The human race's problem right now is that we have all our eggs in one basket; namely, Earth. If something terrible were to happen to our planet, the entire human race could be wiped out, forever. [..]
In an age where a nation (or even a well-funded doomsday cult) could conceivably make the planet humanly uninhabitable through the use of nuclear weapons, the settlement of other worlds seems paramount.
One nuclear bomb can't make Earth uninhabitable. Nuclear war also can't make the Earth uninhabitable. We'll have to have several "woops, just let in a psycho launch our nuclear bombs again against random targets" oopsies a day for quite some time before this happens. And at some point, people will learn it's not a nice thing to do.
But I love your depression inducing thoughts, still, don't get me wrong. Mix it with sci-fi of us going to Mars and finding acient alien artifacts, and we got ourselves a movie.
While your post is mere flamebait, you almost got to the core issue: Mac users will see the Internet as MICROSOFT intended. Excuse me if I think this is a very bad thing.
Good job, I love it when a flamebait shouts "a flamebait!"...
Except that the whole [goal] of using a simplified SGML (HTML) on the WWW was to separate content from presentation [..] Specific fonts [...] shouldn't be necessary
We in the real world differentiate abstract goals from actual results, and stress on having results.
However, the solar power you could produce from the surface of a car is not enough to give you mobility.
They use conventional panels (17%). This one is 42%. Also I'm suggesting they won't run on pure solar, but support the electric motor in the same way the electric motor supports the diesel one in hybrids nowadays.
It may drop your fuel consumption 15%, using "free" solar energy, still worth it.
On a roof, such cells would require less than half the surface area to produce the same amount of power as today's standard solar panels, which have an efficiency of about 17%.
Let me guess: you'll leave how your roof empty to produce the same electricity, or take the whole roof to produce more than twice the electricity. Hard dilemma...
At this point solar energy seems inevitable in our future. Not long from now we'll have more efficient electric motors and even more efficient solar cells, so that would make it a viable backup to a car battery charge and mean you can drive for days and days at long distance without recharging.
The big money now will go to those people who manage to best make use of our existing infrastructure and our new technologies (stellar examples include Toyota's hybrids... imagine if that electric motor they use also has few solar panels to help it in the next models).
So, for a monthly fee I can download low quality music to my phone over a very slow network, which will require me to purchase not only the subscription, but also the data plan, and also pay for any data transfered over the data plan limit, or I can just plug the phone into my computer and transfer a new batch of high quality songs each day, for free.
Hmmm...I wonder what my choice would be.
Nice example of a spin. The AT&T offer is inferior since it's many times more expensive (maybe it's woth it if you're on the road and no access to a connected PC.. I'm not sure about it).
But I'll try to spin it the other way as an excercise:
So, for a monthly fee I can download DRM-free music *directly* to my phone, using my existing data plan, or I can bring a bulky laptop everywhere with me and hunt whole day for a wi-fi spot, hoping the batteries don't die on me before I manage to buy the songs and synchronize them manually with my phone.
Nice specs really. Looks like it'll make not only an excellent internet machine and music/video player (well we're slightly short on space but you can get creative about it).
But all the popular game emulators will run fine on it, Mame, GameBoy, SEGA. Might make a great little companion for long travel.
but a 7" screen in a case that's built for 10" would just annoy me.
Somewhat spoiled, are we not? I still remember the days of CRT when buying a 20 inch screen meant 18.5 inch viewable area and obnoxious thick bezel around it. It was ok.
The obnoxious thick bezel won't prevent you from seeing what's in the middle, plus a 7 inch laptop would mean too small a keyboard to type comfortably on.
Basically, I'm sure they thought about it. It's a device not suited to please, but to do the job. As an enabler of interesting possibilities you would risk trying with your $2000 compact laptop (such riding on a bike with it, or giving it to your little kid as a personal PC), I'd say I can live with the bezel.
Some interesting highlights from the last few days:
The old product pictures has been replaced on Medisons site. According to Comon.dk Medison have foretold that they were replaced by "real" pictures to get more trustworthy. They say that they have hired a professional photographer to take the pictures. The question however, is why a professional photographer would use a Canon Digital IXUS 60 digital camera at 10 in the evening (See the Exif-tags in the pictures). That is for those who don't know a small compact consumer camera... Yes we know that this doesn't "prove" anything, it's just another "fun fact" in this story.
