The above use cases pretty much mirror mine (as someone who does a lot of cooking, brewing, and woodworking, I find "Hey Siri, set a timer for _____" particularly useful when my hands are covered in _____). Thanks for the show-me-pictures-of tip — didn't know about that one. I also use the Wallet app several times a day for loyalty and membership cards. You can create your own for places that don't offer an app or Wallet integration (YMCA, Biggby, etc.) using PassSource. Works like a charm, and if you include the latitude and longitude when creating a card, you'll get a notification when you're in the vicinity. Lastly, I just upgraded to Sierra at work, and am really digging being able to unlock my workstation just by walking up and tapping a key (I wish it would work in reverse too, locking the machine down when I wander off to a meeting).
I wear a watch because, after spending all day in front of the computer, I prefer to spend my free time working with my hands — woodworking, gardening, cooking, cycling, kayaking, home improvement, etc. Yes, I almost always have my phone on me during those activities, but pulling it out to check the time is oftentimes inconvenient or impossible, and sometimes downright dangerous. That said, I've no plans for wearing my Apple Watch during many of those activities, as I'm too afraid I'm going to break or scratch or drown it. I've no such concerns about my day-to-day mechanical watch.
As someone used to wearing large, heavy mechanical watches (a pair of pre-Citizen, stainless-steel-and-saphire Bulova Accutron chronographs) on a daily basis, I find the Apple Watch neither large nor clunky. In fact, it's quite a bit lighter. I have the 42mm version, and I'm 6' tall, roughly 150 lbs.
I got mine for $400 off of Craigslist. It's the stainless-steel-and-saphire version, and had been worn exactly twice by the seller in the four months she owned it. I see it as somewhat telling she was willing to take a $200+ hit to her pocketbook simply because she had no use for the Watch.
I find the Watch most useful for notifications — being able to quickly scan a text from my girlfriend or see who just sent me an email is freaking awesome. I'm 35, and no luddite, but I still feel pulling out your phone in the middle of a conversation to be rude. Glancing at my watch feels much more natural and far less disruptive.
I really like the activity monitoring functions — I'm already fairly active, but getting reminded to stand up and move around every hour or so is a nice feature. That said, I find it annoying that the pedometer in my iPhone doesn't send data back to my Watch when I'm not wearing it. If I'm out felling a tree and disposing of the corpse, I'm not going to risk destroying my Watch. My phone is far more protected, so I have it on my at all times. All those steps accumulated dragging branches and carrying split wood? My phone knows about them, but not my Watch. Same goes for entering calories burned doing activites Watch doesn't understand — my daily 1.5 mile swim goes un-noted.
Why, in 2016, are none of Apple's devices waterproof?
The bottom button seems extremely underutilized, but I'm not sure what else it could be used for.
Every other day or so, I accidentally take a screenshot when the back of my hand presses the digital crown and the bottom button at the same time.
Glances are useless — the only ones I have installed are Settings, Heart Rate, Just Press Record, and Remote. The rest are more trouble than they're worth, take too long to scroll through, are way, way, way too slow (Weather Underground, for example), or do nothing more than launch an app.
Again on the subject of notifications, the integration between the Apple Watch and the iPhone is outstanding. Only receiving notifications on the Watch *unless* you're already looking at your phone works exactly as it should. Now, why the hell Apple can't fix the integration between these two devices and my laptop or iMac (I don't need a notification on my Macbook if I'm currently in Messages on my phone).
I wish Apple would let developers create their own faces. I feel like none of the built-in ones are exactly what I'm looking for, particularly when it comes to complications.
Speaking of complications, I find they're the easiest way to launch my most-used apps — Weather, Calendar, and Stopwatch.
I like the sensitivity of the Watch when it's in Nightstand mode quite a lot. Lightly bumping the side of my nightstand, or thumping the floor with my foot when I'm across the room brings the display to life every time.
Siri works really well, but is a bit slow. That said, I use it for roughly 50% of my interaction with the Watch.
