Not sure if you can come back to this, being an AC and all, but I used to be paid to write open-source software. You seem to think I come at this from the give-me angle but really I'm from the give-you angle.
Do you give the same rant to those who support the red-cross?
The whole point is so that you don't need to re-invent the wheel as much, because you can extend what you have been given instead. That any value any programmer gives to open source is available to all, not just the one company who paid the programmer. Less work to do is going to mean less jobs to do it.
Is this a bad thing? Hell No. Every time a job has been taken to benefit efficiency its gone hand in hand with higher quality of life across the board. Its bad for the individuals who don't or can't re-skill, but of benefit to society as a whole.
Quite frankly I feel that some of the software stack, from the core OS to the most common work programs, should be funded as open-source by governments. Its no different really than public roads. The government doesn't fund trucks, but it does fund the common infrastructure the trucks use. I don't think governments should fund games or media centers, but it would make sense to fund the OS and Office Suite.
I don't even see a sunflower or flower of any type.
* A white cartoon bubble with a green background for SMS
The sms icon isn't green and doesn't have a cartoon bubble.
* A calendar icon with a red bar on top, and black text showing the current day
Its green, and that said it looks like a day planner calendar. Yes, this is similar but at some point you have to say "What else would look like a calendar and fit on an icon?" If the answer is only two or three things patenting one of them is absurd.
* An envelope icon against a cloudy sky
well, envelopes for email existed long before the iPhone. I don't see clouds or sky either in the email icons.
* A notebook with a brown binding on top
I'll give you this one... but again how many ways can you represent a 'note pad'.
So all in all we have one copied icon out of your list. I don't think your claim this is about the icons has merit given what I've been able to find. Obviously if you have some other links I'd be keen to see them and review my position.
Re:Response from David Stone @ Qt
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Nokia Sells Qt
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I used to work at Trolltech, and one of the strengths (at least back in 2002-2005) was how close development was to support. When I started devs had to spend one day a week doing support. It meant you got direct feedback from the people who used your code about what was the major areas that needed fixing, and trust me, you need at least some of that to avoid becoming an ivory tower, feeding that even via one support person muddies the view. Even when dev no longer did support directly when I was there I still kept an eye on the longer email chains to see if I needed to be more directly involved, to the point of initiating a teleconference with a customer in one instance.
Now support isn't even in the same company.
Now I'm outside the company, and I find that even before this announcement some of the trickier support issues just get ignored. I can't give too many specifics as I'm working for a commercial project, but I've done maybe 60K AUD billed hours of work on Qt that hasn't gone back into Nokia and doesn't even give feedback onto why I needed to to so anymore just because of how ignored I found even the fixes I provided were treated. Thats patches for bugs folks.
Now support isn't even in the same company. Yes, worth repeating.
So explain how Digia can give "Top Service" when they have to themselves negotiate to get any fixes they do into Qt. When they by definition don't employ the people who are developing the current features. Sure, they can re-read the documentation... but thats only the support that gets you started, I wouldn't call that "Top Service".
The very fact that there is now an additional layer between Qt support and Qt Development is going to affect developing Qt. I can tell you though as an existing commercial licensee I do not find support a reason to renew my license with Digia, not in the slightest.
Other instance of gestures would be for the couch potato. Sure, you can't hold your shoulders up for an hour, but then on my couch I'm not about to control my video continuously. Sure, there are early issues with accuracy etc, but they can be solved.
The problem with gestures (up till now) is the lack of technology, AND the lack of research into how to use it well, which can't start meaningfully without the technology.
Actually I'd really like it for home theatre control. No more remotes.
I noticed a lot of specialists above. I've had a generalist say a mark was a birth-mark, because it also had extra hair. the specialist claimed it was an irritation because there wasn't extra hair. Guess what? a bit of white paper showed the generalist was right.
And I've been to a dentist that I'm pretty sure 'fixed' the wrong tooth. I didn't go back.
And then you have http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayant_Patel . You are right in that doctors still screw up, and some are more likely to screw up than others. However the licensing is still important so that when they do screw up consistently they can no longer be doctors. I hope you reported each case you mentioned to the relevant professional body.
With the computer system market, a lot of people buying a system need or want OS X
Hrm, you lost me right there. People want a BMW as well, so we better take 'want' out of that sentence straight up if you are trying to point out how Apple is different from BMW.
