your second wish has been granted. There are a number of iPhone apps which do allow you to download maps before you head out. Very classy. Garmin ought to be scared - the iPhone is a hell of a lot better GPS than my Oregon 400: better display, better GPS chip, better battery life (really!). The only advantage that the Garmin has is that it's completely waterproof and I can carry a passle of AA batteries with me.
TomTom for iPhone has been out for years. I have used it already in about 10 countries, from the USA to Europe to New Zealand. It's not free, and needs quite a bit of storage space, but I can recommend it to anyone. It's very good at warning you about unpaved roads and such, and in general very accurate in any place I visited, even remote areas in the USA, Sweden and NZ. It has allowed me to find places that even with a good map I would otherwise have struggled to find.
But I always also bring a map. I just like a good map. The Michelin maps of France are the best. They have a big advantage in that you can use them to plan a trip, before you know where you want to go, and they work without batteries.
One problem I encountered is that some countries have no good maps available (Greece comes to mind). for the USA, the best thing I could find was Rand McNally, which wasn't great but good enough.
The reason that GPS units are so popular is that most people can't read maps. These are the same people that fail to understand the limitations a GPS unit has, or even worse the navigation software on some phones, that only relies on the cell tower signals to figure out where it is or need to be online to work.
I think the article is ignoring some basic physics that has driven us to these outcomes, both his rocket and his oil dependency example.
To get anything into orbit needs a very good weight/energy ratio. The only thing that can provide this itself are your typical rocket fuels. There's two other options:
- Atomic: this usually goes out the window when you consider manned vehicules due to the weight of shielding, and for unmanned vehicules the environmental effects.
- Cheat by leaving a significant part of your mechanism on the ground. Space cannons, magnetic rails and the like. The problem here might indeed be one of technology. even a very fast car (Thrust SC2), might go about at the speed of sound. Sounds pretty fast? It's still nowhere near enough what you'd need. The escape velocity is about 11 km/s, the speed of sound about 300 m/s. Now we need to think in energy, so we need to use E = 1/2 mV^2. Or in other words we need to compare the square of the velocities. 300^2/11000^2 = 0.00074 or about 0.075% of the energy required. Going much faster and the friction with the atmophere melt your vehicule. So to get anywhere with a space cannon type system, it needs to be on a very high platform, probably 10km or more, and then be big enough to accellerate a payload to 10-20 times the speed of sound.
When you look at the basic physics, you very quickly end up with rocket-like devices.
A similar thing holds true for our dependency on oil. It again boils down to weight/energy ratio, but with much bigger safety, usability and logistics constraints. The math is not as straigthforeward, as it's mostly economics, but only rocket fuels give much more power to weight ratio then the conventional fossile fuels.
I've seen this happen at two different employers. It must be commonplace for shops that have old unix boxes from a bygone era still tucked into corners here and there.
You only notice how many people are still using it when it indeed goes offline by accident.
What's also important, is that it makes it easier for a new party to gain a foothold and over time replace the estblished parties. This gives more pressure on politicians to stay honest.
It also usually leads to coalition governments and thus to smaller changes in policies and an overal more stable environment.
The US government supports Egypt for two main reasons: - It controls the Suez canal. - It was the first and still one of the few countries to have a peace treaty with Israel. The second one is especially important as it means they keep the border to the Gaza Strip closed from their end.
The problem with the USA is that they only support freedom and democracy if it benefits them, otherwise they're just as happy to support oppressive dictatorships, usually making the problem worse in the long run. US foreign policy is very hypocritical. This is not a problem in itself, but they pretend it isn't.
I have only read one book that was physically over 100 years old (Eene aanmerkelijke luchtreis, 1813 W.Bilderdijk), but I have read many that were printed 50 or more years ago. Most of them originally owned by my parents or grandparents. Jules Verne, Old Shatterhand, Sherlock Holmes, Asimov's Foundation is from 1951. Hell, "2001: A Space Odyssey" is already 43 years old.
