"the Office 12 formats pay special attention to compatibility with older document versions, [and] other formats do not concern themselves with this important issue."
ROTFL. Anyone that has had to distribute anything via Word knows this is beyond FUD. My best example is my CV. I wrote it in Mac Office 2004, and made sure it was compatible (using compatibility checker) all the way back to Word 97. It wasn't even close. In the end I was sending my CV out as Word 97, 2000, RTF and PDF just to make sure.
Backwards compatibility my arse. It nearly cost me a job, as when your in IT, and people think you can't even use word, it starts to look bad. I understand that its a word processor, not a desktop publisher, but is consistant handling of tables and pictures that much to ask?
I've had documents that would open in Word 2004 fine, but all the pictures would be rotated through 90 degrees on Word 2000. And thats before you start looking at the way it handles the difference between A4 and Letter.
The only way I can send a file and be certain that it looks the way it should is via PDF. But thats at the expense of other parties being able to edit it.
PDF isn't the solution, its a hack. I want/need the consistant typesetting of PDF, with the editting features of Word. Now I know there are other applications that let me do this (latex et al), I just wish other people did too so I could start using that instead of frigin office.
OK - I know nothing about this, so it is a genuine question.
Should we be pleased that Itanium failed?
I mean, on one hand/. hates x86 bloatedness, on the other hand we slapdown this attempt by intel to escape the aging architecture. If AMD hadn't stepped up and provided a chip that does both 32 and 64 bit ops would we finally be on the verge of dropping x86 all together?
Are there reasons other than poor support from Micorsoft for Itanics massive failure? Is it a poor arcitecture?
I owned an XBox and a GC before the XBox exploded, and the GC was stolen.
I have to say that, of the two, I got a lot more mileage out of the GC (which I bought on a whim) than I ever got out of the XBox (which I eagerly awaited for months before its release). But I think you're off with graphics performance at least with 'photoreal' 3D stuff like Men of Honour (where you could actually count the frame rate in some sections) to Metroid Prime, which although good, simply didn't compare to Doom 3 or even Halo 2 in terms of graphical beauty (gameplay, they're probably on a par - but then arn't all FPS nowadays).
I'd say the question next gen owners have got to ask is do they want the best online FPS experience (Xbox) or do they want to have fun playing different games. I'm definately in the latter camp. 2 bottles of tequilla, the likes of Donkey Konga/Monkey Ball/Double Dash and a group of friends in the same room will always out weigh a couple of litres of red bull, Halo 2/Rainbow 6, and few 12 year old yanks.
The question Nintendo have to ask themselves is why, when their console is cheaper, the games are cheaper and arguably better, are they being outsold by Sony and XBox on all continents? Its got to be about the 'cool' factor - something Nintendo hasn't been since the gameboy. Which is a real shame, when the only thing that seems to be 'cool' is killing innocents, blood, driving too fast and more killing. Rome _is_ the mob.
So Windows XP was put together by the best brains that money could buy and it was OK - not great, not good, just OK. >90% of the worlds computers, for better or worse, run on this operating system, and its averageness has lead to a world where people still think that viruses, malware and spyware are an accepted part of computing and that its the 90% marketshare making it a target that has caused these problem.
Now its going to be designed by the best people money can buy, Microfied (viruses and bugs added - to improve the upgrade market) by the marketing dept, and then built by the cheapest labour on the planet. And this will improve stability and performance how? What about all those studies that show that its not the volume of coders that you need, its the quality?
Now I'm sure, given the right support, these Chinese coders have the potential to take over the world, but the fact is they'll get Mubai'd. Badly translated design sheets will arrive on their desks. They're managers will only be interested in the volume of code they produce (because thats an easier metric than quality), and the working environment will be sweat shop not think tank, and probably worse of all, if they find an inconsistancy in the design, they'll code through it as it will be cheaper than waiting for the world to rotate so that Redmond is awake enough to answer questions coherantly.
