While Consumer Watchdog hyperventilates about The Great Satan Google, they conveniently neglect to mention that their website tracks user behavior with...Google Analytics.
$250 fine. First class, well done. You hit back at someone doing you a favour when they do a bad job. *clap clap clap*.
What a self-important moron this judge is.
Why is this judge a "self-important moron"? For doing her job? And how was the juror doing her a favor by perverting the course of justice?
I don't know whether this was a failed attempt at humor, or just a knee-jerk reaction from another anti-authoritarian idiot. Probably both.
There seem to be a lot of/. discussions about obviously stupid things.
The subject may be "obviously stupid" to you, but perhaps others have interesting things to add. I've already read some informative and insightful comments in this thread about audio/video cables, interference, hum, etc., which I would not have learned had I decided that the discussion was too "obviously stupid" to follow.
The comment thread fills up with people competing for the Score 5 (funny) comments. What's the point here, other than ego stroking and karma boosting?
"Competing"? Why do you think it's a competition? Maybe an amusing thought just popped into their head and they decided to share it. Obviously some people enjoyed them or they wouldn't have been moderated "Funny". You seriously need to get over yourself.
You know it is BS when they trot out the iPhone. Please explain to me how the iPhone is at all innovative. It is a touchscreen smartphone. Not only had I seen those before, I'd seen lots of them. The smartphone market was well established when Apple came in.
"Well established"? Smartphones were a niche market before the iPhone, and only exploded in popularity (and continue to grow dramatically) after the iPhone was introduced in 2007. Windows Mobile was far and away the largest smartphone platform; where is it now? And as to your assertion that the iPhone was not at all innovative, please show me the touchscreen smartphones before the iPhone that had a UI designed for a touchscreen device, not a desktop OS shoehorned into a mobile device. Please show me a smartphone that had a mobile Internet experience comparable to iPhone. Please show me even one of the "lots" that you've seen that had such easy access to a large and diverse collection of applications. Oh, and please show me the plethora of touchscreen Android devices that existed before the iPhone. If in your view the iPhone was not innovative, how would you classify the Droid X and HTC EVO, et al?
An innovative product is something that is new and different. It is something that people didn't think about before but now go "Oooo, I see a use for that."
Congratulations. You just described the iPhone and iPad. The hardest part by far in consumer electronic design is not the features, it's the interface, and if you think that Apple's success with iPhone and now iPad are due to just good design and marketing, you need to take off your hate-colored glasses and stop with the feature-checkbox mentality. It's all well and good for technically minded persons and tinkerers, like many (most?) Slashdot readers, to think that it's fun to have to trim the spinnaker, strap the cat to the buttered toast, and change the dilithium crystals just to check their email, but for the average non-tech-elitist Joe and Jane, it's completely unacceptable.
Most people only think of innovation as occurring within their narrow range of interests, and for geeks that means that anything with electrons or logic flowing though it will make them jizz their pants. How many Slashdot readers would consider Dell to be an innovative company, much less one that had a seismic impact on computing? And yet it was Michael Dell's commercial and production innovations that resulted in the commoditization of the personal computer and made them widely affordable to the broad public, including most people here I'd wager. Demystifying existing technology for the average user and presenting them with easy and intuitive ways to interact with their data is Apple's genius, and it is true innovation at work, despite what you might think.
Three teams done bettered Elo with betterer done algorithms, and the submitter is surprised that it was bettered done so quickly. I'm done. Was that better?
Another thing just occurred to me. Can anyone say how effective lasers will be with atmospheric obscuration such as smoke, fog, haze etc.? And I agree completely that it's always nice to have another layer in the defensive envelope, but as you rightfully say there will always be counter-measures, and counter- counter-measures ad infinitum.
Obviously I didn't, and your explanation makes a great deal more sense than my mistaken conclusion that this was meant as a replacement for, rather than a complement to, existing systems. My one concern would be that attacking missiles could use some sort of ablative coating, like the tiles on the Space Shuttle, to mitigate the effects of energy weapons.
Bullets and lasers deliver this energy differently - the bullet's energy is transferred to the target in a much shorter time (milliseconds, I assume) which produces more chaotic results than the laser (for the same energy), which is waiting until the target ignites or a hole forms, wrecking the aerodynamics.
While energy weapons are gosh-wow sexy, their effects depend on maintaining the beam on the incoming missile for some undetermined length of time, until it either ignites the fuel or destroys the guidance systems. As modern ship-killer missiles tend to be supersonic, keeping the beam focused on a particular spot on an incoming missile is far from trivial, and of course will vary from missie to missile, so the defensive sytems have even more variables to account for. Phalanx and other gun systems use radar to track the incoming missile as well as the stream of outgoing rounds, and adjusts the aim until the tracks intersect.
