But seriously, is there all that much difference between any of them? Just because we can trace these two churches back to their wacko founders, doesn't mean the other older churches weren't founded by wackos too.
I believe that there are severe differences from them... Take these two:
Scientology is a scam, clearly designed by a science fiction author to part fools and their money
Islam was established as a way to control and motivate followers and gain power by a local chief... it just spread a bit much afterward
In contrast, some of the other religions (Judaism, Christendom, Hinduim, Buddhism) seem to have started out as attempts to understand the world and fill out holes of their knowledge... and then it grew from there. Sure, many sects and leaders have used these to the same ends as the two religions listed above, but at least they don't seem to be started by someone with a clear motive to gain from it.
That said, that the core of the religions is imagination doesn't prevent many of them from being rich treasure troves of culture and knowledge of what it is, and has been, to be human - created by humans.
I have one of these TVs, and one major problem is that each manufacturer is trying to create a captive audience for their own variety of apps.
As a result, the number of apps available is pathetic, and almost all boil down to TV stations vanity apps
Walled gardens can work - just look at Apple's app store for iOS. And I have no doubt that an app store for Apple TV would be a large success.
Don't confuse the drawbacks with "can't work". Some (not all) examples of drawbacks
The "gardener" gets to enforce policies that might be in conflict what customers wants. E.g. crazy American moral standards: Nipples are really, really, really bad, violence is for everyone
Open source is harder
The lead time for software to reach the user is increased
Even so, there are advantages to users as well. A single location to find, buy and update apps is easy - far easier than the mess that I had e.g. on my Nokia N95 in the pre-iPhone days. Finding apps was hard, and there was no update mechanism. You also decrease the chance of malware significantly, and at least in theory apps shouldn't misbehave as much.
They're not "getting rid of pixels," since you'll still have pixels on your monitor and your graphics card will still buffer what it's drawing to the screen.
The paper sounds interesting enough, but the summary has essentially nothing to do with it.
As a resident of a small island off the West coast of Europe, and having done my research, I can tell you now that Europe as a whole is not innocent; particularly Norway, where one fifth of the child population is in State care
Uhh.... what?? That claim doesn't exactly seem to match reality. Just below 4% get some attention, and most of them get assistance in the family.
I'm looking at my mac options from GOG and I'm wondering.. Planescape or Baldurs Gate?
Both are really good games. As a standalone experience, I'd recommend Planescape. However, nothing beats starting a character in Candlekeep in BG1 and following the character throughout BG1 (w/expansion), BG2 and finally BG2:Throne of Bhaal.
It should be noted that BG1 (w/expansion) has just been released in an enhanced version available on the iPad(!), Windows and soon Mac.
This is so wrong its not even funny. How is automation going to make the Macbook Pro cheaper for the masses? ITS NOT. Apple, like many other companies, decided that manufacturing was too costly in the US, so they moved it overseas where labor costs were next to nothing. If Apple is moving some manufacturing back to the US, and using automation to do it, it must at least be on par with their costs to do business in China. Do you expect Apple to knock $50 off the price of your next computer because of it? They won't. They'll pocket that money. Rich get richer, just like always
The Macbook Pro is priced based on the value Apple believes it provides, not on the production value. A really nice position to be in, and one which requires a way to differentiate you from other potential competitors. If the production price goes down $50, all other things equal, Apple pockets the difference. Same thing if the production cost increases $50, without Apple believing the reason is something that increases the relative value of the product (if the cost increase is $50 for everyone, e.g. from Intel, they'd increase the price of course).
Not true since Vista. Slashdot is full of folks who've last used Windows more than 10 years ago and thus complain of things like bluescreens, bloat etc. which makes them look like idiots.
Get with the times and at least update your hate machine.
Bluescreens still happen... My work HP laptop running Windows 7 could be relied upon to provide a couple each hour it was running a skype conference. Sound driver, I believe.
Just bite the bullet and get a Harmony One or (if you need to control devices outside line-of-site) the Harmony 900.