To all the banks, governments, militaries et al. The end is nigh. Start investing now in Linux or BSD. They're charities, so its tax deductable. If you want more control you can buy that too. What you want to invest in is the GUI and Office Suite. this is because good coders often find this bit boring, and need 'motivation' to want to do it in their spare time. The rest is pretty much there - at least its already better than a lot of windows. Just remember that you won't 'own' anything, but then you don't own Windows / Office either. I'm sure if you speak nicely to Linus he'll provide you with a "We support free software", or "Free software inside" banner for your websites, brochures and websites.
My smart car hasn't let me down once with regard groceries. I have over filled a trolly more than once and still managed to get it all in a the boot. In fact, my girlfriend and I have been on many a camping trip, getting a 4 man kayam tent, cooking equipment and a double air bed, plus groceries for a couple days in one of them.
OK, you can't fit a sofa in the back, or, oh I don't know, a fence or a cow or France, or a 5 a side soccer team, but you can fit more than you'd think!
So does this mean that using Private Browsing on Safari makes me a terrorist? Sometimes I don't want my computer recording watch I'm 'reading' during 'self reflection' sessions. In the same way as I need a Apple script to clear the recent files list in preview.app and quicktime.app during similar sessions. Its a privacy thing - I am entitled to privacy in my own house arn't I?
In the news today: world shocked as cost of system critcal software, that needs to be supported by real people, is not just the ticket price!
Seriously. The only reason this article is even remotely interesting is because a big company (admittedly with a vested interest) has taken time out from its busy schedule of taking over the world, to point out the fact the the real cost of an OS is the support and not the retail price. Now this is important, as although we as/.ers all know this to be a fact, it no doubt alludes the other 99.9% of the computer buying populous, so it getting into the news is probably a good thing.
Thats not to say that saving the site licence for Windows isn't a big saving, its just that Linux admins know that because people think they're saving 10 large, that they can charge more than the market rate for Windows admins. As is always the case, the market will eventually catch up, supply of admins will begin to saturate the market and linux TCO will begin to slide, as will Windows as they pull out all the stops to stay ahead.
Depends where you are in the world. F.A.C.T. The Federation Against Copyright Theft preach that it is actually theft in the UK, and they're on TV ads, DVD ads, Cinema ads... but most people take the ads off the pirated DVDs;)
This is fascinating stuff! I've watched noobs use Macs for the first time and seen their reactions to th UI, but you rarely get someone talking about its nuances with your level of experience that isn't trying to sell something.
You picked up on something that really bothers me with Mac OS - the dialog dilema. You learn from experience how each dialog behaves, but thats not the point. I've always felt that this discourages people from playing with controls that people really ought to feel very comfortable with - like editing mail accounts, network settings and application preferences. These are scary enough for noobs without the added worry of inconsistant UIs.
You're right you don't have to pair (which I didn't know - thanks for the tip!), but you still have to select the device you want to send to via another menu...yada yada yada yada.
Is this hard? No. Is it bearable, with what we know about omnidirectional radio communications? Hell yes! Bluetooth is a God send. But is it necessary for the use case we've described? No.
Omnidirectional is great, but that extra flexibility means extra controls. You absolutely gotta have:
Device ID
Security/Encryption
Collision detection
Which we can do, but all of those come at the expense of simplicity and bandwidth overhead. I'm really not saying get rid of Bluetooth, I'm saying can we have this as well, please!
I miss line of sight communications. Now I can see that when the range is measured in miles or 10s of yards line of site is probably a real issue, but when its measured in feetor inches its actually really neat.
Bluetooth is cool, I wouldn't want a LOS headset, or xbox controller and it is cool being able to sync or connect to your phone whilst its still in your pocket. But handshaking is a PITA. Say a friend of mine wants to send me a photo from his groovy new phone to my apple. I can do it with bluetooth, but I have to pair it first (grrrr). In the bad old days of ir, all he had to do was point his phone at my laptop press send, then I accepted the transmission and it magically appeared on my desktop. Sweet.
