I think in part you may misunderstand me. There are two trends that work in conjunction, one of which is scary, one of which is not. Doing things in software as opposed to hardware beyond fairly simple things can be both easier to test and easier to make reliable if properly done (and potentially cheaper as well). The problem that you identified with software is the fact that engineers in general (software developers included) tend to run wild when given the ability to do more than they need to. This is why in many practical situations the software ends up being more complex than the discreet hardware would be, but there is no reason that a well tested micro-controller could not be coded to do the same thing as a discreet circuit just as reliably (at least when dealing with digital circuits). The ease of development and testing of either a discreet circuit based system or a software based system will be directly related to the skill of the engineer doing the development. Either can be done well and either can be a disaster.
Personally I speak from experience as a developer who has done some discreet circuit work in the past and regularly uses micro-controllers to serve the same purpose in hobby work simply because it is quicker and easier for me to program the logic in to the micro-controller than it is for me to fabricate and debug the necessary discreet circuit.
True, but there are fewer and fewer reasons to release grainy video now. Many people have HD capable video camera's on their cellphones. There is no reason for video to be grainy anymore, so low quality video should be the first warning sign that someone may be trying to hide something.
The improved UI was part of the whole user friendliness. It's not just icons, it's the whole system, the way it's used. Plus, it was very, very polished. Apple made the smart phone easy, as you say. It's the same reason the iPod took off -- from geek toy to polished consumer product.
Again, don't just copy, make something better.
But that is just what I'm saying, they didn't do anything to make it better that wasn't simply incremental. The basic way that we interact with a PDA has not changed since early Palm devices. We have a grid of icons which we can scroll through from which we choose an application to launch, we have a home button which we can use to get back to that screen and a back button to move back a screen. We have an area of the screen for typing and/or writing. We have apps (the well designed ones at least) that have touch friendly controls and are easily readable. The limiting factors have always been screen resolution, processing power and to a lesser extent battery life. I have been using PDAs since they were first created and the iPhone (and iPod touch) changed nothing about the way I interact with them because the UI didn't change in any significant way. (And I do have a second gen iPod Touch from before I switched over to using my smartphone for music.)
You won't get any argument from me about the original iPod classic. The click-wheel was a brilliant innovation that had not been done by anyone else prior and offered both a familiar means of controlling the flow of music as well as an intuitive interface for scrolling. It was ideal for it's purpose and deserved every bit of the success it enjoyed, though I would still argue that the price made the value somewhat questionable in terms of value (at least early on), I had several myself as they were the best device on the market and I didn't mind a premium for that. Also don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the iPhone is not a good smartphone or that it isn't quality hardware, but to make the accusation that Android copied Apple and not simply the companies that Apple copied themselves requires the burden of proof. Certainly Android benefited greatly from the marketing and hype of the iPhone, but that is unavoidable and certainly not Android's fault. It could be said they copied the App store, but App stores existed (such as Steam) in the PC world long before the iPhone app store. While the pairing was a good product offering, it is no more innovative than when MS included IE in Windows and then claiming that any other OS that includes a browser is copying Windows.
I've found that many of their products are best in category, regardless of hype. I'm not even a long-time Apple fan, having bought my first Apple product in late 2006 -- a second-generation iPod Nano. The quality and value then hooked me.
I would challenge that for what you get, people still get swayed by marketing in to thinking they are getting more than they are. The fact is that most consumer electronics now do more than they will ever need anyway and most of what the non-technical customer feels they are getting is really the result of marketing and what they believe the capability of their device to be, not necessarily what it actually is as they rarely if ever hit the limits of the device. As a technical user, I regularly do hit those limits.
If it wasn't an issue, there would be no money to be made on either side. Also, money isn't the only motivator, power is typically good too, as are personal convictions. I'm not saying that they are necessarily involved in this issue, but to say that money is the only reason someone would jump on a bandwagon is foolish at best and it can be very hard to see your own biases at times.