Who exactly needs OS X? Oh no, I need OS-X to do my tax? no, thats Windows. Um, business software, no Windows again. Latest Office software? That works on Windows. Games, yup windows again.
You see, I am a mac user. I'm typing this on a mac. And I've yet to come across OS-X being needed to do some important task.
I want a BMW, I want a Mac (the whole thing, not just OS-X). Would I prefer things unbundled. Probably. Is it anti-trust, certainly not. The only thing tying me to the software or the hardware is preference.
How do you quantify that I don't. I merely responded to a post claiming statistics saying one thing without references with the first references I found. I made a summary to save readers time.
Personally, I think the effect of gun-control on crime, and even deaths/injuries per capita is probably very, very small in either direction, other factors are much more important. But I live in Australia, and just as Americans probably don't like hearing that they are all gun-nuts, the great-grandparent post was equally offensive to Australians.
To round this out I've travelled a little of the world, as I'm sure a lot of posters here have. Gun laws have never figured into whether I felt safe. Street-lamps and street culture have though. Traffic regulations as well seem a significant factor, but perhaps not in the way you might first think.
But, that's another story. Of course there are always special situations, but, the part I was griping about was where a person could either speed up or slow down in order to merge right to let the line of 5-15 cars behind him pass. You can get some road rage when some asshole is driving side by side the person in the right lane holding traffic back.
If only thats what it took.
I was passing (yes, passing) a bunch of cars while going 5 over the limit. In about half a minute it would be safe for me to move over. In this half a minute the tailgater catches up with me, flashes his headlights etc. I pull to the slow lane after slowing him perhaps only 20 seconds of his life, and he swerves at me as he passes.
Yes, thats "using a motor vehicle to threaten another person's life (e.g. two more inches and it would have been an accident on a freeway) for slowing them for 20 seconds." And it was just that one car, not 10-15 behind me, just one, just the self righteous asshole who thought he owned the road, the agreed rules of the community he lived in be hanged.
I shouldn't have to drive more dangerously because someone wants to pass even faster than I am and can't hold it for 20 seconds. Although I agree tapping the breaks is worse. The rule is drive safe, don't drive less safely because of some asshat with their panties in a twist who thinks laws about speeding and tailgaiting don't apply to them.
Of note, U.S. is listed at four times the number of homicides per capita than Australia. The U.K is even lower. Brazil isn't listed, which I assume to mean it wasn't included in the study. And this is homicides, by knife, gun or otherwise. There is a whole separate graph for 'killed by guns'.
Note the source of the study as well. 1998 to 2000. The same time period you seem to claim you got your data from.
Feel free to link to your own study, be sure it lists definitions and sources for the data it uses.
The comment starting with 'um' refers to the fact that even ten years from now, my $59 HD-DVD player will still play my $10 HD-DVD movies. I think you would have to be either intentionally misreading the comment, or a pretty dim to think I meant I'd take working HD-DVD disks, rip them to bluray, then try and play burned bluray disks on the HD-DVD player when I still, by definition, have working HD-DVD discs.
I suppose you could assume I'd have just had them ripped the whole time and no longer have the HD-DVD discs, but then why burn them at all, I'd just play them via Myth off a data disc (hdd, or whatever burnable media is at the time).
This article is dead on and people are smart for doing this. Don't hate because someone knows a good thing when they see it. I just bought 10 HD DVD's for $50. And at a later point I will rip them onto my computer then burn them to a Blu-Ray disc.
And play them on what? They won't play on any BD player currently in existence, or likely in existence in the future (by design).
Um, my perfectly good $59 HD-DVD player.
Then there's the media. How cheap are you expecting dual-layer Blu-Ray discs to be? Go look up the price of a dual-layer recordable DVD. And those have been out for five years or so. Right now, single layer Blu-Ray recordable discs are about $10 each. They'll come down eventually, but it will take a while, as it did with DVD.
Yes, I can wait. I remember DVD, or rather I remember paying the premium to get into DVD early. This time I'm into high-definition earlyish, but for a mere fraction of the cost. I bought a few classics at a pittance. What are DVD media going for these days? $1? thats when I'll burn them over. As long as my HD-DVD player doesn't explode before then (and my DVD player made it that long just fine, no reason the new tech wont) I'm in HD land cheap.
