Like a number of slashdotters, I was a shy kid. I didn't like birthdays at all, because on that day, I hated being the center of attention. I didn't like being looked at, and I espescially didn't like posing for photographs, or anyone taking my picture or a video of me. And I thought I came up with a great solution. I must have been like 12, but the idea was, I would copyright my likeness, my voice, and my story, everything that made me what I am, and then, in theory, I could control the flow of information about me. Ultimately, I felt, no one could even legally look at me, because to do so, one would have to collect photons that bounced off me, and recreate a likeness of me upside down on their retina, thus violating my copyright. But in the years since I learned something about the law... just because something is possible with the law, it doesn't matter... the law is there for convention. Only convention, that is, what all those concerned with the law agree upon is ok, then it's ok. So... it's ok to punch someone in the face without fear of prosecution... so long as their not rich. It's ok to jail someone for years before trial, because it's done... effectively punishing them before conviction. It's quite effective. Any one that comes up with something very clever and useful in law is going to lose their credibility, no matter how honest they are. The retards run this place. Just go about your business and hope no one notices you.
Of course it is technically a computer, but unmolested, an iPad doesn't do the things that PC does, we don't interact with it quite the same way. For instance, you don't open an email, take a spreadsheet attachment, and infuse it into another spreadsheet, do some more calculations, using it to send out a mass emailing, then upload the attachment to some other location. At best, with an ordinary jailed iPad, you view your attachment and thats it. Hell, even with a jail broken iPad, you cant do that much more... it just gives you access to the filesystem, and yes, technically thets all computer, but again, it's not used the same way. Your cell phone is effectively a computer, but you don't use it the same way as your PC. iPad is closer, but missing some things, sort of forces you to operate quite differently than on a PC with a fully featured OS.
A jailbroken iPad is a tablet computer. Without the jailbreak, it's a utility, an accessory, and/or an appliance, but it's hardly a personal computer by modern standards.
That is exactly the point, as originally conceived, the PADD had almost no computing power, in and of itself. By itself, the iPad is superior. The PADD required the ships computer to do anything interesting. Without it, it was a kindel with some color and AV capabilities.
it seems to be a reading device, not a general-purpose tablet computer
I didn't RTFA, yet, but from the tone of the comments, it seems like more similarities are appearing, now, after the fact, than originally existed. As if... "yeah, we meant to say PADDs could do that too," when PADDs conceivers never thought of some of the basic things iPad does... like wifi and 3G... Neither the PADD nor iPad is a general-purpose tablet computer. The PADD was hardly a computer at all, sort of just a dumb device, all of whose wizardry was possible by and controlled from the starships computer core. No one is computing with iPad, probably... it's just a net accessory, but with more stand alone functionality than a PADD.
forgot to add... iPad blows PADDs away. Unless there's a multigigaquad federation starship computer to go with it, in which case, iPad is ridiculously archaic.
The main difference, I think, between iPad and the original conception of PADDs, were that PADDs are near useless without a starship nearby, and specifically, it's computer core. The PADD was the first conceived cloud accessory. Originally, it was basically just an ebook reader, any heavy processing or analysis was done by the ships computer, which it would always be connected to, wirelessly, even if on planet.
Less of a problem. Bandwidth is cheap. Non-paying customers take up valuable table-space.
This is a silly idea, to remove the wifi to regain table space, though I'm sure that's what business owners are thinking. It's penny-wise and dollar-foolish. All restaurants, all of them, have always had to deal with limited table space. They don't eliminate specials to regain it... the specials are necessary to bring in customers. Freeloaders can be asked to leave: "order something, or please leave, we have a lot of customers that need the table."
More likely this is greedy owners that don't want the extra bill, and are too shortsighted to recognize how hit helps their business. Its the same thing as charging for water, or using pay toilets. They will lose their customers to the competition. Unless there is something really special about the coffee or the location, these places will become extinct.
Better spending tax dollars on saving the human race than blowing it up in Iraq and Afghanistan.
How about we solve our problems here on Earth before attempting to export them into insanely expensive and hostile environments? You think was is expensive here? It's nothing compared to the cost of war in space.
