"Those links are bunk. The first one doesn't report on how it got its numbers"
You mean the massive black bold text underneath the statistics wasn't enough of a clue for you?
"BBC link is based on shipments and we all know anybody can stuff a sales channel. How many did Samsung actually SELL. Apple admits to selling everything they ship while Samsung don't report sales figures. So lets see Samsung's numbers and then we will have a bit more truth as you say."
Ah yes, the old "God is real, prove he's not" argument. The fact is claiming companies like Samsung stuff a sales channel, and Apple doesn't is a terrible argument, because you simply have no proof that Samsung stuffs sales channels to increase shipment figures, more so than Apple does.
The obvious problem with the channel stuffing argument is that it doesn't even make sense, you can't stuff a channel to the order of millions of units, retailers don't just blindly accept stuff if they think they can't sell it, and many countries have strict laws against trying to hype up your firm with such practices, particularly when you trade on stock exchanges.
Really, if the channel stuffing argument is the best people can come up with, it's a sign their argument is already lost. We heard the same argument between PS3/360/Wii fanboys too, and what a bunch of tosh it ended up being there also. It's the classic "Look, I have an irrational love for this brand, I want it to win at all costs, I don't have any other argument to claim it will, so I'm just going to resort to the channel stuffing argument" response.
Really, if you genuinely think channel stuff is the reason for some set of sales figures you disagree with, them get some evidence to prove it, otherwise one can only assume it's a desperate attempt to not be wrong.
I said the Samsung Galaxy SII has been outselling the iPhone 4. It hasn't been outselling all iPhone models combined, once you factor in iPhone 4S sales, and 3GS sales the iPhone outsells just the Galaxy S II it by 4%.
Model to model comparison though and the Galaxy S II outsells either model individually, factor in the entire Galaxy range, and the entire Galaxy range has been outselling the entire iPhone range.
Note that those stats are for the UK market, however judging by the sales figures of Samsung's entire smartphone range, against Apple's entire phone range, provided in the second link for global sales, it seems quite representative.
Of course, you could've just clicked the link and figured it out for yourself.
The thing about banning internal e-mail was originally labelled by the press of doing away with e-mail altogether, which it wasn't. The article on it on the BBC was actually quite interesting, I was dismissive of the idea at first, but it was a pretty good article and worth opening your mind to.
My only concern is about auditing, if communications occur by IM, then where is the audit trail?
If you look at the first survey for the UK, the Galaxy S II has been outselling the iPhone 4 white, and black model combined, and it's only when you then factor in the 4S white, and black model, that the iPhone finally overtakes the Galaxy S II in sales.
What all stats coming out in the last couple of months appear to demonstrate is that you're quite wrong - the Galaxy S II as a single model, has been outselling either the iPhone 4, or the iPhone 4S as a single model. When Samsung combines all it's Smartphones, as the iPhone 3GS, 4, and 4S are lumped together as if they're equally a single offering, it's shifting over 7% more handsets than Apple.
It was a valid argument early on, but it just doesn't seem to really hold any weight anymore. This is the fundamental problem with people who feel the need to defend Apple, they originally said Android would never overtake the iPhone, then when it happened they said, no individual manufacturer will ever overtake Apple, now it's happened they're saying no individual handset is beating the iPhone, but even that seems it's almost certainly happening now. Even if it's not quite the case yet and the stats are wrong and the Galaxy S II isn't outselling a specific iPhone model, and almost even all iPhone models combined, then it's still a close enough call such that terms like "Apple dwarfs them" is laughably incorrect rhetoric.
Apple's marketshare for tablets has already declined this year, it's now down as far as 62%, having been up at around 90% last year:
This is with countless false starts (HP's tablet, RIM's playbook etc.), lacklustre Android offerings, and even some Android tablets being banned from sale in some markets. As these issues start to fade and the Android tablets pick up strength, i.e. through inclusion of things like Android 4, then the market for the iPad isn't suddenly going to grow. It's opportunity to thrive has been possibly bigger than ever with all the setbacks competitors have faced, yet it's marketshare has still declined.
I'm not talking Apple down because I have some irrational will to see them fail, I'm not that much of a fanboy - I do disagree with many of their corporate decisions, but what I do like is to see a bit of truthfulness in these sorts of discussions, because fanboys lying to themselves and agreeing with each other is a largely meaningless sport - a fanboy can spout some crap about how their pet brand is going to win some arbitrary war all they want, but it wont change reality if it then doesn't. By all means I may be wrong, and Apple may see a resurgence that allows it to grab increasing levels of marketshare, and that's fair enough if someone wants to make that point, but throwing around clear bullshit like "no individual Android tablet is going to have more than 5%" with no suggestion as to why that might be the case when it's not been the case with phones is meaningless.
