FTA: "At a political rally, an audience member could completely lock down Santorum, Romney, Paul, or Obama from speaking. "
well, I'm sure the secret service would notice if you were pointing toaster at POTUS (look at the pic, handheld, yes? inconspicuous? no)
wonder if you could defeat it with a piece of glass like a bigger teleprompter screen (it doesn't use noise cancelling technology) - no mention of how it works in an amplified environment where sound comes real time from multiple directions/sources.
"The gun works by listening in with a directional microphone, and then, after a short delay of around 0.2 seconds, playing it back with a directional speaker. This triggers an effect that psychologists call Delayed Auditory Feedback (DAF), which has long been known to interrupt your speech (you might’ve experienced the same effect if you’ve ever heard your own voice echoing through Skype or another voice comms program). "
BES schmez... ipads and iphones are making headway, not because the IT monkeys like them, but the because the high paid executives WANT them. If the big cheese says he wants mail on his iphone.. the IT monkeys will make it happen.. BES be damned.. Apple didn't have to spend a cent.
happend at my company (fortune 500, big). took 2 years to get BB in the house.. about 8 months for iphone because the big cheese of corporate IT wanted to use his for work.
even if apple wanted the BES.. that's all they'd get. RIM has nothing (not counting IP) that apple needs (never mind wants).
apple's not going to buy anything on fire sale. if anything they should buy someone that's doing well that compliments what they've already got.. like SONOS. if a real appleTV is in the works, SONOS audio would compliment that line (and they're doing really well.. I've never seen a bad review for their stuff). they ALWAYS buy something that they can integrate into their ecosystem. they never buy any consumer facing physical products (i don't consider software a physical product).
"Then close down the operating system division, killing support for it."
logistically and politically impossible....pretty sure if you bought MS you'd have to honor your support contracts. Don't forget, XP isn't going to be end of lifed for 2 more years. and I'm pretty sure 95% of the corporate world would have something to say if you suddenly took windows (support for...) away. the government also uses windows and office so you'd have to answer to them too.
face it.. companies like MS have to exist. if Apple owned 95% of the market, they'd be the same way.
"That's because too much cash often burns a hole in managers' pockets, and they end up doing a poor job of investing that cash—engaging instead in foolish pursuits like empire building."
Siri, PA Semi... appear to have been wise purchases. All of these (purchases/acquisitions since 2008) seem to have, for the most part, worked out well. (not counting the last 3 since it's too early). 2-3 billion.. of almost 100 in the bank. they could have bought those companies with the interest.
April 24, 2008 P.A. Semi Semiconductors United States US$278,000,000 [31] Apple A4, A5 (SoC) July 7, 2009 Placebase Maps United States — [32] Maps December 6, 2009 Lala.com Music streaming United States US$17,000,000 [33] iCloud, iTunes Match January 5, 2010 Quattro Wireless Mobile advertising United States US$275,000,000 [34] iAds April 27, 2010 Intrinsity Semiconductors United States US$121,000,000 [35] Apple A5 (SoC) April 27, 2010 Siri Software United States — [36] Siri July 14, 2010 Poly9 Web-based mapping Canada — [37] Maps September 20, 2010 Polar Rose Face-Recognition Sweden US$29,000,000 [38] iPhone software (camera) September 14, 2010 IMSense High Dynamic Range Photography United Kingdom — [39] iPhone software (camera) August 1, 2011 C3 Technologies 3D Mapping Sweden US$267,000,000 [40] Maps December 20, 2011 Anobit Flash Memory Israel US$390,000,000 [41] iPhones and iPads February 23, 2012 Chomp App-search software United States US$50,000,000 [42]
I'll bet a significant chunk of that money would be well spent tooling OTHER manufacturers facilities to make Apple parts. Spend the money to upgrade a factory to make the seamless glass panes they used in the NYC store (for example) and they get really good prices on that glass for another construction project.. the new HQ.. which apparently has all glass exterior walls (and no right angles).
