No, no, no! You're falling into a trap. The sharks provided the documentation that the sea lions were getting frickin' lasers so we'd go take them out and then the sharks would end up with all the fish!
I saw the Documentaries titled "Madagascar" and I know for a fact that Penguins are very elusive and deceptive creatures. We need to keep an eye on them at all costs, lest we fall into their trap for world domination.
We've actually started crowd-sourcing that operation to Nickelodean. It's a clever Government/Private Industry initiative.
One of the "features" I loathe about it is the fact that typical users including so called "light users" have to charge it daily.
Depends on a few things.
I tend to be a light user and I charge it once every 3-4 days. That said, the times that I've used it lots, I've had to charge it every day. I've also noticed that flaky network stuff (like when I'm somewhere with poor AT&T reception) seems to cause the battery to run down dramatically.
Agreed. Hell, as an old-time Mac developer, I still have my copies of "Inside Macintosh" circa 1986 or 1987. I even had the "Phone Book Edition" that they put out in '85 or so--unfortunately, I've lost it somewhere in my travels.
That said, he's right that Apple was pretty closed about certain low-level interfaces--mostly because they were subject to change and using them would break stuff.
Actually, one interesting thing I always liked to point out back in the 1990s as a difference between Microsoft and Apple had to do with openness. I was the Mac developer in a lot of PC shops and I always noticed that pretty much everybody used Microsoft programs. They used Internet Explorer, Word, Excel, Visual C, Outlook, etc. Whereas, on my Mac, I used Netscape Navigator, Word, Excel, Metrowerks C, and something from Claris (whose name escapes me), but I switched to Netscape's e-mail application.
So in the Microsoft world, you bought your computer from whoever and you bought your operating system and all your applications from Microsoft. In the Apple world, you bought your computer and operating system from Apple but you bought all your applications from elsewhere.
Climate produces weather. They're not trying to change the climate. They're not even necessarily trying to change the weather--they're not trying to make it not snow. What they're trying to do is make it snow someplace else. And we're talking that someplace else being, say, 30 or 40 miles away.
(widget showing offensive fortunes - is there a one yet?).
Now, you see, this is why Maemo will lose. While you're writing a useless App to show an offensive fortune on the screen, Apple has created SDKs so that iPhone developers can create Apps to play offensive sounds!
Here's one reason for the Nexus One that I haven't seen yet.
Google wants it's employees to use Android and test new versions and be inspired to come up with interesting applications. The best way to do this is to give all your employees phones. If you're doing that, you might as well come up with a cool phone. It's not like Google doesn't have the money to do this.
So, no, there's no ulterior motive about breaking the cellphone companies' grip on the market. There's no plan to sell it through T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, or even Mosaic telecom. All there is a phone that Google can give to their employees for testing and being creative with. That's it.
I know, I know. It's far more fun to believe that these corporations are doing all of these things as a battle that we can sit back and enjoy. But the reality is usually far more mundane.
In people's defense, one concern with "metered data" is that there is no real way of knowing how big something is that you're downloading.
I have an iPhone with 450 minutes per month and unlimited data. 450 minutes is 7.5 hours. Over one month, that's about 15 minutes a day. 450 minutes is pretty easy to understand. I can talk on the phone for 15 minutes every day or I can chat with a friend for 7.5 hours. If I've used 443 minutes for the month, I can look at my watch and know how much time I have left to talk. We all know what minutes are. We have various ways of monitoring them outside the phone company.
Suppose I have a 30MB/month limit. What's a byte? How does that equate to an image? How does that relate to a website? How does that relate to a video? There's no way--outside of your provider--to really have any idea how much data you're using. If I'm at 29MB for the month, can I visit slashdot.org? Can I watch that episode of Star Trek from CBS.com? Can I use my Google Map or Weather App? I have no way of knowing whether or not a particular action will put me over.
Sure, the network providers can send me a warning that I'm at 29MB out of 30MB. But it doesn't tell me what I can and can't do in any meaningful way.
That's one reason people prefer unmetered plans is that the payment plan is consistant. I pay my $30 and I get a month of Internet access. Whether I use 30MB or 300MB, it's the same charge. Unless I unknowingly travel outside the country, I shouldn't have any unpleasant surprises.
I'm not sure it's possible to meter Internet use in a meaningful way, so I think we're sort of stuck with "unlimited" being the most popular.