I have two (for different media centers) and bought my dad one as well. Haven't had to reprogram any of them since the initial installation more than a year ago.
You don't appreciate physical buttons on your remote until you lose them all.
I loved the Harmony One, and I've got a Harmony Touch now - but they did not work at all with the Nintendo Wii. To work with the PS3, you need an extra device for converting IR to bluetooth.
The Harmony is great at setting up the other devices that are part of the activity, though - typically a TV and a receiver.
I'm sorry you have violated Xerox's Corporation trademark on the use of the protected phrase "xerox". According to Xerox corporation "you cannot 'xerox' a document, but you can copy it on a Xerox Brand copying machine".
I think Trademarks are mostly ok how they are, as opposed to the insanity's that are copyright and patents.
I mostly agree there... software patents should go the way of the dodo bird, and other patents are in big need of a reform as well. In my opinion (which is just that), Samsung deserves a big slap on the wrist for trying so hard to make their initial Android phones look like the iPhone - the physical device, the OS (Android modified to look more like the iPhone), the icons etc. And then everybody should just move on, they don't look identical anymore.
It sounds like Motorola has patented using Wi-Fi on tablets.
Are we really handing patents out for this?
Yes, indeed. Motorola has got patents on WiFi technology on pretty much any device. But consider: Apple has patents on the external shape and icons of the iPad. That is infinitely much worse; and even worse is that Apple feels that 'innovation' is worth $20 per device copying the rounded rectangular shape.
Actually, I think extortion on standard essential FRAND patents are far worse than trying to prevent someone from almost xeroxing the device. There are many ways to create devices (cell phones and tablets looked really different before the iPhone), but a standard is just that... a standard. And to get your patent included in a standard, you make promises that should be upheld.
IPS superior to LED? I believe your mileage may vary.
I believe you are talking of OLED, not just LED. In particular, Samsung's AMOLED. LED is frequently used in conjunction with LCD, e.g. on most TVs today.
That said, IPS can indeed be superior to OLEDs for the time being. E.g., the best screen on any cellphone today is on Apple's iPhone 5 - and it is IPS.
Are you serious? A service pack is a bundling up of driver updates and patches. The equivalent of the service pack in OS X would be the 10.x.x packages which are free. The "version" stays at 10.x with each release because each release retains a high level of binary and code compatibility and for marketing purposes. In some cases, third party drivers (ktext) have to be recompiled in order to work while in others some rewriting has to happen. The kernel increased by a full version number with each 10.x release and new APIs were also added with each release.
When was the last time the Win32 API was updated? Certainly not with service packs. BTW. The.NET framework does not really count since you can download that separately and the API that is hooks into has not really changed much since Windows XP.
While I agree on your point - that the 10.x releases are in general comparable to a Windows release - I would like to point out that due to an architecture change (impressively handled) and OS architecture change (Carbon -> Cocoa), no apps from 2005 or earlier will run on a new system. Many won't even recompile. So there have been massive changes even while just bumping the.x.
I'm a UK citizen and I have little sympathy for him. HIs defence played the old suicide card with a side serving of poor-little-me aspergers sufferer. As if that somehow makes him innocent of his crimes. If thats alls that needed to get someone off going to prison then most prisons would be empty.
This sends a very bad message. And yes, I know I'll get modded down for this by all the self righteous teen keyboard warriors but I have karma to burn to knock yourselves out.
Why is a Brit extradited to the US anyway, for a possible crime committed in the UK? If I did something stupid in Norway, I'd expected to be tried here with Norwegian laws, judges and sentences. I'm pretty sure the US does not extradite it's own citizens for crimes done in the US...
Because MicroUSB is a terrible connector. They already had a proprietary connector and just swapped it for another type with the function they wanted.
I know MicroUSB has features that allow it to adapt and output HDMI, or analog audio etc, but Apple wanted a more adaptable (although obviously proprietary) connector.
Does MicroUSB allow this? I thought MicroUSB only handled USB data transfers, if it can handle more that would be very useful... and it also affects the reason I believe Apple chose another connector: It does many other things, like video and audio.
