But I can see a day when I'll want a system -- be it an entertainment system, a car or a smartphone -- that "just works." And sadly, this is more easily achieved when a single manufacturer controls the hardware.
But that is not true of buying habits in general.
"Just Works" is a secondary concern at best. What it comes down to is "do or not do". People will use a product that allows them to get from point A to point B as it were. This is why Windows remains on 90% of most computers, despite several Linux distro's being "average person ready" for 2 years now and a concerted fanboy marketing campaign by Apple, Microsoft's dominance on the desktop remains unchallenged. Why, well because Windows does, it does 99% of what 99% of people need it to. It does nothing well, it's a bloated, buggy pile of crap but it allows people to get things done.
That is the real driver, will X device get what I want done. This is what will ultimately derail Apple, there will be too many cases where Apple "does not". Android is far from perfect, but it allows more people to do more of what they want then Apple. Spit an polish count for nothing when they put a roadblock in your way.
If you're waiting for a perfect device, you'll never get one. Perfect is the enemy of done, however Android is a lot closer to that goal then Apple simply because Android does not, by default come with inbuilt restrictions.
So in the end, Android vs IOS is much like DOS vs Apple in the 80's. DOS won because it allowed people to do what they needed, in order to do this it had to be extensible, flexible and well, open enough to allow people to do almost anything. Same with Unix vs Linux, now days it's hard to get a proprietary Unix, most are dead. We'd rather install Centos then sell AIX despite the profits for AIX being higher because AIX is on life support.
People don't necessarily buy the product they prefer. Price is a consideration.
A lot of people simply want a phone for calls and text messages. Web is creeping in there a little, why would they spend $900 when a similar product will do it for $500?
Not everyone actually wants an Iphone, in fact few people consider that a requirement.
And the vast number of cheap Android phones from many manufacturers explains the market share.
Actually most devices are high end, Samsung Galaxy S and the HTC Desire range (Desire\HD\Z) make up over 60% of the phones sold.
Sorry if that doesn't jive with your view on Android. But in your defence, Android high end devices are cheaper ($5-700) then the entry level iDevices ($900+). I bought my HTC Desire Z outright for A$550.
Well maybe not. But it means everything to the developers
But it means everything to the customers. Customers make purchasing decisions. It should stand to note that Angry Birds, everyone's favourite yard stick is making more per month with it's free Android offering then it's paid for IOS offering.
Developers are known for cutting off their nose despite their face. If they choose to ignore the fastest growing platform then they do so at their own peril. Not like there is a shortage of developers at the moment.
Not of Apps it doesn't. iPhone has more and better choice of apps than Android for the reason stated above.
Kindly point out the alternate email clients in the Apple store. Same with the alternate browsers (complete with their own engine) or the tethering programs. Widgets for your home screens?
There may be more applications for Apple, but there is by far more choice on Android. Android does far more then IOS out of the box, the fact is it's been two years and Apple is still playing catchup with Android 1.1 on features.
Oh, BTW, mods? What the hell? Insightful? It takes only a moment of critical thought to see that this is devoid of insight. This comment offends me, not as a christian (which makes sense, since I am not one, nor have I ever have been one), but as someone with a brain.
Insightful because there is no +1 Ironic.
GP is complaining about an educated populace being the enemy of organised religion whilst misspelling the word populace.
OK, should have been modded funny, not insightful but he did put the words "religion" and "paedophile" together and that always results in some kind of Karma whoring, I mean watch this get modded informative.
Fairly large, most Satanists use Anton Zsandor LeVay's Satanic Bible as a guide. The Satanic Bible is not a scripture or instruction manual for life, if it is to teach you one lesson, that lesson is to think for yourself.
So what they do believe in does not have a name of its own?
No god or other deity.
Satanism is more a rejection of Christian like controls over our own lives. To do as one wishes to and not to appease some mythical creature.
Many people's interpretations of the Satanic Bible are different. It's meant to be and this is what makes it different from organised religion. There are no set rules, dogma or rituals, the words "Thou Shalt" and "Thou Shalt not" aren't used a lot in that book.
While they CAN take the name of a heresy of a religion they don't believe in... WHY would they do that?
Because it's a rejection of the kind of hypocrisy and control that it represents.
You've read too much into a single word and became fixated on it's meaning according to you. Go ask a Christian, Jew and Muslim, "who is god". You'll get three different answers despite the three talking about the exact same (mythical) entity.
Using access to Android source as a club to force OEMs to use Google search, to hamstring Facebook and other service providers.
First off, Facebook is not a search provider.
