RAID array and NFS, a Lustre, etc depending on need, but a network share!...and if you need more encryption and even admins cant have access to data, have your users store true-crypt drives on the network. Sneakernet is, in the end, far more insecure!
The $199 price quoted in TFA is only after you agree to a ~$2000 contract
Except that's whargarbl in the other direction, it's only 2k if you count the basic phone plan, but by this point pretty much any consumer buying an iphone is either switching from some other form of cell phone or would probably at least get a basic cell phone if they didn't end up with a smart phone of some kind. Thus, at $25/mo for the iphone data plan, the phone counting contract is $199 + (2yrs*12mo/yr*$25/mo)=$199+$600=$800.
*used* to be simple. Now, with wireless prevalent, and employees own devices on the network...
I'm spending the summer working at a DOE lab, and the wireless network allows google SSL (at least gmail and gcal) traffic. everything *does* go through a proxy, but without control of my laptop they wouldnt be able to sign duplicate certs and pass them along like they theoretically would with my lab-provided workstation.
IPV6 is still an *IP* address, not the Media Access Control address, the hardware address for your NIC. That said, while a MAC address *is* theoretically unique to a NIC, it can easily be spoofed. However dont confuse it with IPV6
I agree, a link to something like this or or this all of which came from a quick google and give some basic info on mpeg 7 and mention some content ID tech would be helpful as a real source of *something* on this new standard (that I just heard of today)! Damn it editors, do your jobs!
You ignoring one absolutely crucial option, ease of use! Anyone can pick it up and use it, in 5 seconds, it's drop dead simple.
Heh. It's the year 2010, who doesn't know how to use a computer by now? Infants?
But in any case, the iPad has no ease of use advantage over the less expensive, more convenient iPhone, or over competing tablets.
If any comment convinced me you're looking at it with blinders on, this is it. There are *lots* of people who don't know how to use a computer, and lots more that are *barely* computer literate. You, posting on/., are not a good yardstick. If you don't believe me, walk into a senior center, or a college helpdesk on move-in day, or, help me, a biology research lab. I've had plenty of users who don't know much about how to use their machines, and really don't want to.
factor in service and the smartphone isnt less
It is if you're getting 3G service for the iPad too. If not, then you should be comparing it to something like the iPod Touch - the 64 GB iPod Touch is over $100 less than the 16 GB iPad.
Except the ipod touch has a *much* smaller (and non-IPS lower quality) screen, a slower processor, and less memory. The iPad is more powerful and if you're browsing the web for a long period of time much nicer. Look, I love my iPod touch, but it's a nice pocket computer/PDA, not a living-room web device. Why can't you understand that a larger, IPS screen alone is going to push the price up?
and honestly, in terms of price, unless you spend your days popping onto slickdeals and waiting for sales and the like, a netbook and the ipad cost about the same
Have you not looked at prices lately? I went to bestbuy.com and with literally two clicks, I found 18 netbooks for under $300. The iPad starts at $500.
Fair enough, though the *really* cheap netbooks are slow, annoying to use on the web, ugly and un-aesthetic enough to not appeal nicely.
It's just barely cheap enough to be an expensive impulse buy
At $500? Maybe if you work on Wall Street.
And yet people buy many more expensive things as impulse buys all the time. For that matter, an xbox or a ps3 near launch.....
And yes, it's also aesthetic enough to leave in your living room.
Take a look at some of those sub-$300 netbooks - they look just as slick. You don't have to buy Apple products to get attractive design anymore.
I havent really seen many cheap laptops that rival the looks and design. sure, once you get above 500... Also, the screens alone often make them look poor in comparison, show me a netbook with an IPS display...
I'd say it's more like arguing that your freezer at home costs more, does less, and is less convenient than other home freezers: that every requirement you have for a freezer would have been filled better by buying a different model.
You ignoring one absolutely crucial option, ease of use! Anyone can pick it up and use it, in 5 seconds, it's drop dead simple. If Apple is good at anything it's UI. Their UIs may be frustrating to the tech crowd because they arent as customizable as others, dont offer as many easy to access advanced settings... but that's not apple's target audience. Apple is very very good at making UIs that the average person can Just Use.