HD-DVD proponents really need to just let this whole thing go.
I'm not a HD-DVD proponent. I'm a cheap Hi Def movie proponent. HD-DVD in many cases is less than the cost of DVD at the moment. For instance I'm getting Heroes season one at a fraction of what I've seen the DVD version go for. So I can either trust the laser that works now will work in five or ten years, and get really cheap HD now, or I can wait for BR to finish coming in and switch then. I'll have cheap HD now, not Cheap HD in a few years time.
When I will switch to BluRay is when there are more BluRay titles at my local video store than DVDs.
The main thing the parent needs to get here is this isn't about pushing the HD-DVD format. Its about accepting that BluRay won, and getting stuff as cheaply as possible now. That space for my HD-DVD player isn't costing me anything in rent. Nor have I leased the HD-DVD titles. And they don't have a built in self-destruct.
Think of all the people who spent thier hard earned money on an HD DVD player that is going to now become an expensive paperweight
I am, thats why I bought my player after the war was over. Specifically I bought a HD-DVD player after the latest round of price drops. I'm kinda hoping all those early adopters ditch their hd-dvd collections cheap on ebay, but even if they don't I got my player cheap enough that I don't really care if my movie collection ends up being say, four movies on HD-DVD.
Technology can be used to solve social problems as well.
No it can't. Anyone who thinks otherwise is naive.
Um, really? Thats a rather blanket statement. I'm sure technology can solve some social problems. I'm suspect secure doors help reduce crime. Its possible breath-tests help reduce drink driving.
In this case though, technology does solve some of the problems to do with bad email usage.
If you email box is flooded by people who reply all, simply have a folder that only includes messages sent to you and you alone. or even for when you are in the 'to' field but not the cc's. You now have every message where people replied to you rather than just replied.
Got people not cleaning up their messages? block quoting done by mail clients is recognizable. It could easily be made to collapse.
Running out of harddrive space due to the two above? How are bigger hard-drives not technology solutions?
I can't speak for crime or bad driving. But I know for a fact that good use of technology has solved the issue of bad email etiquette, at least for my own inbox.
There are no buses or trains or any other mass transit anywhere near where I live and commute from. Give me the mass transit before you start charging me for not using it (and acting holier than thou.)
Whoa, speaking of holier-than-thou... Why can't you carpool? Why can't you move closer to your job?
Well, I can't speak for the GP, but some can't carepool due to a non-strict 9-5 working hours. Or perhaps not access to a carpool. And some can't move closer to their job, because their job is in a very expensive area to live and they have a family to support. Something that gets harder if they are slugged by higher tolls. I don't know, but then neither does the parent, I'm just not assuming its because of one specific reason: that they don't care about the environment.
When I lived on a public transport corridor I'd take the bus even if it was faster to drive. It was marginally cheaper on the bus, but more importantly, it was a nice bus. It was a stress free trip where I could tune out.
Now I live no where near any good public transport (yet, 2009 hopefully it will 'extend' out here). I have two roads into work. I choose to take the one that is tolled, and avoid congestion.
But here is the important point. I realize that in both cases, I was in a position to make that choice. In the first case I could afford to live in an area with good public transport. In the second case I can afford the tolls. If I assumed everyone was able to make the choice but didn't because they didn't care, thats "Holier than thou". Thats assuming that you are better than other people, rather than just in a better position to choose.
I pay higher tolls in the name of less congestion. And I take busses and trains when it doesn't double my trip time. And I say that its my choice to make because I can make it. Not because I'm one of the select few who choose to make it, that the rest somehow need to be charged more to get them to redeem themselves and change their wicked ways.
"the bug was triggered by a feature of another product as it did something it was expected to do"
My manager isn't going to assume I'm shifting blame onto the other product. There is a *huge* difference between "triggered by" and "caused by", especially when referring to software bugs. Never mind that you used an incomplete quote. The only time they talk about something being the cause is when they talk about their own code
"this event revealed a previously unseen software bug within the network resource allocation algorithm"
Skype could hardly explain the bug would only occur if there was a large number of logins in a short period of time without explaining why that might have happened in the specific instance. Given that, I think they stated it as well as should be expected.
