Additionally, many of the "smart" capabilities work against the lifespan of a device. Refrigerators are devices that I expect to last 20+ years with minimal maintenance (changing water hoses and filters, vacuuming dust on coils, etc). I don’t want to be replacing my refrigerator because the flash used by the OS fails and the device won’t function as a refrigerator anymore.
There is little value that an LCD panel brings to a refrigerator, and even less value in having it WiFi enabled. Thus, there is little incentive for me as a purchaser to go that direction. I’m already pissed at how difficult and expensive it is to replace the plastic ice chute on my current refrigerator. I don’t want to even consider replacing the board driving the “smart” capabilities of a refrigerator (or having to ensure that the firmware my refrigerator is running doesn’t have vulnerabilities).
Hydrogen is an energy *vector*, not an energy source. The energy must come from somewhere - natural gas usually - and, as TFA's author points out, the efficiency of the entire chain from energy source to the wheels is quite insanely bad.
Vectors are an important part of the overall equation. Different regions of the world have different viabilities of energy production. Some areas have lots of wind, some lots of light, some with rivers that offer a great opportunity to dam and harness the energy. Iceland currently generates nearly 100% of their electricity from renewable energy (75% hydro, 25% geothermal). It might make sense for Iceland to use their natural energy production assets to store energy in a 'vector' and export it. If that energy can go to areas where energy production is more difficult or comes at a higher environmental cost, it might be worth the efficiency loss.
This, however, doesn't mean that there aren't better options than hydrogen as the transport vector.
It has also been known for quite some time that Microsoft was working on merging the big Windows and Windows phone codebases to create a unified source tree. This is one of the reasons that I gave up on Windows phone, as the path to this integration meant that app models and compatibility kept shifting, requiring app writers to keep updating to each new platform release...something that isn't worth doing for a platform with little market share.
What I really miss from Windows Phone is the email/calendar system. Android and iOS don't even come close to what you can do on the Windows Phone.
With all of that liquid helium for cooling, it might be a good place to setup a datacenter. The latency would be pretty bad, but you pretty much get superconductivity for free.
However, those same attributes have been driving reasonable people out of the party, as each election cycle the people motivated by the populist rhetorical impose more stringent populist requirements on the leadership, continually pushing them to the right.
What I find strange here is that it is the moderates that pretty much determine the outcome of elections, especially right now when neither the Democrats or Republicans have a large enough base to take an election.
The fact that Trump has any followers, let alone that he is leading the pack with Republicans, is very disconcerting. Mostly because of the animosity many Republicans have towards President Obama - if they really want to have a Republican in office in 2017, they really need to prop a candidate that moderates could support.
But maybe the Republicans have a dark horse they aren't showing right now that will actually get the nomination. Trump has already baited the other current contenders to appeal to the fringe, and there is no way these current candidates can come back to a more centric position during the general election. There is already too much of a record of stupid and scary statements that have been made by the Republican candidates.
And I can't imagine how frothing at the mouth the right will become if Hillary is elected because Republicans couldn't back a reasonable candidate.
I hereby facetiously give permission to all of the black hats out there to push malware to these televisions. The more damage you can do, the better.
I've been trying to shop around for a 4K 'television' that is really just a monitor, and the only available options at any reasonable price are "Smart" TVs. The fact that manufacturers are coupling the content playback engine with the display is just stupid. This article is the main reason why: It is very hard to create a Smart TV that is always up to date and has the latest capabilities for content. So manufacturers are left trying to create a revenue stream post sale by spying or selling content, or just not updating the OS with latest security and features.
Instead of Smart TVs, I wish they would make 4k displays with DisplayPort inputs that can drive 4K at higher than 30FPS. A TV is a product that should last 15-20 years. The devices that I hook up to the TV (PC, Tivo, cable box, xBox, whatever) are all components that have shorter life expectancies at this time because a ton of changes are happening in that area of the market. TVs just need to be dumb and simply display the content.
Before you get your knickers in a bunch: this is most likely just a bug, not intentional.
