It would have been stopped if the battery was fully charged. Looking at the video it most likely had just residual charge in it. Umhhh... The sweet smell of burning lithium polimer... Umhh.... Sweet...
My guess is that an entire generation of managers (or two) at these companies need to retire before we'll see anything like a basic understanding of the Internet in these companies' actions.
I think you are somewhat mistaken here. They clearly see where the quick revenue opportunity lies in the current internet and this is all they are interested in - quick revenue without any further capex. They have all the understanding required for this one. The fact that it may kill long term revenue opportunities is not really relevant here. They are not interested in that and that has nothing to do with understanding of the internet. It has to do with actual way corporations function today.
That is the problem - it does not in real life. Application works in developer hands, goes out in the field and breaks (seen that one time too many). Millions if not billions of dollars have been put to make sure that RDBMS transactions are atomic and preserve data integrity. No application level interface abstraction has ever afforded the expense and could ever afford the expense to do that. In every single instance I have looked at application developers replacing SQL ACID with "bake-their-own" system I have found cases of data integrity violations. In modern multithreaded (or web server based) apps the most common result from this is race conditions which are probably the hardest to debug problem in software.
The other common problem in using application level abstractions is performance. Once again - works in developer hands, goes in the field, gets real data loaded in it and all hell breaks lose. Similar reasons to ACID as the next biggest investment after data integrity in a database is in its ability to fine-grain lock data objects. If a developer tries to replace RDBMS locking in the application layer, he usually ends up with higher granularity lock that is more contended. In addition to that to avoid race conditions, developers usually deliberately create a bottleneck by muxing all RDBMs access to a single thread and a single access point to simplify locking. In fact probably one of the most beneficial uses of MySQL is its ability to support server-based fine-grained locks that are not tied to a specific data object. You can use these in global semaphors and global locking even in cases where POSIX locks do not work (f.e. across clusters).
Overall, yeah, MySQL and your app "already works". For Proof of Concept - maybe (in fact I use it myself). For real stuff - no, not really, unless you put a lot of work in the application layer. I have done that on quite a few occasions and the performance gains can be staggering compared to ACIDising your brain with a proper RDBMS, but the effort is hardly worth it in most real life scenarios. It also makes it considerably less maintainable.
Who cares if MySQL does them or not. Show me the developers that can both develop applications and do SQL. That is a dieing breed. Most developers nowdays go for a really trivial schema and an abstraction layer. At that point the only thing that matters is row speed on simple table operations and there MySQL or in-memory OO database frameworks with a simple backing store wipe the floor.
This is the reality of life. And it is not going to get better. If you look at the books on the market the only book that used to teach "proper" SQL (with joins and the lot) strictly from the context of application development was the old DB2 bible. It has not been reprinted since the late 90-es. All the rest that is out there is either heavily slanted toward the app side or towards the DB side (usually the latter). Add to that the fact that many universities try to teach "real life software engineering skills" instead of proper data structure and data manipulation classes and the picture is complete: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsof JavaSchools.html. Add to that the fact that DBDs when you actually corner them to ask something meaningfull answer with SQL technobabble like in your post. To the average developer it sounds like fortran. And if it looks like fortran, walks like fortran and talks like fortran it gotta be fortran. From the point of view of a average software engineer SQL and especially stored procedures look like a blast from the past. He expects to see objects, constructors, destructors, private and public structures. And what does he see? He sees something that looks like written by his grandparents. As a result he turns around and starts doing delete/insert/last_insert_id instead of replace and sequential deletions in software instead of foreign keys.
I have tried in the past to work with developers who write commercial apps on top of SQL to optimise their code. And I have wanted to scream all along. In 95% of the cases you deal with either one of the following:
A nice schema designed once upon a time properly by a proper DBD that is vandalised in the application abstraction layer because the developers are are sorely pissed off by the endless wingeing of the SQL server and/or its abissmal performance. So they take the matters in their own hands and violate ACID by cashing and bypassing restrictions in the app. Sooner or later someone comes around and says - WTF, why don't we rewrite this all in software and sod off the expensive database. And surprise surprise it ends up being done in MySQL.
An abissmal schema or no schema at all where all restrictions are done in the app. That is MySQL country all the way.