I disagree with your evaluation. Apple didn't "go after" other manufacturers. The other manufactures jumped on the bash Apple bandwagon FIRST. And even if they didn't, how do you show all phones exhibit the same issues WITHOUT using other phones? The complaint is absurd. Apple didn't drag them into it, them started flinging crap, thus, them opened the door to criticism. Apple schooled them.
ok, I don't doubt it... but I think it says volumes more about what a good technology owner you are rather than what a good product Toshiba makes. I bet your '83 Saab (or whathaveyou) is in showroom condition... but this says nothing about Saab and everything about you.
For what it's worth, my '03 PowerBook has been violently ABUSED ever since I bought it.OK, I kept it nice for a while... then there was that fight with the gf,, and she threw it across the room, against the wall.... it's a miracle the LCD didn't shatter. Things pretty much went downhill from there... it's got way too much character now to have any resell value whatsoever (even with the weird value retainment on Apple laptops.... speaking of which, priced a snow iBook lately? Still too rich for my wanna hack it blood.)
Good work. Mine's only 7 yrs old, and runs leopard well. I do have an upgraded 9600 running Panther Server, but it just serves... rarely use it for desktop stuff.
After the warranty ends, apple is the single WORST laptop manufacturer, due to their software policy of "update hardware every few years or be unable to use new software completely".
In other words, unless you're looking at a completely broken laptop vs apple laptop, every other comparison ends with apple on the bottom when looking at long term functionality of the laptop.
Unless you boot windows/linux on it of course.
What you describe seems to be exactly what is wrong with Windows laptops, not Apples. After 6 short months, you got boot times of over 4 minutes, but when you bought it it only took 1 or 2. And software that ran great when it was new, the exact same software, seems to lag, and become more unusable as the registry gets filled with crap. Not so with Apple's... if it runs the software when you bought it, it will run it for as long as the machine runs. Mac's run UNIX... it doesn't STOP running the software as it ages... Perhaps the software gets more bloated with bells and whistles as time advances with updates, but all developers seem to do this to keep their wares fresh. Don't complain that it only runs CS2 when CS5 is current. (Ok... maybe adobe is a cherry picked example because they've been fleecing their customers with worthless upgrades for a decade).
It is true that my 2003 powerbook doesn't run snow leopard, but is now stuck at leopard, because it's a powerPC based machine, and Apple switched to Intel. But it's also true that the thing has been running pretty much non-stop for the last 4 years, and there are plenty of universal binaries left that it is still a valid machine... which is why I still use it, hours daily.
It appears that everyone else seems to be bending the facts, including you. It's always said that/. is a pro Apple site, but I've never seen that. Apple fans get modded down before they can refresh the page.
So... because a certain loud minority claims that up is down, Apple must start telling lies? It's crap. The antennagate thing is crap. Your cell phone's antenna sucks in exactly the same way... they all do. There is nothing special about Apple's antenna, nor is there anything special with the death spot. Ah... but a personnel change and everyone suddenly is clairvoyant and omniscient, seeing right into Apple's thoughts like they were transparent. Who the hell knows why this guy was canned. Maybe he's been stressed out (understandable) and was late way too many times. You can be fired for good reason, bad reason, or no reason at all. That's anyone, anytime, anywhere, for any or no reason. But.... oh, YOU know, YOU really know what's going on... how awesome that must be.
No matter how I hold my HTC Evo, I can have a phone call.
well... NOT according to HTC, and NOT according to the Evo manual, which I LINKED TO IN MY POST. Unless you too don't believe in cell towers and invisble cell signals... it's all in the phone, right? CLICK THE DAMN LINKS... they show you were your death spot is. But it makes no difference if you live in an area with great cell... you can detune your antenna 20dB and still have 5 bars. wtf is wrong with people? Why not try reading a post before responding to it?
um,... something wrong with your mouse button? Click the links in teh post you replied to... they are proof of the opposite of what you just posted... and it was the whole point of putting the links in, to show this. Did you even READ the post? wtf
As a skeptic I can tell you you are full of crap. Just what happens to that signal when you detune the antenna? Where does it go? Might you say... that it's absorbed?
