I recently got rid of my Keurig machine because it produces terribly weak coffee. I broke open a pod and there were 10g of coffee to the gram. That's barely enough to make 6 oz of coffee and the machine blindly lets you choose sizes up to at least 12 if not 16oz. Instead I bought a Baratza Vario H and a Clever Dripper. The grinder is overkill for sure. Any quality burr grinder, including the entry level Baratzas would work but for my money I get the significant advantage of grinding exactly 25g of coffee every.single.time. I use a $50 electric kettle to heat my water. It serves as the source of hot water for tea and hot cereal as well, which is nice. The coffee is from a local roaster who roasts their beans daily and the average age of what they're selling is a week. I may get into roasting my own beans at some point but probably not yet. The coffee I'm drinking now is so significantly better it is like drinking an entirely different drink. Its like orange flavored drink vs. orange juice.
I was with him to a degree until "There is no other explanation except for the fact that “fans” made the unethical choice to take their music without compensating these artists." Its not possible in this guy's mind that competing forms of entertainment, the economy, changes in music tastes, etc. are causes for his friends' sales drops. No, it has to be piracy. That is a total leap of faith and is the same leap the RIAA and MPAA make that infuriates people.
Manufacturers competing on their "view of innovation"--which apparently means junkware like TouchWiz--is precisely what is fragmenting the platform. Schmidt seems to believe that by reframing it with a feel-good word like innovation, he can successfully claim that it's somehow the opposite of fragmentation. The differentiation and and in-fighting between manufacturers and devices is the fragmentation. Nothing he stated refutes the claim that the platform is fragmented; he's just describing the fragmentation in a different way.
NPD now says that iOS has officially closed the gap with Android in U.S. marketshare since the release of the iPhone 4S, so these issues are having a real effect on the platform. According to NPD's report, 150 Android handsets can't beat three old iPhone models. What's happening here is that Android phones catered to techies and budget buyers, but with the iPhone 3GS now free on contract, Apple now has budget buyers covered--and there are way more of them than there are techies.
Agree 1000%. Wish I had mod points. He's saying "Its not fragmented, its just a bunch of different systems, and custom UIs and different hardware, and different OS versions, and an inconsistent upgrade path." Uhm.... OK Eric.
Graphical UI's are more fast, easier to use, you don't need to remember commands and even new users can do their thing quickly, without resorting to reading manuals and other crap like that.
I'll give you the rest, but no way graphical UIs are faster than using command-line tools.
They're faster when you don't know the commands. And they're often still faster if you only need to perform the action ONCE. I know enough to be dangerous in a command line and about the only time I find it useful is when I need to do multiple things to many objects over and over. And even then I PREFER a UI which allows me to set that up (do XYZ to every file in ABC dir, etc.)
Well, my screenshot was from Outlook 2007, so it's been around since then (released in Jan 07). The patent was filed in September 2006.
My question is why it took 6 years to look at and grant the patent? We've now got countless mail clients that now use this as a standard feature.
Have IBM been warning them they have a Patent Pending on this (or other, as yet ungranted) item? What happens to all these mail clients? How much will IBM be charging for use of this patent? What if they can't/wont pay up?
Exactly! What the hell is wrong with the patent system!? Now pretty much EVERY tool has this and IBM will invariably end up basically being a troll, whether they intended to or not.
You don't understand - Carriers make money for overselling. They want you to buy 1GB a month, because they don't think you'll use it. If you do, they'll complain that you are using too much, and "hogging" data.
What they really want is to charge you for a 1GB plan, then charge you extra if you actually use it. Carriers want to upsell people to plans they won't use, and feel cheated if people use what they bought.
I do understand that, I just think its bullshit and I thought it was a given that it was bullshit.
The reality is though, they are cracking down on the top users but giving NO benefit to people who use 50MB a month. Those people used to subsidize high data users which you could argue was unfair. But now that people are being cut off or paying for actual usage over a certain point, the bill for people using much less should drop!
Someone needs to go and burn down the Capital building already.
I've been puzzled from the beginning as to why the OWS protesters aren't in front of the Capitol and the White House. They're the ones ultimately responsible for Wall Street corruption, because it necessarily requires a corrupt government in order to exist and grow.