One big difference was that, originally, there was also no way to get your "Web App" into the iPhone Springboard (that thing that launches Apps). So you had to hope that your user would bookmark it. Of course, launching your Web App consisted of launching Safari and going to your bookmarks to find the App and then waiting for it to load across AT&T's 2.5G network.
The iPhone has improved enough to use Web Apps. I use sigalert.com on my iPhone to view traffic--it sits in Springboard and, when I tap it, it launches Safari and loads the page. I barely notice that it's not a native application because, even if it was, the slow part would be getting the data from the Internet anyway.
The problem is that Apple promotes native Apps more than Web Apps. Apple has a whole infrastucture for selling Apps, allowing developers to make money selling Apps. The only thing that Apple has for Web Apps is a listing page.
Yeah, we smokers are outside in the rain and snow and sleet and cold because we're dedicated to our habit! We could quit smoking and be nice and warm with the rest of you pansies, but we're tougher than that!
If they made you pansy bastards go outside to eat your cheeseburgers, you'd probably quit eating cheeseburgers. You're all just poseur addicts. You have no dedication.
Yeah, sit inside and eat your cheeseburger, you whiny poseur addict. We smokers will be outside in the cold, earning respect from all the real addicts.
Uh... no. Landing on the moon is harder than landing on mars.
While I agree, it's somewhat outside the point.
We will need to figure out how to build a (mostly?) self-sufficient colony. While that can be done in orbit or on the Moon or even on the Earth, by doing it on the Moon we get to Step 2--namely tapping lunar resources.
You're right that landing on the Moon and Mars are totally different. But creating a system to, say, generate oxygen from ice in sufficient quantities to support a colony of 50 people is something that can be figured out on the Moon or Mars. Creating the necessary technology to provide food to 50 people is something that can be figured out on the Moon or Mars.
A moon colony would actually be a waste of resources (in terms of getting a colony on Mars)
Again, I think the Moon is a great way of getting from Earth to Mars.
As I've said previously, the Moon has low gravity but not zero-G. This allows us to use many of the same techniques we use on Earth to build things. For example, if you heat an ore until it is liquid, it can flow from where it is heated into appropriate molds just like we do here on Earth. We don't have to come up with way to get this floating liquid ore into a mold to create, say, a steel girder. But the lower gravity will make it easier to launch bigger/heavier things. Imagine a ship to Mars with lead shielding. It might be too heavy to launch from Earth, but not from the Moon. This assumes we can find lead on the Moon, of course...
Also there's no need for concerns about radioactive fallout when using things like nuclear propulsion. You don't have people saying, "What happens if there's an accident?"
All in all, building a colony on the Moon will allow us to build a better colony on Mars.
Step 1, create a (mostly?) self-sufficient colony on the moon. We'll need this for Mars, anyway, unless we're just going to go to Mars to plant a flag and hit a few golf balls.
Step 2, manufacture stuff on the moon. This is a variation on Step 1, in that some manufacturing will have to be done on the moon anyway in order to be (mostly?) self-sufficient.
Step 3, send people from Earth to Mars by way of the Moon on spacecraft manufactured on the Moon.
As I've said before, I'm in no hurry to get to Mars like we were with the Apollo program. I'd rather spend the money on improving infrastructure so that not only can we go to Mars, we can go pretty much anywhere else we feel like going. Does it mean that I won't live to see a man walk on Mars? Yes. But I'm more interested in having a space infrastructure than in dog-and-pony shows.
The Bastards! How dare they say that they will license in a "Reasonable and Nondiscriminatory" fashion and then turn around and charge their chief competitor more than anyone else?
Suppose I release something GPL. Then I decide not to and, furthermore, sue all the people who downloaded and used it under the GPL. Obviously, that would be a breach of contract.
So if Nokia agreed to be non-discriminatory, that means they can't charge Apple more than they would charge anyone else. That means they can't go after Apple's IP unless they go after everyone else's. Doing otherwise is "Discriminatory."
Fun example: Microsoft creates the Open XML Document format and agrees to charge a "Reasonable or Non-discriminatory" amount for it's use. They then charge Linux projects more than anyone else to use it because Microsoft wants to hurt Linux Office projects.