Another problem is that destroying the missile's guidance system alone won't cut it. If it's already locked in the terminal phase chances are it will be blind, but still hit the target. This is the major reason that CIWS tend to use multi-barrel cannon with extremely high rates of fire (20mm/6,000 rounds per minute in the case of Phalanx, 30mm/4,000 rpm in the Dutch Goalkeeper system, which is built around the gun used in the A-10 aircraft). The intention is to cause as much structural damage to the incoming missile as possible, either destroying it or rendering it incapable of remaining on course, and with a missile like the SS-N-19 Shipwreck, which masses 7,000 kg and travels at Mach 2.5, even if the guidance systems and warhead are nullified, impact, even from large fragments, can still cause catastrophic damage to the defending vessel.
Then there's the energy requirements of a powerful laser, along with the transmission and control systems, massive cabling, fire-suppression, safety etc., versus self-contained units like Phalanx or Goalkeeper which basically just plug into a hole in the deck (oversimplification of course, but not by much). I am not a weapons expert, but personally I don't see the advantage of energy weapons over traditional gun systems for close-in defense.
What I find most ironic is that despite their recommendation not to buy the iPhone 4, Consumer Reports ranks it highest in their latest smartphone ratings with a score of 76%, 2 points ahead of its nearest rivals, the iPhone 3GS and the HTC Evo 4G.
iPhone 4 FaceTime Video Sex Line Chat - free iPhone 4 (NYC/LI)
Date: 2010-06-27, 12:06PM EDT
Reply to: job-dqsyj-1813619670@craigslist.org
Starting an online interactive pornography firm where woman will use the iphone 4 to video chat with potential customers on a pay as you go basis.
Hours are flexible, pay will increase as the business builds. Woman will receive a free iphone 4 to use as personal time when not working. Woman will talk to potential clients and chat with them and perform various acts as desired by clients. All information will be confidential.
Judges are supposed to apply the law. Laws aren't made by a single person, but by the legislature. How do you propose to decide if the government obeys the law or not
...Oh..you mean like the office holder (Obama) that unilaterally declared the moratorium in the first place?
The President is the Chief of the Executive branch of Government; he can unilaterally declare that the BP site be nuked from orbit if he so desires. It's the job of the Judiciary to determine the legality of his actions. There will always be that dynamic tension between the Executive and the Judiciary. Human nature being what it is, the Executive will always try to get away with as much as they can, while the Judiciary exists to make sure they comply with the laws of the land as enacted by the Legislature. It's called "Checks and Balances".
And why the fuck am I even explaining this to you? Your response to the parent post didn't even make any sense in the first place. If you're not American, I apologize for being harsh; if you are, you should be deeply ashamed of your ignorance.
What happens when 30 minutes into my commute my fully charged battery is shot cause I was watching a few youtube vids? Shit the Nexus One can barely hold a charge long enough for me to drop my pants!
Ummm... I don't really care to know what videos you're watching, but if you're dropping your pants during your commute then your phone's battery life is the least of your problems...
Apple gets a big kickback from AT&T on the monthly bill that iPhone users pay. That's the real reason for exclusivity despite the shitty AT&T network. The lack of choice is purely due to Apple's greed.
Even if your argument were factually correct, which it is not, exercising a modicum of common sense would explain that it is AT&T who gain from exclusivity, not Apple. When Apple, approached the carriers with the iPhone, AT&T were the only ones who did not point blank reject Apple's demand that the device not carry the network logo, as well as crippling the phone with their network's "features" and burying it in shovelware. AT&T demanded exclusive rights for five years in return for agreeing to Apple's terms.
Remember that no one could have predicted that the device would become a runaway smash hit, and AT&T were in the driver's seat; they were the only option left to Apple after the other networks had rejected Apple's terms. Jobs demanded a percentage of iPhone data revenues in return for exclusivity, to help offset lost opportunities with other carriers. This was a no-brainer for AT&T. If iPhone failed, no big deal, they sell a hell of a lot of different devices, and if only a tiny fraction of their customers used the iPhone, giving Apple a cut of iPhone data revenues would have a minimal impact on their bottom line.