The Catalyst Control Center thing isn't a bug. Windows removes the display driver on upgrade (and thus CCC if installed), and downloads the latest driver from Windows Update after the upgrade. There are potentially scenarios where the OEM posted the Win10 driver to WU without CCC bundled, but otherwise most users will get the latest driver with CCC enabled.
"the supercomputer has more than 45,000 processor cores and runs at petfalops."
So what happened here? Is this like the cubic centimeter limits for motors where if you go over a size limit new rules go into effect? Like you don't have to pay to register your supercomputer if it is under 2.000 "petfalops" (whatever the hell that is)?
...or did someone realize after it was built that Excel had been rounding on them, and they were 113 processors short of the 2 "petfalops" system specified in the bid?
I'm guessing their "developers" don't actually use an IDE. Even on my Mac I use a two-button mouse just to get context-sensitive menus.
I could be wrong, but I was assuming this was because it was being tracked by a Chrome plugin that much of the activity outside of the web browser was not captured.
I personally use caps lock all the time when typing SQL queries. Outside of that, I rarely use it.
OEM information like what? USB has the Vendor ID and Device ID, that's enough to load the correct driver.
USB VID and PID is typically the IHV Vendor and DeviceID information, and is rarely changed when integrated into an OEM system. I understand that the OEM can update these values, but most often they don't.
There is nothing stopping them from getting WHQL certification of their OEM drivers and submitting them to Microsoft. If their drivers are written properly (with proper hardware identification strings for PCI / USB / ACPI devices) then they will apply before generic drivers, and this isn't even a problem.
PCI is the only bus type you listed that includes OEM information embedded in the device identifier (using the subsystem VendorID). USB doesn't, and for the most part, neither does ACPI.
Additionally, OEMs don't typically certify device drivers through WHQL. It is usually the IHV that certifies the component/driver, and the OEM certifies the system consisting of components from different IHVs.
Most people have no idea how cell phones work. Does that mean God made cell phones?
I don't think that most people would attribute a cell phone to being made by God, but they would point out that the cell phone had a creator (and thus was not happenstance). Even without knowing the origin of a cell phone, intuition and basic understanding would tell them that it would not exist without intentional design. I think this same intuition is what many use to believe that the universe also was intelligently created.
While the author doesn't cite the equation in question, is clear that he is referring to the Drake Equation. The problem with that is that the Drake Equation is an estimation of detectable life in our galaxy. And so when he states that we keep adding criteria to the equation that diminishes the odds of life existing, he is also being incredibly misleading about what the equation represents. By the definition of the Drake equation, our civilization is not detectable - and we would not make the list.
The universe is also a bit larger than our galaxy.
He then goes on to misuse probability to make the case that the odds that our universe could exists are so incredibly low that only a fool would think it just happened this way.
I am extremely disappointed in the WSJ for publishing the article - even as an opinion. The article is fraudulent.
A cursory look at the list of activity, and I don't see anything wrong. Most of that is background compile (ngen) of managed libraries, which is triggering the antivirus software based on the recompiled binaries being written to disk.
This is actually a good feature, IMHO. Microsoft will periodically release updates to the compiler to fix security related issues, as well as performance enhancements. Binaries can either be recompiled at load time, or while the system is idle.
They didn't rewrite the kernel from scratch so that puts it into 6.4 - 6.99999 range.
Just a minor nitpick... Software version numbers are not decimal numbers but separate units (major.minor).
After 6.9 comes 6.10. After 6.99999 comes 6.100000.
Just another minor nitpick... Windows stores OS versions as an unsigned 64 bit integer, consisting of four 16 bit ordinals. When displaying a "friendly" string version of the version, the four ordinals are separated by periods.
So 6.99999 is not a possible version, as 99999 overflows a 16 bit unsigned integer.
They also had that deal with Microsoft that made Bing the default search engine on all their phones ("Droid" branded ones excluded, the rest of their Android phones did have it).
Serious question here:
So fucking what?
Google's entire economic model is based on the user consuming Google services, especially search. There is no altruism from Google to develop Android. They did it to corral users to Google services, and having mobile phone providers place Bing as a default search engine undermines the value of investment Google has placed in Android.