I've also lived in a few small towns, where you'd have to be crazy to bike because everything is 20 miles apart and uphill and motorists treat you with an odd reverence.
For those of us that commute as well as ride long distance for pleasure, this is actually a major upside. Where I live, most drivers will fully enter the opposite lane to give you as wide a berth as possible. When I commute the ~8.5 miles to work, by the time I reach the city, I've encountered drivers who will lay on the horn, crowd you off the road, and lean out the window screaming obscenities. The worst offenders—and this holds true when I drive, as well—tend to be those people who, for reasons unknown, still refuse to use a hands-free device whilst driving.
I'd just move the GPS to my bike and wire it up to a spare car battery. Then I'd have a good excuse not to work out ("But honey, if I go for a ride, it'll cost us...") AND I'd save money in taxes.
For what it's worth, Quicksilver was easily the driest of the three--it really felt like a history textbook, and I honestly don't blame anyone who gave up on the series (and possibly the author) after trying to make their way through it. I know it took me two tries, and even then it was a struggle. He started picking up steam with the second book though, and the third was quite excellent.
"Lagniappes" is a word I've not come across before. For anyone else who couldn't figure out the meaning via context, or who's looking for a proper definition:
I must be tired. It took me several reads of the headline -- "Museum IDs New Species of Dinosaur" -- before I realized that the museum had apparently discovered a new species of dinosaur, and not that their identification cards had evolved into an otherwise extinct life-form...
I know this one is going to get me flamed into oblivion, and may even result in a rather authoritative knock on my door tomorrow morning, but I'll not be labeled as an anonymous coward either, so here goes...
Through everything that's gone on, from the constant erosion of our rights, to the outright lies that got us involved in what will be a never-ending war, to the fact that the entire administration has shown time and time again that they couldn't give two shits about what the American people at large think, to the complete and utter disregard Bush has for separation of powers ("signing statements," anyone) the one thing I keep hearing is "support the troops."
Support the troops. Support the troops. Support the troops.
My question is, why are the troops supporting this government? If anyone, anyone has the power to put an end to all of this, it is they. Why hasn't the military staged a coup d'état? Why haven't the troops themselves simply said "enough is enough?"
The part that angers me the most is that these are the people who put this administration in office. Twice! They are the very same people who are getting completely shafted by this government. And they are the blue-collar workers of America. They are the ones whose sons and husbands and uncles (and daughters and wives and aunts) are being sent off to die in a country that doesn't give a fuck about us.
Was it so important that their neighbors, both of whom happen to be named Jim, shouldn't be allowed to fuck in the privacy of their own home, let alone consider themselves married (which, by the way, is just a word -- just a word) that they're willing to die for it? That they're willing to lose their social security for it? That they're willing force an absolutely abominable national debt on their children, and their children's children, and so on and so forth?
Was it worth it, to make sure that everyone says "the theory of evolution," but simply refers to the opposing viewpoint as "creationism" (shouldn't it be "the theory of creationism")?
And if not, why the hell haven't our troops done something about it?
There are legitimate uses for HTML mail (think newsletters that people actually subscribe to because they want to stay informed). Unfortunately, just like anything -- on the internet or otherwise -- those that seek to abuse the system end up ruining it for everyone.
That aside, if they're trying to fix security problems, they're pretty much throwing the baby out with the bathwater -- there are decided advantages to being able to use CSS and proper markup, even in email (think smaller messages, and messages that "email designers" can craft once and send to many different email clients, rather than returning to the 1990's internet, with the mess of browser-sniffing and crafting the same page multiple ways to please the various browsers).
I'd say it's far more likely you'll end up with even larger garbage email. Besides the added benefit of well-applied CSS making documents way smaller, have you ever seen the absolute garbage HTML output Word has?
Agreed. If you live "out in the country," get yourself a burner barrel and burn all your paper trash. You'll be amazed at how much less goes into the bin (especially if you compost organics) at the end of the day/week.
If you live in the city, use your fireplace. If you don't have one of those, check to see if your building has an incinerator. If you don't have one of those, uhm... get a cross-cut shredder...?
