You forgot to list any iChat-like applications. I'd be surprised if Apple's contracts with the carriers didn't have any provisions intended to protect ths carriers' SMS income.
I agree, but you left out another deadly issue: lack of support for older hardware.
A while back, I really wanted to use Solaris w/ZFS raid-Z. Unfortunately, Solaris doesn't support PCI IDE controllers (it only supports the IDE controller on motherboards). Being restricted to only 3 disks (+ CDROM) severely limits the usefulness of raid-Z. (Well, this was the case a year or so back, and it may have changed, but I doubt it.)
And, now that ZFS has been ported to FreeBSD (which does support PCI IDE controllers), I have no significant reason to use Solaris. Yes, there are a number of areas where Solaris is better, technically, but none are big enough to make me want to switch.
Bottom line: this is all in a gray area. Disclaimer: IANAL.
Mangled summary: while the DCMA does have exemptions for this, they appear to assume that the sole purpose is for lawfully connecting to wireless networks. Once you start to sell/produce unlocked phones, lawyers can argue that the sole purpose is profit, and not for connecting to networks, and can possibly sue.
Apple fanboys: get over it. Apple products aren't perfect, they aren't "revolutionizing markets", and they aren't for everyone.
No argument there.
However, you're misunderstanding the target audience. You seem to think that the iPhone is targeted at people like you, who have or are interested in smartphones. The iPhone appears to be targeted at the cash-flush, "mass-market consumers", and not at tech geeks. There's a whole lot more money to be made by selling to mass-market consumers, and these people don't really care if the technology has been around before. Apple's produced an easy-to-use device, and, for what it does, it does it fairly well, and that's a big selling point with mass-market consumers.
Also, if Apple sells enough, many developers and websites will be optimizing for the iPhone, and not necessarily for smartphones. (Yes, web devs should be optimizing for both, but that doesn't always happen -- note the recent appearance of iPhone-optimized websites.)
Sheep? Maybe, maybe not. But Apple's laughing all the way to the bank.
Oh, and I'll just mention that any iPhone-wannabees will also have to compete with the iTunes store. Lots of mass-market consumers like to have an easy-to-use, "one-stop-shopping" experience, and any wannabe will have to face that hurdle. Now, I'm not saying that there won't be any competition to the iPhone. It's just that they'll have a difficult time grabbing a big share of the "iPhone marketplace".
"But I don't care about iTunes", some people will say. OK. Fine. good. Apple's probably not trying to sell you an iPhone, although they'd love it if you bought one. It's not about you -- it's about all of the many other mass-market consumers with $$$. Note that brains are irrelevant, here.
In fact, she uses the iPhone so much that it's getting to the point where I could probably sneak out and she wouldn't know. Perhaps it's saying something about me. doh!
No, you need to get an iPhone, too, so that the two of you can have meaningful, deep discussions via the iPhones.:-)
However, a big advantage of the iPhone is that you can do more. Want to know what movies are showing and where? Look it up. Want to know a store's hours? Look it up. Yada, etc. (Admittedly, the recent appearance of iPhone-optimized web pages do help a lot.)
"But I can call up XXX and just ask", some people will say. Sure, you can make a phone call. You can also do that while sitting at your computer. So, why don't you?:-)
For those people who are complaining about the virtual keyboard, welcome to the "Crotchety Old Geezers" club.;-)
My guess is that most (but not all) of the 25-and-under club will find the virtual keyboard perfectly usable. Note: not "perfect" or "excellent", but "usable". They're the ones who can generally easily adapt and learn. Us old geezers, on the other hand....;-)
Of course, as to how many "under-25" people can afford the iPhone, well, that's another question.
I read it again, and the article is actually ambiguous. He doesn't seem to say, one way or the other, and you can read it either way. However, after re-reading it, I'll concede that, in all probability, LOTR probably doesn't have level matching.
Monster leveling like that only works in single-player games, like Oblivion.
I agree -- and that's way I won't even look at LOTR if they do level matching.
