iBooks looks like a great idea, but will this be an iPad-only app, or will it filter down to the iPhone/iPod? I sold my Kindle off in favor of the iPhone app, mostly because it was cumbersome to carry both. If iBooks is restricted to the Pad, Apple and the publishers will be losing out on a lot of potential buyers foe the same reason.
If Apple releases iBooks on both the iPhone and iPad formats, I may end up buying an iPad. If not, I will probably end up sticking with Amazon, since I cam read books on the iPhone.
In a way, it's win-win for Publishers who use Amazon, since they will sell books either way. It's Apple who had to prove that they have something distinctive enough to make people go with the iPad. Why would I publish on iBooks alone when I could sell more with Amazon?
For that matter, owning either device is also a choice. Don't like the fact that you can only (officially) purchase and install apps that have been approved by Apple? Use a different phone/media player.
This a non-sequitur argument, and it doesn't address the point. Saying "if you don't like it, don't buy it" doesn't actually address the fundamental problem being addressed.
In fact, any time this statement ever comes up in a conversation, it should be ignored. It doesn't address the problem, doesn't attempt to rebut the argument stating there's a problem, and it doesn't offer a solution to the problem.
So why bother saying it in the first place? It's a re-statement of the obvious, and therefore is simply a waste of bits.
Here's my problem with the "so don't buy it" argument...
Should a company be forced to dictate what an end user does with a hardware platform after the purchase? My belief is that the user should have the final decision over what software and media is installed on his hardware. I believe that DRM which restricts the use of software or media on any device is wrong. This is not the same thing as DRM that prevents theft of content.
The iPhone platform is also NOT the only platform that has these kinds of restrictions; it's simply the most visible. Nintendo, for example, restricts who can get a developer license. The Wii dev site warns off the states that the home developer, and the Wii homebrew war has been an ongoing battle for several years. Don't get me started on the XBox Live ban.
This is one reason I'm actively trying to move off of the iPhone platform and on to Android. But there are a couple of apps I need that still have not reached Android... until they do, I'm stuck in the iDRMsphere for a bit longer.
The more I see of this, the more I think we need some sort of "bill of rights" for cell phone customers. I'm not against people choosing to take the subsidy, assuming they know what they're doing when they sign the contract.
What I don't like is being FORCED in to a subsidy arrangement. When I signed up for T-Mobile about 5 years ago, I had a perfectly good Sony Ericsson phone, yet TMO would not just sell me a SIM card and bill me month to month. Instead, I had to take their free phone (which I shoved in a drawer) and sign a 1 year contract.
Cell phone carriers need to acknowledge that this subsidy agreement is really a CREDIT agreement and handle it in the same manner as any other installment payment plan. We should see the subsidy balance and the subsidy payment amount on our statements. When our subsidy is paid off, we should get a discount on our bill equal to the subsidy payment. If we cancel our subscription, we should only pay the unpaid subsidy balance. Most importantly, we should have the option to buy or bring our "naked" phones and subscribe to a plan without the hidden subsidy surcharge. We should also have the option to unlock any phone once the subsidy is fully paid off.
Example: if the subsidy is $240 over 2 years, I should see a separate $10 line item on my phone bill. If I choose to bring an unlocked phone, or if I choose to pay full retail price, my bill should be $10 less than the guy who lets the carrier give him a "free" phone.
I think T-Mobile seems to be moving this way. How about the rest of you guys, AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint? (Not to mention the other regional carriers.)
> Gmail and the rest of the privacy traders do it for you automatically.
Gmail has a great success rate for me... It stops about 1000 spams a month and maybe lets through 2 a year. I've had maybe 2 false positives in all that time (that I've known about.) One was a note from my ex-wife, so maybe GMail knew what it was doing after all.
It's a conflict of interest for the clerk at Wal-Mart to tell me how much I owe AND collect my money?
The real conflict of interest is for corporations to give money to election campaigns.
The root cause of this is that corporations have too much power in our system. Corporations buy politicians and they buy court verdicts. It's just wrong, and we need to fix the system, starting with the "golden rule".
