"What I miss most are keyboards that have some 'omph' to them, and software that makes use of keyboard shortcuts. I really miss the 'clicky' IBM Model M keyboards from the mid and late '80s, for instance. I can type 150+ words per minute and I can move my fingers across a keyboard faster than I can move my hand to a mouse, move the cursor, click, and put my fingers back on the keyboard. I really really really miss customizable keyboard shortcuts."
WHAT???? You have keyboard shortcuts now, windows has the Windows button and the alt key! For both Windows and Mac you have a ton of shortcut apps that give you access to keyboard shortcuts. Apps that take shortened text you type frequently and expands it to a long word. They are all there, they just moved to third party apps. This Eric Loyd is a dipshit if he misses keyboard shortcuts... go buy a $2 app that gives them back to you you idiot!
More:
""The main feature I miss on today's keyboards is having FUNCTION keys (F1, F2, etc) on the left of the main key area, and a CONTROL key in the middle of the left-side column of keys (so it goes from top to bottom: ~/TAB/CTRL/SHIFT/ALT). There are a number of CTRL+F-key and ALT+F-key combinations that can quickly and easily done with one hand in this configuration without looking"
I agree the layout of the keyboard in this instance is good, but if you have fully customizable shortcuts at your command thru any number of apps, design something that makes sense to you. Don't assign your shortcut to Alt-F12 if you need two hands and want one hand. Undo/cut/copy/paste were brilliantly designed, take a lesson from that and design the same keyboard shortcut for yourself.
More: "There is a programmable keyboard available -- the CVT Avant Stellar,"
Ah fuck me it's a slashvertisement.
More: "what he misses is the convenience of DOS's CONTROL-C and CONTROL-Q which could kill an accidentally triggered program, along with the Unix Control-C and kill -9 for command line Unix. I'm not sure if anything exists that can do that as quickly at the GUI level."
I can agree with this, a keyboard in general is the fastest input device we have, but this is a clever deception, trying to say that just because a GUI is slower it's not evolving. Not true. Once you know what you are doing, and have to perform a repetitive task, a keyboard is always faster. A GUI, however, is always easier if you don't necessarily know what you are looking for or know what you are doing. Remember images and motions towards and area of the screen is easier for a lot of people, rather than trying to remember to put a -9 after the kill, or remembering what grep, awk, and cron do. If you have to look up a command every few minutes, it's not faster, and if you can remember the action faster to do what you want, for you it's faster. GUIs opened up the world of computing to many more people, and that's a fact, because it was easier to remember and perform the tasks they wanted to perform.
More: "The CMU Andrew Toolkit had very complex scrollbars that took a while to master,"
Stop right there, everything in this paragraph is invalidated by the fact that thos was "complex" and "took a while to master." A GUI is supposed to make things simpler, because not everyone has time to master complex scroll bars. If it takes me a half hour to figure out scrolling in a GUI, it's not necessarily faster when all I have to do is scan down a page looking for a simple paragraph. Complex is not necessarily evolution, and making something simplified is not necessary a regression. Simplicity could speed everyone up as a whole.
The article then degenerates into a bunch of technobabble about a bunch of features developers use to have, but just about every one of them has a modern equivalent they could get by just finding and downloading third party software, most which is probably free. Sure, notepad sucks, notepad is not meant to be an advanced text editor! How long did it take you to figure that
The malware is evolving from taking advantage of bugs in Windows, to social engineering. I had malware scanning on my PC because malware could get in the back door via services and other areas. Now, they are installing it right in front of your face trying to masquerade as something else.
They are going from the thief in the night who exploits the bad lock in the back door, to walking in the front door acting like the delivery man and given the run of the building by unsuspecting human beings. They are no longer exploiting Windows or Mac OS X... they are exploiting the users directly and making it look like it's the OS's fault.
I've seen plenty of PCs pwned by this type of malware, and it wasn't Windows fault in those situations either, the user simple installed something that took over the system.
Who said you were supposed to trust your "congresscritter"? If they promised something and didn't follow up you are supposed to vote for someone who you agree with who will keep promises. It's called being active in your government and it's what you are supposed to do in a democracy. It's better than letting the cable companies hire thousands of lobbyists to bribe and manipulate your congresscritter while you sit at home watching American Idol on your way too expensive cable feed. We don't have that because we don't have enough people in the US who do just that.
i know a lot of teenagers and adults with immature teenaged mentalities thinks government secrets are pure evil, but guess what: when it comes to fighting terrorism, they are absolutely necessary.
