I want HUDs to finally find their way into vehicles...
HUDs have been implemented in numerous cars over the years, but have never really caught on for the mainstream. GM introduced a HUD on a few models in the late 80's. BMW, Citroen, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan/Infiniti and Toyota/Lexus all offer HUDs currently, although some only do so overseas. The big ones are GM and BMW although the latest Lexus comes with a very nice LED HUD as an option and it even includes the GPS turn by turn as I understand. You can also get a lot of third party add on HUDs. Heck, I've seen HUD setups for motorcycle helmets.
the only advantage the gps units had over smartphones is the fact they still worked on trips that take out them out of signal range.
Why do people think this. GPS is *not* something that can be, or is received over cell networks.
I think you missed the tense there. Smartphones did use cell phone towers to triangulate position and provide GPS type information before such phones started to get actual GPS chips and antenna. At the time, smartphones did fine in the city, but failed to provide your location when you were out in the country away from towers. Now most smartphones include actual GPS so that disadvantage has gone away, as per the original poster's comment.
Slow down and comprehend what people are saying before going off half cocked.
iPods won't lose marketshare for the same reason that DVD is barely losing marketshare to Blu-Ray. Ogg is not enough superior from the consumer's viewpoint to make a switch worth the not-insignificant cost.
The DVD publishing industry is controlled by a cartel. Are you claiming Apple has undue influence on a relevant market? Which one?
It is worth it for the long term health of the industry, but consumers don't know that. It's like the switch to unleaded gas... it wouldn't have happened unless it was forced.
There was a clear public interest in stopping leaded gasoline because it was introducing a cost ot society in damage to health that was not being borne by those profiting from selling it. That's not even close to a similar situation to video codecs.
Competition in the market is a good thing, but the competition comes at the cost of freedom due to patents. You cannot freely, legally ship software that implements H.264 in the US
And we don' know if you can freely and legally ship Ogg because no one has bothered to test what patents it may be violating.
That is a VERY significant barrier to browsers like Firefox.
Which is why Firefox won't ship with the codec, although it will likely ship with the ability to use the codec if it is included with the OS, which is likely in many cases. That's why it makes sense to not specify any codec and provide multiple options, then the video tag may actually be used by browsers other than IE instead of being ignored by everyone.
If the market were actually free, I would agree with you. The problem is that it's not free, there are significant restrictions on the free use of H.264, and that makes Ogg a much better choice.
I don't accept your assertion that patents undermine the operation of the free market in the general case.
Because iPods have h.264 acceleration hardware built in.
Yeah, but if Ogg is better, iPods will start to lose marketshare to competitors who implement it, won't they? Wouldn't not implementing it be harming their platform, not protecting it?
And Apple has a strong interest in keeping H.264 the standard specifically because they want to keep selling iPods.
But H.264 isn't the standard now. There is no standard now, it is fragmented among many solutions. And Apple isn't making H.264 the standard, their influence is making it one of several options for that standard, competing against Ogg. Is competition in the market not a good thing?
And for cross-platform, free implementations Ogg IS a better solution.
But is it better for general use in the market? That's the question being posed and which competition may be able to answer.
If I'm not mistaken isn't there an Opera Mobile browser for App store? I guess Apple probably knocked it but jailbroken iPhones might have it or be able to get it right?
I don't think jailbroken iPhone constitute a significant market content providers are interested in targeting.
If Apple wants to pay to free up the H.264 codec so it can be implemented legally by everyone...
Wy should Apple or Google have to pay for everyone else. If a company invents a new, patented, fuel injection technology and some companies don't refuse to implement it until the patent expires and it if free to implement are they likewise holding up progress, or is the converse?
Otherwise, Apple is sure as shit holding back progress in order to protect their own platform (aka, iPod and friends) which only supports H.264.
Umm, I don't see how Apple is protecting their platform by only implementing H.264. How does that protect iPods? If Ogg is truly better, or even as good but free, won't Apple not implementing it cause people to move away from iPods and to other products?
Let me say it again: YouTube is not a content provider any more than Google Docs;
That's not exactly true as Google has signed deals with content providers to make content available over YouTube. As far as I know they haven't signed contracts with anyone to make content available via Google Docs.
...it is a hosting and search provider.
Largely this is correct, but it is not really material to any of my points.
For a minute..... iPhone and ipod users will upgrade to better/cheaper devices as soon as Apple falls behind on open video standards.
Why would you expect Apple tog et behind a standard that costs them more money to provide and benefits them not at all?Why would you expect of other content distributors to do so? Just because something is specified in a standard does not force content providers to switch to it, it just means you have an unused standard and people stick with what they have.
Why would anyone try to promote Apple's obvious push for vendor lock in?
How is it vendor lock in? Anyone can implement H.264 on near even footing with Apple. If the Web moves to H.264 as a standard, or a mix of H.264 and Ogg, how does that lock users into Apple and what Apple product does it lock them into? I don't understand your assertion at all. Please clarify.