A poster on SweClockers posted the following answer that is supposed to be from the manufacturer: "they got one pcs sample from our customer and not paid". Hmm, interesting, isn't it?
According to the Danish site Comon.dk, Medison will have a press conference on Wednesday to clear things out. They have also spoken with several people in the computer industry that claims, just like all other experts, that the price is "impossible".
The Asus Eee offer however is great I'm looking forward to their machine. You shouldn't look at this laptop from the perspective of using it as full blown desktop Machine. Consider all the stuff you get at mere $200, for a nice mobile computer with full-sized keyboard and rich internet abilities. It makes for far better browsing/mail checking than what you can do on your $600 iPhone.
What confuses me as soon as it says "$100 more" is that you are at $299 and for another $150 you can wander into BestBuy and splash $450 on a decent laptop that comes with Vista. Knocking $80 or what ever for the OEM version means that you are talking $370 or so for a decent laptop with a decent screen and a decent disk et al and this is for something with a dual core Intel processor.
Not everyone needs a "decent laptop". I am considering hooking up my grandparents with two of those to keep connected and allow them to use the internet. All depends on whether their "novice" mode is easier than Windows Vista / XP.
I love this! If they install something like this on the streets around me I am going to send the electric company a bill for my time to generate their power... what am I a giant hamster to them?!
You may want to actually. As you know, energy isn't appearing out of nowhere and doesn't go nowhere.
It may be harder to walk on blocks that slightly depress as you walk on them. Sort of like walking in mud, but not that bad.
They could explain exercise is good for you, but if you're trying to go back home after a tiresome day, you may not enjoy the compulsory experience.
waht makes you think they won't use a desktop OS? windows NT runs British battleships.
The difference is Japanese car-makers are smart, proud, and a fully private owned business. British battleships are just pure government & military stupidity.
The iPhone doesn't have a user-replaceable battery, but it is replaceable. This is the same as all iPods for the last several years. And no, the iPhone isn't the first of these devices to have a battery that is soldered. Various iPod models have already had soldered batteries. Also, the battery replacement information was available the day the iPhone shipped. So, nothing new here.
So you ranted on and on (forever actually) about how the info was known in advance and can be found on the site.
Let me ask you: how does the fact that you KNOW the battery is soldered, is making it any better for you, as an iPhone owner, when you'll have to ship it to Apple for a $100 replacement?
Is it? Does disclosing of intentionally crippled architecture of the device mean we can't be dissatisfied with the serviceability of the phone? Does it mean people are happy with their crippled iPod batteries (judging by the web, no, they aren't).
You need you to grow some balls and face the reality: Apple has intentionally crippled these products for no better reason than remain in tight control of the battery replacement procedure and get some cash from there too.
This makes them somewhat sad, but the fact that you as a customer (I suppose you don't work at Apple) defend them, is even sadder.
people can adapt to accept absolutely everything as normal, as long as there's lots of it everywhere around us.
Isn't that the definition of normal?
It's a very poor passive definition of normal. During WWII the entire environment suggested it's ok to kill torture and abuse jewish people, so most germans considered it "normal".
Let's not fall pray to such poor definitions. I better definition would be "serving to establish a standard". We don't want PR speak being worthless and misleading to be the standard, so it's not normal.
Taking PR statements and criticizing them for being PR speak is #3 on the "10 dumbest ways to spend your time" list that I made a minute ago.
Possibly. It just goes to show, however how people can adapt to accept absolutely everything as normal, as long as there's lots of it everywhere around us.
We're shaping the reality around us. You can't judge things based on simply how prevalent they are. Judge them based on what you'd prefer they would.
There's no much motivation right now for "Mac Wine" since there isn't such a flood of Mac-only apps that are essential to Linux users.
You're trying to do something stupid here: a Mac is only good as Apple sold it to you. They've went to thoroughly extensive work to ensure it is so, trying to get something production ready with OSX apps under Linux is begging for problems.
You bought a Mac, use OSX (you can dual boot still, or virtualize).
When has Apple tied their other offerings to specific carriers? Would this be comparable to how Apple does not die their desktop offerings to AOL? Please elaborate.
He means: Apple always limits the options of their customers to retain control of the offer and the final experience.
