Agreed. I have no idea why they think this is even art, and the article shows no justification for it. It's some gouges carved into rock on a shelf-ish thing (just a flat area where some tools were found). They say it would have taken at least 54 strokes with their tools to create one line, and there's only a handful of lines, and they say this was not where they cut animal hides. From that, they say it must have been art. I'm not archaeologist, but my first guess would be that someone was bored, and I think that's a MUCH more likely explanation, but there's no way I'd assume I know what the motivation was 30,000 years ago (and "art" is all about motivation).
Another thing to consider is debugging. As a developer, you want to debug on a system that's as close as possible to the machine where the bug occurred. Obviously it's easier to be sure that your environment is the same as your server's (and that you're seeing the same problem the server saw) if the two run the same distro.
Two words: virtual machine
Even if you were to run the same OS and version on your primary desktop as your server has, you're still VERY likely to end up installing stuff that the server does not have (ex. maybe you want to use eclipse and the latest JDK for it, or you need a newer version of python for some VCS tool you use). In any case, you are better off running the code on a vm that is very similar to production.
Let me tell you something, pendejo. You pull any of your crazy shit with us, you flash a piece out on the lanes, I’ll take it away from you, stick it up your ass and pull the fucking trigger ’til it goes “click.”
Besides that, it IS very discreet! There's LOADS of ways to discreetly put your finger in your own drink. I often do it by mistake on mixed drinks - they come with that stupid little straw and I hold it out of the way with my pointer finger, which wraps to the inside of the glass... quite easy to splash some drink on it.
The whole point of these drugs is that they can be easily administered to someone that is being otherwise careful. I've heard far too many anecdotes (read: personal experience from most of the people I know, including myself) to think this is just some really rare thing that only happens to those that are "asking for it". FWIW, most of the experiences I've heard of have luckily avoided the rape part. It's often something like the person or one of their friends realizes that the world crashing down on them, so they get the fuck out of there ASAP and wake up the next morning having no idea how they got home.
I'm honestly shocked by how many AC's are completely dismissing this issue. "And him being... wasn't enough to clue her into him being a probable rapist" "the plural of anecdote is not data" "It's far more likely that you know someone who claims that happened to her" WTF people?
How are you separating gmail and drive profits? They are both just methods of accessing the same block of storage. Should they be making you pay more if you want to access that same storage in a different manner?
Easy. Gmail is ad supported and data mined so they can better target you with ads. Drive is just storage (AFAICT). If Drive is mined, the value per gb is going to be substantially less (email being mostly text, and it's stuff the user often categorizes well and deletes stuff they don't want giving further marketing clues; vs files on drive are going to be random assortments of files: photos, mp3s, videos, office docs, backups, etc).
So yes, they should make you pay more if you want to access storage through Drive vs Gmail, assuming you are not abusing gmail as a drive (which has been done for ages, but is not commonly done by users and likely violates the TOS).
There was a previous blog entry on that topic that claims to explain why it is currently only on iPad.
FTFY. In short, that post says that they'd lose a lot if they made a pdf instead of their magazine app, and thus they only make it for the iPad because... well, just because. Personally, I'm going to assume they chose to use some platform specific toolset(s) and either lack the time or expertise to port to other platforms or do cross platform development... of a magazine.
The interactive features they'd lose is the ability to click on a title and have it go directly to the app store on your device and have you playing with minimal interruption (according to their post). I don't see why that'd be lost. Just have different links in each platform specific version and leave the content the same, so the iPad version links to the app store; the windows version links to the homepage; the android version links to the google play store; etc etc.
Whatever. It's their business decision. No real reason they don't support other platforms.
The silver lining here is that if he spent over $500,000 odds are they ended up spending something similar.
It's quite difficult to consider spending half a million dollars on legal fees only to walk away without justice being served as being a silver lining. This is one more reason people should support the EFF - they see their cases through to the end whenever possible (AFAICT). The best outcome in this case for the lawyers involved is exactly what happened - loads of fees and no actual case; what motivation do they (in general) have to see patent trolls go away?