Secondly, how, you and I can access the latest 2.3 source code on the AOSP and do what we like with it. The source does not include Google Search any more, that is now a separate application. Same with market, Gmail and all other Google branded applications. You can download these from Google yourself.
Finally, all google are actually saying is, "manufacturers, stop screwing around or we'll remove the unfair advantage you have over cheaper handset manufactures like Huawei and ZTE, we're looking at you Samsung". They have not limited access to the source code at all, they are limiting access to unreleased code (which google is under no obligation to release at all).
Google is not using the source code as a club, they are leveraging an unfair advantage that big manufacturers like Samsung and HTC to ensure that the end user gets a better product. If the partners don't like it, they can wait for the source to drop into the AOSP, just like modders such as Darky and Cyanogen do (who are ironically keeping my HTC Desire Z more up to date then HTC).
Kindly stop trolling and take your FUD back to the bridge from whence you came.
Apple and Google need to figure out how to ignore your hand resting on the screen while writing with a stylus and license this tech form whoever owns it.
I've said for a while capacitive screens need some kind of thigh detection. I've accidentally called my boss a few times when my phone is in my pocket (Adam, I don't know any Aarons so he's at the top of the list).
So, by your reckoning I should buy a car that can only turn left because turning right is a feature that will make my care less usable.
I've had very feartureful MP3 players made by Archos and Cowon that were a delight to use, very easy to access common functions like listening to MP3 without having to sacrifice functionality. Given the fact I didn't have to use Itunes to do anything with it, it was far easier to use then anything made by Apple.
Dear fanboys, please learn that low in features != easy to use.
Webkit. You can thank Apple for being open when using the browser on your phone.
You can thank the KHTML foundation for making it open source (Apple couldn't change the LGPL license, Webkit is a derivative work of KHTML), and you can thank Google for making it usable.
The problem is that manufacturers by and large stopped selling them a couple years ago.
Really, Asus just released a new model, Acer have an entire brand dedicated to netbooks (eMachines), HP and dell have their 10" Mini's and even lenovo is selling cheap 10" laptops.
Perhaps the hype just died, Netbooks are still selling. In fact the netbook trend has continued to cheap, low powered, optical drive-less 13" laptops being offered by Dell and Lenovo. Even Apple is in on the game, the original Macbook Air was nothing but a overpriced netbook (a cheap, low powered light laptop, minus the cheap of course) and of course there is the 11" air.
Of course it's totally a coincidence the Netbook market dies around the same time the iPad was released.
It would be a coincidence, if the netbook market actually died.
Amongst my friends*, since the Ipad's release there have been 2 Ipads purchased and 6 of them have got netbooks. BTW, the 2 Ipads were bought by the same person.
* Using this term loosely, on of the people I'm referring to is an utter twunt with is head up his arse, I just know him from work.
Crashed, you seem to have a strange definition of crash?
Netbook sales normalised long before tablets were released. The reason behind this is because people already had netbooks.
Only a fool expects the initial growth of a product to continue forever, you know that eventually, everyone who wants your product will have one.
With Netbooks, they are cheap, simple computers. What kind of a person would want this? certainly not one that replaces it religiously, netbooks sell well to people like my mother who buys a new PC every 7 to 10 years.
And people are still buying them. The idea that the Ipad killed netbooks is merely a wet dream of Apple fanboys. netbooks are selling as well as they were before.
Right, because everybody knows that 90% of a game's code is in its UI and input system. Things like the game engine, AI, logic controlling elements in the game, resources, and netcode are completely irrelevant, right?
To be fair, WP7 doesn't support much in the way of netcode right now, and it's certainly not trivial to shift UI paradigms. However, that doesn't mean that the ability to use XNA, and resuse a lot of code as a result, isn't still quite valuable.
PC = powerful X86
Xbox = mediocre PowerPC
Win Phone 7* = Weak ARM v7.
That's going to put a serious kink in your plans for code portability, not to mention art assets that need to look reasonable on a 22" 16:10, 36" 16:9 and 3.7" 5:3 (or 3:5) display.
You're not going to be able to reuse much of the code, even a lot of the art assets.
* Not calling it WP7 for the sake of the whining Word Perfect fanboys and yes, I'm getting off your lawn.
STOP BUYING THEIR MUSIC (and don't pirate it.) Sooner or later they will die away like any meme that has become bad.
You're assuming they'll be able to put 2 and 2 together and figure this out.
Given the fact that they've stated there are 200,000 more pirates then internet connections in Australia I doubt it (23 million population). They didn't even bother to look up stats publicly available on the ABS web site (Australian Bureau of Statistics) before pulling some horrifying looking numbers out of their arse.
