However, it's also nearly a tautological statement. It's not deep.
It's just ~B -> ~A therefore A -> B. No shit.
It may not be deep, but it is sufficiently non-obvious that many people have made the error of arguing that because this particular planet/solar system/universe seems particularly well suited to us, then it must have been designed for our benefit.
An intuitive way of thinking about entropy is considering how likely a particular arrangement is to give you the overall appearance you observe.
However, in order to do this, we have to understand the physical system very well. Even if we do, a system may be too complex or chaotic to make statistical predictions. Moreover, it is easy to fool yourself when you try to calculate retrospectively the probability of something that has already happened. For example, if you calculate the probability of the specific sequence resulting from shuffling a deck of cards, you will find that the likelihood of that particular sequence arising randomly is vanishingly small. It would obviously be ridiculous to conclude on that basis that the deck was stacked, particularly if you shuffled it yourself. Yet "Intelligent Design" advocates frequently make exactly analogous arguments about such things as protein and DNA sequences
Objects that are designed by people (and, presumably, other intelligences) tend to be simpler than those created by nature. For example, compare the straight lines of a road with the wavy shape of a river.
In some cases, yes, in others, no. Many things in nature are mathematically simple: the smooth contours of bubbles, the regular patterns of crystal, the conic sections of planetary orbits, the shapes of large astronomical bodies. And many things that appear complex are actually the result of algorithmically simple chaotic dynamics.
Basically, we distinguish between the products of non-intelligent natural processes and the products of intelligence based upon our knowledge of the specific processes involved and our experience with their characteristic products. For example, we know very well what sort of landscape patterns are produced by natural processes of geology and erosion, so we can readily distinguish them from human constructions, at least most of the time. We also understand what typical goals of human beings are likely to be, and technology humans have available to them, so we can often recognize the products of human design. But even this can fail as we move away from the familiar. There are many examples of objects produced by natural processes that would be hard to distinguish from some nonrepresentational sculptures.
Once we get away from the familiar, our ability to distinguish between natural design and intelligent design starts to fail. When it comes to the question of nonhuman intelligence, all bets are off. Pulsar signals were originally thought to be evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence, until theorists came up with ideas of natural mechanisms capable of producing such regularity. Suppose we found an extraterrestrial signal that followed the Fibonacci series. We'd probably suspect extraterrestrial intelligence, because we don't yet know of any astronomical process that generates a Fibonacci series. Yet there is nothing specifically intelligent about that series--some branching patterns in plants follow a Fibonacci series.
As stated, it implies that 18% of consumers can't distinguish SD from HD in a direct A/B comparison. I find this frankly unbelievable.
On the other hand, I would not be at all surprised if 18% of consumers, particularly those who don't normally watch HD, might be unable to recognize HD when either SD or HD is shown on an unfamiliar monitor without the opportunity to make a direct A/B comparison.
Another question is whether they were actually being asked to distinguish 480i SD from 720p or 1080i/p HD, or whether the "SD" was really 480p ED. On anything other than a very large-screen monitor, the distinction between ED and HD is fairly subtle. Actually, I expect the percentage of people unable to tell whether a picture is ED or HD would be considerably greater than 18%
Ferguson, particularly in part 2, does a nice job of pointing out the problems with the study. In addition to the obvious difficulties in drawing causal conclusions from correlational data, a key issue is whether the effects that they are claiming to observe have any practical (as opposed to statistical) significance. To what extent does a small increase in "aggression" translate into an increase in real-world violence? And how big an increase? This is a key issue, because it is undisputed that real-world violence rates have dropped even as games have become more violent and more realistic. Moreover, as Ferguson points out, there is no correlation between media violence and real violence when you compare different countries. None of this proves that the claimed violence-inducing effect of videogames is completely nonexistant--but it does prove that any such effect must be so small as to be overwhelmed by other social and demographic factors that influence violence.