So you have documentation for developers (API), community (code contributes), and designers (themes), but the problem area is for users.
IE. you are providing docs for the very smallest percentage of users, and leaving the vast majority of users without documentation.
That seems to be fairly common, but it's completely backwards. Similar to optimizing administration processes while end user processes get ignored because they get paid less or are simply not as well connected.
Come up with some way to document while making coding changes for user facing parts. That's the part that should be documented, and keeping it current is much more important than your API docs (though those are most likely autogenerated already, and thus up to date). Make documentation part of the cost of development so that expectations in productivity don't get way off kilter (ex.rewriting 1000+ pages at release time... it's just not maintainable that way).
Thank you. That makes a lot more sense. EG. The TP-Link routers mentioned are small travel routers (good for this purpose), low power (even usb or battery powered), and have onboard ethernet, 802.11n, usb, easily accessible serial consoles, and good openwrt support.
So yes, a travel router with a bit more ram and/or flash + openwrt support would be nice.
That said, if they're trying to market to the public, then it might be easier to go with a larger model that has the necessary ram/flash than one that is a desirable size but requires... uh... something the summary says is difficult.
Why TP-Link? There are lots of models of routers that are that are readily available, have enough onboard flash and ram, and support DD-WRT (some even come with it out of the box). Why start with two models from TP-Link which do not meet the minimum requirements without physical modification?!?
I'm not sure if the idea of a contributor license as you suggest is in the spirit of open source.
Depends on which "spirit of open source" you are referring.
The classical Richard Stallman model is about giving the person running the code the ability to modify it for their own use and share those modifications with others. I believe that one of his first big gripes had to do with printer drivers, as an example. In that case, the contributor license agreement causes no harm at all. The CLA defines restrictions for the user if the user wants his contribution to become part of the codebase distributed by the original author. That does not stop the user from re-distributing the same codebase with or without his own changes (ie. fork).
In most cases, the CLA will never actually be necessary. Most new projects get few, if any, contributors. The summary even says the works they previously posted just sit there and rust - they aren't maintaining them, and neither is anyone else. On any cases where someone contributes code, it will either be:
a) very trivial, and thus no copyright transfers are needed (ex. a bugfix changing 2 if statements) b) a small patch. c) a large patch.
For the large patches, you'll just need to decide if the CLA is worth it or not. Is it a feature that is worth having. If so, is it worth the legal hassle, or should you just rewrite it?
For the small patches, those often need rewritten anyway. People rarely submit complete patches with tests and everything... so just rewrite it. If it's something that doesn't need rewritten, see the previous sentence. Contributors will often provide the patch with a public domain license if asked, which you can then relicense as needed.
That seems to validate the parents point of, "Panama didn't have the benefit of the massive machines available now. It will likely be much cheaper compartitively."
Ex: http://www.geekologie.com/2008... 311ft tall, 705ft long, 45,000 tons (versus panamas digger at 105 tons), and moves 2,700,000 cubic ft of day!
Ex. http://www.popularmechanics.co... Hydraulic Shovel (possibly the best comparison/evolution of the steam shovel you shared). It's shovel holds 57 cubic yards (versus the measly 2.5 - 5 of that steam shovel).
I'd say that's quite an improvement and should make the job faster and cheaper than panama.
The bottom line is that without upgrading their networks, they can't provide the promised service to 100% of their customers.
Wrong (AFAICT).
They are actively throttling users. That is not the same as their network being unable to handle it, or for congestion to affect many users.
The users with metered plans are not being throttled. They may be using even more. Everyone could do that, and they would not throttle the metered users because they want that additional money. The unlimitted users are getting throttled when they hit some cap of MB/month. That's not unlimitted. Unlimitted would mean they should behave just like the metered plans, but they'd pay a flat fee.