Except...the iPhone succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams. It brought AT&T millions of new customers, and data traffic spiked, bringing the network to its knees. AT&T made money hand over fist off their exclusivity deal, attracting new customers and retaining them despite their shitty service. Case in point, a friend of mine in Seattle who switched from Verizon to AT&T in February just to get an iPhone. She had wanted to trade her BlackBerry Curve for a touchscreen smartphone, and the only thing Verizon had at the time was the Storm. She loathed it, and whenever we spoke she'd complain bitterly about it. When she called me a couple months ago just to tell me how much she loved her iPhone, AT&T dropped the call three times in fifteen minutes. When I redialed her for the third time and asked her how the hell she could put up with such awful service, she said that the iPhone was such a joy for her to use that she was willing to tolerate it, but said she'd jump back to Verizon in a New York minute if they got the device. In fact, her enthusiasm for the iPhone was such that she said she was considering getting her first Mac, which couldn't have gone over too well at home; her husband works for Microsoft. And just to forestall the argument that iPhone users are sheep, yes, she is a non-technical user, but far from stupid; she's an emergency room physician, and a damned good one too. It never fails to amuse me when smug, elitist techies describe users of Apple products as smug and elitist.
To suggest that Apple were the ones who demanded exclusivity is laughable, and that they did so out of greed, is simply irrational. Why the hell would they willingly restrict their own potential sales? You sound like just another anti-Apple jihadist, willing to distort facts in any way you can to demonstrate that Apple is "evil".
Android's popularity might have more to do with it being available on more devices, including much cheaper devices.
Excellent point, and as a corollary to that it's worth noting that the plethora of Android devices are available on all of the Big Four networks, while iPhone continues to be available only on AT&T. It says something about the popularity of the iPhone that it's available only on arguably the worst of the major networks yet is stll No. 2 behind only Blackberry.
Much has been made of the fact that the Android platform outsold the iPhone in the 1st Quarter, but the Apple-haters crowing that this somehow signals the ascendancy of Android and the end for the iPhone's supremacy are bound to be bitterly disappointed when the iPhone becomes available on othe networks. Not "if", "when". The general consensus is that it will be available on Verizon sometime in 2011, and according to Shaw Wu of Kaufman Bros., it may be on T-Mobile as early as fall of this year. In my opinion, the rapid sales of Android devices have as much to do with Verizon's aggressive promotion, as well as the reluctance of people to switch from their existing providers to AT&T, as the merits of the platform itself. That calculus will change dramatically when the iPhone throws off the AT&T shackles. Android outselling iPhone in the 1st Quarter of 2010 may well come to be looked on as an anomaly
Even if Apple were to grow sales 100% a year for 5 years they still couldn't match Microsofts actual profits.
Really? Let's see:
Microsoft - Year ending December 31, 2009, Net Income $16.26 Billion on Revenues of $58.69 Billion
Apple Inc. - Year ending December 31, 2009, Net Income $7.477 Billion on Revenues of $42.05 Billion
According to you, if Apple grew sales 100% per year for 5 years, over that period they'd earn $16.26 billion in net income on revenues of more than $1.3 Trillion. Let's assume Apple's net income remains 17.78% of revenue. On sales of $1.303 Trillion, they'd show net income of $231 billion, not $16.26 billion as you assert.
We're supposed to take any part of your post seriously? You're spouting bullshit in such an authoritative manner you'd be right at home behind the anchor desk of Fox News.
You and many others believe that because Apple has such a small market share they must somehow be unsuccessful, and that they "lost" the PC war. Microsoft's almost complete dominance of the desktop has changed the definition of "success" in the eyes of the public at large, especially in the tech industry. Their monopoly turned the focus on market share, and most people have come to accept it is the critical metric for a company's success or failure. I'm constantly surprised how the mainstream media and many otherwise intelligent people subscribe to the misconception that if a company hasn't achieved total market domination they've "lost", never mind the fact they're profitable.
And Apple has proven to be astonishingly profitable. Revenue and profits (yes, the things that people who run companies do know about) are setting new records every quarter, and in terms of market capitalization, they recently leapfrogged Wal-Mart as the third most valuable company in the US, behind only Microsoft and Exxon Mobil. Based on Microsoft's flat share price and the anticipated leap in Apple's following the release of the 4th generation iPhone, as well as continued strong demand for iPhones and iPads, many analysts expect Apple to overtake Microsoft as the second most valuable American company sometime this summer, and Morgan Stanley today raised their target price for Apple stock to $310 USD, based on their expectation that Apple will sell 61.5 million iPhones in 2011.
Looks like the "PC war" was only a battle after all, and the true war, the war for mobile Internet, is only just beginning. Apple is again one of the giants jostling for position in this one, but the other contender is Google, and this time Microsoft is watching from the sidelines. Microsoft saw this coming and couldn't do anything about it; they don't have a dog in the mobile fight and they're watching the next great business frontier passing them by and receding in the distance. The vast majority of the world's users will not connect to the Web with a desktop or a laptop computer, but via a mobile device like a smartphone or tablet, and the market will be vastly larger than the PC market. That translates to hundreds of millions, or billions, of eyeballs for ads, credit card numbers, customer profiles etc., and Google is terrified that Apple's dramatically growing influence in mobile, including the App Store model and the iAd platform will pose a critical threat to their core business. People have commented that the rivalry between Apple and Google is rapidly turning into open war, and they're right. Make no mistake, Google sees themselves in a fight for survival, and Microsoft seems so irrelevant now.