In court, make the richer party pay for both lawyers, and eliminate corporate contributions for political campaigns and ballot measures. Then maybe the PEOPLE can run this country.
It's not THAT hard to file a corrected tax return. Just download the forms from the FTB site and do it.
And file electronically next time. The $40 is well worth it to make sure it's not "lost in the mail".
Don't blame others when you dropped the ball.
I think the problem is that our military trains for the wrong kind of thing now. We have tanks and planes, which are great for WW3, but we don't seem to be training our guys for these kind of police actions. Vietnam proved that the US military doesn't make good cops, and Somalia, Bosnia, and Iraq aren't exactly changing that perception.
Regardless - it's apparent from interviews on NPR that it is a small group of people causing violence in Haiti, not the general population. This is how it's always been, though. Most humans are content to live peaceful lives, but a select few have no respect for the rights of others.
I don't think this is a case of the disaster turning good people bad. I think it's a case of the disaster giving bad people an excuse to act on their impulses with little likelihood of reprisal or punishment. Look at the looters in LA after the Rodney King riots. People were actually surprised when they were caught, tried, and convicted.
Remember Somalia? Warlords there grabbed airdropped supplies and then SOLD them at ridiculous prices.
According to the news, the prisons are as broken as everything else, and criminals are running rampant. The Haitian police are nowhere to be found. This is exactly why the US sent in soldiers first, this time.
Your company gives you time off so you can relax and recharge. They recognize that humans need a few days to unwind and do something NOT work-related.
If you go volunteer and do basically what you would have done at work, isn't that just doing your job somewhere else?
I just installed TC last week so I could encrypt my USB hard drives. (I discovered TC from another article here on/.)
I like TrueCrypt, because it solves the major problems people are using as excuses not to encrypt their systems:
I can use a keyfile combined with a passphrase as my encryption key. Since the keyfile can be ANYTHING, I could easily set up some random MP3 or image file available on some web site, or I could store the keyfile on my Dropbox or Google Docs account. Furthermore, TC is simple enough to install, and I can even store it on the same physical drive as the encrypted data - thanks to the way TC manages file stores. I do have a genuine need for encryption, and my company requires it for mobile users.
When travelling with a setup like this, I could back up my entire laptop drive to an encrypted external USB drive using VMWare converter. I could pack the backup drive in my luggage, and even if my laptop got stolen at the airport or was damaged during the trip, I have my entire system on a virtual machine, ready to go! I just install VMWare Player and TrueCrypt on another machine and plug in the drive. No muss, no fuss.
Incidentally, my long-term goal is to work 100% inside of virtual machines, only using the host system to run the hypervisor... that should solve my security and portability issues.
I saw this on HamSexy maybe 6 months ago... If you look closely, you can see that half the radios aren't even hooked up. I'm pretty sure this is a put-on just to demonstrate how ridiculous you can get.
That's not to say some people don't go too far, but the most outrageous - actually functioning - car I've seen in person had 10 or radios, all told. (That's not counting real EMS personnel...)
You have to wonder: I'm betting this is the single most requested (realistic) feature. I wonder why they haven't implemented it yet. It'd be simple to do. Simply don't return results on specific domains (or wildcards), and optionally look up the domain's owner and refuse to return results from any other domain owned by that organization.
I'm waiting for the Google Labs option that automatically filters out the "direct download" sites that don't actually offer any added value, things like "freewareseeker.com" and "findyourdownload.net". You can drop individual search results, but where's the "never show me this domain or any other domain from this company ever again" button?
What's "moral responsability" got to do with it? VMWare makes a great product, and I was happy to pay for Workstation when I badly needed a stable hypervisor with USB support. There were NO other Windows-based Hypervisors at the time that worked.
And quite frankly, if I hadn't discovered that Viewer 3 lets you create and edit VM's, I would have spent the $100 to upgrade to VMWare Workstation 7.
VirtualBox is a piece of junk that's never worked for me, despite the fact that I've tried several times, and I'm no idiot. If that's the state of "Free as in Speech" virtualization, the give me the beer. I have a job to do, and that's a lot more important than some hypothetical argument over whether code wants to be free. (Then, of course, there's the whole issue about my company not allowing me to use FOSS for security reasons. I don't agree with that stance, but I don't make the rules.)