What the iPhone captured was marketing and ease of app distribution. Prior to the iPhone, the majority of applications were either pre-installed on the device or had to be downloaded and installed rather cumbersomely from a website or from a PC. This made using a smartphone to do smartphony things very technical and not very end user friendly. The success of the iPhone has absolutely zero to do with any improvement to the UI. The improvement was incremental, minimal and primarily based on advances in screen resolution, nothing else. What made it a huge success was the marketing might of Apple to make it a device people wanted coupled with an App store that allowed people to actually use it to it's full potential. The tight integration with AT&T's services helped a lot too, but again, this is mostly a marketing and deal making thing with Apple, not actual innovation, just better business.
Don't get me wrong, I will never accuse Apple of being bad at business, they are brilliant at it, but they are not the most innovative company out there nor do they make the best products (particularly when value (real not hype) is considered).
Proximity sensors existed prior, touch friendly controls existed prior (see Palm), multi-touch gestures were a standard step forward from single touch gestures, simply enabled by an incremental technical advance in display technology that didn't originate with Apple. If you really think that pinch to zoom is revolutionary, then you have some seriously misconstrued and selective views of technical history.
I think you may misunderstand the point of college, particularly in the CS field. I went to an extremely theory based school that was very highly ranked for computer science and was frustrated at how theory based things were. When I got in to the working world however, I realized that the breadth of the market in the CS field is so broad that the theory is what gets you by and not the direct knowledge of how to implement. In effect, the theory teaches you how to think and analyze a problem so that whatever real world problem you encounter, you can figure out the solution for it.
That said, some individuals lack the ability to make their own jump from theory to reality when confronted with a problem. These people are better suited for a more maintenance oriented role such as IT rather than a problem defining and solving role such as computer science. Some people are very good at taking knowledge of a particular system or set of systems and applying it, others are good at taking theory and applying it to new problems, both are needed and few are strong in both.
The same reason people thought the iPhone was innovative for being the first product to bring multi-touch to market. They don't understand technology and see something shinny.
Personally, the clubs don't bother me. If they want to know what I buy and when I buy it so they can give me more targeted deals and serve me better, I'm all for it. It's directly related to my business with their store and I see no privacy concern with them knowing their clients. When a mall starts doing wholesale tracking of individuals and not relying on a voluntary system of tracking business transactions, that is certainly a bridge too far.
Thanks, that is a great story. While I didn't like the direction Jobs went in his later years at Apple (I'll call them the "try to dominate and control all technology to my advantage" years, I've always liked the Woz and his attitude towards wanting to simply push technology forward for the sake of moving forward. Examples like this of him helping someone just because he could with no expectation of anything from it really show the difference in attitude so clearly.
Yeah, my first thought was publicity stunt as well, though I would hazard that as others mentioned, it wouldn't surprise me if he actually enjoys going and seeing the enthusiasm of Apple's fans directly as well. But yeah, it's a great PR move too.
Yeah, it would also probably be health issues I would guess. Not sure the chems are safe to implant. Also the off state would probably not be skin colored, so it would still look a little odd. That said, this goal would probably be better served through something like the Printbrush, modified to print on non-flat surfaces and using a removable ink to apply a design topically since the idea is to have a non-perminant body art that you can change yourself.
Perhaps I didn't state my problem very well. I am not a quantum physics expert, but I thought the idea was nothing within any reference frame could move faster than the speed of light. If that is the case, then from our reference frame, the data would still appear to get here at the speed of light, due to dilation.
I thought the whole idea of reference frames was that even if the reference frame was somehow traveling faster than the speed of light, it wouldn't see the signal get there faster than the speed of light?
I have said things anti-piracy oriented on slashdot and been modded up for it in the past. The standard applied to comments that would normally be unpopular is higher, but I do feel that the moderation system will still respond favorably to a very well written and informative comment, even when it contradicts the general opinion of the community.
Right, my point was just that the previous poster's comment that cameras didn't make a difference because you were already buying a ticket wasn't actually true since it is possible to get a ticket without identifying yourself, thus the cameras do represent a potential reduction in privacy. That said, I think a bus is public space and personally I see no problem with the presence of cameras for security purposes on a bus.
While I don't disagree that I don't see a privacy concern with cameras on buses, it is worth pointing out that in every city I know of, it is possible to buy a bus ticket with cash, and therefore, they don't know who you are when you get on or when you get off. Many also don't require you to scan a pass getting both on and off.
