How about use it for more than a few hours? This is the one big feature that I really got the iPad for. The specs say, "10 hours of HD video playing" but if you are just typing up documents or reading ebooks or doing light web browsing, the iPad runs for 30+ hours on a charge.
I would disagree. It's sufficient for what people use it for. In what way is the hardware not good enough?
Sure, it's not cheap, but it's also a fairly high quality product. I am looking forward to all the $100 cheap plastic flimsy Android tablets that will, no doubt, beat the iPad on some ridiculous spec sheet, but I doubt that this will stop people from literally lining up in droves at the Apple store.
Actually, the iPad is for *anything* at this point. I know quite a few people who use one for taking notes in class, writing papers, making presentations, and so forth.
Coupled with a nice bluetooth keyboard, it's still smaller than most netbooks, and the battery life is of course way, way better. Using the iPad as a typewriter, for example, I get over 30 hours of battery life.
Just because you can view Youtube on the iPad, doesn't mean that you can't type a paper on it too.
My problem has been convincing them that they con't just pass of the cost of Windows to the customer. They like the fact that they can hire 3-4 MCSEs for the cost of one good Unix admin, but they don't realize that the Unix admin can set things up so that maintenance is much easier.
Windows is ingrained in business culture here, for the most part.
This is the problem. An artificial market for underpowered devices has been created, and is supported both by the standard math curricula (TI teams up with publishers to encourage states to purchase books that require a TI calc) and the standardized test manufacturers, while they do not "require" a brand name calculator, do indeed require that children cripple themselves and spend another $150 on a hunk of plastic that has not changed in years.
Kids should be able to use a Nintendo DS with a graphing calc cartridge, they should be able to use an iPod Touch, they should be able to use their little netbooks and so forth.
Aside from the *fact* that Firefox is a cow, it has some of the most awful, ugly font rendering in the world.
Why would you buy a Macintosh, which includes perhaps the best font rendering engine on the planet, and $1000 worth of professional fonts, in order to render them so terribly?
Safari has one of the fastest Javascript engines on the planet, its HTML5 capabilities blow FF out of the water, and it's just all around nicer.
Your other points ring true, but the first one fails. Fink is astoundingly easy to use - it has basically the same interface as most any other Unix package management system. You pick the thing you want to install, it asks you if it can install the dependencies, and it's off and away.
This is hardly hard work. Even if you don't have a binary in a repo, it simply takes a bit longer because of the compilation step.
Fink and the Ports system both work great, and they coexist without problems (now). Look at the situation with Linux, where you have several competing package management systems, which are completely incompatible with each other. A slight misconfiguration upstream somewhere doesn't just cause the package installation process to fail - it can totally cheese your whole system! I used to use Ubuntu with MythTV, but that was a hairy fucking mess when it came to installing upgrades. I need 2 separate versions of MySQL? What in the fuck is MythTV doing even storing program scheduling data in a database, when a flat text file would work just as well and even allow a person to edit it manually, say over an SSH session? This is just one example of the problems you are faced with even in an easy-to-use distro like Ubuntu.
Why isn't it recognized as a calculator? It's surely not because it can't "calculate." This is an example of the standardized test manufacturers creating an artificial market for TI calculators. Again, it feeds into the classroom expectation that all students drive a VW Beetle, I mean a TI calc.
Perhaps the best place to start, is to give each student the choice to use ANY little computing gadget they wish to enhance their calculation speed. Or, to ban calculators altogether in standardized tests. But, is it the schools who decide what happens during standardized testing? The states? No, it's the standardized test manufacturers.
This is an *actual* monopoly situation, supported and enhanced by the fact that states do not show any willingness to actually tackle the problems that created it.
People don't buy a new computer to run Windows 7. They buy a new computer because a game doesn't work on their older computer, and getting a new machine with Windows 7 is barely any more expensive than Windows 7 itself. It's a race to the bottom, for generic PC (aka "windows box) manufacturers.
Compare the profits Dell pulls per PC, to that which Apple pulls, and you'll see that Dell needs to sell roughly 30 computers to equal the profit that Apple gets from a single sale. Why do you think Apple has become nearly the most profitable company in the entire WORLD? After all, they are mainly just slapping a heavily modified FreeBSD / Nextstep on top of commodity hardware these days.
Apple products have not always been underpowered. Sure, you can build a faster PC at home, but this is the case whether you compare it against a pre-built machine from Apple or a Dell or a Supermicro.
By the way, I should have added my caveat here: Casio's new calc will fail at least in the USA and Canada, because schools generally require kids to use what the teacher uses, e.g. a TI Calc.
It's more expensive and less versatile than an iPod touch, or hell, even my old Zaurus from a decade ago.
The only reason that TI does so well, is that schoolteachers are pretty much trained in on it and refuse to use newer technology. A kid should be able to use whatever device he or she wants, as long as it has the requisite functionality.