I can name many more, but most of them are from Dutch writers that would probably not mean anything to you. The oldest book I currently own myself is printed in 1912 and maybe 50-60 that are over 50 years old. My parents and grandparents have many more, a lot of which I read and enjoyed. Most of the books I own were printed in the last 30 years, I do tend to buy books quite a lot second hand, I think about 50%. I think I have read at least half of the books I own more than once.
Once a book has been published, a new edition is usually just as good as one that was printed years ago. It's not like a Lord of the Rings printed in the fifties is in any way different from one printed yesterday. I can only see an argument for wanting a more recent edition when you read something in translation.
Egypt *is* the Nile. And not much near the borders...
Yeah, and then it it's most populated neighbouring areas are the Gaza strip and Libia. Not exactly places that have a lot of potential to get a signal out.
I think that what iOS has done in the iPhone and now the iPad, and what Andriod is building on, is a paradigm shift in how user interfaces work and how we use computers.
I think that for a large part it's moving from the windows/desktop paradigm to the "information appliance" (as envisioned by Raskin in his Apple days).
Why MS always failed to make a good tablet, is because they tried to shoehorn the desktop metaphore onto a device that doesn't lend itself very well for it. What Apple has done with iOS is use a completely different paradigm one where you interact with one application at a time, and the entire device morphs it's user interface to one optimal for the appliance it's mimicing.
What iOS shown, is that this results in a device that can be nearly as complex as a PC, but easier to use than a VCR. That's what now a lot of other manufacturers have realised and why the iPad style tablet has now become a huge market. For most people owning a PC, and a lot who don't (elderly), the tablet interface will be so much easir for them, that in 5 years time I think tablets will outsell PCs.
In my experience neither GRID nor Cloud computing is a good fit for these things, mostly because the data handling is very bandwidth/storage intensive and requires usually a very specialized software stack.
On a generic GRID or Cloud solution these are usually not available or easy to install/run/debug.
We are trying to get our data and software on GRID and Cloud solutions because it would indeed help us in processing our data, but it's been a real struggle and until now with only limited success.
The data challenges in astrophysics over the next 10 years are, together with particle physics (LHC/CERN), one of the few fields that might compare to the needs of porn.
For example, I'm working on LOFAR, we currently have a data rate of just over 200 Gbit/s and could be going as high as 1440 Gbit/s in the next couple of years. This is not just for a few seconds, like most particle experiments, but this will be 24/7 from March 2011. Our archive will store only scientific results, but still about 5 PB a year.
Since I can check my bank balance every day on my phone, I have a much better grasp of my finances. Especially now that I have just bought a house and have additional mortgage payments, it has been a great help in keeping my finances in order. It might depend a lot on the sophistication of the app that your bank provides though, mine has a lot of nice advanced features.
I think open source is fine for generic tools that a lot of people want and can contribute to. Something like a browser or word processor.
I think open source is not the way to go for software that requires a lot of specialized knowledge, because by its very nature you then become dependent on a very small transient group of developers.
Next to that I think it's time that the Linux kernel developers got off their high horse and give the kernel a good binary driver API. I also think that it would help if they'd raise the hardware abstraction level to the level of what I'd call "virtual devices" So for example make it have a concept of a "phone" with contact lists, and a calendar for example. I think a lot of stuff that Gnome and KDE are now trying to do, should be at the kernel level. This would give programmers a uniform API to use and would make it much easier to write Linux programs and just leave the GUI to the widget toolkits.
Exactly, I got my iPhone 3GS for free with a 25 euro/month 2 year contract in August 2009. As I see it, I paid 24 x 25 = 600 euros for the phone and got the voice, sms and internet (unlimited !) for free.
Exactly, Google isn't fighting Apple, it's fighting Microsoft. It's the browser wars in reverse. Google giving it away for free while Ms charges money. Apple is in the end only interested in it's high-end niche like it is for laptops and desktops, it has just shown Google the way to one of MS's blind spots, just like it's trying with Chrome OS.
2-3 years from now, either MS will have crushed Google, or Google will be 70-80% marketshare with Apple owning most of the rest.