Go back to my previous post and click the links. You will see the manufacturer draw a circle around the area they don't want you to touch. That is what we're calling the deathspot. And they all have one, along with the regular hand holding detuning of the antenna. Secondly... you have no clue how much signal attenuation is occurring... no way to know, unless you have your own anechoic chamber and solid science to test it. Apple's presentation revealed that everyone uses different algorithms to display available signal, and looking at anyone's bars TELLS YOU NOTHING. Its a relatively meaningless graphic representation. And if you hack your phone to tell you the actual dB instead of bars, it is still lying to you, because it cannot display every possible dB, but will have certain peaks that it wants to display, like -115 dB, but NOT -113 dB or -116 dB. IT's the most obvious mistake everyone is overlooking: your equipment, that you are using to test the phone in question, IS THE PHONE ITSELF. That is garbage science. You have no idea what the actual available cell is, no matter what your bars are telling you.
I have a great respect for your occupation. But anyone can be fooled if they let themselves. Even, God forbid, engineers.
I defy you to find the death grip spot on my Motorola W365. It has crap reception no matter how you hold it, or don't.
You're funny... and it's appreciated... but I found it. It's right at the base of your external antenna. see page 58 of the manual
No one seems to acknowledge that the available cell signal in a particular area is really the most important detail when making calls from a cell phone. We got Carl in the city with his whatever, and he loves his phone, always has five bars... must be the phone. Then we got Jimmy out in the sticks with his smartphone, which he hates, because he always has one bar or none... and blames his phone.
All cell phones are basically identical, the phone parts anyway,, and the thing that makes them work well, or suck immensely, is the availability of the network, not the phone or the antenna.
True, matters what you started with, somewhat. Power connectors are still always a problem with plastic chassis, but if you got the best process in 2005, with the fast harddrive, then I can see it would last longer than the stock models. However, the range of choice in WinBooks ends up working against both the consumer and the manufacturer. In 2005, the outfit I worked for bought 14 Dell D410's. By 2007, everyone that was using them was complaining about them.... booting took 5 minutes... logging in was a painful extra few mins of wait. These were Pentium M's with the 4200 speed HDs... and I couldn't do a thing with them other than reinstall XP. Yet by the time they were updated and antivirus was installed, they still crawled. I ended up putting ubuntu on half of them, and that Stripped to the Bone edition of XP on the rest, and that definitely mitigated their impotence somewhat. I was actually impressed with the toughness of the plastic in them, yet they still suffered from power connector that snapped off (but we had an extended Dell contract through a local firm who operated for Dell in the area, so at any time there was at least one laptop of the 14 in repair). That same year was the first intel MBP, and we had 14 of those too... they all had the processor sauce problem... but once AppleCare gave them the once over, there was never another problem with them. That was 1st gen hardware.
It will cost them at least 30 million in lost sales to give those bumpers away. And it's called damage control. Gizmodo and the gullible caused the damage with fantasy. IMHO, Apple should have stuck by their guns... there's no flaw, and nothiing wrong with the antenna or design. Most reviewers said it was the best phone they'd ever reviewed, and most said reception was improved, even before antennagate. Did you even watch the Apple presentation? Watch it. Explains everything. Clearly. All the points you think you wish to make, obliterated.
It is nothing but arrogance and ignorance that a schmuck, second rate blogger at a third rate blog thinks they discovered something that a multibillion dollar corporation didn't know. And it continues. Because you want to see Apple fail so badly, you forsake science and all valid evidence that antennagate was fiction. But no matter how bad you want it, Apple, all financial and business experts pretty much agree, is unstoppable. They're just going to keep succeeding regardless of your maligned attitudes towards superior software and hardware.
Do we REALLY have to relive this? IT's MAKE BELIEVE, you gullible clown.You've been hypnotized by Gizmodo, LMAO.
ALL CELL PHONES, ALWAYS will have their antenna detuned by a human's touch, and THEY ALL have a death spot.Sure do. Show me any cell phone, I'll show you how to detune the antenna, and I'll find it's death spot.
But... you go ahead... keep evangelizing against Apple and iPhone 4. Whatever floats your boat, mate.
I have a Windows 7 machine running a Windows 98 application - try that with a Mac and tell me how it works out for you.
How about not? It's a pointless exercise. Pray tell, what awesome proprietary yet unupdated and outmoded Win98 app did you get locked into? And just why would you BRAG about that? My Mac runs UNIX software that's 40 years old... and so what?