If I said "I allowed the fire" I might be accused of arson. If I say "I allowed the fire-truck to pass me" I'm doing the right thing. The whole article, when read as a whole, does not say "Skype Blames Microsoft Patch Tuesday for Outage"
Interesting. I on the other hand got above my typing speed on my phone of the last three years within oh, half a second.
However I was testing to see how fast and good it was, not learning to use it. I was literally trying to make it screw up by being as careless as possible. Accuracy of about 95% at a guess.
Of course I might not have that fat fingers... but I've used a similar keyboard on about two thirds the screen width with similar results so I don't think thats it.
IMO it's about time ppl had to take responsibility for their system. Why on earth should a bank take a loss when it was your fault?
Nice in theory, but that isn't what the article was about. It was about the bank snooping on my home PC. And given their criteria they would have rejected my old XP machine. A machine that was live, on the net for three years, no re-installs. One day a particularly convincing news story convinced me that I was at risk, so I went and installed anti-virus software..... and found no malware, no viruses. Norten, up to date signatures. Then had the anti-virus software make my PC experience terrible enough that the Apple Switch ads came to mind.
Personally I find most anti-malware and anti-virus software can cause more harm to the computer than the virus and malware causes in the first place. I find if you just are sensible about your internet habits and use a real firewall your risk is minimal anyway, so why should I have to take a loss on performance when it isn't my fault? Of course I'm on a MacBook pro now, for other reasons, but it means that the Snooping Bank very much would prevent me access.
As for this decreasing the possible incident of fraud, it is BS. The National Australia Bank have a much better solution than peeking on the users machine, they found a way of introducing mobile phones to aid the security solution, so even if there is a key-logger on my machine they won't get enough information to be able to get into my account with out also intercepting my sms messages. And since you can receive text messages on home phones as well here now anyone with an internet connection can benefit. Another bank (sorry, can't bring the name to mind) has another effective solution. Auditing the users machine is not an effective solution.
Except my iPod was $250 and my phone was $35. The iPod is a 30GB video model which makes this iPhone look like crap. So, I've got an iPod video and a phone for under $300 compared to the $600 price tag of the iPhone. SUCK!
1: My definition of a phone costs more than $35, although not necessarily as much as $350 (600-250), which leads to.... 2: I'm actually happy to pay extra for one device to carry around instead of two.
The 30GB of course is a fairly good point, but it isn't relevant to my position. You see iTunes makes it really easy to pick what you sync to the iPod and I only listen to at most 2GB of music in any one month anyway. As long as I can fit say, three albums and a full length movie on it, I'm happy. Since you are a video iPod user you should be able to work out whether thats possible. I'm happy for you if you like your 30GB video model, but really it isn't a factor in what I want.
Thats enough for me to want it, even with the low storage size. The rest is sugar. The problem is that I'm in Australia and haven't heard hide nor hair of any plans to release the iPhone here. My current plan is to hope they release an unlocked, no plans one somewhere and just import it.
Two batteries? 5 megapixel camera? oled + ClearVision display? After reading through the 'perfect phone' I started wondering how much cash the perfect customer has.
Of course I'll also repeat what many other people have said. There is no perfect phone - especially once you take price into account. For instance, if all you do is make calls and you have poor eyesight, the F3 is great, the N95 terrible and over priced. Although if you want GPS, play movies, wifi etc, the F3 won't suite at all.
There are a few different markets in the phone segment, a perfect phone has to cater for them individually.
Budget buyers, Technophiles, music lovers, business users, rugged use, and some I probably didn't think of in the few seconds I devoted to the task.
Sometimes there is some overlap. But the variety of markets is why each manufacturer makes multiple phones.
Now my perfect phone would be a clamshell, ClearVision/e-ink outside display, hi-res lcd inside display, microSD card, bluetooth. I'm biased on the software so I'll skip describing that.
Its a matter of what is important. If someone is invading my house, yes, I would want to stop them. If they are leaving I wouldn't want to stop them, there are things more valuable to me than what they can sell. Does that mean I condone them taking my stuff? Hell no. But it does mean I put their ability to breath for the next fifty years above the PS3 under their arm, and I put my safety and that of my family and neighbors high enough not to prolong or escalate the situation.
You call it "rush to defend scum", I call it defending the paper boy you didn't see coming up the street that you (might have) shot by accident while aiming at a criminal no longer threatening you.