MS has only just woken up. If it starts giving it's OS away for free you'll know that the real battle has started. The Apple Appstore might stay the biggest as far as mobile apps go, because their market segment has the money to pay for the apps, while MS and Google will be fighting for the user group that will go for the cheapest option.
TomTom has been around on the iPhone for several years now. It has nearly worldwide coverage by now. I've used it to navigate in most of Europe (about 20 countries) and New Zealand. Sure, it's not free, but it's entirely offline, so no roaming and works fine in even the most remote areas of New Zealand, and has been very reliable and available. It's basically the only iPhone app I paid for, but it's been a really good investment.
It's not price -- as far as I can tell, that's pretty comparable for both platforms these days.
Yes, it's price. Higher end Androids are price comparable with the iPhone. But there are lots of cheap (free with a contract) Androids. They're awful, but they look like a good deal in the shop.
I have to agree. Most of my friends who buy an Android instead of an iPhone do so because of the price.
For a long time, the development offerings from Microsoft were quite inferior to the competition, especially Borland. Only around 2002-2003 did MS really start catching up with their.Net offerings. I think that has been a very smart move by them.
I think they made the change because of the "developers" mantra that Balmer did use around that time, because the internet was starting to make platform independent development possible around that time, snd because their old ways of maintaining their monopoly were under siege from anti-competitive lawsuits.
When they have real competition, MS can innovate and bring a good product to the market, even if it often is a copy of the earlier competition. Internet Explorer during the browser wars, Visual Studio.Net because people were moving to Borland and Java solutions and now Windows Mobile 7 because of the iPhone and especially Android. But as soon as the competitive pressure is overcome, MS tends to have their products linger and become lacklustre again. It apparently is good in chasing a competitor, but inherently innovative and striving for quality if left to its own devices.
I tend to see a good product from a company that very often fails to produce decent offerings as a fluke.
I only tend to buy from companies where there have been at least 3 generations of a good product. It means I'm not really an early adaptor of new technology, but it also avoids a lot of crap.
I didn't do this 15 years ago and have since been burned one to many times.
I've also owned a MS mobile product once and use many over the past 12 years, and have since developed a similar allergic reaction. My personal gripe was how poor it handled stylus input for left-handed people. Now I know that the new version is supposed to work without a stylus, but the number of boneheaded UI ideas that I've experienced in the past and Microsoft's inability to fix in over TEN years, even very basic things like having left-handed people be able to use the device has meant that I will go to great lengths to avoid their products.
I find this a common reaction.
What I think is that the problem within MS is that the established monopolies have so much power within the bureaucracy that no other branches can really work properly.
But that only works if your employer has an e-mail system that supports ActiveSync, and has it activated. Unless you have Exchange, this is not a given. And Exchange/Outlook isn't always the best choice for an employer for other reasons. For example at my work we use GroupWise, because Windows machines are less than 10% of our desktops, and there is no Outlook for OSX or Linux, while there is a GroupWise java client.
The fragmentation isn't the problem. The fact that no one has any financial incentive to provide software updates is the issue. The problem is not Android specific.
I think it's essential in the smartphone martket. I think it's only Apple's business model where the manufacturer also has an incentive to update the software and in the end that will be what keeps them alive vs. Google and MS. As more and more people move to a smartphone, I think that Google and MS will need to retrink their business model. Until a few years ago MS was the only game in town, but now with Apple and Google in the same market, things like this will need to change.
This is why, when I have something important, like a airplane flight, I always make sure to set multiple alarms. I mean on different devices. I usually use the iPhone for my alarms, but on important cases I add at least my old mechanical wind-up alarm clock. No power or battery or software requirements still makes that the most reliable, if you have something like an airplane flight or job interview.
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your second wish has been granted. There are a number of iPhone apps which do allow you to download maps before you head out. Very classy. Garmin ought to be scared - the iPhone is a hell of a lot better GPS than my Oregon 400: better display, better GPS chip, better battery life (really!). The only advantage that the Garmin has is that it's completely waterproof and I can carry a passle of AA batteries with me.