Does your solution account for weather forecast? Because watering the lawn 12 hours before it is going to rain seems like a bit of a waste.
I'd love to have a timer that was smart enough to read the local weather forecast, and make decisions. I'd also love to have a timer where I could walk the zones in my garden periodically and using my smart phone/tablet and increase/decrease the amount of watering duration for the zone.
Given that the death penalty was in existence prior to his crime, yet the perp still did what he did, it seems that the threat of punishment was no deterrent.
While I personally agree that death penalties probably don't have much of an effect on capital crimes, I do feel the need to point out that a deterrent doesn't always eliminate the undesired behavior. Saying that the deterrent didn't work because instances still occur does not take into account all of the instances that did not occur because of the deterrent.
They shouldn't ban it - they should just charge an arm and a leg for the service. Something like $5 per minute.
Phones at the seats are not new to airplanes. The prior phones were too expensive for any casual use - though I have never flown first class, so I don't know if people were being annoying with them up there.
Reporting them, you see nothing back. All those people who get error reports upon upgrading to a duff hotfix, it takes someone to whinge to Microsoft to get it fixed. Millions of crash reports aren't acted up, from what I see. I doubt anyone reads them.
I look at them. So do many others here at Microsoft.
Background: I sit on an engineering team that works with OEMs and IHVs. I formerly supported driver developers with support and posting drivers to Windows Update
The challenge with OCA is that there are many sources of crashes. It can be caused by a bug in a Microsoft component, 3rd party driver, faulty hardware, or something else in the kernel doing something wrong (such as malware, etc). Crashes are assigned to buckets, where the hope is that there is a one-to-one relationship been a bucket and a bug. Unfortunately a lot of buckets are an aggregation of different kinds of bugs.
Grouping the crashes into buckets gives us a list of trending crash causes. As expected, the buckets with the highest counts are researched first, where analysts try and identify root cause. If the bug is identified in a Microsoft product, the product sustained engineering team is engaged to build a hotfix to resolve the issue. If the bug is in a 3rd party driver, we engage the 3rd party to resolve the issue.
When a bucket has a resolution, we will typically link that bucket to a response that will notify affected users through the "Action Center" on the system tray. This only works if the bucket is solved, and the entire bucket can be solved by the solution. A lot of buckets do not have a linked response, but the resolution is posted to Windows Update as a Windows hotfix or a 3rd party driver update.
I am 34 and have been on Adderal for about six years now. Being on this medication has had such an improvement on my life that I really wish I had been on it at a much younger age - especially in high school.
The problem that I have is that ADD/ADHD is that it is a classification of a symptom, but does not define the root cause. I also have dyslexia. After doing research into the characteristics of dyslexia, I believe that is really what my source of ADD symptoms is. What I have found is that I need to be stimulated in order to have functional cognitive capacity. When stimulated, I am generally well above average in cognitive capabilities. When non-stimulated, my brain simply shuts down. Stimulation can come from several sources: Medication, exercise, and engaging in an activity that I find interesting.
In an ideal world I would not use medication, but instead stick to exercise and activities I enjoy. I unfortunately live in a world of rigid school structuring designed to prepare students for a similar corporate environment. I have learned to cope with the corporate environment by reducing as much of the TPS reporting from my job description as possible, and standing most of the day. I have a standing desk, and in almost every meeting you find me at, I will be in the back standing or slowly pacing. I loathe wasteful meetings, and avoid them when possible.
I personally think that we need to re-evaluate our education system with the thought that there might not be a one size fits all solution. Take all the kids who have "ADD" and put them in a separate school, and figure out what kind of curriculum works best for them. That might sound like the worst nightmare of a teacher, but I believe that with a proper engagement, you'd end up with a school full of superstars.
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Additionally, many of the "smart" capabilities work against the lifespan of a device. Refrigerators are devices that I expect to last 20+ years with minimal maintenance (changing water hoses and filters, vacuuming dust on coils, etc). I don’t want to be replacing my refrigerator because the flash used by the OS fails and the device won’t function as a refrigerator anymore.
