I have used $15.00 prepaid Nokia phones when on outdoors trips (where I wouldn't want to risk a smartphone even in an Otterbox case.) When having to get up to make it somewhere in time, the cheapie device never failed me.
The issue here is that this is basic functionality of a device; one never thinks about a smartphone having time/date issues, and most people have not thought of these types of corner cases since they were stacking boxes of MREs in their bong shelters preparing for Y2K. People take a reliable alarm clock for granted.
The lesson learned from this -- if one has to be somewhere and it is a career changing/ending move if they are late, one should consider an additional alarm. Since the Nokia prepaid phone is so inexpensive, it is cheaper than a lot of travel alarms.
What is ironic, the last time I saw a time/date problem on January 1, it was the original Zune that went catatonic the whole day. It fixed itself the next day, and MS did push out an update so it would never happen again.
Yes, time and date stuff can bring errors, but isn't this something that there are automated tools to doublecheck? At least test critical days and times of the year (Dec 31, Feb 28, Feb 29, Jan 1, the Sunday where DST starts, the Sunday where DST ends, checking if a timezone change affects stuff, etc.) This should be part of regression testing as well.
Bugs happen. For a lot of people, no alarm on the first of January isn't a bad thing. However, there are a lot of people whose job might be placed at risk if they come late. There are also a lot of people who work shift work at jobs that often change schedule. These jobs, you just don't wake up naturally 15-30 minutes if the alarm doesn't go off... one may wake up 4-8 hours later, which at best means no hours earned that day (if on an hourly wage.)
Even if it isn't a job, there are people who use the iPhone as a travel alarm at hotels and expect it to wake them at least before check-out time.
Of course, this isn't something that is a world ender for most people. However, this isn't just a cosmetic bug either, because it has some impact on people's daily lives, but because there isn't a way for a third party app to handle alarms (well, assuming a non-jailbroken iPhone), Apple has more pressure in making sure their stuff works right.
I could be wrong on this, but doesn't the loss of power with altitude happen to any normally aspirated engine? A lot of diesels have single or twin turbos which minimize the power output loss, but I wonder if a regular diesel engine would suffer from this, even with the much higher compression ratios that diesels use as opposed to gasoline engines.
The usual $50.00 question I have for any Android device: How easy is it for this device to be rooted? An additional question would be how easy it is to flash a custom ROM image.
I just hope it isn't too hard to have custom, fast ROM images for this device.
This is an article point that annoys me. You know what I see for vehicles where I live?
Volkwagen Jettas/Golfs Mazda 3s Honda Fits/Civics/Accords Toyota Corollas/Camries
I see some new ones, but mainly I see cars that have been on the road 3-10 years. These are nowhere near what the article states as cars going 0-60 in four seconds. These are low-end to midrange cars that are basic transportation. It is rare to see a full size SUV newer than 2000-2003 on the roads, similar with pickups. (I mainly see 1997-2003 Ford models, and similar year Chevies. In fact, if it is a 2004 or newer, it likely is a company truck.)
People who say that Americans are just "consuming" when it comes to vehicles need to look at other regions of the country other than Beverly Hills or the Las Vegas strip.
The US car tastes have changed, and this started before the recession. Contrary to what people who make articles like this (which seem to have a lot of uninformed conclusions), American tastes for cars are changing to what Europeans buy, because they are easier to maneuver in congestion, look decent, and are reliable. Since a dead car is a dreaded fear, people buy cars for perceived reliability.
Want to know how the US has changed? Three notable things I see:
1: There is a clamor for VW diesels because they have high mpg and decent performance. Not just from a few people, but from almost all walks of life.
2: Even full size pickups are going back to V6 options. For example, Ford has an Eco-Boost twin turbo V6.
3: Microcars are appearing on the streets. Smart cars were laughed at initially ("Well, when you need a repair, just pick up the vehicle and drop it off in a deposit slot at the service station.") Now they are becoming more and more common.
For the TL;DR crowd, the article's author needs to actually check facts. Americans buying en masse Escalades with 30 inch rims are nowhere near the reality for most of the US.
With BitLocker, Windows uses two partitions, first is equivalent to the/boot in Linux, which stores the OS kernel and some basic utilities. The second part is the usual C: volume. The Bitlocker boot process essentially scans the MBR, drops that hash into the TPM, and before each segment gets loaded, it gets hashed, the hash also sent to the TPM. As soon as the first phase of booting is complete and the machine is about to load the C: system, it asks the TPM for the key. If all the hashes match, the TPM hands the key over. Otherwise, it doesn't, and the machine asks for a recovery key to be typed in or a USB flash drive with it put in.