An interesting thought, but something seems fishy there. How does immunet tell that a particular piece of malware is malware? If it can tell automatically, then why not simply prevent it in the first place and updates are not necessary as you now have the perfect AV. If you can't tell automatically, then it relies on an end user to recognize and prevent infection. At this point, it is really relying on the end user and is not really any better than conventional AV.
I would still hazard that the cold war was at least as formative. If it was not for the two big giants forcing everyone in to one of two camps, then things would have been considerably more chaotic. Just look at what happened after the Soviet Union broke up. A large portion of that area went to hell without the governance that had been unifying against a threat. In the case of the west, the threat may have gone away, but the connections that were forged continue. This same principal can be seen in politics with the whole notion of divide and conquer and the notion (particularly in America) of voting for the lesser of two evils when it comes to elections. The main reason two large alliances don't end up like every other alliance before them was for no amount of distrust or lack of desire to be able to remove the threat by direct action, but rather the knowledge that doing so would result in unacceptable losses. Don't get me wrong, the UN helped to stabilize a situation that would have otherwise been more likely to go the disastrous route, but the UN would not have worked if not for the way the world was altered by nuclear powers. It still does serve a fairly valuable roll, but even simply looking at the issues that have crept in with fracturing when there is no diametrically opposed sides, you can see how significant the cold war was to the formulation of the UN.
The pessimist in me disagrees that the UN was the cause. Nukes were the cause. Trying to take something from another country because you want it is a lot less appealing when you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they or one of their allies can still wipe you from the face of the planet. Large scale warfare died with the invention of the nuclear arsenal and for no other reason. WW2 didn't make us realize things needed to change, if world conflict made people realize the need for change, WW1 would have prevented WW2 from occurring. It is human nature for one group to try and take advantage of another group if they think they can get away with it. Nukes ensure that they can't and that they know they can't.
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I think in part you may misunderstand me. There are two trends that work in conjunction, one of which is scary, one of which is not. Doing things in software as opposed to hardware beyond fairly simple things can be both easier to test and easier to make reliable if properly done (and potentially cheaper as well). The problem that you identified with software is the fact that engineers in general (software developers included) tend to run wild when given the ability to do more than they need to. This is why in many practical situations the software ends up being more complex than the discreet hardware would be, but there is no reason that a well tested micro-controller could not be coded to do the same thing as a discreet circuit just as reliably (at least when dealing with digital circuits). The ease of development and testing of either a discreet circuit based system or a software based system will be directly related to the skill of the engineer doing the development. Either can be done well and either can be a disaster.
Personally I speak from experience as a developer who has done some discreet circuit work in the past and regularly uses micro-controllers to serve the same purpose in hobby work simply because it is quicker and easier for me to program the logic in to the micro-controller than it is for me to fabricate and debug the necessary discreet circuit.
In fact, discreet circuits are theoretically harder to test than software that does the same thing and certainly harder to debug.
True, but there are fewer and fewer reasons to release grainy video now. Many people have HD capable video camera's on their cellphones. There is no reason for video to be grainy anymore, so low quality video should be the first warning sign that someone may be trying to hide something.
The improved UI was part of the whole user friendliness. It's not just icons, it's the whole system, the way it's used. Plus, it was very, very polished. Apple made the smart phone easy, as you say. It's the same reason the iPod took off -- from geek toy to polished consumer product.
Again, don't just copy, make something better.
But that is just what I'm saying, they didn't do anything to make it better that wasn't simply incremental. The basic way that we interact with a PDA has not changed since early Palm devices. We have a grid of icons which we can scroll through from which we choose an application to launch, we have a home button which we can use to get back to that screen and a back button to move back a screen. We have an area of the screen for typing and/or writing. We have apps (the well designed ones at least) that have touch friendly controls and are easily readable. The limiting factors have always been screen resolution, processing power and to a lesser extent battery life. I have been using PDAs since they were first created and the iPhone (and iPod touch) changed nothing about the way I interact with them because the UI didn't change in any significant way. (And I do have a second gen iPod Touch from before I switched over to using my smartphone for music.)