They are saying that they shouldn't have to pay more or give up valuable IP to use those patents since other companies don't have to pay as much or give up IP.
What part of this is confusing?
Suppose HTC gets charged $0.25 per cellphone. Why should Apple have to give up IP worth millions to use the same patents?
Especially if we stopped being pussies and put Project Orion into practice. That would allow us to land basically an aircraft carrier's worth of useful cargo on the surface of Mars pretty easily.
Again, the best place to launch nuclear-powered spacecraft is from the Moon. There's uranium on the Moon which could be used to power the rockets. With less gravity, you could launch six aircraft carrier's worth of useful cargo from the moon. And there's no concerns over fallout.
Of course, there's a neat question of how effectively the science can be done by probes.
Consider the Apollo program versus the Luna program. One was designed to put men on the moon, the other to study the moon with various landers. One cost a great deal of money. The other's cost is pretty much unknown.
On the other hand, if we consider the knowledge gained about the Moon, the Apollo program wins hands down. Just consider that the Apollo program brought back 382 kilograms of moon rocks for further study. The Luna programs returned 0.362 grams of lunar soil. So Apollo brought back more than 1,000,000 times as much of the moon to be studied here on Earth as the Luna probes. Apollo missions also brought back core samples from about 3 meters below the surface, where as the Luna probes mostly brought surface soil--again, better science.
Apollo missions also brought back interesting samples such as the Helium 3 sample returned on Apollo 17 by Harrison Schmitt--a geologist who knew he was looking at something interesting versus a probe that was scooping up whatever was in arm's reach.
So, yes, it's certainly cheaper to send probes. The question is, are they as effective as sending human beings?
Slashdot Mirror
It only has to stay up until 10:00PM...
Probably the same reason that the old USSR called itself CCCP.
Bloody foreigners.
No, no, no! You're falling into a trap. The sharks provided the documentation that the sea lions were getting frickin' lasers so we'd go take them out and then the sharks would end up with all the fish!
Don't believe the shark propaganda!
[...] but we're talking about (among countless other things) 1/4 of the land mass of Florida going underwater.
You say that like it's a bad thing...
I saw the Documentaries titled "Madagascar" and I know for a fact that Penguins are very elusive and deceptive creatures. We need to keep an eye on them at all costs, lest we fall into their trap for world domination.
We've actually started crowd-sourcing that operation to Nickelodean. It's a clever Government/Private Industry initiative.
One of the "features" I loathe about it is the fact that typical users including so called "light users" have to charge it daily.
Depends on a few things.
I tend to be a light user and I charge it once every 3-4 days. That said, the times that I've used it lots, I've had to charge it every day. I've also noticed that flaky network stuff (like when I'm somewhere with poor AT&T reception) seems to cause the battery to run down dramatically.
So your mileage will vary.
What could be easier than "LIST > speak:" to say a directory listing?
ls | say
At least in Mac OS X.
Agreed. Hell, as an old-time Mac developer, I still have my copies of "Inside Macintosh" circa 1986 or 1987. I even had the "Phone Book Edition" that they put out in '85 or so--unfortunately, I've lost it somewhere in my travels.
That said, he's right that Apple was pretty closed about certain low-level interfaces--mostly because they were subject to change and using them would break stuff.
Actually, one interesting thing I always liked to point out back in the 1990s as a difference between Microsoft and Apple had to do with openness. I was the Mac developer in a lot of PC shops and I always noticed that pretty much everybody used Microsoft programs. They used Internet Explorer, Word, Excel, Visual C, Outlook, etc. Whereas, on my Mac, I used Netscape Navigator, Word, Excel, Metrowerks C, and something from Claris (whose name escapes me), but I switched to Netscape's e-mail application.
So in the Microsoft world, you bought your computer from whoever and you bought your operating system and all your applications from Microsoft. In the Apple world, you bought your computer and operating system from Apple but you bought all your applications from elsewhere.
Climate produces weather. They're not trying to change the climate. They're not even necessarily trying to change the weather--they're not trying to make it not snow. What they're trying to do is make it snow someplace else. And we're talking that someplace else being, say, 30 or 40 miles away.
what of note has the franchise done since?
He's been busy...
Why? What patents does LG or Samsung hold that would be of interest to Nokia?
(widget showing offensive fortunes - is there a one yet?).