Corning shelved Gorilla glass because they couldn't find a market for it. along comes Jobs... next thing you know, Corning is making Gorilla glass screens for everyone. I don't think Apple paid to re-tool... but probably gauranteed a shit ton of units ordered to get them to start making Gorilla glass in mass.
you can complain all you want about their marketing, their products, whatever. but you CANNOT, in any way, argue that their business model isn't ROCK SOLID.
"In the cockpit, pilots are using [iPads]," Cook said. "They're replacing 40-pound flight bags full of paper manuals and log books and navigation charts and checklists, making the pilot more efficient and making the plane more fuel efficient.."
I've seen commercial pilots wheeling their bags double stacked.. it's not just maps or stuff pertinent to the immediate trip... bet they never get more than 100 pages in to the stack, and i don't see the need to make monthly copies of a largish flight manual and rule book: "Flight bags typically contain flight manuals, technical orders, regulations, and various other flight-related materials that add weight to the flight, which burns more of the aircraft's fuel."
right. backdoor. to charts... updated every 28 days to "stay current" - hardly top secret shit. "For one, the iPad can instantly update charts electronically, while the AMC would require flying charts to be reprinted every 28 days to stay up to date." orders to nuke moscow aren't going to be FAXed.
military pilots need the same charts as the guy flying trinkets out of china.
SEVENTY fucking pounds. a ream of paper for your office copier weighs 5-7 lbs... 500 pages! even if i didn't have to carry it I'd probably get pretty upset if i had to use it. 70 fucking pounds.. 5000 pages.. WTF that's just stupid.. i'll be they carry charts for every route there is regardless of the fact that they fly between san francisco and LA 15 times a day.
The White House issued an executive order on Nov. 9 that U.S. agencies curb their spending by "limit[ing] the publication and printing of hard copy documents" and to provide that information "in an electronic form, whenever practicable." By cutting publication printing and distribution costs, and exchanging 70 pounds of paper for a 1.3-pound iPad, the Air Force can save some serious cash -- more than $1.2 million worth of fuel per year.
yes, it does suggest Siri is predispositioned to hear (understand better) simple queries (in this sense query means string of words spoken with inquisitive inflection).. it doesn't do such a good job of "hearing" when it listens to a random radio snippet. the inflection is totally different. Siri's like a dog.. if I say "wanna cookie" with playful inflection, the dog comes. if I say the SAME WORDS with "bad dog!" inflection.. the dog hides. Siri probably doesn't even TRY to parse "unfamiliar" inflection.. which explains why you can use it to take dictation in addition to checking the weather.
still, that doesn't mean noise filtering isn't in play.
agreed. it WILL work on other chipsets, but w/o the background noise scrubbing, it will/could be a lot less accurate... so Apple doesn't enable it because of perceived quality issues.. i did a totally unscientific experiment with Siri. Tuned the radio to the news, cranked the volume up, put the phone right in front of the speaker and asked it to set the timer. it "listened" for longer than it would have w/o the radio on, but only "heard" my question and set the timer.
next i did the same thing but didn't ask a question. it heard the radio, but didn't get a damn thing right in the "question" - random words.
but the most popular phone leading up to iphone was the RAZR (2004). initial price in the states was $600 bucks.
http://gizmodo.com/270353/the-razr-taught-us-that-the-iphone-is-priced-juuust-right It was 2004 when the RAZR launched in the US as a high-end design clamshell. It was $600, with a $100 dollar rebate from Cingular. yes, soon after launch the price dropped precipitously much like smart phones now. today you can get an android or ios phone (NEW) for just about every price point from free to 800 bucks.
oh, and don't forget the venerable StarTAC. 1996 - ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_StarTAC).. a primary selling point of which was support for OMG.. wait for it.. SMS....a free iphone 3GS is as capable as a laptop of the StarTAC era. Apple didn't set the bar, Motorola did - TWICE. Together the StarTAC and RAZR sold over 100M units.
so poett, you either forgot or are too young to have ever known;)
could have been scheduled for retirement.... off to the boneyard soonish so it's not worth fixing because they wouldn't recoup 25M before it's decommissioned...? or the value of the parts is worth more than one working plane...