The only way to beat them is at the courtroom. The more court cases they can lose the more it costs them. Barring that you have to go to the laws themselves. Make it expensive for them to sue John and Jane Doe's. This is why they haven't tried to sue the millions of Filthy Pirates(TM) in Oz, our normally woeful libel and deformation laws would bankrupt them in a month.
Most lawyers have never been lobbyists. This judge was a lobbyist employed by the RIAA. You see, the issue here is that she was recently a lobbyist. Not that she is a lawyer.
Two good points here.
1. She's a lawyer, well shouldn't a judge know a thing or two about the law? Lawyers are normally experts in that area.
2. The question shouldn't be "was she a lobbyist", rather it should be "is she still a lobbyist". The lawyer in question may have disliked doing what she did as much as you did. I think you'll be hard pressed to find any professional that liked every client they've ever worked for.
She was a lawyer, paid to do a job as a lobbyist (probably as part of a firm). That does not mean she has an intrinsic link to that philosophy. I've sold MS Exchange Server to clients, that doesn't make me a Microsoft fanboy by any stretch of the imagination.
So the question is, does she have any current ties to any copyright enforcement entity? Economic ties especially.
That's a false duality. There is no reason that regulators can't listen to the industries they regulate as long as the industries aren't buying them trips, cars, vacations, etc...
This points out what most Americans and all Libertarians fail to understand about regulation.
Regulation is not "the man" tying the hands of the "free market(TM)". Regulation is supposed to ensure that an industry can run properly, produce products as well as being profitable and competitive.
Proper regulation brings in more competition and allows for better products or lower prices. Part of this is listening to the industry, who have a list of their problems and wants, part of this is listening to the customers who have a list of their problems and wants then to figure out what is the best course of action to ensure that both sides can get as much of what they want as possible. Often the best course of action is nothing but not always.
Regulation often helps businesses, by limiting liability or preventing supply shortages/abuses sometimes even as far as to fix prices for supply and disallowing below cost prices to force competitors out of business. Complaints about regulation more often then not come from corporations and entities who are attempting to do something that is not in good faith (I.E. squeeze out competitors).
Those people who froth at the mouth with "blerg, regulation is bad(TM)" blanket statements are idiotic. They dont take into account the actual situation. Bad regulation is bad, good regulation is good, blanket statements based on inflexible philosophies are useless.
Visual Studio,.Net, IIS (This bit needs to be fixed), X Box, Office, SQL Server, Exchange, and probably many more. I should also like to point out that their keyboards and mice are some of the best around, especially the Microsoft Natural 4000. Is that as exciting as an iPhone? Maybe not, but I get more use out of it than my smartphone, and it is an excellent product.
Out of all of those, the only one not directly related to the Windows OS is the Xbox and it took six years of haemorrhaging cash to do that, with Nintendo proving that MS going after the "hardcore" (sorry I cant call console gamers that) wasn't where the money was this future is in doubt because they cant support their existing audience whilst going after the casual audience.
Seems like another argument to take responsibility away from individual users. I'm sure it involves filtering domains that "may be virus vectors and may contain illegal content that the user is being protected from". Little "Great Firewalls" for each ISP? Considering that this is coming from Australia, it might be a part of yet another attempt to push for the creation of a Great Firewall at the ISP level, using "industry standards" to enforce it instead of a law that has to be approved and might be struck down.
Odd considering this man's stance on filtering (pretty similar to the stance of the entire ISP industry and most Aussies)
Q: Why do you oppose it?
For a number of reasons, the first is that we think that in terms of the way that the model is constructed, that it is not going to pick up the kind of content that people really do have issues with online. The volume of content that it is likely to pick up by virtue of the design of the filtering systems is really a drop in the ocean compared to the unsuitable content that is on the internet. And so the fear is that we will be creating a system where people believe that they are safer online, whereas in fact it will only be that content that people complain to the regulator about that is classified, combined perhaps with international input onto lists - but only a few thousand sites at best.
In other words the best you could say about the filter is that it will prevent inadvertent, accidental, access to a very limited number of sites, in the absence of any evidence whether anecdotal or empirical the people are accidentally coming across child pornography, bestiality, rape sites - the kind of sites that the government is seeking to dramatise here. Not in our experience, people are routinely bumping into.
A lot of the content that families really are concerned about for their children - things like violent material, racial hatred material, material which promotes race hate, maybe even just adult content that you wouldn't want your children to see, none of that will be picked up by this filtering solution.
I'm convinced this article is simply FUD meant to push the insane content filters so desired by Australia's political class
The original statement is from the AIIA (Australian Internet Industry Association) which is made up by Australian ISP's (private companies) not the government.