There's no doubt Apple is going to continue to be a massively profitable company thanks to the iPhone and iPad in the near to medium term, but I believe they've made some serious mis-steps that has allowed Android to take the lead, and that's led to an inevitable snowballing on it's behalf - the more marketshare it gets, the more developers begin to develop for it, the more open it is, t
Well of course, but if they put forward 7 patents, presumably ones they felt were strong enough to hold at least some merit, and 6 were overturned, and one was validated in the US, but invalidated in Europe then do they really want to keep spending money on court cases that ultimately invalidate more of their patent warchest than it validates?
I doubt they'd have gone in with weak patents from the outset, because if you're going to spend money on this sort of litigation you might as well go in with the intention of guaranteeing the strongest win possible so that you can strongarm other manufacturers with your newly validated set of patents. If 1 patent validated only in the US out of 7 is really the best they can muster, I'm not sure there's much at all to worry about.
The other factor of course is that it doesn't really matter too much how many times they try to repeat this tactic, the process is slow, and an entire generation of phones can be built, sold and made obsolete between judgements. It'd take Microsoft decades to get through their patent chest, years to even get through an absolutely tiny percentage of it, and by that time, they might have lost the mobile battle anyway. For the same reason this is why Apple's hollow victory against HTC is irrelevant - by the time the judgement in Apple's favour comes into play, HTC has long abandoned the infringing handsets in question. Technology moves too fast for lawyers to cope with, in almost every respect.
Well indeed, my anecdote wasn't designed as a fanboy pissing contest, merely an illustration of the fact that this time of year (not just one week before christmas, but from around the beginning of December) things get a bit crazy for online retailers, the level of service drops dramatically, and more people than usual do suffer delayed products and so forth. Your anecdote of usually good service doesn't seem to hold any relevance to my point that this time of year, service is decreased for a greater number of people than usual.
I don't even really have a problem with that per-se if they're transparent about it, but obviously when they offer guaranteed next day delivery and it arrives 3 weeks later, something has gone horribly wrong and at that point they should be removing the guaranteed option as they clearly couldn't actually guarantee it. In my case, it added insult to injury that I had to resort to trading standards and the small claims court to even get them to refund what I paid for that failed guarantee because their CS refused.
When I ordered books from them in the summer I too received them next day, great service as I'd expect. But that doesn't change the fact that this time of year, you see an increase in pissed off customers as a result of degradation in service due to increased volume. It doesn't change the fact that I personally wouldn't rely on them for anything time sensitive from aroud the beginning of December to actually deliver on any promises they make about delivery times.
You're also right that this isn't an Amazon only thing, other retailers suffer the same problem, but I thought I'd already made that clear.
To be fair I can't really blame him, this time last year I had the same feelings about Amazon as their guaranteed next day deliveries took 3 weeks to arrive.
This year I learnt my lesson, and just haven't bought anything from them.
As you say, it's a seasonal thing, even retailers like Amazon aren't equipped to deal with the volume this time of year and fuck up people's orders with such regularity that it's like they're actually getting a hardon over it. Throw in the stress of people wanting to get everything sorted for christmas so little Timmy and the Wife aren't left with nothing to open on Christmas day and you've got a perfect storm for the creation of retailer trolling.
"6 of the Microsoft patents were thrown out and only 1 was upheld."
Yes, I'm not sure why some people are saying this ruling strengthens Microsoft's hand. The ruling only effects sales in America, and only applies to one patent. Companies aren't going to be willing to pay Microsoft as much for one patent only valid in the US as they would've been for 6 patents valid worldwide. If anything I think this will lessen the amount Microsoft will be able to get out of companies over Android - no one's going to pay what they were paying for just a single feature in the American market.
Sure it strengthens Microsoft's hand in getting other companies to license that patent, if they want it, but it doesn't strengthen their hand in the amount they can extort, it weakens their bargaining chip dramatically. Companies wont even be willing to pay Microsoft full stop for their patents on handsets sold outside the US, and they'll only be licensing at most 1 patent for handsets sold inside the US.
"And for the vast majority of these things, Google doesn't do anywhere near as good a job as Wolfram Alpha."
The vast majority? you mean mathematical things? That's hardly the vast majority by any measure. To say Wolfram Alpha is better than Google at most searches is laughable, it's what Wolfram claimed on it's release, but it soon became the laughing stock of the internet precisely because it didn't even come close to living up to that hype.