I personally think that a government is a necessary institution meant to help guarantee rights and equal opportunity across social, racial, ethnic, and economic lines. I also am not so naive as to believe that governments are necessary to fighting terrorism quite simply because certain governments are the root cause of terrorism! Specifically bad governments. For example, American companies and the American government traveling to countries with lots of oil and giving them tons of money to support brutally oppressive regimes just so we can power all of our little TVs, PCs, smart phones, and gas guzzling cars. Also note that the people voted for said American government. Those people being oppressed who feel they have no other choice, can easily follow that straight line right back to the American populace, who is of course the target of the terrorism. After all, our government is of the people, by the people, and for the people right?
Your statement makes it sound like terrorists spawn like in some kind of randomly generated Call of Duty map. Now that's an immature teenage mentality.
The phone has to have the ability to notify the carrier of it's location, who can then give that to 911 as necessary. Sure that means that Android may have to do something in order to enable that, but one of those things is NOT to phone home to Google.
Okay look, if you want to bash on Greenpeace, bash on the facts and stop committing ad hominem attacks. How can we fix the global climate change if no one reads the original report and address that? The Slashdot summary and the linked article are both gravely insufficient.
The slashdot summary also is misleading:
"The report (PDF) doesn't mention how much CO2 is saved by telecommuting and higher corporate efficiency, however."
And yet the article itself address this in several learning points, the most important one is bolded below:
Data centres to house the explosion of virtual information currently consume 1.5-2% of all global electricity; this is growing at a rate of 12% a year. The IT industry points to cloud computing as the new, green model for our IT infrastructure needs, but few companies provide data that would allow us to objectively evaluate these claims. The technologies of the 21st century are still largely powered by the dirty coal power of the past, with over half of the companies rated herein relying on coal for between 50% and 80% of their energy needs. IT innovations have the potential to cut greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors of the economy, but IT’s own growing demand for dirty energy remains largely unaddressed by the world’s biggest IT brands.
And what's worse, this isn't about telecommuting, it's about cloud computing! They are two different things that do not mean exactly the same thing! So the summary is basically diverting attention away from cloud computing, and the original report by Greenpeace directly admits there's no data here. Greenpeace did not willfully omit data, as the summary suggests. The fact that there is no data here is a problem for companies and the planet, not for Greenpeace's report!
And finally, to address your statement of "how does one choose a green energy resource." Answer: lots of ways 1) Vote for politicians that support and direct resources to green energy 2) Pick companies that only use green energy, in this case, cloud companies that use servers that are powered by green energy. 3) In the US, we have many states that have been trying to introduce energy competition where you can chose your energy generator. While most attempts are pretty woeful, we are trying to introduce "choice" to the masses. 4) Large companies in the US often have many choices. Some companies generate part or all of their own power, and some chose specifically where their power comes from if their physical plant is large enough and has certain requirements. We can influence this choice by choosing companies that chose green energy.
Okay I'm all for explaining why this is bad, but why the fuck do we insist as a group using the example of a private eye tracking down a cheating spouse for the purpose of divorce as a reason to take privacy concerns seriously? The average citizen is going to be like "Oh well I don't have to worry about that, I have nothing to hide from my spouse!" even if they are lying to themselves. The political and social leadership will be like "well then don't cheat and you'll be fine!"
WORST... EXAMPLE...EVAR...
Here's some better examples for this specific situation: 1) A burglar determining a pattern when you aren't home so they can rob your house. 2) A stalker determining the best place to attack you 3) Someone who doesn't like you smearing your character publicly simply because your phone walked by a strip club (he must have gone in, he's a sinner!!!), even though 2 blocks away is the hospice you volunteer once a week at.
Let's try to come up with better examples that make people actually care please?
There are huge numbers of problems with the singularly minded idea that there is only one person at fault here.
1) On a moral level, as the old saying goes, if you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem. 2) Technology, even Apple's is complicated. One might be an expert in construction, art, cleaning, accounting, or teaching, but I'll be damned if I continue to see people who can't figure out their super cool iPhones and the apps that go along with it. 3) Parents aren't perfect. Sometimes a parent needs to learn more, but kids are annoying, obnoxious, pesky creatures. Sometimes you have to compromise. Being a parent isn't easy. 4) Apple's technology, despite being complicated technology, is still pretty simple compared to everything else out there. Apple tries to balance security and ease of use and that's hard, but frankly they didn't have to create this in app purchase system. It's to easy to get someone to buy a free app, then get them emotional and try to get them to buy something in the app on an impulse, or tap on something that looks shiny and fun and it turns out to be something you have to buy. Get worked up enough and you'll go past any warning. 5) Apple created the walled garden that they control, and they created the relationship between the iOS device user and them. If App developers want to restore to less than moral tactics to get money, then Apple has to provide the best experience and protect it's customers, so it an App developer is doing something sleazy, Apple has to own up to it. 6) Who's to say Apple isn't working with developers to scam a little money out of people? A class action suit isn't designed necessarily to get money for the plaintiff but rather to punish the defendant if they do something they should not do. Yes the defendants get the money, but where should it go? Laws mandating it to go to charity or government seem kind of hamfisted and of course could be exploited.