A smartphone is an appliance too, but it fits in your pocket, doesn't tire your wrists out from holding it up, and costs less than an iPad. Even a netbook can be dumbed down into an appliance, if that's what you want.
factor in service and the smartphone isnt less, and the key part about netbooks is "can be", people dont want "can be", they want "is".
and honestly, in terms of price, unless you spend your days popping onto slickdeals and waiting for sales and the like, a netbook and the ipad cost about the same
When the novelty wears off, what'll be left is a device that combines the disadvantages of a smartphone with the disadvantages of a laptop, and few of the advantages of either.
That's your opinion, and one I happen to disagree with. The iPad is hitting a different niche than what normal laptops and smart phones are aimed at. It's just barely cheap enough to be an expensive impulse buy, easily and intuitively usable for most people, and very good for the kind of quick internet and email tasks people want to do on a bigger screen than their smartphone but dont want to go hop onto their comp for.
And yes, it's also aesthetic enough to leave in your living room. If you don't think that's important....
Look, when my parents got FiOS the woman doing the install came in, looked around, and asked where my father wanted the ONT (it's a largeish, wall mounted, beige box). I was home and I and my father both shrugged, pointed to a section of bare wall near the door, and said, "how about there?". After all, it's the connection that's important, and the quicker the box gets mounted to the wall the quicker it is to 25/25 internet!
The tech took one look, turned back to my father, and goes "sir, are you married?". My father said yes, and the tech replied "then there is no way in hell your wife is going to want that there, you'll be sleeping on the couch tonight and I dont want that on my conscience... how about in the front closet?"
Needless to say when my mother came home she was very happy to find the largeish beige telecom box *not* in plain view of the door.
Geeks often dont care about aesthetics in our tech, but most people do.
and yet, somehow, 1 million people and counting disagree with you... Could it be, perhaps, that you are not the target market!?
I'm not either, and my mother (professor), father (comp programmer, on/., probably lurking on this thread somewhere), and little sister (she's starting college in the fall, 'nuff said) all need full laptops. For my girlfriend's mother on the hand (who doesnt do more than look at FB and youtube and answer a few emails every so often), or my grandmother (same as g/fs mother)... the iPad is pretty much perfect. It's an appliance that has just enough ability to be turned into something else to keep the "geek toy" crowd happy too, that's what you're missing.
It's like arguing that my freezer (no, you dont get a car analogy!) at home doesnt work like a commercial, programmable, walk-in unit. It's inferior to the business version, sure, but it eats less power and I dont *need* a zoned, programmable, walk in freezer!
I have a *jar* of 512-1gb flash drives (with some larger, up to 16gb right now) sitting on my desk. I get them at conferences and events, I havent paid for a USB drive in years. That's pretty cheap to me, and yes, sometimes I do just give them to people with files on them~
I actually googled then copypasta'd the quote, don't blame me for the missing comma (I s'pose I could have fixed it, I really wasn't invested enough in the post to though:-p).
Highlights from those links include kidney dialysis, CAT scans, various types of insulation, efficient water purification tech, cordless tools, modern designs of microchips, satellite tech (you know, it deleives a great deal of your communications....), scratch resistant lenses... And there's a *lot* more, a great deal of modern tech comes from NASA is one way or another.
Even if you have a problem with exploration and a search for knowledge and understanding of the universe, you have to admit the space program and its SCIENCE have yielded *massive* results on earth in technology. I'm also pretty sure there were luddites like you when the first ships were being built, the first submarines, the first plans, hell, the first time someone said "I'm going to wander 50 miles that way and see what's there".
Beijing Metro:
147 Stations, 142 miles of track (no idea how much of that is revenue track), 39 years old. BTW, even when all of the new lines under construction are completed they will only bring the totals to ~280miles of track and 301 stations.
NY Subway:
468 stations, 656 miles of revenue track (842 miles of total track), the underground portion dates back 106 years, the oldest structural component of the system is 125 years old and some of the rights of ways are older still.
Comparing the 2 in terms of line expansion is like comparing IBM and some tech startup and exclaiming how IBM is screwed because the tech startup had 100% growth in the previous and IBM had 1%.
The NYC subway is a much older, more mature system, additions are not going to happen at the same pace as a newer, younger, significantly smaller system.
BTW, dictatorial policies aside, I'll also point out that the beijing metro closes at night and the subway doesnt, which probably makes construction easier.
Public services don't always have to make a profit directly, or even necessarily fiscally justify themselves you know.
The 2nd ave line will be part of the subway, with the same price as the rest of the subway. Even if, at the subway fare, the line never pays for itself (doubtful considering the system, at over 100 years old now, is built with long-term in mind), it will give a cheap ride to a lot of people who can't afford a taxi. In this city the subway is the primary way people commute.