Of course I prefer to live in a country where I don't have to worry about my neighbor shooting at fleeing criminals. You would be arrested for merely owning the hand gun, and I voted for that. Between you and me that makes the GP post the middle ground. Don't get me wrong, Texas can have those laws if it wants, just don't ask me to live there. I'm sure the criminals know those laws too and act accordingly.
Slashdot Mirror
People want to be in control. They just want that control to conform to their natural skill sets, not new obscure skill sets.
Welcome to Siri. I'm still seriously surprised by some of the questions it can actually handle.
Not sure if you can come back to this, being an AC and all, but I used to be paid to write open-source software. You seem to think I come at this from the give-me angle but really I'm from the give-you angle.
Do you give the same rant to those who support the red-cross?
... is to cost IT jobs.
The whole point is so that you don't need to re-invent the wheel as much, because you can extend what you have been given instead. That any value any programmer gives to open source is available to all, not just the one company who paid the programmer. Less work to do is going to mean less jobs to do it.
Is this a bad thing? Hell No. Every time a job has been taken to benefit efficiency its gone hand in hand with higher quality of life across the board. Its bad for the individuals who don't or can't re-skill, but of benefit to society as a whole.
Quite frankly I feel that some of the software stack, from the core OS to the most common work programs, should be funded as open-source by governments. Its no different really than public roads. The government doesn't fund trucks, but it does fund the common infrastructure the trucks use. I don't think governments should fund games or media centers, but it would make sense to fund the OS and Office Suite.
I think you may need to provide some links to back the idea its about the icons as well. I'm looking at
http://allthingsd.com/20110418/apple-files-patent-suit-against-samsung-over-galaxy-line-of-phones-and-tablets/
more specifically the screenshot
http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/files/2011/04/apple-v.-samsung-2.png
* A sunflower for the 'photos' app
I don't even see a sunflower or flower of any type.
* A white cartoon bubble with a green background for SMS
The sms icon isn't green and doesn't have a cartoon bubble.
* A calendar icon with a red bar on top, and black text showing the current day
Its green, and that said it looks like a day planner calendar. Yes, this is similar but at some point you have to say "What else would look like a calendar and fit on an icon?" If the answer is only two or three things patenting one of them is absurd.
* An envelope icon against a cloudy sky
well, envelopes for email existed long before the iPhone. I don't see clouds or sky either in the email icons.
* A notebook with a brown binding on top
I'll give you this one... but again how many ways can you represent a 'note pad'.
So all in all we have one copied icon out of your list. I don't think your claim this is about the icons has merit given what I've been able to find. Obviously if you have some other links I'd be keen to see them and review my position.
I used to work at Trolltech, and one of the strengths (at least back in 2002-2005) was how close development was to support. When I started devs had to spend one day a week doing support. It meant you got direct feedback from the people who used your code about what was the major areas that needed fixing, and trust me, you need at least some of that to avoid becoming an ivory tower, feeding that even via one support person muddies the view. Even when dev no longer did support directly when I was there I still kept an eye on the longer email chains to see if I needed to be more directly involved, to the point of initiating a teleconference with a customer in one instance.
Now support isn't even in the same company.
Now I'm outside the company, and I find that even before this announcement some of the trickier support issues just get ignored. I can't give too many specifics as I'm working for a commercial project, but I've done maybe 60K AUD billed hours of work on Qt that hasn't gone back into Nokia and doesn't even give feedback onto why I needed to to so anymore just because of how ignored I found even the fixes I provided were treated. Thats patches for bugs folks.
Now support isn't even in the same company. Yes, worth repeating.
So explain how Digia can give "Top Service" when they have to themselves negotiate to get any fixes they do into Qt. When they by definition don't employ the people who are developing the current features. Sure, they can re-read the documentation... but thats only the support that gets you started, I wouldn't call that "Top Service".
The very fact that there is now an additional layer between Qt support and Qt Development is going to affect developing Qt. I can tell you though as an existing commercial licensee I do not find support a reason to renew my license with Digia, not in the slightest.
If that is the test, than I as a non-American just got 70%.
The parent is insightful post.
Other instance of gestures would be for the couch potato. Sure, you can't hold your shoulders up for an hour, but then on my couch I'm not about to control my video continuously. Sure, there are early issues with accuracy etc, but they can be solved.
