ugh

Sometimes there are no second chances. Sometimes you should get it right the first time. Especially when it comes to something as obvious as this.

Sorry, but this is not some subtle mistake.

It’s blatant sexism and misogyny. That is always offensive. I’m not sure why you don’t seem to have a problem with sexism and misogyny. That’s all being offended means: I have a problem with you saying stuff like that. That seems reasonable enough to me.

No, whoever is offended by this is exactly right. They do not need a thicker skin.

So, uhm, I’m not a fan of Windows 8, but why exactly is this in any way a big deal?

It's not finished. It will break. You have a backup device (or two) ready when you present it in front of a crowd.

Apple does it (I remember keynotes where they had to switch to their backup Mac), Microsoft does it, everyone does it.

(Pssst, that’s the point I’m trying to make. NASA seems to can, but maybe paying other people doesn’t count or something.)

Question: Who pays SpaceX? Where is their revenue coming from?

Tyson didn’t make that video. He didn’t pick the images. You don’t even know what he thinks about the Shuttle, do you? You don’t even know what he thinks about Ares and Orion, do you? You don’t even know what he thinks about SpaceX, do you?

Why do you insist on slandering him by calling him a shill? There isn’t even so much as a hint that what he says are not really his views and convictions. If you want to challenge those, fine, but don’t slander him along the way.

Also: Have you considered that what you want might just be impossible with the money and resources Nasa has at its disposal? Not just for Nasa, for any organization, real or imagined. You seem to want an awful lot of them.

(I know. I do that sometimes, but usually it’s too much work for me.)

I write all my email on the iPad. I'm not really sure how you would know whether someone wrote you an email with an iPad or not.

(This comment was written on an iPad while relaxing on a comfy chair. You can tell because I'm not using typographically correct apostrophes.)

Oh hey, I just wrote a comment that is also fitting here. Quoting myself:

Look at this graph: http://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/index.cfm

More than one third of US households have more than one PC. It’s probably a good assumption that most US households with iPads will keep at least one PC, but it’s very possible that many households are replacing their second or third PCs with iPads. After getting an iPad many households might not replace their kitchen or living room PC once it breaks. Maybe kids will get an iPad instead of a cheap laptop.

It would actually be very interesting to look at that question more closely. I’m not sure whether there is already data out there.

I think it’s important to emphasize that for the iPad to supplant PCs, people don’t have to ditch every PC they own. Many own more than one.

Look at this graph: http://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/index.cfm

More than one third of US households have more than one PC. It’s probably a good assumption that most US households with iPads will keep at least one PC, but it’s very possible that many households are replacing their second or third PCs with iPads. After getting an iPad many households might not replace their kitchen or living room PC once it breaks. Maybe kids will get an iPad instead of a cheap laptop.

It would actually be very interesting to look at that question more closely. I’m not sure whether there is already data out there.

I think it’s important to emphasize that for the iPad to supplant PCs, people don’t have to ditch every PC they own. Many own more than one.

How many percent of customers would Apple lose if Apple made the iPhones/iPads Apple-carrier-only?

Not gonna happen.

He is also pretty well known in Germany. That (I guess you could call it local fame) seems about appropriate for what he did. He is no Turing, after all.

The new computer science and automation building of my university in Germany (now the second largest building on the campus) was named after Zuse. I would say that’s quite the honor and recognition, especially considering the other buildings are named after Humboldt, Newton (mechanical engineering), Kirchhoff (electrical engineering), Helmholtz, Leibniz (library), Röntgen, Curie and Faraday.

The 3210 has less volume. Being huge in three dimensions the deal breaker. Volume is the name of the game, and the screen constrains that.

Also: The 3210 is still annoyingly large.

Phones 30% to 50% larger would be disastrous. Uncomfortable, just too big. I think the way phones are now is about right. Still a bit too large to basically disappear in your pocket, but small enough to not be annoying.

It's not about fashion. Making phones larger would be a stupid idea indeed.

If you didn't know, it’s already online (earlier than usual). Here’s the link: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/460/r...

I think Marco Arment licensed those fonts. They don’t come with iOS. Would be nice, though, if Apple were to finally step it up again in the typography department, especially now that they have devices that can show beautiful and detailed fonts off.

It’s a well told story, it’s good radio. You can definitely see the appeal of it as a monologue. But it was presented as fact and is not, not completely. I would recommend listening to both the original show and the redaction back to back, they are both very powerful and well made.

iOS has VoiceOver. Every app should support text to speech, at least if the developer didn’t completely ignore accessibility. I’m just now testing with Instapaper and VoiceOver seems to work perfectly with it.

I don’t know whether that’s default, but I set my iPad up in a way that pressing the home button three times activates VoiceOver. You then select what you want VoiceOver to read to you. If you want it to just continue reading forever (instead of just reading what you selected, like a headline or a paragraph) you scroll down with two fingers.

It’s an accessibility feature, so its primary use case is not reading texts to you, but it works perfectly fine for that purpose – and in the vast majority of apps it just works, even without the developer doing anything.

Red Army Faction, not Royal Air Force :-)

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction

That might have been a terrorism thing in the 80s in Germany. You know, domestic terrorism. The RAF was still active in the 80s and was actually able to carry out a few attacks (unlike, say, islamic terrorists).

During a recent terrorism scare (you know, elevated danger of an attack and such) those submachine guns really were everywhere in larger train stations but they disappeared after some time. I usually only see police without submachine guns now.

Is the resolution not revolutionary? I don’t think you can seriously argue with that.

Apple doesn't do that kind of stuff. Most people will not be able to see the pixels (at their comfortable viewing distances). That’s good enough for them (also considering they are streets ahead of everyone else in the pixels department).

I … don’t … understand?

So everyone and their mother are complaining about big government and one of the two guys who has good chances of becoming the nominee is in favor of doing draconian (fascist, even) big government stuff. What?!

American voter, what’s going on? I’m only confused. I have given up making sense of it.

I think it's every journalists’ duty to do their due diligence in contacting who they are writing about. That's all that was done here. To call it stalking or to compare it to paparazzo is preposterous.

I get that. Doesn't change a thing: It looks just like an arrow if you are not looking for the M. It’s cute, doesn’t help, though.

It just looks like an arrow pointing down. Seems to general to me.

No, it wasn't: http://www.doublefine.com/news/comments/the_partys_over_but_...

So they really got what they wanted plus three million in the end. (Minus ten or so percent, right? Five for Kickstarter, the rest for Amazon.)

People are also so upset with Apple.

I know that. But what we are talking about here are servers that do use a white list. You can’t even make them public, you have to invite people.

If you play with fiends you don’t need anti-giefing. (Ok, if you do need anti-giefing even though you play with your friends you may not have the best friends.)

I think the model here is playing with your friends, so anti-griefing and administration is not so important - but it does limit how useful the service is, sure. It's certainly not a great service for starting a huge server where you play with strangers or people you hardly know. I thimk the whole payment model isn't the best for a huge server, but I think it's great for getting together with friends. The execution is also awesome. It's incredibly simple, while most other services are opaque amd confusing to set up (for what I assume is most of Minecraft's target demographic).

It's basically a service that is not for everyone but very attractive for some. I assume they are working to make those service attractive for more people, but it's a good fundament.