Well, I agree. But notice that nobody in China (at Google) is being forced to take this stance. Every single one of them can leave their job if they disagree with it. It's one thing to put someone else's head on the chopping block. It's quite another to tell the person that they may be going in harms way for the moral fight when they have every opportunity to say "no, I don't believe in this" and leave... I think that if it was something that I felt strongly about, I would stake my life. I have done it before so that others could enjoy the right to life (I was a volunteer firefighter for several years). Now, whether or not I feel that strongly about censorship, I can't say without being the proper position...
It is their decision though, isn't it? The employees over there have every right to leave the company if they felt that it was doing the wrong course of action. I'm pretty sure that Google would probably pull out of China if all of a sudden 1/2 their senior staff up and quit (especially if they cited their anti-censorship behavior). So by that logic, it IS their decision already.
But the difference here, is that we cannot know if their reason for not wanting to go against censorship is because they believe that censorship is right and moral, or they fear their government... And that's why the fight can't be just discarded as "it's not our fight" (At least by a someone who feels that censorship is morally wrong and goes against everyone's basic human rights)...
Well, that will do no good. Because when an exploit in Adobe Acrobat causes it to gain access to system files, the permissions for it to do so were already granted, so your box has been rooted. At least with the system I described in my OP, when that happened, since it was never granted that permission by default, it would pop up "Hey, wait a minute! Acrobat is trying to do something that it was not given permission to do! Do you REALLY want to do this?"... Sure, novice users may click right through them, but experienced users would gain the advantage of being able to kill those attacks before they ever get to do damage (or at least limit the damage). You can't stop stupidity, the most you can do is to put the tools in place for those who want to use them...
Well, you are right in that freedom is something that's part of our western culture. However, I think your comparison to the Vietnam War is somewhat lacking. In that war, we (the US and western countries) were fighting communism (or at least that was the proxy portion of the war). There's a BIG difference between fighting against a philosophical belief (Such as censorship is wrong) and fighting against a political system you think is wrong (even if it contains philosophical beliefs that you feel are wrong). This is directly fighting the belief, not the whole system. There are many different forms of government in the world today. Google isn't trying to say that "Anything but Democracy is wrong" (As we did in the Cold war), they are saying that this particular philosophical belief is wrong.
The different culture argument I feel is weak. If it was part of a culture to kill anyone who started walking with their left foot first (instead of their right foot first), is that something that the rest of the world should overlook? If it's part of a culture to starve everyone except the ruling party, does that mean the rest of the world should overlook it? The fundamental issue at hand here is basic human rights. Those rights that are completely culture independent... That's where the moral line is drawn between "that's just their culture and we should respect it" and "what they are doing is wrong, and we should fight it". That line is different for every single person in every single country. The unanswered question at hand is whether or not freedom of information (not censored) is a fundamental human right. Personally, I believe that it is. I THINK that most of the intellectual world would agree with that statement (of course that's an assumption, but at least I am saying it as such). The unfortunate thing, is that not everyone will agree (obviously). So how do you make a determination on what to do? Do you always ignore a perceived problem because someone may not agree that it's actually a problem? Or do you pick and choose your battles to include only those problems that you not only feel morally justified fighting, but have the support of a lot of people around you? I, personally, would choose the second... Someone's got to fight for the rights of people that can't fight for themselves (Again, in my opinion)...
Isn't their corporate motto "Do no evil"? So isn't also part of their corporate objective? And if you equate censorship as evil (As I personally do, and I am a Google shareholder), than Google's censoring results (even if it's the law) would be against their corporate objective. So if that's the case, they can either put up a fight, or leave...
And the chance of starting a movement by leaving is slim to none. Which is why in my OP I said they should fight (if it really mattered to them)...
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Sometimes it's worth it... Not always, but given the wide belief that censorship is wrong, if that's what it takes to start a revolution, then perhaps it's necessary...
In their first option, they can stand up to their philosophical beliefs --which is a VERY rare thing these days for any major company-- and keep up the fight. If they do this and win, they could start a intellectual and philosophical movement in China... If they lose, not only would they be kicked out and lose money, some of their people possibly could wind up in a Chinese prison (It is violating the law after all)...