I don't understand why people waste money and time doing these kinds of studies. Invariably they depend upon untested, questionable assumptions, such as equating "aggressive" play with violence. And it is all directed toward solving a problem that doesn't exist, because the violence statistics have consistently shown that as games have gotten more realistic and more violent, real-world violence has steadily decreased. In fact, it has decreased most precipitously in the very demographic that is the biggest consumers of videogames. Now of course, this doesn't prove that games don't make people aggressive, or even violent. What it does prove is that the violence-inducing effect of video games, if any, is so small that it is swamped by other social and demographic factors that influence violence.
Why not with Russia or China, uhm? Or Venezuela? Oh, they aren't "developed" countries? Right. But, don't you think, there may be other factors at play? Such as large number of immigrants skewing the statistics here?
You mean why compare the US to other countries with similar demographics and a long history of democracy, like the US? And do you really think that other countries--England for example, don't have immigrants? And what is your claim, anyway--that immigrants are somehow genetically prone to infant death and short lives, even if they get adequate medical care?
Both, McCain's and Obama's plans would disassociate loss of job with loss of health coverage. McCain's plan, however, will keep choice possible, while Obama's will force us into what the government thinks is best.
Both plans provide choice, but neither one provides us what we really need--a single payer plan that is provided to everybody regardless of income and covers preventative care and severe illness. Obama's plan is a (very) small step in the right direction, offering universal coverage to children.
What's more, however, is that the government has no mandate to provide health care â" even if it were most efficient for it to do so. The government â" deriving its just power from the will of the governed â" is charged with upholding the law, and defense against foreign adversaries.
Nonsense--there is absolutely nothing in the Constitution that prohibits the government from providing health care (hardly surprising, considering that it was written at a time when health care was limited, cheap, and mostly ineffective) or any other service to its citizens. The mandate of a democratic government is what its citizens choose for it to do.
And it is not efficient. For example, despite the oft-cited expenses of conducting two wars (Afghanistan and Iraq) and the defense spending has still not exceeded Medicate expenses [wikipedia.org] alone, not including Medicaid...
So the cost of getting our young people killed in an unnecessary war is less than the cost of improving the health, quality of life. and lifespan for millions of people? What currency did you calculate that in? Apples or oranges? I can't imagine anything more idiotic than judging the efficiency of health care by comparing it to the efficiency of killing people.
But, in any case, we got off-tangent. My initial post was aimed at explaining the differences between the current situation, and McCain's and Obama's visions.
But you responded to my post, which was about how far both plans fall short of what we really need, a single-payer health plan that covers critical medical expenses.
Obviously such a plan would not eliminate choice. There is no reason why such a system could not exist in parallel with private programs to provide elective procedures and priority (house calls, no waiting) health services, just as there are private programs offering supplementary service to Medicare.
When somebody demands a citation from something that can be googled in 10 seconds, it is clear that they are engaging in rhetoric, not genuine discussion. But since you asked, here is "I'm feeling lucky" result of a Google search for "life expectancy infant mortality"
Compare, for example the US and Great Britain. Or Canada. Or Sweden. So why didn't you look it up yourself? Didn't actually want to know the answer, perhaps?
Rrriight... Sure. Happens every day â" I have to step over these dying on the street schmucks every day on the way to work.
Yes, it happens every day, but you don't have to step over them every day on the way to work, because they don't survive long. Happened to a cousin of mine: "Laid off" by her employer as soon as they learned she had breast cancer, lost her insurance and was evicted from her apartment. Found a part time job, that paid barely enough for another apartment, but it didn't offer health insurance or pay enough to support private health insurance, and anyway it was now a pre-existing condition. Could only see a doctor by standing in line for hours at the emergency room (because while seriously ill, it was not actually an emergency). By the time she was able to get medical care, the cancer was far advanced. The "schmuck" died. She wasn't 91. She was 50.
But it is not â" if you are seriously sick, the government's care will not treat you properly. It is not cost-efficient â" why treat a sick old person, who, even if they recover, will not be productive again? Since the government bureaucrats don't owe you anything (unlike insurance companies), you will not be able to sue them.
There is not much legal recourse when you are seriously ill. When you are trying to hold onto a place to live, half out of your mind from pain, and get medical care, you aren't going to be spending time going to lawyers and court dates, and anyway the defendant will know they can just delay and wait you out.