There is little value that an LCD panel brings to a refrigerator, and even less value in having it WiFi enabled. Thus, there is little incentive for me as a purchaser to go that direction. I’m already pissed at how difficult and expensive it is to replace the plastic ice chute on my current refrigerator. I don’t want to even consider replacing the board driving the “smart” capabilities of a refrigerator (or having to ensure that the firmware my refrigerator is running doesn’t have vulnerabilities).
Hydrogen is an energy *vector*, not an energy source. The energy must come from somewhere - natural gas usually - and, as TFA's author points out, the efficiency of the entire chain from energy source to the wheels is quite insanely bad.
Vectors are an important part of the overall equation. Different regions of the world have different viabilities of energy production. Some areas have lots of wind, some lots of light, some with rivers that offer a great opportunity to dam and harness the energy. Iceland currently generates nearly 100% of their electricity from renewable energy (75% hydro, 25% geothermal). It might make sense for Iceland to use their natural energy production assets to store energy in a 'vector' and export it. If that energy can go to areas where energy production is more difficult or comes at a higher environmental cost, it might be worth the efficiency loss.
This, however, doesn't mean that there aren't better options than hydrogen as the transport vector.
Say it right the first time your reply to your own post.
Where is "mod: +1 ironic" when you need it?
It has also been known for quite some time that Microsoft was working on merging the big Windows and Windows phone codebases to create a unified source tree. This is one of the reasons that I gave up on Windows phone, as the path to this integration meant that app models and compatibility kept shifting, requiring app writers to keep updating to each new platform release...something that isn't worth doing for a platform with little market share.
What I really miss from Windows Phone is the email/calendar system. Android and iOS don't even come close to what you can do on the Windows Phone.
Any other thoughts?
With all of that liquid helium for cooling, it might be a good place to setup a datacenter. The latency would be pretty bad, but you pretty much get superconductivity for free.
However, those same attributes have been driving reasonable people out of the party, as each election cycle the people motivated by the populist rhetorical impose more stringent populist requirements on the leadership, continually pushing them to the right.
What I find strange here is that it is the moderates that pretty much determine the outcome of elections, especially right now when neither the Democrats or Republicans have a large enough base to take an election.
The fact that Trump has any followers, let alone that he is leading the pack with Republicans, is very disconcerting. Mostly because of the animosity many Republicans have towards President Obama - if they really want to have a Republican in office in 2017, they really need to prop a candidate that moderates could support.
But maybe the Republicans have a dark horse they aren't showing right now that will actually get the nomination. Trump has already baited the other current contenders to appeal to the fringe, and there is no way these current candidates can come back to a more centric position during the general election. There is already too much of a record of stupid and scary statements that have been made by the Republican candidates.
And I can't imagine how frothing at the mouth the right will become if Hillary is elected because Republicans couldn't back a reasonable candidate.
I hereby facetiously give permission to all of the black hats out there to push malware to these televisions. The more damage you can do, the better.
I've been trying to shop around for a 4K 'television' that is really just a monitor, and the only available options at any reasonable price are "Smart" TVs. The fact that manufacturers are coupling the content playback engine with the display is just stupid. This article is the main reason why: It is very hard to create a Smart TV that is always up to date and has the latest capabilities for content. So manufacturers are left trying to create a revenue stream post sale by spying or selling content, or just not updating the OS with latest security and features.
Instead of Smart TVs, I wish they would make 4k displays with DisplayPort inputs that can drive 4K at higher than 30FPS. A TV is a product that should last 15-20 years. The devices that I hook up to the TV (PC, Tivo, cable box, xBox, whatever) are all components that have shorter life expectancies at this time because a ton of changes are happening in that area of the market. TVs just need to be dumb and simply display the content.
Before you get your knickers in a bunch: this is most likely just a bug, not intentional.
The Catalyst Control Center thing isn't a bug. Windows removes the display driver on upgrade (and thus CCC if installed), and downloads the latest driver from Windows Update after the upgrade. There are potentially scenarios where the OEM posted the Win10 driver to WU without CCC bundled, but otherwise most users will get the latest driver with CCC enabled.