The main advantage of this setup is that should someone boot the box from another disk (a recovery CD), the contents of the system volume are encrypted. Same if someone yanks the hard disk and puts it in another machine, or tampers with the MBR.
Of course, the disadvantage is if the attacker knows an admin user's password, is able to execute code on the box with an admin context, or is able to dump the RAM.
Bitlocker can be configured to require a PIN on bootup, stored in the TPM... too many bad guesses, the TPM starts demanding a longer and longer period of waiting. This is good on a laptop to prevent brute-force attacks.
Nothing is perfect; but Bitlocker does add a solid avenue of security while not getting in the way for daily use. I just wish other operating systems would use similar functionality with TPMs. This way, an unattended server that has some hard disks walk off would have their data protected. Same with someone booting a box from CD in efforts to change a password without authorization.
My fear is that the other shoe will drop -- to "fix" the problem, each carrier will have its own app store and lock their devices to it.
Why is this bad?
Two reasons. First, developers will have to grease palms in order for their app to be usable by all. Second, carriers will want exclusivity agreements, so Goatse Tower Defense only appears on one cellular carrier, but no other. This will be used as a way to peddle phones, similar to how game titles are used to sell consoles (if you want Halo, you buy an XBox for example.)
I know that most photography has gone digital, but there are enough 35mm cameras still having shutters snap that I wonder if there would be a market for a new type of color film in various ISOs. Something designed for modern use, using as non-toxic chemicals as possible (probably not likely), and perhaps with as small a grain as possible, so one wouldn't have to go with a Hasselblad or medium format to make a 11x17 with ISO 800 film.
This might be impossible, but film has a number of things over even the best digital cameras. From color gradients (256 levels of RGB versus infinite), to the fact that it is quite difficult to doctor film without that being detected (at least easier than firing up Photoshop.)
I agree with you. If it was an advance in phones, I'd like to see more storage space, or even SDXC support so when 64 and 128 GB MicroSD cards come out (there are SD cards out with this capacity, but not MicroSD), the device can easily handle that.
Some things I would like to see in 2011, instead of more tablets:
1: A hard disk controller that can autotier. This way, it can have 4-5 standard hard disks in RAID6 configuration, as well as a SSD, and blocks of data that are often used get dropped on the SSD.
2: A consumer level tape drive that has modern capacities. Even if it means having a SSD [1] for storing data temporarily until it gets streamed to the tape to slow down the incidence of shoe-shining.
3: Significant price drops on SSD technology.
4: US Internet infrastructure improvements. Shouldn't we have 100gbs wireless mesh networks in all metropolitan areas by now, instead of getting mobile plans changed so we pay $10 a gig for already slow wireless connections?
5: Other operating systems than Windows have BitLocker-like functionality so they too can boot using a TPM chip for key storage without needing a password on IPL.
6: A wholesale move to LTE-Advanced, so it doesn't matter which carrier you use, just swap SIM cards into your device.
7: A new HDD design specifically built for libraries. Use the same 2.5" platters, but have a different enclosure for the platters, head, and controller that is made specifically for automated changing in and out of a library, not to mention the ability to slap barcodes on. The result of this would be the advantages of disk (random access), with tape's advantages (resistance to physical damage, long archive life, etc.) If not a HDD design, then a standard robot-friendly enclosure for 2.5" or even 3.5" drives that is used by multiple vendors, with a read-write/read-only switch on them.
[1]: Ideally an AES-256 encrypted SSD that uses transitory keys in RAM, so when the tape transaction is up, it forgets the keys (overwriting the DRAM locations multiple times), then generates new ones for the next transaction. This way, old data isn't still accessible even if the tape is secured.
If the cores are different, it may be useful. Say a phone has two low power/low speed cores, one core dedicated to the radio, and two cores that have high speed/power. This would make the phone useful. When playing games, it could have one or both high speed cores running, but when just idle and sitting there, it could just be using one low-speed core for the OS and background apps.
The advantage about cores is that for devices which run a number of separate discrete tasks, it provides smoother performance. To boot, cores can be turned on and off for further power savings.
This isn't to say a fast, single core CPU is a bad thing, especially if it had the ability to power off or throttle back clock speed for battery savings. However, it might be easier for engineers to design a dual core system where one core is optimized solely for power savings and the other for performance as opposed to try to make one core do the whole show.