That's funny, because when I get a coupon for a FREE something, it usually means I don't pay for it. 99% of users make no distinction between FOSS and $0 COTS, since they're never going to bust open a source editor and fix a bug.
Those that do are more than happy to choose the FOSS version - bugs and all (And I've tried 3 releases of VBox and had to give up on all of them due to bugs or major incompatibilities). However, even the VirtualBox license isn't Free as in "Unencumbered". The version of VirtualBox that includes USB support, something that's essential these days, is not free in terms of source code OR money.
Actually, VMWare Viewer is free, too, and you can EDIT and CREATE VM's with it now. When VMWare updated Workstation to the new version (and wanted to charge me another $100 for it), I actually "downgraded" from Workstation to Viewer, and it works great! It even fixed the problems related to SpeedStep (the UI would be unresponsive while the CPU was slowed down.)
So now, VirtualBox and VMWare Viewer are pretty much dead-even in terms of features. But VirtualBox is very buggy, where VMWare has always been rock-solid for me (with the exception of the SpeedStep problem, which was actually a problem on all the hypervisors.)
I almost want these guys to win just to see the "remote product activation" go away... I activate a Windows installation once every 3 or 4 months, on average, and I'm concerned about running out of activations, even though I have paid for all of my Windows licenses.
Sage TV, Beyond TV, and Media Center are all mature products that work well on Windows.
Media Center is very "Microsoft-y", and it's not as configurable as the others. The upside is that it's seamlessly integrated with Windows, and it passes the WAF test rather well.
Sage TV is a tinkerer's dream, but I never managed to get it successfully up and running with QAM channels mapped.
Beyond TV was my favorite for a long time, as it's both configurable and stable. The only problem is that Snapstream has slowed active development of the consumer product. Their prime focus is on developing for the Enterprise market. (Think one server, recording a dozen news channels at once, extracting closed-caption information to create a searchable database.) BTV has one great bonus feature: It can automatically re-compress video down to H.264 and drop the show in to iTunes as a Podcast. This is pretty slick, since it lets you save several TV shows to your iPod or iPhone and take them with with you.
BTV and Sage can both record HD through the Hauppauge HD-PVR, and all 3 can record ClearQAM content (usually your local TV stations.)
Windows 7 Media Center will also record encrypted QAM cable with a CableCard, but the CableCard capture devices aren't quite ready for public consumption yet; I believe the ATI box's firmware is still in closed beta, and the Ceton device will hit the market early next year. (The Ceton card will record 4 SD or HD shows at the same time.)
BTV and Sage can control your cable box with a USB-UIRT or MCE Remote (with an IR blaster). Media Center will only control your box with an MCE remote/blaster. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000W5GK5C/ref=ox_ya_oh_product">Amazon has one for about $40 that works well.</a>
BTV and Sage both can also stream live video to other PC's on the network. Media Center can only play back pre-recorded video; if you want to watch live TV an another PC, that PC needs a tuner card.
Lego is the name of a company, not an individual piece of an individual product. Lego bricks shouldn't be called "Legos" or "Lego's". They should be called Lego pieces, Lego bricks, or Lego blocks.
The article could read: "...recreated entirely from Lego blocks." and be grammatically correct.
The other article linked here really should be in the story: Higley firing tied to alien-search software. This one makes it pretty clear that the guy was fired because he's a bad employee and a lousy manager, not because he wants to find aliens.
Quite frankly, it's a little annoying that the OP's story only mentions "ET". That's irresponsible reporting, and it's why newspapers are folding all over the country; when your reporters can't even write a proper, coherent, unbiased story, people go elsewhere for their news.
I'm one of those who WANTS to switch to 'Droid, but can't because I need 2 apps that are (so far) only on the iPhone.