I absolutely support the idea that parents need to do their part and deep deep down I'm a technology snob and if someone buys something they better damn well learn how to use it properly. At the same time Apple markets the hell out of their products, like any company. They bear some responsibility. Civil lawsuits are not about saying you are 100% responsible beyond a reasonable doubt, that's a criminal lawsuit. Civil lawsuits look for about at least partial responisibility and who's more responsible.
And finally, lawsuits are not entirely bad. The law sometimes has to work these things out to find out who would be at fault here. You think it's obvious, others disagree. We have to go thru a logical and thought out process to find out who's right. And then it's worked out for the time being.
I understand your stance. The important thing an IT admin must always understand is "What are my user's requirements?" The original article only addresses someone's unethical means of acquiring an update. It does not address the underlying cause as to why the user thinks they need an update. Moryath attempted to humorously blame the user, which is not always the case. In your case you understand your users, but understand that things may change, and there things a smart organization can do to address this rather than create an adversarial relationship between IT and everyone else... if IT is willing to listen.
The actual idea of regenerating Doctors is misplaced, but the article in the summary actually refers to the actual use of killing off characters and resurrecting them in Doctor Who. In the first season with Matt Smith, a sort-of-primary character was killed off in an incredibly permanent way... he was erased from history. And yet despite being erased from history, he came back in the season finale as an android copy of himself with all his memories.
You got to admit, when Doctor Who uses a cliche, it goes all out.
Here let's flip that around a bit, just as another example.
IT Side - we made up the following reasons that normal users shouldn't be installing programs themselves. - Microsoft gave us a document that says we should configure it like this so we did just that. - We are too lazy or overworked or underpaid to think too hard about our user's needs - We never bothered to ask what user's requirements were, we just assumed it. - IT person happens to be PHB's son or fucking PHB on the side.
User side - - I have to be able to do work that my boss has required me to do which is core to the business making money! - I need to be able to test certain situations in order to come up with a new means to be more productive and save the company money! - Arbitrary restrictions are stifling users for the sake of making IT look good.
Brain-dead PHB of IT side- - "We have a policy and we stick too it and we can't change it." - One month later: "We have a policy and we stick to it and we can't change it." - One more month later: PHB is out of the office playing golf with someone while you fume over missing yet another deadline.
Now add in that you might be working in a software development environment, where every IT rep treats you like an office temp and tries to give you access to MS office and internet explorer and nothing else and does absolutely nothing to understand how your own company's software works nor tries to understand what it takes to create, test, and support said software when your own customers have admin rights to their own machine and, funny, you don't, so you can't possibly figure out what their problem is!
This is just a counter example to your stereotype. People in general are idiots, sometimes they are in IT, sometimes they are in the user base, and sometimes it's both. You can't paint one side with a broad brush and completely blame things like this on them.
The time one lives on this planet is relative to measurements made by other people and by other devices. Your watch on your own wrist is probably the most accurate personal time you can get, but you have to adjust it based on other clocks around you to remain in sync with the rest of the world. Even more so, computers and phones now regularly ping a clock server to get an updated time automatically, and that server is somewhere else, being stationary. Time on the Earth is measured in terms of the velocity of the planet's orbit and rotation, but not in terms of your personal velocity relative to the sun or earth itself. The earth rotates and orbits at a specific velocity. If you move, your velocity relative the sun is different than the planet itself.
However, by moving, based on the theory of relativity, you are gaining a fraction of a fraction of a second by moving faster than the world around you. The clock is a philosophical exercise exploring relativity, and it's not like you'll gain 200 relative years by constantly walking or running anywhere, but it's fun to observe relativity in action. The "gain vs loss" here is that 1 second for you is still 1 second, but if you were say running, 1 second for you is, for example, 1.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds for everyone you pass that are standing still. So you gain that fraction of a second relative to the world around you, and thus travel into the future a little faster than others.