Imagine, if when you took your driving tests, they only allowed VW Beetles. Now, you have to buy a Beetle to pass your driving test. Sure, there is a "market" for Camrys, but you will still need your own Beetle when the behind the wheel test comes. Car companies would scream bloody murder, that there was a totally artificial market created for Beetles, and that the lack of competition was keeping everybody invested in 1938 technology.
TI's calculator stranglehold sickens me. It should sicken everybody who thinks that competition in a market leads to better products.
Steve has specifically said that you will be able to run whatever you like on the Mac in the future. Whether or not you believe him, is up to you, but ease let us know where your doom about OS X comes from.
Clearly you have a configuration problem then. Or you are just flat out lying.
However, looking at your post history, you never miss an opportunity to bash Apple products, and even when your posts smack of untruth your low UID magically gets you modded up.
However a trained shooter with a handgun can make shots far exceeding 25 meters. I know several folks who can shoot a standard small bore bullseye with a standard police revolver from the 1950s (a.38 special) accurately at ranges exceeding 200 feet. The target is about the same size as a man's head. If you are satisfied with simply hitting a person somewhere, you can probably double that range after a few days at the range and some good instruction.
This is really not even that big of a deal. Looking up the effective range on the internet, and seeing what a trained, careful shot can do with a revolver are two different things.
Yahoo seems involved with the spammers. An experiment I did once:
I logged into Yahoo with SSL, and created an account. I never sent any mail to anybody from it, never told anybody what I was doing or the new email address.
Then I logged in in one month, and was barely astonished to see that there were literally hundreds of spam messages in the account. How did the spammers get that email address? It was something like oi807b31978qgv@yahoo.com (can't remember the account name any more) so they couldn't have guessed at the account name.
My conclusion? Somebody at Yahoo is selling their email addresses to spammers, or Yahoo is operating a spam farm on the side.
Slashdot Mirror
How about use it for more than a few hours? This is the one big feature that I really got the iPad for. The specs say, "10 hours of HD video playing" but if you are just typing up documents or reading ebooks or doing light web browsing, the iPad runs for 30+ hours on a charge.
So you can't put Quake 4 on there, but who cares?
I would disagree. It's sufficient for what people use it for. In what way is the hardware not good enough?
Sure, it's not cheap, but it's also a fairly high quality product. I am looking forward to all the $100 cheap plastic flimsy Android tablets that will, no doubt, beat the iPad on some ridiculous spec sheet, but I doubt that this will stop people from literally lining up in droves at the Apple store.
Actually, the iPad is for *anything* at this point. I know quite a few people who use one for taking notes in class, writing papers, making presentations, and so forth.
Coupled with a nice bluetooth keyboard, it's still smaller than most netbooks, and the battery life is of course way, way better. Using the iPad as a typewriter, for example, I get over 30 hours of battery life.
Just because you can view Youtube on the iPad, doesn't mean that you can't type a paper on it too.
My problem has been convincing them that they con't just pass of the cost of Windows to the customer. They like the fact that they can hire 3-4 MCSEs for the cost of one good Unix admin, but they don't realize that the Unix admin can set things up so that maintenance is much easier.
Windows is ingrained in business culture here, for the most part.
You really think a fucking lawsuit is going to help here?
Jeez, nigga, you DUMB.
Fink IS apt.
MacPorts is more analogous to the FreeBSD Port system, although different in implementation.
It's unfortunate that your computer got hosed, but without a post-mortem on the logfiles it's impossible to say that MacPorts did this.
Unlike most users of these packages, you ended up with problems. There are occasional problems, but I haven't had them.
"They don't allow laptops into most exam rooms."
This is the problem. An artificial market for underpowered devices has been created, and is supported both by the standard math curricula (TI teams up with publishers to encourage states to purchase books that require a TI calc) and the standardized test manufacturers, while they do not "require" a brand name calculator, do indeed require that children cripple themselves and spend another $150 on a hunk of plastic that has not changed in years.
Kids should be able to use a Nintendo DS with a graphing calc cartridge, they should be able to use an iPod Touch, they should be able to use their little netbooks and so forth.
Aside from the *fact* that Firefox is a cow, it has some of the most awful, ugly font rendering in the world.
Why would you buy a Macintosh, which includes perhaps the best font rendering engine on the planet, and $1000 worth of professional fonts, in order to render them so terribly?
Safari has one of the fastest Javascript engines on the planet, its HTML5 capabilities blow FF out of the water, and it's just all around nicer.
Your other points ring true, but the first one fails. Fink is astoundingly easy to use - it has basically the same interface as most any other Unix package management system. You pick the thing you want to install, it asks you if it can install the dependencies, and it's off and away.
This is hardly hard work. Even if you don't have a binary in a repo, it simply takes a bit longer because of the compilation step.