For fast, one time transmission, this technology could really make life easier. You don't have to know what WLAN to connect to, you don't have pair, you don't have to worry about firewalls or connection settings or network contention. You just fire and forget. Its not replacement for bluetooth, its complimentary.
So I guess in the rest of the world thats more like 22,000 miles. Thats still a heck of a lot of mileage, but not out of the reach of sales reps and long-haul commuters.
But you don't buy a hybrid because they're cheaper, you buy them for that warm, green, fuzzy feeling.
OK. The patent office can't handle the load. I don't really think that any, one institution could. I mean where could you find a group of people who could find prior art within 20 secs... oh right/. does.
Why isn't there a community forum where new patents are bought forward and people can moderate them, and the patent office can then analise that 'moderation' and act upon that. You know, a democratic process.
I'm not saying that/. should have the final say. Hell, that would be REALLY stupid, but it would enable the patent office to tap into the nerd community for free, and we get to feel powerful. If they like that, maybe they could then let groklaw do the same with new laws.
This post is slightly tounge in cheek, but there must be someway to tap into the wisdom of crowds, even if the final descision is made by those in charge.
Lets get one thing straight - the crappy handicamed, pre-screen divx that gets sent over the internet, is just that crappy. The sound is bad. The visuals are bad, and the audience noise doesn't add to the experience.
If someone wants to see the movie so badly as to download that version of the movie you know one thing - your marketing team are doing they're jobs and the hype is working. That person will also be first in line at the cinema, and you get to complain about all the free publicity you are getting and get more free publicity in the process. If anyone downloads that version and decides not to give you any money thats because your movie , in their opinion, is bad.
Secondly... since when did movies in Hollywood start making money? I thought the whole point was that, at best, they broke even and therefore nobody has to pay any tax? The reason so many of these blockbusters are getting bigger and bigger budgets is because its much easier to claim that you didn't make $150m dollars from a film than £20 dollars. Thats why they always declare the weekend gross, not net. Hell, we should all be celebrating the ammount of money these guys should be paying in corportation tax.
We all know that the real criminals and pirates are the studios, thats why they're so rich. Let he who has no sin, cast the first stone. Ie don't sue your customers - asshat.
I whole heartedly agree, apart from on the laptops, where it is kinda right next to the drive itself.
My girlfriend bought a Mac yesterday and to be honest the ejecting system completely stumped her.
GF: How do I eject the CD?!?!? There is no button?!?!?! Me: Press the eject button on the keyboard?!?!?! GF: Huh? Thats stupid...
a few minutes later
GF: Why does it complain everytime I unplug my iPod? Me: You have to eject it first. GF: Why? Me (thinks): Shall I explain write behind caching or just tell her id... Me: You have to do it in windows too... on a Mac you can drag it to the trash, or right click it and select eject, or highlight it and press Apple-e etc... GF: Why can't I just press the button on the keyboard? Me (thinks): Thats a good question that doesn't really have a none technical answer... Me:...because Steve Jobs says so!
The way I see it, Apple sat a lot of very clever people down to figure out the most intuitive way of doing something completely unintuitive - unmounting media. None of them had a really good idea, so uncharactoristically for Apple they did all of them and gave you choice. People like choice about as much as they like taxes. They except them as a symbol of freedom whilst secretly hating them for the effort they force them to excert.
Unless you understand the caching mechanisms and the benefits they produce, its impossible to understand why you need them at all. I blame the floppy disk and DOS. Floppy disks were slow, but if you clicked on save, the minute you heard the clicking and whirring stop you knew the data was 'safe' and you knew where it was. People expect that from USB keys, CD-RW and firewire disks, and its very hard to explain why the new technology is harder to use, even if it is faster, stores more and improves system stability to someone who isn't technical.
to stop illegal downloading is to uninvent the wheel. Make ANY device that can digitize analog data illegal unless they are properly licensed by a *IAA authorized service provider. No home movies. No home recording, unless it is to analog media. In a sense make digitzers like stills. Anyone can make Whisky, its easy, unless the equipment to do so is illegal.