So, are they really automatically matching the monster levels to the player level?
If so, then meh, I'm definitely not going to get LOTR. Monster levels should be fixed: if my wimpy lvl 2 toon wants to commit suicide and take on the nasty lvl 18 monster, that's my challenge. If my lvl 18 toon wants to rampage through some lvl 2 monsters, that's my decision.
IMO, automatic monster level matching just means that the devs are too cheap/lazy to design good, challenging areas.
While valgrind is very nice, IBM's (was Rational's) Purify is much better for uninitialized memory detection, if you can afford it (the Unix/linux version of purify, that is -- I don't like the windows version). The biggest issue with valgrind is that it only tells you about uninitialized variables when they are used as part of a conditional test (like an "if" or "while" statement). For example, function "A" could have an uninitialized variable that gets passed to functions "B", "C", and "D", which then store the uninitialized value like a virus into 1000 data structures. Eventually, valgrind may eventually report that an uninitialized value is being used by function "xyz". For many cases, while valgrind will detect the uninitialized value's existence, it can be very hard to divine the source. Purify, on the other hand, will tell you exactly from whence it came.
However, purify is pretty expensive. I don't think most folks can afford it, and so valgrind is an excellent alternative.
Increased reliability (all data is checksummed, even in non-raid configurations), near brainless management (e.g., newfs is not needed, raid configurations are trivial to setup, etc.), built-in optional compression (even for swap, if you're feeling masochistic), etc.. Encryption is in development.
Of course, the other recent study by Google showed that predictive health checks may be of limited value as an indicator of impending catastrophic disk failure.
The google study did find that the sudden appearance of an error, recoverable or otherwise, did correlate well with increased disk failure probability.
It's generally not about the 64- vs 128- vs whatever.
It's about the additional reliability (current bugs aside), and the ease of filesystem/pool management. For example, a Sun developer was developing on a workstation with bad hardware, which occasionally caused incorrect data to be written to disk. After setting up raidz, ZFS automatically detected and corrected the error: http://blogs.sun.com/elowe/entry/zfs_saves_the_day _ta
Scary, yes. Doing that definitely isn't something I'd recommend, but it does show one of the powerful features of ZFS.
Going off on a slight tangent, VMware Workstation (non-free, $$) is the only one that has a glimmer of (imperfect) DirectX support, although there are rumors about similar support in the forthcoming OS X version. This is important for home users (not enterprise or business users) that run windows to play real-time 3D games.;-)
Ignoring the hype, the one big advantage of landlines (in California, at least), is that the landlines tend to be battery-backed-up, whereas cell phone towers seem to die whenever there's a power failure (I hope this is changing, though). This can be important, here in earthquake country (although, admittedly, I wouldn't expect landlines to last more than an hour or two after a major disaster).
Cell coverage is also best in the major metropolitan areas, and spotty outside, due to the large geographical area covered by California.
Unfortunately, nexenta development appears to be glacial. The last alpha release was what, six months ago??? Now, "six months" might not seem to be too bad -- this is an OS that we're talking about. However, when you consider that the competition (e.g., Ubuntu) comes out with unstable releases every month or two, then, well, nexenta doesn't look too good. This is especially important, as hardware support is a problem with solaris.
PCI IDE controllers? Last I heard (a few months back), there really wasn't any support for them, although some could be made to work with some patches. I don't imagine that this situation has changed (and I've love to be wrong, here), but an old box with several IDE drives would make a very nice raid-Z server. Unfortunately, you apparently can't do that with PCI IDE controllers.
Right now, I'm stuck using linux for virtualization. If solaris ever supported decent virtualization, I'd drop-kick linux and love every moment of it (because I'd really like to use ZFS and dTrace). Unfortunately, solaris doesn't really have good virtualization: xen is about it, and xen progress appears to be as glacial as nexenta (last blog update was at the end of April, but the previous entry was last August!).