I have seen some accounts cracked. Usually one or more of three things happen:
1: All friends of this person get the archetypal "OMG, I'm in a gaol in London, I need $750 to get put, please wire some cash", from an account whose owner who doesn't even have a passport.
2: All friends of this person get inundated with wall postings about various sites; all of which are dummy domains apparently trying to serve up malware.
3: Friends on the cracked account list get called or mass-texted if they are dumb enough happen to have their number on FB.
All this can make an account cracker a good amount of cash (either directly or a commission from the malware downloads), because people will tend to send money to a friend who sends a plausible sob story. Since the crackers are likely in another country who doesn't give a rat's ass anyway about people in the West, they can do what they please, and there are no chances of repercussions.
IIRC, it wasn't censorship of why 1984 and Animal farm were pulled; it was disputes about Amazon's right to carry those books. This mechanism likely kept Amazon from suffering the same fate as MP3.com where the big record labels sued that company into component quarks because of the MP3 locker service they offered.
Comment spam hasn't slowed down. I think its because E-mail spam is starting to have such a low return ratio compared to getting spam in front of eyeballs via Facebook or Web forums.
For a spammer, cracking into a Facebook account, posting links up to a malicious website to distribute malware is far more lucrative than just spewing out and hoping the outgoing ISP, the relays, the user's mail server, and the user's MUA doesn't stomp the spam first. A FB account is almost guaranteed to be read, and oftentimes, the link clicked on.
It gave Sony about 3 years of a 0% piracy rate, which is unheard of. That in itself will likely make Sony drop even more fundage into the PS4 to make it harder to crack. I'm sure this time around, they will be using a real RNG for generating their keys.
Correction, Adobe applications. It would be nice to be able to feed stuff large amounts of RAM addressable in nanoseconds, because it is a *lot* easier to throw more hardware at something than to get most vendors to tighten up their products.
Here what it boils down to, IMHO: Will the racetrack memory provide enough addressable space, at a decent price, to allow Adobe and other large applications to run decently?
Didn't a French carmaker address this by having a set of wheels that would drop down, shoulder the vehicle's weight, and allow the car to move sideways? I remember this because it was a relatively simple way to address parallel parking, as opposed to having a computer do it for you. This way, instead of playing the ramming game, it was a simple manner of scooting out in the street, retracting the wheels and driving off.
Of course, in Europe, few people will have full size Ford Excursions going down cobblestone [1] streets. However, what size SUV are they not wanting in Paris? There are pretty tiny SUVs, like the Honda CR-V which have better MPG than most cars. Would delivery vehicles be affected such as vans? Would they ban hybrid SUVs? There are full size SUVs like the Tahoe that come to mind. Would they ban everything but a "car-shaped" vehicle? If so, this would earn them a marksmanship award in footshooting.
IMHO, this is more of a PR stunt against American culture such as "yank tanks" than anything else. Who would drive a full size SUV like a Suburban around Paris? A smaller SUV such as a ford Kuga or a pickup like a Ranger would be actually drivable there. Are those the target of what gets tossed out of Paris?
[1]: Technically setts, but people call it cobblestone anyway.
If another organization in the US made an interconnecting network, there is a chance that other countries would drop some type of gateways to monitor content. Perhaps real time communication internationally would not have ever been allowed, because communications would have to be stored, then forwarded UUCP-like while an online equivalent of customs looks through any stuff destined for another source. Anything encrypted or not decipherable off the bat would be ditched.
I can picture trying to send an E-mail to someone in Germany, should this come to pass. It would quickly go to an "edge" gateway server, then sit there in a queue while someone doing a role similar to a mailing list moderator examines the message and approves it, or drops it.
Real time file transfers would suck. What likely would happen is that each country would start making mirrors, because files going through an international gateway either would be examined, or stuff would probably have to be delivered via modem lines internally for gigantic long distance bills.
As of now, the Internet has a lot of problems. That film at 11 has been about to show for a generation. However, there could be worse incarnations. Picture the TV set top box makers getting their way. Most everyone would be having to read text on a TV, paying $5 an hour, and 25 cents a page. All replied would be filtered through moderators, and if they didn't like someone enough, the "internet" account could vanish, stating that something violated the TOS somewhere.
If Russia starts using Linux and demanding that app vendors make programs compatible for the OS, or else they will pay or find application vendors that will, this will get the mainstream guys to start treating Linux as a top tier platform and not something to hide in the server room racks.
The result? A win/win/win situation. Linux can become an alternative to Windows. Application makers have a gigantic market (Russia, then possibly China, then perhaps Europe, anywhere there is distrust of closed operating systems.) Users have an OS choice that has proven itself in the "big boy" arenas that can run their applications without having to buy new hardware.