Secondly, the AIIA have been instrumental in blocking some of the pants on head retarded legislation, including the aforementioned content filters.
Thirdly, the Australian ISP market is highly competitive, despite all the attempts of the privatised remnants of our national telco (who owns all the copper in Oz) to do the exact opposite.
But don't let the facts get in the way of your conspiracy.
You'll notice the site's name in cio.com.au
OMFG, that name clearly proof of their nefarious scheme.
CIO and managerial subordinates certainly wont be interested in reading the opinions of a competent industry rep. It's all a massive conspiracy.
I'm afraid the only real solution will be modifying the end user experience to improve security.
Oh spare me that user experience bollocks. User experience is a pointless marketing term that has nothing to do with real HMI/HCI. User Experience is based entirely on bias and perception, meaning if you have the wrong experiene it's your bias and perception that was wrong.
Now the real solution is two fold. First, OS's need to adopt two security practices, 1. get rid of default accept, both OSX and Windows are still default accpet. Switch to Default Deny. 2. Stop allowing blank passwords.
Secondly and more importantly, we need to educate users. This is the only solution that is permanent, everything else is a stopgap. People only lock their cars and hide their valuables because they've been taught to.
Apple's File Vault hasn't been nearly as effective at encouraging encryption as Time Machine has been at encouraging backups,
Yes it has, because Apple's Time Machine has done feck all to encourage users to back up anything.
Apple are just as bad, if not worse then Microsoft for supporting bad end user habits.
Their 4G is not LTE. It is HSDPA+. They can only call it 4G due to the regulations changing to throughput instead of technology. This is fine right now, but once LTE is readily available, their "4G" will be clearly inferior due to technological limitations.
LTE is not 4G, it's 3.5G. Verizon et al have hassled the ITU in order to have that changed.
not sure if they've succeeded. Either way, HSPA+ is not 4G either and Australia has had a HSPA+ network for over 2 years.
telcos are NOT innovating anymore. well, unless you mean stealing money from us for 'texting' which costs them exactly $0.00.
I'd like to know how it costs them "exactly" $0.00?
Not that I believe that it really costs Aussie telco's A$0.25 (US$0.255) per SMS and that I also beleive that 160 bytes of data costs "for all intents and purposes" $0,00.
Once the analouge to digital conversion is done (do phones still do this, or is it digital end to end), the data used (160 b) is almost too low to measure. 200 MB per month costs about $5 to buy outright on Aussie telco's that's over 140,000 text messages yet in Telco accounting thats only 20 text messages.
In the Philippines, having 1 (~A$0.025) peso on a prepaid account entitles you to unlimited SMS messages. There are a few differences between Phillipino and Australian wages but I refuse to beleive that, in a largely automated system that makes that much of a difference.
Finally, Australian telco's are fond of using "imaginary dollars" to keep the illusion of a high price. If you're on a $35 plan, telco's give your $350 of credit to use on calls and texts (not data), I call these Imaginary Dollars (!$). This means they can list $0.25 as the price per SMS but on a pre-paid or that's $0.25 acutal dollars but on a contract its $0.25 imaginary dollars.
So !$350 gives me 1400 SMS's for $35 of my real Australian dollars, that's about $0.025. Not counting the 500 MB of data included with that $35 which costs A$2 per MB allegedly.
I'll be the first to admit that I'm no expert in accounting but these numbers simply don't add up to me.
The fact that Vista/7 is more secure than XP does little to counteract the habits and ecosystem of malware that exists to exploit people.
You think that Mac's do?
You've proven the GP's point. Bad user habits are the cause of spam, not MS's operating system and I dislike Winblows as much as the next person with half a brain.
However bad Windows is at supporting bad user habits, OS X actively fosters them. The Mac advertising gives people a false sense of security by telling them that they are magically secure. In actual fact the same kind of malware that is so prevalent on Windows systems also exists on OS X, the only difference is that Mac users beleive they are automatically protected by virtue of using a Mac.
The biggest infection vector in malware has never been technical (the OS), it's always been social (the user) and Mac's don't help this. In fact they make it worse.
Here are the six dumbest ideas in computer security,
Windows and OS X cover major dumbs 1, 2 and 3 as well as minor dumbs 3, 5 and 6.
OS X on it's own covers minor dumbs 1 and 2 as well as actively working against major dumb 5 (educating users).
Of those dumbest ideas, number 5 (educating users) is the most important because it's the only long term fix. But it's impossible to educate a user who believes they are magically protected. At least the overwhelming majority of Windows users acknowledge that there is a danger.