This is obviously bad for EVERYONE except Apple.
You mean bad for everyone except Apple and Google, who refuses to switch YouTube to Ogg since it would cost them money and result in an inferior solution. And for that matter, bad for everyone except all the other content distributors who are in the same boat and who will be the ones deciding whether HTML5 is an implemented standard or a dead end.
Let's hope to god that YouTube (Google) does the right thing and axes flash in favor of Ogg.
Why would you expect them to since it is not in their best interests and they said they won't? Did you read the article?
Apple is a media distributor as well as a browser maker (OK it may be technically financially split) - presumably they're worried about losing some control over the distributed media (not enough DRM) ?
Why would you make such an assumption? Apple has been moving away from DRM consistently because they don't make money on the content. They do make money on selling iPods, but they don't have an interest in implementing a standard that will cost them more money in bandwidth to run their break even content business and which will make their hardware devices less attractive to consumers since there is no hardware acceleration easily available for Ogg and certainly not for already shipped devices.
Regardless of why they have some hatred for Xiph who cares what Apple's doing?
Ipod and iPhone owners care. Content providers looking to target iPod and iPhone owners care.
Apple will either lose market share as people switch to a browser that doesn't suck or they'll cave and use Ogg.
You're oversimplifying. This about more than just Web browsers. It is also about content services. When you don't have Google's Youtube on board with Ogg and you don't have iTunes on board with Ogg and it won't play on iPhones or iPods and you have little likelihood of that changing, specifying Ogg in the spec results in the spec not gaining widespread implementation and failing.
Are we just going to stop bothering to innovate because Apple won't give us its blessing?
Apple is one of the companies pushing HTML5 and already implements it in Safari. They aren't holding back progress so much as trying to push it in a different way than what Mozilla and Opera want.
We (developers) are the ones that determine who wins the browser battles.
I'd say the content providers have as much or more influence than browser developers. If the video element is implemented in a way content providers like iTunes and YouTube are not happy with, then it will be ignored by them and we''ll be stuck without any progress and a Web still locked into a fragmented mix and dominated by Flash video and Silverlight.
Instead of wasting energy making it accelerate unnecessarily quickly, how about giving it a usefully long range
Why would you assume they can trade battery life for low end torque? One property of electrical engines is they allow for faster acceleration on the low end. It's not like they can somehow get rid of this acceleration while still having an electrical motor with the same top speed and I don't see how they can get more battery life out of the same either.
exactly... and Microsoft gets to take all of the shit, while Apple gets away with the same tricky bullshit.
Except it isn't the same bullshit any more than a guy at the shooting range doing target practice is the same as a drive by shooting murder. It's the same action in different circumstances with different results.
When Apple bundles Safari with iTunes iTunes users are more likely use Safari and slightly less likely to use iTunes. This is because Apple is leveraging iTunes to benefit Safari and at the same time annoying some users. This is legal because it does not undermine any markets. Apple does not have a monopoly on music jukebox software.
When MS bundles Bing with IE or Windows users are more likely to use Bing, but not less likely to use IE or Windows because both of those have overwhelming influence on their respective markets. Windows users are usually locked in by applications and don't know how to switch to something else and most IE users don't even know switching is an option. MS is not appreciably losing customers via their bundling so the market can't sort it out as it can with Apple's actions. This is why MS's action is illegal.
Still only a 93% on acid3. Better, but not good enough.
Good enough for what, exactly?
It is not good enough to have solved all their compliance edge cases targeted by the Acid test creators. I mean, that is what the acid tests are for, is to help the developers of Firefox and Webkit to fix compliance issues (and incidentally to help other browsers fix compliance issues).
Well, I downloaded the final version and played with it on OS X for a bit. I usually use Safari on OS X because I have a hard time getting over certain deficiencies of Firefox and Opera. The good things are javascript performance is now quite good, better than the Safari 4 release by a significant margin (although still lagging the Webkit nightlies as one would expect). It's still not there for the ACID3 test, but it's getting close. It still is a little less responsive, but nothing too significant. They haven't cloned the text box resizing feature yet, so I still need to dig up an extension to do that, and of all things basic UI components should be built in. The grammar checker does not work at all. The spelling checker fails to use the default spellchecking service, so it does not know any of the words I've trained OS X to recognize and which work in all my other programs. All the other system services are likewise unavailable.
In short, it' better in all the ways one would expect, but they've still done nothing to make it work like a truly native application which makes it a second class citizen for power users. This is sort of ironic since the plug-in extensions to Firefox normally make it ideal for power users on other platforms. It's too bad they ignore all OS wide plug-ins on OS X.
So tell me why should I be forced to pay for someone else's healthcare?
Why should you be forced to pay for roads you don't drive on? Why should you be forced to pay for a military to defend you when you'd prefer the country was overrun by other nations?