I believe that if Apple continues to fire on all cylinders and their plans come to fruition, then Apple has a damned good shot at becoming the most valuable and profitable company on the planet within the next 2 years. Not bad for the loser of the PC war.
I don't see much of a military need for this tech, however, when we've had military launch capability that could reach any location on earth well within a day, including the time it takes for authorization, for close to half a century.
You're presuming that it's solely for weapons delivery. The first application that came to my mind was reconnaisance. It's all well and good to be able to deliver a warhead to "any location on earth well within a day", but intel as near-real time as you can get it is just as critical to the military, and the ability to get sensors over an area of concern as quickly as possible is immeasurably valuable. That's the reason the SR-71 Blackbird was built, and it performed it's mission admirably for decades.
"The best way to compete is to create the best technology and innovate faster than your competitors."
So sparking an FTC investigation is competing? How about answering Job's challenge by demonstrating Flash running -and running well, while not making the battery cry- on a mobile device, any mobile device?
This response is really kind of sad in my opinion. The best way to respond to hurtful criticism is to prove the critics wrong, and until they cn do that, then this massive ad campaign is just a colossal waste of money.
it presents this situation as a failure of the luxury sites, not of the iPad.
Precisely. Coincidentally, a report today from Yahoo offered some stats on iPad users visiting Yahoo's sites:
The first Yahoo iPad users were 94 percent more likely to be affluent consumers with solid wealth and strong incomes than typical U.S. Yahoo users.
In other words, the very demographic these luxury brands depend on for their survival. What are the odds that they'll refuse to update their sites to attract them?
Regardless of people's opinions of Apple or their products, they are a major driving force behind the rapid adoption of HTML 5, and the deprecation of Flash. Hell, most people never even heard of Flash before Apple announced that the iDevices will not support it, but consumers voted with their dollars anyway, billions of them, and businesses follow the money. They see a platform with tens of millions of affluent potential customers that they simply can't reach because their sites are in a format that doesn't exist on that platform. They'll be falling over themselves to remedy that situation post haste.
I'm still trying to figure out why a discussion forum populated with a bunch of people who obviously loath Apple products keep getting presented with Apple stories.
Because Slashdot is about "News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters", and Apple matters tremendously, and because obviously those interested in hearing about Apple outnumber those who don't (and if you don't, I'm sure you can figure out how to use Slashdot's user settings to not show stories related to Apple).
I'm continually baffled by the vocal hatred of a small minority of Slashdot users (and they are a small minority, albeit the loudest), particularly since many of them claim that they don't use Apple's products or services, therefore Apple is irrelevant to them. Rubbish. If Apple were truly irrelevant to them they wouldn't be wasting their time actively seeking out and participating in discussions about Apple.
I'm an atheist, and religion is of no relevance to me, so I could care less what other people want to believe. Then there are the anti-religious atheists, notably Richard Dawkins, to whom religion is something to be actively, vigorously, and dogmatically opposed: "We are right and you are wrong, and we have a duty to save you from yourselves, because we're smarter than you and know what's best for you." The Apple-haters remind me of this group, particularly the Linux zealots. These are the people to whom Linux is the One True Way, and all others, Windows, Mac, BSD, whatever, are objects of scorn and derision. These are the people who espouse freedom of choice, but Cthulu help you if you don't choose what they do, then you're treated like some sort of heretic.
I've only ever used a Mac,and I first started reading Slashdot because I'm interested in the experiences of users of other platforms, particularly Linux, about which I knew nothing, and for the most part it used to be quite enlightening, and entertaining, having civilized discussions with grownups. My take is that I'm here to learn new things and exchange ideas with intriguing people, not to stand on a soapbox and shit all over other people's opinions. But now the signal-to-noise ratio has gotten much worse, with the loudmouth zealots spewing invective everywhere because reality (the bastard!), has the nerve to contradict their worldview.
There also seems to be component of jealousy among some Linux zealots. They root for the underdog in their fight against "The Man", but they'll turn on them like hyenas if they become too successful. All of a sudden Google is evil, and Apple is the Great Satan, because these companies are no longer underdogs, and the average user still couldn't care less about Linux or FOSS.