Slashdot Mirror
But that is not true of buying habits in general.
"Just Works" is a secondary concern at best. What it comes down to is "do or not do". People will use a product that allows them to get from point A to point B as it were. This is why Windows remains on 90% of most computers, despite several Linux distro's being "average person ready" for 2 years now and a concerted fanboy marketing campaign by Apple, Microsoft's dominance on the desktop remains unchallenged. Why, well because Windows does, it does 99% of what 99% of people need it to. It does nothing well, it's a bloated, buggy pile of crap but it allows people to get things done.
That is the real driver, will X device get what I want done. This is what will ultimately derail Apple, there will be too many cases where Apple "does not". Android is far from perfect, but it allows more people to do more of what they want then Apple. Spit an polish count for nothing when they put a roadblock in your way.
If you're waiting for a perfect device, you'll never get one. Perfect is the enemy of done, however Android is a lot closer to that goal then Apple simply because Android does not, by default come with inbuilt restrictions.
So in the end, Android vs IOS is much like DOS vs Apple in the 80's. DOS won because it allowed people to do what they needed, in order to do this it had to be extensible, flexible and well, open enough to allow people to do almost anything. Same with Unix vs Linux, now days it's hard to get a proprietary Unix, most are dead. We'd rather install Centos then sell AIX despite the profits for AIX being higher because AIX is on life support.
Open and usable wins over closed and usable.
TFTFY.
In Europe, Asia and Australia I can take my unlocked phone to most carriers in these three regions.
They've relegate Android to the bargain bin.
I'd do a fact check if I were you. HTC thunderbolt is outselling Iphones at 28% of Verizon stores, Iphones are outselling Android at a mere 11%.
Then you've got Europe and Asia were Iphones are pretty well under represented.
A lot of people simply want a phone for calls and text messages. Web is creeping in there a little, why would they spend $900 when a similar product will do it for $500?
Not everyone actually wants an Iphone, in fact few people consider that a requirement.
And the vast number of cheap Android phones from many manufacturers explains the market share.
Actually most devices are high end, Samsung Galaxy S and the HTC Desire range (Desire\HD\Z) make up over 60% of the phones sold.
Sorry if that doesn't jive with your view on Android. But in your defence, Android high end devices are cheaper ($5-700) then the entry level iDevices ($900+). I bought my HTC Desire Z outright for A$550.
But it means everything to the customers. Customers make purchasing decisions. It should stand to note that Angry Birds, everyone's favourite yard stick is making more per month with it's free Android offering then it's paid for IOS offering.
Developers are known for cutting off their nose despite their face. If they choose to ignore the fastest growing platform then they do so at their own peril. Not like there is a shortage of developers at the moment.
Kindly point out the alternate email clients in the Apple store. Same with the alternate browsers (complete with their own engine) or the tethering programs. Widgets for your home screens?
There may be more applications for Apple, but there is by far more choice on Android. Android does far more then IOS out of the box, the fact is it's been two years and Apple is still playing catchup with Android 1.1 on features.
Oh, BTW, mods? What the hell? Insightful? It takes only a moment of critical thought to see that this is devoid of insight. This comment offends me, not as a christian (which makes sense, since I am not one, nor have I ever have been one), but as someone with a brain.
Insightful because there is no +1 Ironic.
GP is complaining about an educated populace being the enemy of organised religion whilst misspelling the word populace.
OK, should have been modded funny, not insightful but he did put the words "religion" and "paedophile" together and that always results in some kind of Karma whoring, I mean watch this get modded informative.
No god or other deity.
Satanism is more a rejection of Christian like controls over our own lives. To do as one wishes to and not to appease some mythical creature.
Many people's interpretations of the Satanic Bible are different. It's meant to be and this is what makes it different from organised religion. There are no set rules, dogma or rituals, the words "Thou Shalt" and "Thou Shalt not" aren't used a lot in that book.
Because it's a rejection of the kind of hypocrisy and control that it represents.
You've read too much into a single word and became fixated on it's meaning according to you. Go ask a Christian, Jew and Muslim, "who is god". You'll get three different answers despite the three talking about the exact same (mythical) entity.
That's the one with the $5 wrench, right?
Where did you manage to find a wrench for $5?
amoeba
Multi cellular organisms.
Harley-Davidson
Triumph.
pink
green.
cnn.com
Slashdot.org, because lets face it, neither are bastions of journalistic integrity. Both just choose to inflame people about different subjects.
Using access to Android source as a club to force OEMs to use Google search, to hamstring Facebook and other service providers.
First off, Facebook is not a search provider.