It's almost a completely perfect example of taxes being used for public gain, of proper government spending of capital too large and unprofitable for the private sector and too important to not be done (even if you disagree about the usefulness of this particular line I hope you get my point).
How do you explain the recent Steam server outage that left games lists blank, and the offline option broken?
Any way you spin it, that's DRM keeping you from playing your games offline.
from what I can see from the rest of this thread, it was a technical glitch that, yes, involved DRM, but was rare, did not effect that many people, was not intentional, and is not likely to happen again. It seems if there is spinning, it's that *you're* spinning this as doom and gloom.
It sucks you had a bad experience, but it's not indicative of the overall experience most people (including myself) seem to have with Steam. The vitriol you're spewing about it makes me wonder if you have another axe to grind as well.
Very much not true, I have used steam and the games I have installed through it on my laptop with no web connection, coming from a cold boot. I suggest you go try it. Steam requires you to be online to activate the games - once per game, when you *first* play it. After that you can play offline with impunity.
While it certainly doesnt apply to a smaller, less vendor-sponsored conference like pycon, Supercomputing's SCinet is always a rather impressive feat. The wireless reception off the main conference floor this past year sucked on 2.4 (I dont know if it was the fault of the convention center's construction plus maybe policies that limited router placement or something), but if you had a device that could do 5 (like most people at the conference), you were golden. Speeds were quite good too, and SCinet handles a *lot* of traffic.
Funny... My 12 year old Dual 1Ghz processor Powermac (Quicksilver) is running OS X 10.6
Not possible, unless you work in Apple's OS dev labs. The releases of 10.6, both dev and general consumer dropped PPC support...
Slashdot Mirror
RAID array and NFS, a Lustre, etc depending on need, but a network share! ...and if you need more encryption and even admins cant have access to data, have your users store true-crypt drives on the network. Sneakernet is, in the end, far more insecure!
The $199 price quoted in TFA is only after you agree to a ~$2000 contract
Except that's whargarbl in the other direction, it's only 2k if you count the basic phone plan, but by this point pretty much any consumer buying an iphone is either switching from some other form of cell phone or would probably at least get a basic cell phone if they didn't end up with a smart phone of some kind. Thus, at $25/mo for the iphone data plan, the phone counting contract is $199 + (2yrs*12mo/yr*$25/mo)=$199+$600=$800.
*used* to be simple. Now, with wireless prevalent, and employees own devices on the network... I'm spending the summer working at a DOE lab, and the wireless network allows google SSL (at least gmail and gcal) traffic. everything *does* go through a proxy, but without control of my laptop they wouldnt be able to sign duplicate certs and pass them along like they theoretically would with my lab-provided workstation.
Apple's calendar server is CalDAV on the backend, so that should be usable too
IPV6 is still an *IP* address, not the Media Access Control address, the hardware address for your NIC. That said, while a MAC address *is* theoretically unique to a NIC, it can easily be spoofed. However dont confuse it with IPV6
I agree, a link to something like this or or this all of which came from a quick google and give some basic info on mpeg 7 and mention some content ID tech would be helpful as a real source of *something* on this new standard (that I just heard of today)! Damn it editors, do your jobs!
You ignoring one absolutely crucial option, ease of use! Anyone can pick it up and use it, in 5 seconds, it's drop dead simple.
Heh. It's the year 2010, who doesn't know how to use a computer by now? Infants?
But in any case, the iPad has no ease of use advantage over the less expensive, more convenient iPhone, or over competing tablets.
If any comment convinced me you're looking at it with blinders on, this is it. There are *lots* of people who don't know how to use a computer, and lots more that are *barely* computer literate. You, posting on /., are not a good yardstick. If you don't believe me, walk into a senior center, or a college helpdesk on move-in day, or, help me, a biology research lab. I've had plenty of users who don't know much about how to use their machines, and really don't want to.
factor in service and the smartphone isnt less
It is if you're getting 3G service for the iPad too. If not, then you should be comparing it to something like the iPod Touch - the 64 GB iPod Touch is over $100 less than the 16 GB iPad.
Except the ipod touch has a *much* smaller (and non-IPS lower quality) screen, a slower processor, and less memory. The iPad is more powerful and if you're browsing the web for a long period of time much nicer. Look, I love my iPod touch, but it's a nice pocket computer/PDA, not a living-room web device. Why can't you understand that a larger, IPS screen alone is going to push the price up?
and honestly, in terms of price, unless you spend your days popping onto slickdeals and waiting for sales and the like, a netbook and the ipad cost about the same
Have you not looked at prices lately? I went to bestbuy.com and with literally two clicks, I found 18 netbooks for under $300. The iPad starts at $500.