TomTom for iPhone has been out for years. I have used it already in about 10 countries, from the USA to Europe to New Zealand. It's not free, and needs quite a bit of storage space, but I can recommend it to anyone. It's very good at warning you about unpaved roads and such, and in general very accurate in any place I visited, even remote areas in the USA, Sweden and NZ. It has allowed me to find places that even with a good map I would otherwise have struggled to find.
But I always also bring a map. I just like a good map. The Michelin maps of France are the best. They have a big advantage in that you can use them to plan a trip, before you know where you want to go, and they work without batteries.
One problem I encountered is that some countries have no good maps available (Greece comes to mind). for the USA, the best thing I could find was Rand McNally, which wasn't great but good enough.
The reason that GPS units are so popular is that most people can't read maps. These are the same people that fail to understand the limitations a GPS unit has, or even worse the navigation software on some phones, that only relies on the cell tower signals to figure out where it is or need to be online to work.
I think the article is ignoring some basic physics that has driven us to these outcomes, both his rocket and his oil dependency example.
To get anything into orbit needs a very good weight/energy ratio. The only thing that can provide this itself are your typical rocket fuels. There's two other options:
- Atomic: this usually goes out the window when you consider manned vehicules due to the weight of shielding, and for unmanned vehicules the environmental effects.
- Cheat by leaving a significant part of your mechanism on the ground. Space cannons, magnetic rails and the like. The problem here might indeed be one of technology. even a very fast car (Thrust SC2), might go about at the speed of sound. Sounds pretty fast? It's still nowhere near enough what you'd need. The escape velocity is about 11 km/s, the speed of sound about 300 m/s. Now we need to think in energy, so we need to use E = 1/2 mV^2. Or in other words we need to compare the square of the velocities. 300^2/11000^2 = 0.00074 or about 0.075% of the energy required.
Going much faster and the friction with the atmophere melt your vehicule.
So to get anywhere with a space cannon type system, it needs to be on a very high platform, probably 10km or more, and then be big enough to accellerate a payload to 10-20 times the speed of sound.
When you look at the basic physics, you very quickly end up with rocket-like devices.
A similar thing holds true for our dependency on oil. It again boils down to weight/energy ratio, but with much bigger safety, usability and logistics constraints.
The math is not as straigthforeward, as it's mostly economics, but only rocket fuels give much more power to weight ratio then the conventional fossile fuels.
I've seen this happen at two different employers. It must be commonplace for shops that have old unix boxes from a bygone era still tucked into corners here and there.
You only notice how many people are still using it when it indeed goes offline by accident.
Exactly.
What's also important, is that it makes it easier for a new party to gain a foothold and over time replace the estblished parties. This gives more pressure on politicians to stay honest.
It also usually leads to coalition governments and thus to smaller changes in policies and an overal more stable environment.
The US government supports Egypt for two main reasons:
- It controls the Suez canal.
- It was the first and still one of the few countries to have a peace treaty with Israel.
The second one is especially important as it means they keep the border to the Gaza Strip closed from their end.
The problem with the USA is that they only support freedom and democracy if it benefits them, otherwise they're just as happy to support oppressive dictatorships, usually making the problem worse in the long run. US foreign policy is very hypocritical. This is not a problem in itself, but they pretend it isn't.
I have only read one book that was physically over 100 years old (Eene aanmerkelijke luchtreis, 1813 W.Bilderdijk), but I have read many that were printed 50 or more years ago. Most of them originally owned by my parents or grandparents. Jules Verne, Old Shatterhand, Sherlock Holmes, Asimov's Foundation is from 1951. Hell, "2001: A Space Odyssey" is already 43 years old.
I can name many more, but most of them are from Dutch writers that would probably not mean anything to you. The oldest book I currently own myself is printed in 1912 and maybe 50-60 that are over 50 years old. My parents and grandparents have many more, a lot of which I read and enjoyed. Most of the books I own were printed in the last 30 years, I do tend to buy books quite a lot second hand, I think about 50%. I think I have read at least half of the books I own more than once.