Worse, the things Wolfram Alpha fails at are precisely the type of things people ask - day to day questions, and that's why Google has been number one for so long, the competitors don't get that and never have.
I just tried precisely the same type of query with Wolfram, "What is the population of , England?" and it just gives me the population of England. Interestingly, if I ask it the population of a city, like Barnsley, it lists only the urban area population, and not the full borough population. Google lists both clearly in it's first result. When I tried my Ford focus headlight changing video example, it failed spectacularly, and couldn't even try:
"Functionality for this topic is under development..."
So it seems even the areas you believe it is strong, it's actually pretty weak, and it can't do the more lifestyle oriented (rather than mathematical/statistical) queries well either.
Right, but it's just a pre-programmed function, there's no AI going on there.
Similarly if you ask Google right now to make an appointment in your calendar it can't, because that's application specific.
But these are the really easy things to implement, the hard ones are the ones where you need sources of information, the ones where Apple resorts to the likes of Wikipedia, and Wolfram alpha, and the ones where Google can do better.
See my other post in this thread for examples of where Siri will struggle, because Apple doesn't have the backend software required, whilst Google does. One example I used is:
"Can you show me a video of how to change my Ford Focus' headlight?"
Google can do this sort of thing, it can take you straight to a video showing how to do just that.
The fundamental point is that whilst Google hasn't put together their system yet, they have the tools, and they have the tools to do it better. There is no magical AI behind Siri, there is at best a bunch of hard coded functions and responses, and a relatively weak fall back to search engines.
This is why there was such a fuss about Siri failing to find abortion clinics recently - because Apple just hadn't hard coded that function in, something which Google has long been able to do as standard.
Well it's simple, try typing any of your Siri queries into Google, and come back and tell me if Google's responses are any worse.
Certainly last time I tried this, using a list of things Siri failed to answer, Google was able to.
Many of the responses Siri is giving that people call "attitude" or "AI" are actually just hard coded responses to specific questions. I'm pretty fucking sure Google is capable of doing that too.
Yes, this is why I never got why people are so amazed with Siri, it's far from a fascinating new peice of software magically capable of understanding people in a way computers never have before.
To demonstrate this is quite simple, we know that voice recognition is pretty advanced right now, it's quite common for computers to be able to convert voice into text. So now try this, type a question directly into Google, and see if it responds as well as Siri does? It did? well, who'd have thought it.
All Siri is is a voice to text translator which then passes the text to a remote search engine. There are some slight changes required from a standard search engine, like referring queries involving key terms such as "appointment" to certain apps, in this case, the calendar app, and in Siri's case, adding in "attitude" like creating preset responses to certain questions, but it's really all very simple. A quick search will show any number of things Siri can't answer which proves it's not the super intelligent AI some fanboys are selling it as.
But this is where it gets interesting, Google has been researching voice recognition, translation, and search, perhaps more than any other company in the world, and because of things like Google Voice, and Google translate, it likely has more raw data too. Because of this they can handle more languages, more accents, and more local expressions than any other company could. They have everything they need to make the first stage of such a tool better.
Of course, Google also excel at search, not just text search, but image search and so forth too. This means that Google has the tools to not just create a competitor that understands more people, with more accents across more languages, but that is more flexible too. With things like image search, Google's offering could handle queries like "What is this?" by doing an image search on whatever the device's camera is pointed at. With their translation tools it can act as an interpreter. But even on basic queries Google has a far better plain text search engine to work from than Apple has available to it for Siri, one that has the potential to respond to current events ("Is it true that Kim Jong Il is dead?") and with a variety of multimedia responses to boot ("Can you show me a video of how to change my Ford Focus' headlight?"). This is not to even mention the fact Google has got quite good at giving search results that are more relevant based on your language, and location to boot.
Of course, this doesn't mean that Google will get it right, they've had plenty of failures of products too that should have been good, but weren't.
But the Apple fanboys writing off Google's capability to do this already are laughably naive, Google has all the components to produce a far superior system to Siri, the only question is, will they? and the only way we'll find the answer to that, is to just wait and see.
Yeah I never really understood why all these sensitive factories are built in earthquake and flood zones.
Why don't they build them over here in the UK, where the worst we get is a bit of bad snow every 30 years, a bit of wind that sometimes knocks a few leaves of the trees, or if you're really stupid, a wet carpet because you bought a has that was built on a flood plane.
Yes, but you've simply reiterated that they are separate - that much is clear. The question is why are they separate, why can't those infractions be dealt with under pre-existing civilian law and justice systems that everyone else is subject to?