As others have said, they should just terminate all of these contracts and offer those users something else. They are all on month to month. There's just an awful lot of them that ARE still profitable, and they're scared to lose that... so either it's worth it to keep them all or not, but they shouldn't be throttled like that (as much as I hate the idea of some very small percentage of folks ruining my day to day experience).
Personally, I'd like a more customizable rate... something like the way fractional T1's used to work (dedicated 256k up/down, and burstable to 1.5mbit if it's available... but some different rates in those places, especially on the high end). I'd be willing to wager this is quite possible (for 3g/4g/lte as well as cable/dsl/etc), but is just "too complicated" to market to people (quantity, 2gb/month, is easier to grasp than throughput, 256kbps; and they are very very different forms of measurement, with the former barely meaning anything - if you do all your downloads at 3am, you'll still hit your cap even though there was loads of extra bandwidth).
I am a long time member of the ACM, and I've always thought the value for money was excellent. I'm not an academic and I don't go to conferences. The Safari and 24/7 Books Online subscriptions, plus the skillsoft training is where I see most of the value.
That peaked my interest quite a bit. However, after looking into it, that gets you a custom collection from each of those book places (700 safari books online, and 500 books 24x7, and 150 morgan kaufmann and syngress books). Safari, for example, offers far more books on their cheapest plans (which includes over 200 publishers).
ACM also offers a discounted Safari Pro upgrade: http://learning.acm.org/books/... The ACM price is 20% off list. The Safari Pro package is $39/month or $399/year. So you save either $93.60 or $60 a year. If you wanted to get the Safari Pro already, then you might as well join ACM and do the pro upgrade... it's almost a wash, and you get the other ACM benefits. I was hoping for a bit more of a free ride:-) Still not a bad deal, but thought others might want to know.
Compares Blue Air 203/270E (3,600 RMB) and a Philips AC4072 (3, 000 RMB) to both of his setups. Those are only about $550 filters, but I think that is sufficient to cover the "up to" in "up to $1000". If you want to donate a $1000 one to him, it looks like he'd be happy to test it.
Amazon is winning too much, it seems as if kindle is becoming synonomous with ebook reader. Thats not a good thing, no additional storage, no pdf support , no library support.
Are you talking about eInk e-reader, or their tablet? If eInk, good luck filling up the storage they give you with books. Pdf support is there (as far as I can tell), and you can borrow books from the library using overdrive (checkout is not built in, but it works).
If you're referring to their tablet, just get a generic android tablet. You can install all the reader apps on it (Amazon Kindle, BN Nook, Kobo, FBReader, etc).
I do wish their eink kindle allowed other "app stores", so to speak, but I think that'd be entirely possible using the browser, and they do have app support (I have scrabble on mine).
I'd rather not live in a world where the only places to shop are walmart, amazon, and maybe costco. using size and supply chain efficiency to force smaller guys out of business is not a good thing in the long run.
While I agree, when it comes to ebooks, there's no reason someone else couldn't capture that market. The only thing they have going is that the Kindle is somewhat locked down, however, anyone can make an ebook that works on it (with or without DRM). Those 3 big companies are where they are due to the awesome distribution work they have in place + size (negotiation power) + software. Those things don't matter nearly as much for ebooks.
I don't think Amazon should force a maximum price for ebooks, but I do think anyone selling both the ebook and the physical book on that same site (amazon in this case) should have the ebook at a lower price than the physical copy.
... is technically incorrect, though in general practice it sure does seem that way.
The "privilege" is that of driving on public roads. Just about anyone can legally drive just about anything on their own land (ex. young kids operating farm machinery).
The AC was almost right, except that we (at least in the US) already put laws in place banning various driving situations, like driving in public without a license, or without insurance, or with an unregistered car, etc etc (most of which are actually state laws). It's much like one of the ways that marijuana got banned - they put a requirement that sale required a tax stamp, and then didn't sell any of those stamps. In this case, you can't operate a driverless car on the public roadways without having a licensed driver and registered car and all that stuff, and those don't pass yet.
...but the problem is the power budget. Going faster -> more power required -> bigger solar panels -> more weight -> going slower.