For corruption to flourish in the private sector requires a corrupt government, for only with a corrupt government can the corrupt businesses and individuals be protected from the People and Justice.
Strat
I've been saying this too. One of many reasons OWS was misguided but IMO the biggest reason is they were in the wrong city!
Without being facetious, in reality these are the kinds of issues the so-called occupy movements should be focusing on...things like this where the average employee is all but powerless to prevent having any balance between their work lives and their personal lives.
The concept of a group of workers organizing themselves in order to achieve common goals, such as better working conditions, isn't new. That's the definition of a trade union.
Remind me again why the average US citizen is so violently opposed to the existence of trade unions, let alone joining one?
Because in the US, those at the top of the union power pyramid are just as bad as the employers and the politicians. They're greedy, selfish, self-interested, and completely unwilling to rationally compromise!
The point is that Apple is suing HTC because they are using a map to pinpoint a location. I bet that in the last month, there have been a thousand courses taught in colleges and high schools that tell students how to pinpoint locations on maps. Why isn't Apple suing those community college profs instead of HTC?
Do I really need to answer that?
Who came up with mapping technology first? Was it perhaps Google Maps?
Because the high school teacher presumably isn't doing it in binary computer language or any other method that copies Apple's. Worst analogy ever.
Sure, companies are choosing to act the way they are, but the current patent system is incentivizing this behavior. The question should be whether there is a system with better incentives, not whether companies should stop doing what they are doing, because some companies will behave responsibly, but others invariably won't and you have to expect that behavior.
I'm not convinced any companies, even patent trolls, are truly acting irresponsibly. It's impossible to know if a patent is/isn't valid without going to court. And it's impossible to know if a patent is/isn't being infringed without going to court.
This leads to disagreements between patent holders and potential licensors about just how much should be paid in any licensing agreement, or whether any licensing fees should even be paid at all. To make matters worse, the courts are making stupid decisions all the time.
In my mind, this is a clear situation where we need to blame whoever wrote patent law in the first place for failing to predict the mess they created. And blame more recent government(s) for failing to do anything about it.
But how to solve it? That's the trillion dollar question.
Nope. It's a choice. Apple is choosing to strangle the competition while they have the strong hand. Microsoft chooses to set up a protection racket with companies that infringe on their vaguely-defined Linux patents. In contrast, IBM and Google (generally?) don't pursue patent suits unless they're attacked first. (At least, that's the impression that's been put forth by tech journalism.)
You're making it sound like these same companies don't already have lawsuits against Apple. Excuse me but I see your fanboi is sticking out a bit. Cite a reference if you're going to claim that Apple is striking first.
There is a market for sub 300 dollar notebooks.... they are called notebook computers.....I bought a 15 inch Toshiba notebook for my wife... LCD screen, 250 gig HD, 4 gigs of memory, Decent graphics and an AMD cpu for $279. Why would I bother with a POS netbook when I can get a fully functioning PC with a sane resolution?
What model? I can't find a 15" laptop of any brand for $279.
You make a good point -- I think that Canon is a lot better than some other manufacturers in this respect, but I just checked and their newest DSLRs are using a different battery which doesn't look like it'll work with my current camera. I think that having standardized battery types would be great -- it would be nice if batteries were as interchangeable as, say SD or CF cards. I see no reason why that isn't possible. That said, getting a hold of a CF card in 10 years may be tricky as well; guess we'll have to wait and see.
CF cards are still faster than SD and are still used in higher end camera's like my 5D MKII.
T-Mobile has a banging-hot chick in their advertisements.
And i find it hard to believe that when they were filming their latest commercial they didn't notice what it actually sounds like when they're singing "walking in a 4g wonderland."
NO. A lot of people who believe the earth is 6000 years old are also AGW deniers but I don't believe its true that "a lot" of AGW deniers think the earth is 6000 years old. In my experience most of them are just really hardcore skeptics, not religious zealots who believe Jesus was friends with the dinosaurs.
I would add to that the requirement that any law can only be presented to the committee after the President has signed it, and they have 2 weeks to approve or disapprove. At the end of two weeks, the law defaults to "disapproved".