Slashdot Mirror
Every person should be copyrighted
Like a number of slashdotters, I was a shy kid. I didn't like birthdays at all, because on that day, I hated being the center of attention. I didn't like being looked at, and I espescially didn't like posing for photographs, or anyone taking my picture or a video of me. And I thought I came up with a great solution. I must have been like 12, but the idea was, I would copyright my likeness, my voice, and my story, everything that made me what I am, and then, in theory, I could control the flow of information about me. Ultimately, I felt, no one could even legally look at me, because to do so, one would have to collect photons that bounced off me, and recreate a likeness of me upside down on their retina, thus violating my copyright. But in the years since I learned something about the law... just because something is possible with the law, it doesn't matter... the law is there for convention. Only convention, that is, what all those concerned with the law agree upon is ok, then it's ok. So... it's ok to punch someone in the face without fear of prosecution... so long as their not rich. It's ok to jail someone for years before trial, because it's done... effectively punishing them before conviction. It's quite effective. Any one that comes up with something very clever and useful in law is going to lose their credibility, no matter how honest they are. The retards run this place. Just go about your business and hope no one notices you.
Of course it is technically a computer, but unmolested, an iPad doesn't do the things that PC does, we don't interact with it quite the same way. For instance, you don't open an email, take a spreadsheet attachment, and infuse it into another spreadsheet, do some more calculations, using it to send out a mass emailing, then upload the attachment to some other location. At best, with an ordinary jailed iPad, you view your attachment and thats it. Hell, even with a jail broken iPad, you cant do that much more... it just gives you access to the filesystem, and yes, technically thets all computer, but again, it's not used the same way. Your cell phone is effectively a computer, but you don't use it the same way as your PC. iPad is closer, but missing some things, sort of forces you to operate quite differently than on a PC with a fully featured OS.
We all got it comin', kid. "Deserves" got nothin' to do with it.
--The Unforgiven
A jailbroken iPad is a tablet computer. Without the jailbreak, it's a utility, an accessory, and/or an appliance, but it's hardly a personal computer by modern standards.
That is exactly the point, as originally conceived, the PADD had almost no computing power, in and of itself. By itself, the iPad is superior. The PADD required the ships computer to do anything interesting. Without it, it was a kindel with some color and AV capabilities.
it seems to be a reading device, not a general-purpose tablet computer
I didn't RTFA, yet, but from the tone of the comments, it seems like more similarities are appearing, now, after the fact, than originally existed. As if... "yeah, we meant to say PADDs could do that too," when PADDs conceivers never thought of some of the basic things iPad does... like wifi and 3G... Neither the PADD nor iPad is a general-purpose tablet computer. The PADD was hardly a computer at all, sort of just a dumb device, all of whose wizardry was possible by and controlled from the starships computer core. No one is computing with iPad, probably... it's just a net accessory, but with more stand alone functionality than a PADD.
forgot to add... iPad blows PADDs away. Unless there's a multigigaquad federation starship computer to go with it, in which case, iPad is ridiculously archaic.
The main difference, I think, between iPad and the original conception of PADDs, were that PADDs are near useless without a starship nearby, and specifically, it's computer core. The PADD was the first conceived cloud accessory. Originally, it was basically just an ebook reader, any heavy processing or analysis was done by the ships computer, which it would always be connected to, wirelessly, even if on planet.
Less of a problem. Bandwidth is cheap. Non-paying customers take up valuable table-space.
This is a silly idea, to remove the wifi to regain table space, though I'm sure that's what business owners are thinking. It's penny-wise and dollar-foolish. All restaurants, all of them, have always had to deal with limited table space. They don't eliminate specials to regain it... the specials are necessary to bring in customers. Freeloaders can be asked to leave: "order something, or please leave, we have a lot of customers that need the table."
More likely this is greedy owners that don't want the extra bill, and are too shortsighted to recognize how hit helps their business. Its the same thing as charging for water, or using pay toilets. They will lose their customers to the competition. Unless there is something really special about the coffee or the location, these places will become extinct.
Why would I want to have my tax dollars on this.
Better spending tax dollars on saving the human race than blowing it up in Iraq and Afghanistan.
