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User: robus

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Comments · 38

  1. Re:Apple "leaks" were to steal Balmer's thunder on Microsoft's Risky Tablet Announcement · · Score: 1

    Apple also likes to leak hints about a new product category - they never leak about updates to an existing product - that would dampen sales. Leaking about a new product - that makes people wait instead of purchasing a competing product.

  2. Re:Good on Microsoft's Risky Tablet Announcement · · Score: 1

    PCs and laptops are personal - it would be nice to have a "general use" computer for people who want to look stuff up on the web etc. Basically a computer that is open to anyone in the house without fear of losing ones privacy. And to have something freely portable - excellent. I would buy two - one for the living room and one for the family room.

  3. Re:In a modern, globalised world on Did the US Take the Back Seat In Science In 2009? · · Score: 1

    If there was free movement of people around the world I wouldn't care. But there isn't, so people are stuck in the economy they find themselves. Thus if it is in decline - I (and probably they) care very much.

  4. Re:Jobs is happy with it? on Jobs Finally "Happy" With Unannounced Apple Tablet · · Score: 1

    Agreed - home phones have the worst interfaces. We have one that shows the recent calls - is there a button to click that lets you easily return the call it's showing? There might be - but I haven't found it yet. An obvious use case that was completely missed.

  5. Re:Thought we already had an Apple console... on Apple Racks Up the Gaming Patents · · Score: 1

    I think what's changed is that since it released OS X (with its Darwin underpinnings) Apple is straddling thing open/closed worlds and so makes the argument more difficult to make.

    Microsoft is clearly proprietary.
    Linux is clearly open.
    Apple is somewhere in the middle.

  6. Re:Microsoft has an "Australia" problem on Closing Time At Microsoft's Campus Pub · · Score: 1

    This is only interesting if we could get some citation for these claims. First I've heard of a "brain/brawn drain" from Britain to Oz... certainly have been plenty of inventing and building going on in Britain since the deportations stopped (radar, jet engine etc) not sure what high tech advance Oz can lay claim to? You make it sound like Britain turned into the future portrayed in the Time Machine! :)

  7. Re:Bars are a business and a meeting place on Closing Time At Microsoft's Campus Pub · · Score: 1

    There's a bar/restaurant effectively on the Apple Campus (it's outside the building but I bet someone with a decent arm could hit it from the main entrance - it's a stroll across the parking lot - interesting stop on the walk is the "Steve Jobs parking spot"). While visiting the campus for some dev tech support about a year ago we were invited to have lunch there by a senior Apple engineer specifically because we could get beer (rather than at Cafe Macs which is dry).

    So Apple at least is a bit more relaxed about this it seems.

  8. Re:Sorry this is just not true on Mac Tax, Dell Tax, HP Tax · · Score: 1
    This whole debate is so tedious.

    A laptop computer has 3 main areas for comparison:

    1. Power (the computer hardware itself - cpu, ram, drive, screen)
    2. Hardware Ergonomics (the portability of the package - weight, form, battery life)
    3. Software Ergnomics (the usability of the OS/software)

    When doing price comparisons we only seem to focus on 1/3 of the total package - are the other 2 thirds worthless or worth a lot less than the power alone?

    These days I don't think so.

  9. Re:Sesame Street & the Importance of Bilingual on Shouldn't Every Developer Understand English? · · Score: 1

    I think you're thinking of Dutch.

  10. Re:Bastards! on 10 OSes We Left Behind · · Score: 1

    What has this repsonse to do with music studios? The Atari ST range has a solid reputation in the music production world for having rock-steady MIDI timing.

  11. Re:Cue the following: on Texas Vote May Challenge Teaching of Evolution · · Score: 1

    Many men of science took the cloth in those days because it was a cushy job with lots of free time to study nature and think. Hard to imagine that now...

  12. I believe that was a strawman... on Texas Vote May Challenge Teaching of Evolution · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Hmm - nice strawman. The question was "do you believe" (which is shorthand for "do you think it is true") not "do you believe in" (which is generally reserved for the supernatural/faith/ and other unsciency thinks). I believe the earth orbits the sun - meaning I think it is true even though I will never be in a position to observe this directly - but the evidence supports it. However I don't "believe in" the earth orbiting the sun. I think this is a case where the overloaded meaning of believe is tripping us up.

  13. Breeding - evolution via unnatural selection on 12 Florida Schools Pass Anti-Evolution Resolutions · · Score: 1

    Evolution is an easily observable fact - if we use dog breeding as an example. Everyone on the planet knows that if you mate two dogs of wildly different types you'll get some kind of funky hybrid. A recent example - the labradoodle. Seems like an easy way to undermine the whole "Evolution is not a fact" statement. Then it's just a simple matter of extrapolating from the unnatura selectionl to the natural selection - i.e. random couplings of breeding pairs will produce variant offspring - some will do well in the environment, some will not. Robert.