There's obviously a reason for handling military justice separately, but I'm not clear what it is - as I say, they closest I've found to an explanation previously is precisely so that the military can deal with things more informally, and hence in a more timely manner, but as I say, if that is the case, is that really appropriate for a case that deserves much greater scrutiny? and again, as I say, if that isn't the case then I'd love to better understand the real reason for even having the separate justice systems.
Well, obviously they were questions, so your assertion to the counter is completely false. The fact you see them as negative merely highlights the point that you disagree with my previous view of the situation, and take offence to that.
But this is really a problem for you to deal with yourself. If you take offence to someone being wrong, and aren't willing to challenge their point, and offer them a chance to reassess their viewpoint before you get angry at them, then you must live a very angry lifestyle. This of course begs the question, if you're so intolerant of other people's viewpoints, then perhaps you're precisely the type of person I was talking about?
I've had a search and can't find much to answer the question as to why military trials are separate in the first place. Part the reason I assumed military trials were separate was because it meant it allowed the military to deal with things in their own way. As part of this I was under the impression it meant without the need for as much rigour as the civilian system. I've previously heard the reason for this is based on the argument that if you're in a warzone for example, that if you suspect with a high degree of certainty that someone is guilty of some crime, but can't prove it, you still need to be able to deal with them, because not doing so would be too risky in a combat situation.
Of course I might be wrong, which is precisely why I was intrigued to hear if there are indeed safeguards in place to ensure in a case like this, where there is scope for a proper investigation and trial, that it will indeed be carried out with the same rigour as you would expect in a civilian trial.
My concern is that if it is indeed the case that the same rigour isn't applied in military trials, then a military trial is simply being used to fit Manning up because they knew full well they couldn't get him in a civilian trial. The precedent for this would of course be Guantanmo, where the idea of military trials was put forward precisely because the US government supposedly knew it had no chance of conviction of most Guantanamo inmates under civilian trials.
You know, not everyone on Slashdot has their viewpoints set in stone. There are at least one or two of us here still that are capable of taking in new information and changing our viewpoint based on the balance of evidence, rather than posting asserting that some preconceived notion is correct, despite not actually knowing that to be the case with some degree of accuracy.
I don't know a lot about US military trials, which is why I phrased my post largely as a question, as what I understood to be the case thus far was based largely on previous posts on the subject.
So to continue the point, what exactly is the goal of this pre-trial, what does it determine? how is the jury of peers decided? is it determined by a genuinely randomly selected set of soldiers? is there any scope for corruption to allow it to effectively become a show trial?
I was going to ask, in a military trial, does the evidence even matter? Isn't the case basically just decided on by some high ranking military personnel? Is there any law or repercussions that would convince them to give a toss what the evidence says anyway?
If this was a civilian trial it'd all be rather interesting to hear the arguments and see how they justify the decided punishment in the face of given evidence (or in the face of his unlikely acquittal), but in a military trial I don't think it all even matters does it? If the military has prejudged him to be guilty, and don't care for any outcome other than that then that's what'll happen regardless of the merits of his case no?
The US created the WTO to enforce US style IP laws across the globe because WIPO wasn't playing ball due to the fact it was democratic and the small African nations wanting cheap drugs to keep their people alive outvoted the US and it's strong IP law lobby.
WTO is very much the US' puppet organisation and not vice versa. This is also why the US pushes countries to sign up to it and adhere to it's rulings, whilst simultaneously ignoring rulings against it by the WTO itself.
I'm not sure how one could claim the WTO is in charge of the US when the whole US the WTO exists is to push US trade policy and the subvert the previously more rational, fair, and democratic nature of WIPO. They're both shit now though, in order to avoid becoming obsolete, WIPO is now adhering to the US line, which is just what the US wanted.
I think all hardware was better back then tbh as I also have some hardware from that era that is still perfectly functioning.
It's around the early to mid 2000s that quality started to deteriorate and companies like Maxtor and Fujitsu started chucking out drives which you'd be lucky if they'd even last a year, and things like RAM seemed to start having higher failure rates at this point, unless you were willing to pay for the really high end stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
"Those links are bunk. The first one doesn't report on how it got its numbers"
You mean the massive black bold text underneath the statistics wasn't enough of a clue for you?
"BBC link is based on shipments and we all know anybody can stuff a sales channel. How many did Samsung actually SELL. Apple admits to selling everything they ship while Samsung don't report sales figures. So lets see Samsung's numbers and then we will have a bit more truth as you say."
Ah yes, the old "God is real, prove he's not" argument. The fact is claiming companies like Samsung stuff a sales channel, and Apple doesn't is a terrible argument, because you simply have no proof that Samsung stuffs sales channels to increase shipment figures, more so than Apple does.