That is true. However, when interviewing for jobs, HR people will question your ability to deal with IT technology if you don't have a MySpace/FB/Twitter presence, claiming it is as behind the times to not be on FB as it is not to have a cellphone or computer. Most companies, the HR people will have the say over the IT people, so whatever they think goes when it comes to offers being extended.
One profile is what they show to prospective employers that is sanitized and easy for people to see.
One profile that is either under a nickname, or a slight misspelling of the normal name, and private. This is for friends only, and for the usual socializing. Make sure to use group permissions so you can friend someone, but they don't have to see all your postings unless you give them access.
Neither of the above have platform apps turned on.
Then, one profile, not connected in any to the above two, using a nickname or alias, and using a different E-mail address (preferably different domain), perhaps in a separate Web browser and sandbox. This profile is for fertilizing your donkey in Farmville and playing all the FB games. Since this has no friends attached, an app slurping up all the gory details to hand over to the advertising companies isn't going to obtain much.
Eclipse is a decent tool, but infuriating sometimes. On Windows, I tried installing it, and it just would exit, no error code, no anything. So, I use it on a Mac. I'd love to see NetBeans pushed forward as a steady IDE with hooks for the Dalvik VM and development there.
As for Android, I am sure multi-touch will get fixed. It is likely one reason it has lagged behind is because Apple is sitting there with its legions of lawyers who will sue anybody into the ground who shows 2+ finger controls on anything but their devices.
People cry "fragmentation" when it comes to Android, but other platforms have it too. Windows Phone 7/Windows Mobile has this. iOS doesn't because Apple only has a few models (iPhone/iPhone 3G/iPhone 3GS/iPhone 4/iPad) that developers need to worry about. However, what is gained with that is lost in the fact that Apple is part of the development cycle, with a step of having each update approved. Android is a very quickly evolving platform. It wasn't that long ago that the G1 was the only device running it. Android is going through in about a year and a half of what other platforms have had to evolve though in 5-7 years.
Android's "fragmentation" isn't Google's fault either. A good portion of it can be blamed squarely on some phone makers who deliberately de-function their devices to prevent unofficial OS upgrades.
Java may seem boring, but it does provide two important feature to Android as a platform -- platform independence, so it isn't locked to just the ARM architecture, and security. A rogue app has to crack out of the Dalvik VM, as opposed to be able to attack the OS directly by directly executing CPU instructions. Even after it gets out of the Dalvik VM, it likely won't get past Android's permission structure. Finally, if it does, people will review and report it, and Google will boot it off the marketplace for good.
All and all, I tell people to give Android time if it does not have what they want. For example, I was bellyaching about the lack of encryption for Exchange. While Google is working on an elegant mechanism to solve it, third party apps have addressed this. NitroDesk's Touchdown solves this problem by encrypting mail (with 3DES) as well as attachments stored on the SD card. It also provides a remote kill mechanism to erase all Exchange data which is important in the enterprise (and even to individuals) should a phone get lost/stolen.
I do admit I did propose a quite tinfoil hattish scenario. However, with a lot of jobs, a smartphone is a must have:
1: A lot of people are on call 24/7. This means they need to have the ability to call people, as well as respond to Exchange E-mails anywhere.
2: Other people have to have E-mail access, for work-related items, such as messages/meeting requests from clients and such.
3: The PDA feature of almost all smartphones can be extremely useful.
4: Apps/games are useful. Why worry about a MP3 player, a pocket camera, a USB flash drive, a PDA and such, when one device can handle all of that?
For some people, they may not need anything more than a basic phone. For others, having a smartphone is a must have, especially with Exchange connectivity being almost mandatory. This is why people like myself get concerned about all the trends that can converge to make a very locked down, user-hostile platform that has the ability to actively attack the user should he or she attempt to disable it. Since I use a smartphone all the time, I like knowing it isn't ratting me out 24/7/365.25 to companies who are actively hostile to my interests.
Of course, turning off the smartphone and yanking the battery ensures that it isn't geo-locating, but in some cases, no signal might be as damning as a signal in the wrong place.
Ultimately, the best solution to this as of now are the Google phones sold to developers, where because Google has more interest in getting the latest technology into developer's hands. Drop in DroidWall and one has their privacy back. If an app needs to contact Google's licensing servers, an iptables rule can be made to allow it to do that, but deny all connectivity anywhere else, unless there is a need for it to connect somewhere.