It' called democracy, where the people make collective decisions (indirectly in the US) to provide for the common good.
I work and earn for myself and whomever else I choose to give to, not for society at large.
And I assume you inherited the exact same wealth as everyone else rather than being given a benefit from being born relatively wealthy? Oh wit, we don't have 100% inheritance tax so we need a different mechanism to make life relatively fair and balance out wealth condensation.
Seriously, if you want to advocate lack of state interference at least have the balls to advocate anarchy. After all why should the sate step in and stop people from shooting you in the head and taking your things if another person is stronger?
Socialism is a great idea until you run out of other people's money.
Socialism is not an either or prospect. Every economy in the world is a blend of capitalism, socialism, and communism. What differs are the relative levels. Whenever an economy uses to an extreme in any direction it fails. The US has pushed to far towards capitalism with drastic reductions in tax progressiveness over the last several decades and it, predictably, destabilized. We need to restore the balance.
Socialized medicine is rationed medicine.
Yay, you memorized a slogan. How about, Red is dead? I don't care if it is rationed or not, it works better than the mess we have now, so you and your can go eat your entitlement.
You do realize that if you get cancer of here and are paying for health insurance, you are 50% more likely to survive compared to if you were on NHS?
If you want to cherry pick individual aspects of healthcare you'll always be able to find something between two countries where one is better. The US's rate is about the same as Canada and Japan and France so there is no positive correlation between socialized healthcare and cancer survival. What's different is that in the US your survival rate varies widely depending upon where you live, what your race is, and what your income is.
So, unless Microsoft was willing to obviate their right to file their patents abroad, there's simply no reason to believe any such submarine patents actually exist.
Microsoft has already filed dozens o patents that do apply to.NET and dozens more that may or may not apply. They just don't advertise that fact while pushing for adoption by others.
That's a good start. But regulations don't "hold people accountable".
Accountability is the price of freedom. With rights come responsibility.
In a Capitalist society, people are free to create and pay for fire departments, if they want to (and as has been done in the past)
Right, which resulted in extortion and lots of runaway fires when it was not profitable to stop them immediately. Socialized firefighting came about because capitalism failed so spectacularly. We tried it. It didn't work. People died because of greed.
Yeah, why don't you move to Estonia or some other hellhole that subscribes to such sophomoric views.
You are actually the first I have heard refer to the beliefs and actions of the founding fathers as "sophomoric"
Oh please. The founding fathers were pragmatists and did not, in general oppose socialism at all. Most of their arguments were about whether it should be implemented at the state or federal level, not about whether it should be implemented. In the first decade the founding fathers implemented socialized roads, post, and navy at the federal level and hundreds of other markets on the state level.
My mind and the contents of my thoughts are not determined by what others think of me.
Then you are the pinnacle of arrogance. You ignore all the suffering and death and the opinions of others on the topic. It's frankly sickening.
I am not my brother's keeper. I will choose if, when, and how I will help someone. Neither you, bureaucrats, kings, nor my parents have the moral right to dictate how I live my life - so long as I respect others' equal right to be free.
In a society of equal opportunity this might work, but last I heard not everyone started life with the same amount of money and property. You may feel entitled to do what you want, but until this initial unfairness is remedied you have no "right" to freely exploit the suffering of those who started with less and neither does society. Or, if you wish to ignore fairness, you have no right not to be killed and have what is your taken from you, which is how most extreme capitalist economies end, with a bloody redistribution.
The reason Capitalism works is because it is the only political system...
Capitalism is an economic method, not a political system. It is clear, however, you don't even understand how it works, but instead have a stupid, blind faith in it as a philosophy. Your understanding is juvenile.
From what I have studied, any of the so-called failures of Capitalism were either failures of the regulatory-state, or not failures at all.
Extreme capitalism (not even total capitalism) inevitably results in wealth consolidation because of the wealth condensation principal. Wealth consolidates until it becomes unacceptable in the level of exploitation of those born poor and then there is a revolution. Usually this is a violent revolution, but occasionally it is an economic revolution like the new deal. If you'd like to present a counter example, just find me one country with a flat tax that has maintained it for 50 years. Good luck.
Extreme capitalism fails just as spectacularly as extreme socialism. The only economist who still advocate either are the ones paid or threaten into doing so. Even Greenspan has abandoned the push towards increasing the already dangerous level of capitalism in the US and has advocated for a more moderate system with more progressiveness and socialism. It's sad that so much ignorance on this topic abounds.
You think libraries let you plug in Webcams and install drivers and talk and record video on site?
Either will let you participate in the "national discussion".
Not unless you own your own computer they won't.
When even disabling text comments on a YouTube video sparks talk of social injustice, we are really scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to find it.