"correlate to the complexity of the specific query and language we used to perform i"...maybe because
"set timer for 30 minutes" has less characters than "search wolfram alpha for flights currently overhead" - try this one when you can see a plane overhead
the upload for the timer command is smaller than the one asking for flight info. and the results will also vary.. last time I checked for flights, it came back with info for 8 flights, altitude, angle, distance (presumably from my location), and aircraft type (Boeing - 777-200 etc) PLUS a sky map! All this info vs. just launching the clock app and setting the timer @30.
"If you use Siri 2-3 times per day at an average of 63KB per instance, you might expect to use 126KB to 189KB per day, or 3.7 to 5.5MB per month. For 4-6 times a day, that might come out to 252KB to 378KB per day, or 7.4 to 11MB per month. If you use it 10-15 times per day, you might end up using 630KB to 945KB per day, or 18.5 to 27.7MB per month."
only 30MB a month if you ask 10-15 questions every day (that's ~once per hour assuming you're awake for ~16 hours)
syncing only works on WiFi, as does does PhotoStream. the only thing I can think of is Itunes match (where you get music from you stash @ apple) you download a song the first time you listen to it.
the only OTA update I remember as only 50GB, and I don't think they allow that over 3g either.
anecdotally - I live in a place that's notoriously bad for coverage. In recent months coverage and bandwidth (ATT) have improved. I eat lunch at a spot that used to have zero coverage (no signal at all, not even EDGE).. last time I was there - 5 bars.
i'm simply able to do more (online) in less time with a 4S, but I don't think it's the improved antenna either, because my ATT BBerry also saw a network performance boost.
"We performed six tasks that would be considered to be local tasks. These queries included things like, "Set an alarm for 3 hours from now," "Make an appointment for 2pm on Friday" (and then telling Siri to cancel the task), "Remind me to file expense reports when I get home," and "What is the contact info for Ars Technica?"
These tasks added up to a total of 220KB of data usage, or an average of 36.7KB per query. The actual numbers ranged from 60KB down to 18KB, and we believe this is correlated to the complexity of the specific query and language we used to perform it.
The five other tasks were ones that required lookups online—some of them were questions that Siri could get from Wolfram Alpha, while others prompted us to continue to search on the Web (thereby bringing up a Google search page with the wording that we had asked Siri). Some sample questions included "How many calories in a muffin?", "How many movies has Kevin Bacon been in?" (this required a Google lookup, which we said yes to), and "What is Lady Gaga's real name?"
These five tasks added up to a total of 473.5KB of data use, or an average of 94.72KB per query. The range went from 23KB to 187KB, depending on the question at hand.
what EVIDENCE do you have of Apple ever enforcing those rules. trivial for them to block or otherwise disable, but they NEVER have. Apple's never tried to "prosecute" me for re-selling "their" devices when I was upgrading.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/feds-ok-iphone-jailbreaking/ "Federal regulators lifted a cloud of uncertainty when they announced it was lawful to hack or “jailbreak” an iPhone, declaring Monday there was “no basis for copyright law to assist Apple in protecting its restrictive business model.”
" If you're using Apple products, that means that you're looking at the world through a very bent straw, and Apple is doing the bending. Is it in your favor? You decide."
I think Android is working much harder to get your eyeballs.
as much as I use both Apple and Google products, I'm more wary of what Google is going to do with my info.
Slashdot Mirror
FTA: "At a political rally, an audience member could completely lock down Santorum, Romney, Paul, or Obama from speaking. "
well, I'm sure the secret service would notice if you were pointing toaster at POTUS (look at the pic, handheld, yes? inconspicuous? no)
wonder if you could defeat it with a piece of glass like a bigger teleprompter screen (it doesn't use noise cancelling technology) - no mention of how it works in an amplified environment where sound comes real time from multiple directions/sources.
"The gun works by listening in with a directional microphone, and then, after a short delay of around 0.2 seconds, playing it back with a directional speaker. This triggers an effect that psychologists call Delayed Auditory Feedback (DAF), which has long been known to interrupt your speech (you might’ve experienced the same effect if you’ve ever heard your own voice echoing through Skype or another voice comms program). "
what a turd of a company.