I have little sympathy for the *IAA. Do you think they gave us CD/DVDs because they gave us better quality, or because they increased profit? The fact that they were too miopic to realise that the same technologies that were dropping their bottom line could enable consumers to replace them is karmic.
The creators of optical media suing bittorrent et al, is like the great ship builders suing boeing and airbus. It shouldn't be allowed to happen. Artists need to stop looking for recording contracts and start looking for marketting contracts. You can still make money in popular arts, its just you can't expect to make money by selling digital facsimilies of that art.
The iPod works because it is a music player. It is not a music recorder. It is not a fancy music organiser. It is a music player. If you want to do anything 'clever' you plug it into a Mac and control it through a GUI that elegantly handles the complexity outside of the beautifully simple player. The iPod is also a portable harddisk. If you want to use it as such, you just plug it into a Mac, and it works as a slow, but effective harddisk.
The Apple phone should be ALOT like this.
It should be a phone. It shouldn't be a web browswer, PSP, or run my house. It should also be a data point. I should be able to do nothing more than pair my mac with my iPhone and it should just work from that point on as a data point (in the absense of anything faster / cheaper).
I'm in two minds weather you should be able to input any real data at all. I have never really used the PIM functions of my phone other than to read them. If I want to change/add/delete an entry I usually fire up the closest Mac, do it on that, then resync. The only thing I can really see me doing is adding a new phone number, and dialing and, at a push, SMS (but thats soooo 90s technology).
In that respect I could see the iPhone being almost a clone of the iPod Mini, just with a menu system aimed more at PIM data, and a jog wheel that doubles as an old style phone dialler - (no touch buttons would really make it stand out).
Apple have played and won in the music player market, because they understand that people that own MP3 players own computers too. Now that line isn't as clean in the phone market, but its not that far off - and for those of use that do own both, a phone that is designed around this paradigm is what is really missing from the market (not a phone that can access my iTMS account).
Of course this phone won't be anything like that, so it will fail. It will be another Motorola monstrosity that does everything in its power in make Cingular more money at the expense of usability, battery life and my patience. As such it will be another fish in the sea, albeit a fish with Apple branding.
"Computer science is as much as about computers as astronomy is about telescopes"
As for learning on the job - you leave uni, your straight into Job Catch 22.
You need experience to get the job You need training to get experience You need money to get training You need a job to get money You need a job to get experience
Where do you start? Especially when you concider that companies don't like investing in training, because it means they might have to pay you more (and if they don't you'll move companies).
I know the laws of economics will kick in, and eventually the skills gap will mean that companies are forced to take risks again... but thats not now. If IBM wants to sell mainframes, they need to give away training.
At the moment Joe Public is using the internet for web browsing, email and IM. Thats it, because it takes people a long time to get into the mind set of a new technology.
Features my Mum is asking for now is easy file transfer to herself and collegues. She works for local government and regulary produces files that are more popular than she initially realised. At the moment her only option is email. Thats fine, until she spends most of her morning emailing the same file to people who suddenly decide they need a copy too (if its not her its her secretary). What she needs is a public, secure file dump, its not that I can't set one up for her, its that people get scared by new acronyms. Just go to be secure ftp site and download it is almost always followed by: "Huh?". I suggested.Mac, but her net admins (quite rightly) won't let her download or install executables, so its too difficult for her to set up in XP.
Why couldn't you have a two tier tertiary storage system. 6GB of power hungry storage, and 256MB of low power storage, the 32 MB of volatile RAM etc...
That way your iPod wouldn't have to fire up the harddrive half as often. If you need to access your music you can, but providing you don't want to change the playlist / album or are happy with the shuffle selection you'd only need to fire up the HDD every couple of days.
Sounds like you have issues. A friend of mine recommended Dr. Eliza. She's really helped me work through some of my own issues. The voices in my head are down to a dull roar, and my twitching no longer turns bath time into jaccuzzi time.
Slashdot Mirror
"the Office 12 formats pay special attention to compatibility with older document versions, [and] other formats do not concern themselves with this important issue."