In their second option, they can bow to the pressure and keep censoring content in China. If they do this, they are sacrificing their philosophical beliefs for the almighty dollar... This would be a crushing blow to the anti-censorship movement (as one of its most powerful allies will have bowed to the pressure)...
Finally, they could leave China altogether. This could have 2 paths. Either someone (MS with Bing?) would jump in their place right away and it would be like nothing ever happened (Which would also hurt the anti-censorship movement). Or, with luck, other companies that are not happy with the censorship will leave too. It could provide energy to the anti-censorship movement in China...
So, to me, the best option would be #1. In all 3 cases, there is potential to harm the anti-censorship movement. But only the first case has a significant chance to REALLY help it. If Google REALLY wants to promote freedom of information, #1 is the only way to go (Again, IMHO)...
So you want to go to a permissions based security model? Something along the lines of what Android does? So when you install the app, it'll tell you every permission that it has, and if you don't agree with them, it doesn't install (Or possibly gives you the option of running in a reduced permissions mode, if the developer allowed it). It's a lot of overhead, but most definitely could have some interesting results in combating these kind of threats. Then again, something like this would need to be introduced at the Kernel level (Any higher, and permissions could be subverted with a system call)... Actually the more I think about it, it sounds like a good! You could implement "persistent" permissions and one-time-only permissions. So when you install the software, you can declare the permissions that it has permanently (And hence avoid the UAC dialog box every time you use that software), and select some permissions to be granted on a one-time basis (that it must ask each time)... Once something got into the kernel, it'd have free reign over everything, but how's that different from now?
Re:Sounds rather disappointing, really
on
Hollow Spy Coins
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· Score: 1, Funny
Isn't that kind of defeating the point? The idea is to have it 100% inconspicuous. Having a big red X on it may raise some red flags for those people who are looking for something... Perhaps get a coin from a difference currency than your own (I am in the US, so I could get a Euro 20c or 50c piece), and keeping it in your wallet. That way there's very little chance of you accidentally spending it, and if someone asks why you're carrying a Euro coin in the US, you can simply answer for sentimental value (and make up a semi-true story about how you found it on the ground in **insert EU country here** when on vacation, and it has brought you luck ever since)...
Considering the material of the inner wall is copper, it'd have to be a VERY strong field to penetrate the coin. It would have to be so strong that the induced currents are strong enough to begin to melt it. And actually the small size is an advantage, since you'd need a VERY high potential gradient to even generate a significant current (given the walls are how far apart? A tenth of a millimeter? Or on edge maybe a few cm at most). So basically you could generate a high power EMF that's oscillating at a very high frequency (to keep inducing high currents) over a VERY small distance (So that the generated EMF has a VERY high potential gradient) to even be able to generate any kind of a significant current... And by that point, if you melt the copper, you've pretty much destroyed what's inside, so the better option would be developing something to detect the seam rather than try to pear inside with EMR...
Grounding will eliminate Electro-Magnetic Radiation being emitted from within the cage... But being grounded does not affect the ability of the cage to block out external sources. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage So it would block someone from trying to "peer into" the cage, but not block something in the cage from transmitting... So a passive RFID chip placed in the coin would not function at all (since it requires the reception of a "power" signal to operate the transmitter), but a device that has an internal power source would be able to transmit out (one way only)...
Re:Sounds rather disappointing, really
on
Hollow Spy Coins
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· Score: 3, Interesting
It wouldn't be that difficult to get the weight right, would it? I mean most coins are a copper core with a nickle covering. So if you could create a heavier core, it would compensate for the mass of the removed area. Actually, now that I look at it, lead would be the only non-expensive metal that's heavier than copper by volume, but it's not THAT much heavier (I'm not sure if it's enough to compensate for such a large void)... Sure, they could use something more exotic like Platinum or Tungston (or even Uranium or Plutonium, but if you use them in a coin, I think you have bigger problems than detecting a hidden microSD card), but how much would that thing cost then?
http://www.simetric.co.uk/si_metals.htm
Re:Sounds rather disappointing, really
on
Hollow Spy Coins
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· Score: 4, Insightful
That's my concern. I'll stick a microSD card in there with a bunch of important data. And then mix it up with a real coin and spend it... Then go crazy later when I need to access the card and can't find it...