And then there's the iPad hate. Hoo boy... I knew a guy in college, very bright, somewhat reserved and shy, but generally likable and well-liked. He was hopelessly in love with a really nice girl who was only vaguely aware of his existence. He had only ever exchanged greetings and a few pleasantries with her, but as far as he was concered, she was The One, and it was mildly amusing to see him mooning over her, doodling her name in lectures etc. Then came the fateful day he saw her holding hands and making cow's eyes with another guy. It's like his head exploded or something. Whereas before she was his angel sent from Heaven Itself, all of a sudden he was badmouthing her as a whore and worse to anyone who would listen. He rapidly became extremely unpleasant to be around, and the poor girl was flabbergasted that anyone would slander her so viciously and unrelentingly. She wasn't interested in him, so he made it his life's mission to ensure that no one would be interested in her (it stopped when her new boyfirend, whom she later married, got incensed and punched his lights out one day).
When the iPad was released and some tech commentators lost their shit over it *cough Cory Doctorow cough* the emotionalism evoked strong memories of the entire sorry affair, not least because many of
Slashdot Mirror
While Consumer Watchdog hyperventilates about The Great Satan Google, they conveniently neglect to mention that their website tracks user behavior with...Google Analytics.
Why is this judge a "self-important moron"? For doing her job? And how was the juror doing her a favor by perverting the course of justice?
I don't know whether this was a failed attempt at humor, or just a knee-jerk reaction from another anti-authoritarian idiot. Probably both.
The host of the event is named Ryan Glitch, for God's sake! Where are the Slashdot jokers when you need them to mine this nugget of pure comedy gold?
"So how did the whole Star Wars-themed speed-dating thing work out?" "Not too well; there was a Glitch..."
Something along those lines, but hopefully better. Get with it people!
The subject may be "obviously stupid" to you, but perhaps others have interesting things to add. I've already read some informative and insightful comments in this thread about audio/video cables, interference, hum, etc., which I would not have learned had I decided that the discussion was too "obviously stupid" to follow.
"Competing"? Why do you think it's a competition? Maybe an amusing thought just popped into their head and they decided to share it. Obviously some people enjoyed them or they wouldn't have been moderated "Funny". You seriously need to get over yourself.
"Well established"? Smartphones were a niche market before the iPhone, and only exploded in popularity (and continue to grow dramatically) after the iPhone was introduced in 2007. Windows Mobile was far and away the largest smartphone platform; where is it now? And as to your assertion that the iPhone was not at all innovative, please show me the touchscreen smartphones before the iPhone that had a UI designed for a touchscreen device, not a desktop OS shoehorned into a mobile device. Please show me a smartphone that had a mobile Internet experience comparable to iPhone. Please show me even one of the "lots" that you've seen that had such easy access to a large and diverse collection of applications. Oh, and please show me the plethora of touchscreen Android devices that existed before the iPhone. If in your view the iPhone was not innovative, how would you classify the Droid X and HTC EVO, et al?
Congratulations. You just described the iPhone and iPad. The hardest part by far in consumer electronic design is not the features, it's the interface, and if you think that Apple's success with iPhone and now iPad are due to just good design and marketing, you need to take off your hate-colored glasses and stop with the feature-checkbox mentality. It's all well and good for technically minded persons and tinkerers, like many (most?) Slashdot readers, to think that it's fun to have to trim the spinnaker, strap the cat to the buttered toast, and change the dilithium crystals just to check their email, but for the average non-tech-elitist Joe and Jane, it's completely unacceptable.
Most people only think of innovation as occurring within their narrow range of interests, and for geeks that means that anything with electrons or logic flowing though it will make them jizz their pants. How many Slashdot readers would consider Dell to be an innovative company, much less one that had a seismic impact on computing? And yet it was Michael Dell's commercial and production innovations that resulted in the commoditization of the personal computer and made them widely affordable to the broad public, including most people here I'd wager. Demystifying existing technology for the average user and presenting them with easy and intuitive ways to interact with their data is Apple's genius, and it is true innovation at work, despite what you might think.
Three teams done bettered Elo with betterer done algorithms, and the submitter is surprised that it was bettered done so quickly. I'm done. Was that better?
He sounds like Lady Macbeth on crack.
Another thing just occurred to me. Can anyone say how effective lasers will be with atmospheric obscuration such as smoke, fog, haze etc.? And I agree completely that it's always nice to have another layer in the defensive envelope, but as you rightfully say there will always be counter-measures, and counter- counter-measures ad infinitum.
You must be joking; this is Slashdot. :)
Obviously I didn't, and your explanation makes a great deal more sense than my mistaken conclusion that this was meant as a replacement for, rather than a complement to, existing systems. My one concern would be that attacking missiles could use some sort of ablative coating, like the tiles on the Space Shuttle, to mitigate the effects of energy weapons.