Now, you see, this is why Maemo will lose. While you're writing a useless App to show an offensive fortune on the screen, Apple has created SDKs so that iPhone developers can create Apps to play offensive sounds!
In stereo!
And cross-licensing is what surely any other notable phone tech manufacturer does with Nokia.
And who decides who is a "notable phone tech manufacturer"? Nokia? Isn't that, by it's definition, "discriminatory"?
Here's one reason for the Nexus One that I haven't seen yet.
Google wants it's employees to use Android and test new versions and be inspired to come up with interesting applications. The best way to do this is to give all your employees phones. If you're doing that, you might as well come up with a cool phone. It's not like Google doesn't have the money to do this.
So, no, there's no ulterior motive about breaking the cellphone companies' grip on the market. There's no plan to sell it through T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, or even Mosaic telecom. All there is a phone that Google can give to their employees for testing and being creative with. That's it.
I know, I know. It's far more fun to believe that these corporations are doing all of these things as a battle that we can sit back and enjoy. But the reality is usually far more mundane.
In people's defense, one concern with "metered data" is that there is no real way of knowing how big something is that you're downloading.
I have an iPhone with 450 minutes per month and unlimited data. 450 minutes is 7.5 hours. Over one month, that's about 15 minutes a day. 450 minutes is pretty easy to understand. I can talk on the phone for 15 minutes every day or I can chat with a friend for 7.5 hours. If I've used 443 minutes for the month, I can look at my watch and know how much time I have left to talk. We all know what minutes are. We have various ways of monitoring them outside the phone company.
Suppose I have a 30MB/month limit. What's a byte? How does that equate to an image? How does that relate to a website? How does that relate to a video? There's no way--outside of your provider--to really have any idea how much data you're using. If I'm at 29MB for the month, can I visit slashdot.org? Can I watch that episode of Star Trek from CBS.com? Can I use my Google Map or Weather App? I have no way of knowing whether or not a particular action will put me over.
Sure, the network providers can send me a warning that I'm at 29MB out of 30MB. But it doesn't tell me what I can and can't do in any meaningful way.
That's one reason people prefer unmetered plans is that the payment plan is consistant. I pay my $30 and I get a month of Internet access. Whether I use 30MB or 300MB, it's the same charge. Unless I unknowingly travel outside the country, I shouldn't have any unpleasant surprises.
I'm not sure it's possible to meter Internet use in a meaningful way, so I think we're sort of stuck with "unlimited" being the most popular.
One big difference was that, originally, there was also no way to get your "Web App" into the iPhone Springboard (that thing that launches Apps). So you had to hope that your user would bookmark it. Of course, launching your Web App consisted of launching Safari and going to your bookmarks to find the App and then waiting for it to load across AT&T's 2.5G network.
The iPhone has improved enough to use Web Apps. I use sigalert.com on my iPhone to view traffic--it sits in Springboard and, when I tap it, it launches Safari and loads the page. I barely notice that it's not a native application because, even if it was, the slow part would be getting the data from the Internet anyway.
The problem is that Apple promotes native Apps more than Web Apps. Apple has a whole infrastucture for selling Apps, allowing developers to make money selling Apps. The only thing that Apple has for Web Apps is a listing page.
Your attitude makes me sick, you pansy.
Yeah, we smokers are outside in the rain and snow and sleet and cold because we're dedicated to our habit! We could quit smoking and be nice and warm with the rest of you pansies, but we're tougher than that!
If they made you pansy bastards go outside to eat your cheeseburgers, you'd probably quit eating cheeseburgers. You're all just poseur addicts. You have no dedication.
Yeah, sit inside and eat your cheeseburger, you whiny poseur addict. We smokers will be outside in the cold, earning respect from all the real addicts.
Uh... no. Landing on the moon is harder than landing on mars.
While I agree, it's somewhat outside the point.
We will need to figure out how to build a (mostly?) self-sufficient colony. While that can be done in orbit or on the Moon or even on the Earth, by doing it on the Moon we get to Step 2--namely tapping lunar resources.
You're right that landing on the Moon and Mars are totally different. But creating a system to, say, generate oxygen from ice in sufficient quantities to support a colony of 50 people is something that can be figured out on the Moon or Mars. Creating the necessary technology to provide food to 50 people is something that can be figured out on the Moon or Mars.