Kirk got a hairpiece stapled to his scalp... and he had no problems getting women. Picard was proud to be bald... and didn't seem to have problem getting women. Sisko shaved his head! He was married twice!
This is not news for nerds. If nerds know anything, it's not what's on top of their head, but what's in the captain's chair that counts.
Exactly when did Google get to less than 1% market share, have no money in the bank, and was once considered to be the laughing stock of the tech industry? You may not like the direction Google went in, but you need to go back and review your definition of running into the ground.
Apple was run into the ground during late 80's/early 90's by bad management until Steve came back. Everything Steve built up was destroyed, and Steve had to recreate it from the ground up. Steve took control in 1998, so it's arguable that Apple never had any lead at all when Google was founded.
So that's a lot of moveable parts. Technically the screen is flexible but the other side appears hinged. What happens when one of those hinges bust?
One of the selling points is that the rolltop fits in any bag, but if my livelihood depends on a reliable machine that won't physically break in the airport right before I get on the plane, I'll gladly get a specialized bag for it, it's not that big a deal.
Actually you originally said: "the iphone has zero to do with tmobile being sold". Now you are saying: "there is more to that picture than the iPhone." which is it? In fact the latter is my point, not your point.
And to address your statement: "It hardly is attributed to the iphone for that matter". Actually as I stated it is a large point. The iPhone gave AT&T a large infusion of cash and took away subscribers from T-Mobile, helping to shrinking the T-Mobile user base. One company got bigger, another got smaller, and then that smaller company is getting eaten by the larger one. Typical American Capitalism (I make no judgement as to this being a good or bad thing).
Actually you can easily get a clue on this. Just Google it. You'll see that the 1.5 million figures first estimated were not corroborated and people think that's the FUD. Also, there are articles about how in 2008 the G1 was the 5th most popular phone, behind the iPhone 3G and 3 blackberry models.
And yet I'm not really trying to prove the iPhone outsold the G1. If you follow my statement, I said it was a fact that the T-mobile subscriber base has shrunk since 2007 overall. The original poster's position that the G1 increased T-Mobiles subscriber base, and I'm trying to say that's false from the other evidence provided. I'm not saying "iPhone ownz j00r f33bl3 G1". Not at all.
Yes, the story is hyperbole and conjecture, because most tech articles online are based on dramatic declarations rather than facts. However, your comment is also a bit hyperbolic.
Think about business here. The iPhone wasn't the sole reason but it helped a lot. In terms of subscribers and money, the carriers right now are 1) Verizon, 2) AT&T, 3) Sprint 4) T-Mobile. Verizon has differentiated itself by running on it's reputation of reliability. AT&T differentiated itself by getting the iPhone first. It remains to be seen if AT&T can remain #2 but it has done a good job of locking some people into their service by getting a boost from the iPhone. Sprint and T-Mobile are a distant 3 and 4, because they aren't differentiating themselves well, and because AT&T was stealing their high end subscribers while local smaller outfits like MetroPCS, Cricket, Boost, Amped and others were stealing their low end subscribers. So what you end up with is a smaller T-Mobile and a larger AT&T with lots of cash to start making business deals.
Now ultimately the reason why T-Mobile is being sold is because AT&T bought them. The article makes it seem like AT&T handed T-Mobile a crushing defeat and Deutch Telekom whimpered for mercey and sold their meager T-Mobile branch. Far from the truth. Deutch Telekom saw a money making opportunity, better than what they were making now. There are probably lots of business reasons surrounding it, and DT saw they were getting their asses kicked since 2007. They could continue to operate and try to come up with something new, but quite simply they cashed out when someone made them an attractive offer. DT saw they weren't as competitive as they wanted to be, so they took their money and went home. They might be able to make more money by investing that $39 in their European wireless market... or just invest it in oil futures or something.
As for the G1... seriously? Don't make me laugh. T-Mobiles subscriber base has shrunk since 2007. Period, regardless of what technology AT&T and T-Mobile are offering. You can hardly say T-Mobile gained as many customers from the G1 as AT&T did from the iPhone.
Could simply be encoded in the network tracking. The endpoint of the TCP request is not the phone, it's the machine attached to the phone. Can you somehow track that in the network traffic regardless of the jailbreak and then cross reference with the user's AT&T account?
Slashdot Mirror
From TFA:
"What I miss most are keyboards that have some 'omph' to them, and software that makes use of keyboard shortcuts. I really miss the 'clicky' IBM Model M keyboards from the mid and late '80s, for instance. I can type 150+ words per minute and I can move my fingers across a keyboard faster than I can move my hand to a mouse, move the cursor, click, and put my fingers back on the keyboard. I really really really miss customizable keyboard shortcuts."