Just being pedantic, but that's not a task manager. It only monitors services, not applications. A service is a program that always runs, and only ever runs in the background. An example of a service would be an app that periodically updates its data (Like an RSS reader, or a sports score updater, etc). It's the same concept as a service in Windows, or a daemon in *nix. The Running Services manager lets you see what background services are running, and to terminate them. But there's no task manager in the traditional sense (that shows you every program that's running). That's why programs like Advanced Task Killer exist. BUT --from my experience-- most of the applications that I've used just work. There's a convention. If you exit out of a program with the back button, that program stops running. If you exit out of it with the home button, it keeps running. Simple as that. But even if they don't stop all together, if the phone becomes low on resources (out of memory, out of CPU, etc) Android will automatically kill lower priority applications (those that aren't being actively used at the time, and those that were last used the longest ago)...
Actually, that's exactly what I do here. When our QC team needs to test websites on IE6 (Because some of our clients still use it and they pay the bills), they simply RDC into a server that we keep live solely for IE6. It has nothing else on it, and has networking locked down to only allow traffic to our local subnet (and hence only our applications). Anyone who needs to test is simply granted RDC rights, and they can do it. And considering the server is a VM, it was basically free (we already had the terminal server and windows licenses)...
Well, the last time I checked, salt is a vital element to our survival (It regulates water content, not enough and we'd all die of dehydration regardless of how much water we drank). So by removing it from public sources, are they thereby impacting at least some people's ability to get salt (IE those that do not eat much at home) and hence endangering them? Sure, excessive salt can be dangerous, but not nearly as dangerous as not enough... This sounds to me like a "That sounds bad, we should do something about it!" snap decision... Sigh...
Well, the question is not did PF use this to stop EMI from selling it separately, but did they do it to try to get out of the contract and regain control over their songs?
Did not Intel do L3 cache first with the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition on Gallatin in September 2003?
Yes and no. L3 just means level 3, and yes Intel did introduce that in 03. But when I said L3, I meant a shared L3 across cores. All of AMD's multi-core chips have a shared cache level accessible by all cores. Intel didn't with the first few rounds of the C2Duo series (Including the original C2Quad chips).
AMD didn't eliminate the Northbridge, they just took one part of it out, the memory controller.
Well, even as such, I don't think you could still call it a north bridge then. One key feature of a Northbridge is connecting to the CPU via a Front Side Bus. AMD eliminated that bus when it introduced the point to point interconnect (Hypertransport). So yes, there is still one of the functions of the Northbridge still remaining on the mobo. But because the method of interconnection is different and the primary function is gone I don't think you can still call it a Northbridge (IMHO)...
AMD matters, but I think you give them too much credit on innovations
You proved my point when you said "AMD obvious did a ton of good stuff, well disproportionate to their slice of the competitive marketplace."... I wasn't trying to imply that Intel stood still in the past few years (or ever really). My implication was that people tend to shit on AMD and say "Well, they don't perform, they don't innovate" when the fact of the matter is that a significant number of advances that led to today's i7 processors came from AMD...
HUH? I'm confused. When did I say it was a good idea? I was actually adding my addition to what the OP was saying. It's my firm belief that all children (Especially --but not just-- those in households with firearms) need to be taught about gun safety. Face the facts, children are incredibly clever and don't have sound reasoning skills. Those two make a very dangerous combination. Sure, keeping your guns and ammunition locked up is absolutely responsible (Not doing that would be downright irresponsible). But that's not enough. What are the chances that an inquisitive child will find the key/figure out the combination? They may be small if you're diligent, but they are most definitely not zero. So what happens when the kid does figure it out? Does he start playing with the gun and "accidentally" shoot himself/herself/someone else? Or does he have enough respect from training NOT to do that?
You are right about one thing though. I am not with the times. I believe that parents should be responsible for their children. I believe that parents should teach their children right from wrong. I believe that parents should spend time with their children and be involved in their lives. I believe that parents should not shelter their children from evil, but teach them about it so that they can learn and be prepared for the day when they do need to face it. I believe that parents should teach their children the value of money and not just go out and buy the latest greatest toy just because jr wants it. I believe that parents should discipline their children in a way that gets through to them (If "timeout" doesn't work, what's the point to keep trying it)? I believe that video games, tv, news, movies, drugs, gangs, poverty and mature content are not causing our children harm, I believe it's the parents failure that is causing the harm (After all, parents have direct control over access to, misuse of or misinterpretation of all of the above).