The obvious problem with the channel stuffing argument is that it doesn't even make sense, you can't stuff a channel to the order of millions of units, retailers don't just blindly accept stuff if they think they can't sell it, and many countries have strict laws against trying to hype up your firm with such practices, particularly when you trade on stock exchanges.
Really, if the channel stuffing argument is the best people can come up with, it's a sign their argument is already lost. We heard the same argument between PS3/360/Wii fanboys too, and what a bunch of tosh it ended up being there also. It's the classic "Look, I have an irrational love for this brand, I want it to win at all costs, I don't have any other argument to claim it will, so I'm just going to resort to the channel stuffing argument" response.
Really, if you genuinely think channel stuff is the reason for some set of sales figures you disagree with, them get some evidence to prove it, otherwise one can only assume it's a desperate attempt to not be wrong.
No, that's not what I said at all.
I said the Samsung Galaxy SII has been outselling the iPhone 4. It hasn't been outselling all iPhone models combined, once you factor in iPhone 4S sales, and 3GS sales the iPhone outsells just the Galaxy S II it by 4%.
Model to model comparison though and the Galaxy S II outsells either model individually, factor in the entire Galaxy range, and the entire Galaxy range has been outselling the entire iPhone range.
Note that those stats are for the UK market, however judging by the sales figures of Samsung's entire smartphone range, against Apple's entire phone range, provided in the second link for global sales, it seems quite representative.
Of course, you could've just clicked the link and figured it out for yourself.
The thing about banning internal e-mail was originally labelled by the press of doing away with e-mail altogether, which it wasn't. The article on it on the BBC was actually quite interesting, I was dismissive of the idea at first, but it was a pretty good article and worth opening your mind to.
My only concern is about auditing, if communications occur by IM, then where is the audit trail?
"But look at any individual manufacturer, and that "All Android Phone" share is sliced into so many tiny pieces that Apple dwarfs them."
Really?
Many sets of stats, like these:
http://www.mobilesplease.co.uk/news/nokia-lumia-slow-start/
and these:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15489523
Suggests that's simply not true.
If you look at the first survey for the UK, the Galaxy S II has been outselling the iPhone 4 white, and black model combined, and it's only when you then factor in the 4S white, and black model, that the iPhone finally overtakes the Galaxy S II in sales.
What all stats coming out in the last couple of months appear to demonstrate is that you're quite wrong - the Galaxy S II as a single model, has been outselling either the iPhone 4, or the iPhone 4S as a single model. When Samsung combines all it's Smartphones, as the iPhone 3GS, 4, and 4S are lumped together as if they're equally a single offering, it's shifting over 7% more handsets than Apple.
It was a valid argument early on, but it just doesn't seem to really hold any weight anymore. This is the fundamental problem with people who feel the need to defend Apple, they originally said Android would never overtake the iPhone, then when it happened they said, no individual manufacturer will ever overtake Apple, now it's happened they're saying no individual handset is beating the iPhone, but even that seems it's almost certainly happening now. Even if it's not quite the case yet and the stats are wrong and the Galaxy S II isn't outselling a specific iPhone model, and almost even all iPhone models combined, then it's still a close enough call such that terms like "Apple dwarfs them" is laughably incorrect rhetoric.
Apple's marketshare for tablets has already declined this year, it's now down as far as 62%, having been up at around 90% last year:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mobile/display/20111215172936_Apple_s_Tablet_Market_Share_Drops_to_61_5_in_Q3_2011_IDC.html
This is with countless false starts (HP's tablet, RIM's playbook etc.), lacklustre Android offerings, and even some Android tablets being banned from sale in some markets. As these issues start to fade and the Android tablets pick up strength, i.e. through inclusion of things like Android 4, then the market for the iPad isn't suddenly going to grow. It's opportunity to thrive has been possibly bigger than ever with all the setbacks competitors have faced, yet it's marketshare has still declined.
I'm not talking Apple down because I have some irrational will to see them fail, I'm not that much of a fanboy - I do disagree with many of their corporate decisions, but what I do like is to see a bit of truthfulness in these sorts of discussions, because fanboys lying to themselves and agreeing with each other is a largely meaningless sport - a fanboy can spout some crap about how their pet brand is going to win some arbitrary war all they want, but it wont change reality if it then doesn't. By all means I may be wrong, and Apple may see a resurgence that allows it to grab increasing levels of marketshare, and that's fair enough if someone wants to make that point, but throwing around clear bullshit like "no individual Android tablet is going to have more than 5%" with no suggestion as to why that might be the case when it's not been the case with phones is meaningless.