But the day those apps are released on Android, I'm putting my iPhone up on EBay.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's the problem as I see it.
iBooks looks like a great idea, but will this be an iPad-only app, or will it filter down to the iPhone/iPod? I sold my Kindle off in favor of the iPhone app, mostly because it was cumbersome to carry both. If iBooks is restricted to the Pad, Apple and the publishers will be losing out on a lot of potential buyers foe the same reason.
If Apple releases iBooks on both the iPhone and iPad formats, I may end up buying an iPad. If not, I will probably end up sticking with Amazon, since I cam read books on the iPhone.
In a way, it's win-win for Publishers who use Amazon, since they will sell books either way. It's Apple who had to prove that they have something distinctive enough to make people go with the iPad. Why would I publish on iBooks alone when I could sell more with Amazon?
This a non-sequitur argument, and it doesn't address the point. Saying "if you don't like it, don't buy it" doesn't actually address the fundamental problem being addressed.
In fact, any time this statement ever comes up in a conversation, it should be ignored. It doesn't address the problem, doesn't attempt to rebut the argument stating there's a problem, and it doesn't offer a solution to the problem.
So why bother saying it in the first place? It's a re-statement of the obvious, and therefore is simply a waste of bits.
Here's my problem with the "so don't buy it" argument...
Should a company be forced to dictate what an end user does with a hardware platform after the purchase? My belief is that the user should have the final decision over what software and media is installed on his hardware. I believe that DRM which restricts the use of software or media on any device is wrong. This is not the same thing as DRM that prevents theft of content.
The iPhone platform is also NOT the only platform that has these kinds of restrictions; it's simply the most visible. Nintendo, for example, restricts who can get a developer license. The Wii dev site warns off the states that the home developer, and the Wii homebrew war has been an ongoing battle for several years. Don't get me started on the XBox Live ban.
This is one reason I'm actively trying to move off of the iPhone platform and on to Android. But there are a couple of apps I need that still have not reached Android... until they do, I'm stuck in the iDRMsphere for a bit longer.
The more I see of this, the more I think we need some sort of "bill of rights" for cell phone customers. I'm not against people choosing to take the subsidy, assuming they know what they're doing when they sign the contract. What I don't like is being FORCED in to a subsidy arrangement. When I signed up for T-Mobile about 5 years ago, I had a perfectly good Sony Ericsson phone, yet TMO would not just sell me a SIM card and bill me month to month. Instead, I had to take their free phone (which I shoved in a drawer) and sign a 1 year contract. Cell phone carriers need to acknowledge that this subsidy agreement is really a CREDIT agreement and handle it in the same manner as any other installment payment plan. We should see the subsidy balance and the subsidy payment amount on our statements. When our subsidy is paid off, we should get a discount on our bill equal to the subsidy payment. If we cancel our subscription, we should only pay the unpaid subsidy balance. Most importantly, we should have the option to buy or bring our "naked" phones and subscribe to a plan without the hidden subsidy surcharge. We should also have the option to unlock any phone once the subsidy is fully paid off. Example: if the subsidy is $240 over 2 years, I should see a separate $10 line item on my phone bill. If I choose to bring an unlocked phone, or if I choose to pay full retail price, my bill should be $10 less than the guy who lets the carrier give him a "free" phone. I think T-Mobile seems to be moving this way. How about the rest of you guys, AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint? (Not to mention the other regional carriers.)
> Gmail and the rest of the privacy traders do it for you automatically.
Gmail has a great success rate for me... It stops about 1000 spams a month and maybe lets through 2 a year. I've had maybe 2 false positives in all that time (that I've known about.) One was a note from my ex-wife, so maybe GMail knew what it was doing after all.
It's a conflict of interest for the clerk at Wal-Mart to tell me how much I owe AND collect my money?
The real conflict of interest is for corporations to give money to election campaigns.
The root cause of this is that corporations have too much power in our system. Corporations buy politicians and they buy court verdicts. It's just wrong, and we need to fix the system, starting with the "golden rule".
In court, make the richer party pay for both lawyers, and eliminate corporate contributions for political campaigns and ballot measures. Then maybe the PEOPLE can run this country.
It's not THAT hard to file a corrected tax return. Just download the forms from the FTB site and do it. And file electronically next time. The $40 is well worth it to make sure it's not "lost in the mail". Don't blame others when you dropped the ball.