So yes, it appears I'm not with the times. But you know what? I'm thankful for that...
Very simple. Liability. I would think it would be possible for a lawyer to make the claim that if Apple's product broke causing the loss, AND that Apple actively blocked --potentially-- better products from working, that they then assumed liability for any damage their original product failed to protect. Right now, liability limitations exist because the user has a choice. "We deny all liability, because you read this and still chose to use our product". But with ACTIVELY suppressing competition, aren't they removing that choice, and hence opening themselves up to liability (Since you had no choice in the first place)?
Well, I think it's more of a case of "the few spoil the bunch". As in the majority of gun owners are "good ones" (the ones you don't hear about on TV or in the news)... From wikipedia: "About half of the adult U.S. population lived in households with guns." So that's around 100 to 150 million people (depending on your definition of "adult population", and "about half"). Out of that number, how many of these issues do you hear of (Sure, not all cases of negligence will make the news, but how many cases of sound parenting and responsibility will make the news)?
Just to be pedantic. There are safeties. They are just not "manual" safeties. There is a safety that disconnects the sear from the firing pin when the slide travels back a certain amount. There is a safety that blocks the firing pin from hitting the round in the chamber unless the trigger is depressed a certain amount. Sure, neither of these prevent a round from going off when the trigger is pulled, but they do prevent a dangerous firing of the weapon (A firing without the slide fully closed, or a discharge when the gun is dropped). BUT, I also disagree with the argument that a DAO gun can't be easily fired by a 3 year-old. Sure, some DAO's have significant trigger pull weights (some as high as 10 lbs or so, like my Kahr that has an 8lbs pull). But some are nearly as "easy" as a single action (I've seen pulls as low as 3lbs for a DAO, where a typical "hair trigger" SA would be around 1 to 2 lbs). It all depends on the firearm. I had a Taurus DAO that had a 3 lbs trigger pull. But the difference, is it had 2 manual safeties (one traditional lever, and a "key" that locked the slide and hammer from moving)...
I'm not saying Intel doesn't innovate. But look at the two big ones that you mentioned. Hyperthreading was introduced on the Xeon-MP line in 2002. MMX was introduced in 1996 on the original Pentium. Not to mention that MMX had nothing to do with sound cards (Other than the fact that it enabled the CPU to natively do the vector math that DSP chips were doing at the time). If anything, AMD's improvement on MMX --named 3DNow!, which added support for floating points in MMX instructions-- helped dedicated sound cards become obsolete. Then Intel took AMD's changes, incorporated them in MMX and introduced SSE. So, sure, Intel did innovate MMX, but the success of MMX (and its successors) was due to a combined effort between Intel and AMD (Intel's original design, and AMD's improvements on it).
And don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to imply that Intel is a bad guy at all. They do make some amazing silicon. My only point, is that people love to bash AMD, when you could argue that a significant portion of Intel's key features were either developed in parallel with AMD (Virtualization technologies for example) or were developed by AMD first (x64, on-die memory controller, elimination of north bridge, etc, etc)... That's not to say that AMD doesn't owe a lot to Intel as well. One without the other, and we wouldn't be anywhere near where we are today...
Not to mention the fact that if guns are in the household (even if locked up) the kids need to be educated about them. Even if so much as "Don't ever touch them without my direct supervision". And I do think a 3 year old is old enough to be taught that. They may not understand it, but they are old enough to understand consequences. I honestly wonder how many of the child gun deaths are due to the child either being completely unaware that the parent owned one (and hence "found" it and thought it was cool) or wasn't taught anything about it (and hence had no idea about proper safety). My father owned guns when I was growing up. He taught me from day one never to touch them unless he was there with his permission. He taught me never to point a gun at something unless I planned on killing it (It's so ingrained in me, I refuse to play paintball because of it). And he did this while I was REALLY young. Sure, firearms are dangerous. But so are stoves and stairs. I would find it very odd if parents never taught a 3 year old that the stove was hot, or to respect stairs (so they don't fall down). I find it equally odd if parents never taught a 3 year old about simple gun safety if there was a chance that the child would come into contact with a gun. It doesn't matter if it is loaded or not, since all guns are loaded until proven otherwise (And even then, treat them as if they were)...