They don't allow you to install OSX on custom hardware. They don't allow people to build Apple-compatible hardware. They have locked down almost everything in their OS interface, and the options are limited.
Initially they had all proprietary ports for peripherals even, and you had to buy special Apple printers and what not (now they're more liberal in that department).
They didn't allow custom apps in the iPod (except approved and checked by them through iTunes), and now on the iPhone.
All of this has ensured Apple's ability to survive on a very competitive market. But it's also the reason why they have such a small fraction of the market. It's a tough business model, but since they picked it, now they have to sustain it.
There's considerable possibility that if they go all loose and PC-like by allowing everything and everyone mix and match parts of Apple, they'll simply vanish in a market of similar opportunities.
The visual voicemail system alone required AT&T to update how their voicemail system works. By picking an exclusive partner Apple ensured that all these changes would work properly with the iPhone. If they simply dumped an unlocked phone on the market then a lot of the fancy gimmicks they've been touting wouldn't work for the vast majority of people
"All the fancy gimmicks" - it's the voice mail only. That's only fancy gimmick that requires carrier coop. Not a lot to lose I think.
Office is a god awful suite of applications and most kids will need to learn how to interact with it.
If it's a god awful suite of applications, where is the alternative. You don't want to say Open Office is any better (it's essentially a clone of MS Office pre-95)? Office people still need their suite of applications. Are you just ranting randomly?
Slashdot Mirror
The human race's problem right now is that we have all our eggs in one basket; namely, Earth. If something terrible were to happen to our planet, the entire human race could be wiped out, forever. [..]
In an age where a nation (or even a well-funded doomsday cult) could conceivably make the planet humanly uninhabitable through the use of nuclear weapons, the settlement of other worlds seems paramount.
One nuclear bomb can't make Earth uninhabitable. Nuclear war also can't make the Earth uninhabitable. We'll have to have several "woops, just let in a psycho launch our nuclear bombs again against random targets" oopsies a day for quite some time before this happens. And at some point, people will learn it's not a nice thing to do.
But I love your depression inducing thoughts, still, don't get me wrong. Mix it with sci-fi of us going to Mars and finding acient alien artifacts, and we got ourselves a movie.
While your post is mere flamebait, you almost got to the core issue: Mac users will see the Internet as MICROSOFT intended. Excuse me if I think this is a very bad thing.
Good job, I love it when a flamebait shouts "a flamebait!"...
Except that the whole [goal] of using a simplified SGML (HTML) on the WWW was to separate content from presentation [..] Specific fonts [...] shouldn't be necessary
We in the real world differentiate abstract goals from actual results, and stress on having results.
"Mac users will continue to see the Internet as it was intended"
What's Wrong With Apple's Font Rendering?
Welcome to the blurry, but fast, browser...
Apple and Microsoft have always disagreed in how to display fonts on computer displays...
However, the solar power you could produce from the surface of a car is not enough to give you mobility.
They use conventional panels (17%). This one is 42%. Also I'm suggesting they won't run on pure solar, but support the electric motor in the same way the electric motor supports the diesel one in hybrids nowadays.
It may drop your fuel consumption 15%, using "free" solar energy, still worth it.
On a roof, such cells would require less than half the surface area to produce the same amount of power as today's standard solar panels, which have an efficiency of about 17%.
Let me guess: you'll leave how your roof empty to produce the same electricity, or take the whole roof to produce more than twice the electricity. Hard dilemma...
At this point solar energy seems inevitable in our future. Not long from now we'll have more efficient electric motors and even more efficient solar cells, so that would make it a viable backup to a car battery charge and mean you can drive for days and days at long distance without recharging.
The big money now will go to those people who manage to best make use of our existing infrastructure and our new technologies (stellar examples include Toyota's hybrids... imagine if that electric motor they use also has few solar panels to help it in the next models).
So, for a monthly fee I can download low quality music to my phone over a very slow network, which will require me to purchase not only the subscription, but also the data plan, and also pay for any data transfered over the data plan limit, or I can just plug the phone into my computer and transfer a new batch of high quality songs each day, for free.
Hmmm...I wonder what my choice would be.
Nice example of a spin. The AT&T offer is inferior since it's many times more expensive (maybe it's woth it if you're on the road and no access to a connected PC.. I'm not sure about it).
