I'd associate as mattering to people who buy Apple products. I'm not suggesting Macintosh owners don't love America - I own many Apple products, including many Macs, but for me "Made in USA" is usually at best an empty phrase and at worst a grave concern about quality. This comes from me being a guitarist. All of my Les Paul guitars are made in the USA, particularly Kalamazoo, though I've had a Nashville here and there, maybe a Memphis too. I have had a lot of guitars that had a made in the USA label on them, or some variant. This isn't the official stamped "Made in USA" logo with a flag though that wound up on Wal-Mart type products. In fact, many of these guitars were made in Japan and Korea during the 1980s, then sent to the US to be either assembled or "finished". In fact, some guitar makers would have "Los Angeles, CA" or "Fort Worth" on the neck plates for guitars that were brought over from Korea and Japan.
Maybe there were then, but I certainly wasn't thinking of desktop computer software. I had a slew of those earlier MP3 players (the devices). I hated every one of them. Somehow I never got around to buying any of the Creative ones, so maybe that would have swayed me. Admittedly, I was pretty biased against MP3 to begin with.
I feel this has less to do with Microsoft and more to do with The Verge. Reading the article again, it spends as much time talking about Apple as it does talking about Windows 8 not sucking. Hollister makes a point to mention that Apple did not invent the first MP3 player or the first touchscreen smartphone, or the first graphical user interface, or the first solid state drive in a laptop. As an Apple fan myself, my gut instinct it to just dismiss the statement as typical of Apple haters that sell the fictitious storyline that Apple and Apple's fans claim invention above all else as opposed to taking existing things that aren't being used right and then making them work seamlessly. Then, Hollister immediately follows by pointing out that Apple likes to wait for a technology to mature, then "swoop" in and perfect then popularize it. Putting aside the fact that I've never seen mature MP3 players, GUIs, or touchscreen smartphones prior to Apple getting involved, the writing is designed to generate talk which, in turn, generates clicks.
The article is garbage. It's premise about touchpad laptops not sucking despite what Steve Jobs said isn't even accurate in context. Touch screens have existed for years. Anyone working at a steakhouse now could have pointed that out. Jobs' problem with touchpad laptops in 2010 was that 2010 era laptops were loud, hot, and big. Hand-writing recognition sucked. Jobs was correct. All those Windows powered touch screen laptops did suck, and they didn't want to be used vertically. Almost three years later, things have changed. We have Surface, Transformer, and ultrabook laptops, and higher pixel density screens. So no, NOT surprisingly touch screen laptops don't suck. That said, about the only use I have for a touch screen ultrabook type laptop is by my beside as a kind of info kiosk and Skype interface for when I'm on the road. Anywhere else where I want a laptop, I can use a real laptop with far better performance.
Hollister should have concluded with it a GOTO 10 statement. And as one person above already put it: cheetos. Cheetos are a reason touch screens suck and I don't want them on my laptops. As it is now, I'm constantly polishing my phone and iPad.
I wouldn't count out Microsoft yet. Surface and Windows Phone 8 are exciting. So Microsoft has to settle for being third in the mobile space for a while, so what? There's still Windows and Xbox. The people who use those products either love them or are in some way forced to use them.
Oh, you play EVE too?
I would, but I have an especial interest in infinite game worlds. I'm finally getting around to "Dear Esther" which is not infinite, but the aim of the game is to travel and experience the game's narrative. I've always liked exploring game environments for the sake of appreciating the virtual world. Grand Theft Auto Vice City and games like Midtown Madness and Test Drive remain favorites for that reason. I wouldn't even call the activity meta gaming as I might for my activities in EVE Online where I enjoy exploring deep space most. I would be interesting in exploring a PG infinite world providing the world was immersive. Skyrim with all the high res water and flora mods is beautiful to explore and take in. Something has to happen though, and for me it has to be more than just a random encounter. It would be fun to explore an infinite map in Skyrim and happen upon something unique and cool, like say a UFO crash site a la Fallout. I have to wonder if game like that could be made by anyone other than an indie. Who would spend AAA money to develop a game like a GTA Vice City that focuses only on cruising a photorealistic 1986 Miami for what has to be a niche within a niche market of consumers?