They have optional port filtering/firewalling, adjustable to various levels. For new accounts (home, not sure about business), it's enabled, and set to some modest level (port 25 is definitely blocked, as are probably a few other ports). If you want to unblock ports (or really crank things down), you have to go into some member tools page to change the port blocking/firewall settings.
But according to what I could find on their Web site their highest-end service is, "somewhere between 3000-6000 Kbits down." That's rather too vague for me.
Unfortunately, with DSL, they're at the mercy of the quality and length of your phone line (from the phone company/remote terminal, to your site). The quality/type of your home/business phone wiring is also important (e.g., home-run vs star configuration, twisted vs untwisted, etc.), and they have no way of knowing that. As a result, they can only guarantee a range, and that's assuming that you even qualify for the (upper) range. There's no way of knowing the exact DSL speeds you can get, without actually getting the line (and then letting the DSL modem train itself over a period of days, to adjust for your line conditions).
On the other hand, if you have boatloads of money, they'll sell you T1/T3/frame relay lines.;-)
This raises the question as to whether there are any reasonable alternatives to Speakeasy left?
Are you looking for a net connection, hosting/co-location services, or both?
If you're looking for a net connection, check out DSLreports, which has ISP ratings.
If you're looking for either, and are in California, check out sonic.net -- they provide home/business DSL service, as well as web hosting/co-location services. Check them out in DSLreports. (Disclaimer: I have no connection to sonic.net, aside from being a satisfied customer.)
I'll second the recommendation for sonic.net (I have no connections to them, aside from being a happy customer). They're a regional ISP (California, and Arizona?), and so they don't serve everyone (although dial-up might work, but most people probably don't want that). However, if anyone's looking for a new ISP, and they can serve you, you really should check them out.
Slashdot Mirror
That's because they haven't yet passed out the maps:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUE1Cu04Jzo
You forgot to list any iChat-like applications. I'd be surprised if Apple's contracts with the carriers didn't have any provisions intended to protect ths carriers' SMS income.
Yes.
Also, I'm surprised that no one's brought up the open letter at iLounge: http://ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/an-open-letter-to-nbc-re-leaving-apples-itunes-store/
It's generally pretty good, although there is a paragraph or two near the end that may make you go, "wtf?".
I agree, but you left out another deadly issue: lack of support for older hardware.
A while back, I really wanted to use Solaris w/ZFS raid-Z. Unfortunately, Solaris doesn't support PCI IDE controllers (it only supports the IDE controller on motherboards). Being restricted to only 3 disks (+ CDROM) severely limits the usefulness of raid-Z. (Well, this was the case a year or so back, and it may have changed, but I doubt it.)
And, now that ZFS has been ported to FreeBSD (which does support PCI IDE controllers), I have no significant reason to use Solaris. Yes, there are a number of areas where Solaris is better, technically, but none are big enough to make me want to switch.
Sheesh. Doesn't anyone actually surf the web and actually read web pages anymore? This is old news: http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/24/know-your-right s-is-it-illegal-to-unlock-my-iphone/
Bottom line: this is all in a gray area. Disclaimer: IANAL.
Mangled summary: while the DCMA does have exemptions for this, they appear to assume that the sole purpose is for lawfully connecting to wireless networks. Once you start to sell/produce unlocked phones, lawyers can argue that the sole purpose is profit, and not for connecting to networks, and can possibly sue.
No argument there.
However, you're misunderstanding the target audience. You seem to think that the iPhone is targeted at people like you, who have or are interested in smartphones. The iPhone appears to be targeted at the cash-flush, "mass-market consumers", and not at tech geeks. There's a whole lot more money to be made by selling to mass-market consumers, and these people don't really care if the technology has been around before. Apple's produced an easy-to-use device, and, for what it does, it does it fairly well, and that's a big selling point with mass-market consumers.
Also, if Apple sells enough, many developers and websites will be optimizing for the iPhone, and not necessarily for smartphones. (Yes, web devs should be optimizing for both, but that doesn't always happen -- note the recent appearance of iPhone-optimized websites.)