BES schmez... ipads and iphones are making headway, not because the IT monkeys like them, but the because the high paid executives WANT them. If the big cheese says he wants mail on his iphone.. the IT monkeys will make it happen.. BES be damned.. Apple didn't have to spend a cent.
happend at my company (fortune 500, big). took 2 years to get BB in the house.. about 8 months for iphone because the big cheese of corporate IT wanted to use his for work.
even if apple wanted the BES.. that's all they'd get. RIM has nothing (not counting IP) that apple needs (never mind wants).
apple's not going to buy anything on fire sale. if anything they should buy someone that's doing well that compliments what they've already got.. like SONOS. if a real appleTV is in the works, SONOS audio would compliment that line (and they're doing really well.. I've never seen a bad review for their stuff). they ALWAYS buy something that they can integrate into their ecosystem. they never buy any consumer facing physical products (i don't consider software a physical product).
"Then close down the operating system division, killing support for it."
logistically and politically impossible. ...pretty sure if you bought MS you'd have to honor your support contracts. Don't forget, XP isn't going to be end of lifed for 2 more years. and I'm pretty sure 95% of the corporate world would have something to say if you suddenly took windows (support for...) away. the government also uses windows and office so you'd have to answer to them too.
face it.. companies like MS have to exist. if Apple owned 95% of the market, they'd be the same way.
"That's because too much cash often burns a hole in managers' pockets, and they end up doing a poor job of investing that cash—engaging instead in foolish pursuits like empire building."
Siri, PA Semi... appear to have been wise purchases. All of these (purchases/acquisitions since 2008) seem to have, for the most part, worked out well. (not counting the last 3 since it's too early). 2-3 billion.. of almost 100 in the bank. they could have bought those companies with the interest.
April 24, 2008 P.A. Semi Semiconductors United States US$278,000,000 [31] Apple A4, A5 (SoC)
July 7, 2009 Placebase Maps United States — [32] Maps
December 6, 2009 Lala.com Music streaming United States US$17,000,000 [33] iCloud, iTunes Match
January 5, 2010 Quattro Wireless Mobile advertising United States US$275,000,000 [34] iAds
April 27, 2010 Intrinsity Semiconductors United States US$121,000,000 [35] Apple A5 (SoC)
April 27, 2010 Siri Software United States — [36] Siri
July 14, 2010 Poly9 Web-based mapping Canada — [37] Maps
September 20, 2010 Polar Rose Face-Recognition Sweden US$29,000,000 [38] iPhone software (camera)
September 14, 2010 IMSense High Dynamic Range Photography United Kingdom — [39] iPhone software (camera)
August 1, 2011 C3 Technologies 3D Mapping Sweden US$267,000,000 [40] Maps
December 20, 2011 Anobit Flash Memory Israel US$390,000,000 [41] iPhones and iPads
February 23, 2012 Chomp App-search software United States US$50,000,000 [42]
I'll bet a significant chunk of that money would be well spent tooling OTHER manufacturers facilities to make Apple parts. Spend the money to upgrade a factory to make the seamless glass panes they used in the NYC store (for example) and they get really good prices on that glass for another construction project.. the new HQ.. which apparently has all glass exterior walls (and no right angles).
spend the money to upgrade the CNC machines to tool unibody chassis, and no other vendor can use that facility (because Apple bought exclusivity). OR they bought all the machines (since it literally takes HOURS to cut a chasis out of a billet http://plasticsnews.com/china/english/chinablog/2011/12/apple_turns_to_new_materials.html)
Corning shelved Gorilla glass because they couldn't find a market for it. along comes Jobs... next thing you know, Corning is making Gorilla glass screens for everyone. I don't think Apple paid to re-tool... but probably gauranteed a shit ton of units ordered to get them to start making Gorilla glass in mass.
you can complain all you want about their marketing, their products, whatever. but you CANNOT, in any way, argue that their business model isn't ROCK SOLID.
as the saying goes.. if it ain't broke....
the same way they turned them off - REMOTE.
you think they sent 3000 guys out to turn them off but forgot to collect them?
quick hands on
http://www.thedaily.com/page/2012/02/21/022112-tech-apps-office/ /w metro interface.
mine's in India.
sold it with the free case i got from apple.
who the hell didn't take them up on it when it was offered the first time around?