Fair enough, though the *really* cheap netbooks are slow, annoying to use on the web, ugly and un-aesthetic enough to not appeal nicely.
It's just barely cheap enough to be an expensive impulse buy
At $500? Maybe if you work on Wall Street.
And yet people buy many more expensive things as impulse buys all the time. For that matter, an xbox or a ps3 near launch.....
And yes, it's also aesthetic enough to leave in your living room.
Take a look at some of those sub-$300 netbooks - they look just as slick. You don't have to buy Apple products to get attractive design anymore.
I havent really seen many cheap laptops that rival the looks and design. sure, once you get above 500... Also, the screens alone often make them look poor in comparison, show me a netbook with an IPS display...
I'd say it's more like arguing that your freezer at home costs more, does less, and is less convenient than other home freezers: that every requirement you have for a freezer would have been filled better by buying a different model.
You ignoring one absolutely crucial option, ease of use! Anyone can pick it up and use it, in 5 seconds, it's drop dead simple. If Apple is good at anything it's UI. Their UIs may be frustrating to the tech crowd because they arent as customizable as others, dont offer as many easy to access advanced settings... but that's not apple's target audience. Apple is very very good at making UIs that the average person can Just Use.
A smartphone is an appliance too, but it fits in your pocket, doesn't tire your wrists out from holding it up, and costs less than an iPad. Even a netbook can be dumbed down into an appliance, if that's what you want.
factor in service and the smartphone isnt less, and the key part about netbooks is "can be", people dont want "can be", they want "is".
and honestly, in terms of price, unless you spend your days popping onto slickdeals and waiting for sales and the like, a netbook and the ipad cost about the same
When the novelty wears off, what'll be left is a device that combines the disadvantages of a smartphone with the disadvantages of a laptop, and few of the advantages of either.
That's your opinion, and one I happen to disagree with. The iPad is hitting a different niche than what normal laptops and smart phones are aimed at. It's just barely cheap enough to be an expensive impulse buy, easily and intuitively usable for most people, and very good for the kind of quick internet and email tasks people want to do on a bigger screen than their smartphone but dont want to go hop onto their comp for.
And yes, it's also aesthetic enough to leave in your living room. If you don't think that's important....
Look, when my parents got FiOS the woman doing the install came in, looked around, and asked where my father wanted the ONT (it's a largeish, wall mounted, beige box). I was home and I and my father both shrugged, pointed to a section of bare wall near the door, and said, "how about there?". After all, it's the connection that's important, and the quicker the box gets mounted to the wall the quicker it is to 25/25 internet!
The tech took one look, turned back to my father, and goes "sir, are you married?". My father said yes, and the tech replied "then there is no way in hell your wife is going to want that there, you'll be sleeping on the couch tonight and I dont want that on my conscience... how about in the front closet?"
Needless to say when my mother came home she was very happy to find the largeish beige telecom box *not* in plain view of the door.
Geeks often dont care about aesthetics in our tech, but most people do.
uh, "or my grandmother (same as g/fs mother)" should read "same computing needs as g/f's mother"...
::headdesk::, reminder to self, never type a /. post while working on math models, you get too distracted
and yet, somehow, 1 million people and counting disagree with you... Could it be, perhaps, that you are not the target market!?
/., probably lurking on this thread somewhere), and little sister (she's starting college in the fall, 'nuff said) all need full laptops. For my girlfriend's mother on the hand (who doesnt do more than look at FB and youtube and answer a few emails every so often), or my grandmother (same as g/fs mother)... the iPad is pretty much perfect. It's an appliance that has just enough ability to be turned into something else to keep the "geek toy" crowd happy too, that's what you're missing.
I'm not either, and my mother (professor), father (comp programmer, on
It's like arguing that my freezer (no, you dont get a car analogy!) at home doesnt work like a commercial, programmable, walk-in unit. It's inferior to the business version, sure, but it eats less power and I dont *need* a zoned, programmable, walk in freezer!
uh, damn, I think I broke the /code link generation in that post
anyone else find it ironic that after killing latin chars from the root URL, the page redirects to http://(sitename the /. wont display)/ar/default.aspx
I have a *jar* of 512-1gb flash drives (with some larger, up to 16gb right now) sitting on my desk. I get them at conferences and events, I havent paid for a USB drive in years. That's pretty cheap to me, and yes, sometimes I do just give them to people with files on them~
heh, hello there mister grammar nazi...