Because MicroUSB is a terrible connector. They already had a proprietary connector and just swapped it for another type with the function they wanted.
I know MicroUSB has features that allow it to adapt and output HDMI, or analog audio etc, but Apple wanted a more adaptable (although obviously proprietary) connector.
Does MicroUSB allow this? I thought MicroUSB only handled USB data transfers, if it can handle more that would be very useful... and it also affects the reason I believe Apple chose another connector: It does many other things, like video and audio.
If it's PPI you're after, the iPhone 4/4s/5 isn't your best bet. If you're an Android user, you've got plenty of great displays to choose from.
The iPhone had, as the first smartphone, a high enough PPI that you can't distinguish between pixels - it's what they coined the phrase "retina display" for - so there's no point in going for something higher. And the iPhone 5 apparently has the best screen among smartphones today.
RIM's main problem is that enterprise companies have started moving away from the platform. People don't want to carry around several smart phones and are much more eager to choose either iPhone or WP7 phones. Microsoft is known for being the office centric company and therefore has fantastic support for Exchange server and office apps. RIM lost the audience it had when Windows Phones were introduced (while Windows Mobile also had many work users, WP was a major improvement)..
While you present an interesting theory, reality is that noone is using Windows Phone. They had a market share of 3% of smartphones shipped. iPhone in particular and Android are the ones eating Blackberry's lunch. To make this even worse, this quarter Windows Phone is currently only sold on known obsolete phones. I'm glad I didn't get suckered into buying a phone that obsolete immediately, unlike Nexus Phones and iPhones.
You have to recoup R & D, maintenance, sales and marketing, etc.
True, but the marginal cost of software is low - in this case, close to zero as I'm sure support will be handled by the ISVs. And in that case, you want to maximize units sold times price per unit.
Of course, this market has an entrenched player with an upscale, premium reputation - something Microsoft doesn't have. So selling Windows tablets for more than iPads might be an uphill battle that isn't going to last very long.
If their ways of doing that improves my user experience above the base level of not having ads, then the ads and their mechanisms are a net win for me as a customer. So your argument really falls down on an objective level, []
I didn't argue that ads were bad or detrimental to your user experience. I just noted that Android is a delivery mechanism for Google's ads, so that speaking of Google Nexus not having adware is rather... weird. Thus my argument stands, you just seem to set up something else to argue against.
And just FTR: Kindle Tablets are, for the time being, completely and utterly irrelevant to me: They don't ship them to Norway. I could get around it, but with no Amazon Prime this would be rather pointless.
but it's sole job is to enable delivery of Google's ad service to users from it's customers.
Sure there's the ads, but there's also the web usage metrics, app usage metrics, location data stream, QR code metrics, and the friction-free interface with the Google web properties, force-multiplying all of the various data modeling and extraction those use, what with the text-to-speech, the corpus for natural language comprehension, email and spam-guided machine learning, calendar stats aggregation, Google+ relationship maps and content. Let alone guaranteeing integrated and most-favored-nation status for their content services, YouTube, Google Play...
"You will pay for your lack of imagination!":)
You're just describing way of delivering more ads, improving the targeting of the ads (and thus being able to charge more) and measuring how effective they are so you can target them even more. Plus some auxiliary services ("Google Play") which has to be there, or noone will use the platform.
I think this will help Google Nexus sales. I am not aware they come with built in adware.
From a 30000 ft view, Android is just an ad delivery mechanism. If you zoom in, it's a mobile OS, but it's sole job is to enable delivery of Google's ad service to users from it's customers. And as always, you are Google's product, not their customer.
Now, I use google mail, google docs, google talk and chrome... but I know they're doing this to sell me.
Slashdot Mirror
But seriously, is there all that much difference between any of them? Just because we can trace these two churches back to their wacko founders, doesn't mean the other older churches weren't founded by wackos too.