The reality is that countries with single-payer plans compare favorably to the US in objective measures such as lifespan and infant mortality. The difference is that they do not have what has become a common pattern in the US: 1. You get seriously ill 2. Your employer lets you go (generally on some other pretext) because you are missing so much work for sick days, doctors appointments, or hospital stays. 3. Without the income, you can't maintain your insurance (whether private or employer sponsored). 4. You can't get another job because you are spending too much time standing in the charity line at the emergency room to get the care you need to stay alive, or at least not die in too much pain. 5. If you do somehow get another job, you can't get insurance that covers your illness, because it is now excluded as a pre-existing condition. 6. After depleting your savings (nobody but the very wealthy can afford to cover a serious illness from savings), you end up homeless, dying on the street.
A single payer plan won't cover everything. There will still be a role for private insurance for well-to-do people who want greater coverage or faster service for elective procedures, but it will provide a minimum standard of care for all citizens.
I don't buy many PS3 games, but I use the system a lot. In addition to its Blu-Ray capability, Sony has steadily improved its upscaling of regular DVDs until it is on a par with many top dedicated upscaling players. It also does a good job of streaming video from my PC to my TV screen, with good quality and compatibility with a wide range of formats. And its simple hierarchical interface is fast, clear, and easy to navigate. The ability to show Hulu video in its web browser is a nice step up, although I'd like to see support for the TV network web sites as well. I'd like to see Sony add Netflix support. The XBox 360 will soon have the ability to play my Netflix streaming queue, but not edit it; the PS3 with its integrated web browser could do both. And I hate dealing with the XBox 360's awkward user interface which sacrifices usability for flash, and from the pictures that I've seen of the new one, it looks even worse.
No it can't. It can tell which fingers are touching it. But it cannot tell the difference between pressing with your right finger or your left finger if both fingers are in contact. To perform a right click with the Mighty Mouse you have to lift up with your left finger and click with the right.
This, in a word, sucks.
However, in less than a day, I found that my brain had adapted. I don't have to think about what my fingers are doing. When I want a left click, I click and get a left click. When I want a right click, I click and get a right click. I'm sure I'm unconsciously adjusting my fingers, but it feels as if the mouse is reading my mind.
a LCD TV is simply an LCD monitor with a built-in tuner card. why buy a TV and a set-top box when you can just have an HTPC or media center pc that can be used to check e-mail, surf the web, burn DVDs, play games, etc., etc.? a computer with a tuner card can watch both, regular TV as well as internet video streams like Miro (Democracy Player). it just doesn't make sense to replace the computer with a locked down and functionally crippled equivalent.
If the trend is always from specialized devices to general purpose devices, then why are there still compact cars, SUVs, trucks, luxury cars, and motorcycles on the road? I already have a general purpose PC. I don't need another one. I prefer to do PC things on my laptop. My entertainment system does a few very specific things, and I want it to do them very well and very conveniently. I don't want it to depend upon my laptop to do them. In other words, I'm looking for a specialized device, streamlined to carry out those particular functions.
The teasers they are sending out clearly indicate that the next event will concern notebook laptops. These days, Apple events are very tightly focused on a particular product line--the last event was for iPods, and they barely even mentioned the iPhone, much less the Mac.
Fundamentally, I think that it is a good idea, and given that they already have the AppleTV name, I imagine that they are looking to go in this direction. But I don't think the Apple TV as it currently exists adds enough value to get an Apple TV set into the high margin arena where Apple likes to play.
I think that Apple has been making a fundamental mistake by tying the Apple TV box too tightly to Apple content. This is different from what they have done with the iPod, which supports mp3 as well as Apple's format. I also think that whereas buy-to-own is king for music, Netflix-style subscription is going to be the dominant model for video distribution.
So if Apple really wants the Apple TV to be more than a minor player in the set-top box market, and to add value to an Apple-branded entertainment display, they need to:
1) Play back or stream video in a wide-range of formats as the XBox360 and PS3 do. This should be easy; everything they need is already available open-source. Just include a UPnP client and something like VLC.
2) Include Netflix subscription capability, as the XBox360 is about to do. Heck, perhaps Apple should just acquire Netflix.