:-p).
I actually googled then copypasta'd the quote, don't blame me for the missing comma (I s'pose I could have fixed it, I really wasn't invested enough in the post to though
You're under arrest for child cruelty, child endangerment, depriving children of food, selling children as food and misrepresenting the weight of livestock.
Honestly, insightful?
From a quick google search on NASA inventions:
Ten NASA inventions you use every day
Top 15 NASA inventions
Polimide Foam
NASA Inventions benefiting our daily lives
Highlights from those links include kidney dialysis, CAT scans, various types of insulation, efficient water purification tech, cordless tools, modern designs of microchips, satellite tech (you know, it deleives a great deal of your communications....), scratch resistant lenses... And there's a *lot* more, a great deal of modern tech comes from NASA is one way or another.
Even if you have a problem with exploration and a search for knowledge and understanding of the universe, you have to admit the space program and its SCIENCE have yielded *massive* results on earth in technology. I'm also pretty sure there were luddites like you when the first ships were being built, the first submarines, the first plans, hell, the first time someone said "I'm going to wander 50 miles that way and see what's there".
allright, I'll bite..
Let's compare, shall we?
Beijing Metro:
147 Stations, 142 miles of track (no idea how much of that is revenue track), 39 years old. BTW, even when all of the new lines under construction are completed they will only bring the totals to ~280miles of track and 301 stations.
NY Subway:
468 stations, 656 miles of revenue track (842 miles of total track), the underground portion dates back 106 years, the oldest structural component of the system is 125 years old and some of the rights of ways are older still.
Comparing the 2 in terms of line expansion is like comparing IBM and some tech startup and exclaiming how IBM is screwed because the tech startup had 100% growth in the previous and IBM had 1%.
The NYC subway is a much older, more mature system, additions are not going to happen at the same pace as a newer, younger, significantly smaller system.
BTW, dictatorial policies aside, I'll also point out that the beijing metro closes at night and the subway doesnt, which probably makes construction easier.
as long as it hits the right spots and fills properly, that's all a train needs!
Public services don't always have to make a profit directly, or even necessarily fiscally justify themselves you know.
The 2nd ave line will be part of the subway, with the same price as the rest of the subway. Even if, at the subway fare, the line never pays for itself (doubtful considering the system, at over 100 years old now, is built with long-term in mind), it will give a cheap ride to a lot of people who can't afford a taxi. In this city the subway is the primary way people commute.
It's almost a completely perfect example of taxes being used for public gain, of proper government spending of capital too large and unprofitable for the private sector and too important to not be done (even if you disagree about the usefulness of this particular line I hope you get my point).
...and will move more people than many continent spanning lines do. Sometimes it's not the size but what you do with it that counts!
How do you explain the recent Steam server outage that left games lists blank, and the offline option broken? Any way you spin it, that's DRM keeping you from playing your games offline.
from what I can see from the rest of this thread, it was a technical glitch that, yes, involved DRM, but was rare, did not effect that many people, was not intentional, and is not likely to happen again. It seems if there is spinning, it's that *you're* spinning this as doom and gloom.
It sucks you had a bad experience, but it's not indicative of the overall experience most people (including myself) seem to have with Steam. The vitriol you're spewing about it makes me wonder if you have another axe to grind as well.
Very much not true, I have used steam and the games I have installed through it on my laptop with no web connection, coming from a cold boot. I suggest you go try it. Steam requires you to be online to activate the games - once per game, when you *first* play it. After that you can play offline with impunity.
::blinks::
There's actually a "play offline" mode, in steam... I've used it....
While it certainly doesnt apply to a smaller, less vendor-sponsored conference like pycon, Supercomputing's SCinet is always a rather impressive feat. The wireless reception off the main conference floor this past year sucked on 2.4 (I dont know if it was the fault of the convention center's construction plus maybe policies that limited router placement or something), but if you had a device that could do 5 (like most people at the conference), you were golden. Speeds were quite good too, and SCinet handles a *lot* of traffic.
Funny... My 12 year old Dual 1Ghz processor Powermac (Quicksilver) is running OS X 10.6 Not possible, unless you work in Apple's OS dev labs. The releases of 10.6, both dev and general consumer dropped PPC support...