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User: robus

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  1. Re:2 very different versions of Surface on Surface RT vs. iPad: a Comparison · · Score: 1

    "That is your toy that is really just a windows version of an Ipad except that it can produce content."

    Well that was insightful.

  2. Re:God's experiment in free will on Debate Over Evolution Will Soon Be History, Says Leakey · · Score: 1

    Well most parents don't witness the death of their children - those that do claim it to be pretty unpleasant. Hell we have a hard enough time facing the end of beloved pets. So god is doing this all the time and watching people make mistakes and pay terrible costs all in the name of his free will experiment. You'd think he'd have gathered enough data by now.... He's just doing it out of sheer bloodyminded-ness now, or he's not (and never has) because it's all bullshit....

    I know which way occam's razor slices...

  3. Re:God's experiment in free will on Debate Over Evolution Will Soon Be History, Says Leakey · · Score: 1

    Hmm I would say that rather than providing comfort religious orders realized they could profit (or at least generate enough income for a comfortable life for its insiders) from those understandable fears. Otherwise how to explain the way they like to multiply the fears by ascribing catastrophes and tragedies to either the devil or gods anger with the world. But, sure, follow their rules and hand over your cash and a eternity of happiness wil be yours. (though an eternity of sitting around cheering on god while he mindfucks the current population of the planet sounds like hell to me...)

  4. Re:I believe it, but it is a choice as well on Smartphones More Dangerous Than Alcohol, When Driving · · Score: 2

    And if you're a dead victim of their "choice"?

    Laws can be a way for society to set clear limits on acceptable behavior. Currently people aren't seriously considering the risks they're taking with others safety. That has to change - soon.

  5. Re:Prove your absurd prices on How the US Lost Out On iPhone Work · · Score: 1

    You seem to be operating with a pre-transnationalist mindset.

    Large corporations have moved beyond worrying about the fate of individual nations. (why do you think apple associates more with California?) The world is their market. And pitting one nation against another is just good business. I'm actually sympathetic to a dissolution of national borders as the current division encourages this corporate degradation of workers rights and allows capital more free movement than people which I believe is abhorrent.

  6. What patents are supposed to be for... on Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Google Chase 'Got Milk?' Patents · · Score: 1

    Patents were invented to make trade secrets public for the betterment of society - for example some enterprising engineer comes up with a method for making super strong steel - just looking at the end result doesn't give you any clue and if the engineer kept it as a trade secret the method might go with her to her grave - thus hurting society. She taking out a patent means that society gets to learn how to do it and she is rewarded for sharing by getting extra compensation from licensing the patent to other engineers.

    Location-based reminders is not a significant advance by that definition.... and should not be patentable IMHO. All the necessary patentable advances were in the GPS system etc upon which this simple and obvious idea is built. Makes me sick how much this system is abused.

    Doesn't it feel like almost every societal tool has been switched into reverse these days?

    Robert.

  7. Re:This is a software thing on Is Apple Pushing Away Professionals? · · Score: 1

    I agree the handling of Final Cut Pro X was a fiasco - but I don't think Apple was wrong to rebuild it. The app was creaking antique - that yes ran - but was built on a bunch of old tech foundations. Apple has a bunch of new tech that Final Cut could only leverage with a complete rebuild. Why they didn't rename it "Final Cut Pro Classic" or something and indicate that FCP X was the future path and transition over people who could now and add features for the Pros over time and gradually transition them too? I have no idea. An insurgent product wouldn't immediately end the sales of the market leader - they could have competed with themselves for a while.

    Very strange.

  8. Re:Apple is going where the money is... on Is Apple Pushing Away Professionals? · · Score: 1

    Apple goes where the market is heading and they like to think that their toughest competitor is themselves which is why they regularly subvert the established market (including their own products). They're constantly trying to be the outsider carving out a new niche. They've seen what happens when you become complacent: your products stagnate, your users oppose any change (Adobe?, Microsoft?) - this makes you vulnerable to hungry entrants who have nothing to lose (Apple?)