WHAT???? You have keyboard shortcuts now, windows has the Windows button and the alt key! For both Windows and Mac you have a ton of shortcut apps that give you access to keyboard shortcuts. Apps that take shortened text you type frequently and expands it to a long word. They are all there, they just moved to third party apps. This Eric Loyd is a dipshit if he misses keyboard shortcuts... go buy a $2 app that gives them back to you you idiot!
More:
""The main feature I miss on today's keyboards is having FUNCTION keys (F1, F2, etc) on the left of the main key area, and a CONTROL key in the middle of the left-side column of keys (so it goes from top to bottom: ~/TAB/CTRL/SHIFT/ALT). There are a number of CTRL+F-key and ALT+F-key combinations that can quickly and easily done with one hand in this configuration without looking"
I agree the layout of the keyboard in this instance is good, but if you have fully customizable shortcuts at your command thru any number of apps, design something that makes sense to you. Don't assign your shortcut to Alt-F12 if you need two hands and want one hand. Undo/cut/copy/paste were brilliantly designed, take a lesson from that and design the same keyboard shortcut for yourself.
More:
"There is a programmable keyboard available -- the CVT Avant Stellar,"
Ah fuck me it's a slashvertisement.
More:
"what he misses is the convenience of DOS's CONTROL-C and CONTROL-Q which could kill an accidentally triggered program, along with the Unix Control-C and kill -9 for command line Unix. I'm not sure if anything exists that can do that as quickly at the GUI level."
I can agree with this, a keyboard in general is the fastest input device we have, but this is a clever deception, trying to say that just because a GUI is slower it's not evolving. Not true. Once you know what you are doing, and have to perform a repetitive task, a keyboard is always faster. A GUI, however, is always easier if you don't necessarily know what you are looking for or know what you are doing. Remember images and motions towards and area of the screen is easier for a lot of people, rather than trying to remember to put a -9 after the kill, or remembering what grep, awk, and cron do. If you have to look up a command every few minutes, it's not faster, and if you can remember the action faster to do what you want, for you it's faster. GUIs opened up the world of computing to many more people, and that's a fact, because it was easier to remember and perform the tasks they wanted to perform.
More:
"The CMU Andrew Toolkit had very complex scrollbars that took a while to master,"
Stop right there, everything in this paragraph is invalidated by the fact that thos was "complex" and "took a while to master." A GUI is supposed to make things simpler, because not everyone has time to master complex scroll bars. If it takes me a half hour to figure out scrolling in a GUI, it's not necessarily faster when all I have to do is scan down a page looking for a simple paragraph. Complex is not necessarily evolution, and making something simplified is not necessary a regression. Simplicity could speed everyone up as a whole.
The article then degenerates into a bunch of technobabble about a bunch of features developers use to have, but just about every one of them has a modern equivalent they could get by just finding and downloading third party software, most which is probably free. Sure, notepad sucks, notepad is not meant to be an advanced text editor! How long did it take you to figure that
The malware is evolving from taking advantage of bugs in Windows, to social engineering. I had malware scanning on my PC because malware could get in the back door via services and other areas. Now, they are installing it right in front of your face trying to masquerade as something else.
They are going from the thief in the night who exploits the bad lock in the back door, to walking in the front door acting like the delivery man and given the run of the building by unsuspecting human beings. They are no longer exploiting Windows or Mac OS X... they are exploiting the users directly and making it look like it's the OS's fault.
I've seen plenty of PCs pwned by this type of malware, and it wasn't Windows fault in those situations either, the user simple installed something that took over the system.
I thought it was put to rest that Lady Gaga does not have a penis. Is this new evidence?
Who said you were supposed to trust your "congresscritter"? If they promised something and didn't follow up you are supposed to vote for someone who you agree with who will keep promises. It's called being active in your government and it's what you are supposed to do in a democracy. It's better than letting the cable companies hire thousands of lobbyists to bribe and manipulate your congresscritter while you sit at home watching American Idol on your way too expensive cable feed. We don't have that because we don't have enough people in the US who do just that.
i know a lot of teenagers and adults with immature teenaged mentalities thinks government secrets are pure evil, but guess what: when it comes to fighting terrorism, they are absolutely necessary.
