First, if you don't know what a word means, please don't use it. Even if you think you know, it's most likely that you will use it wrongly.
Second, so what does this mean for users?
I think that totally went over his head. For the uneducated:
1Gb = 1 gigabit
1GB = 1 gigabyte
8 bits = 1 byte
Case matters.
Farhad makes a lot of good points, but he underestimates the transformative nature of the iPhone. I agree that Google should build its own phone, but it's not about making yet another bespoke handset, it's about building another mobile computing transformation that Apple, with its walled garden approach, cannot even contemplate. It's not nearly enough to be a bit better than the iPhone - any serious competitor will need to take the next gigantic leap forward, and do it before Apple does.
Oh FFS, we are talking about a net change in arriving solar radiation of less than 0.1% over 11 year cycles, and though its likely there are some larger fluctuations that modulate the 11 year cycle, we haven't been measuring long enough. The notion that this data predicts a 'mini-ice age' is about as useful as using sunspot counts to predict the weather. Which is not useful at all. Sun spot counts don't predict weather at all. Even the proxies don't really link us to what is going on, though they do seem to loosely track solar oscillations. How long is the lag on those proxy relationships? Are they indicative of some other process that is being influenced by solar activity? No one knows. We don't have long enough direct solar activity measurements.
As the dominant dim bulbs around here are fond of echoing: Correlation is not causation.
As for global climate change due to our Industrial Age farting dinosaurs back into the atmosphere, we do need to get a grip on that. I doubt very seriously that some prediction of a long solar minimum is going to change the outcome much, if at all.
How many of those 3 million are sitting headless somewhere, serving up files or running batch jobs?
20% of gamers that run Linux, have a decent enough PC, and enjoy FPSes might be more reasonable.
Well, sort of. This is a document where Apple is arguing about changes to the DMCA and is not a statement of policy.
I wouldn't fault anyone for skipping the iPhone because of this
If this is their sole/primary objection, I fault them in the same way I fault anyone who makes a big deal out of some minor thing. Which is to say, I'll say they're misguided, but it's their choice so to each his own, right?
there are plenty of other phones that are designed to run arbitrary code and whose manufacturers won't call you a criminal for doing so.
That's overstating things a bit much, though.
NYC they have wireless auto ticket printers. they'll just scan your registration and print a ticket in a few minutes and let you go to court to sort it out
U.S. speed limits are also set artificially low.
How else can you explain an engineering report that lists 120mph as the designed maximum limit for an interstate, and an 85mph recommended limit for travel, but somehow gets signed at 65? The only reason I can conclude why politicians ignore engineers' recommendations is because the politicians view the twenty mph gap as an opportunity - to increase tax revenue.
And of course the Bernie Madoff-like scammers we call insurance companies also benefit because they can double or triple your rates if you get speeding tickets, even if you are a perfect driver who's never wrecked.
The profit motive also encourages them to A: ship product B: on time C: on budget D: that meets the customer's needs. NASA seems to have trouble with all four of those.
Yeah, all companies ship everything on time, under budget, without defects and a product that the customer actually wants.
Well, I'm not a mathematician, but it seems to me that's precisely why there isn't a repetitive pattern in the numerical representation. If there was, that would mean the ratio can be exactly defined by a finite amount of information.
It can be exactly defined by a finite amount of information. And it's not impossible, in general, for a transcendental number to have some sort of pattern in the numerical representation. For instance, the Champernowne constant --
Uhm...to say that there is no unified protocol for video and voice on XMPP just doesn't match reality.
The jingle specs are fairly universal in the XMPP world. Google's, interestingly enough, is actually a bit out of date at this point, but they've promised to update to the jingle specs once the XSF has settled them, which has only really happened pretty recently.
Other clients that support some level of jingle A/V, where some of them may be audio only (and remember, there's basically no support needed at the server level for any of this) are Psi, Cocinella, Spark (in Windows), and now Pidgin. Talkonaut is a mobile (WinMo and Symbian) client that does jingle voice. More niche clients that have support are some of the IP PBX systems like Asterisk and FreeSwitch. There are others that are listed in places that have support for it, but I don't know the degree of that support, so I'm not going to list them...others can speak up if they know better on some of the others.
iChat is definitely the outlier in the XMPP world for not supporting jingle, or at least supporting something jingle-like (Google hasn't moved up to the standard as specified yes, as I said).
Oh, and just to knock down a bit of bias...I'm typing this on a Mac, so ostensibly, I'm one of those snobby iChat users as well, except that I don't use it.
Warfare.
Scientists will study your brain to learn more about your distant cousin, Man.