And I agree 100% that the father should have the book thrown at him. There's no excuse for an accident like this...
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Well, I agree. But notice that nobody in China (at Google) is being forced to take this stance. Every single one of them can leave their job if they disagree with it. It's one thing to put someone else's head on the chopping block. It's quite another to tell the person that they may be going in harms way for the moral fight when they have every opportunity to say "no, I don't believe in this" and leave... I think that if it was something that I felt strongly about, I would stake my life. I have done it before so that others could enjoy the right to life (I was a volunteer firefighter for several years). Now, whether or not I feel that strongly about censorship, I can't say without being the proper position...
It is their decision though, isn't it? The employees over there have every right to leave the company if they felt that it was doing the wrong course of action. I'm pretty sure that Google would probably pull out of China if all of a sudden 1/2 their senior staff up and quit (especially if they cited their anti-censorship behavior). So by that logic, it IS their decision already.
But the difference here, is that we cannot know if their reason for not wanting to go against censorship is because they believe that censorship is right and moral, or they fear their government... And that's why the fight can't be just discarded as "it's not our fight" (At least by a someone who feels that censorship is morally wrong and goes against everyone's basic human rights)...
Well, that will do no good. Because when an exploit in Adobe Acrobat causes it to gain access to system files, the permissions for it to do so were already granted, so your box has been rooted. At least with the system I described in my OP, when that happened, since it was never granted that permission by default, it would pop up "Hey, wait a minute! Acrobat is trying to do something that it was not given permission to do! Do you REALLY want to do this?"... Sure, novice users may click right through them, but experienced users would gain the advantage of being able to kill those attacks before they ever get to do damage (or at least limit the damage). You can't stop stupidity, the most you can do is to put the tools in place for those who want to use them...
Well, you are right in that freedom is something that's part of our western culture. However, I think your comparison to the Vietnam War is somewhat lacking. In that war, we (the US and western countries) were fighting communism (or at least that was the proxy portion of the war). There's a BIG difference between fighting against a philosophical belief (Such as censorship is wrong) and fighting against a political system you think is wrong (even if it contains philosophical beliefs that you feel are wrong). This is directly fighting the belief, not the whole system. There are many different forms of government in the world today. Google isn't trying to say that "Anything but Democracy is wrong" (As we did in the Cold war), they are saying that this particular philosophical belief is wrong.
The different culture argument I feel is weak. If it was part of a culture to kill anyone who started walking with their left foot first (instead of their right foot first), is that something that the rest of the world should overlook? If it's part of a culture to starve everyone except the ruling party, does that mean the rest of the world should overlook it? The fundamental issue at hand here is basic human rights. Those rights that are completely culture independent... That's where the moral line is drawn between "that's just their culture and we should respect it" and "what they are doing is wrong, and we should fight it". That line is different for every single person in every single country. The unanswered question at hand is whether or not freedom of information (not censored) is a fundamental human right. Personally, I believe that it is. I THINK that most of the intellectual world would agree with that statement (of course that's an assumption, but at least I am saying it as such). The unfortunate thing, is that not everyone will agree (obviously). So how do you make a determination on what to do? Do you always ignore a perceived problem because someone may not agree that it's actually a problem? Or do you pick and choose your battles to include only those problems that you not only feel morally justified fighting, but have the support of a lot of people around you? I, personally, would choose the second... Someone's got to fight for the rights of people that can't fight for themselves (Again, in my opinion)...
Isn't their corporate motto "Do no evil"? So isn't also part of their corporate objective? And if you equate censorship as evil (As I personally do, and I am a Google shareholder), than Google's censoring results (even if it's the law) would be against their corporate objective. So if that's the case, they can either put up a fight, or leave...
And the chance of starting a movement by leaving is slim to none. Which is why in my OP I said they should fight (if it really mattered to them)...
Sometimes it's worth it... Not always, but given the wide belief that censorship is wrong, if that's what it takes to start a revolution, then perhaps it's necessary...
Well, it poses a Catch-22 for Google...