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I have used $15.00 prepaid Nokia phones when on outdoors trips (where I wouldn't want to risk a smartphone even in an Otterbox case.) When having to get up to make it somewhere in time, the cheapie device never failed me.
The issue here is that this is basic functionality of a device; one never thinks about a smartphone having time/date issues, and most people have not thought of these types of corner cases since they were stacking boxes of MREs in their bong shelters preparing for Y2K. People take a reliable alarm clock for granted.
The lesson learned from this -- if one has to be somewhere and it is a career changing/ending move if they are late, one should consider an additional alarm. Since the Nokia prepaid phone is so inexpensive, it is cheaper than a lot of travel alarms.
What is ironic, the last time I saw a time/date problem on January 1, it was the original Zune that went catatonic the whole day. It fixed itself the next day, and MS did push out an update so it would never happen again.
Yes, time and date stuff can bring errors, but isn't this something that there are automated tools to doublecheck? At least test critical days and times of the year (Dec 31, Feb 28, Feb 29, Jan 1, the Sunday where DST starts, the Sunday where DST ends, checking if a timezone change affects stuff, etc.) This should be part of regression testing as well.
Bugs happen. For a lot of people, no alarm on the first of January isn't a bad thing. However, there are a lot of people whose job might be placed at risk if they come late. There are also a lot of people who work shift work at jobs that often change schedule. These jobs, you just don't wake up naturally 15-30 minutes if the alarm doesn't go off... one may wake up 4-8 hours later, which at best means no hours earned that day (if on an hourly wage.)
Even if it isn't a job, there are people who use the iPhone as a travel alarm at hotels and expect it to wake them at least before check-out time.
Of course, this isn't something that is a world ender for most people. However, this isn't just a cosmetic bug either, because it has some impact on people's daily lives, but because there isn't a way for a third party app to handle alarms (well, assuming a non-jailbroken iPhone), Apple has more pressure in making sure their stuff works right.
I could be wrong on this, but doesn't the loss of power with altitude happen to any normally aspirated engine? A lot of diesels have single or twin turbos which minimize the power output loss, but I wonder if a regular diesel engine would suffer from this, even with the much higher compression ratios that diesels use as opposed to gasoline engines.
The usual $50.00 question I have for any Android device: How easy is it for this device to be rooted? An additional question would be how easy it is to flash a custom ROM image.
I just hope it isn't too hard to have custom, fast ROM images for this device.
This is an article point that annoys me. You know what I see for vehicles where I live?
Volkwagen Jettas/Golfs
Mazda 3s
Honda Fits/Civics/Accords
Toyota Corollas/Camries
I see some new ones, but mainly I see cars that have been on the road 3-10 years. These are nowhere near what the article states as cars going 0-60 in four seconds. These are low-end to midrange cars that are basic transportation. It is rare to see a full size SUV newer than 2000-2003 on the roads, similar with pickups. (I mainly see 1997-2003 Ford models, and similar year Chevies. In fact, if it is a 2004 or newer, it likely is a company truck.)
People who say that Americans are just "consuming" when it comes to vehicles need to look at other regions of the country other than Beverly Hills or the Las Vegas strip.
The US car tastes have changed, and this started before the recession. Contrary to what people who make articles like this (which seem to have a lot of uninformed conclusions), American tastes for cars are changing to what Europeans buy, because they are easier to maneuver in congestion, look decent, and are reliable. Since a dead car is a dreaded fear, people buy cars for perceived reliability.
Want to know how the US has changed? Three notable things I see:
1: There is a clamor for VW diesels because they have high mpg and decent performance. Not just from a few people, but from almost all walks of life.
2: Even full size pickups are going back to V6 options. For example, Ford has an Eco-Boost twin turbo V6.
3: Microcars are appearing on the streets. Smart cars were laughed at initially ("Well, when you need a repair, just pick up the vehicle and drop it off in a deposit slot at the service station.") Now they are becoming more and more common.
For the TL;DR crowd, the article's author needs to actually check facts. Americans buying en masse Escalades with 30 inch rims are nowhere near the reality for most of the US.
With BitLocker, Windows uses two partitions, first is equivalent to the /boot in Linux, which stores the OS kernel and some basic utilities. The second part is the usual C: volume. The Bitlocker boot process essentially scans the MBR, drops that hash into the TPM, and before each segment gets loaded, it gets hashed, the hash also sent to the TPM. As soon as the first phase of booting is complete and the machine is about to load the C: system, it asks the TPM for the key. If all the hashes match, the TPM hands the key over. Otherwise, it doesn't, and the machine asks for a recovery key to be typed in or a USB flash drive with it put in.