You won't get any argument from me about the original iPod classic. The click-wheel was a brilliant innovation that had not been done by anyone else prior and offered both a familiar means of controlling the flow of music as well as an intuitive interface for scrolling. It was ideal for it's purpose and deserved every bit of the success it enjoyed, though I would still argue that the price made the value somewhat questionable in terms of value (at least early on), I had several myself as they were the best device on the market and I didn't mind a premium for that. Also don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the iPhone is not a good smartphone or that it isn't quality hardware, but to make the accusation that Android copied Apple and not simply the companies that Apple copied themselves requires the burden of proof. Certainly Android benefited greatly from the marketing and hype of the iPhone, but that is unavoidable and certainly not Android's fault. It could be said they copied the App store, but App stores existed (such as Steam) in the PC world long before the iPhone app store. While the pairing was a good product offering, it is no more innovative than when MS included IE in Windows and then claiming that any other OS that includes a browser is copying Windows.
I've found that many of their products are best in category, regardless of hype. I'm not even a long-time Apple fan, having bought my first Apple product in late 2006 -- a second-generation iPod Nano. The quality and value then hooked me.
I would challenge that for what you get, people still get swayed by marketing in to thinking they are getting more than they are. The fact is that most consumer electronics now do more than they will ever need anyway and most of what the non-technical customer feels they are getting is really the result of marketing and what they believe the capability of their device to be, not necessarily what it actually is as they rarely if ever hit the limits of the device. As a technical user, I regularly do hit those limits.
If it wasn't an issue, there would be no money to be made on either side. Also, money isn't the only motivator, power is typically good too, as are personal convictions. I'm not saying that they are necessarily involved in this issue, but to say that money is the only reason someone would jump on a bandwagon is foolish at best and it can be very hard to see your own biases at times.
What the iPhone captured was marketing and ease of app distribution. Prior to the iPhone, the majority of applications were either pre-installed on the device or had to be downloaded and installed rather cumbersomely from a website or from a PC. This made using a smartphone to do smartphony things very technical and not very end user friendly. The success of the iPhone has absolutely zero to do with any improvement to the UI. The improvement was incremental, minimal and primarily based on advances in screen resolution, nothing else. What made it a huge success was the marketing might of Apple to make it a device people wanted coupled with an App store that allowed people to actually use it to it's full potential. The tight integration with AT&T's services helped a lot too, but again, this is mostly a marketing and deal making thing with Apple, not actual innovation, just better business.
Don't get me wrong, I will never accuse Apple of being bad at business, they are brilliant at it, but they are not the most innovative company out there nor do they make the best products (particularly when value (real not hype) is considered).
Proximity sensors existed prior, touch friendly controls existed prior (see Palm), multi-touch gestures were a standard step forward from single touch gestures, simply enabled by an incremental technical advance in display technology that didn't originate with Apple. If you really think that pinch to zoom is revolutionary, then you have some seriously misconstrued and selective views of technical history.
I think you may misunderstand the point of college, particularly in the CS field. I went to an extremely theory based school that was very highly ranked for computer science and was frustrated at how theory based things were. When I got in to the working world however, I realized that the breadth of the market in the CS field is so broad that the theory is what gets you by and not the direct knowledge of how to implement. In effect, the theory teaches you how to think and analyze a problem so that whatever real world problem you encounter, you can figure out the solution for it.
That said, some individuals lack the ability to make their own jump from theory to reality when confronted with a problem. These people are better suited for a more maintenance oriented role such as IT rather than a problem defining and solving role such as computer science. Some people are very good at taking knowledge of a particular system or set of systems and applying it, others are good at taking theory and applying it to new problems, both are needed and few are strong in both.
Wow, and didn't even post as anonymous coward, guess we don't need a black box for you.
While I cry a little because of the truth of this, it made me laugh a little this morning. Thank you.
The same reason people thought the iPhone was innovative for being the first product to bring multi-touch to market. They don't understand technology and see something shinny.
Personally, the clubs don't bother me. If they want to know what I buy and when I buy it so they can give me more targeted deals and serve me better, I'm all for it. It's directly related to my business with their store and I see no privacy concern with them knowing their clients. When a mall starts doing wholesale tracking of individuals and not relying on a voluntary system of tracking business transactions, that is certainly a bridge too far.