A moon colony would actually be a waste of resources (in terms of getting a colony on Mars)
Again, I think the Moon is a great way of getting from Earth to Mars.
As I've said previously, the Moon has low gravity but not zero-G. This allows us to use many of the same techniques we use on Earth to build things. For example, if you heat an ore until it is liquid, it can flow from where it is heated into appropriate molds just like we do here on Earth. We don't have to come up with way to get this floating liquid ore into a mold to create, say, a steel girder. But the lower gravity will make it easier to launch bigger/heavier things. Imagine a ship to Mars with lead shielding. It might be too heavy to launch from Earth, but not from the Moon. This assumes we can find lead on the Moon, of course...
Also there's no need for concerns about radioactive fallout when using things like nuclear propulsion. You don't have people saying, "What happens if there's an accident?"
All in all, building a colony on the Moon will allow us to build a better colony on Mars.
That was the problem--he should have used bing.
We did go see Twilight god help me got being so whipped.
No wonder you're an Anonymous Coward. Dating 13 year old girls...tsk tsk...
True. But who says that it has to built on Earth?
Step 1, create a (mostly?) self-sufficient colony on the moon. We'll need this for Mars, anyway, unless we're just going to go to Mars to plant a flag and hit a few golf balls.
Step 2, manufacture stuff on the moon. This is a variation on Step 1, in that some manufacturing will have to be done on the moon anyway in order to be (mostly?) self-sufficient.
Step 3, send people from Earth to Mars by way of the Moon on spacecraft manufactured on the Moon.
As I've said before, I'm in no hurry to get to Mars like we were with the Apollo program. I'd rather spend the money on improving infrastructure so that not only can we go to Mars, we can go pretty much anywhere else we feel like going. Does it mean that I won't live to see a man walk on Mars? Yes. But I'm more interested in having a space infrastructure than in dog-and-pony shows.
The Bastards! How dare they say that they will license in a "Reasonable and Nondiscriminatory" fashion and then turn around and charge their chief competitor more than anyone else?
Suppose I release something GPL. Then I decide not to and, furthermore, sue all the people who downloaded and used it under the GPL. Obviously, that would be a breach of contract.
So if Nokia agreed to be non-discriminatory, that means they can't charge Apple more than they would charge anyone else. That means they can't go after Apple's IP unless they go after everyone else's. Doing otherwise is "Discriminatory."
Fun example: Microsoft creates the Open XML Document format and agrees to charge a "Reasonable or Non-discriminatory" amount for it's use. They then charge Linux projects more than anyone else to use it because Microsoft wants to hurt Linux Office projects.
We'd be screaming bloody murder--and rightly so.
I keep giving examples. From above:
They are saying that they shouldn't have to pay more or give up valuable IP to use those patents since other companies don't have to pay as much or give up IP.
What part of this is confusing?
Suppose HTC gets charged $0.25 per cellphone. Why should Apple have to give up IP worth millions to use the same patents?
Especially if we stopped being pussies and put Project Orion into practice. That would allow us to land basically an aircraft carrier's worth of useful cargo on the surface of Mars pretty easily.
Again, the best place to launch nuclear-powered spacecraft is from the Moon. There's uranium on the Moon which could be used to power the rockets. With less gravity, you could launch six aircraft carrier's worth of useful cargo from the moon. And there's no concerns over fallout.
Of course, there's a neat question of how effectively the science can be done by probes.
Consider the Apollo program versus the Luna program. One was designed to put men on the moon, the other to study the moon with various landers. One cost a great deal of money. The other's cost is pretty much unknown.
On the other hand, if we consider the knowledge gained about the Moon, the Apollo program wins hands down. Just consider that the Apollo program brought back 382 kilograms of moon rocks for further study. The Luna programs returned 0.362 grams of lunar soil. So Apollo brought back more than 1,000,000 times as much of the moon to be studied here on Earth as the Luna probes. Apollo missions also brought back core samples from about 3 meters below the surface, where as the Luna probes mostly brought surface soil--again, better science.
Apollo missions also brought back interesting samples such as the Helium 3 sample returned on Apollo 17 by Harrison Schmitt--a geologist who knew he was looking at something interesting versus a probe that was scooping up whatever was in arm's reach.
So, yes, it's certainly cheaper to send probes. The question is, are they as effective as sending human beings?