There's no doubt Apple is going to continue to be a massively profitable company thanks to the iPhone and iPad in the near to medium term, but I believe they've made some serious mis-steps that has allowed Android to take the lead, and that's led to an inevitable snowballing on it's behalf - the more marketshare it gets, the more developers begin to develop for it, the more open it is, t
Well of course, but if they put forward 7 patents, presumably ones they felt were strong enough to hold at least some merit, and 6 were overturned, and one was validated in the US, but invalidated in Europe then do they really want to keep spending money on court cases that ultimately invalidate more of their patent warchest than it validates?
I doubt they'd have gone in with weak patents from the outset, because if you're going to spend money on this sort of litigation you might as well go in with the intention of guaranteeing the strongest win possible so that you can strongarm other manufacturers with your newly validated set of patents. If 1 patent validated only in the US out of 7 is really the best they can muster, I'm not sure there's much at all to worry about.
The other factor of course is that it doesn't really matter too much how many times they try to repeat this tactic, the process is slow, and an entire generation of phones can be built, sold and made obsolete between judgements. It'd take Microsoft decades to get through their patent chest, years to even get through an absolutely tiny percentage of it, and by that time, they might have lost the mobile battle anyway. For the same reason this is why Apple's hollow victory against HTC is irrelevant - by the time the judgement in Apple's favour comes into play, HTC has long abandoned the infringing handsets in question. Technology moves too fast for lawyers to cope with, in almost every respect.
Well indeed, my anecdote wasn't designed as a fanboy pissing contest, merely an illustration of the fact that this time of year (not just one week before christmas, but from around the beginning of December) things get a bit crazy for online retailers, the level of service drops dramatically, and more people than usual do suffer delayed products and so forth. Your anecdote of usually good service doesn't seem to hold any relevance to my point that this time of year, service is decreased for a greater number of people than usual.
I don't even really have a problem with that per-se if they're transparent about it, but obviously when they offer guaranteed next day delivery and it arrives 3 weeks later, something has gone horribly wrong and at that point they should be removing the guaranteed option as they clearly couldn't actually guarantee it. In my case, it added insult to injury that I had to resort to trading standards and the small claims court to even get them to refund what I paid for that failed guarantee because their CS refused.
When I ordered books from them in the summer I too received them next day, great service as I'd expect. But that doesn't change the fact that this time of year, you see an increase in pissed off customers as a result of degradation in service due to increased volume. It doesn't change the fact that I personally wouldn't rely on them for anything time sensitive from aroud the beginning of December to actually deliver on any promises they make about delivery times.
You're also right that this isn't an Amazon only thing, other retailers suffer the same problem, but I thought I'd already made that clear.
To be fair I can't really blame him, this time last year I had the same feelings about Amazon as their guaranteed next day deliveries took 3 weeks to arrive.
This year I learnt my lesson, and just haven't bought anything from them.
As you say, it's a seasonal thing, even retailers like Amazon aren't equipped to deal with the volume this time of year and fuck up people's orders with such regularity that it's like they're actually getting a hardon over it. Throw in the stress of people wanting to get everything sorted for christmas so little Timmy and the Wife aren't left with nothing to open on Christmas day and you've got a perfect storm for the creation of retailer trolling.
"6 of the Microsoft patents were thrown out and only 1 was upheld."
Yes, I'm not sure why some people are saying this ruling strengthens Microsoft's hand. The ruling only effects sales in America, and only applies to one patent. Companies aren't going to be willing to pay Microsoft as much for one patent only valid in the US as they would've been for 6 patents valid worldwide. If anything I think this will lessen the amount Microsoft will be able to get out of companies over Android - no one's going to pay what they were paying for just a single feature in the American market.
Sure it strengthens Microsoft's hand in getting other companies to license that patent, if they want it, but it doesn't strengthen their hand in the amount they can extort, it weakens their bargaining chip dramatically. Companies wont even be willing to pay Microsoft full stop for their patents on handsets sold outside the US, and they'll only be licensing at most 1 patent for handsets sold inside the US.
"And for the vast majority of these things, Google doesn't do anywhere near as good a job as Wolfram Alpha."
The vast majority? you mean mathematical things? That's hardly the vast majority by any measure. To say Wolfram Alpha is better than Google at most searches is laughable, it's what Wolfram claimed on it's release, but it soon became the laughing stock of the internet precisely because it didn't even come close to living up to that hype.
Worse, the things Wolfram Alpha fails at are precisely the type of things people ask - day to day questions, and that's why Google has been number one for so long, the competitors don't get that and never have.