Imagine, if you will, a recording of your favorite local symphony. Imagine that said recording was created with and is being played back on the highest quality equipment known to man -- equipment so good, in fact, that the resulting audio is perfectly indistinguishable from the original. Finally, imagine leaving the acoustically perfect room this recording is being played back in, closing the door, emptying your styrofoam coffee cup into the garbage can, and then listening to the recording by pressing your ear against the cup and the cup against the door.
Obviously, your favorite symphony now sounds like shit, despite the perfection of the source.
The point is, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. No matter how good (or bad) the source audio is, what reaches your ear is only as good as the speakers it's being played back on (ignoring audiophile quality receivers and the like for the sake of simplicity). Shit speakers will produce shit sound, no matter the source quality. But good (or great) speakers will produce good (or great) sound only if they're working with good (or great) source audio.
Secondly, regarding, the reason why low bit rates were choosen for use with DRM'ed downloadable music is actually three fold. First off, when the MP3 hit the scene, broadband was a pipe-dream for most. Downloading "lossless" audio (e.g., SHN or FLAC audio files) takes forever over dial up (trust me, I still know all about it). Second, with a "lossless" audio source, it would be way too easy to simply play back the audio and record the output (using either a digital cable or some sort of sound card interception software), thus creating a nearly perfect copy of the source audio, sans-DRM. Third, the bandwidth costs for, say, the iTunes music store, were it distributing everything in "lossless" format, would be astounding, to say the least.
Heelllloooo! You've both clearly forgotten this is Slashdot... Nobody reading these comments is going out on "a lot of dates," and anyone actually doing the commenting certainly fairs no better.
Let me play Devil's advocate here for a moment. Technically (and by technically, I mean "according to the RIAA, MPAA, and, of course, the software producers"), aren't you really only buying a little plastic disc with a thin coating of metal on one side? Even though the commercials/advertisements go against this entirely ("Own it today on DVD!"), hasn't their argument all along been that you're licensing the software/video/music?
In other words, you're paying $XXX.XX for this little plastic disc that's yours to keep and do with what you will (use it as a coaster, shove it up your ass, shove it up someone else's ass, etc.). If, subsequent to purchasing your little plastic disc, you decide to use that it for what is arguably it's primary -- but certainly not sole -- purpose, only then do you need to read and/or agree to a license agreement.
Of course, the only thing any sane person would do with it is watch the movie, play the music, or in this case, install the software that just so happens to come with what is now your little plastic disc, but that's beside the point.
To take things a step further, this argument could be used to explain why you can't return opened software, movies, music, etc. After all, you agree to certain terms when you buy your little plastic disc. If it's defective, then the store is obligated to replace it with another. If you take issue with the bits and bytes that just so happen to be included with your little plastic disc, well, tough shit -- they're just along for the ride, you didn't buy them.
I'd actually tend to think that it'll be a smaller, less organized country that finally commits this sort of act. We Americans took that step once -- dropping the big bombs in Japan. We'll likely not make that sort of move again unless a large foreign body (read: not terrorists, but an army of good size) decides to attack us on our own shores. But a smaller eastern European country, who have less to lose and see less options available to them, or maybe the Russians, who decide they've had enough, already... I could certainly see them bombing the living daylights out of some of these middle-eastern countries.
Actually, I think it makes perfect sense. After all, both Brown and Jackson have experience in fucking things up royally. Since I think we can all agree that neither has learned the error of their ways, hiring them and doing the exact opposite of everything they recommend should yield fairly good results.
Or, at the very least, incredibly cocked-up results that are entirely different from previous droppings of the ball. After all, it's just like President Bush says:
There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again.
Cheapskate here. Then again, your figures are a little off -- SBC/Yahoo! (now at&t/Yahoo!) DSL is $29.99/month regular price, and that's for the lowest-end connection (384kbps-1.5mbps), and I pay only $8.95 for 56kbps dial-up.
I mean, Jesus Cristobal Colon Christ in a fucking birch-bark canoe... Netscape 3!
Yeesh!