Or the problem is the financial budget (more money -> send more stuff -> include more features/stuff -> going faster and doing more).
FWIW, I totally understand that certain design decisions were made for various, and well justified, reasons. Personally, I'd favor the ability to travel long distances over some of the other features (ex. have it nuke powered, and ignore the issue of contamination of Mars). I'd also love to see more stuff sent there, and to other celestial bodies, like maybe a deep drilling device, or excavation equipment.
Anyway... I had just assumed (poorly) that it had wheeled around more than an average of 36 feet a day, or had a top speed better than 0.1mph. It's still an amazing little rover (already survived more than 40x's longer than planned).
I realize it's done much more than it was designed for, and we got more bang for our buck, but when I first read TFS, I thought this:
"If the rover can continue to operate the distance of a marathon — 26.2 miles (about 42.2 kilometers) — it will approach the next major investigation site mission
...meant, "If the rover can travel just 26.2 MORE miles THAN IT ALREADY HAS TRAVELED, then..."
It's been on Mars for over 10 years. It's not a very fast little bugger, is it?
They had their own goals and all that, but my first goal, if I was sending something millions of miles away (I don't know how far it traveled when it went to Mars, but the closest approach between earth and mars has been 34.8 million miles), I'd certainly want the ability to move it more than XXX feet per day. 25 miles is REALLY short compared to it's 35 million+ mile trip to get there!
So: why isn't someone making a *phone case* with a built-in Bluetooth or USB keyboard?
1. they are. They're just not very good. 2. there's stuff on the back of your phone. If you add on a keyboard, you block those things and/or have to work around them some how. 3. (if you didn't do a slider keyboard) the other options is a folio style. Generic ones exist, but they're very bulky cloth or (faux)leather wallet things with a keyboard shoved on one inner side. 4. more battery needed (takes up room, and it's another thing to charge).
Phones with a built in keyboard can move stuff around the back of the keyboard. They can stick the battery in the keyboard part if they want. It's little things, but they're really needed to make it worthwhile.
As I mentioned above, the Typo keyboard for the iPhone is another alternative that does seem to work. It rips off the blackberry, more-or-less. Something like that *could* be made for other devices, but it's not as desirable in other ways (adds permanent length to already long phones, and puts the keyboard on the portrait side, etc).
Completely agree then. The biggest issues with the sliding keyboard cases for galaxy S4 and S5 is that the camera, which is centered on the back, gets blocked even when the keyboard is slid out (the cases have an extra hinge so one can then fold it some, which leaves the camera the clearance it needs, and makes it really awkward to use and extra bulky). The only add-on case I've been able to find that appears to be decent is that typo one for the iPhone. Wish they made them for other phones.
I'm hoping we see keyboards make a short comeback. Between the samsung galaxy S3, S4, and S5, there really weren't many significant changes. It wouldn't take them much engineering to get a keyboard properly integrated with one (or any other maker to do similar), and they could nab some upgrades from folks like me that see no reason to upgrade (only thing the S5 has that I want is the water proofing, which I hope becomes commonplace).
Have not managed to find a keyboard case for a single phone that I would actually consider buying. iPhone? nope. Samsung Galaxy III? Nuh uh. There exists not a single keyboard case for the Nexus 4/5. If someone makes one, I will buy it in a heartbeat.
WHAT!??!! I haven't found a keyboard case for the Samsung Galaxy S4 that I would use (though I really want a keyboard), but keyboard cases exist for the first two you mentioned (haven't looked for the nexus). Or am I misreading your post... are you saying you would NOT buy an iPhone nor Galaxy SIII?
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Agreed. I have no idea why they think this is even art, and the article shows no justification for it.
It's some gouges carved into rock on a shelf-ish thing (just a flat area where some tools were found). They say it would have taken at least 54 strokes with their tools to create one line, and there's only a handful of lines, and they say this was not where they cut animal hides. From that, they say it must have been art.