I think the problem is that our military trains for the wrong kind of thing now. We have tanks and planes, which are great for WW3, but we don't seem to be training our guys for these kind of police actions. Vietnam proved that the US military doesn't make good cops, and Somalia, Bosnia, and Iraq aren't exactly changing that perception.
Regardless - it's apparent from interviews on NPR that it is a small group of people causing violence in Haiti, not the general population. This is how it's always been, though. Most humans are content to live peaceful lives, but a select few have no respect for the rights of others.
I don't think this is a case of the disaster turning good people bad. I think it's a case of the disaster giving bad people an excuse to act on their impulses with little likelihood of reprisal or punishment. Look at the looters in LA after the Rodney King riots. People were actually surprised when they were caught, tried, and convicted.
Remember Somalia? Warlords there grabbed airdropped supplies and then SOLD them at ridiculous prices. According to the news, the prisons are as broken as everything else, and criminals are running rampant. The Haitian police are nowhere to be found. This is exactly why the US sent in soldiers first, this time.
The fine for running a red light is $351. The fine for sharing songs is, apparently, $2,250 per song.
Running a red light can kill someone.
Sharing an MP3 might cost the record company $1.
Since when did a record become 641% MORE valuable than a human life?
Your company gives you time off so you can relax and recharge. They recognize that humans need a few days to unwind and do something NOT work-related. If you go volunteer and do basically what you would have done at work, isn't that just doing your job somewhere else?
I just installed TC last week so I could encrypt my USB hard drives. (I discovered TC from another article here on /.)
I like TrueCrypt, because it solves the major problems people are using as excuses not to encrypt their systems:
I can use a keyfile combined with a passphrase as my encryption key. Since the keyfile can be ANYTHING, I could easily set up some random MP3 or image file available on some web site, or I could store the keyfile on my Dropbox or Google Docs account. Furthermore, TC is simple enough to install, and I can even store it on the same physical drive as the encrypted data - thanks to the way TC manages file stores. I do have a genuine need for encryption, and my company requires it for mobile users.
When travelling with a setup like this, I could back up my entire laptop drive to an encrypted external USB drive using VMWare converter. I could pack the backup drive in my luggage, and even if my laptop got stolen at the airport or was damaged during the trip, I have my entire system on a virtual machine, ready to go! I just install VMWare Player and TrueCrypt on another machine and plug in the drive. No muss, no fuss.
Incidentally, my long-term goal is to work 100% inside of virtual machines, only using the host system to run the hypervisor... that should solve my security and portability issues.
I saw this on HamSexy maybe 6 months ago... If you look closely, you can see that half the radios aren't even hooked up. I'm pretty sure this is a put-on just to demonstrate how ridiculous you can get. That's not to say some people don't go too far, but the most outrageous - actually functioning - car I've seen in person had 10 or radios, all told. (That's not counting real EMS personnel...)
You have to wonder: I'm betting this is the single most requested (realistic) feature. I wonder why they haven't implemented it yet. It'd be simple to do. Simply don't return results on specific domains (or wildcards), and optionally look up the domain's owner and refuse to return results from any other domain owned by that organization.
Please subscribe so I can show you the answer. :)
I'm waiting for the Google Labs option that automatically filters out the "direct download" sites that don't actually offer any added value, things like "freewareseeker.com" and "findyourdownload.net". You can drop individual search results, but where's the "never show me this domain or any other domain from this company ever again" button?
What's "moral responsability" got to do with it? VMWare makes a great product, and I was happy to pay for Workstation when I badly needed a stable hypervisor with USB support. There were NO other Windows-based Hypervisors at the time that worked. And quite frankly, if I hadn't discovered that Viewer 3 lets you create and edit VM's, I would have spent the $100 to upgrade to VMWare Workstation 7. VirtualBox is a piece of junk that's never worked for me, despite the fact that I've tried several times, and I'm no idiot. If that's the state of "Free as in Speech" virtualization, the give me the beer. I have a job to do, and that's a lot more important than some hypothetical argument over whether code wants to be free. (Then, of course, there's the whole issue about my company not allowing me to use FOSS for security reasons. I don't agree with that stance, but I don't make the rules.)