At least no web designers/developers in their right mind are worried about pleasing you anymore -- the good ones use web standards to insure graceful degradation and the bad ones, well, they never really gave a rats ass anyway...
Heh... Those were the days. The best was going dumpster diving at Property Dispo(sition), and then eBaying/keeping that stuff. They'd get mad as hell if they caught you, but I once made several hundred bucks selling old NeXT equipment they'd tossed.
That aside, true greed (perhaps "stupidity" is a better word) shows itself on the Freecycle lists too. All sorts of "WANTED" messages asking for things like XBoxes, flat-panel monitors, cars, and other things that you'd have to be an idiot to throw away and completely friendless not to already know someone "in the need." It's the primary reason I unsubscribed (well, that and the constant "can you drop it off?" requests).
As of 10.4 (Tiger), IE is no longer included with the OS. However, if you do an upgrade (rather than a clean install), you'll still have IE. For me, this is the final nail in the coffin. No more trying to fudge around with CSS-based sites in hopes of appeasing Mac/IE's "great for its time" (and, in many ways, still better than that of Win/IE 6) rendering engine, which is simply no longer that great. Sure, it's usually not hard to do said fudging, but eventually, we have to draw the line (there are bigger fish to fry). The products has been EOLed, HOPEFULLY, Microsoft will pull the download from their site (if they haven't already), and one user at a time, we'll get rid of the now-pesky thing.
It's not urban legend at all. I have, sitting right next to me, an official survial manual from the Department of the Army (FM 21-76 -- dated March, 1986) which states the following regarding open wounds:
Rinse (do not scrub) the wound with large amounts of the cleanest water available. You can use fresh urine if water is in short supply. Fresh urine is sterile.
Slashdot Mirror
The above use cases pretty much mirror mine (as someone who does a lot of cooking, brewing, and woodworking, I find "Hey Siri, set a timer for _____" particularly useful when my hands are covered in _____). Thanks for the show-me-pictures-of tip — didn't know about that one. I also use the Wallet app several times a day for loyalty and membership cards. You can create your own for places that don't offer an app or Wallet integration (YMCA, Biggby, etc.) using PassSource. Works like a charm, and if you include the latitude and longitude when creating a card, you'll get a notification when you're in the vicinity. Lastly, I just upgraded to Sierra at work, and am really digging being able to unlock my workstation just by walking up and tapping a key (I wish it would work in reverse too, locking the machine down when I wander off to a meeting).
Here are some of my thoughts and observations:
I've also lived in a few small towns, where you'd have to be crazy to bike because everything is 20 miles apart and uphill and motorists treat you with an odd reverence.
For those of us that commute as well as ride long distance for pleasure, this is actually a major upside. Where I live, most drivers will fully enter the opposite lane to give you as wide a berth as possible. When I commute the ~8.5 miles to work, by the time I reach the city, I've encountered drivers who will lay on the horn, crowd you off the road, and lean out the window screaming obscenities. The worst offenders—and this holds true when I drive, as well—tend to be those people who, for reasons unknown, still refuse to use a hands-free device whilst driving.
I'd just move the GPS to my bike and wire it up to a spare car battery. Then I'd have a good excuse not to work out ("But honey, if I go for a ride, it'll cost us...") AND I'd save money in taxes.
For what it's worth, Quicksilver was easily the driest of the three--it really felt like a history textbook, and I honestly don't blame anyone who gave up on the series (and possibly the author) after trying to make their way through it. I know it took me two tries, and even then it was a struggle. He started picking up steam with the second book though, and the third was quite excellent.
"Lagniappes" is a word I've not come across before. For anyone else who couldn't figure out the meaning via context, or who's looking for a proper definition:
lagniappe (lan yap)
noun
something given as a bonus or extra gift.
ORIGIN Louisiana French, from Spanish la ñapa.
I must be tired. It took me several reads of the headline -- "Museum IDs New Species of Dinosaur" -- before I realized that the museum had apparently discovered a new species of dinosaur, and not that their identification cards had evolved into an otherwise extinct life-form...