But I'll try to spin it the other way as an excercise:
So, for a monthly fee I can download DRM-free music *directly* to my phone, using my existing data plan, or I can bring a bulky laptop everywhere with me and hunt whole day for a wi-fi spot, hoping the batteries don't die on me before I manage to buy the songs and synchronize them manually with my phone.
Hmmm.. I wonder what my choice would be.
The shockingly low number of iPhones is probably the reason.
Next time don't ask that little troll that's hiding in your cupboard about sales numbers: he's lying to you and taking the money!
Anybody surprised? Anybody care? It is just another reason why the iPhone sucks...
:P
But.. [looks at his iPhone and his missing $600], it doesn't suck really, right? It's revolutionary and.. I mean.. it's Apple, yeeei
So it'll drop from $400 to 350? I can't believe they aren't taking the opportunity to sell it for $360.
"XBox 360 - for $360"
niiiiiiceee....
Nice specs really. Looks like it'll make not only an excellent internet machine and music/video player (well we're slightly short on space but you can get creative about it).
But all the popular game emulators will run fine on it, Mame, GameBoy, SEGA. Might make a great little companion for long travel.
but a 7" screen in a case that's built for 10" would just annoy me.
Somewhat spoiled, are we not? I still remember the days of CRT when buying a 20 inch screen meant 18.5 inch viewable area and obnoxious thick bezel around it. It was ok.
The obnoxious thick bezel won't prevent you from seeing what's in the middle, plus a 7 inch laptop would mean too small a keyboard to type comfortably on.
Basically, I'm sure they thought about it. It's a device not suited to please, but to do the job. As an enabler of interesting possibilities you would risk trying with your $2000 compact laptop (such riding on a bike with it, or giving it to your little kid as a personal PC), I'd say I can live with the bezel.
Since it was mentioned in the summary, there's a new blog following the whole fiasco at http://medisonscam.blogspot.com/
Some interesting highlights from the last few days:
The old product pictures has been replaced on Medisons site. According to Comon.dk Medison have foretold that they were replaced by "real" pictures to get more trustworthy. They say that they have hired a professional photographer to take the pictures. The question however, is why a professional photographer would use a Canon Digital IXUS 60 digital camera at 10 in the evening (See the Exif-tags in the pictures). That is for those who don't know a small compact consumer camera... Yes we know that this doesn't "prove" anything, it's just another "fun fact" in this story.
A poster on SweClockers posted the following answer that is supposed to be from the manufacturer: "they got one pcs sample from our customer and not paid". Hmm, interesting, isn't it?
According to the Danish site Comon.dk, Medison will have a press conference on Wednesday to clear things out. They have also spoken with several people in the computer industry that claims, just like all other experts, that the price is "impossible".
The Asus Eee offer however is great I'm looking forward to their machine. You shouldn't look at this laptop from the perspective of using it as full blown desktop Machine. Consider all the stuff you get at mere $200, for a nice mobile computer with full-sized keyboard and rich internet abilities. It makes for far better browsing/mail checking than what you can do on your $600 iPhone.
What confuses me as soon as it says "$100 more" is that you are at $299 and for another $150 you can wander into BestBuy and splash $450 on a decent laptop that comes with Vista. Knocking $80 or what ever for the OEM version means that you are talking $370 or so for a decent laptop with a decent screen and a decent disk et al and this is for something with a dual core Intel processor.
Not everyone needs a "decent laptop". I am considering hooking up my grandparents with two of those to keep connected and allow them to use the internet. All depends on whether their "novice" mode is easier than Windows Vista / XP.
If it's not, then it's not worth it.
I love this! If they install something like this on the streets around me I am going to send the electric company a bill for my time to generate their power ... what am I a giant hamster to them?!
You may want to actually. As you know, energy isn't appearing out of nowhere and doesn't go nowhere.
It may be harder to walk on blocks that slightly depress as you walk on them. Sort of like walking in mud, but not that bad.
They could explain exercise is good for you, but if you're trying to go back home after a tiresome day, you may not enjoy the compulsory experience.
waht makes you think they won't use a desktop OS? windows NT runs British battleships.
The difference is Japanese car-makers are smart, proud, and a fully private owned business. British battleships are just pure government & military stupidity.