Good luck getting monstrous laws passed under that regime!
I would like to add that this branch be sequestered. They are not allowed to know which party (people) sponsored or voted for or against the bill. Their review is to be based on merit, not "I'm going to vote however the Democrats did because that's my party!"
If the RIAA wants their property protected without paying for it directly, then I suggest they start paying property taxes like everybody else who relies on the military or police to protect their property.
The best systems are ones that intrinsically converge to fairness -- e.g. the best way for two people who want cake to cut cake? One person cuts, the other chooses; the system enforces fairness. The best way for intellectual property to be protected? The content owners can pick whatever value they think their content is worth, then pay 4% property tax per year like everybody else. If a million people infringe on their property, each person is only liable for one-millionth of this taxable amount. The competing forces (A. company wants lower taxes so wants to claim their property is worthless, and B. company wants maximum awarded damages and so wants to claim their property is worth trillions) will force the company to self-assess a fair price. If their property is REALLY worth trillions, the company won't hesitate to pay 4% ($40 billion) per year in taxes. If the company isn't willing to pay more than $2 million per year in taxes to protect their property, then it's only worth $50 million, and so if they sue 50,000 people, each person is only liable for a maximum of $1,000. If the company isn't willing to pay more than $0 per year in taxes to protect their property, then their property is worthless and there's no penalty to infringe.
That system would ROCK. You could just pirate whatever you want. The more people who did it, the lower the per person cost. It would probably drive the cost per song down to about $1 per person per song! Brilliant!
Sounds like they're going more the Finder type route from OSX. I don't think hitting one (or two) keys and typing in "Word" and then [enter] is exactly "using the command line" as someone earlier implied.
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Flavia coffee is NOT good. It is identical to Keurig except the container the coffee grounds are stored in is a foil/plastic "bag" instead of a cup.
I recently got rid of my Keurig machine because it produces terribly weak coffee. I broke open a pod and there were 10g of coffee to the gram. That's barely enough to make 6 oz of coffee and the machine blindly lets you choose sizes up to at least 12 if not 16oz. Instead I bought a Baratza Vario H and a Clever Dripper. The grinder is overkill for sure. Any quality burr grinder, including the entry level Baratzas would work but for my money I get the significant advantage of grinding exactly 25g of coffee every.single.time. I use a $50 electric kettle to heat my water. It serves as the source of hot water for tea and hot cereal as well, which is nice. The coffee is from a local roaster who roasts their beans daily and the average age of what they're selling is a week. I may get into roasting my own beans at some point but probably not yet. The coffee I'm drinking now is so significantly better it is like drinking an entirely different drink. Its like orange flavored drink vs. orange juice.
This is in Nebraska. So yeah, wide spacing. We don't all live on top of each other.
The reality is a Linux laptop should cost MORE because while Dell may have to pay $25 to Microsoft they get $50 from the crapware vendors.
The % of iOS devices running the latest OS (a varient, i.e. IOS 5 vs. IOS 4) in the wild is EXTREMELY high. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57450474-37/apple-365-million-ios-devices-sold-80-percent-running-ios-5/
Wish I had mod points!
I was with him to a degree until "There is no other explanation except for the fact that “fans” made the unethical choice to take their music without compensating these artists." Its not possible in this guy's mind that competing forms of entertainment, the economy, changes in music tastes, etc. are causes for his friends' sales drops. No, it has to be piracy. That is a total leap of faith and is the same leap the RIAA and MPAA make that infuriates people.
Manufacturers competing on their "view of innovation"--which apparently means junkware like TouchWiz--is precisely what is fragmenting the platform. Schmidt seems to believe that by reframing it with a feel-good word like innovation, he can successfully claim that it's somehow the opposite of fragmentation. The differentiation and and in-fighting between manufacturers and devices is the fragmentation. Nothing he stated refutes the claim that the platform is fragmented; he's just describing the fragmentation in a different way.
NPD now says that iOS has officially closed the gap with Android in U.S. marketshare since the release of the iPhone 4S, so these issues are having a real effect on the platform. According to NPD's report, 150 Android handsets can't beat three old iPhone models. What's happening here is that Android phones catered to techies and budget buyers, but with the iPhone 3GS now free on contract, Apple now has budget buyers covered--and there are way more of them than there are techies.