I know this one is going to get me flamed into oblivion, and may even result in a rather authoritative knock on my door tomorrow morning, but I'll not be labeled as an anonymous coward either, so here goes...
Through everything that's gone on, from the constant erosion of our rights, to the outright lies that got us involved in what will be a never-ending war, to the fact that the entire administration has shown time and time again that they couldn't give two shits about what the American people at large think, to the complete and utter disregard Bush has for separation of powers ("signing statements," anyone) the one thing I keep hearing is "support the troops."
Support the troops. Support the troops. Support the troops.
My question is, why are the troops supporting this government? If anyone, anyone has the power to put an end to all of this, it is they. Why hasn't the military staged a coup d'état? Why haven't the troops themselves simply said "enough is enough?"
The part that angers me the most is that these are the people who put this administration in office. Twice! They are the very same people who are getting completely shafted by this government. And they are the blue-collar workers of America. They are the ones whose sons and husbands and uncles (and daughters and wives and aunts) are being sent off to die in a country that doesn't give a fuck about us.
Was it so important that their neighbors, both of whom happen to be named Jim, shouldn't be allowed to fuck in the privacy of their own home, let alone consider themselves married (which, by the way, is just a word -- just a word) that they're willing to die for it? That they're willing to lose their social security for it? That they're willing force an absolutely abominable national debt on their children, and their children's children, and so on and so forth?
Was it worth it, to make sure that everyone says "the theory of evolution," but simply refers to the opposing viewpoint as "creationism" (shouldn't it be "the theory of creationism")?
And if not, why the hell haven't our troops done something about it?
There are legitimate uses for HTML mail (think newsletters that people actually subscribe to because they want to stay informed). Unfortunately, just like anything -- on the internet or otherwise -- those that seek to abuse the system end up ruining it for everyone.
That aside, if they're trying to fix security problems, they're pretty much throwing the baby out with the bathwater -- there are decided advantages to being able to use CSS and proper markup, even in email (think smaller messages, and messages that "email designers" can craft once and send to many different email clients, rather than returning to the 1990's internet, with the mess of browser-sniffing and crafting the same page multiple ways to please the various browsers).
I'd say it's far more likely you'll end up with even larger garbage email. Besides the added benefit of well-applied CSS making documents way smaller, have you ever seen the absolute garbage HTML output Word has?
Agreed. If you live "out in the country," get yourself a burner barrel and burn all your paper trash. You'll be amazed at how much less goes into the bin (especially if you compost organics) at the end of the day/week.
If you live in the city, use your fireplace. If you don't have one of those, check to see if your building has an incinerator. If you don't have one of those, uhm... get a cross-cut shredder...?
Imagine, if you will, a recording of your favorite local symphony. Imagine that said recording was created with and is being played back on the highest quality equipment known to man -- equipment so good, in fact, that the resulting audio is perfectly indistinguishable from the original. Finally, imagine leaving the acoustically perfect room this recording is being played back in, closing the door, emptying your styrofoam coffee cup into the garbage can, and then listening to the recording by pressing your ear against the cup and the cup against the door.
Obviously, your favorite symphony now sounds like shit, despite the perfection of the source.
The point is, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. No matter how good (or bad) the source audio is, what reaches your ear is only as good as the speakers it's being played back on (ignoring audiophile quality receivers and the like for the sake of simplicity). Shit speakers will produce shit sound, no matter the source quality. But good (or great) speakers will produce good (or great) sound only if they're working with good (or great) source audio.
Secondly, regarding, the reason why low bit rates were choosen for use with DRM'ed downloadable music is actually three fold. First off, when the MP3 hit the scene, broadband was a pipe-dream for most. Downloading "lossless" audio (e.g., SHN or FLAC audio files) takes forever over dial up (trust me, I still know all about it). Second, with a "lossless" audio source, it would be way too easy to simply play back the audio and record the output (using either a digital cable or some sort of sound card interception software), thus creating a nearly perfect copy of the source audio, sans-DRM. Third, the bandwidth costs for, say, the iTunes music store, were it distributing everything in "lossless" format, would be astounding, to say the least.