In their first option, they can stand up to their philosophical beliefs --which is a VERY rare thing these days for any major company-- and keep up the fight. If they do this and win, they could start a intellectual and philosophical movement in China... If they lose, not only would they be kicked out and lose money, some of their people possibly could wind up in a Chinese prison (It is violating the law after all)...
In their second option, they can bow to the pressure and keep censoring content in China. If they do this, they are sacrificing their philosophical beliefs for the almighty dollar... This would be a crushing blow to the anti-censorship movement (as one of its most powerful allies will have bowed to the pressure)...
Finally, they could leave China altogether. This could have 2 paths. Either someone (MS with Bing?) would jump in their place right away and it would be like nothing ever happened (Which would also hurt the anti-censorship movement). Or, with luck, other companies that are not happy with the censorship will leave too. It could provide energy to the anti-censorship movement in China...
So, to me, the best option would be #1. In all 3 cases, there is potential to harm the anti-censorship movement. But only the first case has a significant chance to REALLY help it. If Google REALLY wants to promote freedom of information, #1 is the only way to go (Again, IMHO)...
So you want to go to a permissions based security model? Something along the lines of what Android does? So when you install the app, it'll tell you every permission that it has, and if you don't agree with them, it doesn't install (Or possibly gives you the option of running in a reduced permissions mode, if the developer allowed it). It's a lot of overhead, but most definitely could have some interesting results in combating these kind of threats. Then again, something like this would need to be introduced at the Kernel level (Any higher, and permissions could be subverted with a system call)... Actually the more I think about it, it sounds like a good! You could implement "persistent" permissions and one-time-only permissions. So when you install the software, you can declare the permissions that it has permanently (And hence avoid the UAC dialog box every time you use that software), and select some permissions to be granted on a one-time basis (that it must ask each time)... Once something got into the kernel, it'd have free reign over everything, but how's that different from now?
Isn't that kind of defeating the point? The idea is to have it 100% inconspicuous. Having a big red X on it may raise some red flags for those people who are looking for something... Perhaps get a coin from a difference currency than your own (I am in the US, so I could get a Euro 20c or 50c piece), and keeping it in your wallet. That way there's very little chance of you accidentally spending it, and if someone asks why you're carrying a Euro coin in the US, you can simply answer for sentimental value (and make up a semi-true story about how you found it on the ground in **insert EU country here** when on vacation, and it has brought you luck ever since)...
Considering the material of the inner wall is copper, it'd have to be a VERY strong field to penetrate the coin. It would have to be so strong that the induced currents are strong enough to begin to melt it. And actually the small size is an advantage, since you'd need a VERY high potential gradient to even generate a significant current (given the walls are how far apart? A tenth of a millimeter? Or on edge maybe a few cm at most). So basically you could generate a high power EMF that's oscillating at a very high frequency (to keep inducing high currents) over a VERY small distance (So that the generated EMF has a VERY high potential gradient) to even be able to generate any kind of a significant current... And by that point, if you melt the copper, you've pretty much destroyed what's inside, so the better option would be developing something to detect the seam rather than try to pear inside with EMR...
Grounding will eliminate Electro-Magnetic Radiation being emitted from within the cage... But being grounded does not affect the ability of the cage to block out external sources. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage So it would block someone from trying to "peer into" the cage, but not block something in the cage from transmitting... So a passive RFID chip placed in the coin would not function at all (since it requires the reception of a "power" signal to operate the transmitter), but a device that has an internal power source would be able to transmit out (one way only)...
It wouldn't be that difficult to get the weight right, would it? I mean most coins are a copper core with a nickle covering. So if you could create a heavier core, it would compensate for the mass of the removed area. Actually, now that I look at it, lead would be the only non-expensive metal that's heavier than copper by volume, but it's not THAT much heavier (I'm not sure if it's enough to compensate for such a large void)... Sure, they could use something more exotic like Platinum or Tungston (or even Uranium or Plutonium, but if you use them in a coin, I think you have bigger problems than detecting a hidden microSD card), but how much would that thing cost then? http://www.simetric.co.uk/si_metals.htm
That's my concern. I'll stick a microSD card in there with a bunch of important data. And then mix it up with a real coin and spend it... Then go crazy later when I need to access the card and can't find it...
