a history of thoughtful design and a slew of devices that work much better than their competitors
If you are only counting the tiny number of popular competitors to Apple, I guess you have a point. You know, like if you only pay attention to Apple's marketing department telling you who their competitors are?
...run the same programs on any of these tablets? Port some libre software from one to another without paying extra? Release libre software for these tablets?
My security engineering text (Anderson, 2nd edition) predicted that social networking websites would become security liabilities because of the amount of personal information they store about their members. That book was published in 2007.
Unfortunately, dialup is quite lacking for a lot of things. For someone like me, downloading a Fedora installation image is not so uncommon (in fact, I downloaded one earlier today), and on a dialup connection, that would take a very long time. Future applications may require significant bandwidth, and dialup would be a bottleneck (for example, secure multiparty computation, which is already starting to see real world use, sometimes requires quite a few messages to be sent back and forth). Sometimes, a broadband connection can really make a difference.
My thoughts exactly, although Google would probably make quite a bit of money selling no-advertisements, if only because the majority of people are just not familiar with ad blocking. Reminds me of the various "remote desktop" packages that charge people for what is essentially a rebranded VNC.
They even tried to help me with an issue connecting with WPA - which ultimately is a Linux problem not their network's.
That's funny, I am on a WPA connection right now, and my university uses enterprise WPA, which my Fedora laptop has no issue with at all.
Basically it's no problem and I suspect a lot of people who run Linux like me are realizing how good MBPs are and so are using them as school computers. You don't want to run into problems with Linux right when you need your computer for something important, and OS X is the most stable platform for that while also being very geek friendly.
You know, some of us consider proprietary software to be un-friendly, and avoid Mac OS X for the same reason we avoid Windows.
Instead of working on stability and usability they keep focusing on trying to copy Windows and Mac OS and stupid graphics.
Which is precisely why I do not use GNOME or KDE. Please don't spread the FUD by acting like GNOME and KDE are the be-all and end-all of use Linux on a desktop.
*ITC provides limited support for these operating systems to connect to the unencrypted wahoo wireless network.
Sounds like they basically tell incoming freshman, "Don't use 'Linux,' use Windows or Mac OS X, or else we will not help you." Here is something else to consider:
Notice that they place Apple's laptops higher on the page than Dell's or Lenovo's -- and that they choose words like "fastest" and "most powerful" to describe them (compare with the descriptions of other machines). This store is located in UVa's bookstore, and so incoming students are likely to purchase their computers from there. No surprise, then, that so many students at UVa are using Apple products.
Apple is even worse than Microsoft when it comes to keeping its users on a leash
Most college students do not care about that at all. I spoke to a number of undergrads a few months ago about the Kindle 1984 debacle and how Apple was banning certain categories of applications from the iPad, and they responded by essentially saying that I was a hater who didn't "get it" and that iPads are cool and that is all that mattered to them. UVa also did an experiment with using the Kindle for textbooks, and nobody complained about the locked-down locked-in nature of the device; the complaints focused entirely on usability.
Well, we could always collect helium from tobacco fields -- the radioactive polonium in commonly used tobacco fertilizers is an alpha emitter, and plenty of it accumulated in the soil after decades of use.
My impression was not that we were running out of helium, but that we were just not bothering to collect as much as we used to, despite the continued demand for it. It is not like alpha emitters are a particularly rare thing...
Re:And thus they fail because...
on
Why Wave Failed
·
· Score: 1
Interface was an afterthought, not the product's primary driver, as it MUST be for any consumer software product
Have to disagree there, if only because of the number of enormously successful ugly products, and the number of enormously unsuccessfully shiny products. Look at the popularity of AIM and Yahoo! messenger; the official clients are horrible, ugly, and loaded with advertising, and yet people continue to use them.
Apple is not successful because its products look nice, it is successful because it has one of the best marketing teams in recorded history.
Re:It's all your fault
on
Why Wave Failed
·
· Score: 4, Informative
If only you could just set up your own Wave server...
Solution in need of a (perceived) problem
on
Why Wave Failed
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Why did email become so successful? It solved a problem that seemed real to most people: the ability to send text over long distances very quickly and without paying a lot.
What problem did Wave solve? None of the problems Wave solved were perceived as problems by most people, so nobody saw Wave as a "killer app."
One thing you can do is reverse engineer the product and keep an eye out for certain strings in the firmware. From what I have seen, most GPL violators do not even bother to try to cover their tracks, and will often leave author names, GPL notices, and so forth in the software. The biggest challenge with consumer electronics is actually reading the contents of the firmware; once you can do that, you can just do some basic checks.
Of course, that is not an easy thing to do, so it is possible that a number of consumer products contain GPL violations that go unnoticed.
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a history of thoughtful design and a slew of devices that work much better than their competitors
If you are only counting the tiny number of popular competitors to Apple, I guess you have a point. You know, like if you only pay attention to Apple's marketing department telling you who their competitors are?
Considering how long these websites have been overwhelmingly popular, to the point of actually becoming security liabilities?
...run the same programs on any of these tablets? Port some libre software from one to another without paying extra? Release libre software for these tablets?
If they are like the iPad, I guess not...
My security engineering text (Anderson, 2nd edition) predicted that social networking websites would become security liabilities because of the amount of personal information they store about their members. That book was published in 2007.