I'm not archaeologist, but my first guess would be that someone was bored, and I think that's a MUCH more likely explanation, but there's no way I'd assume I know what the motivation was 30,000 years ago (and "art" is all about motivation).
Another thing to consider is debugging. As a developer, you want to debug on a system that's as close as possible to the machine where the bug occurred. Obviously it's easier to be sure that your environment is the same as your server's (and that you're seeing the same problem the server saw) if the two run the same distro.
Two words: virtual machine
Even if you were to run the same OS and version on your primary desktop as your server has, you're still VERY likely to end up installing stuff that the server does not have (ex. maybe you want to use eclipse and the latest JDK for it, or you need a newer version of python for some VCS tool you use). In any case, you are better off running the code on a vm that is very similar to production.
Obviously you're not a golfer.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/T...
That's your opinion, sure...
Let me tell you something, pendejo. You pull any of your crazy shit with us, you flash a piece out on the lanes, I’ll take it away from you, stick it up your ass and pull the fucking trigger ’til it goes “click.”
Besides that, it IS very discreet! There's LOADS of ways to discreetly put your finger in your own drink. I often do it by mistake on mixed drinks - they come with that stupid little straw and I hold it out of the way with my pointer finger, which wraps to the inside of the glass... quite easy to splash some drink on it.
I'm not "blaming the victim", mind you.
The whole point of these drugs is that they can be easily administered to someone that is being otherwise careful. I've heard far too many anecdotes (read: personal experience from most of the people I know, including myself) to think this is just some really rare thing that only happens to those that are "asking for it". FWIW, most of the experiences I've heard of have luckily avoided the rape part. It's often something like the person or one of their friends realizes that the world crashing down on them, so they get the fuck out of there ASAP and wake up the next morning having no idea how they got home.
I'm honestly shocked by how many AC's are completely dismissing this issue. ... wasn't enough to clue her into him being a probable rapist"
"And him being
"the plural of anecdote is not data"
"It's far more likely that you know someone who claims that happened to her"
WTF people?
How are you separating gmail and drive profits? They are both just methods of accessing the same block of storage. Should they be making you pay more if you want to access that same storage in a different manner?
Easy. Gmail is ad supported and data mined so they can better target you with ads. Drive is just storage (AFAICT). If Drive is mined, the value per gb is going to be substantially less (email being mostly text, and it's stuff the user often categorizes well and deletes stuff they don't want giving further marketing clues; vs files on drive are going to be random assortments of files: photos, mp3s, videos, office docs, backups, etc).
So yes, they should make you pay more if you want to access storage through Drive vs Gmail, assuming you are not abusing gmail as a drive (which has been done for ages, but is not commonly done by users and likely violates the TOS).
There was a previous blog entry on that topic that claims to explain why it is currently only on iPad.
FTFY. In short, that post says that they'd lose a lot if they made a pdf instead of their magazine app, and thus they only make it for the iPad because... well, just because. Personally, I'm going to assume they chose to use some platform specific toolset(s) and either lack the time or expertise to port to other platforms or do cross platform development... of a magazine.
The interactive features they'd lose is the ability to click on a title and have it go directly to the app store on your device and have you playing with minimal interruption (according to their post). I don't see why that'd be lost. Just have different links in each platform specific version and leave the content the same, so the iPad version links to the app store; the windows version links to the homepage; the android version links to the google play store; etc etc.
Whatever. It's their business decision. No real reason they don't support other platforms.
The silver lining here is that if he spent over $500,000 odds are they ended up spending something similar.
It's quite difficult to consider spending half a million dollars on legal fees only to walk away without justice being served as being a silver lining. This is one more reason people should support the EFF - they see their cases through to the end whenever possible (AFAICT). The best outcome in this case for the lawyers involved is exactly what happened - loads of fees and no actual case; what motivation do they (in general) have to see patent trolls go away?
So you have documentation for developers (API), community (code contributes), and designers (themes), but the problem area is for users.