There is serious inequality when it comes to being listened to by politician, but this is a pretty minor instance of that. I merely object to people who don't have any idea how hard this can be for many people spouting off based upon their preconceptions and ignorance of the difficulties many people face.
My point is that people are not free to use their minds to creatively solve problems, because regulations force people to do things the way our rulers want us to.
People are, but they are limited in their ability to advertise and sell things based upon the greater interests of public health. Personally, I'm all for lesser restrictions on individual access to medical equipment and drugs, but not for letting people sell services without being held accountable.
you seem to be one of those libertarian economists with a strong, but unsupported belief that an unregulated free market will somehow magically solve all problems.
So when thinking, self-responsible, people solve problems, you call it magic?
Who said anything about self-responsible people solving problems. We're talking about applying the free market to aspects of our society where individual buying and immediate self interest between buyers and sellers is too skewed. A guy standing outside your house offering to save it from burning down if you give him 90% of the value is not a good fit to the capitalist model. It doesn't bring fair competition or better service. The same is true for the guy bleeding out in need of medical treatment.
So the only "non-magical" way to solve problems is: when bureaucrats impose their will on everyone at the point of a gun?
No, the best and most effective solution, as demonstrated around the world, is for the people to use the democratic process to pool resources and solve a problem the free market has failed to.
If you are a student of economics and history, then have you studied Von Mises and other Austrian economists?
Sure he was a closed minded extremist by all accounts, just as bad as the extreme socialist, just wrong in the opposite direction. At least Hayek was sensible, if you want to cite said school of economics.
I personally know of many professional economists and historians who advocate Laissez-Faire Capitalism. It is essentially the framework advocate by the founding fathers.
Yeah, why don't you move to Estonia or some other hellhole that subscribes to such sophomoric views. We don't even have a long standing example of such an economy because it is so painfully unstable. By far the consensus of economists advocate a balanced and stable moderation. Regulated capitalism where possible and socialism with progressive taxation to balance wealth condensation and provide for the markets where capitalism fails.
For you to call it a "simplistic philosophy" is just a smear that avoids the effort required to understand and apply the ethical and political arguments advocated by such people.
You're arguing ethics while the rest of the world looks at us as barbaric morons who let the poor members of our society suffer and die from treatable illnesses while our economy spirals down the crapper dragging them with it. You cite Von Mises, a wealthy man born to wealth with a notorious lack of understanding of human nature to the point where most of his contemporaries gave up even trying to have discussions with him. The reason capitalism works is because it exploits human nature in a beneficial way. It's the same reason capitalism fails in particular cases. Unless you comprehend the mechanism, you'll never see why it is inappropriate for healthcare.
I think we can tolerate the absence of people who can afford computers and not cellphone cameras.
The libraries near me are full of poor people using internet connected computers. My cell phone has a camera, but it doesn't do video and the only way to get images off of it is to pay absurd data transfer rates. Many people I see only have pay as you gocell phones with no camera capabilities. I think you might be a little disconnected from the realities of the lower class and their access to video cameras.
I'm fairly skeptical these days when Obama says he wants to involve the general population in a discussion.
Skeptical is good.
His modus operandi became evident when he ignored the highly voted Internet town hall topic of legalizing marijuana. It appears that at least sometimes, he's only pretending to take the general citizenry's views into account, even when he's saying otherwise.
I have little doubt there was significant internal discussion about the issue. It probably resulted in the consensus that the topic is political poison and they should avoid any public commentary. They still are concerned about the next election and need a longer period for policies to take effect and show a difference if they want many of their initiatives to last for the long term. I've been underwhelmed by the public participation programs put into place. It is hard to distinguish between the administration not hearing and the administration willfully pretending they did not hear anything, but at least on the marijuana issue it is pretty likely to be the latter.
As much as I like to bash Microsoft, that doesn't completely answer his question. Even if there are more pro-Microsoft posters on Slashdot, does it mean that those posters are shills? Maybe their claims are justified.
You're right, he did not document it well, but take a look at "uassholes" reply for some nice commentary by one of the people running Digg about how there is definitely an astroturf program in place to bury articles critical of Microsoft there. Personally on Slashdot I've made a lot comments about MS's antitrust abuses in various articles and I noticed in such articles there are often dozens of comments from a handful of users whose posting history shows they only post in articles discussing Microsoft or Linux and always expressing the same view. I don't have any proof that these posters are in fact astroturfers, but if not they have a lot of time and very, very limited interest here. They generally only reply to highly modded posts ignoring everything else including replies to their comments. Further, I notice that comments I have which can be construed as critical of MS's practices are often modded to +5 for several days, then modded down significantly afterwards once the article is off the main page. Maybe it is simply normal behavior I don't understand, but I'm highly suspicious.
Slashdot Mirror
I want HUDs to finally find their way into vehicles...