MySQL is a result of the way current software development is taught and done. Unless Jo the Average Developer starts understanding how to use SQL in his application (and he does not) and unless SQL data representation grows up to modern non-fortran-like OO semantics MySQL will proliferate. And if you think that MySQL is bad think twice. There are the object persistence frameworks and in-memory crap that follow in its wake.
Though you are actually not looking at the GP argument in sufficient depth. It is a popular tendency today to brand even the smallest deviation from the average as autism and try to "cure" it or "compensate" for it. Plenty of lousy, lame and lazy teachers use this as an excuse to avoid children that require individual attention and do not study well in a group.
Many great brains and problem solvers are wiped in the process. Einstein would have been put on Ritalin by the age of 6 nowdays and we would have never had the theory of relativity. Same for Mozart and his symphonies. And I am not going to even mention extreme cases like Tesla who had a seriously bad case.
Absolutely. That is the worst structural failure I have seen since 1995 Fiat Seicento EuroNCAP 1.5 score. Looking at it, the Chinese clearly have to learn some more in the art of shitty engineering and it is quite obvious where they can go for the next lesson.
Re:Protection from Sabotage forgotten?
on
Floating Wind Turbines
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
C'mon reality is not "Blue Thunder, do you copy" and a generator is not a starscraper.
Seriously, the most vulnerable parts of the power distribution at sea can be protected by putting them on the seabed. The technology for doing this is already there and the Norwegians have mastered it when doing the pipelines between their gas fields, UK and rest of Europe. In fact, the infrastructure at sea is easier to defend and protect than the one on the ground.
My dad participated in doing the "survival" analysis for a national grid during a terrorist scare back in the 80-es. I remember some of the results and it is scary how little it takes for a conventional grid to fall apart if you hit the right places at the right moments.
Compared to that an underwater distribution system is actually a considerable improvement on both safety and security of the supply.
That is a very onesided look at Lara Croft. You have to draw the guns as well as the weapons of mass distraction.
Re:Protection from Sabotage forgotten?
on
Floating Wind Turbines
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Er... Minor problems in your argument:
1. You are expecting the bozo to have a clue. Terrorists, especially the allahhead variety do not. Even 9/11 was clueless. Despite supposedly being a construction engineer Bin Laden did not see the folding effect which a major fire will do to the skyscraper design. The ones to come later were equally clueless. 7/7 managed to reach their targets without blowing themselves on the way due to sheer luck. Madrid ones managed to get that far only because they found a corrupt local Spaniard to supply them with explosives and a Bulgarian muslim trained by CIA to rig them. If it was not for a major power training their "explosive expert" they would have not gotten anywhere. And 21/7 and the last slot in London and Glasgow were a total laughing stock. And that were terrorists lead by a mastermind with an engineering and design degree from a "respectable" British university. IMO all people who had the same chemistry course with this bozo in Anglia Polytechnics (nowdays East Anglia Ruskin) should have their degree revoked and resit their exams. To ensure good standards of teaching in the future. Religious fanaticism and real modern military and engineering capability do not go well together.
2. In order to get to an installation offshore the bozo will need to use a plane or a boat. All it takes to protect an offshore installation is to have an exclusion zone around it (which are set around many of the current windfarms for health and safety reasons). Any approaching vessel will be picked up on radar tens of miles away and can be stopped trivially. Just put any bog-standard naval close quarters defence system on the more important rigs. While attacking a power station based on land can be done by any bozo with a bag of dynamite (hint - how do you get the electiricty out of it), attacking a defended sea installation requires the resources of a major naval power. If it is defended, even minimally. It cannot be done by a lone allahhead idiot on a boat with a gun. That is besides the fact that Norwegian and UK air force have any point within the north sea within 15-20 min scramble time. There is very little an allahhead bozo with a gun can do against an incoming Harpoon missile.
Not all have open interfaces for this. iPhone is a prime example in this category. Samsung non-Windows phones closely follow.
Some that have open interfaces do not have enough resources to record all voice traffic (though most can probably manage data sniffing as it is not a realtime task). Early windows mobile are in this category. Most of them have the APIs to sniff, but are likely not to have enough CPU to do so.
You missed one more which is specifically R&D and specifically science related and relevant only at the highest R&D levels (we are not talking H1B slaveshop labour here):
Hiring people with different cultural and educational backgrounds allows you to find solutions to problems which otherwise will be overlooked. Especially in an abstract scientific area.