The main advantage of this setup is that should someone boot the box from another disk (a recovery CD), the contents of the system volume are encrypted. Same if someone yanks the hard disk and puts it in another machine, or tampers with the MBR.
Of course, the disadvantage is if the attacker knows an admin user's password, is able to execute code on the box with an admin context, or is able to dump the RAM.
Bitlocker can be configured to require a PIN on bootup, stored in the TPM... too many bad guesses, the TPM starts demanding a longer and longer period of waiting. This is good on a laptop to prevent brute-force attacks.
Nothing is perfect; but Bitlocker does add a solid avenue of security while not getting in the way for daily use. I just wish other operating systems would use similar functionality with TPMs. This way, an unattended server that has some hard disks walk off would have their data protected. Same with someone booting a box from CD in efforts to change a password without authorization.
My fear is that the other shoe will drop -- to "fix" the problem, each carrier will have its own app store and lock their devices to it.
Why is this bad?
Two reasons. First, developers will have to grease palms in order for their app to be usable by all. Second, carriers will want exclusivity agreements, so Goatse Tower Defense only appears on one cellular carrier, but no other. This will be used as a way to peddle phones, similar to how game titles are used to sell consoles (if you want Halo, you buy an XBox for example.)
I know that most photography has gone digital, but there are enough 35mm cameras still having shutters snap that I wonder if there would be a market for a new type of color film in various ISOs. Something designed for modern use, using as non-toxic chemicals as possible (probably not likely), and perhaps with as small a grain as possible, so one wouldn't have to go with a Hasselblad or medium format to make a 11x17 with ISO 800 film.
This might be impossible, but film has a number of things over even the best digital cameras. From color gradients (256 levels of RGB versus infinite), to the fact that it is quite difficult to doctor film without that being detected (at least easier than firing up Photoshop.)
I agree with you. If it was an advance in phones, I'd like to see more storage space, or even SDXC support so when 64 and 128 GB MicroSD cards come out (there are SD cards out with this capacity, but not MicroSD), the device can easily handle that.
Some things I would like to see in 2011, instead of more tablets:
1: A hard disk controller that can autotier. This way, it can have 4-5 standard hard disks in RAID6 configuration, as well as a SSD, and blocks of data that are often used get dropped on the SSD.
2: A consumer level tape drive that has modern capacities. Even if it means having a SSD [1] for storing data temporarily until it gets streamed to the tape to slow down the incidence of shoe-shining.
3: Significant price drops on SSD technology.
4: US Internet infrastructure improvements. Shouldn't we have 100gbs wireless mesh networks in all metropolitan areas by now, instead of getting mobile plans changed so we pay $10 a gig for already slow wireless connections?
5: Other operating systems than Windows have BitLocker-like functionality so they too can boot using a TPM chip for key storage without needing a password on IPL.
6: A wholesale move to LTE-Advanced, so it doesn't matter which carrier you use, just swap SIM cards into your device.
7: A new HDD design specifically built for libraries. Use the same 2.5" platters, but have a different enclosure for the platters, head, and controller that is made specifically for automated changing in and out of a library, not to mention the ability to slap barcodes on. The result of this would be the advantages of disk (random access), with tape's advantages (resistance to physical damage, long archive life, etc.) If not a HDD design, then a standard robot-friendly enclosure for 2.5" or even 3.5" drives that is used by multiple vendors, with a read-write/read-only switch on them.
[1]: Ideally an AES-256 encrypted SSD that uses transitory keys in RAM, so when the tape transaction is up, it forgets the keys (overwriting the DRAM locations multiple times), then generates new ones for the next transaction. This way, old data isn't still accessible even if the tape is secured.
If the cores are different, it may be useful. Say a phone has two low power/low speed cores, one core dedicated to the radio, and two cores that have high speed/power. This would make the phone useful. When playing games, it could have one or both high speed cores running, but when just idle and sitting there, it could just be using one low-speed core for the OS and background apps.
The advantage about cores is that for devices which run a number of separate discrete tasks, it provides smoother performance. To boot, cores can be turned on and off for further power savings.
This isn't to say a fast, single core CPU is a bad thing, especially if it had the ability to power off or throttle back clock speed for battery savings. However, it might be easier for engineers to design a dual core system where one core is optimized solely for power savings and the other for performance as opposed to try to make one core do the whole show.
I have seen some accounts cracked. Usually one or more of three things happen:
1: All friends of this person get the archetypal "OMG, I'm in a gaol in London, I need $750 to get put, please wire some cash", from an account whose owner who doesn't even have a passport.