Once a book has been published, a new edition is usually just as good as one that was printed years ago. It's not like a Lord of the Rings printed in the fifties is in any way different from one printed yesterday. I can only see an argument for wanting a more recent edition when you read something in translation.
I hope my children will read these books one day.
Not much likelihood of GSM roaming. Take a look at a photo of Egypt at night from space.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28634332@N05/5146231463/
Egypt *is* the Nile. And not much near the borders...
Yeah, and then it it's most populated neighbouring areas are the Gaza strip and Libia. Not exactly places that have a lot of potential to get a signal out.
I think that what iOS has done in the iPhone and now the iPad, and what Andriod is building on, is a paradigm shift in how user interfaces work and how we use computers.
I think that for a large part it's moving from the windows/desktop paradigm to the "information appliance" (as envisioned by Raskin in his Apple days).
Why MS always failed to make a good tablet, is because they tried to shoehorn the desktop metaphore onto a device that doesn't lend itself very well for it. What Apple has done with iOS is use a completely different paradigm one where you interact with one application at a time, and the entire device morphs it's user interface to one optimal for the appliance it's mimicing.
What iOS shown, is that this results in a device that can be nearly as complex as a PC, but easier to use than a VCR. That's what now a lot of other manufacturers have realised and why the iPad style tablet has now become a huge market. For most people owning a PC, and a lot who don't (elderly), the tablet interface will be so much easir for them, that in 5 years time I think tablets will outsell PCs.
In my experience neither GRID nor Cloud computing is a good fit for these things, mostly because the data handling is very bandwidth/storage intensive and requires usually a very specialized software stack.
On a generic GRID or Cloud solution these are usually not available or easy to install/run/debug.
We are trying to get our data and software on GRID and Cloud solutions because it would indeed help us in processing our data, but it's been a real struggle and until now with only limited success.
The data challenges in astrophysics over the next 10 years are, together with particle physics (LHC/CERN), one of the few fields that might compare to the needs of porn.
For example, I'm working on LOFAR, we currently have a data rate of just over 200 Gbit/s and could be going as high as 1440 Gbit/s in the next couple of years. This is not just for a few seconds, like most particle experiments, but this will be 24/7 from March 2011. Our archive will store only scientific results, but still about 5 PB a year.
How does that compare to your porn?
Since I can check my bank balance every day on my phone, I have a much better grasp of my finances. Especially now that I have just bought a house and have additional mortgage payments, it has been a great help in keeping my finances in order. It might depend a lot on the sophistication of the app that your bank provides though, mine has a lot of nice advanced features.
I think you underestimate what one can do with a car.
See for example the Queensday attack in the Netherlands almost 2 years ago:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,622342,00.html
5 people dead at an event with about the highest level of security that you could find in the Netherlands at the time.
I think it's just to much of a PITA to write a Linux driver because there is not good stable binary API.
I think open source is fine for generic tools that a lot of people want and can contribute to. Something like a browser or word processor.
I think open source is not the way to go for software that requires a lot of specialized knowledge, because by its very nature you then become dependent on a very small transient group of developers.
Next to that I think it's time that the Linux kernel developers got off their high horse and give the kernel a good binary driver API. I also think that it would help if they'd raise the hardware abstraction level to the level of what I'd call "virtual devices" So for example make it have a concept of a "phone" with contact lists, and a calendar for example. I think a lot of stuff that Gnome and KDE are now trying to do, should be at the kernel level. This would give programmers a uniform API to use and would make it much easier to write Linux programs and just leave the GUI to the widget toolkits.
Exactly, I got my iPhone 3GS for free with a 25 euro/month 2 year contract in August 2009. As I see it, I paid 24 x 25 = 600 euros for the phone and got the voice, sms and internet (unlimited !) for free.
Exactly, Google isn't fighting Apple, it's fighting Microsoft. It's the browser wars in reverse. Google giving it away for free while Ms charges money. Apple is in the end only interested in it's high-end niche like it is for laptops and desktops, it has just shown Google the way to one of MS's blind spots, just like it's trying with Chrome OS.