While the US educational system is not bad, a number of countries exceed it by far in a number scientific areas, especially in mathematics and related areas.
Do we like it or not, but our thought process and the means of its expression are largely defined by the language, followed by culture, upbringing and education. I would approach a problem differently compared to an American and an Indian, Chinese or Japanese. There will be cases where the American will find the most appropriate architecture and solution. There will be cases where it will be one of the "foreign devils".
Currently, hiring foreign devils on non-slaveshop rates and for non-slaveshop jobs in the US is extremely difficult. First of all you cannot hire them on H1B. At all. If you want to hire staff that is above the industry average you end up having to pay above the industry average. The H1B program is adverse to this concept as it is invented to import cheap labour and mandates "pay by the average". Going for other means of importing highly qualified labour with the US immigration service is hell. While universities have means of bypassing this hell using various post-doc/student/lecturer programs, corporations do not. Add to that the current level of bigotry that is manifested all over every second thread in this slashdot article. Add to that the overall image US currently has abroad. Add... Ad naseum.
So if Microsoft really wants to get a world class research facility going I am not surprised that it is shipping it to Canada. More will follow. It makes business sense. The only other option is founding a private university and using the educational shortcuts in the system to get the best staff and that is not perfect.
So overall, I will give them the benefit of the doubt. It may end up in fact that they are doing exactly this - founding a first class research facility to attract staff way above the H1B level. Let's wait and see.
While voice roaming in Europe has recently become relatively sane (thanks Nelly), data roaming pricing is obscene and is all over the place. From 10£ per MB for the worst case to nothing or fixed per-day pricing on some voda tariffs.
Apple while pushing the iPhone has so far put great emphasis on the Internet useability. For Europe this means that data roaming from an obscure subject of interest solely to business users, becomes a subject of interest for consumers.
My data is probably a bit old. I saw some numbers on a couple of occasions 1-2 years ago when interviewing with a couple of network policy control startups. At that time they were one of the worst in Europe. Situation may have changed nowdays.
Uh, I did. Just to check my figures.. Yep. Data Packs. They figure prominently in the mail threads I exchanged with the Dear Cretins in their customer care department. And both what I mention and what you mention are wrong as far as the iPhone is concerned. It will require a whole new data tariff, something similar to web-n-walk, but with acceptable roaming. Buying it otherwise in Europe does not make any sense whatsoever. No point in buying a "universal access" gadget that surprise, surprise cannot access anything universally due to braindamaged roaming restrictions.
While at it 2G+Edge is actually excellent for holidays. While 3G coverage around Europe is still extremely patchy, 2.5G+Edge has pretty good availability. So if the iPhone comes with a passable data roaming tariff (which O2's parent Telefonica can deliver if it gets its head out its arse) it may make it onto my shopping list.
If it switches to GSM based on congestion (which it should) this will not last long. The calls started on WiFi, but switched to GSM will outweight the others by so much that the billing department will scream bloody murder.
Wrong product actually. You should navigate their website before talking rubbish. Look for the 3G broadband modem or the datacard.
Vodafone currently has the most sensible dedicated data plans at:
- 90 quid for unlimited + up to 250MB EU roaming (look at the T-Mob roaming tariff and you will choke on your breakfast). - under 50 for unlimited UK use + 8 pounds per up to 50MB day EU roaming in countries with Voda franchises - 29 for 250MB UK use + 8 pounds per up to 50MB day EU roaming (countries with franchises).
Unfortunately, their sales and customer service staff are a bunch of cretinous moronoids which do not even know that the tariffs exist. I have a couple of mail threads in my mailbox about them and they make a reading close to the classic "Dear Cretins" letter to NTL.
Voda unfortunately has a host of known Data problems as well. It has no EDGE for purely political reasons. Some wanker in their management said once upon a time that Edge is useless and they would not dilute the value of their 3G license by buying into a competitive technology so they now tow the party line regardless of the fact that their Edgeless GPRS network is totally out of capacity. The CretinBerry has eaten it all. The packet loss on GPRS on voda on a morning UK east coast mainline commuter train is currently 95%+ downlink. So if the iPhone in Europe is not a 3G device, the choice of O2 is obvious. It has considerably more GPRS capacity to go around and it has Edge in all places where it matters.