Thanks for your reply, by the way.
While energy weapons are gosh-wow sexy, their effects depend on maintaining the beam on the incoming missile for some undetermined length of time, until it either ignites the fuel or destroys the guidance systems. As modern ship-killer missiles tend to be supersonic, keeping the beam focused on a particular spot on an incoming missile is far from trivial, and of course will vary from missie to missile, so the defensive sytems have even more variables to account for. Phalanx and other gun systems use radar to track the incoming missile as well as the stream of outgoing rounds, and adjusts the aim until the tracks intersect.
Another problem is that destroying the missile's guidance system alone won't cut it. If it's already locked in the terminal phase chances are it will be blind, but still hit the target. This is the major reason that CIWS tend to use multi-barrel cannon with extremely high rates of fire (20mm/6,000 rounds per minute in the case of Phalanx, 30mm/4,000 rpm in the Dutch Goalkeeper system, which is built around the gun used in the A-10 aircraft). The intention is to cause as much structural damage to the incoming missile as possible, either destroying it or rendering it incapable of remaining on course, and with a missile like the SS-N-19 Shipwreck, which masses 7,000 kg and travels at Mach 2.5, even if the guidance systems and warhead are nullified, impact, even from large fragments, can still cause catastrophic damage to the defending vessel.
Then there's the energy requirements of a powerful laser, along with the transmission and control systems, massive cabling, fire-suppression, safety etc., versus self-contained units like Phalanx or Goalkeeper which basically just plug into a hole in the deck (oversimplification of course, but not by much). I am not a weapons expert, but personally I don't see the advantage of energy weapons over traditional gun systems for close-in defense.
What I find most ironic is that despite their recommendation not to buy the iPhone 4, Consumer Reports ranks it highest in their latest smartphone ratings with a score of 76%, 2 points ahead of its nearest rivals, the iPhone 3GS and the HTC Evo 4G.
My name is Ingo Sick. You cast doubt on the Standard Model. Prepare to die!
Samsung is a Korean conglomerate.
Spot on. Start-ups are already advertising for girls for iPhone 4 FaceTime video sex chat services. From a Craigslist ad:
The President is the Chief of the Executive branch of Government; he can unilaterally declare that the BP site be nuked from orbit if he so desires. It's the job of the Judiciary to determine the legality of his actions. There will always be that dynamic tension between the Executive and the Judiciary. Human nature being what it is, the Executive will always try to get away with as much as they can, while the Judiciary exists to make sure they comply with the laws of the land as enacted by the Legislature. It's called "Checks and Balances".
And why the fuck am I even explaining this to you? Your response to the parent post didn't even make any sense in the first place. If you're not American, I apologize for being harsh; if you are, you should be deeply ashamed of your ignorance.
Ummm... I don't really care to know what videos you're watching, but if you're dropping your pants during your commute then your phone's battery life is the least of your problems...
Hmmm... Adobe should be worried if that's the best thing anyone can say about it.
Even if your argument were factually correct, which it is not, exercising a modicum of common sense would explain that it is AT&T who gain from exclusivity, not Apple. When Apple, approached the carriers with the iPhone, AT&T were the only ones who did not point blank reject Apple's demand that the device not carry the network logo, as well as crippling the phone with their network's "features" and burying it in shovelware. AT&T demanded exclusive rights for five years in return for agreeing to Apple's terms.
Remember that no one could have predicted that the device would become a runaway smash hit, and AT&T were in the driver's seat; they were the only option left to Apple after the other networks had rejected Apple's terms. Jobs demanded a percentage of iPhone data revenues in return for exclusivity, to help offset lost opportunities with other carriers. This was a no-brainer for AT&T. If iPhone failed, no big deal, they sell a hell of a lot of different devices, and if only a tiny fraction of their customers used the iPhone, giving Apple a cut of iPhone data revenues would have a minimal impact on their bottom line.
Except...the iPhone succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams. It brought AT&T millions of new customers, and data traffic spiked, bringing the network to its knees. AT&T made money hand over fist off their exclusivity deal, attracting new customers and retaining them despite their shitty service. Case in point, a friend of mine in Seattle who switched from Verizon to AT&T in February just to get an iPhone. She had wanted to trade her BlackBerry Curve for a touchscreen smartphone, and the only thing Verizon had at the time was the Storm. She loathed it, and whenever we spoke she'd complain bitterly about it. When she called me a couple months ago just to tell me how much she loved her iPhone, AT&T dropped the call three times in fifteen minutes. When I redialed her for the third time and asked her how the hell she could put up with such awful service, she said that the iPhone was such a joy for her to use that she was willing to tolerate it, but said she'd jump back to Verizon in a New York minute if they got the device. In fact, her enthusiasm for the iPhone was such that she said she was considering getting her first Mac, which couldn't have gone over too well at home; her husband works for Microsoft. And just to forestall the argument that iPhone users are sheep, yes, she is a non-technical user, but far from stupid; she's an emergency room physician, and a damned good one too. It never fails to amuse me when smug, elitist techies describe users of Apple products as smug and elitist.
