...and then adding a third--triangulation.
As I understand it, though, it's a little easier said than done to get the required accuracy for E-911. But it isn't impossible. I believe it was AT&T that went the triangulation route and it was Verizon that just put GPS in all the phones. But I could be wrong...
Yes.
As I understand it, E-911 required that the carriers tell the 911 where the person is to within 300 feet. To handle this, some carriers just mandated that the phones have GPS. Other carriers used triangulation from the cell tower. So you can use a cellphone without GPS, but that doesn't mean that the carriers won't know where you are.
In fact, the carriers used to (and perhaps still do) have a service where they would text you directions to where you wanted to go based upon where you were. No GPS required.
It's a worthwhile point, but the difference is that a business opportunity exists for dealing with this because there are so many cars on the road that need just this kind of maintenance.
Conversely, batteries like this will be pretty rare, so the bi-monthly stop at Jiffy Lube for car maintenance probably isn't happening. Initially, you'll have to keep track of it yourself.
Still, if these can be installed, an appropriate idiot light, "Hey, battery needs refilling!" would be useful.
The issue isn't so much "can you put something in the menu bar" but "should you put something in the menu bar."
On the Mac, this might make sense because the menu bar is easier to access than it is on Windows.
This was always the joke in 7th grade French class, saying "Je suis chaud" instead of "J'ai chaud." That's what I meant when I said "literally", as "Je" is "I", "suis" is "am", and "chaud" is "hot." So if you just translate the words, you get the wrong answer. "J'ai Faim" (I am hungry) has a similar issue,
As for the Quebecois, well...
Yeah, I'll wait for 10.10 for that. OS X 10.9 is way too flaky.
Also, Maps doesn't have nearly the features of Google Earth.
It's a good point.
Consider the menu bar. It's a pretty handy place for commands. On the Mac, it sits at the top of the screen. On Windows, it sits along the top of your window. Now if we consider Fitts' Law for a moment and compare Mac and Windows, the menu bar is much easier to access on the Mac than it is on Windows because it's sitting at the top of the screen.
So, putting things that people access somewhat frequently into a menu item on the menu bar isn't a horrible thing on the Mac. But on Windows--because the menu bar is harder to access--it will frustrate your users. You probably want to set up some kind of contextual menu on Windows.
Do it the Mac way, you've annoyed your Windows users. Do it the Windows way and you confuse your Mac users (who are used to searching the menu bar to find things). Or devote the time and effort to doing it both ways.
There are plenty of apps that use QT--probably the most mainstream one is Google Earth.
Now, look at me with a straight face and say, "And Google Earth has a great UI!"
To me, this is the problem with cross-platform UI. It starts from a mistaken premise: Windows and Mac or iOS and Android have the same basic UI. There's even a grain of truth to it. But it doesn't really work.
The example I love to use is French and English. They are, basically, the same language, right? They both have words, sentences, and paragraphs. They both have nouns, verbs, and adjectives. So if you just translate the words and move around the adjectives, you've got a French/English translator! It's that simple!
No, not really. If it's 100 degrees outside and you've just come from the outside and remark to a pretty girl "Je suis chaud" (literally, I am hot), she might very well slap your face. Because you've just said that you are hot as in, "Oh, baby, you make me so hot."
And those are the silly mistakes that cross-platform UIs make.
Take a simple one from Mac versus Windows: On the Mac, in a dialog box, the default button is always the right-most button. So you have a dialog box that says, "Are you sure you want to do this?" and the right-most button would say, "OK" and the button to the left of it would say, "Cancel." On Windows, the default "OK" button would be on the left with the "Cancel" button the right of it.
Alignment, again, is a question. I'm not sure there's a standard on Windows--I've seen things centered and I've seen them aligned right. On Mac OS X, there's a standard. Which means when Windows aligns them on the right like on the Mac, I'm always pressing the Cancel button.
So, yeah, you can use QT to have a cross platform application and it will work fine. And it's great, if you have an application like Google Earth, which has lots of great GIS capabilities so that the result is worth the pain. But, frankly, if Microsoft did an equivalent to Google Earth but made a Mac application that was "correct," I'd use it in a heartbeat. Because, all else being equal, I'd rather have an application that "speaks my language" to one that only sort of does.
Have you ever spoken to a tech support person from another country with a thick accent? That's the equivalent of using Google Earth on a Mac.
No one is forcing anyone to upgrade and I certainly won't until Yosemite or a successor to it is well established. In my experience apple systems are among those that keep their value the longest without an update.
Hear hear!
I tend to subscribe to "The Star Trek Theory"--namely, the even numbered ones are the good ones. My laptop runs 10.8 quite happily, I still get updates for Xcode, Safari, and the like. I haven't been "abandoned" by developers.
So with 10.10 coming along, I'll probably wait 'til after the first bug-fix release or until Apple stops sending out Xcode updates for it (whichever comes first) and then switch to 10.10.
But I'm not going to ride around being a billboard.
Says the guy with the bike shirt covered in various company logos...
If I'm going to ride around being a billboard, I'm sure as hell getting paid for it.
Define "Long Distance"?
Heck, I always have a backpack on when I ride. It has spare tubes, tools, extra water, phone, etc. When I bike to work, it also has a soda, office keys, and some clothes for when I get to work.
The ride to work is 15 miles. I wouldn't call that "long distance." But I've done 60 mile rides with the backpack and no problems. I'm doing a 100 mile ride in a few weeks and I'll definitely have the backpack.
C'mon--toughen up!
I'm not much of a hacker--if I could ever be called one--but I do have the one story...
We had Zork on a Prime minicomputer. Well, I wanted to play it but my "boss" at the time wouldn't give me an account on the box. He jokingly told his fellow managers that he had "assigned" me to hack it.
So I grabbed some of the documentation and discovered two accounts--SPOOLQ and BATCHQ--which had no passwords. As you can guess, SPOOLQ ran the printing system and BATCHQ the batch processing system. So I tried to login as those accounts and was immediately logged out. However, if I logged in and immediate hit the "Break" key, it wouldn't log me out and I could do what I wanted--play Zork.
Of course, I log in as SPOOLQ and nobody's print jobs run...
Actually, a co-worker brought up a good point.
Apple had to go begging and pleading to the music labels to get permission to stream music and they probably got reamed. Supposedly, Beats Music has a kick-ass licensing deal with the labels--better than Spotify and Pandora. So now that's Apple's deal.
The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse time. -- Merrick Furst