Furking perhaps?
Thanks, that is a great story. While I didn't like the direction Jobs went in his later years at Apple (I'll call them the "try to dominate and control all technology to my advantage" years, I've always liked the Woz and his attitude towards wanting to simply push technology forward for the sake of moving forward. Examples like this of him helping someone just because he could with no expectation of anything from it really show the difference in attitude so clearly.
Yeah, my first thought was publicity stunt as well, though I would hazard that as others mentioned, it wouldn't surprise me if he actually enjoys going and seeing the enthusiasm of Apple's fans directly as well. But yeah, it's a great PR move too.
Yeah, it would also probably be health issues I would guess. Not sure the chems are safe to implant. Also the off state would probably not be skin colored, so it would still look a little odd. That said, this goal would probably be better served through something like the Printbrush, modified to print on non-flat surfaces and using a removable ink to apply a design topically since the idea is to have a non-perminant body art that you can change yourself.
Just in case you missed it, that was an April fool's joke, but it would still be pretty awesome to have that as a real technology.
Perhaps I didn't state my problem very well. I am not a quantum physics expert, but I thought the idea was nothing within any reference frame could move faster than the speed of light. If that is the case, then from our reference frame, the data would still appear to get here at the speed of light, due to dilation.
I thought the whole idea of reference frames was that even if the reference frame was somehow traveling faster than the speed of light, it wouldn't see the signal get there faster than the speed of light?
I have said things anti-piracy oriented on slashdot and been modded up for it in the past. The standard applied to comments that would normally be unpopular is higher, but I do feel that the moderation system will still respond favorably to a very well written and informative comment, even when it contradicts the general opinion of the community.
Right, my point was just that the previous poster's comment that cameras didn't make a difference because you were already buying a ticket wasn't actually true since it is possible to get a ticket without identifying yourself, thus the cameras do represent a potential reduction in privacy. That said, I think a bus is public space and personally I see no problem with the presence of cameras for security purposes on a bus.
While I don't disagree that I don't see a privacy concern with cameras on buses, it is worth pointing out that in every city I know of, it is possible to buy a bus ticket with cash, and therefore, they don't know who you are when you get on or when you get off. Many also don't require you to scan a pass getting both on and off.
An interesting thought, but something seems fishy there. How does immunet tell that a particular piece of malware is malware? If it can tell automatically, then why not simply prevent it in the first place and updates are not necessary as you now have the perfect AV. If you can't tell automatically, then it relies on an end user to recognize and prevent infection. At this point, it is really relying on the end user and is not really any better than conventional AV.
I would still hazard that the cold war was at least as formative. If it was not for the two big giants forcing everyone in to one of two camps, then things would have been considerably more chaotic. Just look at what happened after the Soviet Union broke up. A large portion of that area went to hell without the governance that had been unifying against a threat. In the case of the west, the threat may have gone away, but the connections that were forged continue. This same principal can be seen in politics with the whole notion of divide and conquer and the notion (particularly in America) of voting for the lesser of two evils when it comes to elections. The main reason two large alliances don't end up like every other alliance before them was for no amount of distrust or lack of desire to be able to remove the threat by direct action, but rather the knowledge that doing so would result in unacceptable losses. Don't get me wrong, the UN helped to stabilize a situation that would have otherwise been more likely to go the disastrous route, but the UN would not have worked if not for the way the world was altered by nuclear powers. It still does serve a fairly valuable roll, but even simply looking at the issues that have crept in with fracturing when there is no diametrically opposed sides, you can see how significant the cold war was to the formulation of the UN.
The pessimist in me disagrees that the UN was the cause. Nukes were the cause. Trying to take something from another country because you want it is a lot less appealing when you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they or one of their allies can still wipe you from the face of the planet. Large scale warfare died with the invention of the nuclear arsenal and for no other reason. WW2 didn't make us realize things needed to change, if world conflict made people realize the need for change, WW1 would have prevented WW2 from occurring. It is human nature for one group to try and take advantage of another group if they think they can get away with it. Nukes ensure that they can't and that they know they can't.