To suggest that Apple were the ones who demanded exclusivity is laughable, and that they did so out of greed, is simply irrational. Why the hell would they willingly restrict their own potential sales? You sound like just another anti-Apple jihadist, willing to distort facts in any way you can to demonstrate that Apple is "evil".
Excellent point, and as a corollary to that it's worth noting that the plethora of Android devices are available on all of the Big Four networks, while iPhone continues to be available only on AT&T. It says something about the popularity of the iPhone that it's available only on arguably the worst of the major networks yet is stll No. 2 behind only Blackberry.
Much has been made of the fact that the Android platform outsold the iPhone in the 1st Quarter, but the Apple-haters crowing that this somehow signals the ascendancy of Android and the end for the iPhone's supremacy are bound to be bitterly disappointed when the iPhone becomes available on othe networks. Not "if", "when". The general consensus is that it will be available on Verizon sometime in 2011, and according to Shaw Wu of Kaufman Bros., it may be on T-Mobile as early as fall of this year. In my opinion, the rapid sales of Android devices have as much to do with Verizon's aggressive promotion, as well as the reluctance of people to switch from their existing providers to AT&T, as the merits of the platform itself. That calculus will change dramatically when the iPhone throws off the AT&T shackles. Android outselling iPhone in the 1st Quarter of 2010 may well come to be looked on as an anomaly
Really? Let's see:
Microsoft - Year ending December 31, 2009, Net Income $16.26 Billion on Revenues of $58.69 Billion
Apple Inc. - Year ending December 31, 2009, Net Income $7.477 Billion on Revenues of $42.05 Billion
According to you, if Apple grew sales 100% per year for 5 years, over that period they'd earn $16.26 billion in net income on revenues of more than $1.3 Trillion. Let's assume Apple's net income remains 17.78% of revenue. On sales of $1.303 Trillion, they'd show net income of $231 billion, not $16.26 billion as you assert.
We're supposed to take any part of your post seriously? You're spouting bullshit in such an authoritative manner you'd be right at home behind the anchor desk of Fox News.
Why am I not shocked?
You and many others believe that because Apple has such a small market share they must somehow be unsuccessful, and that they "lost" the PC war. Microsoft's almost complete dominance of the desktop has changed the definition of "success" in the eyes of the public at large, especially in the tech industry. Their monopoly turned the focus on market share, and most people have come to accept it is the critical metric for a company's success or failure. I'm constantly surprised how the mainstream media and many otherwise intelligent people subscribe to the misconception that if a company hasn't achieved total market domination they've "lost", never mind the fact they're profitable.
And Apple has proven to be astonishingly profitable. Revenue and profits (yes, the things that people who run companies do know about) are setting new records every quarter, and in terms of market capitalization, they recently leapfrogged Wal-Mart as the third most valuable company in the US, behind only Microsoft and Exxon Mobil. Based on Microsoft's flat share price and the anticipated leap in Apple's following the release of the 4th generation iPhone, as well as continued strong demand for iPhones and iPads, many analysts expect Apple to overtake Microsoft as the second most valuable American company sometime this summer, and Morgan Stanley today raised their target price for Apple stock to $310 USD, based on their expectation that Apple will sell 61.5 million iPhones in 2011.
Looks like the "PC war" was only a battle after all, and the true war, the war for mobile Internet, is only just beginning. Apple is again one of the giants jostling for position in this one, but the other contender is Google, and this time Microsoft is watching from the sidelines. Microsoft saw this coming and couldn't do anything about it; they don't have a dog in the mobile fight and they're watching the next great business frontier passing them by and receding in the distance. The vast majority of the world's users will not connect to the Web with a desktop or a laptop computer, but via a mobile device like a smartphone or tablet, and the market will be vastly larger than the PC market. That translates to hundreds of millions, or billions, of eyeballs for ads, credit card numbers, customer profiles etc., and Google is terrified that Apple's dramatically growing influence in mobile, including the App Store model and the iAd platform will pose a critical threat to their core business. People have commented that the rivalry between Apple and Google is rapidly turning into open war, and they're right. Make no mistake, Google sees themselves in a fight for survival, and Microsoft seems so irrelevant now.