ROTFL. Anyone that has had to distribute anything via Word knows this is beyond FUD. My best example is my CV. I wrote it in Mac Office 2004, and made sure it was compatible (using compatibility checker) all the way back to Word 97. It wasn't even close. In the end I was sending my CV out as Word 97, 2000, RTF and PDF just to make sure.
Backwards compatibility my arse. It nearly cost me a job, as when your in IT, and people think you can't even use word, it starts to look bad. I understand that its a word processor, not a desktop publisher, but is consistant handling of tables and pictures that much to ask?
I've had documents that would open in Word 2004 fine, but all the pictures would be rotated through 90 degrees on Word 2000. And thats before you start looking at the way it handles the difference between A4 and Letter.
The only way I can send a file and be certain that it looks the way it should is via PDF. But thats at the expense of other parties being able to edit it.
PDF isn't the solution, its a hack. I want/need the consistant typesetting of PDF, with the editting features of Word. Now I know there are other applications that let me do this (latex et al), I just wish other people did too so I could start using that instead of frigin office.
OK - I know nothing about this, so it is a genuine question.
/. hates x86 bloatedness, on the other hand we slapdown this attempt by intel to escape the aging architecture. If AMD hadn't stepped up and provided a chip that does both 32 and 64 bit ops would we finally be on the verge of dropping x86 all together?
Should we be pleased that Itanium failed?
I mean, on one hand
Are there reasons other than poor support from Micorsoft for Itanics massive failure? Is it a poor arcitecture?
Like I said, I genuinely don't know.
I owned an XBox and a GC before the XBox exploded, and the GC was stolen.
I have to say that, of the two, I got a lot more mileage out of the GC (which I bought on a whim) than I ever got out of the XBox (which I eagerly awaited for months before its release). But I think you're off with graphics performance at least with 'photoreal' 3D stuff like Men of Honour (where you could actually count the frame rate in some sections) to Metroid Prime, which although good, simply didn't compare to Doom 3 or even Halo 2 in terms of graphical beauty (gameplay, they're probably on a par - but then arn't all FPS nowadays).
I'd say the question next gen owners have got to ask is do they want the best online FPS experience (Xbox) or do they want to have fun playing different games. I'm definately in the latter camp. 2 bottles of tequilla, the likes of Donkey Konga/Monkey Ball/Double Dash and a group of friends in the same room will always out weigh a couple of litres of red bull, Halo 2/Rainbow 6, and few 12 year old yanks.
The question Nintendo have to ask themselves is why, when their console is cheaper, the games are cheaper and arguably better, are they being outsold by Sony and XBox on all continents? Its got to be about the 'cool' factor - something Nintendo hasn't been since the gameboy. Which is a real shame, when the only thing that seems to be 'cool' is killing innocents, blood, driving too fast and more killing. Rome _is_ the mob.
So Windows XP was put together by the best brains that money could buy and it was OK - not great, not good, just OK. >90% of the worlds computers, for better or worse, run on this operating system, and its averageness has lead to a world where people still think that viruses, malware and spyware are an accepted part of computing and that its the 90% marketshare making it a target that has caused these problem.
Now its going to be designed by the best people money can buy, Microfied (viruses and bugs added - to improve the upgrade market) by the marketing dept, and then built by the cheapest labour on the planet. And this will improve stability and performance how? What about all those studies that show that its not the volume of coders that you need, its the quality?
Now I'm sure, given the right support, these Chinese coders have the potential to take over the world, but the fact is they'll get Mubai'd. Badly translated design sheets will arrive on their desks. They're managers will only be interested in the volume of code they produce (because thats an easier metric than quality), and the working environment will be sweat shop not think tank, and probably worse of all, if they find an inconsistancy in the design, they'll code through it as it will be cheaper than waiting for the world to rotate so that Redmond is awake enough to answer questions coherantly.