Secondly, how, you and I can access the latest 2.3 source code on the AOSP and do what we like with it. The source does not include Google Search any more, that is now a separate application. Same with market, Gmail and all other Google branded applications. You can download these from Google yourself.
Finally, all google are actually saying is, "manufacturers, stop screwing around or we'll remove the unfair advantage you have over cheaper handset manufactures like Huawei and ZTE, we're looking at you Samsung". They have not limited access to the source code at all, they are limiting access to unreleased code (which google is under no obligation to release at all).
Google is not using the source code as a club, they are leveraging an unfair advantage that big manufacturers like Samsung and HTC to ensure that the end user gets a better product. If the partners don't like it, they can wait for the source to drop into the AOSP, just like modders such as Darky and Cyanogen do (who are ironically keeping my HTC Desire Z more up to date then HTC).
Kindly stop trolling and take your FUD back to the bridge from whence you came.
Apple and Google need to figure out how to ignore your hand resting on the screen while writing with a stylus and license this tech form whoever owns it.
I've said for a while capacitive screens need some kind of thigh detection. I've accidentally called my boss a few times when my phone is in my pocket (Adam, I don't know any Aarons so he's at the top of the list).
More features != better.
Apple learned that lesson. MS still hasn't.
So, by your reckoning I should buy a car that can only turn left because turning right is a feature that will make my care less usable.
I've had very feartureful MP3 players made by Archos and Cowon that were a delight to use, very easy to access common functions like listening to MP3 without having to sacrifice functionality. Given the fact I didn't have to use Itunes to do anything with it, it was far easier to use then anything made by Apple.
Dear fanboys, please learn that low in features != easy to use.
Webkit. You can thank Apple for being open when using the browser on your phone.
You can thank the KHTML foundation for making it open source (Apple couldn't change the LGPL license, Webkit is a derivative work of KHTML), and you can thank Google for making it usable.
The problem is that manufacturers by and large stopped selling them a couple years ago.
Really, Asus just released a new model, Acer have an entire brand dedicated to netbooks (eMachines), HP and dell have their 10" Mini's and even lenovo is selling cheap 10" laptops.
Perhaps the hype just died, Netbooks are still selling. In fact the netbook trend has continued to cheap, low powered, optical drive-less 13" laptops being offered by Dell and Lenovo. Even Apple is in on the game, the original Macbook Air was nothing but a overpriced netbook (a cheap, low powered light laptop, minus the cheap of course) and of course there is the 11" air.
Of course it's totally a coincidence the Netbook market dies around the same time the iPad was released.
It would be a coincidence, if the netbook market actually died.
Amongst my friends*, since the Ipad's release there have been 2 Ipads purchased and 6 of them have got netbooks. BTW, the 2 Ipads were bought by the same person.
* Using this term loosely, on of the people I'm referring to is an utter twunt with is head up his arse, I just know him from work.
Netbooks shot way up then crashed.
Crashed, you seem to have a strange definition of crash?
Netbook sales normalised long before tablets were released. The reason behind this is because people already had netbooks.
Only a fool expects the initial growth of a product to continue forever, you know that eventually, everyone who wants your product will have one.
With Netbooks, they are cheap, simple computers. What kind of a person would want this? certainly not one that replaces it religiously, netbooks sell well to people like my mother who buys a new PC every 7 to 10 years.
Did netbooks go somewhere...?
No they didn't.
Last time I looked the shops were full of them
And people are still buying them. The idea that the Ipad killed netbooks is merely a wet dream of Apple fanboys. netbooks are selling as well as they were before.
Right, because everybody knows that 90% of a game's code is in its UI and input system. Things like the game engine, AI, logic controlling elements in the game, resources, and netcode are completely irrelevant, right?
To be fair, WP7 doesn't support much in the way of netcode right now, and it's certainly not trivial to shift UI paradigms. However, that doesn't mean that the ability to use XNA, and resuse a lot of code as a result, isn't still quite valuable.
PC = powerful X86
Xbox = mediocre PowerPC
Win Phone 7* = Weak ARM v7.
That's going to put a serious kink in your plans for code portability, not to mention art assets that need to look reasonable on a 22" 16:10, 36" 16:9 and 3.7" 5:3 (or 3:5) display.
You're not going to be able to reuse much of the code, even a lot of the art assets.
* Not calling it WP7 for the sake of the whining Word Perfect fanboys and yes, I'm getting off your lawn.
STOP BUYING THEIR MUSIC (and don't pirate it.) Sooner or later they will die away like any meme that has become bad.
You're assuming they'll be able to put 2 and 2 together and figure this out.