"the supercomputer has more than 45,000 processor cores and runs at petfalops."
So what happened here? Is this like the cubic centimeter limits for motors where if you go over a size limit new rules go into effect? Like you don't have to pay to register your supercomputer if it is under 2.000 "petfalops" (whatever the hell that is)?
...or did someone realize after it was built that Excel had been rounding on them, and they were 113 processors short of the 2 "petfalops" system specified in the bid?
I'm guessing their "developers" don't actually use an IDE. Even on my Mac I use a two-button mouse just to get context-sensitive menus.
I could be wrong, but I was assuming this was because it was being tracked by a Chrome plugin that much of the activity outside of the web browser was not captured.
I personally use caps lock all the time when typing SQL queries. Outside of that, I rarely use it.
You could always use it to make a smelting crucible to melt tantalum hafnium carbide into.
OEM information like what? USB has the Vendor ID and Device ID, that's enough to load the correct driver.
USB VID and PID is typically the IHV Vendor and DeviceID information, and is rarely changed when integrated into an OEM system. I understand that the OEM can update these values, but most often they don't.
There is nothing stopping them from getting WHQL certification of their OEM drivers and submitting them to Microsoft. If their drivers are written properly (with proper hardware identification strings for PCI / USB / ACPI devices) then they will apply before generic drivers, and this isn't even a problem.
PCI is the only bus type you listed that includes OEM information embedded in the device identifier (using the subsystem VendorID). USB doesn't, and for the most part, neither does ACPI.
Additionally, OEMs don't typically certify device drivers through WHQL. It is usually the IHV that certifies the component/driver, and the OEM certifies the system consisting of components from different IHVs.
Most people have no idea how cell phones work. Does that mean God made cell phones?
I don't think that most people would attribute a cell phone to being made by God, but they would point out that the cell phone had a creator (and thus was not happenstance). Even without knowing the origin of a cell phone, intuition and basic understanding would tell them that it would not exist without intentional design. I think this same intuition is what many use to believe that the universe also was intelligently created.
While the author doesn't cite the equation in question, is clear that he is referring to the Drake Equation. The problem with that is that the Drake Equation is an estimation of detectable life in our galaxy. And so when he states that we keep adding criteria to the equation that diminishes the odds of life existing, he is also being incredibly misleading about what the equation represents. By the definition of the Drake equation, our civilization is not detectable - and we would not make the list.
The universe is also a bit larger than our galaxy.
He then goes on to misuse probability to make the case that the odds that our universe could exists are so incredibly low that only a fool would think it just happened this way.
I am extremely disappointed in the WSJ for publishing the article - even as an opinion. The article is fraudulent.
A cursory look at the list of activity, and I don't see anything wrong. Most of that is background compile (ngen) of managed libraries, which is triggering the antivirus software based on the recompiled binaries being written to disk.
This is actually a good feature, IMHO. Microsoft will periodically release updates to the compiler to fix security related issues, as well as performance enhancements. Binaries can either be recompiled at load time, or while the system is idle.
They didn't rewrite the kernel from scratch so that puts it into 6.4 - 6.99999 range.
Just a minor nitpick... Software version numbers are not decimal numbers but separate units (major.minor).
After 6.9 comes 6.10. After 6.99999 comes 6.100000.
Just another minor nitpick... Windows stores OS versions as an unsigned 64 bit integer, consisting of four 16 bit ordinals. When displaying a "friendly" string version of the version, the four ordinals are separated by periods.
So 6.99999 is not a possible version, as 99999 overflows a 16 bit unsigned integer.
While hilarious, the wear pattern on the floor indicates that it is an often used console.
They killed the last guy who was pushing buttons. The "wear pattern" is from scrubbing the floor to remove the bodily fluids and other evidence.
They also had that deal with Microsoft that made Bing the default search engine on all their phones ("Droid" branded ones excluded, the rest of their Android phones did have it).
Serious question here:
So fucking what?
Google's entire economic model is based on the user consuming Google services, especially search. There is no altruism from Google to develop Android. They did it to corral users to Google services, and having mobile phone providers place Bing as a default search engine undermines the value of investment Google has placed in Android.