Just being pedantic, but that's not a task manager. It only monitors services, not applications. A service is a program that always runs, and only ever runs in the background. An example of a service would be an app that periodically updates its data (Like an RSS reader, or a sports score updater, etc). It's the same concept as a service in Windows, or a daemon in *nix. The Running Services manager lets you see what background services are running, and to terminate them. But there's no task manager in the traditional sense (that shows you every program that's running). That's why programs like Advanced Task Killer exist. BUT --from my experience-- most of the applications that I've used just work. There's a convention. If you exit out of a program with the back button, that program stops running. If you exit out of it with the home button, it keeps running. Simple as that. But even if they don't stop all together, if the phone becomes low on resources (out of memory, out of CPU, etc) Android will automatically kill lower priority applications (those that aren't being actively used at the time, and those that were last used the longest ago)...
You do realize that he didn't work for a company, don't you? He worked for the state government...
Actually, that's exactly what I do here. When our QC team needs to test websites on IE6 (Because some of our clients still use it and they pay the bills), they simply RDC into a server that we keep live solely for IE6. It has nothing else on it, and has networking locked down to only allow traffic to our local subnet (and hence only our applications). Anyone who needs to test is simply granted RDC rights, and they can do it. And considering the server is a VM, it was basically free (we already had the terminal server and windows licenses)...
Well, the last time I checked, salt is a vital element to our survival (It regulates water content, not enough and we'd all die of dehydration regardless of how much water we drank). So by removing it from public sources, are they thereby impacting at least some people's ability to get salt (IE those that do not eat much at home) and hence endangering them? Sure, excessive salt can be dangerous, but not nearly as dangerous as not enough... This sounds to me like a "That sounds bad, we should do something about it!" snap decision... Sigh...
Well, the question is not did PF use this to stop EMI from selling it separately, but did they do it to try to get out of the contract and regain control over their songs?
Yes and no. L3 just means level 3, and yes Intel did introduce that in 03. But when I said L3, I meant a shared L3 across cores. All of AMD's multi-core chips have a shared cache level accessible by all cores. Intel didn't with the first few rounds of the C2Duo series (Including the original C2Quad chips).
Well, even as such, I don't think you could still call it a north bridge then. One key feature of a Northbridge is connecting to the CPU via a Front Side Bus. AMD eliminated that bus when it introduced the point to point interconnect (Hypertransport). So yes, there is still one of the functions of the Northbridge still remaining on the mobo. But because the method of interconnection is different and the primary function is gone I don't think you can still call it a Northbridge (IMHO)...
You proved my point when you said "AMD obvious did a ton of good stuff, well disproportionate to their slice of the competitive marketplace."... I wasn't trying to imply that Intel stood still in the past few years (or ever really). My implication was that people tend to shit on AMD and say "Well, they don't perform, they don't innovate" when the fact of the matter is that a significant number of advances that led to today's i7 processors came from AMD...
HUH? I'm confused. When did I say it was a good idea? I was actually adding my addition to what the OP was saying. It's my firm belief that all children (Especially --but not just-- those in households with firearms) need to be taught about gun safety. Face the facts, children are incredibly clever and don't have sound reasoning skills. Those two make a very dangerous combination. Sure, keeping your guns and ammunition locked up is absolutely responsible (Not doing that would be downright irresponsible). But that's not enough. What are the chances that an inquisitive child will find the key/figure out the combination? They may be small if you're diligent, but they are most definitely not zero. So what happens when the kid does figure it out? Does he start playing with the gun and "accidentally" shoot himself/herself/someone else? Or does he have enough respect from training NOT to do that?
You are right about one thing though. I am not with the times. I believe that parents should be responsible for their children. I believe that parents should teach their children right from wrong. I believe that parents should spend time with their children and be involved in their lives. I believe that parents should not shelter their children from evil, but teach them about it so that they can learn and be prepared for the day when they do need to face it. I believe that parents should teach their children the value of money and not just go out and buy the latest greatest toy just because jr wants it. I believe that parents should discipline their children in a way that gets through to them (If "timeout" doesn't work, what's the point to keep trying it)? I believe that video games, tv, news, movies, drugs, gangs, poverty and mature content are not causing our children harm, I believe it's the parents failure that is causing the harm (After all, parents have direct control over access to, misuse of or misinterpretation of all of the above).
So yes, it appears I'm not with the times. But you know what? I'm thankful for that...