3) Put Safari on it. Even the iPod touch supports Safari. The PS3 and Wii even have web browsers, although they are not very appealing. Add an app to the iPhone/iTouch that makes it function as a touchpad for Safari on AppleTV.
If they do these things, then a TV set with AppleTV built into it would likely be a strong contender.
I've used other PVRs and they don't do this. Moreover, the TiVo "step-back" is different depending upon which of the three fast forward/reverse speeds you are using. At the slowest speed, there is no step-back. At the faster speed there is a step-back, and at the fastest speed there is a larger step-back. The result is that at either of the two faster speeds the stepback generally does a good job of compensating for your reaction time (at the slowest FF speed, the overshoot is rarely enough to matter)
This feature of the TiVo makes a huge contribution to the user-friendliness of the device.
This is mere obfuscation. If the difference in price were the difference in production costs, price would not be an issue. Media and production costs are such a small fraction (about 5%) of the price of a disk that have negligible impact on price. The disks are priced what the studio thinks the market will bear.
Blu-ray producers are still suffering from the delusion that the format can be expected to command a premium with consumers. The reality is that for typical (non home theater) size TVs, the difference between a $50 upscaling DVD player and a blu-ray player is visible but not striking--worth perhaps an extra $10 for the player and an extra buck for the disk. Blu-ray will not break out of the videophile niche market until it is nearly price-competitive with standard DVDs and players.
Medical students don't need to know Organic Chemistry. It doesn't help them with their medical classes (not even Pharmacology, which I teach) and it certainly won't help them with their practice of medicine.
On the other hand, there is a sense in which the difficulty of Organic Chem is similar to the difficulty of medical school. There is a lot of detail, some of which cannot be deduced, and must simply be learned, and yet the student needs to figure out how to see the forest as well as the trees, and to reason with the material. So I can understand why a good grade in Organic Chem helps to convince an admissions committee that a student will be able to hack med school.
Wrong. That is only for the US; we are talking world climate. The tiny correction made a slight difference in ranking of US warmest year records, not global. In terms of global temperature, all of the 10 warmest years have been since 1989, and the tiny correction (below the level of statistical significance) to the US temperature records did not alter that.
And by the way, it is not even true that NASA previously ranked 1998 as the hottest year. NASA ranked has always ranked 1934 as the hottest year (in the US only, of course, and by a statistically insignificant margin). The tiny correction did not change that, either.
You might want to think about the source you cited, and what their motivation might be for promulgating such disinformation, still uncorrected months after scientists have pointed out the falsity of the claim.
The 3rd party app bug is not new, and Apple has acknowledged that it is working on it. I had the same problem with the old firmware after an update of a 3rd party application. Doing a restore solved the problem.
From the article, it just sounds like they're sure he's trampled over at least a zoning law or two and most likely violated a bunch of other regulations, too.
Yet somehow, they couldn't seem to think of any. I'm not surprised. Most zoning regulations concern things like residential vs. business uses; they don't dictate what sort of noncommercial hobbies people can engage in in their own homes.
But we are moving away from an era of individual freedom and privacy toward one where anything not expressly permitted is forbidden.
What? Where did they imply they were going to charge him with a crime?
This is Massachusetts, where people have been subjected to criminal charges for things like harmless electronic ads and jewelry with blinking lights. So the threat is not even all that implicit.
Leaving cans of ether sitting open on a benchtop and smoking a cigarette five feet away.
And the guy who works on his car or has a power lawnmower might be handling gasoline improperly, or dumping used oil down the toilet. I've just discovered that my neighbor is having an explosive gas piped into his home and is using it in his kitchen and basement in the vicinity of open flames. Somebody needs to confiscate his car, lawnmower, stove, furnace and hot water heater to protect the public safety!
So, even though he wasn't actively being a terrorist or doing anything wrong with the chemicals, there are still rules about how you're supposed to handle it and where and he apparently didn't abide by them well enough.
Not exactly. The statement was "Mr. Deeb's home likely violated the regulations of many state and local departments."
However, Mr. Deeb is only required to abide by the regulations of his own state and town. What some other state or locality does or does not allow is irrelevant.