HUDs have been implemented in numerous cars over the years, but have never really caught on for the mainstream. GM introduced a HUD on a few models in the late 80's. BMW, Citroen, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan/Infiniti and Toyota/Lexus all offer HUDs currently, although some only do so overseas. The big ones are GM and BMW although the latest Lexus comes with a very nice LED HUD as an option and it even includes the GPS turn by turn as I understand. You can also get a lot of third party add on HUDs. Heck, I've seen HUD setups for motorcycle helmets.
the only advantage the gps units had over smartphones is the fact they still worked on trips that take out them out of signal range.
Why do people think this. GPS is *not* something that can be, or is received over cell networks.
I think you missed the tense there. Smartphones did use cell phone towers to triangulate position and provide GPS type information before such phones started to get actual GPS chips and antenna. At the time, smartphones did fine in the city, but failed to provide your location when you were out in the country away from towers. Now most smartphones include actual GPS so that disadvantage has gone away, as per the original poster's comment.
Slow down and comprehend what people are saying before going off half cocked.
iPods won't lose marketshare for the same reason that DVD is barely losing marketshare to Blu-Ray. Ogg is not enough superior from the consumer's viewpoint to make a switch worth the not-insignificant cost.
The DVD publishing industry is controlled by a cartel. Are you claiming Apple has undue influence on a relevant market? Which one?
It is worth it for the long term health of the industry, but consumers don't know that. It's like the switch to unleaded gas... it wouldn't have happened unless it was forced.
There was a clear public interest in stopping leaded gasoline because it was introducing a cost ot society in damage to health that was not being borne by those profiting from selling it. That's not even close to a similar situation to video codecs.
Competition in the market is a good thing, but the competition comes at the cost of freedom due to patents. You cannot freely, legally ship software that implements H.264 in the US
And we don' know if you can freely and legally ship Ogg because no one has bothered to test what patents it may be violating.
That is a VERY significant barrier to browsers like Firefox.
Which is why Firefox won't ship with the codec, although it will likely ship with the ability to use the codec if it is included with the OS, which is likely in many cases. That's why it makes sense to not specify any codec and provide multiple options, then the video tag may actually be used by browsers other than IE instead of being ignored by everyone.
If the market were actually free, I would agree with you. The problem is that it's not free, there are significant restrictions on the free use of H.264, and that makes Ogg a much better choice.
I don't accept your assertion that patents undermine the operation of the free market in the general case.
Because iPods have h.264 acceleration hardware built in.
Yeah, but if Ogg is better, iPods will start to lose marketshare to competitors who implement it, won't they? Wouldn't not implementing it be harming their platform, not protecting it?
And Apple has a strong interest in keeping H.264 the standard specifically because they want to keep selling iPods.
But H.264 isn't the standard now. There is no standard now, it is fragmented among many solutions. And Apple isn't making H.264 the standard, their influence is making it one of several options for that standard, competing against Ogg. Is competition in the market not a good thing?
And for cross-platform, free implementations Ogg IS a better solution.
But is it better for general use in the market? That's the question being posed and which competition may be able to answer.
If I'm not mistaken isn't there an Opera Mobile browser for App store? I guess Apple probably knocked it but jailbroken iPhones might have it or be able to get it right?
I don't think jailbroken iPhone constitute a significant market content providers are interested in targeting.
If Apple wants to pay to free up the H.264 codec so it can be implemented legally by everyone...
Wy should Apple or Google have to pay for everyone else. If a company invents a new, patented, fuel injection technology and some companies don't refuse to implement it until the patent expires and it if free to implement are they likewise holding up progress, or is the converse?
Otherwise, Apple is sure as shit holding back progress in order to protect their own platform (aka, iPod and friends) which only supports H.264.
Umm, I don't see how Apple is protecting their platform by only implementing H.264. How does that protect iPods? If Ogg is truly better, or even as good but free, won't Apple not implementing it cause people to move away from iPods and to other products?
Let me say it again: YouTube is not a content provider any more than Google Docs;
That's not exactly true as Google has signed deals with content providers to make content available over YouTube. As far as I know they haven't signed contracts with anyone to make content available via Google Docs.
...it is a hosting and search provider.
Largely this is correct, but it is not really material to any of my points.
For a minute..... iPhone and ipod users will upgrade to better/cheaper devices as soon as Apple falls behind on open video standards.
Why would you expect Apple tog et behind a standard that costs them more money to provide and benefits them not at all?Why would you expect of other content distributors to do so? Just because something is specified in a standard does not force content providers to switch to it, it just means you have an unused standard and people stick with what they have.
Why would anyone try to promote Apple's obvious push for vendor lock in?
How is it vendor lock in? Anyone can implement H.264 on near even footing with Apple. If the Web moves to H.264 as a standard, or a mix of H.264 and Ogg, how does that lock users into Apple and what Apple product does it lock them into? I don't understand your assertion at all. Please clarify.
This is obviously bad for EVERYONE except Apple.