I believe that there are severe differences from them... Take these two:
In contrast, some of the other religions (Judaism, Christendom, Hinduim, Buddhism) seem to have started out as attempts to understand the world and fill out holes of their knowledge... and then it grew from there. Sure, many sects and leaders have used these to the same ends as the two religions listed above, but at least they don't seem to be started by someone with a clear motive to gain from it.
That said, that the core of the religions is imagination doesn't prevent many of them from being rich treasure troves of culture and knowledge of what it is, and has been, to be human - created by humans.
I have one of these TVs, and one major problem is that each manufacturer is trying to create a captive audience for their own variety of apps.
As a result, the number of apps available is pathetic, and almost all boil down to TV stations vanity apps
Walled gardens can work - just look at Apple's app store for iOS. And I have no doubt that an app store for Apple TV would be a large success.
Don't confuse the drawbacks with "can't work". Some (not all) examples of drawbacks
Even so, there are advantages to users as well. A single location to find, buy and update apps is easy - far easier than the mess that I had e.g. on my Nokia N95 in the pre-iPhone days. Finding apps was hard, and there was no update mechanism. You also decrease the chance of malware significantly, and at least in theory apps shouldn't misbehave as much.
They're not "getting rid of pixels," since you'll still have pixels on your monitor and your graphics card will still buffer what it's drawing to the screen.
The paper sounds interesting enough, but the summary has essentially nothing to do with it.
Vector monitors to the rescue!
As a resident of a small island off the West coast of Europe, and having done my research, I can tell you now that Europe as a whole is not innocent; particularly Norway, where one fifth of the child population is in State care
Uhh.... what?? That claim doesn't exactly seem to match reality. Just below 4% get some attention, and most of them get assistance in the family.
When I look at the Planescape page at GOG, it doesn't show a Mac option. Did I miss something? I'd give 'em $9.99 in a heartbeat.
The GOG version works well in Crossover, and probably other versions of Wine as well.
I'm looking at my mac options from GOG and I'm wondering.. Planescape or Baldurs Gate?
Both are really good games. As a standalone experience, I'd recommend Planescape. However, nothing beats starting a character in Candlekeep in BG1 and following the character throughout BG1 (w/expansion), BG2 and finally BG2:Throne of Bhaal.
It should be noted that BG1 (w/expansion) has just been released in an enhanced version available on the iPad(!), Windows and soon Mac.
This is so wrong its not even funny. How is automation going to make the Macbook Pro cheaper for the masses? ITS NOT. Apple, like many other companies, decided that manufacturing was too costly in the US, so they moved it overseas where labor costs were next to nothing. If Apple is moving some manufacturing back to the US, and using automation to do it, it must at least be on par with their costs to do business in China. Do you expect Apple to knock $50 off the price of your next computer because of it? They won't. They'll pocket that money. Rich get richer, just like always
The Macbook Pro is priced based on the value Apple believes it provides, not on the production value. A really nice position to be in, and one which requires a way to differentiate you from other potential competitors. If the production price goes down $50, all other things equal, Apple pockets the difference. Same thing if the production cost increases $50, without Apple believing the reason is something that increases the relative value of the product (if the cost increase is $50 for everyone, e.g. from Intel, they'd increase the price of course).
Not true since Vista. Slashdot is full of folks who've last used Windows more than 10 years ago and thus complain of things like bluescreens, bloat etc. which makes them look like idiots.
Get with the times and at least update your hate machine.
Bluescreens still happen... My work HP laptop running Windows 7 could be relied upon to provide a couple each hour it was running a skype conference. Sound driver, I believe.
Just bite the bullet and get a Harmony One or (if you need to control devices outside line-of-site) the Harmony 900.
I have two (for different media centers) and bought my dad one as well. Haven't had to reprogram any of them since the initial installation more than a year ago.
You don't appreciate physical buttons on your remote until you lose them all.
I loved the Harmony One, and I've got a Harmony Touch now - but they did not work at all with the Nintendo Wii. To work with the PS3, you need an extra device for converting IR to bluetooth.