The problem with gestures (up till now) is the lack of technology, AND the lack of research into how to use it well, which can't start meaningfully without the technology.
Actually I'd really like it for home theatre control. No more remotes.
I noticed a lot of specialists above. I've had a generalist say a mark was a birth-mark, because it also had extra hair. the specialist claimed it was an irritation because there wasn't extra hair. Guess what? a bit of white paper showed the generalist was right.
And I've been to a dentist that I'm pretty sure 'fixed' the wrong tooth. I didn't go back.
And then you have http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayant_Patel .
You are right in that doctors still screw up, and some are more likely to screw up than others. However the licensing is still important so that when they do screw up consistently they can no longer be doctors. I hope you reported each case you mentioned to the relevant professional body.
With the computer system market, a lot of people buying a system need or want OS X
Hrm, you lost me right there. People want a BMW as well, so we better take 'want' out of that sentence straight up if you are trying to point out how Apple is different from BMW.
Who exactly needs OS X? Oh no, I need OS-X to do my tax? no, thats Windows. Um, business software, no Windows again. Latest Office software? That works on Windows. Games, yup windows again.
You see, I am a mac user. I'm typing this on a mac. And I've yet to come across OS-X being needed to do some important task.
I want a BMW, I want a Mac (the whole thing, not just OS-X). Would I prefer things unbundled. Probably. Is it anti-trust, certainly not. The only thing tying me to the software or the hardware is preference.
Now iTunes on the other hand....
Personally, I think the effect of gun-control on crime, and even deaths/injuries per capita is probably very, very small in either direction, other factors are much more important. But I live in Australia, and just as Americans probably don't like hearing that they are all gun-nuts, the great-grandparent post was equally offensive to Australians.
To round this out I've travelled a little of the world, as I'm sure a lot of posters here have. Gun laws have never figured into whether I felt safe. Street-lamps and street culture have though. Traffic regulations as well seem a significant factor, but perhaps not in the way you might first think.
If only thats what it took.But, that's another story. Of course there are always special situations, but, the part I was griping about was where a person could either speed up or slow down in order to merge right to let the line of 5-15 cars behind him pass. You can get some road rage when some asshole is driving side by side the person in the right lane holding traffic back.
I was passing (yes, passing) a bunch of cars while going 5 over the limit. In about half a minute it would be safe for me to move over. In this half a minute the tailgater catches up with me, flashes his headlights etc. I pull to the slow lane after slowing him perhaps only 20 seconds of his life, and he swerves at me as he passes.
Yes, thats "using a motor vehicle to threaten another person's life (e.g. two more inches and it would have been an accident on a freeway) for slowing them for 20 seconds." And it was just that one car, not 10-15 behind me, just one, just the self righteous asshole who thought he owned the road, the agreed rules of the community he lived in be hanged.
I shouldn't have to drive more dangerously because someone wants to pass even faster than I am and can't hold it for 20 seconds. Although I agree tapping the breaks is worse. The rule is drive safe, don't drive less safely because of some asshat with their panties in a twist who thinks laws about speeding and tailgaiting don't apply to them.
Searched for "homicide rates per capita per country"
got
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita
Of note, U.S. is listed at four times the number of homicides per capita than Australia. The U.K is even lower. Brazil isn't listed, which I assume to mean it wasn't included in the study. And this is homicides, by knife, gun or otherwise. There is a whole separate graph for 'killed by guns'.
Note the source of the study as well. 1998 to 2000. The same time period you seem to claim you got your data from.
Feel free to link to your own study, be sure it lists definitions and sources for the data it uses.
Have you looked at SQLite?
C based, no client-server. Very small, quite fast. And a very permissive license.
The comment starting with 'um' refers to the fact that even ten years from now, my $59 HD-DVD player will still play my $10 HD-DVD movies. I think you would have to be either intentionally misreading the comment, or a pretty dim to think I meant I'd take working HD-DVD disks, rip them to bluray, then try and play burned bluray disks on the HD-DVD player when I still, by definition, have working HD-DVD discs.
I suppose you could assume I'd have just had them ripped the whole time and no longer have the HD-DVD discs, but then why burn them at all, I'd just play them via Myth off a data disc (hdd, or whatever burnable media is at the time).
Um, my perfectly good $59 HD-DVD player.