Given the fact that they've stated there are 200,000 more pirates then internet connections in Australia I doubt it (23 million population). They didn't even bother to look up stats publicly available on the ABS web site (Australian Bureau of Statistics) before pulling some horrifying looking numbers out of their arse.
The only way to beat them is at the courtroom. The more court cases they can lose the more it costs them. Barring that you have to go to the laws themselves. Make it expensive for them to sue John and Jane Doe's. This is why they haven't tried to sue the millions of Filthy Pirates(TM) in Oz, our normally woeful libel and deformation laws would bankrupt them in a month.
Two good points here.
1. She's a lawyer, well shouldn't a judge know a thing or two about the law? Lawyers are normally experts in that area.
2. The question shouldn't be "was she a lobbyist", rather it should be "is she still a lobbyist". The lawyer in question may have disliked doing what she did as much as you did. I think you'll be hard pressed to find any professional that liked every client they've ever worked for.
She was a lawyer, paid to do a job as a lobbyist (probably as part of a firm). That does not mean she has an intrinsic link to that philosophy. I've sold MS Exchange Server to clients, that doesn't make me a Microsoft fanboy by any stretch of the imagination.
So the question is, does she have any current ties to any copyright enforcement entity? Economic ties especially.
That's a false duality. There is no reason that regulators can't listen to the industries they regulate as long as the industries aren't buying them trips, cars, vacations, etc...
This points out what most Americans and all Libertarians fail to understand about regulation.
Regulation is not "the man" tying the hands of the "free market(TM)". Regulation is supposed to ensure that an industry can run properly, produce products as well as being profitable and competitive.
Proper regulation brings in more competition and allows for better products or lower prices. Part of this is listening to the industry, who have a list of their problems and wants, part of this is listening to the customers who have a list of their problems and wants then to figure out what is the best course of action to ensure that both sides can get as much of what they want as possible. Often the best course of action is nothing but not always.
Regulation often helps businesses, by limiting liability or preventing supply shortages/abuses sometimes even as far as to fix prices for supply and disallowing below cost prices to force competitors out of business. Complaints about regulation more often then not come from corporations and entities who are attempting to do something that is not in good faith (I.E. squeeze out competitors).
Those people who froth at the mouth with "blerg, regulation is bad(TM)" blanket statements are idiotic. They dont take into account the actual situation. Bad regulation is bad, good regulation is good, blanket statements based on inflexible philosophies are useless.
Johnny Matthis vs Diet Pepsi...
Who is this Johny Matthis?
More over, who is Diet Pepsi?
Visual Studio, .Net, IIS (This bit needs to be fixed), X Box, Office, SQL Server, Exchange, and probably many more. I should also like to point out that their keyboards and mice are some of the best around, especially the Microsoft Natural 4000. Is that as exciting as an iPhone? Maybe not, but I get more use out of it than my smartphone, and it is an excellent product.
Out of all of those, the only one not directly related to the Windows OS is the Xbox and it took six years of haemorrhaging cash to do that, with Nintendo proving that MS going after the "hardcore" (sorry I cant call console gamers that) wasn't where the money was this future is in doubt because they cant support their existing audience whilst going after the casual audience.
Seems like another argument to take responsibility away from individual users. I'm sure it involves filtering domains that "may be virus vectors and may contain illegal content that the user is being protected from". Little "Great Firewalls" for each ISP? Considering that this is coming from Australia, it might be a part of yet another attempt to push for the creation of a Great Firewall at the ISP level, using "industry standards" to enforce it instead of a law that has to be approved and might be struck down.
Odd considering this man's stance on filtering (pretty similar to the stance of the entire ISP industry and most Aussies)
Q: Why do you oppose it?
For a number of reasons, the first is that we think that in terms of the way that the model is constructed, that it is not going to pick up the kind of content that people really do have issues with online. The volume of content that it is likely to pick up by virtue of the design of the filtering systems is really a drop in the ocean compared to the unsuitable content that is on the internet. And so the fear is that we will be creating a system where people believe that they are safer online, whereas in fact it will only be that content that people complain to the regulator about that is classified, combined perhaps with international input onto lists - but only a few thousand sites at best.
In other words the best you could say about the filter is that it will prevent inadvertent, accidental, access to a very limited number of sites, in the absence of any evidence whether anecdotal or empirical the people are accidentally coming across child pornography, bestiality, rape sites - the kind of sites that the government is seeking to dramatise here. Not in our experience, people are routinely bumping into.
A lot of the content that families really are concerned about for their children - things like violent material, racial hatred material, material which promotes race hate, maybe even just adult content that you wouldn't want your children to see, none of that will be picked up by this filtering solution.
Time to admit you dont know what you're on about.