To all the banks, governments, militaries et al. The end is nigh. Start investing now in Linux or BSD. They're charities, so its tax deductable. If you want more control you can buy that too. What you want to invest in is the GUI and Office Suite. this is because good coders often find this bit boring, and need 'motivation' to want to do it in their spare time. The rest is pretty much there - at least its already better than a lot of windows. Just remember that you won't 'own' anything, but then you don't own Windows / Office either. I'm sure if you speak nicely to Linus he'll provide you with a "We support free software", or "Free software inside" banner for your websites, brochures and websites.
My smart car hasn't let me down once with regard groceries. I have over filled a trolly more than once and still managed to get it all in a the boot. In fact, my girlfriend and I have been on many a camping trip, getting a 4 man kayam tent, cooking equipment and a double air bed, plus groceries for a couple days in one of them.
OK, you can't fit a sofa in the back, or, oh I don't know, a fence or a cow or France, or a 5 a side soccer team, but you can fit more than you'd think!
The used to be called One-2-One in the UK - or as it soon became known: One-2-NoOne
So does this mean that using Private Browsing on Safari makes me a terrorist? Sometimes I don't want my computer recording watch I'm 'reading' during 'self reflection' sessions. In the same way as I need a Apple script to clear the recent files list in preview.app and quicktime.app during similar sessions. Its a privacy thing - I am entitled to privacy in my own house arn't I?
In the news today: world shocked as cost of system critcal software, that needs to be supported by real people, is not just the ticket price!
/.ers all know this to be a fact, it no doubt alludes the other 99.9% of the computer buying populous, so it getting into the news is probably a good thing.
Seriously. The only reason this article is even remotely interesting is because a big company (admittedly with a vested interest) has taken time out from its busy schedule of taking over the world, to point out the fact the the real cost of an OS is the support and not the retail price. Now this is important, as although we as
Thats not to say that saving the site licence for Windows isn't a big saving, its just that Linux admins know that because people think they're saving 10 large, that they can charge more than the market rate for Windows admins. As is always the case, the market will eventually catch up, supply of admins will begin to saturate the market and linux TCO will begin to slide, as will Windows as they pull out all the stops to stay ahead.
They called it Wolverine did they?
Depends where you are in the world. F.A.C.T. The Federation Against Copyright Theft preach that it is actually theft in the UK, and they're on TV ads, DVD ads, Cinema ads... but most people take the ads off the pirated DVDs ;)
This is fascinating stuff! I've watched noobs use Macs for the first time and seen their reactions to th UI, but you rarely get someone talking about its nuances with your level of experience that isn't trying to sell something.
You picked up on something that really bothers me with Mac OS - the dialog dilema. You learn from experience how each dialog behaves, but thats not the point. I've always felt that this discourages people from playing with controls that people really ought to feel very comfortable with - like editing mail accounts, network settings and application preferences. These are scary enough for noobs without the added worry of inconsistant UIs.
Is this hard? No. Is it bearable, with what we know about omnidirectional radio communications? Hell yes! Bluetooth is a God send. But is it necessary for the use case we've described? No.
Omnidirectional is great, but that extra flexibility means extra controls. You absolutely gotta have:- Device ID
- Security/Encryption
- Collision detection
Which we can do, but all of those come at the expense of simplicity and bandwidth overhead. I'm really not saying get rid of Bluetooth, I'm saying can we have this as well, please!I miss line of sight communications. Now I can see that when the range is measured in miles or 10s of yards line of site is probably a real issue, but when its measured in feetor inches its actually really neat.
Bluetooth is cool, I wouldn't want a LOS headset, or xbox controller and it is cool being able to sync or connect to your phone whilst its still in your pocket. But handshaking is a PITA. Say a friend of mine wants to send me a photo from his groovy new phone to my apple. I can do it with bluetooth, but I have to pair it first (grrrr). In the bad old days of ir, all he had to do was point his phone at my laptop press send, then I accepted the transmission and it magically appeared on my desktop. Sweet.
For fast, one time transmission, this technology could really make life easier. You don't have to know what WLAN to connect to, you don't have pair, you don't have to worry about firewalls or connection settings or network contention. You just fire and forget. Its not replacement for bluetooth, its complimentary.