Agree 1000%. Wish I had mod points. He's saying "Its not fragmented, its just a bunch of different systems, and custom UIs and different hardware, and different OS versions, and an inconsistent upgrade path." Uhm.... OK Eric.
Graphical UI's are more fast, easier to use, you don't need to remember commands and even new users can do their thing quickly, without resorting to reading manuals and other crap like that.
I'll give you the rest, but no way graphical UIs are faster than using command-line tools.
They're faster when you don't know the commands. And they're often still faster if you only need to perform the action ONCE. I know enough to be dangerous in a command line and about the only time I find it useful is when I need to do multiple things to many objects over and over. And even then I PREFER a UI which allows me to set that up (do XYZ to every file in ABC dir, etc.)
Well, my screenshot was from Outlook 2007, so it's been around since then (released in Jan 07). The patent was filed in September 2006. My question is why it took 6 years to look at and grant the patent? We've now got countless mail clients that now use this as a standard feature. Have IBM been warning them they have a Patent Pending on this (or other, as yet ungranted) item? What happens to all these mail clients? How much will IBM be charging for use of this patent? What if they can't/wont pay up?
Exactly! What the hell is wrong with the patent system!? Now pretty much EVERY tool has this and IBM will invariably end up basically being a troll, whether they intended to or not.
You don't understand - Carriers make money for overselling. They want you to buy 1GB a month, because they don't think you'll use it. If you do, they'll complain that you are using too much, and "hogging" data.
What they really want is to charge you for a 1GB plan, then charge you extra if you actually use it. Carriers want to upsell people to plans they won't use, and feel cheated if people use what they bought.
I do understand that, I just think its bullshit and I thought it was a given that it was bullshit.
The reality is though, they are cracking down on the top users but giving NO benefit to people who use 50MB a month. Those people used to subsidize high data users which you could argue was unfair. But now that people are being cut off or paying for actual usage over a certain point, the bill for people using much less should drop!
Someone needs to go and burn down the Capital building already.
I've been puzzled from the beginning as to why the OWS protesters aren't in front of the Capitol and the White House. They're the ones ultimately responsible for Wall Street corruption, because it necessarily requires a corrupt government in order to exist and grow.
For corruption to flourish in the private sector requires a corrupt government, for only with a corrupt government can the corrupt businesses and individuals be protected from the People and Justice.
Strat
I've been saying this too. One of many reasons OWS was misguided but IMO the biggest reason is they were in the wrong city!
The concept of a group of workers organizing themselves in order to achieve common goals, such as better working conditions, isn't new. That's the definition of a trade union.
Remind me again why the average US citizen is so violently opposed to the existence of trade unions, let alone joining one?
Because in the US, those at the top of the union power pyramid are just as bad as the employers and the politicians. They're greedy, selfish, self-interested, and completely unwilling to rationally compromise!
The point is that Apple is suing HTC because they are using a map to pinpoint a location. I bet that in the last month, there have been a thousand courses taught in colleges and high schools that tell students how to pinpoint locations on maps. Why isn't Apple suing those community college profs instead of HTC?
Do I really need to answer that?
Who came up with mapping technology first? Was it perhaps Google Maps?
Because the high school teacher presumably isn't doing it in binary computer language or any other method that copies Apple's. Worst analogy ever.
Sure, companies are choosing to act the way they are, but the current patent system is incentivizing this behavior. The question should be whether there is a system with better incentives, not whether companies should stop doing what they are doing, because some companies will behave responsibly, but others invariably won't and you have to expect that behavior.
I'm not convinced any companies, even patent trolls, are truly acting irresponsibly. It's impossible to know if a patent is/isn't valid without going to court. And it's impossible to know if a patent is/isn't being infringed without going to court.
This leads to disagreements between patent holders and potential licensors about just how much should be paid in any licensing agreement, or whether any licensing fees should even be paid at all. To make matters worse, the courts are making stupid decisions all the time.
In my mind, this is a clear situation where we need to blame whoever wrote patent law in the first place for failing to predict the mess they created. And blame more recent government(s) for failing to do anything about it.