    IT is the worst market for Apple because they hate surprises. They want slow, steady increments in functionality - with road maps they can budget for. And they're going to beat you down in price because IT is a commodity market.

    Apple's always on the hunt for something new and they're willing to piss people off to find it.

  9. Re:Idiots on Groupon Loses COO, Drastically Cuts Reported Revenue · · Score: 4, Insightful

    My money is on Groupon's knowledge that Google's due diligence would uncover the rotten underbelly of their business and thus the deal would never have gone through and Groupon would be exposed. Much safer to bilk investors with "On The Internet" fever.

  10. Re:Apple is just lucky.... on Samsung Ordered To Hand Over Unreleased Designs To Apple · · Score: 2

    Seriously? Even here on Slashdot where we know how to use the inter-tubes?

    "The first successful commercial GUI product was the Apple Macintosh, which was heavily inspired by PARC's work; Xerox was allowed to buy pre-IPO stock from Apple, in exchange for engineer visits and an understanding that Apple would create a GUI product. Much later, in the midst of the Apple v. Microsoft lawsuit in which Apple accused Microsoft of violating its copyright by appropriating the use of the "look and feel" of the Macintosh GUI, Xerox also sued Apple on the same grounds. The lawsuit was dismissed because the presiding judge ruled "that Xerox's complaints were inappropriate for a variety of legal reasons," although it is commonly believed that Xerox simply waited too long to file suit, and the statute of limitations had expired. This was not actually true; the dismissal of Xerox's legal complaint was not based simply on late filings, but rather a lack of legal merit to Xerox's case as it was presented."

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_(company)

    Jeez - is Google search so hard? There's no excuse for uninformed opinion and urban legends any more. It just shows a pathetic amount of laziness...

  11. Re:Why the iTunes sync? on Apple Updating iOS To Address Privacy Concerns · · Score: 1

    Not sure what you're trying to say here, but unless the actual triangulation is recorded the cache is useless for figuring out exactly where the phone was at any point in time.

    The hysteria around this is staggering...

  12. Re:Who are they trying to fool? on Rivals Mock Microsoft's 'Native HTML5' Claims · · Score: 1

    It's for CIOs - how think they should care *and* actually know nothing.

  13. Re:This can only shake out one way! on RIM Confirms Android Apps Will Run On Playbook, Through Intermediate Players · · Score: 1

    They're not hardware makers any more - they're hardware designers that outsource manufacturing to Chinese and Taiwanese contractors - (in fact the same people Apple use) - and mostly outsource software to Google (we'll see what comes of WebOS - but seeing how HP missed the opportunity to get behind consumer Unix in the past I'm not hopeful).

    Apple at least control their destiny on software and are locking up hardware supplies to control that too... The rest are left scrambling for scraps...

  14. Re:This can only shake out one way! on RIM Confirms Android Apps Will Run On Playbook, Through Intermediate Players · · Score: 1

    Here's the weird thing about hardware manufacturing - it's pretty much all contracted out to third parties - meaning Apple (unlike Nintendo say - who are an anachronism) have access to pretty much the entire tablet manufacturing capacity of the planet. This is very different from when Apple (and HP and whoever else - seems most computer manucturers are gone) had their own factories that limited their capacity.

    So the other tablet "manufacturers" are competing with Apple for those resources - except Apple is the one with the mind-share and the deep pockets. So unless Apple misses big with a product no-one wants to buy, there's no manufacturing reason why Apple can't beat all the other companies IMHO. It's all about design and network effects - which Apple has in spades.

    It's going to be an interesting next few years... (reaches for popcorn).

  15. Re:A serious, non-troll question on Hands-on Face-off: IPad 2 V Motorola Xoom · · Score: 1

    When Apple starts telling retailers that if they want to stock the iPad then they can't stock competing products. Basically when Apple starts interfering with the tablet market in general rather than just offering the most competitive product at this time.