It's hard to read this as meaning anything other than, "We don't know of any law that you've violated, but we're going to steal your property anyway, and if you object we'll trump up some kind of technicality to charge you with a crime."
I'm not a lawyer, but how would that work? Company "B" sells equipment that is compatible with Company "A"'s software. Company "B" never has anything to do with sales or support of said software. What standing would "A" have to sue "B"?
Many software manufacturers have included provisions in their EULAs that resemble Apple's, and all are practically unenforceable against consumers. If I've legally purchased a product, Apple doesn't have any legal standing to tell me how to use that product, aside from unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials.
I can melt the CD down into a little voodoo doll of Steve Jobs, use it as a coaster, or install it on another computer I own. So long as I'm not providing the software to another person for their use, I've broken no law. Remember, EULAs fall under contract law, which is widely regarded as the weakest of all agreements.
Yes, you can certainly melt the CD down or use it as a coaster, because you can do those things without agreeing to the EULA. On the other hand, when you install the software, you explicitly agree to the terms of the EULA and then become bound to the terms of it. When you click that "Accept" button, you give Apple the legal standing that they need.
Not that Apple is likely to come after you personally. They probably don't care much if you hack the software to run on a non-Apple product, so long as you do it for personal use. But they do care about a competitor trying to sell you computers designed for that purpose, so they would probably have a pretty good case against a company that can be shown to be intentionally trying to assist you in violating your EULA.
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It may not be deep, but it is sufficiently non-obvious that many people have made the error of arguing that because this particular planet/solar system/universe seems particularly well suited to us, then it must have been designed for our benefit.
However, in order to do this, we have to understand the physical system very well. Even if we do, a system may be too complex or chaotic to make statistical predictions. Moreover, it is easy to fool yourself when you try to calculate retrospectively the probability of something that has already happened. For example, if you calculate the probability of the specific sequence resulting from shuffling a deck of cards, you will find that the likelihood of that particular sequence arising randomly is vanishingly small. It would obviously be ridiculous to conclude on that basis that the deck was stacked, particularly if you shuffled it yourself. Yet "Intelligent Design" advocates frequently make exactly analogous arguments about such things as protein and DNA sequences
In some cases, yes, in others, no. Many things in nature are mathematically simple: the smooth contours of bubbles, the regular patterns of crystal, the conic sections of planetary orbits, the shapes of large astronomical bodies. And many things that appear complex are actually the result of algorithmically simple chaotic dynamics.
Basically, we distinguish between the products of non-intelligent natural processes and the products of intelligence based upon our knowledge of the specific processes involved and our experience with their characteristic products. For example, we know very well what sort of landscape patterns are produced by natural processes of geology and erosion, so we can readily distinguish them from human constructions, at least most of the time. We also understand what typical goals of human beings are likely to be, and technology humans have available to them, so we can often recognize the products of human design. But even this can fail as we move away from the familiar. There are many examples of objects produced by natural processes that would be hard to distinguish from some nonrepresentational sculptures.
Once we get away from the familiar, our ability to distinguish between natural design and intelligent design starts to fail. When it comes to the question of nonhuman intelligence, all bets are off. Pulsar signals were originally thought to be evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence, until theorists came up with ideas of natural mechanisms capable of producing such regularity. Suppose we found an extraterrestrial signal that followed the Fibonacci series. We'd probably suspect extraterrestrial intelligence, because we don't yet know of any astronomical process that generates a Fibonacci series. Yet there is nothing specifically intelligent about that series--some branching patterns in plants follow a Fibonacci series.
As stated, it implies that 18% of consumers can't distinguish SD from HD in a direct A/B comparison. I find this frankly unbelievable.
On the other hand, I would not be at all surprised if 18% of consumers, particularly those who don't normally watch HD, might be unable to recognize HD when either SD or HD is shown on an unfamiliar monitor without the opportunity to make a direct A/B comparison.