So nothing new here. If the iPhone is a 2G device the choice is correct, though fairly shortsighted. The device will be useless where it most matters - on roaming. For that Apple should have chosen Voda. Europe is not US. Here everyone who has the money to buy an iPhone goes on at least 4 holidays abroad per year if not more and expects the gadget to work there as well. Without a 700£ data bill.
Most coffee shop deployments will not die on bandwith. They will die on packet rates. One VOIP call is 100 packets per second. 8 calls are 800. While the nominal rate of most devices used for APs should in theory allow 10+ times more than that, in reality they will die NAT-ing the traffic. 3-4 calls at most is what they can handle without excessively jittering the flows. 8+ calls is likely to kill most APs with built in NAT outright. 8 calls assuming IPSEC in UDP NAT traversal and AMR internally is around some measly 320Kbit. So packet rates start killing this long before bandwidth is of any concern.
While there are few of these phones, they will be great. If they really get market penetration its own popularity will kill it or make it useless as it will be switching to GSM/3G all the time due to detected congestion on the WiFi. From there on there will be endless billing nightmares as consumers will insist that they called over WiFi while the call really was routed over cellular and so on and so fourth.
It will be fun to watch. From the sidelines. Thanks god I am no longer in this business.
And the fact that the CPU is not going to hit the high street for 6 odd months does not mean that selected engineering samples cannot be clocked to the same frequency. So in fact, the test is most likely run on a real CPU. Even further, if it is shipping in 6 months to stores the engineering samples have to hit OEMs and major manufacturers now so they can verify their designs.
Oh, and by the way, both AMD and Intel do this all the time. Intel was publishing Core benchmarks for 3-6 months ahead of launches. If we dig around their site I bet that we are going to find at least one benchmark for a CPU that is yet to be officially released.
They are pissed as is already. AFAIK Belgian congestion levels due to P2P are one of the worst in Europe at the moment. So funnily enough this is likely to receive support from a large portion of the paying customers.
There is no need to build a robot with identification capability for that. Cannabis fields can be identified trivially on aerial and space photos taken in the near infraread provided that you have relatively accurate temperature and time of day data for the time the picture was taken. The only reason it is still around as a mass drug crop is that governments need a scarecrow for various varieties of "war of drugs". By the way, flamethrowers will not help either. As the ifor troops in Afganistan learned it does not burn very well. And the little that burns from a flamethrower will provide some entertaining experience to any soldier happening to be downwind:http://cannabis.net/articles/giant-mariju ana.html
I have a different take on this one. Even if it started with good intentions, it will very soon end in: "More power to people making sure the Homeland Security no-fly database is populated from as early age as possible".
You are underestimating Apple's desire for B&D engagement with the consumer. They are the most lock-in mad company in the world. Compared to them microsoft are a bunch of harmless share-all hippies.
I will bet a case of beer that the Apple portion of the iPhone verifies the GSM portion flash contents on startup and/or refuses to use it if a strong cryptographic checksum does not match. As the iPhone itself is with certificate chains all over the place and everything is meticulously signed, breaking this and making it use unsigned image for the baseband will not be as trivial as with most GSM handsets which are yet to learn the wanders of DRM and PKI.
Slashdot Mirror
It would have been stopped if the battery was fully charged. Looking at the video it most likely had just residual charge in it. Umhhh... The sweet smell of burning lithium polimer... Umhh.... Sweet...
I think you are somewhat mistaken here. They clearly see where the quick revenue opportunity lies in the current internet and this is all they are interested in - quick revenue without any further capex. They have all the understanding required for this one. The fact that it may kill long term revenue opportunities is not really relevant here. They are not interested in that and that has nothing to do with understanding of the internet. It has to do with actual way corporations function today.
From the notebooks of Lazarus Long: If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion.
That is the problem - it does not in real life. Application works in developer hands, goes out in the field and breaks (seen that one time too many). Millions if not billions of dollars have been put to make sure that RDBMS transactions are atomic and preserve data integrity. No application level interface abstraction has ever afforded the expense and could ever afford the expense to do that. In every single instance I have looked at application developers replacing SQL ACID with "bake-their-own" system I have found cases of data integrity violations. In modern multithreaded (or web server based) apps the most common result from this is race conditions which are probably the hardest to debug problem in software.