You mean bad for everyone except Apple and Google, who refuses to switch YouTube to Ogg since it would cost them money and result in an inferior solution. And for that matter, bad for everyone except all the other content distributors who are in the same boat and who will be the ones deciding whether HTML5 is an implemented standard or a dead end.
Let's hope to god that YouTube (Google) does the right thing and axes flash in favor of Ogg.
Why would you expect them to since it is not in their best interests and they said they won't? Did you read the article?
Apple is a media distributor as well as a browser maker (OK it may be technically financially split) - presumably they're worried about losing some control over the distributed media (not enough DRM) ?
Why would you make such an assumption? Apple has been moving away from DRM consistently because they don't make money on the content. They do make money on selling iPods, but they don't have an interest in implementing a standard that will cost them more money in bandwidth to run their break even content business and which will make their hardware devices less attractive to consumers since there is no hardware acceleration easily available for Ogg and certainly not for already shipped devices.
Regardless of why they have some hatred for Xiph who cares what Apple's doing?
Ipod and iPhone owners care. Content providers looking to target iPod and iPhone owners care.
Apple will either lose market share as people switch to a browser that doesn't suck or they'll cave and use Ogg.
You're oversimplifying. This about more than just Web browsers. It is also about content services. When you don't have Google's Youtube on board with Ogg and you don't have iTunes on board with Ogg and it won't play on iPhones or iPods and you have little likelihood of that changing, specifying Ogg in the spec results in the spec not gaining widespread implementation and failing.
Are we just going to stop bothering to innovate because Apple won't give us its blessing?
Apple is one of the companies pushing HTML5 and already implements it in Safari. They aren't holding back progress so much as trying to push it in a different way than what Mozilla and Opera want.
We (developers) are the ones that determine who wins the browser battles.
I'd say the content providers have as much or more influence than browser developers. If the video element is implemented in a way content providers like iTunes and YouTube are not happy with, then it will be ignored by them and we''ll be stuck without any progress and a Web still locked into a fragmented mix and dominated by Flash video and Silverlight.
300 miles will take some 4 hours to drive, you could prob do with at least a 45 min rest ... so this is finally acceptable range for an electric car.
The article says 80% charge in under 10 minutes.
Instead of wasting energy making it accelerate unnecessarily quickly, how about giving it a usefully long range
Why would you assume they can trade battery life for low end torque? One property of electrical engines is they allow for faster acceleration on the low end. It's not like they can somehow get rid of this acceleration while still having an electrical motor with the same top speed and I don't see how they can get more battery life out of the same either.
exactly... and Microsoft gets to take all of the shit, while Apple gets away with the same tricky bullshit.
Except it isn't the same bullshit any more than a guy at the shooting range doing target practice is the same as a drive by shooting murder. It's the same action in different circumstances with different results.
When Apple bundles Safari with iTunes iTunes users are more likely use Safari and slightly less likely to use iTunes. This is because Apple is leveraging iTunes to benefit Safari and at the same time annoying some users. This is legal because it does not undermine any markets. Apple does not have a monopoly on music jukebox software.
When MS bundles Bing with IE or Windows users are more likely to use Bing, but not less likely to use IE or Windows because both of those have overwhelming influence on their respective markets. Windows users are usually locked in by applications and don't know how to switch to something else and most IE users don't even know switching is an option. MS is not appreciably losing customers via their bundling so the market can't sort it out as it can with Apple's actions. This is why MS's action is illegal.
Huh? Is there somebody out there yelling, "No! We need one browser! Competition is evil"?
I think his name is Ballmer.
If so, I haven't run across them.
That's good... he throws chairs. :)
Still only a 93% on acid3. Better, but not good enough.
Good enough for what, exactly?
It is not good enough to have solved all their compliance edge cases targeted by the Acid test creators. I mean, that is what the acid tests are for, is to help the developers of Firefox and Webkit to fix compliance issues (and incidentally to help other browsers fix compliance issues).
Well, I downloaded the final version and played with it on OS X for a bit. I usually use Safari on OS X because I have a hard time getting over certain deficiencies of Firefox and Opera. The good things are javascript performance is now quite good, better than the Safari 4 release by a significant margin (although still lagging the Webkit nightlies as one would expect). It's still not there for the ACID3 test, but it's getting close. It still is a little less responsive, but nothing too significant. They haven't cloned the text box resizing feature yet, so I still need to dig up an extension to do that, and of all things basic UI components should be built in. The grammar checker does not work at all. The spelling checker fails to use the default spellchecking service, so it does not know any of the words I've trained OS X to recognize and which work in all my other programs. All the other system services are likewise unavailable.
In short, it' better in all the ways one would expect, but they've still done nothing to make it work like a truly native application which makes it a second class citizen for power users. This is sort of ironic since the plug-in extensions to Firefox normally make it ideal for power users on other platforms. It's too bad they ignore all OS wide plug-ins on OS X.