2: All friends of this person get inundated with wall postings about various sites; all of which are dummy domains apparently trying to serve up malware.
3: Friends on the cracked account list get called or mass-texted if they are dumb enough happen to have their number on FB.
All this can make an account cracker a good amount of cash (either directly or a commission from the malware downloads), because people will tend to send money to a friend who sends a plausible sob story. Since the crackers are likely in another country who doesn't give a rat's ass anyway about people in the West, they can do what they please, and there are no chances of repercussions.
IIRC, it wasn't censorship of why 1984 and Animal farm were pulled; it was disputes about Amazon's right to carry those books. This mechanism likely kept Amazon from suffering the same fate as MP3.com where the big record labels sued that company into component quarks because of the MP3 locker service they offered.
Comment spam hasn't slowed down. I think its because E-mail spam is starting to have such a low return ratio compared to getting spam in front of eyeballs via Facebook or Web forums.
For a spammer, cracking into a Facebook account, posting links up to a malicious website to distribute malware is far more lucrative than just spewing out and hoping the outgoing ISP, the relays, the user's mail server, and the user's MUA doesn't stomp the spam first. A FB account is almost guaranteed to be read, and oftentimes, the link clicked on.
It gave Sony about 3 years of a 0% piracy rate, which is unheard of. That in itself will likely make Sony drop even more fundage into the PS4 to make it harder to crack. I'm sure this time around, they will be using a real RNG for generating their keys.
Correction, Adobe applications. It would be nice to be able to feed stuff large amounts of RAM addressable in nanoseconds, because it is a *lot* easier to throw more hardware at something than to get most vendors to tighten up their products.
Here what it boils down to, IMHO: Will the racetrack memory provide enough addressable space, at a decent price, to allow Adobe and other large applications to run decently?
Didn't a French carmaker address this by having a set of wheels that would drop down, shoulder the vehicle's weight, and allow the car to move sideways? I remember this because it was a relatively simple way to address parallel parking, as opposed to having a computer do it for you. This way, instead of playing the ramming game, it was a simple manner of scooting out in the street, retracting the wheels and driving off.
Of course, in Europe, few people will have full size Ford Excursions going down cobblestone [1] streets. However, what size SUV are they not wanting in Paris? There are pretty tiny SUVs, like the Honda CR-V which have better MPG than most cars. Would delivery vehicles be affected such as vans? Would they ban hybrid SUVs? There are full size SUVs like the Tahoe that come to mind. Would they ban everything but a "car-shaped" vehicle? If so, this would earn them a marksmanship award in footshooting.
IMHO, this is more of a PR stunt against American culture such as "yank tanks" than anything else. Who would drive a full size SUV like a Suburban around Paris? A smaller SUV such as a ford Kuga or a pickup like a Ranger would be actually drivable there. Are those the target of what gets tossed out of Paris?
[1]: Technically setts, but people call it cobblestone anyway.
If another organization in the US made an interconnecting network, there is a chance that other countries would drop some type of gateways to monitor content. Perhaps real time communication internationally would not have ever been allowed, because communications would have to be stored, then forwarded UUCP-like while an online equivalent of customs looks through any stuff destined for another source. Anything encrypted or not decipherable off the bat would be ditched.
I can picture trying to send an E-mail to someone in Germany, should this come to pass. It would quickly go to an "edge" gateway server, then sit there in a queue while someone doing a role similar to a mailing list moderator examines the message and approves it, or drops it.
Real time file transfers would suck. What likely would happen is that each country would start making mirrors, because files going through an international gateway either would be examined, or stuff would probably have to be delivered via modem lines internally for gigantic long distance bills.
As of now, the Internet has a lot of problems. That film at 11 has been about to show for a generation. However, there could be worse incarnations. Picture the TV set top box makers getting their way. Most everyone would be having to read text on a TV, paying $5 an hour, and 25 cents a page. All replied would be filtered through moderators, and if they didn't like someone enough, the "internet" account could vanish, stating that something violated the TOS somewhere.
This.
If Russia starts using Linux and demanding that app vendors make programs compatible for the OS, or else they will pay or find application vendors that will, this will get the mainstream guys to start treating Linux as a top tier platform and not something to hide in the server room racks.
The result? A win/win/win situation. Linux can become an alternative to Windows. Application makers have a gigantic market (Russia, then possibly China, then perhaps Europe, anywhere there is distrust of closed operating systems.) Users have an OS choice that has proven itself in the "big boy" arenas that can run their applications without having to buy new hardware.