IMO the case I got then was better than Apple's bumper (which was slow shipping at the time) anyway.
i don't think so.. 40 POUND FLIGHT BAGS
"In the cockpit, pilots are using [iPads]," Cook said. "They're replacing 40-pound flight bags full of paper manuals and log books and navigation charts and checklists, making the pilot more efficient and making the plane more fuel efficient.."
I've seen commercial pilots wheeling their bags double stacked.. it's not just maps or stuff pertinent to the immediate trip... bet they never get more than 100 pages in to the stack, and i don't see the need to make monthly copies of a largish flight manual and rule book: "Flight bags typically contain flight manuals, technical orders, regulations, and various other flight-related materials that add weight to the flight, which burns more of the aircraft's fuel."
right. backdoor. to charts... updated every 28 days to "stay current" - hardly top secret shit.
"For one, the iPad can instantly update charts electronically, while the AMC would require flying charts to be reprinted every 28 days to stay up to date."
orders to nuke moscow aren't going to be FAXed.
military pilots need the same charts as the guy flying trinkets out of china.
SEVENTY fucking pounds. a ream of paper for your office copier weighs 5-7 lbs... 500 pages! even if i didn't have to carry it I'd probably get pretty upset if i had to use it. 70 fucking pounds.. 5000 pages.. WTF that's just stupid.. i'll be they carry charts for every route there is regardless of the fact that they fly between san francisco and LA 15 times a day.
The White House issued an executive order on Nov. 9 that U.S. agencies curb their spending by "limit[ing] the publication and printing of hard copy documents" and to provide that information "in an electronic form, whenever practicable." By cutting publication printing and distribution costs, and exchanging 70 pounds of paper for a 1.3-pound iPad, the Air Force can save some serious cash -- more than $1.2 million worth of fuel per year.
yes, it does suggest Siri is predispositioned to hear (understand better) simple queries (in this sense query means string of words spoken with inquisitive inflection).. it doesn't do such a good job of "hearing" when it listens to a random radio snippet. the inflection is totally different. Siri's like a dog.. if I say "wanna cookie" with playful inflection, the dog comes. if I say the SAME WORDS with "bad dog!" inflection.. the dog hides. Siri probably doesn't even TRY to parse "unfamiliar" inflection.. which explains why you can use it to take dictation in addition to checking the weather.
still, that doesn't mean noise filtering isn't in play.
listen to the demo from the guy above: http://www.audience.com/demos/transmit-noise-en.php
it's doing EXACTLY what you said it can't.
random radio chatter in the background has a "spectral signature" much the same as the din in a crowded bar.
agreed. it WILL work on other chipsets, but w/o the background noise scrubbing, it will/could be a lot less accurate... so Apple doesn't enable it because of perceived quality issues .. i did a totally unscientific experiment with Siri. Tuned the radio to the news, cranked the volume up, put the phone right in front of the speaker and asked it to set the timer. it "listened" for longer than it would have w/o the radio on, but only "heard" my question and set the timer.
next i did the same thing but didn't ask a question.
it heard the radio, but didn't get a damn thing right in the "question" - random words.
but the most popular phone leading up to iphone was the RAZR (2004). initial price in the states was $600 bucks.
http://gizmodo.com/270353/the-razr-taught-us-that-the-iphone-is-priced-juuust-right
It was 2004 when the RAZR launched in the US as a high-end design clamshell. It was $600, with a $100 dollar rebate from Cingular. yes, soon after launch the price dropped precipitously much like smart phones now. today you can get an android or ios phone (NEW) for just about every price point from free to 800 bucks.
oh, and don't forget the venerable StarTAC. 1996 - ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_StarTAC).. a primary selling point of which was support for OMG.. wait for it.. SMS. ...a free iphone 3GS is as capable as a laptop of the StarTAC era. Apple didn't set the bar, Motorola did - TWICE. Together the StarTAC and RAZR sold over 100M units.
so poett, you either forgot or are too young to have ever known ;)
could have been scheduled for retirement.... off to the boneyard soonish so it's not worth fixing because they wouldn't recoup 25M before it's decommissioned...? or the value of the parts is worth more than one working plane...