Yes, I can wait. I remember DVD, or rather I remember paying the premium to get into DVD early. This time I'm into high-definition earlyish, but for a mere fraction of the cost. I bought a few classics at a pittance. What are DVD media going for these days? $1? thats when I'll burn them over. As long as my HD-DVD player doesn't explode before then (and my DVD player made it that long just fine, no reason the new tech wont) I'm in HD land cheap.
I'm not a HD-DVD proponent. I'm a cheap Hi Def movie proponent. HD-DVD in many cases is less than the cost of DVD at the moment. For instance I'm getting Heroes season one at a fraction of what I've seen the DVD version go for. So I can either trust the laser that works now will work in five or ten years, and get really cheap HD now, or I can wait for BR to finish coming in and switch then. I'll have cheap HD now, not Cheap HD in a few years time.
When I will switch to BluRay is when there are more BluRay titles at my local video store than DVDs.
The main thing the parent needs to get here is this isn't about pushing the HD-DVD format. Its about accepting that BluRay won, and getting stuff as cheaply as possible now. That space for my HD-DVD player isn't costing me anything in rent. Nor have I leased the HD-DVD titles. And they don't have a built in self-destruct.
Think of all the people who spent thier hard earned money on an HD DVD player that is going to now become an expensive paperweight
I am, thats why I bought my player after the war was over. Specifically I bought a HD-DVD player after the latest round of price drops. I'm kinda hoping all those early adopters ditch their hd-dvd collections cheap on ebay, but even if they don't I got my player cheap enough that I don't really care if my movie collection ends up being say, four movies on HD-DVD.
Um, really? Thats a rather blanket statement. I'm sure technology can solve some social problems. I'm suspect secure doors help reduce crime. Its possible breath-tests help reduce drink driving.
In this case though, technology does solve some of the problems to do with bad email usage.
If you email box is flooded by people who reply all, simply have a folder that only includes messages sent to you and you alone. or even for when you are in the 'to' field but not the cc's. You now have every message where people replied to you rather than just replied.
Got people not cleaning up their messages? block quoting done by mail clients is recognizable. It could easily be made to collapse.
Running out of harddrive space due to the two above? How are bigger hard-drives not technology solutions?
I can't speak for crime or bad driving. But I know for a fact that good use of technology has solved the issue of bad email etiquette, at least for my own inbox.
Well, I can't speak for the GP, but some can't carepool due to a non-strict 9-5 working hours. Or perhaps not access to a carpool. And some can't move closer to their job, because their job is in a very expensive area to live and they have a family to support. Something that gets harder if they are slugged by higher tolls. I don't know, but then neither does the parent, I'm just not assuming its because of one specific reason: that they don't care about the environment.
When I lived on a public transport corridor I'd take the bus even if it was faster to drive. It was marginally cheaper on the bus, but more importantly, it was a nice bus. It was a stress free trip where I could tune out.
Now I live no where near any good public transport (yet, 2009 hopefully it will 'extend' out here). I have two roads into work. I choose to take the one that is tolled, and avoid congestion.
But here is the important point. I realize that in both cases, I was in a position to make that choice. In the first case I could afford to live in an area with good public transport. In the second case I can afford the tolls. If I assumed everyone was able to make the choice but didn't because they didn't care, thats "Holier than thou". Thats assuming that you are better than other people, rather than just in a better position to choose.
I pay higher tolls in the name of less congestion. And I take busses and trains when it doesn't double my trip time. And I say that its my choice to make because I can make it. Not because I'm one of the select few who choose to make it, that the rest somehow need to be charged more to get them to redeem themselves and change their wicked ways.
If I tell my manager
"the bug was triggered by a feature of another product as it did something it was expected to do"
My manager isn't going to assume I'm shifting blame onto the other product. There is a *huge* difference between "triggered by" and "caused by", especially when referring to software bugs. Never mind that you used an incomplete quote. The only time they talk about something being the cause is when they talk about their own code
"this event revealed a previously unseen software bug within the network resource allocation algorithm"
Skype could hardly explain the bug would only occur if there was a large number of logins in a short period of time without explaining why that might have happened in the specific instance. Given that, I think they stated it as well as should be expected.