I'm not playing word games. I mentioned the Libertarian party losing elections because your last remark about my ignorance of the libertarian movement being irrelevant made me wonder if you were trying to argue that the Libertarian party has had an impact. What do you by "whatever that may be"? I made it pretty clear that the modern libertarian movement consists of people from across the board. You've only restated my points here. I never said that libertarian minded voters don't have an impact, I said that mainstream popular libertarian movement, which has been defined by the Tea Party, should not be listened to, and I am correct. So far, they (the Tea Party) have been an embarrassment. They constantly show that they haven't put much out int their beliefs and they are mostly a reactionary element that has no real direction. yes, of course, there are other kinds of libertarians, and I pointed that out already. If you weren't so fast to foe me, you might have noticed that we don't disagree with each other on those points, instead you kept in with assumptions.
Take a break from slapping bumper stickers on your car and look at what I wrote. Where did I imply that either of the major parties are automatically run by saints or scholars or intellectuals? If you require citations that show that the Tea Party libertarian movement is compromised mostly of self-described political amateurs who only recently took an interest in politics, pick your favorite cable news network and watch one of their documentaries on them. With the exception of MSNBC's tendency to underplay the role of socially liberal pro-legalization voters and overplay the input of super-rich svengalies, the three cable nets have been virtually identical in pointing out that the Tea Party movement is a populist movement of outsiders. Also, nowhere do I say that the libertarian movement is irrelevant. You might have read into my calling the Libertarian party inconsequential. If you think they aren't, count their successes at swaying ideology or just winning major elections. What I did say is that there is little value in what the Tea Party stands for when you pin them down to specifics, and I stand by that.
Calm down everyone. You're all confusing three distinct phenomena: classic libertarianism, an inconsequential modern political third party, and the contemporary mainstream Randian wannabe sociopolitical movement of the same name that at best is nothing more than a reactionary coalition of political, social, and civic amateurs, some of which are actual liberal pro-legalization college kids that think they are brilliant scholars because they got an A in poli-sci and soc, and in-fact sociopolitical conservative moralists that are anti-tax because they either fear their money going to welfare or are borderline confederacy-seeking states rightists that want a Fed so small they can drown it in a bathtub. Add in a dash of actual anarcho-capitalist industrialists and entrepreneurs and crazed gold standard pushers of alternative currencies for flavor. By and large, the libertarian movement as it is popularized today is a caricature of the original libertarian movement, but populated by low information people that don't read enough, that get all their news from pundits, and who only recently in the last 8 years have taken a real interest in domestic policy and macroeconomics. To put it simply, they don't know what they don't know.
To put it another way, I have recently in the last decade taken a refreshed interest in physics after sleep walking through it as a student and a professional. But, much of my new learning comes from advocacy sources like Michio Kaku. I enjoy doing fun things with magnets and lasers. My teleportation machine is awesome, but I assure you, none of you should use it no matter how much I tell you I've worked out all the kinks because I'm a physics tourist and my input should be taken as if it came from an enthusiastic child that still believes in Santa.
There's no reason to worry here. This article is not news. Of course Apple is looking at alternatives to Intel. Apple is always looking at alternatives. It's part of the company's culture and plan for for evolving. Apple didn't just switch from PowerPC. A decision that big made that fast can be disastrous to a hardware company. Apple long had an Intel based Macintosh back when there wasn't public talk about IBM and Motorola not delivering the clock speeds. Assuredly, Apple has an ARM Macintosh right now. Apple very likely has another PowerPC Mac too. I'm worried too about Macintosh becoming iOS but I have more faith in Apple that this won't happen.
The kid in me is fascinated with living forever as an ever-evolving robot, much like Ray Kurzweil hopes. I want to believe that the universe is ever-expanding and that I will be able to witness the birth of stars; that someday, an advanced AI me (and indeed us all) will see an amazing future for humans and meet new races, or maybe just travel the world doing all the things I've wanted to do. It's a silly dream - I realize this, but then even learning that Gliese 581 g is too far away to ever reach within a generation, also made me sad. But, I suppose on the the upside, it's good that I can still romanticize space travel as bitter as I can get about everything else!