"correlate to the complexity of the specific query and language we used to perform i" ...maybe because
"set timer for 30 minutes" has less characters than
"search wolfram alpha for flights currently overhead" - try this one when you can see a plane overhead
the upload for the timer command is smaller than the one asking for flight info.
and the results will also vary.. last time I checked for flights, it came back with info for 8 flights, altitude, angle, distance (presumably from my location), and aircraft type (Boeing - 777-200 etc) PLUS a sky map! All this info vs. just launching the clock app and setting the timer @30.
more data in the response.
figure out a way to work the fish slapping dance into this movie.
i just don't think peple use Siri that often.
"If you use Siri 2-3 times per day at an average of 63KB per instance, you might expect to use 126KB to 189KB per day, or 3.7 to 5.5MB per month. For 4-6 times a day, that might come out to 252KB to 378KB per day, or 7.4 to 11MB per month. If you use it 10-15 times per day, you might end up using 630KB to 945KB per day, or 18.5 to 27.7MB per month."
only 30MB a month if you ask 10-15 questions every day (that's ~once per hour assuming you're awake for ~16 hours)
syncing only works on WiFi, as does does PhotoStream. the only thing I can think of is Itunes match (where you get music from you stash @ apple) you download a song the first time you listen to it.
the only OTA update I remember as only 50GB, and I don't think they allow that over 3g either.
anecdotally - I live in a place that's notoriously bad for coverage. In recent months coverage and bandwidth (ATT) have improved. I eat lunch at a spot that used to have zero coverage (no signal at all, not even EDGE).. last time I was there - 5 bars.
i'm simply able to do more (online) in less time with a 4S, but I don't think it's the improved antenna either, because my ATT BBerry also saw a network performance boost.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/11/how-data-heavy-is-siri-on-an-iphone-4s-ars-investigates.ars
"We performed six tasks that would be considered to be local tasks. These queries included things like, "Set an alarm for 3 hours from now," "Make an appointment for 2pm on Friday" (and then telling Siri to cancel the task), "Remind me to file expense reports when I get home," and "What is the contact info for Ars Technica?"
These tasks added up to a total of 220KB of data usage, or an average of 36.7KB per query. The actual numbers ranged from 60KB down to 18KB, and we believe this is correlated to the complexity of the specific query and language we used to perform it.
The five other tasks were ones that required lookups online—some of them were questions that Siri could get from Wolfram Alpha, while others prompted us to continue to search on the Web (thereby bringing up a Google search page with the wording that we had asked Siri). Some sample questions included "How many calories in a muffin?", "How many movies has Kevin Bacon been in?" (this required a Google lookup, which we said yes to), and "What is Lady Gaga's real name?"
These five tasks added up to a total of 473.5KB of data use, or an average of 94.72KB per query. The range went from 23KB to 187KB, depending on the question at hand.
what EVIDENCE do you have of Apple ever enforcing those rules. trivial for them to block or otherwise disable, but they NEVER have. Apple's never tried to "prosecute" me for re-selling "their" devices when I was upgrading.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/feds-ok-iphone-jailbreaking/
"Federal regulators lifted a cloud of uncertainty when they announced it was lawful to hack or “jailbreak” an iPhone, declaring Monday there was “no basis for copyright law to assist Apple in protecting its restrictive business model.”
meanwhile....
http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/18/motorola-locks-razr-bootloader-angers-rom-happy-lovers-of-anore/
define win.
Android ships more units. Apple makes more money.
" If you're using Apple products, that means that you're looking at the world through a very bent straw, and Apple is doing the bending. Is it in your favor? You decide."
I think Android is working much harder to get your eyeballs.
as much as I use both Apple and Google products, I'm more wary of what Google is going to do with my info.
everyone knows they'll ignore us until we have warp capability.
2 weeks to the Moon?
9 months to Mars? lol.
woosh.
waterproof, sealed, dishwasher safe, antimicrobial keyboards.
http://www.sealshield.com/
$149 with a touchpad vs. $900 because it comes with lights?
BF3 and MW3 where the NYC, Berlin and Paris are bombed to shit by the Russians?