If I said "I allowed the fire" I might be accused of arson. If I say "I allowed the fire-truck to pass me" I'm doing the right thing. The whole article, when read as a whole, does not say "Skype Blames Microsoft Patch Tuesday for Outage"
Interesting. I on the other hand got above my typing speed on my phone of the last three years within oh, half a second.
However I was testing to see how fast and good it was, not learning to use it. I was literally trying to make it screw up by being as careless as possible. Accuracy of about 95% at a guess.
Of course I might not have that fat fingers... but I've used a similar keyboard on about two thirds the screen width with similar results so I don't think thats it.
Nice in theory, but that isn't what the article was about. It was about the bank snooping on my home PC. And given their criteria they would have rejected my old XP machine. A machine that was live, on the net for three years, no re-installs. One day a particularly convincing news story convinced me that I was at risk, so I went and installed anti-virus software..... and found no malware, no viruses. Norten, up to date signatures. Then had the anti-virus software make my PC experience terrible enough that the Apple Switch ads came to mind.
Personally I find most anti-malware and anti-virus software can cause more harm to the computer than the virus and malware causes in the first place. I find if you just are sensible about your internet habits and use a real firewall your risk is minimal anyway, so why should I have to take a loss on performance when it isn't my fault? Of course I'm on a MacBook pro now, for other reasons, but it means that the Snooping Bank very much would prevent me access.
As for this decreasing the possible incident of fraud, it is BS. The National Australia Bank have a much better solution than peeking on the users machine, they found a way of introducing mobile phones to aid the security solution, so even if there is a key-logger on my machine they won't get enough information to be able to get into my account with out also intercepting my sms messages. And since you can receive text messages on home phones as well here now anyone with an internet connection can benefit. Another bank (sorry, can't bring the name to mind) has another effective solution. Auditing the users machine is not an effective solution.
1: My definition of a phone costs more than $35, although not necessarily as much as $350 (600-250), which leads to....
2: I'm actually happy to pay extra for one device to carry around instead of two.
The 30GB of course is a fairly good point, but it isn't relevant to my position. You see iTunes makes it really easy to pick what you sync to the iPod and I only listen to at most 2GB of music in any one month anyway. As long as I can fit say, three albums and a full length movie on it, I'm happy. Since you are a video iPod user you should be able to work out whether thats possible. I'm happy for you if you like your 30GB video model, but really it isn't a factor in what I want.
iPod + Phone
Thats enough for me to want it, even with the low storage size. The rest is sugar. The problem is that I'm in Australia and haven't heard hide nor hair of any plans to release the iPhone here. My current plan is to hope they release an unlocked, no plans one somewhere and just import it.
Two batteries? 5 megapixel camera? oled + ClearVision display? After reading through the 'perfect phone' I started wondering how much cash the perfect customer has.
Of course I'll also repeat what many other people have said. There is no perfect phone - especially once you take price into account. For instance, if all you do is make calls and you have poor eyesight, the F3 is great, the N95 terrible and over priced. Although if you want GPS, play movies, wifi etc, the F3 won't suite at all.
There are a few different markets in the phone segment, a perfect phone has to cater for them individually.
Budget buyers, Technophiles, music lovers, business users, rugged use, and some I probably didn't think of in the few seconds I devoted to the task.
Sometimes there is some overlap. But the variety of markets is why each manufacturer makes multiple phones.
Now my perfect phone would be a clamshell, ClearVision/e-ink outside display, hi-res lcd inside display, microSD card, bluetooth. I'm biased on the software so I'll skip describing that.
Its a matter of what is important. If someone is invading my house, yes, I would want to stop them. If they are leaving I wouldn't want to stop them, there are things more valuable to me than what they can sell. Does that mean I condone them taking my stuff? Hell no. But it does mean I put their ability to breath for the next fifty years above the PS3 under their arm, and I put my safety and that of my family and neighbors high enough not to prolong or escalate the situation.
You call it "rush to defend scum", I call it defending the paper boy you didn't see coming up the street that you (might have) shot by accident while aiming at a criminal no longer threatening you.
Of course I prefer to live in a country where I don't have to worry about my neighbor shooting at fleeing criminals. You would be arrested for merely owning the hand gun, and I voted for that. Between you and me that makes the GP post the middle ground. Don't get me wrong, Texas can have those laws if it wants, just don't ask me to live there. I'm sure the criminals know those laws too and act accordingly.