The iPhone doesn't have a user-replaceable battery, but it is replaceable. This is the same as all iPods for the last several years. And no, the iPhone isn't the first of these devices to have a battery that is soldered. Various iPod models have already had soldered batteries. Also, the battery replacement information was available the day the iPhone shipped. So, nothing new here.
So you ranted on and on (forever actually) about how the info was known in advance and can be found on the site.
Let me ask you: how does the fact that you KNOW the battery is soldered, is making it any better for you, as an iPhone owner, when you'll have to ship it to Apple for a $100 replacement?
Is it? Does disclosing of intentionally crippled architecture of the device mean we can't be dissatisfied with the serviceability of the phone? Does it mean people are happy with their crippled iPod batteries (judging by the web, no, they aren't).
You need you to grow some balls and face the reality: Apple has intentionally crippled these products for no better reason than remain in tight control of the battery replacement procedure and get some cash from there too.
This makes them somewhat sad, but the fact that you as a customer (I suppose you don't work at Apple) defend them, is even sadder.
I really hope they don't go the "OS for battleships" direction and just take a regular OS and tailor it for cars.
What's the point of "hoping" they don't do something they aren't doing anyway. They don't put Ubuntu in your car, don't worry.
I hope they won't use Widows Vista! I hope I won't have to power up my car and then wait 5 minutes for it to boot!
people can adapt to accept absolutely everything as normal, as long as there's lots of it everywhere around us.
Isn't that the definition of normal?
It's a very poor passive definition of normal. During WWII the entire environment suggested it's ok to kill torture and abuse jewish people, so most germans considered it "normal".
Let's not fall pray to such poor definitions. I better definition would be "serving to establish a standard". We don't want PR speak being worthless and misleading to be the standard, so it's not normal.
Taking PR statements and criticizing them for being PR speak is #3 on the "10 dumbest ways to spend your time" list that I made a minute ago.
Possibly. It just goes to show, however how people can adapt to accept absolutely everything as normal, as long as there's lots of it everywhere around us.
We're shaping the reality around us. You can't judge things based on simply how prevalent they are. Judge them based on what you'd prefer they would.
There's no much motivation right now for "Mac Wine" since there isn't such a flood of Mac-only apps that are essential to Linux users.
You're trying to do something stupid here: a Mac is only good as Apple sold it to you. They've went to thoroughly extensive work to ensure it is so, trying to get something production ready with OSX apps under Linux is begging for problems.
You bought a Mac, use OSX (you can dual boot still, or virtualize).
they're much like Klingons
Man, that analysis you're pulling off there is amaaaaazingly deep! I love it.
And this thing I'm smoking is making it even better.
Curiously enough everything you said is true about every single big corporation.
When has Apple tied their other offerings to specific carriers? Would this be comparable to how Apple does not die their desktop offerings to AOL? Please elaborate.
He means: Apple always limits the options of their customers to retain control of the offer and the final experience.
They don't allow you to install OSX on custom hardware. They don't allow people to build Apple-compatible hardware. They have locked down almost everything in their OS interface, and the options are limited.
Initially they had all proprietary ports for peripherals even, and you had to buy special Apple printers and what not (now they're more liberal in that department).
They didn't allow custom apps in the iPod (except approved and checked by them through iTunes), and now on the iPhone.
All of this has ensured Apple's ability to survive on a very competitive market. But it's also the reason why they have such a small fraction of the market. It's a tough business model, but since they picked it, now they have to sustain it.
There's considerable possibility that if they go all loose and PC-like by allowing everything and everyone mix and match parts of Apple, they'll simply vanish in a market of similar opportunities.
The visual voicemail system alone required AT&T to update how their voicemail system works. By picking an exclusive partner Apple ensured that all these changes would work properly with the iPhone. If they simply dumped an unlocked phone on the market then a lot of the fancy gimmicks they've been touting wouldn't work for the vast majority of people
"All the fancy gimmicks" - it's the voice mail only. That's only fancy gimmick that requires carrier coop. Not a lot to lose I think.
Office is a god awful suite of applications and most kids will need to learn how to interact with it.
If it's a god awful suite of applications, where is the alternative. You don't want to say Open Office is any better (it's essentially a clone of MS Office pre-95)? Office people still need their suite of applications. Are you just ranting randomly?