  16. Re:It won't be his ego on Netgear CEO Says Jobs's Ego Will Bite Apple · · Score: 1

    Actually I believe Apple made out like bandits in the early 00's - I distinctly remember Steve saying that while other tech companies were cutting jobs (HP for example) Apple would innovate through the recession and come up with products people would want to buy (iPod came soon after). Last year they had record profits despite the world being in the middle of a massive recession...

    Wishful thinking doesn't make it true....

  17. Re:One issue: on Netgear CEO Says Jobs's Ego Will Bite Apple · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually they're not. AppleTV (an iAnything if ever there was one) has been pretty much DOA until recently - Xserve was killed due to lack of sales - (you'd think the corporate fanboys in Hollywood and New York would have lapped those up?!)

    How is this still debated? Not everything Apple touches turns to gold. Your meme is defective.

  18. Re:A Closed Model Can Only Take You So Far on Netgear CEO Says Jobs's Ego Will Bite Apple · · Score: 1

    Only if you're just considering software - which is missing half the equation. It's funny that when comparing devices the only thing that's looked at is the hardware spec (cpu, ram, camera etc) but when talking about devices we seem to only look at software (iOS, Android, etc) - but the device is only usable as a whole and a closed model really can accelerate the development of a well-integrated device, hardware and software.

    BTW open source projects seem to be good as product seeds but it generally takes a closed model to finish them off to a usable state. The web is rife with stories of unusable (or undocumented) open source projects. It's the exception that turns into something good - and I'd hazard most of those are projects that started off closed and were converted to open source.

  19. Re:If the future is now the iFuture on Apple Passes $300B Market Cap, 2nd In the World · · Score: 1

    You mean like the 90's?

  20. Re:Whither 9%? on Ballmer, Bezos Fund Effort To Undermine Bill Gates · · Score: 1

    While watching Fox News the other week while waiting for a doctors visit (I wouldn't ordinarily choose it) an insight struck me. Fox News (and conservative media in general) plays the patriot card both ways. When Repubs are in power - they're portrayed as valiantly trying to help the little guy while un-american agitators (i.e. democrats) try to undermine them. When Dems are in power - they're portrayed as out of touch elitists with too much sympathy for foreign ideas while right-minded partriots (i.e. repubs - though nowadays tea baggers) try to take back America.

    That's all it seems to be. Perhaps obvious but it was a revelation to me at the time.

  21. Re:Windows [mobile]/[phone] on Nokia Names Microsoft's Elop As New CEO · · Score: 1

    Hmm - but I would argue that Office has been able to phone it in for the past 15 years - and so where has Elop learned to handle to difficulties of a real market place? And even though we know Microsoft is rife with infighting I doubt anyone messes much with the Office division - so he wouldn't have got many hard knocks there either.

    Still seems like an odd choice.

  22. Re:about Nokia's responce on Nokia and RIM Respond To Apple's Antenna Claims · · Score: 1
  23. Re:Actually, there is a lot of harm to apple... on Police Seize Computers From Gizmodo Editor · · Score: 1

    A big difference between suspicion and knowledge.

    We suspect those products are in development - but who knows when they will be released.

    The imminent arrival iPhone 4G is now well known. That makes a big difference to people's purchashing plans.

  24. Re:Something deeper on Adobe Stops Development For iPhone · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I don't think so. I think Apple (and Steve Jobs) are ruthless about killing what they see as legacy tech. And they're pissed at Adobe for dragging their heels in adopting the new Cocoa APIs for UI development.

    I think Apple (rightly or wrongly) have decided their mission is to drag the tech world kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

  25. Re:Why does your kid have an iPhone? on Steve Jobs Recommends Android For Fans of Porn · · Score: 1

    I guess you've not heard of the iPod Touch? And Apple is just practicing the Serenity Prayer:

    "God, grant me the serenity
    To accept the things I cannot change;
    The courage to change the things that I can;
    And the wisdom to know the difference."

    App Store - something it can change. The Web - something it can't. It knows the difference.

    Robert.