The original statement is from the AIIA (Australian Internet Industry Association) which is made up by Australian ISP's (private companies) not the government.
Secondly, the AIIA have been instrumental in blocking some of the pants on head retarded legislation, including the aforementioned content filters.
Thirdly, the Australian ISP market is highly competitive, despite all the attempts of the privatised remnants of our national telco (who owns all the copper in Oz) to do the exact opposite.
But don't let the facts get in the way of your conspiracy.
You'll notice the site's name in cio.com.au
OMFG, that name clearly proof of their nefarious scheme.
CIO and managerial subordinates certainly wont be interested in reading the opinions of a competent industry rep. It's all a massive conspiracy.
Oh spare me that user experience bollocks. User experience is a pointless marketing term that has nothing to do with real HMI/HCI. User Experience is based entirely on bias and perception, meaning if you have the wrong experiene it's your bias and perception that was wrong.
Now the real solution is two fold. First, OS's need to adopt two security practices,
1. get rid of default accept, both OSX and Windows are still default accpet. Switch to Default Deny.
2. Stop allowing blank passwords.
Secondly and more importantly, we need to educate users. This is the only solution that is permanent, everything else is a stopgap. People only lock their cars and hide their valuables because they've been taught to.
Apple's File Vault hasn't been nearly as effective at encouraging encryption as Time Machine has been at encouraging backups,
Yes it has, because Apple's Time Machine has done feck all to encourage users to back up anything.
Apple are just as bad, if not worse then Microsoft for supporting bad end user habits.
Their 4G is not LTE. It is HSDPA+. They can only call it 4G due to the regulations changing to throughput instead of technology. This is fine right now, but once LTE is readily available, their "4G" will be clearly inferior due to technological limitations.
LTE is not 4G, it's 3.5G. Verizon et al have hassled the ITU in order to have that changed.
not sure if they've succeeded. Either way, HSPA+ is not 4G either and Australia has had a HSPA+ network for over 2 years.
telcos are NOT innovating anymore. well, unless you mean stealing money from us for 'texting' which costs them exactly $0.00.
I'd like to know how it costs them "exactly" $0.00?
Not that I believe that it really costs Aussie telco's A$0.25 (US$0.255) per SMS and that I also beleive that 160 bytes of data costs "for all intents and purposes" $0,00.
Once the analouge to digital conversion is done (do phones still do this, or is it digital end to end), the data used (160 b) is almost too low to measure. 200 MB per month costs about $5 to buy outright on Aussie telco's that's over 140,000 text messages yet in Telco accounting thats only 20 text messages.
In the Philippines, having 1 (~A$0.025) peso on a prepaid account entitles you to unlimited SMS messages. There are a few differences between Phillipino and Australian wages but I refuse to beleive that, in a largely automated system that makes that much of a difference.
Finally, Australian telco's are fond of using "imaginary dollars" to keep the illusion of a high price. If you're on a $35 plan, telco's give your $350 of credit to use on calls and texts (not data), I call these Imaginary Dollars (!$). This means they can list $0.25 as the price per SMS but on a pre-paid or that's $0.25 acutal dollars but on a contract its $0.25 imaginary dollars.
So !$350 gives me 1400 SMS's for $35 of my real Australian dollars, that's about $0.025. Not counting the 500 MB of data included with that $35 which costs A$2 per MB allegedly.
I'll be the first to admit that I'm no expert in accounting but these numbers simply don't add up to me.
The fact that Vista/7 is more secure than XP does little to counteract the habits and ecosystem of malware that exists to exploit people.
You think that Mac's do?
You've proven the GP's point. Bad user habits are the cause of spam, not MS's operating system and I dislike Winblows as much as the next person with half a brain.
However bad Windows is at supporting bad user habits, OS X actively fosters them. The Mac advertising gives people a false sense of security by telling them that they are magically secure. In actual fact the same kind of malware that is so prevalent on Windows systems also exists on OS X, the only difference is that Mac users beleive they are automatically protected by virtue of using a Mac.
The biggest infection vector in malware has never been technical (the OS), it's always been social (the user) and Mac's don't help this. In fact they make it worse.
Here are the six dumbest ideas in computer security,
Windows and OS X cover major dumbs 1, 2 and 3 as well as minor dumbs 3, 5 and 6.
OS X on it's own covers minor dumbs 1 and 2 as well as actively working against major dumb 5 (educating users).
Of those dumbest ideas, number 5 (educating users) is the most important because it's the only long term fix. But it's impossible to educate a user who believes they are magically protected. At least the overwhelming majority of Windows users acknowledge that there is a danger.