The other common problem in using application level abstractions is performance. Once again - works in developer hands, goes in the field, gets real data loaded in it and all hell breaks lose. Similar reasons to ACID as the next biggest investment after data integrity in a database is in its ability to fine-grain lock data objects. If a developer tries to replace RDBMS locking in the application layer, he usually ends up with higher granularity lock that is more contended. In addition to that to avoid race conditions, developers usually deliberately create a bottleneck by muxing all RDBMs access to a single thread and a single access point to simplify locking. In fact probably one of the most beneficial uses of MySQL is its ability to support server-based fine-grained locks that are not tied to a specific data object. You can use these in global semaphors and global locking even in cases where POSIX locks do not work (f.e. across clusters).
Overall, yeah, MySQL and your app "already works". For Proof of Concept - maybe (in fact I use it myself). For real stuff - no, not really, unless you put a lot of work in the application layer. I have done that on quite a few occasions and the performance gains can be staggering compared to ACIDising your brain with a proper RDBMS, but the effort is hardly worth it in most real life scenarios. It also makes it considerably less maintainable.
And I also suggest a revisit of this load of horrid tripe recently prominently featured on slashdot:http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl ?sid=07/07/08/0547234
Compare it to the reasons behind this guy achievement. Sit back. Reminisce. Enjoy der blinkenlichten.
- A nice schema designed once upon a time properly by a proper DBD that is vandalised in the application abstraction layer because the developers are are sorely pissed off by the endless wingeing of the SQL server and/or its abissmal performance. So they take the matters in their own hands and violate ACID by cashing and bypassing restrictions in the app. Sooner or later someone comes around and says - WTF, why don't we rewrite this all in software and sod off the expensive database. And surprise surprise it ends up being done in MySQL.
- An abissmal schema or no schema at all where all restrictions are done in the app. That is MySQL country all the way.
MySQL is a result of the way current software development is taught and done. Unless Jo the Average Developer starts understanding how to use SQL in his application (and he does not) and unless SQL data representation grows up to modern non-fortran-like OO semantics MySQL will proliferate. And if you think that MySQL is bad think twice. There are the object persistence frameworks and in-memory crap that follow in its wake.Seconded.
Though you are actually not looking at the GP argument in sufficient depth. It is a popular tendency today to brand even the smallest deviation from the average as autism and try to "cure" it or "compensate" for it. Plenty of lousy, lame and lazy teachers use this as an excuse to avoid children that require individual attention and do not study well in a group.
Many great brains and problem solvers are wiped in the process. Einstein would have been put on Ritalin by the age of 6 nowdays and we would have never had the theory of relativity. Same for Mozart and his symphonies. And I am not going to even mention extreme cases like Tesla who had a seriously bad case.
Absolutely. That is the worst structural failure I have seen since 1995 Fiat Seicento EuroNCAP 1.5 score. Looking at it, the Chinese clearly have to learn some more in the art of shitty engineering and it is quite obvious where they can go for the next lesson.
Indians are clearly ahead here: http://www.topgear.com/content/news/stories/1832/
C'mon reality is not "Blue Thunder, do you copy" and a generator is not a starscraper.
Seriously, the most vulnerable parts of the power distribution at sea can be protected by putting them on the seabed. The technology for doing this is already there and the Norwegians have mastered it when doing the pipelines between their gas fields, UK and rest of Europe. In fact, the infrastructure at sea is easier to defend and protect than the one on the ground.
My dad participated in doing the "survival" analysis for a national grid during a terrorist scare back in the 80-es. I remember some of the results and it is scary how little it takes for a conventional grid to fall apart if you hit the right places at the right moments.
Compared to that an underwater distribution system is actually a considerable improvement on both safety and security of the supply.
That is a very onesided look at Lara Croft. You have to draw the guns as well as the weapons of mass distraction.
Er... Minor problems in your argument:
1. You are expecting the bozo to have a clue. Terrorists, especially the allahhead variety do not. Even 9/11 was clueless. Despite supposedly being a construction engineer Bin Laden did not see the folding effect which a major fire will do to the skyscraper design. The ones to come later were equally clueless. 7/7 managed to reach their targets without blowing themselves on the way due to sheer luck. Madrid ones managed to get that far only because they found a corrupt local Spaniard to supply them with explosives and a Bulgarian muslim trained by CIA to rig them. If it was not for a major power training their "explosive expert" they would have not gotten anywhere. And 21/7 and the last slot in London and Glasgow were a total laughing stock. And that were terrorists lead by a mastermind with an engineering and design degree from a "respectable" British university. IMO all people who had the same chemistry course with this bozo in Anglia Polytechnics (nowdays East Anglia Ruskin) should have their degree revoked and resit their exams. To ensure good standards of teaching in the future. Religious fanaticism and real modern military and engineering capability do not go well together.