How about we solve our problems here on Earth before attempting to export them into insanely expensive and hostile environments? You think was is expensive here? It's nothing compared to the cost of war in space.
nice... thx
I disagree with your evaluation. Apple didn't "go after" other manufacturers. The other manufactures jumped on the bash Apple bandwagon FIRST. And even if they didn't, how do you show all phones exhibit the same issues WITHOUT using other phones? The complaint is absurd. Apple didn't drag them into it, them started flinging crap, thus, them opened the door to criticism. Apple schooled them.
For what it's worth, my '03 PowerBook has been violently ABUSED ever since I bought it.OK, I kept it nice for a while... then there was that fight with the gf,, and she threw it across the room, against the wall.... it's a miracle the LCD didn't shatter. Things pretty much went downhill from there... it's got way too much character now to have any resell value whatsoever (even with the weird value retainment on Apple laptops.... speaking of which, priced a snow iBook lately? Still too rich for my wanna hack it blood.)
Good work. Mine's only 7 yrs old, and runs leopard well. I do have an upgraded 9600 running Panther Server, but it just serves... rarely use it for desktop stuff.
After the warranty ends, apple is the single WORST laptop manufacturer, due to their software policy of "update hardware every few years or be unable to use new software completely".
In other words, unless you're looking at a completely broken laptop vs apple laptop, every other comparison ends with apple on the bottom when looking at long term functionality of the laptop. Unless you boot windows/linux on it of course.
What you describe seems to be exactly what is wrong with Windows laptops, not Apples. After 6 short months, you got boot times of over 4 minutes, but when you bought it it only took 1 or 2. And software that ran great when it was new, the exact same software, seems to lag, and become more unusable as the registry gets filled with crap. Not so with Apple's... if it runs the software when you bought it, it will run it for as long as the machine runs. Mac's run UNIX... it doesn't STOP running the software as it ages... Perhaps the software gets more bloated with bells and whistles as time advances with updates, but all developers seem to do this to keep their wares fresh. Don't complain that it only runs CS2 when CS5 is current. (Ok... maybe adobe is a cherry picked example because they've been fleecing their customers with worthless upgrades for a decade).
It is true that my 2003 powerbook doesn't run snow leopard, but is now stuck at leopard, because it's a powerPC based machine, and Apple switched to Intel. But it's also true that the thing has been running pretty much non-stop for the last 4 years, and there are plenty of universal binaries left that it is still a valid machine... which is why I still use it, hours daily.
It appears that everyone else seems to be bending the facts, including you. It's always said that /. is a pro Apple site, but I've never seen that. Apple fans get modded down before they can refresh the page.
So... because a certain loud minority claims that up is down, Apple must start telling lies? It's crap. The antennagate thing is crap. Your cell phone's antenna sucks in exactly the same way... they all do. There is nothing special about Apple's antenna, nor is there anything special with the death spot. Ah... but a personnel change and everyone suddenly is clairvoyant and omniscient, seeing right into Apple's thoughts like they were transparent. Who the hell knows why this guy was canned. Maybe he's been stressed out (understandable) and was late way too many times. You can be fired for good reason, bad reason, or no reason at all. That's anyone, anytime, anywhere, for any or no reason. But.... oh, YOU know, YOU really know what's going on... how awesome that must be.
No matter how I hold my HTC Evo, I can have a phone call.
well... NOT according to HTC, and NOT according to the Evo manual, which I LINKED TO IN MY POST. Unless you too don't believe in cell towers and invisble cell signals... it's all in the phone, right? CLICK THE DAMN LINKS... they show you were your death spot is. But it makes no difference if you live in an area with great cell... you can detune your antenna 20dB and still have 5 bars. wtf is wrong with people? Why not try reading a post before responding to it?
um, ... something wrong with your mouse button? Click the links in teh post you replied to... they are proof of the opposite of what you just posted... and it was the whole point of putting the links in, to show this. Did you even READ the post? wtf
As a skeptic I can tell you you are full of crap. Just what happens to that signal when you detune the antenna? Where does it go? Might you say... that it's absorbed? Go back to my previous post and click the links. You will see the manufacturer draw a circle around the area they don't want you to touch. That is what we're calling the deathspot. And they all have one, along with the regular hand holding detuning of the antenna. Secondly... you have no clue how much signal attenuation is occurring... no way to know, unless you have your own anechoic chamber and solid science to test it. Apple's presentation revealed that everyone uses different algorithms to display available signal, and looking at anyone's bars TELLS YOU NOTHING. Its a relatively meaningless graphic representation. And if you hack your phone to tell you the actual dB instead of bars, it is still lying to you, because it cannot display every possible dB, but will have certain peaks that it wants to display, like -115 dB, but NOT -113 dB or -116 dB. IT's the most obvious mistake everyone is overlooking: your equipment, that you are using to test the phone in question, IS THE PHONE ITSELF. That is garbage science. You have no idea what the actual available cell is, no matter what your bars are telling you.
