MrRage

On a tangential subject, if it's proven then why keep calling it the Poincare conjecture? It's now a theorem.

I wouldn't consider Gruber a journalist, but of course journalist should be held to a standard. The problem is when a majority of what journalist do is comment or report on what other journalist say.

I think there's a parallel in today's popular "news" shows. It seems like Olbermann spends most of his time mad at what Beck said and Beck is mad at what Olbermann said, ad nausium.

> Having held an HTC Hero and an iPhone, I'm here to say that they're not wrong. Those cameras suck as cameras.

I disagree. There are two sayings about photography I've heard a few times. 1) The best camera is the one that you have with you. 2) The novice photographer wishes he/she had a better camera, but the experienced photograph wishes he/she had better lighting.

Re #1, I have a high end point and shoot that's really nice. But I almost never use it now because my iPhone 3GS is always with me. I find that some of the best photograph opportunities come when you least expect it.

Re: #2, most of photography is lighting and and composition. If you have crappy light (that includes using a flash) it doesn't matter if you have some $10,000 camera and lens. If you take photos with good light and have an eye for composition it won't matter to much which camera you use.

Now saying that, some phone cameras really do lack in resolution. My iPhone 3GS has decent resolution, but iPhones before that take washed out looking photos. Of course there's other limitations like no zoom, you can't print out a huge poster version of your photos, and it can't do more "advaced" things like long exposures. But I and many others have taken decent looking photos on iPhones. It's Good Enough.

Edit: One more thing. I like the challenge of taking photos on a simple camera. You don't get distracted by messing with features and have to kinda learn what makes a photo good.

I guess my main point is there are millions of us between NYC and San Francisco that don't have these issues and are happy with the iPhone. I've just never had any issues, but that's the price I pay for living in crappy city in a red state. Totally understand switching if you have bad service.

BTW, my experience with NYC is that the bad spots seemed "localized". Up in Washington Heights where my brother lives service is fine. But maybe that neighborhood is the boondocks by Manhattan standards.

As tempting as it is to jump on the Android bandwagon, here are some of my reasons for sticking with my iPhone 3GS.

* I don't live in the San Francisco area bubble, so I get great service. The only time it was crappy was the one day I was on vacation in midtown Manhattan.

* I still have over a year left on my contract. But even when it's up, I'm going to stick with my iPhone until it dies. The only thing that would possibly get me to switch is if my monthly payments would be at least $20 less than what I pay now for the same level of service.

* What I really wanted in a smart phone is a good web browser, which the iPhone has. I do use a handful of apps from the store, but they're not essential to me.

* My whole family uses at&t, so free minutes. I talk with my brother in NYC for hours each week and no minutes are eaten up.

Saying all that, I'll probably won't be buying Apple products for a long time because of all the usual complaints.

So it's more the library they're using? I thought it was strange they support Delphi and Java but not C#.

Amen. Good time to use this: http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

>The typing problem you mentioned can be solved by a case that holds it an an angle, such as http://www.goincase.com/products/detail/CL57512.

That seems to be an extremely awkward angle for typing.

> Also heavy duty typing can be handled with a bluetooth attached keyboard though for my needs the the onscreen keyboard has been adequate.

Kinda ruins the mobility of the device compared with a lap top. You'll have to carry around the iPad, a stand, and a keyboard, which you could only reasonably use on some sort of table.

I've frequently upgraded and changed parts in my PCs over the past few years an only once has Windows refused to activate. It was fixed with a 15 minute phone call to Microsoft. I find it hard to believe this is a serious issue unless you're reinstalling or changing parts every week or something.

Edit: And by upgrading parts I mean things as big as upgrading the CPU and/or motherboard.

That may be true but no Nintendo console has been hailed as the future of computing. They're just game consoles.

Why would it make sense? Would any Mac user use IE? How many Windows users use Safari? Not many I'd wager.

> Will be found on the desk of a character in several movies to indicate the character is of above average intelligence

I guess that's why I'm hesitant to use term like "real literature". I'm very picky about what I read, that is I tend to stick to books like those you described. On the other hand I don't like to appear that I read those books just so I can name drop or look smart when someone sees my bookshelf.

There are sci-fi elements in IJ for sure. I just think IJ is too broad in scope to label it sci-fi though.

Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is a sci-fi story that's also considered real literature. It's mostly set in the 20th century.

I don't like terms like "real literature". I would say the Foundation series despite its weaknesses is worth reading for anyone who wants to be well rounded in his/her book choices.

Haven't books have been dying since the invention of the radio? How's this talk about the iPad killing books any different?

I would also add overuse of adverbs. Good to see you removed most of them in your rewrite.

Second that. For instance what's the difference between "Top News" and "Most Recent"? They seem to display the same stuff in a slightly different order. I'm a computer programmer and have masters degree so I don't think I'm dumb...

> But in any event, less IE is good for the web.

My hatred for IE 6 notwithstanding, I'd phrase it: browser diversity is good for the web. I see nothing wrong about using IE 8 (although it's not my personal choice), because thanks to competition it's actually a decent browser.

The system it's operating is a virtual machine. At least that's what I inferred from the description.

If a user is confused about all the choice they can just stick to the software Apple and a handful of popular vendors provide. It stays simple by the fact that they can just ignore all the other choices.

Who hasn't been an critic of Apple's app store policies? That's not much of an argument.

> emperor-has-no-clothes modern art

I admit I have a hard time "getting" most modern art. But seeing the actual pieces in person, especially some Picasso and Pollock, is quite a different experience than seeing dinky little prints in an art book.

All the Arial bashing is rather boring. Which designer is using Arial over Helvetica when designing logos? Of course Helvetica is the superior choice if those are the only two typefaces that can be used.

I dare say most people use Arial on a computer screen, and the only way you're going to tell Arial and Helvetica apart is to use a huge font size. That would be a real test.

BTW, I scored 19/20.

I love my Das Keyboard. I used to get some painful cramps during work (programming). I tried a couple keyboards that helps somewhat, namely Microsoft's old-school natural keyboards, and also the happy hacker keyboard, but I'd still get wrist cramping if I typed long enough. Haven't had any issues at all with Das Keyboard.

The only drawback is that now it feels strange to type on keyboards without mechanical switches.

The major difference, as I see it, is that Apple includes fonts that are good for publishing, and Microsoft includes fonts that are good for reading on a screen. For example, Consolas is designed for a screen with sub-pixel rendering.

I think this difference is apparent in how fonts are rendered on OS X and Windows, i.e. Windows "snaps" fonts to pixel grids for readability.

Wolfram Alpha is not a web search. Google is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_mistake

Have you used Office 2007 at all? They're hidden away by default. The whole purpose of the ribbon was to manage the complexity better. Plus, there's no paper clip. It's not the '90s anymore.

Not to mention that if you're going to talk about languages with syntax like C, Java should be in that list.

Or maybe said boss would spend less just buying software than paying an employee to duplicate an maintain the functionality. For a large enough company, one software license is not that big of an expense.

These ancient, unsupported apps aren't things like spread sheets and word processors, they're industry specific applications. They're much more expensive to create and update (and buy) because of limited demand, and there's often little choice in what software a company can use.

I've been working on a project to upgrade a old DOS based industry specific app to a "modern" browser app. There are still people using the DOS based version, and our main client for the browser app is still using Windows 2000 and IE 6.