2. In order to get to an installation offshore the bozo will need to use a plane or a boat. All it takes to protect an offshore installation is to have an exclusion zone around it (which are set around many of the current windfarms for health and safety reasons). Any approaching vessel will be picked up on radar tens of miles away and can be stopped trivially. Just put any bog-standard naval close quarters defence system on the more important rigs. While attacking a power station based on land can be done by any bozo with a bag of dynamite (hint - how do you get the electiricty out of it), attacking a defended sea installation requires the resources of a major naval power. If it is defended, even minimally. It cannot be done by a lone allahhead idiot on a boat with a gun. That is besides the fact that Norwegian and UK air force have any point within the north sea within 15-20 min scramble time. There is very little an allahhead bozo with a gun can do against an incoming Harpoon missile.
Not all have open interfaces for this. iPhone is a prime example in this category. Samsung non-Windows phones closely follow.
Some that have open interfaces do not have enough resources to record all voice traffic (though most can probably manage data sniffing as it is not a realtime task). Early windows mobile are in this category. Most of them have the APIs to sniff, but are likely not to have enough CPU to do so.
You missed one more which is specifically R&D and specifically science related and relevant only at the highest R&D levels (we are not talking H1B slaveshop labour here):
Do we like it or not, but our thought process and the means of its expression are largely defined by the language, followed by culture, upbringing and education. I would approach a problem differently compared to an American and an Indian, Chinese or Japanese. There will be cases where the American will find the most appropriate architecture and solution. There will be cases where it will be one of the "foreign devils".
Currently, hiring foreign devils on non-slaveshop rates and for non-slaveshop jobs in the US is extremely difficult. First of all you cannot hire them on H1B. At all. If you want to hire staff that is above the industry average you end up having to pay above the industry average. The H1B program is adverse to this concept as it is invented to import cheap labour and mandates "pay by the average". Going for other means of importing highly qualified labour with the US immigration service is hell. While universities have means of bypassing this hell using various post-doc/student/lecturer programs, corporations do not. Add to that the current level of bigotry that is manifested all over every second thread in this slashdot article. Add to that the overall image US currently has abroad. Add... Ad naseum.
So if Microsoft really wants to get a world class research facility going I am not surprised that it is shipping it to Canada. More will follow. It makes business sense. The only other option is founding a private university and using the educational shortcuts in the system to get the best staff and that is not perfect.
So overall, I will give them the benefit of the doubt. It may end up in fact that they are doing exactly this - founding a first class research facility to attract staff way above the H1B level. Let's wait and see.
Not just any roaming. Data roaming.
While voice roaming in Europe has recently become relatively sane (thanks Nelly), data roaming pricing is obscene and is all over the place. From 10£ per MB for the worst case to nothing or fixed per-day pricing on some voda tariffs.
Apple while pushing the iPhone has so far put great emphasis on the Internet useability. For Europe this means that data roaming from an obscure subject of interest solely to business users, becomes a subject of interest for consumers.
My data is probably a bit old. I saw some numbers on a couple of occasions 1-2 years ago when interviewing with a couple of network policy control startups. At that time they were one of the worst in Europe. Situation may have changed nowdays.
While at it 2G+Edge is actually excellent for holidays. While 3G coverage around Europe is still extremely patchy, 2.5G+Edge has pretty good availability. So if the iPhone comes with a passable data roaming tariff (which O2's parent Telefonica can deliver if it gets its head out its arse) it may make it onto my shopping list.
If it switches to GSM based on congestion (which it should) this will not last long. The calls started on WiFi, but switched to GSM will outweight the others by so much that the billing department will scream bloody murder.
Wrong product actually. You should navigate their website before talking rubbish. Look for the 3G broadband modem or the datacard.
Vodafone currently has the most sensible dedicated data plans at:
- 90 quid for unlimited + up to 250MB EU roaming (look at the T-Mob roaming tariff and you will choke on your breakfast).