I miss the days when I got real installation media and driver disks that contained drivers for other operating systems I didn't even have, and I hated the 90's era of recovery discs that factory restored all that bloatware I deleted immediately, but Apple's way of handling media-free installation has made me a convert. I ruined my partition on my Macintosh. I booted, and when the computer couldn't find any usable partitions, it connected online and downloaded enough to make the machine bootable, and from there, downloaded the rest of the OS and installed. Of course, I saved the installation files to a new recovery partition as well as a USB and FireWire portable drive. I even have an emergency file system on a FireWire drive in case my internal drive ever dies. This is a smarter way of doing things. My worst case scenario is having no connection and no access to my backup drives. The fact is, people lose their installation discs all the time and the only option has been paying for replacement discs or hunting down files online on some horrible support site.
If installation media were ever to return, I hope it will be exclusively in the form of rewritable flash memory. I'll be blunt, read-only optical media is shit and has always been shit. If I buy boxed software, put it on flash media so I can transfer the contents to my larger mass storage and then reuse the flash drive like I did floppy diskettes.
Microsoft is marketing the Surface as something more than a tablet. It is a hybrid of tablet and ultra book, hence it is made for people like myself who really need more than what a tablet can do (I have an iPad) but don't really want to se a laptop unless I just happen to want to. This is why the keyboard cover is so much a part of the Surface "experience".
Because no third party app that translates Office formats or opens them does so with complete accuracy. If you depend on the more advanced features of MS Office (things other than text processing), then anything less than the real MS Office is a frustrating compromise.
Hmm. Does this mean Princess Leia is now a Disney princess?
Not every Cousin Nerd is truly knowledgeable on these things. He's just a little bit more savvy than Joe Sixpack because he's younger and follows trends better and is a l33t hax0r because he cleverly found a way to hack the firmware of the his phone by downloading an program off the Internet.
- Smoother performance (less an issue perhaps vs Jelly Bean)
- Good multitasking
- full MS Office (beyond Office 365 in a browser)
- XBox Live integration
- D3D development, Visual Basic too
- Higher likelihood of timely OS updates
- external storage
- freedom from iTunes
I can't argue for more and better software. Obviously there are some advantages to already having Windows programming experience in Direct 3D, C++, XAML, VB, etc. However, there's only a subset of .NET in RT, and there's no Win32 or XNA or anything else that would really unlock the potential of Surface RT. Surface Pro will have XNA and every other development system you could use under Windows 7. That is the clear winner over iPad for me, but I'm looking for a tablet now and RT is going to be a difficult sell when there's not even side loading unless you're enterprise.
They equated the two by using Sandusky as the example. They might as well have made a Hitler reference too. The goal was a psychological effect with some political consequences, planting the notion in the minds of people who don't understand climate science and who have no informed opinion either way on global warming, that Mann is somehow preserve, a danger to children and society at large, criminal. The person making this comparison is counting on the inability of readers to see two distinct situations and be able to separate them from each other when placed adjacent to one another. There are plenty of cases of institutional white washing in academia, industry, and government that would have made for a better 1:1 comparison. He could have used the classic Cantor's Dilemma as a literary device at a stretch. No, this was an attempt at character assassination.
I'm curious though whether there is a real case because the harm would be that notable, thinking, professionals and academicians might believe Mann committed fraud or even associate him with some deeply disturbing criminal behavior, but considering the source and the target audience, isn't this like if a Orly Taitz ran around challenging people's birth certificates whilst Alex Jones accused you of personally funding the development of weather controlling satellites that are operated by FEMA and Major League Baseball whilst simultaneously conducting research with Rosie O'Donnell to learn whether it is possible to harvest gold from the bone marrow of late term aborted babies. I'm just suggesting that not all defamation is legally actionable when you're dealing with accusers that aren't playing with all their Lego bricks.
That's pretty much everything the average Joe would care about, excepting the multi-user features.