That's funny, because when I get a coupon for a FREE something, it usually means I don't pay for it. 99% of users make no distinction between FOSS and $0 COTS, since they're never going to bust open a source editor and fix a bug. Those that do are more than happy to choose the FOSS version - bugs and all (And I've tried 3 releases of VBox and had to give up on all of them due to bugs or major incompatibilities). However, even the VirtualBox license isn't Free as in "Unencumbered". The version of VirtualBox that includes USB support, something that's essential these days, is not free in terms of source code OR money.
Actually, VMWare Viewer is free, too, and you can EDIT and CREATE VM's with it now. When VMWare updated Workstation to the new version (and wanted to charge me another $100 for it), I actually "downgraded" from Workstation to Viewer, and it works great! It even fixed the problems related to SpeedStep (the UI would be unresponsive while the CPU was slowed down.) So now, VirtualBox and VMWare Viewer are pretty much dead-even in terms of features. But VirtualBox is very buggy, where VMWare has always been rock-solid for me (with the exception of the SpeedStep problem, which was actually a problem on all the hypervisors.)
I almost want these guys to win just to see the "remote product activation" go away... I activate a Windows installation once every 3 or 4 months, on average, and I'm concerned about running out of activations, even though I have paid for all of my Windows licenses.
Sage TV, Beyond TV, and Media Center are all mature products that work well on Windows.
Media Center is very "Microsoft-y", and it's not as configurable as the others. The upside is that it's seamlessly integrated with Windows, and it passes the WAF test rather well.
Sage TV is a tinkerer's dream, but I never managed to get it successfully up and running with QAM channels mapped.
Beyond TV was my favorite for a long time, as it's both configurable and stable. The only problem is that Snapstream has slowed active development of the consumer product. Their prime focus is on developing for the Enterprise market. (Think one server, recording a dozen news channels at once, extracting closed-caption information to create a searchable database.) BTV has one great bonus feature: It can automatically re-compress video down to H.264 and drop the show in to iTunes as a Podcast. This is pretty slick, since it lets you save several TV shows to your iPod or iPhone and take them with with you.
BTV and Sage can both record HD through the Hauppauge HD-PVR, and all 3 can record ClearQAM content (usually your local TV stations.)
Windows 7 Media Center will also record encrypted QAM cable with a CableCard, but the CableCard capture devices aren't quite ready for public consumption yet; I believe the ATI box's firmware is still in closed beta, and the Ceton device will hit the market early next year. (The Ceton card will record 4 SD or HD shows at the same time.)
BTV and Sage can control your cable box with a USB-UIRT or MCE Remote (with an IR blaster). Media Center will only control your box with an MCE remote/blaster. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000W5GK5C/ref=ox_ya_oh_product">Amazon has one for about $40 that works well.</a>
BTV and Sage both can also stream live video to other PC's on the network. Media Center can only play back pre-recorded video; if you want to watch live TV an another PC, that PC needs a tuner card.
Lego is the name of a company, not an individual piece of an individual product. Lego bricks shouldn't be called "Legos" or "Lego's". They should be called Lego pieces, Lego bricks, or Lego blocks.
The article could read: "...recreated entirely from Lego blocks." and be grammatically correct.
The other article linked here really should be in the story: Higley firing tied to alien-search software. This one makes it pretty clear that the guy was fired because he's a bad employee and a lousy manager, not because he wants to find aliens.
Quite frankly, it's a little annoying that the OP's story only mentions "ET". That's irresponsible reporting, and it's why newspapers are folding all over the country; when your reporters can't even write a proper, coherent, unbiased story, people go elsewhere for their news.
Including me... :) I'm a full-time software engineer, myself.
The big one I don't want to lose is the Kindle reader... I use that every day.
I'm one of those who WANTS to switch to 'Droid, but can't because I need 2 apps that are (so far) only on the iPhone. But the day those apps are released on Android, I'm putting my iPhone up on EBay.