Sheep? Maybe, maybe not. But Apple's laughing all the way to the bank.
Oh, and I'll just mention that any iPhone-wannabees will also have to compete with the iTunes store. Lots of mass-market consumers like to have an easy-to-use, "one-stop-shopping" experience, and any wannabe will have to face that hurdle. Now, I'm not saying that there won't be any competition to the iPhone. It's just that they'll have a difficult time grabbing a big share of the "iPhone marketplace".
"But I don't care about iTunes", some people will say. OK. Fine. good. Apple's probably not trying to sell you an iPhone, although they'd love it if you bought one. It's not about you -- it's about all of the many other mass-market consumers with $$$. Note that brains are irrelevant, here.
No, you need to get an iPhone, too, so that the two of you can have meaningful, deep discussions via the iPhones. :-)
(No, no, I'm not serious. Really.)
True, true.
However, a big advantage of the iPhone is that you can do more. Want to know what movies are showing and where? Look it up. Want to know a store's hours? Look it up. Yada, etc. (Admittedly, the recent appearance of iPhone-optimized web pages do help a lot.)
"But I can call up XXX and just ask", some people will say. Sure, you can make a phone call. You can also do that while sitting at your computer. So, why don't you? :-)
lol
For those people who are complaining about the virtual keyboard, welcome to the "Crotchety Old Geezers" club. ;-)
My guess is that most (but not all) of the 25-and-under club will find the virtual keyboard perfectly usable. Note: not "perfect" or "excellent", but "usable". They're the ones who can generally easily adapt and learn. Us old geezers, on the other hand .... ;-)
Of course, as to how many "under-25" people can afford the iPhone, well, that's another question.
"Get off my iPhone!"
Why, yes, I did. ;-)
I read it again, and the article is actually ambiguous. He doesn't seem to say, one way or the other, and you can read it either way. However, after re-reading it, I'll concede that, in all probability, LOTR probably doesn't have level matching.
I agree -- and that's way I won't even look at LOTR if they do level matching.
So, are they really automatically matching the monster levels to the player level?
If so, then meh, I'm definitely not going to get LOTR. Monster levels should be fixed: if my wimpy lvl 2 toon wants to commit suicide and take on the nasty lvl 18 monster, that's my challenge. If my lvl 18 toon wants to rampage through some lvl 2 monsters, that's my decision.
IMO, automatic monster level matching just means that the devs are too cheap/lazy to design good, challenging areas.
While valgrind is very nice, IBM's (was Rational's) Purify is much better for uninitialized memory detection, if you can afford it (the Unix/linux version of purify, that is -- I don't like the windows version). The biggest issue with valgrind is that it only tells you about uninitialized variables when they are used as part of a conditional test (like an "if" or "while" statement). For example, function "A" could have an uninitialized variable that gets passed to functions "B", "C", and "D", which then store the uninitialized value like a virus into 1000 data structures. Eventually, valgrind may eventually report that an uninitialized value is being used by function "xyz". For many cases, while valgrind will detect the uninitialized value's existence, it can be very hard to divine the source. Purify, on the other hand, will tell you exactly from whence it came.
However, purify is pretty expensive. I don't think most folks can afford it, and so valgrind is an excellent alternative.
Increased reliability (all data is checksummed, even in non-raid configurations), near brainless management (e.g., newfs is not needed, raid configurations are trivial to setup, etc.), built-in optional compression (even for swap, if you're feeling masochistic), etc.. Encryption is in development.
See my other posts here for links.
OK:
- ZFS w/flaky hardware (scary): http://blogs.sun.com/elowe/entry/zfs_saves_the_da
y _ta
- Self Healing with ZFS: http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/demos
/ selfheal/
- 100 Mirrored Filesystems in 5 minutes: http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/demos
/ basics/
And, for more than you wanted to know about ZFS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFSThe google study did find that the sudden appearance of an error, recoverable or otherwise, did correlate well with increased disk failure probability.