IE. you are providing docs for the very smallest percentage of users, and leaving the vast majority of users without documentation.
That seems to be fairly common, but it's completely backwards. Similar to optimizing administration processes while end user processes get ignored because they get paid less or are simply not as well connected.
Come up with some way to document while making coding changes for user facing parts. That's the part that should be documented, and keeping it current is much more important than your API docs (though those are most likely autogenerated already, and thus up to date). Make documentation part of the cost of development so that expectations in productivity don't get way off kilter (ex.rewriting 1000+ pages at release time... it's just not maintainable that way).
Thank you. That makes a lot more sense.
EG. The TP-Link routers mentioned are small travel routers (good for this purpose), low power (even usb or battery powered), and have onboard ethernet, 802.11n, usb, easily accessible serial consoles, and good openwrt support.
So yes, a travel router with a bit more ram and/or flash + openwrt support would be nice.
That said, if they're trying to market to the public, then it might be easier to go with a larger model that has the necessary ram/flash than one that is a desirable size but requires... uh... something the summary says is difficult.
Why TP-Link? There are lots of models of routers that are that are readily available, have enough onboard flash and ram, and support DD-WRT (some even come with it out of the box). Why start with two models from TP-Link which do not meet the minimum requirements without physical modification?!?
I'm not sure if the idea of a contributor license as you suggest is in the spirit of open source.
Depends on which "spirit of open source" you are referring.
The classical Richard Stallman model is about giving the person running the code the ability to modify it for their own use and share those modifications with others. I believe that one of his first big gripes had to do with printer drivers, as an example. In that case, the contributor license agreement causes no harm at all. The CLA defines restrictions for the user if the user wants his contribution to become part of the codebase distributed by the original author. That does not stop the user from re-distributing the same codebase with or without his own changes (ie. fork).
In most cases, the CLA will never actually be necessary. Most new projects get few, if any, contributors. The summary even says the works they previously posted just sit there and rust - they aren't maintaining them, and neither is anyone else. On any cases where someone contributes code, it will either be:
a) very trivial, and thus no copyright transfers are needed (ex. a bugfix changing 2 if statements)
b) a small patch.
c) a large patch.
For the large patches, you'll just need to decide if the CLA is worth it or not. Is it a feature that is worth having. If so, is it worth the legal hassle, or should you just rewrite it?
For the small patches, those often need rewritten anyway. People rarely submit complete patches with tests and everything... so just rewrite it. If it's something that doesn't need rewritten, see the previous sentence. Contributors will often provide the patch with a public domain license if asked, which you can then relicense as needed.
That seems to validate the parents point of, "Panama didn't have the benefit of the massive machines available now. It will likely be much cheaper compartitively."
Ex: http://www.geekologie.com/2008...
311ft tall, 705ft long, 45,000 tons (versus panamas digger at 105 tons), and moves 2,700,000 cubic ft of day!
Ex. http://justpaste.it/largest-co...
A bunch of various big machines...
Ex. http://www.popularmechanics.co...
Hydraulic Shovel (possibly the best comparison/evolution of the steam shovel you shared). It's shovel holds 57 cubic yards (versus the measly 2.5 - 5 of that steam shovel).
I'd say that's quite an improvement and should make the job faster and cheaper than panama.
The bottom line is that without upgrading their networks, they can't provide the promised service to 100% of their customers.
Wrong (AFAICT).
They are actively throttling users. That is not the same as their network being unable to handle it, or for congestion to affect many users.
The users with metered plans are not being throttled. They may be using even more. Everyone could do that, and they would not throttle the metered users because they want that additional money. The unlimitted users are getting throttled when they hit some cap of MB/month. That's not unlimitted. Unlimitted would mean they should behave just like the metered plans, but they'd pay a flat fee.
As others have said, they should just terminate all of these contracts and offer those users something else. They are all on month to month. There's just an awful lot of them that ARE still profitable, and they're scared to lose that... so either it's worth it to keep them all or not, but they shouldn't be throttled like that (as much as I hate the idea of some very small percentage of folks ruining my day to day experience).