That is true. However, when interviewing for jobs, HR people will question your ability to deal with IT technology if you don't have a MySpace/FB/Twitter presence, claiming it is as behind the times to not be on FB as it is not to have a cellphone or computer. Most companies, the HR people will have the say over the IT people, so whatever they think goes when it comes to offers being extended.
I recommend people keep multiple profiles:
One profile is what they show to prospective employers that is sanitized and easy for people to see.
One profile that is either under a nickname, or a slight misspelling of the normal name, and private. This is for friends only, and for the usual socializing. Make sure to use group permissions so you can friend someone, but they don't have to see all your postings unless you give them access.
Neither of the above have platform apps turned on.
Then, one profile, not connected in any to the above two, using a nickname or alias, and using a different E-mail address (preferably different domain), perhaps in a separate Web browser and sandbox. This profile is for fertilizing your donkey in Farmville and playing all the FB games. Since this has no friends attached, an app slurping up all the gory details to hand over to the advertising companies isn't going to obtain much.
Eclipse is a decent tool, but infuriating sometimes. On Windows, I tried installing it, and it just would exit, no error code, no anything. So, I use it on a Mac. I'd love to see NetBeans pushed forward as a steady IDE with hooks for the Dalvik VM and development there.
As for Android, I am sure multi-touch will get fixed. It is likely one reason it has lagged behind is because Apple is sitting there with its legions of lawyers who will sue anybody into the ground who shows 2+ finger controls on anything but their devices.
People cry "fragmentation" when it comes to Android, but other platforms have it too. Windows Phone 7/Windows Mobile has this. iOS doesn't because Apple only has a few models (iPhone/iPhone 3G/iPhone 3GS/iPhone 4/iPad) that developers need to worry about. However, what is gained with that is lost in the fact that Apple is part of the development cycle, with a step of having each update approved. Android is a very quickly evolving platform. It wasn't that long ago that the G1 was the only device running it. Android is going through in about a year and a half of what other platforms have had to evolve though in 5-7 years.
Android's "fragmentation" isn't Google's fault either. A good portion of it can be blamed squarely on some phone makers who deliberately de-function their devices to prevent unofficial OS upgrades.
Java may seem boring, but it does provide two important feature to Android as a platform -- platform independence, so it isn't locked to just the ARM architecture, and security. A rogue app has to crack out of the Dalvik VM, as opposed to be able to attack the OS directly by directly executing CPU instructions. Even after it gets out of the Dalvik VM, it likely won't get past Android's permission structure. Finally, if it does, people will review and report it, and Google will boot it off the marketplace for good.
All and all, I tell people to give Android time if it does not have what they want. For example, I was bellyaching about the lack of encryption for Exchange. While Google is working on an elegant mechanism to solve it, third party apps have addressed this. NitroDesk's Touchdown solves this problem by encrypting mail (with 3DES) as well as attachments stored on the SD card. It also provides a remote kill mechanism to erase all Exchange data which is important in the enterprise (and even to individuals) should a phone get lost/stolen.
Don't forget one phone with DNS, so in darkness bind() them.
I do admit I did propose a quite tinfoil hattish scenario. However, with a lot of jobs, a smartphone is a must have:
1: A lot of people are on call 24/7. This means they need to have the ability to call people, as well as respond to Exchange E-mails anywhere.
2: Other people have to have E-mail access, for work-related items, such as messages/meeting requests from clients and such.
3: The PDA feature of almost all smartphones can be extremely useful.
4: Apps/games are useful. Why worry about a MP3 player, a pocket camera, a USB flash drive, a PDA and such, when one device can handle all of that?
For some people, they may not need anything more than a basic phone. For others, having a smartphone is a must have, especially with Exchange connectivity being almost mandatory. This is why people like myself get concerned about all the trends that can converge to make a very locked down, user-hostile platform that has the ability to actively attack the user should he or she attempt to disable it. Since I use a smartphone all the time, I like knowing it isn't ratting me out 24/7/365.25 to companies who are actively hostile to my interests.
Of course, turning off the smartphone and yanking the battery ensures that it isn't geo-locating, but in some cases, no signal might be as damning as a signal in the wrong place.
Ultimately, the best solution to this as of now are the Google phones sold to developers, where because Google has more interest in getting the latest technology into developer's hands. Drop in DroidWall and one has their privacy back. If an app needs to contact Google's licensing servers, an iptables rule can be made to allow it to do that, but deny all connectivity anywhere else, unless there is a need for it to connect somewhere.