ZFS also has disk compression, and encryption is under development (IIRC).
It's generally not about the 64- vs 128- vs whatever.
It's about the additional reliability (current bugs aside), and the ease of filesystem/pool management. For example, a Sun developer was developing on a workstation with bad hardware, which occasionally caused incorrect data to be written to disk. After setting up raidz, ZFS automatically detected and corrected the error: http://blogs.sun.com/elowe/entry/zfs_saves_the_day _ta
Scary, yes. Doing that definitely isn't something I'd recommend, but it does show one of the powerful features of ZFS.
Going off on a slight tangent, VMware Workstation (non-free, $$) is the only one that has a glimmer of (imperfect) DirectX support, although there are rumors about similar support in the forthcoming OS X version. This is important for home users (not enterprise or business users) that run windows to play real-time 3D games. ;-)
Interesting.
Ignoring the hype, the one big advantage of landlines (in California, at least), is that the landlines tend to be battery-backed-up, whereas cell phone towers seem to die whenever there's a power failure (I hope this is changing, though). This can be important, here in earthquake country (although, admittedly, I wouldn't expect landlines to last more than an hour or two after a major disaster).
Cell coverage is also best in the major metropolitan areas, and spotty outside, due to the large geographical area covered by California.
Unfortunately, nexenta development appears to be glacial. The last alpha release was what, six months ago??? Now, "six months" might not seem to be too bad -- this is an OS that we're talking about. However, when you consider that the competition (e.g., Ubuntu) comes out with unstable releases every month or two, then, well, nexenta doesn't look too good. This is especially important, as hardware support is a problem with solaris.
PCI IDE controllers? Last I heard (a few months back), there really wasn't any support for them, although some could be made to work with some patches. I don't imagine that this situation has changed (and I've love to be wrong, here), but an old box with several IDE drives would make a very nice raid-Z server. Unfortunately, you apparently can't do that with PCI IDE controllers.
Right now, I'm stuck using linux for virtualization. If solaris ever supported decent virtualization, I'd drop-kick linux and love every moment of it (because I'd really like to use ZFS and dTrace). Unfortunately, solaris doesn't really have good virtualization: xen is about it, and xen progress appears to be as glacial as nexenta (last blog update was at the end of April, but the previous entry was last August!).
So, yes, Linux does have some catching up to do. ;-)
They have optional port filtering/firewalling, adjustable to various levels. For new accounts (home, not sure about business), it's enabled, and set to some modest level (port 25 is definitely blocked, as are probably a few other ports). If you want to unblock ports (or really crank things down), you have to go into some member tools page to change the port blocking/firewall settings.
Unfortunately, with DSL, they're at the mercy of the quality and length of your phone line (from the phone company/remote terminal, to your site). The quality/type of your home/business phone wiring is also important (e.g., home-run vs star configuration, twisted vs untwisted, etc.), and they have no way of knowing that. As a result, they can only guarantee a range, and that's assuming that you even qualify for the (upper) range. There's no way of knowing the exact DSL speeds you can get, without actually getting the line (and then letting the DSL modem train itself over a period of days, to adjust for your line conditions).
On the other hand, if you have boatloads of money, they'll sell you T1/T3/frame relay lines. ;-)
Are you looking for a net connection, hosting/co-location services, or both?
If you're looking for a net connection, check out DSLreports, which has ISP ratings.
If you're looking for either, and are in California, check out sonic.net -- they provide home/business DSL service, as well as web hosting/co-location services. Check them out in DSLreports. (Disclaimer: I have no connection to sonic.net, aside from being a satisfied customer.)
I'll second the recommendation for sonic.net (I have no connections to them, aside from being a happy customer). They're a regional ISP (California, and Arizona?), and so they don't serve everyone (although dial-up might work, but most people probably don't want that). However, if anyone's looking for a new ISP, and they can serve you, you really should check them out.
Also, don't take my word for it. Check out their DSLreports entry. Also, see how they compare to other regional ISPs (at the bottom of this page).