So I guess in the rest of the world thats more like 22,000 miles. Thats still a heck of a lot of mileage, but not out of the reach of sales reps and long-haul commuters.
But you don't buy a hybrid because they're cheaper, you buy them for that warm, green, fuzzy feeling.
OK. The patent office can't handle the load. I don't really think that any, one institution could. I mean where could you find a group of people who could find prior art within 20 secs... oh right /. does.
/. should have the final say. Hell, that would be REALLY stupid, but it would enable the patent office to tap into the nerd community for free, and we get to feel powerful. If they like that, maybe they could then let groklaw do the same with new laws.
Why isn't there a community forum where new patents are bought forward and people can moderate them, and the patent office can then analise that 'moderation' and act upon that. You know, a democratic process.
I'm not saying that
This post is slightly tounge in cheek, but there must be someway to tap into the wisdom of crowds, even if the final descision is made by those in charge.
Is Peter Jackson having a laugh?
Lets get one thing straight - the crappy handicamed, pre-screen divx that gets sent over the internet, is just that crappy. The sound is bad. The visuals are bad, and the audience noise doesn't add to the experience.
If someone wants to see the movie so badly as to download that version of the movie you know one thing - your marketing team are doing they're jobs and the hype is working. That person will also be first in line at the cinema, and you get to complain about all the free publicity you are getting and get more free publicity in the process. If anyone downloads that version and decides not to give you any money thats because your movie , in their opinion, is bad.
Secondly... since when did movies in Hollywood start making money? I thought the whole point was that, at best, they broke even and therefore nobody has to pay any tax? The reason so many of these blockbusters are getting bigger and bigger budgets is because its much easier to claim that you didn't make $150m dollars from a film than £20 dollars. Thats why they always declare the weekend gross, not net. Hell, we should all be celebrating the ammount of money these guys should be paying in corportation tax.
We all know that the real criminals and pirates are the studios, thats why they're so rich. Let he who has no sin, cast the first stone. Ie don't sue your customers - asshat.
I whole heartedly agree, apart from on the laptops, where it is kinda right next to the drive itself.
...because Steve Jobs says so!
My girlfriend bought a Mac yesterday and to be honest the ejecting system completely stumped her.
GF: How do I eject the CD?!?!? There is no button?!?!?!
Me: Press the eject button on the keyboard?!?!?!
GF: Huh? Thats stupid...
a few minutes later
GF: Why does it complain everytime I unplug my iPod?
Me: You have to eject it first.
GF: Why?
Me (thinks): Shall I explain write behind caching or just tell her id...
Me: You have to do it in windows too... on a Mac you can drag it to the trash, or right click it and select eject, or highlight it and press Apple-e etc...
GF: Why can't I just press the button on the keyboard?
Me (thinks): Thats a good question that doesn't really have a none technical answer...
Me:
The way I see it, Apple sat a lot of very clever people down to figure out the most intuitive way of doing something completely unintuitive - unmounting media. None of them had a really good idea, so uncharactoristically for Apple they did all of them and gave you choice. People like choice about as much as they like taxes. They except them as a symbol of freedom whilst secretly hating them for the effort they force them to excert.
Unless you understand the caching mechanisms and the benefits they produce, its impossible to understand why you need them at all. I blame the floppy disk and DOS. Floppy disks were slow, but if you clicked on save, the minute you heard the clicking and whirring stop you knew the data was 'safe' and you knew where it was. People expect that from USB keys, CD-RW and firewire disks, and its very hard to explain why the new technology is harder to use, even if it is faster, stores more and improves system stability to someone who isn't technical.
to stop illegal downloading is to uninvent the wheel. Make ANY device that can digitize analog data illegal unless they are properly licensed by a *IAA authorized service provider. No home movies. No home recording, unless it is to analog media. In a sense make digitzers like stills. Anyone can make Whisky, its easy, unless the equipment to do so is illegal.