Another question is whether they were actually being asked to distinguish 480i SD from 720p or 1080i/p HD, or whether the "SD" was really 480p ED. On anything other than a very large-screen monitor, the distinction between ED and HD is fairly subtle. Actually, I expect the percentage of people unable to tell whether a picture is ED or HD would be considerably greater than 18%
Ferguson, particularly in part 2, does a nice job of pointing out the problems with the study. In addition to the obvious difficulties in drawing causal conclusions from correlational data, a key issue is whether the effects that they are claiming to observe have any practical (as opposed to statistical) significance. To what extent does a small increase in "aggression" translate into an increase in real-world violence? And how big an increase? This is a key issue, because it is undisputed that real-world violence rates have dropped even as games have become more violent and more realistic. Moreover, as Ferguson points out, there is no correlation between media violence and real violence when you compare different countries. None of this proves that the claimed violence-inducing effect of videogames is completely nonexistant--but it does prove that any such effect must be so small as to be overwhelmed by other social and demographic factors that influence violence.
I don't understand why people waste money and time doing these kinds of studies. Invariably they depend upon untested, questionable assumptions, such as equating "aggressive" play with violence. And it is all directed toward solving a problem that doesn't exist, because the violence statistics have consistently shown that as games have gotten more realistic and more violent, real-world violence has steadily decreased. In fact, it has decreased most precipitously in the very demographic that is the biggest consumers of videogames. Now of course, this doesn't prove that games don't make people aggressive, or even violent. What it does prove is that the violence-inducing effect of video games, if any, is so small that it is swamped by other social and demographic factors that influence violence.
You mean why compare the US to other countries with similar demographics and a long history of democracy, like the US? And do you really think that other countries--England for example, don't have immigrants? And what is your claim, anyway--that immigrants are somehow genetically prone to infant death and short lives, even if they get adequate medical care?
Both plans provide choice, but neither one provides us what we really need--a single payer plan that is provided to everybody regardless of income and covers preventative care and severe illness. Obama's plan is a (very) small step in the right direction, offering universal coverage to children.
Nonsense--there is absolutely nothing in the Constitution that prohibits the government from providing health care (hardly surprising, considering that it was written at a time when health care was limited, cheap, and mostly ineffective) or any other service to its citizens. The mandate of a democratic government is what its citizens choose for it to do.
So the cost of getting our young people killed in an unnecessary war is less than the cost of improving the health, quality of life. and lifespan for millions of people? What currency did you calculate that in? Apples or oranges? I can't imagine anything more idiotic than judging the efficiency of health care by comparing it to the efficiency of killing people.
But you responded to my post, which was about how far both plans fall short of what we really need, a single-payer health plan that covers critical medical expenses.
Obviously such a plan would not eliminate choice. There is no reason why such a system could not exist in parallel with private programs to provide elective procedures and priority (house calls, no waiting) health services, just as there are private programs offering supplementary service to Medicare.
When somebody demands a citation from something that can be googled in 10 seconds, it is clear that they are engaging in rhetoric, not genuine discussion. But since you asked, here is "I'm feeling lucky" result of a Google search for "life expectancy infant mortality"
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004393.html
Compare, for example the US and Great Britain. Or Canada. Or Sweden. So why didn't you look it up yourself? Didn't actually want to know the answer, perhaps?
Yes, it happens every day, but you don't have to step over them every day on the way to work, because they don't survive long. Happened to a cousin of mine: "Laid off" by her employer as soon as they learned she had breast cancer, lost her insurance and was evicted from her apartment. Found a part time job, that paid barely enough for another apartment, but it didn't offer health insurance or pay enough to support private health insurance, and anyway it was now a pre-existing condition. Could only see a doctor by standing in line for hours at the emergency room (because while seriously ill, it was not actually an emergency). By the time she was able to get medical care, the cancer was far advanced. The "schmuck" died. She wasn't 91. She was 50.
There is not much legal recourse when you are seriously ill. When you are trying to hold onto a place to live, half out of your mind from pain, and get medical care, you aren't going to be spending time going to lawyers and court dates, and anyway the defendant will know they can just delay and wait you out.
The reality is that countries with single-payer plans compare favorably to the US in objective measures such as lifespan and infant mortality. The difference is that they do not have what has become a common pattern in the US:
1. You get seriously ill
2. Your employer lets you go (generally on some other pretext) because you are missing so much work for sick days, doctors appointments, or hospital stays.