Very simple. Liability. I would think it would be possible for a lawyer to make the claim that if Apple's product broke causing the loss, AND that Apple actively blocked --potentially-- better products from working, that they then assumed liability for any damage their original product failed to protect. Right now, liability limitations exist because the user has a choice. "We deny all liability, because you read this and still chose to use our product". But with ACTIVELY suppressing competition, aren't they removing that choice, and hence opening themselves up to liability (Since you had no choice in the first place)?
Note: IANAL
Well, I think it's more of a case of "the few spoil the bunch". As in the majority of gun owners are "good ones" (the ones you don't hear about on TV or in the news)... From wikipedia: "About half of the adult U.S. population lived in households with guns." So that's around 100 to 150 million people (depending on your definition of "adult population", and "about half"). Out of that number, how many of these issues do you hear of (Sure, not all cases of negligence will make the news, but how many cases of sound parenting and responsibility will make the news)?
Just to be pedantic. There are safeties. They are just not "manual" safeties. There is a safety that disconnects the sear from the firing pin when the slide travels back a certain amount. There is a safety that blocks the firing pin from hitting the round in the chamber unless the trigger is depressed a certain amount. Sure, neither of these prevent a round from going off when the trigger is pulled, but they do prevent a dangerous firing of the weapon (A firing without the slide fully closed, or a discharge when the gun is dropped). BUT, I also disagree with the argument that a DAO gun can't be easily fired by a 3 year-old. Sure, some DAO's have significant trigger pull weights (some as high as 10 lbs or so, like my Kahr that has an 8lbs pull). But some are nearly as "easy" as a single action (I've seen pulls as low as 3lbs for a DAO, where a typical "hair trigger" SA would be around 1 to 2 lbs). It all depends on the firearm. I had a Taurus DAO that had a 3 lbs trigger pull. But the difference, is it had 2 manual safeties (one traditional lever, and a "key" that locked the slide and hammer from moving)...
I'm not saying Intel doesn't innovate. But look at the two big ones that you mentioned. Hyperthreading was introduced on the Xeon-MP line in 2002. MMX was introduced in 1996 on the original Pentium. Not to mention that MMX had nothing to do with sound cards (Other than the fact that it enabled the CPU to natively do the vector math that DSP chips were doing at the time). If anything, AMD's improvement on MMX --named 3DNow!, which added support for floating points in MMX instructions-- helped dedicated sound cards become obsolete. Then Intel took AMD's changes, incorporated them in MMX and introduced SSE. So, sure, Intel did innovate MMX, but the success of MMX (and its successors) was due to a combined effort between Intel and AMD (Intel's original design, and AMD's improvements on it).
And don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to imply that Intel is a bad guy at all. They do make some amazing silicon. My only point, is that people love to bash AMD, when you could argue that a significant portion of Intel's key features were either developed in parallel with AMD (Virtualization technologies for example) or were developed by AMD first (x64, on-die memory controller, elimination of north bridge, etc, etc)... That's not to say that AMD doesn't owe a lot to Intel as well. One without the other, and we wouldn't be anywhere near where we are today...
Not to mention the fact that if guns are in the household (even if locked up) the kids need to be educated about them. Even if so much as "Don't ever touch them without my direct supervision". And I do think a 3 year old is old enough to be taught that. They may not understand it, but they are old enough to understand consequences. I honestly wonder how many of the child gun deaths are due to the child either being completely unaware that the parent owned one (and hence "found" it and thought it was cool) or wasn't taught anything about it (and hence had no idea about proper safety). My father owned guns when I was growing up. He taught me from day one never to touch them unless he was there with his permission. He taught me never to point a gun at something unless I planned on killing it (It's so ingrained in me, I refuse to play paintball because of it). And he did this while I was REALLY young. Sure, firearms are dangerous. But so are stoves and stairs. I would find it very odd if parents never taught a 3 year old that the stove was hot, or to respect stairs (so they don't fall down). I find it equally odd if parents never taught a 3 year old about simple gun safety if there was a chance that the child would come into contact with a gun. It doesn't matter if it is loaded or not, since all guns are loaded until proven otherwise (And even then, treat them as if they were)...
And I agree 100% that the father should have the book thrown at him. There's no excuse for an accident like this...