The Harmony is great at setting up the other devices that are part of the activity, though - typically a TV and a receiver.
> xeroxing the device
I'm sorry you have violated Xerox's Corporation trademark on the use of the protected phrase "xerox". According to Xerox corporation "you cannot 'xerox' a document, but you can copy it on a Xerox Brand copying machine".
I think Trademarks are mostly ok how they are, as opposed to the insanity's that are copyright and patents.
I mostly agree there... software patents should go the way of the dodo bird, and other patents are in big need of a reform as well. In my opinion (which is just that), Samsung deserves a big slap on the wrist for trying so hard to make their initial Android phones look like the iPhone - the physical device, the OS (Android modified to look more like the iPhone), the icons etc. And then everybody should just move on, they don't look identical anymore.
It sounds like Motorola has patented using Wi-Fi on tablets.
Are we really handing patents out for this?
Yes, indeed. Motorola has got patents on WiFi technology on pretty much any device. But consider: Apple has patents on the external shape and icons of the iPad. That is infinitely much worse; and even worse is that Apple feels that 'innovation' is worth $20 per device copying the rounded rectangular shape.
Actually, I think extortion on standard essential FRAND patents are far worse than trying to prevent someone from almost xeroxing the device. There are many ways to create devices (cell phones and tablets looked really different before the iPhone), but a standard is just that... a standard. And to get your patent included in a standard, you make promises that should be upheld.
Samsung's shipments are way up, despite the iPhone. In fact Apple's shipments are a bit lower than last year.
Apple shipped 26.9 million iPhones last quarter, an increase of 58% since the same quarter last year. That's hardly decreasing shipments.
IPS superior to LED? I believe your mileage may vary.
I believe you are talking of OLED, not just LED. In particular, Samsung's AMOLED. LED is frequently used in conjunction with LCD, e.g. on most TVs today.
That said, IPS can indeed be superior to OLEDs for the time being. E.g., the best screen on any cellphone today is on Apple's iPhone 5 - and it is IPS.
Are you serious? A service pack is a bundling up of driver updates and patches. The equivalent of the service pack in OS X would be the 10.x.x packages which are free. The "version" stays at 10.x with each release because each release retains a high level of binary and code compatibility and for marketing purposes. In some cases, third party drivers (ktext) have to be recompiled in order to work while in others some rewriting has to happen. The kernel increased by a full version number with each 10.x release and new APIs were also added with each release.
When was the last time the Win32 API was updated? Certainly not with service packs. BTW. The .NET framework does not really count since you can download that separately and the API that is hooks into has not really changed much since Windows XP.
While I agree on your point - that the 10.x releases are in general comparable to a Windows release - I would like to point out that due to an architecture change (impressively handled) and OS architecture change (Carbon -> Cocoa), no apps from 2005 or earlier will run on a new system. Many won't even recompile. So there have been massive changes even while just bumping the .x.
Google Galaxy Nexus $250 16GB.
That one is much smaller than the iPad. Google hasn't released a normal size tablet yet, just the mini version.
I'm a UK citizen and I have little sympathy for him. HIs defence played the old suicide card with a side serving of poor-little-me aspergers sufferer. As if that somehow makes him innocent of his crimes. If thats alls that needed to get someone off going to prison then most prisons would be empty.
This sends a very bad message. And yes, I know I'll get modded down for this by all the self righteous teen keyboard warriors but I have karma to burn to knock yourselves out.
Why is a Brit extradited to the US anyway, for a possible crime committed in the UK? If I did something stupid in Norway, I'd expected to be tried here with Norwegian laws, judges and sentences. I'm pretty sure the US does not extradite it's own citizens for crimes done in the US...
Because MicroUSB is a terrible connector. They already had a proprietary connector and just swapped it for another type with the function they wanted.
I know MicroUSB has features that allow it to adapt and output HDMI, or analog audio etc, but Apple wanted a more adaptable (although obviously proprietary) connector.