I have little sympathy for the *IAA. Do you think they gave us CD/DVDs because they gave us better quality, or because they increased profit? The fact that they were too miopic to realise that the same technologies that were dropping their bottom line could enable consumers to replace them is karmic.
The creators of optical media suing bittorrent et al, is like the great ship builders suing boeing and airbus. It shouldn't be allowed to happen. Artists need to stop looking for recording contracts and start looking for marketting contracts. You can still make money in popular arts, its just you can't expect to make money by selling digital facsimilies of that art.
The iPod works because it is a music player. It is not a music recorder. It is not a fancy music organiser. It is a music player. If you want to do anything 'clever' you plug it into a Mac and control it through a GUI that elegantly handles the complexity outside of the beautifully simple player. The iPod is also a portable harddisk. If you want to use it as such, you just plug it into a Mac, and it works as a slow, but effective harddisk.
The Apple phone should be ALOT like this.
It should be a phone. It shouldn't be a web browswer, PSP, or run my house. It should also be a data point. I should be able to do nothing more than pair my mac with my iPhone and it should just work from that point on as a data point (in the absense of anything faster / cheaper).
I'm in two minds weather you should be able to input any real data at all. I have never really used the PIM functions of my phone other than to read them. If I want to change/add/delete an entry I usually fire up the closest Mac, do it on that, then resync. The only thing I can really see me doing is adding a new phone number, and dialing and, at a push, SMS (but thats soooo 90s technology).
In that respect I could see the iPhone being almost a clone of the iPod Mini, just with a menu system aimed more at PIM data, and a jog wheel that doubles as an old style phone dialler - (no touch buttons would really make it stand out).
Apple have played and won in the music player market, because they understand that people that own MP3 players own computers too. Now that line isn't as clean in the phone market, but its not that far off - and for those of use that do own both, a phone that is designed around this paradigm is what is really missing from the market (not a phone that can access my iTMS account).
Of course this phone won't be anything like that, so it will fail. It will be another Motorola monstrosity that does everything in its power in make Cingular more money at the expense of usability, battery life and my patience. As such it will be another fish in the sea, albeit a fish with Apple branding.
"Computer science is as much as about computers as astronomy is about telescopes"
As for learning on the job - you leave uni, your straight into Job Catch 22.
You need experience to get the job
You need training to get experience
You need money to get training
You need a job to get money
You need a job to get experience
Where do you start? Especially when you concider that companies don't like investing in training, because it means they might have to pay you more (and if they don't you'll move companies).
I know the laws of economics will kick in, and eventually the skills gap will mean that companies are forced to take risks again... but thats not now. If IBM wants to sell mainframes, they need to give away training.
At the moment Joe Public is using the internet for web browsing, email and IM. Thats it, because it takes people a long time to get into the mind set of a new technology. Features my Mum is asking for now is easy file transfer to herself and collegues. She works for local government and regulary produces files that are more popular than she initially realised. At the moment her only option is email. Thats fine, until she spends most of her morning emailing the same file to people who suddenly decide they need a copy too (if its not her its her secretary). What she needs is a public, secure file dump, its not that I can't set one up for her, its that people get scared by new acronyms. Just go to be secure ftp site and download it is almost always followed by: "Huh?". I suggested .Mac, but her net admins (quite rightly) won't let her download or install executables, so its too difficult for her to set up in XP.
You were going to take $$$ worth of stuff back home on a bus? In Illinois? Dude, you must be some big ass, scary looking, mofo, uber geek.
PS - Use the credit card to hire a taxi.
Why couldn't you have a two tier tertiary storage system. 6GB of power hungry storage, and 256MB of low power storage, the 32 MB of volatile RAM etc...
That way your iPod wouldn't have to fire up the harddrive half as often. If you need to access your music you can, but providing you don't want to change the playlist / album or are happy with the shuffle selection you'd only need to fire up the HDD every couple of days.
Sounds like you have issues. A friend of mine recommended Dr. Eliza. She's really helped me work through some of my own issues. The voices in my head are down to a dull roar, and my twitching no longer turns bath time into jaccuzzi time.