So tell me why should I be forced to pay for someone else's healthcare?
Why should you be forced to pay for roads you don't drive on? Why should you be forced to pay for a military to defend you when you'd prefer the country was overrun by other nations?
It' called democracy, where the people make collective decisions (indirectly in the US) to provide for the common good.
I work and earn for myself and whomever else I choose to give to, not for society at large.
And I assume you inherited the exact same wealth as everyone else rather than being given a benefit from being born relatively wealthy? Oh wit, we don't have 100% inheritance tax so we need a different mechanism to make life relatively fair and balance out wealth condensation.
Seriously, if you want to advocate lack of state interference at least have the balls to advocate anarchy. After all why should the sate step in and stop people from shooting you in the head and taking your things if another person is stronger?
Socialism is a great idea until you run out of other people's money.
Socialism is not an either or prospect. Every economy in the world is a blend of capitalism, socialism, and communism. What differs are the relative levels. Whenever an economy uses to an extreme in any direction it fails. The US has pushed to far towards capitalism with drastic reductions in tax progressiveness over the last several decades and it, predictably, destabilized. We need to restore the balance.
Socialized medicine is rationed medicine.
Yay, you memorized a slogan. How about, Red is dead? I don't care if it is rationed or not, it works better than the mess we have now, so you and your can go eat your entitlement.
You do realize that if you get cancer of here and are paying for health insurance, you are 50% more likely to survive compared to if you were on NHS?
If you want to cherry pick individual aspects of healthcare you'll always be able to find something between two countries where one is better. The US's rate is about the same as Canada and Japan and France so there is no positive correlation between socialized healthcare and cancer survival. What's different is that in the US your survival rate varies widely depending upon where you live, what your race is, and what your income is.
So, unless Microsoft was willing to obviate their right to file their patents abroad, there's simply no reason to believe any such submarine patents actually exist.
Microsoft has already filed dozens o patents that do apply to .NET and dozens more that may or may not apply. They just don't advertise that fact while pushing for adoption by others.
That's a good start. But regulations don't "hold people accountable".
Accountability is the price of freedom. With rights come responsibility.
In a Capitalist society, people are free to create and pay for fire departments, if they want to (and as has been done in the past)
Right, which resulted in extortion and lots of runaway fires when it was not profitable to stop them immediately. Socialized firefighting came about because capitalism failed so spectacularly. We tried it. It didn't work. People died because of greed.
Yeah, why don't you move to Estonia or some other hellhole that subscribes to such sophomoric views.
You are actually the first I have heard refer to the beliefs and actions of the founding fathers as "sophomoric"
Oh please. The founding fathers were pragmatists and did not, in general oppose socialism at all. Most of their arguments were about whether it should be implemented at the state or federal level, not about whether it should be implemented. In the first decade the founding fathers implemented socialized roads, post, and navy at the federal level and hundreds of other markets on the state level.
My mind and the contents of my thoughts are not determined by what others think of me.
Then you are the pinnacle of arrogance. You ignore all the suffering and death and the opinions of others on the topic. It's frankly sickening.
I am not my brother's keeper. I will choose if, when, and how I will help someone. Neither you, bureaucrats, kings, nor my parents have the moral right to dictate how I live my life - so long as I respect others' equal right to be free.
In a society of equal opportunity this might work, but last I heard not everyone started life with the same amount of money and property. You may feel entitled to do what you want, but until this initial unfairness is remedied you have no "right" to freely exploit the suffering of those who started with less and neither does society. Or, if you wish to ignore fairness, you have no right not to be killed and have what is your taken from you, which is how most extreme capitalist economies end, with a bloody redistribution.
The reason Capitalism works is because it is the only political system...
Capitalism is an economic method, not a political system. It is clear, however, you don't even understand how it works, but instead have a stupid, blind faith in it as a philosophy. Your understanding is juvenile.
From what I have studied, any of the so-called failures of Capitalism were either failures of the regulatory-state, or not failures at all.
Extreme capitalism (not even total capitalism) inevitably results in wealth consolidation because of the wealth condensation principal. Wealth consolidates until it becomes unacceptable in the level of exploitation of those born poor and then there is a revolution. Usually this is a violent revolution, but occasionally it is an economic revolution like the new deal. If you'd like to present a counter example, just find me one country with a flat tax that has maintained it for 50 years. Good luck.
Extreme capitalism fails just as spectacularly as extreme socialism. The only economist who still advocate either are the ones paid or threaten into doing so. Even Greenspan has abandoned the push towards increasing the already dangerous level of capitalism in the US and has advocated for a more moderate system with more progressiveness and socialism. It's sad that so much ignorance on this topic abounds.
You think libraries let you plug in Webcams and install drivers and talk and record video on site?
Either will let you participate in the "national discussion".
Not unless you own your own computer they won't.