Personally, I'd like a more customizable rate... something like the way fractional T1's used to work (dedicated 256k up/down, and burstable to 1.5mbit if it's available... but some different rates in those places, especially on the high end). I'd be willing to wager this is quite possible (for 3g/4g/lte as well as cable/dsl/etc), but is just "too complicated" to market to people (quantity, 2gb/month, is easier to grasp than throughput, 256kbps; and they are very very different forms of measurement, with the former barely meaning anything - if you do all your downloads at 3am, you'll still hit your cap even though there was loads of extra bandwidth).
I am a long time member of the ACM, and I've always thought the value for money was excellent. I'm not an academic and I don't go to conferences. The Safari and 24/7 Books Online subscriptions, plus the skillsoft training is where I see most of the value.
That peaked my interest quite a bit. However, after looking into it, that gets you a custom collection from each of those book places (700 safari books online, and 500 books 24x7, and 150 morgan kaufmann and syngress books). Safari, for example, offers far more books on their cheapest plans (which includes over 200 publishers).
ACM also offers a discounted Safari Pro upgrade: http://learning.acm.org/books/... :-) Still not a bad deal, but thought others might want to know.
The ACM price is 20% off list. The Safari Pro package is $39/month or $399/year. So you save either $93.60 or $60 a year.
If you wanted to get the Safari Pro already, then you might as well join ACM and do the pro upgrade... it's almost a wash, and you get the other ACM benefits.
I was hoping for a bit more of a free ride
Well, he went as far as confirming he was getting the same particle counts.
He confirmed that the homemade filter reduced particle counts. But I don't see that he compared its effectiveness to filters costing "up to $1000".
http://particlecounting.tumblr...
Compares Blue Air 203/270E (3,600 RMB) and a Philips AC4072 (3, 000 RMB) to both of his setups. Those are only about $550 filters, but I think that is sufficient to cover the "up to" in "up to $1000". If you want to donate a $1000 one to him, it looks like he'd be happy to test it.
Amazon is winning too much, it seems as if kindle is becoming synonomous with ebook reader. Thats not a good thing, no additional storage, no pdf support , no library support.
Are you talking about eInk e-reader, or their tablet?
If eInk, good luck filling up the storage they give you with books. Pdf support is there (as far as I can tell), and you can borrow books from the library using overdrive (checkout is not built in, but it works).
If you're referring to their tablet, just get a generic android tablet. You can install all the reader apps on it (Amazon Kindle, BN Nook, Kobo, FBReader, etc).
I do wish their eink kindle allowed other "app stores", so to speak, but I think that'd be entirely possible using the browser, and they do have app support (I have scrabble on mine).
I'd rather not live in a world where the only places to shop are walmart, amazon, and maybe costco. using size and supply chain efficiency to force smaller guys out of business is not a good thing in the long run.
While I agree, when it comes to ebooks, there's no reason someone else couldn't capture that market. The only thing they have going is that the Kindle is somewhat locked down, however, anyone can make an ebook that works on it (with or without DRM). Those 3 big companies are where they are due to the awesome distribution work they have in place + size (negotiation power) + software. Those things don't matter nearly as much for ebooks.
I don't think Amazon should force a maximum price for ebooks, but I do think anyone selling both the ebook and the physical book on that same site (amazon in this case) should have the ebook at a lower price than the physical copy.
Nitpicking, but this:
driving isn't a right... it's a privilege.
... is technically incorrect, though in general practice it sure does seem that way.
The "privilege" is that of driving on public roads. Just about anyone can legally drive just about anything on their own land (ex. young kids operating farm machinery).
The AC was almost right, except that we (at least in the US) already put laws in place banning various driving situations, like driving in public without a license, or without insurance, or with an unregistered car, etc etc (most of which are actually state laws). It's much like one of the ways that marijuana got banned - they put a requirement that sale required a tax stamp, and then didn't sell any of those stamps. In this case, you can't operate a driverless car on the public roadways without having a licensed driver and registered car and all that stuff, and those don't pass yet.