I believe that if Apple continues to fire on all cylinders and their plans come to fruition, then Apple has a damned good shot at becoming the most valuable and profitable company on the planet within the next 2 years. Not bad for the loser of the PC war.
You're presuming that it's solely for weapons delivery. The first application that came to my mind was reconnaisance. It's all well and good to be able to deliver a warhead to "any location on earth well within a day", but intel as near-real time as you can get it is just as critical to the military, and the ability to get sensors over an area of concern as quickly as possible is immeasurably valuable. That's the reason the SR-71 Blackbird was built, and it performed it's mission admirably for decades.
From the the founders" open letter:
So sparking an FTC investigation is competing? How about answering Job's challenge by demonstrating Flash running -and running well, while not making the battery cry- on a mobile device, any mobile device?
This response is really kind of sad in my opinion. The best way to respond to hurtful criticism is to prove the critics wrong, and until they cn do that, then this massive ad campaign is just a colossal waste of money.
Precisely. Coincidentally, a report today from Yahoo offered some stats on iPad users visiting Yahoo's sites:
In other words, the very demographic these luxury brands depend on for their survival. What are the odds that they'll refuse to update their sites to attract them?
Regardless of people's opinions of Apple or their products, they are a major driving force behind the rapid adoption of HTML 5, and the deprecation of Flash. Hell, most people never even heard of Flash before Apple announced that the iDevices will not support it, but consumers voted with their dollars anyway, billions of them, and businesses follow the money. They see a platform with tens of millions of affluent potential customers that they simply can't reach because their sites are in a format that doesn't exist on that platform. They'll be falling over themselves to remedy that situation post haste.
Because Slashdot is about "News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters", and Apple matters tremendously, and because obviously those interested in hearing about Apple outnumber those who don't (and if you don't, I'm sure you can figure out how to use Slashdot's user settings to not show stories related to Apple).
I'm continually baffled by the vocal hatred of a small minority of Slashdot users (and they are a small minority, albeit the loudest), particularly since many of them claim that they don't use Apple's products or services, therefore Apple is irrelevant to them. Rubbish. If Apple were truly irrelevant to them they wouldn't be wasting their time actively seeking out and participating in discussions about Apple.
I'm an atheist, and religion is of no relevance to me, so I could care less what other people want to believe. Then there are the anti-religious atheists, notably Richard Dawkins, to whom religion is something to be actively, vigorously, and dogmatically opposed: "We are right and you are wrong, and we have a duty to save you from yourselves, because we're smarter than you and know what's best for you." The Apple-haters remind me of this group, particularly the Linux zealots. These are the people to whom Linux is the One True Way, and all others, Windows, Mac, BSD, whatever, are objects of scorn and derision. These are the people who espouse freedom of choice, but Cthulu help you if you don't choose what they do, then you're treated like some sort of heretic.
I've only ever used a Mac,and I first started reading Slashdot because I'm interested in the experiences of users of other platforms, particularly Linux, about which I knew nothing, and for the most part it used to be quite enlightening, and entertaining, having civilized discussions with grownups. My take is that I'm here to learn new things and exchange ideas with intriguing people, not to stand on a soapbox and shit all over other people's opinions. But now the signal-to-noise ratio has gotten much worse, with the loudmouth zealots spewing invective everywhere because reality (the bastard!), has the nerve to contradict their worldview.
There also seems to be component of jealousy among some Linux zealots. They root for the underdog in their fight against "The Man", but they'll turn on them like hyenas if they become too successful. All of a sudden Google is evil, and Apple is the Great Satan, because these companies are no longer underdogs, and the average user still couldn't care less about Linux or FOSS.
And then there's the iPad hate. Hoo boy... I knew a guy in college, very bright, somewhat reserved and shy, but generally likable and well-liked. He was hopelessly in love with a really nice girl who was only vaguely aware of his existence. He had only ever exchanged greetings and a few pleasantries with her, but as far as he was concered, she was The One, and it was mildly amusing to see him mooning over her, doodling her name in lectures etc. Then came the fateful day he saw her holding hands and making cow's eyes with another guy. It's like his head exploded or something. Whereas before she was his angel sent from Heaven Itself, all of a sudden he was badmouthing her as a whore and worse to anyone who would listen. He rapidly became extremely unpleasant to be around, and the poor girl was flabbergasted that anyone would slander her so viciously and unrelentingly. She wasn't interested in him, so he made it his life's mission to ensure that no one would be interested in her (it stopped when her new boyfirend, whom she later married, got incensed and punched his lights out one day).
When the iPad was released and some tech commentators lost their shit over it *cough Cory Doctorow cough* the emotionalism evoked strong memories of the entire sorry affair, not least because many of