I just tried precisely the same type of query with Wolfram, "What is the population of , England?" and it just gives me the population of England. Interestingly, if I ask it the population of a city, like Barnsley, it lists only the urban area population, and not the full borough population. Google lists both clearly in it's first result. When I tried my Ford focus headlight changing video example, it failed spectacularly, and couldn't even try:
"Functionality for this topic is under development..."
So it seems even the areas you believe it is strong, it's actually pretty weak, and it can't do the more lifestyle oriented (rather than mathematical/statistical) queries well either.
Right, but it's just a pre-programmed function, there's no AI going on there.
Similarly if you ask Google right now to make an appointment in your calendar it can't, because that's application specific.
But these are the really easy things to implement, the hard ones are the ones where you need sources of information, the ones where Apple resorts to the likes of Wikipedia, and Wolfram alpha, and the ones where Google can do better.
See my other post in this thread for examples of where Siri will struggle, because Apple doesn't have the backend software required, whilst Google does. One example I used is:
"Can you show me a video of how to change my Ford Focus' headlight?"
Google can do this sort of thing, it can take you straight to a video showing how to do just that.
The fundamental point is that whilst Google hasn't put together their system yet, they have the tools, and they have the tools to do it better. There is no magical AI behind Siri, there is at best a bunch of hard coded functions and responses, and a relatively weak fall back to search engines.
This is why there was such a fuss about Siri failing to find abortion clinics recently - because Apple just hadn't hard coded that function in, something which Google has long been able to do as standard.
Because people read The Daily Mail? Yeah, I guess that is a bit of a problem.
But does the cost of natural disasters really not outweigh the extra hassle of having to adhere to some degree of social standard?
Or do they just write it off with their insurers? Surely the cost of insuring such factories in such places must be getting prohibitive though?
Well it's simple, try typing any of your Siri queries into Google, and come back and tell me if Google's responses are any worse.
Certainly last time I tried this, using a list of things Siri failed to answer, Google was able to.
Many of the responses Siri is giving that people call "attitude" or "AI" are actually just hard coded responses to specific questions. I'm pretty fucking sure Google is capable of doing that too.
Yes, this is why I never got why people are so amazed with Siri, it's far from a fascinating new peice of software magically capable of understanding people in a way computers never have before.
To demonstrate this is quite simple, we know that voice recognition is pretty advanced right now, it's quite common for computers to be able to convert voice into text. So now try this, type a question directly into Google, and see if it responds as well as Siri does? It did? well, who'd have thought it.
All Siri is is a voice to text translator which then passes the text to a remote search engine. There are some slight changes required from a standard search engine, like referring queries involving key terms such as "appointment" to certain apps, in this case, the calendar app, and in Siri's case, adding in "attitude" like creating preset responses to certain questions, but it's really all very simple. A quick search will show any number of things Siri can't answer which proves it's not the super intelligent AI some fanboys are selling it as.
But this is where it gets interesting, Google has been researching voice recognition, translation, and search, perhaps more than any other company in the world, and because of things like Google Voice, and Google translate, it likely has more raw data too. Because of this they can handle more languages, more accents, and more local expressions than any other company could. They have everything they need to make the first stage of such a tool better.
Of course, Google also excel at search, not just text search, but image search and so forth too. This means that Google has the tools to not just create a competitor that understands more people, with more accents across more languages, but that is more flexible too. With things like image search, Google's offering could handle queries like "What is this?" by doing an image search on whatever the device's camera is pointed at. With their translation tools it can act as an interpreter. But even on basic queries Google has a far better plain text search engine to work from than Apple has available to it for Siri, one that has the potential to respond to current events ("Is it true that Kim Jong Il is dead?") and with a variety of multimedia responses to boot ("Can you show me a video of how to change my Ford Focus' headlight?"). This is not to even mention the fact Google has got quite good at giving search results that are more relevant based on your language, and location to boot.
Of course, this doesn't mean that Google will get it right, they've had plenty of failures of products too that should have been good, but weren't.
But the Apple fanboys writing off Google's capability to do this already are laughably naive, Google has all the components to produce a far superior system to Siri, the only question is, will they? and the only way we'll find the answer to that, is to just wait and see.
Yeah I never really understood why all these sensitive factories are built in earthquake and flood zones.
Why don't they build them over here in the UK, where the worst we get is a bit of bad snow every 30 years, a bit of wind that sometimes knocks a few leaves of the trees, or if you're really stupid, a wet carpet because you bought a has that was built on a flood plane.
Yes, but you've simply reiterated that they are separate - that much is clear. The question is why are they separate, why can't those infractions be dealt with under pre-existing civilian law and justice systems that everyone else is subject to?