2-3 years from now, either MS will have crushed Google, or Google will be 70-80% marketshare with Apple owning most of the rest.
MS has only just woken up. If it starts giving it's OS away for free you'll know that the real battle has started. The Apple Appstore might stay the biggest as far as mobile apps go, because their market segment has the money to pay for the apps, while MS and Google will be fighting for the user group that will go for the cheapest option.
TomTom has been around on the iPhone for several years now. It has nearly worldwide coverage by now. I've used it to navigate in most of Europe (about 20 countries) and New Zealand. Sure, it's not free, but it's entirely offline, so no roaming and works fine in even the most remote areas of New Zealand, and has been very reliable and available. It's basically the only iPhone app I paid for, but it's been a really good investment.
Yes, it's price. Higher end Androids are price comparable with the iPhone. But there are lots of cheap (free with a contract) Androids. They're awful, but they look like a good deal in the shop.
I have to agree. Most of my friends who buy an Android instead of an iPhone do so because of the price.
I think I've rebooted my iPhone 3GS only once in the almost 2 years I have it. I'm unsure if some of the iOS updates also rebooted it.
But it seems fine running for months with intensive usage without any need for a reboot, just like my Macbook.
For a long time, the development offerings from Microsoft were quite inferior to the competition, especially Borland. Only around 2002-2003 did MS really start catching up with their .Net offerings. I think that has been a very smart move by them.
I think they made the change because of the "developers" mantra that Balmer did use around that time, because the internet was starting to make platform independent development possible around that time, snd because their old ways of maintaining their monopoly were under siege from anti-competitive lawsuits.
When they have real competition, MS can innovate and bring a good product to the market, even if it often is a copy of the earlier competition. Internet Explorer during the browser wars, Visual Studio.Net because people were moving to Borland and Java solutions and now Windows Mobile 7 because of the iPhone and especially Android. But as soon as the competitive pressure is overcome, MS tends to have their products linger and become lacklustre again. It apparently is good in chasing a competitor, but inherently innovative and striving for quality if left to its own devices.
I tend to see a good product from a company that very often fails to produce decent offerings as a fluke.
I only tend to buy from companies where there have been at least 3 generations of a good product. It means I'm not really an early adaptor of new technology, but it also avoids a lot of crap.
I didn't do this 15 years ago and have since been burned one to many times.
I've also owned a MS mobile product once and use many over the past 12 years, and have since developed a similar allergic reaction. My personal gripe was how poor it handled stylus input for left-handed people. Now I know that the new version is supposed to work without a stylus, but the number of boneheaded UI ideas that I've experienced in the past and Microsoft's inability to fix in over TEN years, even very basic things like having left-handed people be able to use the device has meant that I will go to great lengths to avoid their products.
I find this a common reaction.
What I think is that the problem within MS is that the established monopolies have so much power within the bureaucracy that no other branches can really work properly.
But that only works if your employer has an e-mail system that supports ActiveSync, and has it activated. Unless you have Exchange, this is not a given. And Exchange/Outlook isn't always the best choice for an employer for other reasons. For example at my work we use GroupWise, because Windows machines are less than 10% of our desktops, and there is no Outlook for OSX or Linux, while there is a GroupWise java client.
The fragmentation isn't the problem. The fact that no one has any financial incentive to provide software updates is the issue. The problem is not Android specific.
I think it's essential in the smartphone martket. I think it's only Apple's business model where the manufacturer also has an incentive to update the software and in the end that will be what keeps them alive vs. Google and MS.
As more and more people move to a smartphone, I think that Google and MS will need to retrink their business model. Until a few years ago MS was the only game in town, but now with Apple and Google in the same market, things like this will need to change.
This is why, when I have something important, like a airplane flight, I always make sure to set multiple alarms. I mean on different devices. I usually use the iPhone for my alarms, but on important cases I add at least my old mechanical wind-up alarm clock. No power or battery or software requirements still makes that the most reliable, if you have something like an airplane flight or job interview.