I personally think that a government is a necessary institution meant to help guarantee rights and equal opportunity across social, racial, ethnic, and economic lines. I also am not so naive as to believe that governments are necessary to fighting terrorism quite simply because certain governments are the root cause of terrorism! Specifically bad governments. For example, American companies and the American government traveling to countries with lots of oil and giving them tons of money to support brutally oppressive regimes just so we can power all of our little TVs, PCs, smart phones, and gas guzzling cars. Also note that the people voted for said American government. Those people being oppressed who feel they have no other choice, can easily follow that straight line right back to the American populace, who is of course the target of the terrorism. After all, our government is of the people, by the people, and for the people right?
Your statement makes it sound like terrorists spawn like in some kind of randomly generated Call of Duty map. Now that's an immature teenage mentality.
The phone has to have the ability to notify the carrier of it's location, who can then give that to 911 as necessary. Sure that means that Android may have to do something in order to enable that, but one of those things is NOT to phone home to Google.
Okay look, if you want to bash on Greenpeace, bash on the facts and stop committing ad hominem attacks. How can we fix the global climate change if no one reads the original report and address that? The Slashdot summary and the linked article are both gravely insufficient.
The slashdot summary also is misleading:
"The report (PDF) doesn't mention how much CO2 is saved by telecommuting and higher corporate efficiency, however."
And yet the article itself address this in several learning points, the most important one is bolded below:
Data centres to house the explosion of virtual information
currently consume 1.5-2% of all global electricity; this is growing
at a rate of 12% a year.
The IT industry points to cloud computing as the new, green
model for our IT infrastructure needs, but few companies provide
data that would allow us to objectively evaluate these claims.
The technologies of the 21st century are still largely powered by
the dirty coal power of the past, with over half of the companies
rated herein relying on coal for between 50% and 80% of their
energy needs.
IT innovations have the potential to cut greenhouse gas
emissions across all sectors of the economy, but IT’s own
growing demand for dirty energy remains largely unaddressed by
the world’s biggest IT brands.
And what's worse, this isn't about telecommuting, it's about cloud computing! They are two different things that do not mean exactly the same thing! So the summary is basically diverting attention away from cloud computing, and the original report by Greenpeace directly admits there's no data here. Greenpeace did not willfully omit data, as the summary suggests. The fact that there is no data here is a problem for companies and the planet, not for Greenpeace's report!
And finally, to address your statement of "how does one choose a green energy resource." Answer: lots of ways
1) Vote for politicians that support and direct resources to green energy
2) Pick companies that only use green energy, in this case, cloud companies that use servers that are powered by green energy.
3) In the US, we have many states that have been trying to introduce energy competition where you can chose your energy generator. While most attempts are pretty woeful, we are trying to introduce "choice" to the masses.
4) Large companies in the US often have many choices. Some companies generate part or all of their own power, and some chose specifically where their power comes from if their physical plant is large enough and has certain requirements. We can influence this choice by choosing companies that chose green energy.
Okay I'm all for explaining why this is bad, but why the fuck do we insist as a group using the example of a private eye tracking down a cheating spouse for the purpose of divorce as a reason to take privacy concerns seriously? The average citizen is going to be like "Oh well I don't have to worry about that, I have nothing to hide from my spouse!" even if they are lying to themselves. The political and social leadership will be like "well then don't cheat and you'll be fine!"
WORST... EXAMPLE...EVAR...
Here's some better examples for this specific situation:
1) A burglar determining a pattern when you aren't home so they can rob your house.
2) A stalker determining the best place to attack you
3) Someone who doesn't like you smearing your character publicly simply because your phone walked by a strip club (he must have gone in, he's a sinner!!!), even though 2 blocks away is the hospice you volunteer once a week at.
Let's try to come up with better examples that make people actually care please?
There are huge numbers of problems with the singularly minded idea that there is only one person at fault here.
1) On a moral level, as the old saying goes, if you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
2) Technology, even Apple's is complicated. One might be an expert in construction, art, cleaning, accounting, or teaching, but I'll be damned if I continue to see people who can't figure out their super cool iPhones and the apps that go along with it.
3) Parents aren't perfect. Sometimes a parent needs to learn more, but kids are annoying, obnoxious, pesky creatures. Sometimes you have to compromise. Being a parent isn't easy.
4) Apple's technology, despite being complicated technology, is still pretty simple compared to everything else out there. Apple tries to balance security and ease of use and that's hard, but frankly they didn't have to create this in app purchase system. It's to easy to get someone to buy a free app, then get them emotional and try to get them to buy something in the app on an impulse, or tap on something that looks shiny and fun and it turns out to be something you have to buy. Get worked up enough and you'll go past any warning.