3. Without the income, you can't maintain your insurance (whether private or employer sponsored).
4. You can't get another job because you are spending too much time standing in the charity line at the emergency room to get the care you need to stay alive, or at least not die in too much pain.
5. If you do somehow get another job, you can't get insurance that covers your illness, because it is now excluded as a pre-existing condition.
6. After depleting your savings (nobody but the very wealthy can afford to cover a serious illness from savings), you end up homeless, dying on the street.
A single payer plan won't cover everything. There will still be a role for private insurance for well-to-do people who want greater coverage or faster service for elective procedures, but it will provide a minimum standard of care for all citizens.
I don't buy many PS3 games, but I use the system a lot. In addition to its Blu-Ray capability, Sony has steadily improved its upscaling of regular DVDs until it is on a par with many top dedicated upscaling players. It also does a good job of streaming video from my PC to my TV screen, with good quality and compatibility with a wide range of formats. And its simple hierarchical interface is fast, clear, and easy to navigate. The ability to show Hulu video in its web browser is a nice step up, although I'd like to see support for the TV network web sites as well. I'd like to see Sony add Netflix support. The XBox 360 will soon have the ability to play my Netflix streaming queue, but not edit it; the PS3 with its integrated web browser could do both. And I hate dealing with the XBox 360's awkward user interface which sacrifices usability for flash, and from the pictures that I've seen of the new one, it looks even worse.
However, in less than a day, I found that my brain had adapted. I don't have to think about what my fingers are doing. When I want a left click, I click and get a left click. When I want a right click, I click and get a right click. I'm sure I'm unconsciously adjusting my fingers, but it feels as if the mouse is reading my mind.
If the trend is always from specialized devices to general purpose devices, then why are there still compact cars, SUVs, trucks, luxury cars, and motorcycles on the road? I already have a general purpose PC. I don't need another one. I prefer to do PC things on my laptop. My entertainment system does a few very specific things, and I want it to do them very well and very conveniently. I don't want it to depend upon my laptop to do them. In other words, I'm looking for a specialized device, streamlined to carry out those particular functions.
The teasers they are sending out clearly indicate that the next event will concern notebook laptops. These days, Apple events are very tightly focused on a particular product line--the last event was for iPods, and they barely even mentioned the iPhone, much less the Mac.
Fundamentally, I think that it is a good idea, and given that they already have the AppleTV name, I imagine that they are looking to go in this direction. But I don't think the Apple TV as it currently exists adds enough value to get an Apple TV set into the high margin arena where Apple likes to play.
I think that Apple has been making a fundamental mistake by tying the Apple TV box too tightly to Apple content. This is different from what they have done with the iPod, which supports mp3 as well as Apple's format. I also think that whereas buy-to-own is king for music, Netflix-style subscription is going to be the dominant model for video distribution.
So if Apple really wants the Apple TV to be more than a minor player in the set-top box market, and to add value to an Apple-branded entertainment display, they need to:
1) Play back or stream video in a wide-range of formats as the XBox360 and PS3 do. This should be easy; everything they need is already available open-source. Just include a UPnP client and something like VLC.
2) Include Netflix subscription capability, as the XBox360 is about to do. Heck, perhaps Apple should just acquire Netflix.
3) Put Safari on it. Even the iPod touch supports Safari. The PS3 and Wii even have web browsers, although they are not very appealing. Add an app to the iPhone/iTouch that makes it function as a touchpad for Safari on AppleTV.
If they do these things, then a TV set with AppleTV built into it would likely be a strong contender.
TiVo's patents are not on the idea of a DVR, they are on specific user interface features and methods of implementing them in software and hardware.
I've used other PVRs and they don't do this. Moreover, the TiVo "step-back" is different depending upon which of the three fast forward/reverse speeds you are using. At the slowest speed, there is no step-back. At the faster speed there is a step-back, and at the fastest speed there is a larger step-back. The result is that at either of the two faster speeds the stepback generally does a good job of compensating for your reaction time (at the slowest FF speed, the overshoot is rarely enough to matter)
This feature of the TiVo makes a huge contribution to the user-friendliness of the device.