Does MicroUSB allow this? I thought MicroUSB only handled USB data transfers, if it can handle more that would be very useful... and it also affects the reason I believe Apple chose another connector: It does many other things, like video and audio.
Found it myself - MHDL.
Because MicroUSB is a terrible connector. They already had a proprietary connector and just swapped it for another type with the function they wanted.
I know MicroUSB has features that allow it to adapt and output HDMI, or analog audio etc, but Apple wanted a more adaptable (although obviously proprietary) connector.
Does MicroUSB allow this? I thought MicroUSB only handled USB data transfers, if it can handle more that would be very useful... and it also affects the reason I believe Apple chose another connector: It does many other things, like video and audio.
If it's PPI you're after, the iPhone 4/4s/5 isn't your best bet. If you're an Android user, you've got plenty of great displays to choose from.
The iPhone had, as the first smartphone, a high enough PPI that you can't distinguish between pixels - it's what they coined the phrase "retina display" for - so there's no point in going for something higher. And the iPhone 5 apparently has the best screen among smartphones today.
RIM's main problem is that enterprise companies have started moving away from the platform. People don't want to carry around several smart phones and are much more eager to choose either iPhone or WP7 phones. Microsoft is known for being the office centric company and therefore has fantastic support for Exchange server and office apps. RIM lost the audience it had when Windows Phones were introduced (while Windows Mobile also had many work users, WP was a major improvement)..
While you present an interesting theory, reality is that noone is using Windows Phone. They had a market share of 3% of smartphones shipped. iPhone in particular and Android are the ones eating Blackberry's lunch. To make this even worse, this quarter Windows Phone is currently only sold on known obsolete phones. I'm glad I didn't get suckered into buying a phone that obsolete immediately, unlike Nexus Phones and iPhones.
You have to recoup R & D, maintenance, sales and marketing, etc.
True, but the marginal cost of software is low - in this case, close to zero as I'm sure support will be handled by the ISVs. And in that case, you want to maximize units sold times price per unit.
Of course, this market has an entrenched player with an upscale, premium reputation - something Microsoft doesn't have. So selling Windows tablets for more than iPads might be an uphill battle that isn't going to last very long.
RIM isn't part of the OHA Android group Google runs.
What Alibaba and Acer are doing is a bit like what Bill Gates did to Apple in the 80/90s.
Actually, I would say it's more reminiscent of Microsoft's embrace, extend, extinguish of Java.
If their ways of doing that improves my user experience above the base level of not having ads, then the ads and their mechanisms are a net win for me as a customer. So your argument really falls down on an objective level, []
I didn't argue that ads were bad or detrimental to your user experience. I just noted that Android is a delivery mechanism for Google's ads, so that speaking of Google Nexus not having adware is rather... weird. Thus my argument stands, you just seem to set up something else to argue against.
And just FTR: Kindle Tablets are, for the time being, completely and utterly irrelevant to me: They don't ship them to Norway. I could get around it, but with no Amazon Prime this would be rather pointless.
Sure there's the ads, but there's also the web usage metrics, app usage metrics, location data stream, QR code metrics, and the friction-free interface with the Google web properties, force-multiplying all of the various data modeling and extraction those use, what with the text-to-speech, the corpus for natural language comprehension, email and spam-guided machine learning, calendar stats aggregation, Google+ relationship maps and content. Let alone guaranteeing integrated and most-favored-nation status for their content services, YouTube, Google Play...
"You will pay for your lack of imagination!" :)
You're just describing way of delivering more ads, improving the targeting of the ads (and thus being able to charge more) and measuring how effective they are so you can target them even more. Plus some auxiliary services ("Google Play") which has to be there, or noone will use the platform.
I think this will help Google Nexus sales. I am not aware they come with built in adware.
From a 30000 ft view, Android is just an ad delivery mechanism. If you zoom in, it's a mobile OS, but it's sole job is to enable delivery of Google's ad service to users from it's customers. And as always, you are Google's product, not their customer.
Now, I use google mail, google docs, google talk and chrome... but I know they're doing this to sell me.