5) Apple created the walled garden that they control, and they created the relationship between the iOS device user and them. If App developers want to restore to less than moral tactics to get money, then Apple has to provide the best experience and protect it's customers, so it an App developer is doing something sleazy, Apple has to own up to it.
6) Who's to say Apple isn't working with developers to scam a little money out of people? A class action suit isn't designed necessarily to get money for the plaintiff but rather to punish the defendant if they do something they should not do. Yes the defendants get the money, but where should it go? Laws mandating it to go to charity or government seem kind of hamfisted and of course could be exploited.
I absolutely support the idea that parents need to do their part and deep deep down I'm a technology snob and if someone buys something they better damn well learn how to use it properly. At the same time Apple markets the hell out of their products, like any company. They bear some responsibility. Civil lawsuits are not about saying you are 100% responsible beyond a reasonable doubt, that's a criminal lawsuit. Civil lawsuits look for about at least partial responisibility and who's more responsible.
And finally, lawsuits are not entirely bad. The law sometimes has to work these things out to find out who would be at fault here. You think it's obvious, others disagree. We have to go thru a logical and thought out process to find out who's right. And then it's worked out for the time being.
All they need now is a blow job attachment via USB to your computer, and they will end up making beeeellllioooons!
I understand your stance. The important thing an IT admin must always understand is "What are my user's requirements?" The original article only addresses someone's unethical means of acquiring an update. It does not address the underlying cause as to why the user thinks they need an update. Moryath attempted to humorously blame the user, which is not always the case. In your case you understand your users, but understand that things may change, and there things a smart organization can do to address this rather than create an adversarial relationship between IT and everyone else... if IT is willing to listen.
The actual idea of regenerating Doctors is misplaced, but the article in the summary actually refers to the actual use of killing off characters and resurrecting them in Doctor Who. In the first season with Matt Smith, a sort-of-primary character was killed off in an incredibly permanent way... he was erased from history. And yet despite being erased from history, he came back in the season finale as an android copy of himself with all his memories.
You got to admit, when Doctor Who uses a cliche, it goes all out.
Here let's flip that around a bit, just as another example.
IT Side - we made up the following reasons that normal users shouldn't be installing programs themselves.
- Microsoft gave us a document that says we should configure it like this so we did just that.
- We are too lazy or overworked or underpaid to think too hard about our user's needs
- We never bothered to ask what user's requirements were, we just assumed it.
- IT person happens to be PHB's son or fucking PHB on the side.
User side -
- I have to be able to do work that my boss has required me to do which is core to the business making money!
- I need to be able to test certain situations in order to come up with a new means to be more productive and save the company money!
- Arbitrary restrictions are stifling users for the sake of making IT look good.
Brain-dead PHB of IT side-
- "We have a policy and we stick too it and we can't change it."
- One month later: "We have a policy and we stick to it and we can't change it."
- One more month later: PHB is out of the office playing golf with someone while you fume over missing yet another deadline.
Now add in that you might be working in a software development environment, where every IT rep treats you like an office temp and tries to give you access to MS office and internet explorer and nothing else and does absolutely nothing to understand how your own company's software works nor tries to understand what it takes to create, test, and support said software when your own customers have admin rights to their own machine and, funny, you don't, so you can't possibly figure out what their problem is!
This is just a counter example to your stereotype. People in general are idiots, sometimes they are in IT, sometimes they are in the user base, and sometimes it's both. You can't paint one side with a broad brush and completely blame things like this on them.
The time one lives on this planet is relative to measurements made by other people and by other devices. Your watch on your own wrist is probably the most accurate personal time you can get, but you have to adjust it based on other clocks around you to remain in sync with the rest of the world. Even more so, computers and phones now regularly ping a clock server to get an updated time automatically, and that server is somewhere else, being stationary. Time on the Earth is measured in terms of the velocity of the planet's orbit and rotation, but not in terms of your personal velocity relative to the sun or earth itself. The earth rotates and orbits at a specific velocity. If you move, your velocity relative the sun is different than the planet itself.
However, by moving, based on the theory of relativity, you are gaining a fraction of a fraction of a second by moving faster than the world around you. The clock is a philosophical exercise exploring relativity, and it's not like you'll gain 200 relative years by constantly walking or running anywhere, but it's fun to observe relativity in action. The "gain vs loss" here is that 1 second for you is still 1 second, but if you were say running, 1 second for you is, for example, 1.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds for everyone you pass that are standing still. So you gain that fraction of a second relative to the world around you, and thus travel into the future a little faster than others.