Heelllloooo! You've both clearly forgotten this is Slashdot... Nobody reading these comments is going out on "a lot of dates," and anyone actually doing the commenting certainly fairs no better.
Let me play Devil's advocate here for a moment. Technically (and by technically, I mean "according to the RIAA, MPAA, and, of course, the software producers"), aren't you really only buying a little plastic disc with a thin coating of metal on one side? Even though the commercials/advertisements go against this entirely ("Own it today on DVD!"), hasn't their argument all along been that you're licensing the software/video/music?
In other words, you're paying $XXX.XX for this little plastic disc that's yours to keep and do with what you will (use it as a coaster, shove it up your ass, shove it up someone else's ass, etc.). If, subsequent to purchasing your little plastic disc, you decide to use that it for what is arguably it's primary -- but certainly not sole -- purpose, only then do you need to read and/or agree to a license agreement.
Of course, the only thing any sane person would do with it is watch the movie, play the music, or in this case, install the software that just so happens to come with what is now your little plastic disc, but that's beside the point.
To take things a step further, this argument could be used to explain why you can't return opened software, movies, music, etc. After all, you agree to certain terms when you buy your little plastic disc. If it's defective, then the store is obligated to replace it with another. If you take issue with the bits and bytes that just so happen to be included with your little plastic disc, well, tough shit -- they're just along for the ride, you didn't buy them.
Well said. Well said.
I'd actually tend to think that it'll be a smaller, less organized country that finally commits this sort of act. We Americans took that step once -- dropping the big bombs in Japan. We'll likely not make that sort of move again unless a large foreign body (read: not terrorists, but an army of good size) decides to attack us on our own shores. But a smaller eastern European country, who have less to lose and see less options available to them, or maybe the Russians, who decide they've had enough, already... I could certainly see them bombing the living daylights out of some of these middle-eastern countries.
Or, at the very least, incredibly cocked-up results that are entirely different from previous droppings of the ball. After all, it's just like President Bush says:
Cheapskate here. Then again, your figures are a little off -- SBC/Yahoo! (now at&t/Yahoo!) DSL is $29.99/month regular price, and that's for the lowest-end connection (384kbps-1.5mbps), and I pay only $8.95 for 56kbps dial-up.
Made my night. Thanks.
You're right, I don't believe it.
I mean, Jesus Cristobal Colon Christ in a fucking birch-bark canoe... Netscape 3!
Yeesh!
At least no web designers/developers in their right mind are worried about pleasing you anymore -- the good ones use web standards to insure graceful degradation and the bad ones, well, they never really gave a rats ass anyway...
If you think most users, dial-up or broadband, take the time to update all their software then it is you who are greatly mistaken.
After all, why the fuck do you think SP2 ships with automatic updates enabled?
Dear God that's funny.
Heh... Those were the days. The best was going dumpster diving at Property Dispo(sition), and then eBaying/keeping that stuff. They'd get mad as hell if they caught you, but I once made several hundred bucks selling old NeXT equipment they'd tossed.
That aside, true greed (perhaps "stupidity" is a better word) shows itself on the Freecycle lists too. All sorts of "WANTED" messages asking for things like XBoxes, flat-panel monitors, cars, and other things that you'd have to be an idiot to throw away and completely friendless not to already know someone "in the need." It's the primary reason I unsubscribed (well, that and the constant "can you drop it off?" requests).
As of 10.4 (Tiger), IE is no longer included with the OS. However, if you do an upgrade (rather than a clean install), you'll still have IE. For me, this is the final nail in the coffin. No more trying to fudge around with CSS-based sites in hopes of appeasing Mac/IE's "great for its time" (and, in many ways, still better than that of Win/IE 6) rendering engine, which is simply no longer that great. Sure, it's usually not hard to do said fudging, but eventually, we have to draw the line (there are bigger fish to fry). The products has been EOLed, HOPEFULLY, Microsoft will pull the download from their site (if they haven't already), and one user at a time, we'll get rid of the now-pesky thing.