But how to solve it? That's the trillion dollar question.
If I figure it out, I'm patenting it!
have to
Nope. It's a choice. Apple is choosing to strangle the competition while they have the strong hand. Microsoft chooses to set up a protection racket with companies that infringe on their vaguely-defined Linux patents. In contrast, IBM and Google (generally?) don't pursue patent suits unless they're attacked first. (At least, that's the impression that's been put forth by tech journalism.)
You're making it sound like these same companies don't already have lawsuits against Apple. Excuse me but I see your fanboi is sticking out a bit. Cite a reference if you're going to claim that Apple is striking first.
There is a market for sub 300 dollar notebooks.... they are called notebook computers.....I bought a 15 inch Toshiba notebook for my wife... LCD screen, 250 gig HD, 4 gigs of memory, Decent graphics and an AMD cpu for $279. Why would I bother with a POS netbook when I can get a fully functioning PC with a sane resolution?
What model? I can't find a 15" laptop of any brand for $279.
You make a good point -- I think that Canon is a lot better than some other manufacturers in this respect, but I just checked and their newest DSLRs are using a different battery which doesn't look like it'll work with my current camera. I think that having standardized battery types would be great -- it would be nice if batteries were as interchangeable as, say SD or CF cards. I see no reason why that isn't possible. That said, getting a hold of a CF card in 10 years may be tricky as well; guess we'll have to wait and see.
CF cards are still faster than SD and are still used in higher end camera's like my 5D MKII.
T-Mobile has a banging-hot chick in their advertisements.
And i find it hard to believe that when they were filming their latest commercial they didn't notice what it actually sounds like when they're singing "walking in a 4g wonderland."
Are you assuming they didn't notice? I'm not.
NO. A lot of people who believe the earth is 6000 years old are also AGW deniers but I don't believe its true that "a lot" of AGW deniers think the earth is 6000 years old. In my experience most of them are just really hardcore skeptics, not religious zealots who believe Jesus was friends with the dinosaurs.
I would add to that the requirement that any law can only be presented to the committee after the President has signed it, and they have 2 weeks to approve or disapprove. At the end of two weeks, the law defaults to "disapproved".
Good luck getting monstrous laws passed under that regime!
I would like to add that this branch be sequestered. They are not allowed to know which party (people) sponsored or voted for or against the bill. Their review is to be based on merit, not "I'm going to vote however the Democrats did because that's my party!"
If the RIAA wants their property protected without paying for it directly, then I suggest they start paying property taxes like everybody else who relies on the military or police to protect their property.
The best systems are ones that intrinsically converge to fairness -- e.g. the best way for two people who want cake to cut cake? One person cuts, the other chooses; the system enforces fairness. The best way for intellectual property to be protected? The content owners can pick whatever value they think their content is worth, then pay 4% property tax per year like everybody else. If a million people infringe on their property, each person is only liable for one-millionth of this taxable amount. The competing forces (A. company wants lower taxes so wants to claim their property is worthless, and B. company wants maximum awarded damages and so wants to claim their property is worth trillions) will force the company to self-assess a fair price. If their property is REALLY worth trillions, the company won't hesitate to pay 4% ($40 billion) per year in taxes. If the company isn't willing to pay more than $2 million per year in taxes to protect their property, then it's only worth $50 million, and so if they sue 50,000 people, each person is only liable for a maximum of $1,000. If the company isn't willing to pay more than $0 per year in taxes to protect their property, then their property is worthless and there's no penalty to infringe.
That system would ROCK. You could just pirate whatever you want. The more people who did it, the lower the per person cost. It would probably drive the cost per song down to about $1 per person per song! Brilliant!
Sounds like they're going more the Finder type route from OSX. I don't think hitting one (or two) keys and typing in "Word" and then [enter] is exactly "using the command line" as someone earlier implied.
I quit sending job-applications after age 45!
!
know why?
- I even didnt get an answer any more when saying how old I am
When I faked my age to 35 and still sent my list of features, they eagerly invited me for interviews
to withdraw with an: sorry we already filled the job
not saying: with someone cheaper!
Is it possible they ditched you after determining you lied on your application?