I have a great respect for your occupation. But anyone can be fooled if they let themselves. Even, God forbid, engineers.
I defy you to find the death grip spot on my Motorola W365. It has crap reception no matter how you hold it, or don't.
You're funny... and it's appreciated... but I found it. It's right at the base of your external antenna. see page 58 of the manual
No one seems to acknowledge that the available cell signal in a particular area is really the most important detail when making calls from a cell phone. We got Carl in the city with his whatever, and he loves his phone, always has five bars... must be the phone. Then we got Jimmy out in the sticks with his smartphone, which he hates, because he always has one bar or none... and blames his phone.
All cell phones are basically identical, the phone parts anyway,, and the thing that makes them work well, or suck immensely, is the availability of the network, not the phone or the antenna.
True, matters what you started with, somewhat. Power connectors are still always a problem with plastic chassis, but if you got the best process in 2005, with the fast harddrive, then I can see it would last longer than the stock models. However, the range of choice in WinBooks ends up working against both the consumer and the manufacturer. In 2005, the outfit I worked for bought 14 Dell D410's. By 2007, everyone that was using them was complaining about them.... booting took 5 minutes... logging in was a painful extra few mins of wait. These were Pentium M's with the 4200 speed HDs... and I couldn't do a thing with them other than reinstall XP. Yet by the time they were updated and antivirus was installed, they still crawled. I ended up putting ubuntu on half of them, and that Stripped to the Bone edition of XP on the rest, and that definitely mitigated their impotence somewhat. I was actually impressed with the toughness of the plastic in them, yet they still suffered from power connector that snapped off (but we had an extended Dell contract through a local firm who operated for Dell in the area, so at any time there was at least one laptop of the 14 in repair). That same year was the first intel MBP, and we had 14 of those too... they all had the processor sauce problem... but once AppleCare gave them the once over, there was never another problem with them. That was 1st gen hardware.
It will cost them at least 30 million in lost sales to give those bumpers away. And it's called damage control. Gizmodo and the gullible caused the damage with fantasy. IMHO, Apple should have stuck by their guns... there's no flaw, and nothiing wrong with the antenna or design. Most reviewers said it was the best phone they'd ever reviewed, and most said reception was improved, even before antennagate. Did you even watch the Apple presentation? Watch it. Explains everything. Clearly. All the points you think you wish to make, obliterated.
see for yourself
It is nothing but arrogance and ignorance that a schmuck, second rate blogger at a third rate blog thinks they discovered something that a multibillion dollar corporation didn't know. And it continues. Because you want to see Apple fail so badly, you forsake science and all valid evidence that antennagate was fiction. But no matter how bad you want it, Apple, all financial and business experts pretty much agree, is unstoppable. They're just going to keep succeeding regardless of your maligned attitudes towards superior software and hardware.
Yes... no other cell phone but iPhone 4 has that extra problem... oh, except for this one...
Look at page 169
oh... and this one too.... Look at page 6
Do we REALLY have to relive this? IT's MAKE BELIEVE, you gullible clown.You've been hypnotized by Gizmodo, LMAO.
ALL CELL PHONES, ALWAYS will have their antenna detuned by a human's touch, and THEY ALL have a death spot.Sure do. Show me any cell phone, I'll show you how to detune the antenna, and I'll find it's death spot.
But... you go ahead... keep evangelizing against Apple and iPhone 4. Whatever floats your boat, mate.
I have a Windows 7 machine running a Windows 98 application - try that with a Mac and tell me how it works out for you.
How about not? It's a pointless exercise. Pray tell, what awesome proprietary yet unupdated and outmoded Win98 app did you get locked into? And just why would you BRAG about that? My Mac runs UNIX software that's 40 years old... and so what?
Then all things with antennas have this 'design flaw.' Also, we have renamed all colors 'blue,' because we like blue best. Now, everything is blue!