When even disabling text comments on a YouTube video sparks talk of social injustice, we are really scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to find it.
There is serious inequality when it comes to being listened to by politician, but this is a pretty minor instance of that. I merely object to people who don't have any idea how hard this can be for many people spouting off based upon their preconceptions and ignorance of the difficulties many people face.
My point is that people are not free to use their minds to creatively solve problems, because regulations force people to do things the way our rulers want us to.
People are, but they are limited in their ability to advertise and sell things based upon the greater interests of public health. Personally, I'm all for lesser restrictions on individual access to medical equipment and drugs, but not for letting people sell services without being held accountable.
you seem to be one of those libertarian economists with a strong, but unsupported belief that an unregulated free market will somehow magically solve all problems.
So when thinking, self-responsible, people solve problems, you call it magic?
Who said anything about self-responsible people solving problems. We're talking about applying the free market to aspects of our society where individual buying and immediate self interest between buyers and sellers is too skewed. A guy standing outside your house offering to save it from burning down if you give him 90% of the value is not a good fit to the capitalist model. It doesn't bring fair competition or better service. The same is true for the guy bleeding out in need of medical treatment.
So the only "non-magical" way to solve problems is: when bureaucrats impose their will on everyone at the point of a gun?
No, the best and most effective solution, as demonstrated around the world, is for the people to use the democratic process to pool resources and solve a problem the free market has failed to.
If you are a student of economics and history, then have you studied Von Mises and other Austrian economists?
Sure he was a closed minded extremist by all accounts, just as bad as the extreme socialist, just wrong in the opposite direction. At least Hayek was sensible, if you want to cite said school of economics.
I personally know of many professional economists and historians who advocate Laissez-Faire Capitalism. It is essentially the framework advocate by the founding fathers.
Yeah, why don't you move to Estonia or some other hellhole that subscribes to such sophomoric views. We don't even have a long standing example of such an economy because it is so painfully unstable. By far the consensus of economists advocate a balanced and stable moderation. Regulated capitalism where possible and socialism with progressive taxation to balance wealth condensation and provide for the markets where capitalism fails.
For you to call it a "simplistic philosophy" is just a smear that avoids the effort required to understand and apply the ethical and political arguments advocated by such people.
You're arguing ethics while the rest of the world looks at us as barbaric morons who let the poor members of our society suffer and die from treatable illnesses while our economy spirals down the crapper dragging them with it. You cite Von Mises, a wealthy man born to wealth with a notorious lack of understanding of human nature to the point where most of his contemporaries gave up even trying to have discussions with him. The reason capitalism works is because it exploits human nature in a beneficial way. It's the same reason capitalism fails in particular cases. Unless you comprehend the mechanism, you'll never see why it is inappropriate for healthcare.
I think we can tolerate the absence of people who can afford computers and not cellphone cameras.
The libraries near me are full of poor people using internet connected computers. My cell phone has a camera, but it doesn't do video and the only way to get images off of it is to pay absurd data transfer rates. Many people I see only have pay as you gocell phones with no camera capabilities. I think you might be a little disconnected from the realities of the lower class and their access to video cameras.
I'm fairly skeptical these days when Obama says he wants to involve the general population in a discussion.
Skeptical is good.
His modus operandi became evident when he ignored the highly voted Internet town hall topic of legalizing marijuana. It appears that at least sometimes, he's only pretending to take the general citizenry's views into account, even when he's saying otherwise.
I have little doubt there was significant internal discussion about the issue. It probably resulted in the consensus that the topic is political poison and they should avoid any public commentary. They still are concerned about the next election and need a longer period for policies to take effect and show a difference if they want many of their initiatives to last for the long term. I've been underwhelmed by the public participation programs put into place. It is hard to distinguish between the administration not hearing and the administration willfully pretending they did not hear anything, but at least on the marijuana issue it is pretty likely to be the latter.
As much as I like to bash Microsoft, that doesn't completely answer his question. Even if there are more pro-Microsoft posters on Slashdot, does it mean that those posters are shills? Maybe their claims are justified.
You're right, he did not document it well, but take a look at "uassholes" reply for some nice commentary by one of the people running Digg about how there is definitely an astroturf program in place to bury articles critical of Microsoft there. Personally on Slashdot I've made a lot comments about MS's antitrust abuses in various articles and I noticed in such articles there are often dozens of comments from a handful of users whose posting history shows they only post in articles discussing Microsoft or Linux and always expressing the same view. I don't have any proof that these posters are in fact astroturfers, but if not they have a lot of time and very, very limited interest here. They generally only reply to highly modded posts ignoring everything else including replies to their comments. Further, I notice that comments I have which can be construed as critical of MS's practices are often modded to +5 for several days, then modded down significantly afterwards once the article is off the main page. Maybe it is simply normal behavior I don't understand, but I'm highly suspicious.