This is mere obfuscation. If the difference in price were the difference in production costs, price would not be an issue. Media and production costs are such a small fraction (about 5%) of the price of a disk that have negligible impact on price. The disks are priced what the studio thinks the market will bear.
Blu-ray producers are still suffering from the delusion that the format can be expected to command a premium with consumers. The reality is that for typical (non home theater) size TVs, the difference between a $50 upscaling DVD player and a blu-ray player is visible but not striking--worth perhaps an extra $10 for the player and an extra buck for the disk. Blu-ray will not break out of the videophile niche market until it is nearly price-competitive with standard DVDs and players.
Medical students don't need to know Organic Chemistry. It doesn't help them with their medical classes (not even Pharmacology, which I teach) and it certainly won't help them with their practice of medicine.
On the other hand, there is a sense in which the difficulty of Organic Chem is similar to the difficulty of medical school. There is a lot of detail, some of which cannot be deduced, and must simply be learned, and yet the student needs to figure out how to see the forest as well as the trees, and to reason with the material. So I can understand why a good grade in Organic Chem helps to convince an admissions committee that a student will be able to hack med school.
Wrong. That is only for the US; we are talking world climate. The tiny correction made a slight difference in ranking of US warmest year records, not global. In terms of global temperature, all of the 10 warmest years have been since 1989, and the tiny correction (below the level of statistical significance) to the US temperature records did not alter that.
And by the way, it is not even true that NASA previously ranked 1998 as the hottest year. NASA ranked has always ranked 1934 as the hottest year (in the US only, of course, and by a statistically insignificant margin). The tiny correction did not change that, either.
You might want to think about the source you cited, and what their motivation might be for promulgating such disinformation, still uncorrected months after scientists have pointed out the falsity of the claim.
The 3rd party app bug is not new, and Apple has acknowledged that it is working on it. I had the same problem with the old firmware after an update of a 3rd party application. Doing a restore solved the problem.
Yet somehow, they couldn't seem to think of any. I'm not surprised. Most zoning regulations concern things like residential vs. business uses; they don't dictate what sort of noncommercial hobbies people can engage in in their own homes.
But we are moving away from an era of individual freedom and privacy toward one where anything not expressly permitted is forbidden.
This is Massachusetts, where people have been subjected to criminal charges for things like harmless electronic ads and jewelry with blinking lights. So the threat is not even all that implicit.
And the guy who works on his car or has a power lawnmower might be handling gasoline improperly, or dumping used oil down the toilet. I've just discovered that my neighbor is having an explosive gas piped into his home and is using it in his kitchen and basement in the vicinity of open flames. Somebody needs to confiscate his car, lawnmower, stove, furnace and hot water heater to protect the public safety!
Not exactly. The statement was "Mr. Deeb's home likely violated the regulations of many state and local departments."
However, Mr. Deeb is only required to abide by the regulations of his own state and town. What some other state or locality does or does not allow is irrelevant.
It's hard to read this as meaning anything other than, "We don't know of any law that you've violated, but we're going to steal your property anyway, and if you object we'll trump up some kind of technicality to charge you with a crime."
tortiousinterference
Many software manufacturers have included provisions in their EULAs that resemble Apple's, and all are practically unenforceable against consumers. If I've legally purchased a product, Apple doesn't have any legal standing to tell me how to use that product, aside from unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials.
I can melt the CD down into a little voodoo doll of Steve Jobs, use it as a coaster, or install it on another computer I own. So long as I'm not providing the software to another person for their use, I've broken no law. Remember, EULAs fall under contract law, which is widely regarded as the weakest of all agreements.
Yes, you can certainly melt the CD down or use it as a coaster, because you can do those things without agreeing to the EULA. On the other hand, when you install the software, you explicitly agree to the terms of the EULA and then become bound to the terms of it. When you click that "Accept" button, you give Apple the legal standing that they need.
Not that Apple is likely to come after you personally. They probably don't care much if you hack the software to run on a non-Apple product, so long as you do it for personal use. But they do care about a competitor trying to sell you computers designed for that purpose, so they would probably have a pretty good case against a company that can be shown to be intentionally trying to assist you in violating your EULA.