Windows is a negative brand name to Macintosh and UNIX fans and that last group of Amiga holdouts, but overall, Windows is a pretty strong brand despite Microsoft's efforts to dilute it by slapping "Windows" on every web service they offer. People do have a choice: Macintosh, iOS/Android, Linux, UNIX. It's not 1995. Here's a reason to use a Windows tablet: you can run real Windows applications and games on it. I've used a Windows tablet already. Ignoring the horrible, but unavoidable form factor (laptop components, fans, heat dissipation, weight, etc), the value was there. If you don't like Android or iOS, or you just want to remain in the Windows ecosystem with the ability to reuse software, data formats, and platform programming skills (.NET, WPF, XNA, etc), then a WinRT based tablet can be very useful. As for Windows RT, I'm skeptical about that one. I don't think I would have made an ARM-based Windows platform because I don't believe consumers will understand to disassociate Windows RT with Windows proper. It seems like versus Windows RT, an Android or IOS based device would be a better choice because of the established software base. I plan on waiting for the full "Surface Pro" version. There's still a lot of specifics we don't know because Microsoft is keeping everything under wraps, including the fucking SDKs.
You're not entirely correct, but nor is the AC above you. First off, fan fiction is clearly derivative work under copyright law. "Harry Potter and the Mixed Blood Prince" could possibly allowed on sale under Fair Use as a parody. In Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin Co., "Wind Done Gone" was ultimately considered a critical parody of "Gone With the Wind", and its fair use claims could be defended point by point. But the case doesn't create solid precedent because fan fiction seems to be very case by case. If AC is merely retelling the same story, not doing something critically different or making critical commentary on the original, his Harry Potter could not sell. "50 Shades of Grey" is a popular derivative work. It began as Twilight fan fiction. The sadder tale is that the author plagiarized the fan fiction of other authors borrowing from other stories. 50 Shades author has developed a reputation for plagiarism in the fan-fic community. Yet, her novel is doing very well, and with the support of Twilight's author.
It's actually hard to tell whether one could get away with using existing characters. There's two standard tests at work: "Distinctly Delineated" and "Story Being Told". The latter seems to be really difficult even for judges to work through. The first is also difficult to apply. It says that the more developed a character is, the more protectable it is. Harry Potter would be. There's a long-standing series of novels as well as supplemental materials that flesh out Harry Potter. Anderson v. Stallone, about the character Rocky Balboa, says that in certain cases, very developed characters can be protected, which would mean using that character would not be legal. On top of the copyright issues, there are the trademark issues. Decades ago, Disney went after daycare centers that used Disney characters. You could not make a Tarzan story because Tarzan was copyright protected and trademark. Also, look at Charlie Aplin, which was ruled an unfair competition attempt to deceive moviegoers into believing they were see Charlie Chaplin. Basically, this is a mess, not because of the usual problems with copyright and trademark we complain about here, but because there's a lot of issue separating a fictional character from its original story since characters tend to develop over the course of the work or are so general that they can't really exist absent the work.
In exactly what ways is Facebook a technology platform leader that can be placed adjacent to Apple, Google, or Amazon. I'll buy Amazon. They have Kindle, but even without Kindle there's Amazon's web and cloud services, plus their supply chain management with all the technology that supports it, but Facebook? Facebook is still nothing more than a virtual platform that depends completely on existing platforms. Apple, Google, and Amazon can coexist independently in their own spaces. Facebook is a download, whether it's via browser to your personal computer or to your mobile device, it's still a download. Facebook does have its tech too. Something has made Zynga games successful and a seamless experience on Facebook, but Facebook has nothing that its competitors or its contemporaries lack except clicks. MySpace's luck with clicks and Facebook's constant stock devaluation illustrates just how easy it can be for Facebook to slip away. Microsoft has numerous platforms that interact with each other and is showing signs of realizing that today's market wants enterprise connectivity with consumer style, something Google and Apple have known. I would say that this "gang of four technology platform leaders" would best be described as a "gang of four attention leaders".
Nope. It'll still be there. No one can see it, but it's there and will come back the moment you log back in. The only way to win is not to play!
There isn't a reason for custom iOS ROMs as there is for custom Android ROMs. iOS doesn't come loaded with bloatware. I'd need that custom Android ROM just so I can cut the bloat that Motorola and Verizon added to stock Android, maybe even remove anything else the carrier added to handicap the phone. This is where Apple is superior as a company. It was the only company that could strong-arm the carriers to keep their grimy hands off the phone. I jailbroke my iPhone once. I don't recall being able to totally change the UI. I think the Android users still edge out when it comes to customization.