There's obviously a reason for handling military justice separately, but I'm not clear what it is - as I say, they closest I've found to an explanation previously is precisely so that the military can deal with things more informally, and hence in a more timely manner, but as I say, if that is the case, is that really appropriate for a case that deserves much greater scrutiny? and again, as I say, if that isn't the case then I'd love to better understand the real reason for even having the separate justice systems.
Well, obviously they were questions, so your assertion to the counter is completely false. The fact you see them as negative merely highlights the point that you disagree with my previous view of the situation, and take offence to that.
But this is really a problem for you to deal with yourself. If you take offence to someone being wrong, and aren't willing to challenge their point, and offer them a chance to reassess their viewpoint before you get angry at them, then you must live a very angry lifestyle. This of course begs the question, if you're so intolerant of other people's viewpoints, then perhaps you're precisely the type of person I was talking about?
Yes, no doubt it acts as a convenient scapegoat for implementing unpopular laws that favour corporate lobbyists and so forth also.
I've had a search and can't find much to answer the question as to why military trials are separate in the first place. Part the reason I assumed military trials were separate was because it meant it allowed the military to deal with things in their own way. As part of this I was under the impression it meant without the need for as much rigour as the civilian system. I've previously heard the reason for this is based on the argument that if you're in a warzone for example, that if you suspect with a high degree of certainty that someone is guilty of some crime, but can't prove it, you still need to be able to deal with them, because not doing so would be too risky in a combat situation.
Of course I might be wrong, which is precisely why I was intrigued to hear if there are indeed safeguards in place to ensure in a case like this, where there is scope for a proper investigation and trial, that it will indeed be carried out with the same rigour as you would expect in a civilian trial.
My concern is that if it is indeed the case that the same rigour isn't applied in military trials, then a military trial is simply being used to fit Manning up because they knew full well they couldn't get him in a civilian trial. The precedent for this would of course be Guantanmo, where the idea of military trials was put forward precisely because the US government supposedly knew it had no chance of conviction of most Guantanamo inmates under civilian trials.
"Contrary to what you wish to believe;"
You know, not everyone on Slashdot has their viewpoints set in stone. There are at least one or two of us here still that are capable of taking in new information and changing our viewpoint based on the balance of evidence, rather than posting asserting that some preconceived notion is correct, despite not actually knowing that to be the case with some degree of accuracy.
I don't know a lot about US military trials, which is why I phrased my post largely as a question, as what I understood to be the case thus far was based largely on previous posts on the subject.
So to continue the point, what exactly is the goal of this pre-trial, what does it determine? how is the jury of peers decided? is it determined by a genuinely randomly selected set of soldiers? is there any scope for corruption to allow it to effectively become a show trial?
I was going to ask, in a military trial, does the evidence even matter? Isn't the case basically just decided on by some high ranking military personnel? Is there any law or repercussions that would convince them to give a toss what the evidence says anyway?
If this was a civilian trial it'd all be rather interesting to hear the arguments and see how they justify the decided punishment in the face of given evidence (or in the face of his unlikely acquittal), but in a military trial I don't think it all even matters does it? If the military has prejudged him to be guilty, and don't care for any outcome other than that then that's what'll happen regardless of the merits of his case no?
The US created the WTO to enforce US style IP laws across the globe because WIPO wasn't playing ball due to the fact it was democratic and the small African nations wanting cheap drugs to keep their people alive outvoted the US and it's strong IP law lobby.
WTO is very much the US' puppet organisation and not vice versa. This is also why the US pushes countries to sign up to it and adhere to it's rulings, whilst simultaneously ignoring rulings against it by the WTO itself.
I'm not sure how one could claim the WTO is in charge of the US when the whole US the WTO exists is to push US trade policy and the subvert the previously more rational, fair, and democratic nature of WIPO. They're both shit now though, in order to avoid becoming obsolete, WIPO is now adhering to the US line, which is just what the US wanted.
Blame the US' puppet organisation the WTO for this sort of thing, not the EU.
Being forced to reinvent the wheel isn't innovating, it's time and money wasting.
Humanity will get nowhere if it's forced to invent the same things over and over, rather than focus on inventing new things.
I think all hardware was better back then tbh as I also have some hardware from that era that is still perfectly functioning.
It's around the early to mid 2000s that quality started to deteriorate and companies like Maxtor and Fujitsu started chucking out drives which you'd be lucky if they'd even last a year, and things like RAM seemed to start having higher failure rates at this point, unless you were willing to pay for the really high end stuff.