- under 50 for unlimited UK use + 8 pounds per up to 50MB day EU roaming in countries with Voda franchises
- 29 for 250MB UK use + 8 pounds per up to 50MB day EU roaming (countries with franchises).
Unfortunately, their sales and customer service staff are a bunch of cretinous moronoids which do not even know that the tariffs exist. I have a couple of mail threads in my mailbox about them and they make a reading close to the classic "Dear Cretins" letter to NTL.
Voda unfortunately has a host of known Data problems as well. It has no EDGE for purely political reasons. Some wanker in their management said once upon a time that Edge is useless and they would not dilute the value of their 3G license by buying into a competitive technology so they now tow the party line regardless of the fact that their Edgeless GPRS network is totally out of capacity. The CretinBerry has eaten it all. The packet loss on GPRS on voda on a morning UK east coast mainline commuter train is currently 95%+ downlink. So if the iPhone in Europe is not a 3G device, the choice of O2 is obvious. It has considerably more GPRS capacity to go around and it has Edge in all places where it matters.
So nothing new here. If the iPhone is a 2G device the choice is correct, though fairly shortsighted. The device will be useless where it most matters - on roaming. For that Apple should have chosen Voda. Europe is not US. Here everyone who has the money to buy an iPhone goes on at least 4 holidays abroad per year if not more and expects the gadget to work there as well. Without a 700£ data bill.
Most coffee shop deployments will not die on bandwith. They will die on packet rates. One VOIP call is 100 packets per second. 8 calls are 800. While the nominal rate of most devices used for APs should in theory allow 10+ times more than that, in reality they will die NAT-ing the traffic. 3-4 calls at most is what they can handle without excessively jittering the flows. 8+ calls is likely to kill most APs with built in NAT outright. 8 calls assuming IPSEC in UDP NAT traversal and AMR internally is around some measly 320Kbit. So packet rates start killing this long before bandwidth is of any concern.
While there are few of these phones, they will be great. If they really get market penetration its own popularity will kill it or make it useless as it will be switching to GSM/3G all the time due to detected congestion on the WiFi. From there on there will be endless billing nightmares as consumers will insist that they called over WiFi while the call really was routed over cellular and so on and so fourth.
It will be fun to watch. From the sidelines. Thanks god I am no longer in this business.
Absolutely.
And the fact that the CPU is not going to hit the high street for 6 odd months does not mean that selected engineering samples cannot be clocked to the same frequency. So in fact, the test is most likely run on a real CPU. Even further, if it is shipping in 6 months to stores the engineering samples have to hit OEMs and major manufacturers now so they can verify their designs.
Oh, and by the way, both AMD and Intel do this all the time. Intel was publishing Core benchmarks for 3-6 months ahead of launches. If we dig around their site I bet that we are going to find at least one benchmark for a CPU that is yet to be officially released.
They are pissed as is already. AFAIK Belgian congestion levels due to P2P are one of the worst in Europe at the moment. So funnily enough this is likely to receive support from a large portion of the paying customers.
There is no need to build a robot with identification capability for that. Cannabis fields can be identified trivially on aerial and space photos taken in the near infraread provided that you have relatively accurate temperature and time of day data for the time the picture was taken.u ana.html
The only reason it is still around as a mass drug crop is that governments need a scarecrow for various varieties of "war of drugs".
By the way, flamethrowers will not help either. As the ifor troops in Afganistan learned it does not burn very well. And the little that burns from a flamethrower will provide some entertaining experience to any soldier happening to be downwind:http://cannabis.net/articles/giant-marij
Really?
I have a different take on this one. Even if it started with good intentions, it will very soon end in: "More power to people making sure the Homeland Security no-fly database is populated from as early age as possible".
You are underestimating Apple's desire for B&D engagement with the consumer. They are the most lock-in mad company in the world. Compared to them microsoft are a bunch of harmless share-all hippies.
I will bet a case of beer that the Apple portion of the iPhone verifies the GSM portion flash contents on startup and/or refuses to use it if a strong cryptographic checksum does not match. As the iPhone itself is with certificate chains all over the place and everything is meticulously signed, breaking this and making it use unsigned image for the baseband will not be as trivial as with most GSM handsets which are yet to learn the wanders of DRM and PKI.