Slashdotted. The entire server appears down, not just the page.
Kirk got a hairpiece stapled to his scalp... and he had no problems getting women.
Picard was proud to be bald... and didn't seem to have problem getting women.
Sisko shaved his head! He was married twice!
This is not news for nerds. If nerds know anything, it's not what's on top of their head, but what's in the captain's chair that counts.
Exactly when did Google get to less than 1% market share, have no money in the bank, and was once considered to be the laughing stock of the tech industry? You may not like the direction Google went in, but you need to go back and review your definition of running into the ground.
Apple was run into the ground during late 80's/early 90's by bad management until Steve came back. Everything Steve built up was destroyed, and Steve had to recreate it from the ground up. Steve took control in 1998, so it's arguable that Apple never had any lead at all when Google was founded.
So that's a lot of moveable parts. Technically the screen is flexible but the other side appears hinged. What happens when one of those hinges bust?
One of the selling points is that the rolltop fits in any bag, but if my livelihood depends on a reliable machine that won't physically break in the airport right before I get on the plane, I'll gladly get a specialized bag for it, it's not that big a deal.
They found some Unobtainium!
I hate lame articles like this.
Then why are you reading /. ?
Actually you originally said: "the iphone has zero to do with tmobile being sold". Now you are saying: "there is more to that picture than the iPhone." which is it? In fact the latter is my point, not your point.
And to address your statement: "It hardly is attributed to the iphone for that matter". Actually as I stated it is a large point. The iPhone gave AT&T a large infusion of cash and took away subscribers from T-Mobile, helping to shrinking the T-Mobile user base. One company got bigger, another got smaller, and then that smaller company is getting eaten by the larger one. Typical American Capitalism (I make no judgement as to this being a good or bad thing).
Actually you can easily get a clue on this. Just Google it. You'll see that the 1.5 million figures first estimated were not corroborated and people think that's the FUD. Also, there are articles about how in 2008 the G1 was the 5th most popular phone, behind the iPhone 3G and 3 blackberry models.
And yet I'm not really trying to prove the iPhone outsold the G1. If you follow my statement, I said it was a fact that the T-mobile subscriber base has shrunk since 2007 overall. The original poster's position that the G1 increased T-Mobiles subscriber base, and I'm trying to say that's false from the other evidence provided. I'm not saying "iPhone ownz j00r f33bl3 G1". Not at all.
Yes, the story is hyperbole and conjecture, because most tech articles online are based on dramatic declarations rather than facts. However, your comment is also a bit hyperbolic.
Think about business here. The iPhone wasn't the sole reason but it helped a lot. In terms of subscribers and money, the carriers right now are 1) Verizon, 2) AT&T, 3) Sprint 4) T-Mobile. Verizon has differentiated itself by running on it's reputation of reliability. AT&T differentiated itself by getting the iPhone first. It remains to be seen if AT&T can remain #2 but it has done a good job of locking some people into their service by getting a boost from the iPhone. Sprint and T-Mobile are a distant 3 and 4, because they aren't differentiating themselves well, and because AT&T was stealing their high end subscribers while local smaller outfits like MetroPCS, Cricket, Boost, Amped and others were stealing their low end subscribers. So what you end up with is a smaller T-Mobile and a larger AT&T with lots of cash to start making business deals.
Now ultimately the reason why T-Mobile is being sold is because AT&T bought them. The article makes it seem like AT&T handed T-Mobile a crushing defeat and Deutch Telekom whimpered for mercey and sold their meager T-Mobile branch. Far from the truth. Deutch Telekom saw a money making opportunity, better than what they were making now. There are probably lots of business reasons surrounding it, and DT saw they were getting their asses kicked since 2007. They could continue to operate and try to come up with something new, but quite simply they cashed out when someone made them an attractive offer. DT saw they weren't as competitive as they wanted to be, so they took their money and went home. They might be able to make more money by investing that $39 in their European wireless market... or just invest it in oil futures or something.
As for the G1... seriously? Don't make me laugh. T-Mobiles subscriber base has shrunk since 2007. Period, regardless of what technology AT&T and T-Mobile are offering. You can hardly say T-Mobile gained as many customers from the G1 as AT&T did from the iPhone.
Could simply be encoded in the network tracking. The endpoint of the TCP request is not the phone, it's the machine attached to the phone. Can you somehow track that in the network traffic regardless of the jailbreak and then cross reference with the user's AT&T account?