Fink and the Ports system both work great, and they coexist without problems (now). Look at the situation with Linux, where you have several competing package management systems, which are completely incompatible with each other. A slight misconfiguration upstream somewhere doesn't just cause the package installation process to fail - it can totally cheese your whole system! I used to use Ubuntu with MythTV, but that was a hairy fucking mess when it came to installing upgrades. I need 2 separate versions of MySQL? What in the fuck is MythTV doing even storing program scheduling data in a database, when a flat text file would work just as well and even allow a person to edit it manually, say over an SSH session? This is just one example of the problems you are faced with even in an easy-to-use distro like Ubuntu.
Why isn't it recognized as a calculator? It's surely not because it can't "calculate." This is an example of the standardized test manufacturers creating an artificial market for TI calculators. Again, it feeds into the classroom expectation that all students drive a VW Beetle, I mean a TI calc.
Perhaps the best place to start, is to give each student the choice to use ANY little computing gadget they wish to enhance their calculation speed. Or, to ban calculators altogether in standardized tests. But, is it the schools who decide what happens during standardized testing? The states? No, it's the standardized test manufacturers.
This is an *actual* monopoly situation, supported and enhanced by the fact that states do not show any willingness to actually tackle the problems that created it.
People don't buy a new computer to run Windows 7. They buy a new computer because a game doesn't work on their older computer, and getting a new machine with Windows 7 is barely any more expensive than Windows 7 itself. It's a race to the bottom, for generic PC (aka "windows box) manufacturers.
Compare the profits Dell pulls per PC, to that which Apple pulls, and you'll see that Dell needs to sell roughly 30 computers to equal the profit that Apple gets from a single sale. Why do you think Apple has become nearly the most profitable company in the entire WORLD? After all, they are mainly just slapping a heavily modified FreeBSD / Nextstep on top of commodity hardware these days.
Apple products have not always been underpowered. Sure, you can build a faster PC at home, but this is the case whether you compare it against a pre-built machine from Apple or a Dell or a Supermicro.
By the way, I should have added my caveat here: Casio's new calc will fail at least in the USA and Canada, because schools generally require kids to use what the teacher uses, e.g. a TI Calc.
It's more expensive and less versatile than an iPod touch, or hell, even my old Zaurus from a decade ago.
The only reason that TI does so well, is that schoolteachers are pretty much trained in on it and refuse to use newer technology. A kid should be able to use whatever device he or she wants, as long as it has the requisite functionality.
Imagine, if when you took your driving tests, they only allowed VW Beetles. Now, you have to buy a Beetle to pass your driving test. Sure, there is a "market" for Camrys, but you will still need your own Beetle when the behind the wheel test comes. Car companies would scream bloody murder, that there was a totally artificial market created for Beetles, and that the lack of competition was keeping everybody invested in 1938 technology.
TI's calculator stranglehold sickens me. It should sicken everybody who thinks that competition in a market leads to better products.
Steve has specifically said that you will be able to run whatever you like on the Mac in the future. Whether or not you believe him, is up to you, but ease let us know where your doom about OS X comes from.
Clearly you have a configuration problem then. Or you are just flat out lying.
However, looking at your post history, you never miss an opportunity to bash Apple products, and even when your posts smack of untruth your low UID magically gets you modded up.
Well I for one do not watch TV. It is a magic spell that keeps you from more important things.
People who do not watch TV tend to read and think. Those that do, tend not to. There are exceptions of course, but that is the long and short of it.
He's not saying it's right, he's saying that the doctrine does not include impotent threats followed by inaction.
However a trained shooter with a handgun can make shots far exceeding 25 meters. I know several folks who can shoot a standard small bore bullseye with a standard police revolver from the 1950s (a .38 special) accurately at ranges exceeding 200 feet. The target is about the same size as a man's head. If you are satisfied with simply hitting a person somewhere, you can probably double that range after a few days at the range and some good instruction.
This is really not even that big of a deal. Looking up the effective range on the internet, and seeing what a trained, careful shot can do with a revolver are two different things.
Tibet is much more free now than it ever was under the Dalai Lama.
Sad to say it, but they liberated Tibet.
Windows 7 adoption rates are almost identical to PC replacement rates.
Maybe they would get some real fucking competition.
The iPad is a computer. Calling it a "device" doesn't make it less of a computer.
I can whip up a quick workflow in Automator that will do all that, in about a minute.
Automator rocks.
Yahoo seems involved with the spammers. An experiment I did once:
I logged into Yahoo with SSL, and created an account. I never sent any mail to anybody from it, never told anybody what I was doing or the new email address.
Then I logged in in one month, and was barely astonished to see that there were literally hundreds of spam messages in the account. How did the spammers get that email address? It was something like oi807b31978qgv@yahoo.com (can't remember the account name any more) so they couldn't have guessed at the account name.
My conclusion? Somebody at Yahoo is selling their email addresses to spammers, or Yahoo is operating a spam farm on the side.