"We were warned?"
Net neutrality extends further than your ISP. You only have "control" over who provides you the last leg.
Spot on: intermediate networks deprioritizing some traffic is not something that can be solved by switching ISPs.
Unfortunately, dialup is quite lacking for a lot of things. For someone like me, downloading a Fedora installation image is not so uncommon (in fact, I downloaded one earlier today), and on a dialup connection, that would take a very long time. Future applications may require significant bandwidth, and dialup would be a bottleneck (for example, secure multiparty computation, which is already starting to see real world use, sometimes requires quite a few messages to be sent back and forth). Sometimes, a broadband connection can really make a difference.
What I am left wondering is if we are going to see more of the same: 16000 bugs fixed, more than 16000 new bugs introduced.
Did you really just compare copyright infringement to murder-kidnap?
I don't know how much the FBI should spend at all on copyright,
How does "nothing" sound? Why the FBI involved in what was considered a purely civil matter not so long ago?
This says that it might ake more than a human lifetime (or Sun's) lifetime to solve any NP-complete problem.
Not to be a party pooper, but it might take more than the lifetime of the Sun to solve a P problem, if the inputs are large enough.
Sure, in a society hijacked by greedy corporations.
My thoughts exactly, although Google would probably make quite a bit of money selling no-advertisements, if only because the majority of people are just not familiar with ad blocking. Reminds me of the various "remote desktop" packages that charge people for what is essentially a rebranded VNC.
laptops are very different from phones
So are tablet computers. So where does this fit into your logic:
http://www.apple.com/ipad/
They even tried to help me with an issue connecting with WPA - which ultimately is a Linux problem not their network's.
That's funny, I am on a WPA connection right now, and my university uses enterprise WPA, which my Fedora laptop has no issue with at all.
Basically it's no problem and I suspect a lot of people who run Linux like me are realizing how good MBPs are and so are using them as school computers. You don't want to run into problems with Linux right when you need your computer for something important, and OS X is the most stable platform for that while also being very geek friendly.
You know, some of us consider proprietary software to be un-friendly, and avoid Mac OS X for the same reason we avoid Windows.
Instead of working on stability and usability they keep focusing on trying to copy Windows and Mac OS and stupid graphics.
Which is precisely why I do not use GNOME or KDE. Please don't spread the FUD by acting like GNOME and KDE are the be-all and end-all of use Linux on a desktop.
http://itc.virginia.edu/wireless/encrypted.html
At the bottom:
*ITC provides limited support for these operating systems to connect to the unencrypted wahoo wireless network.
Sounds like they basically tell incoming freshman, "Don't use 'Linux,' use Windows or Mac OS X, or else we will not help you." Here is something else to consider:
http://www.uvastudentcomputers.com/shop_undergrad.asp?mscssid=30F0745C151949448828BA5BF0423D90
Notice that they place Apple's laptops higher on the page than Dell's or Lenovo's -- and that they choose words like "fastest" and "most powerful" to describe them (compare with the descriptions of other machines). This store is located in UVa's bookstore, and so incoming students are likely to purchase their computers from there. No surprise, then, that so many students at UVa are using Apple products.
Apple is even worse than Microsoft when it comes to keeping its users on a leash
Most college students do not care about that at all. I spoke to a number of undergrads a few months ago about the Kindle 1984 debacle and how Apple was banning certain categories of applications from the iPad, and they responded by essentially saying that I was a hater who didn't "get it" and that iPads are cool and that is all that mattered to them. UVa also did an experiment with using the Kindle for textbooks, and nobody complained about the locked-down locked-in nature of the device; the complaints focused entirely on usability.
http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/sources/tobacco.html
Well, we could always collect helium from tobacco fields -- the radioactive polonium in commonly used tobacco fertilizers is an alpha emitter, and plenty of it accumulated in the soil after decades of use.
My impression was not that we were running out of helium, but that we were just not bothering to collect as much as we used to, despite the continued demand for it. It is not like alpha emitters are a particularly rare thing...
Interface was an afterthought, not the product's primary driver, as it MUST be for any consumer software product
Have to disagree there, if only because of the number of enormously successful ugly products, and the number of enormously unsuccessfully shiny products. Look at the popularity of AIM and Yahoo! messenger; the official clients are horrible, ugly, and loaded with advertising, and yet people continue to use them.
Apple is not successful because its products look nice, it is successful because it has one of the best marketing teams in recorded history.
If only you could just set up your own Wave server...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_wave#Other_Compatible_Servers
I stopped reading the article when I saw that.
Why did email become so successful? It solved a problem that seemed real to most people: the ability to send text over long distances very quickly and without paying a lot.
What problem did Wave solve? None of the problems Wave solved were perceived as problems by most people, so nobody saw Wave as a "killer app."
One thing you can do is reverse engineer the product and keep an eye out for certain strings in the firmware. From what I have seen, most GPL violators do not even bother to try to cover their tracks, and will often leave author names, GPL notices, and so forth in the software. The biggest challenge with consumer electronics is actually reading the contents of the firmware; once you can do that, you can just do some basic checks.
Of course, that is not an easy thing to do, so it is possible that a number of consumer products contain GPL violations that go unnoticed.