Does your solution account for weather forecast? Because watering the lawn 12 hours before it is going to rain seems like a bit of a waste.
I'd love to have a timer that was smart enough to read the local weather forecast, and make decisions. I'd also love to have a timer where I could walk the zones in my garden periodically and using my smart phone/tablet and increase/decrease the amount of watering duration for the zone.
Given that the death penalty was in existence prior to his crime, yet the perp still did what he did, it seems that the threat of punishment was no deterrent.
While I personally agree that death penalties probably don't have much of an effect on capital crimes, I do feel the need to point out that a deterrent doesn't always eliminate the undesired behavior. Saying that the deterrent didn't work because instances still occur does not take into account all of the instances that did not occur because of the deterrent.
$5.27 for 12 oz is double what I'm paying for beef.
I'm all in favor of reducing meat consumption but not at the price of doubling my food budget.
It probably isn't healthy to have a diet that consists exclusively of meat.
Just saying...
They shouldn't ban it - they should just charge an arm and a leg for the service. Something like $5 per minute.
Phones at the seats are not new to airplanes. The prior phones were too expensive for any casual use - though I have never flown first class, so I don't know if people were being annoying with them up there.
Reporting them, you see nothing back. All those people who get error reports upon upgrading to a duff hotfix, it takes someone to whinge to Microsoft to get it fixed. Millions of crash reports aren't acted up, from what I see. I doubt anyone reads them.
I look at them. So do many others here at Microsoft.
Background: I sit on an engineering team that works with OEMs and IHVs. I formerly supported driver developers with support and posting drivers to Windows Update
The challenge with OCA is that there are many sources of crashes. It can be caused by a bug in a Microsoft component, 3rd party driver, faulty hardware, or something else in the kernel doing something wrong (such as malware, etc). Crashes are assigned to buckets, where the hope is that there is a one-to-one relationship been a bucket and a bug. Unfortunately a lot of buckets are an aggregation of different kinds of bugs.
Grouping the crashes into buckets gives us a list of trending crash causes. As expected, the buckets with the highest counts are researched first, where analysts try and identify root cause. If the bug is identified in a Microsoft product, the product sustained engineering team is engaged to build a hotfix to resolve the issue. If the bug is in a 3rd party driver, we engage the 3rd party to resolve the issue.
When a bucket has a resolution, we will typically link that bucket to a response that will notify affected users through the "Action Center" on the system tray. This only works if the bucket is solved, and the entire bucket can be solved by the solution. A lot of buckets do not have a linked response, but the resolution is posted to Windows Update as a Windows hotfix or a 3rd party driver update.
I am 34 and have been on Adderal for about six years now. Being on this medication has had such an improvement on my life that I really wish I had been on it at a much younger age - especially in high school.
The problem that I have is that ADD/ADHD is that it is a classification of a symptom, but does not define the root cause. I also have dyslexia. After doing research into the characteristics of dyslexia, I believe that is really what my source of ADD symptoms is. What I have found is that I need to be stimulated in order to have functional cognitive capacity. When stimulated, I am generally well above average in cognitive capabilities. When non-stimulated, my brain simply shuts down. Stimulation can come from several sources: Medication, exercise, and engaging in an activity that I find interesting.
In an ideal world I would not use medication, but instead stick to exercise and activities I enjoy. I unfortunately live in a world of rigid school structuring designed to prepare students for a similar corporate environment. I have learned to cope with the corporate environment by reducing as much of the TPS reporting from my job description as possible, and standing most of the day. I have a standing desk, and in almost every meeting you find me at, I will be in the back standing or slowly pacing. I loathe wasteful meetings, and avoid them when possible.
I personally think that we need to re-evaluate our education system with the thought that there might not be a one size fits all solution. Take all the kids who have "ADD" and put them in a separate school, and figure out what kind of curriculum works best for them. That might sound like the worst nightmare of a teacher, but I believe that with a proper engagement, you'd end up with a school full of superstars.
Countries go to war when diplomacy fails. You completely skipped over the negotiation part.