...but the problem is the power budget. Going faster -> more power required -> bigger solar panels -> more weight -> going slower.
Or the problem is the financial budget (more money -> send more stuff -> include more features/stuff -> going faster and doing more).
FWIW, I totally understand that certain design decisions were made for various, and well justified, reasons. Personally, I'd favor the ability to travel long distances over some of the other features (ex. have it nuke powered, and ignore the issue of contamination of Mars). I'd also love to see more stuff sent there, and to other celestial bodies, like maybe a deep drilling device, or excavation equipment.
Anyway... I had just assumed (poorly) that it had wheeled around more than an average of 36 feet a day, or had a top speed better than 0.1mph. It's still an amazing little rover (already survived more than 40x's longer than planned).
I realize it's done much more than it was designed for, and we got more bang for our buck, but when I first read TFS, I thought this:
"If the rover can continue to operate the distance of a marathon — 26.2 miles (about 42.2 kilometers) — it will approach the next major investigation site mission
...meant, "If the rover can travel just 26.2 MORE miles THAN IT ALREADY HAS TRAVELED, then..."
It's been on Mars for over 10 years. It's not a very fast little bugger, is it?
They had their own goals and all that, but my first goal, if I was sending something millions of miles away (I don't know how far it traveled when it went to Mars, but the closest approach between earth and mars has been 34.8 million miles), I'd certainly want the ability to move it more than XXX feet per day. 25 miles is REALLY short compared to it's 35 million+ mile trip to get there!
So: why isn't someone making a *phone case* with a built-in Bluetooth or USB keyboard?
1. they are. They're just not very good.
2. there's stuff on the back of your phone. If you add on a keyboard, you block those things and/or have to work around them some how.
3. (if you didn't do a slider keyboard) the other options is a folio style. Generic ones exist, but they're very bulky cloth or (faux)leather wallet things with a keyboard shoved on one inner side.
4. more battery needed (takes up room, and it's another thing to charge).
Phones with a built in keyboard can move stuff around the back of the keyboard. They can stick the battery in the keyboard part if they want. It's little things, but they're really needed to make it worthwhile.
As I mentioned above, the Typo keyboard for the iPhone is another alternative that does seem to work. It rips off the blackberry, more-or-less. Something like that *could* be made for other devices, but it's not as desirable in other ways (adds permanent length to already long phones, and puts the keyboard on the portrait side, etc).
Completely agree then.
The biggest issues with the sliding keyboard cases for galaxy S4 and S5 is that the camera, which is centered on the back, gets blocked even when the keyboard is slid out (the cases have an extra hinge so one can then fold it some, which leaves the camera the clearance it needs, and makes it really awkward to use and extra bulky).
The only add-on case I've been able to find that appears to be decent is that typo one for the iPhone. Wish they made them for other phones.
I'm hoping we see keyboards make a short comeback. Between the samsung galaxy S3, S4, and S5, there really weren't many significant changes. It wouldn't take them much engineering to get a keyboard properly integrated with one (or any other maker to do similar), and they could nab some upgrades from folks like me that see no reason to upgrade (only thing the S5 has that I want is the water proofing, which I hope becomes commonplace).
Have not managed to find a keyboard case for a single phone that I would actually consider buying. iPhone? nope. Samsung Galaxy III? Nuh uh. There exists not a single keyboard case for the Nexus 4/5. If someone makes one, I will buy it in a heartbeat.
WHAT!??!!
I haven't found a keyboard case for the Samsung Galaxy S4 that I would use (though I really want a keyboard), but keyboard cases exist for the first two you mentioned (haven't looked for the nexus). Or am I misreading your post... are you saying you would NOT buy an iPhone nor Galaxy SIII?
Ex: iPhone (I really like this case): http://istoreworld.com/us/typo...
Here's a sliding one for the iPhone: http://www.amazon.com/Bluetoot...