So, what are the options for tinkering with the signal before passing it on?
Remote control meat puppet? Real-world RealPlayer experience, with all your attempts at motion suffering from unpredictable stuttering and buffering? The possibilities for creative signal processing are endless!
That would have been a more elegant solution; but why would Nintendo use a ~$70 FPGA to do something they can get a bottom-feeder ARM SoC to do; with the added advantage of being able to share the emulator software with any of their other products that are adequately powerful?
If cost-per-unit were the binding constraint, Nintendo would presumably be best served by building their own, hopefully less eccentric, version of the NES-on-a-chip hardware that you find under a glob top in the assorted 'famiclone' consoles of the world; but doing that would both make doing the design relatively expensive; and be useless for any of their products that don't have the resulting hardware embedded.
Emulation is kind of an ugly, brute force, approach; but it gives Nintendo the flexibility to add 'NES' to just about anything powerful enough just by providing a copy of the software.
It compares favorably with the 'nice consumer toy' lines from the various PC OEMs; but the problem is that Apple is selling this as a "Macbook Pro". As in, their punchiest mobile option for those 'creatives' and whatnot who use macs to do work.
There, the comparison is less flattering. By the standards of consumer laptops, it's undeniably gorgeous and likely to be off well above average quality; and it will be thinner and lighter than the mobile workstations of the world; but that doesn't change the fact that 16GB of RAM just isn't enough for some jobs; and (in a market where you can get 64GBs from the PC OEMs) Apple simply doesn't offer anything.
Back in The Old Days, every last somewhat-seedy mall kiosk carried a wide variety of 'shells' that were snap on replacements for the plastics of whatever Nokia was relevant at the time. As the number of phones that either have removable parts or are designed to survive without a case has declined, cases appear to have moved into filling a similar niche.
I suspect that the potential issue would be with replacement parts that are either copyright infringing knockoffs of iphone 7 components or provided with probably-not-trademark-approved logos and text designed to match the appearance of the iphone 7.
Any attempt to assert that fiddling with the hardware, in itself, is a crime would be overreaching bullshit of the highest order; but if the aim is to look as much like a different product as possible; it is pretty likely that some of the parts kits are on shaky ground in terms of copyright and trademark. Even then, though, it would be unusual for Apple to go after the end users for that; though a vendor offering cosmetic upgrades might well come under fire.
Wireless charging works surprisingly well; but its efficiency is pretty atrocious compared to the resistive losses you would see with any remotely appropriate cable and connector. Losses to heat in battery charging are the same either way; and AC/DC conversion losses are somewhat higher with wireless charging(conversion efficiency will be the same; but the losses in wireless transmission mean that you will need more power at the wall to deliver the same amount of power to the device).
It certainly has its uses, where the absolute power levels are low enough that the losses just don't matter much; or where specific considerations make exposed electrical connections a no-go; but the losses are substantial if you need to deliver significant power.
While I would very much like to see improvements in the security of these services; it's also worth remembering that the 'alternative' is usually either POTS or cellular, provided by the local monopoly and/or cozy-cooperator-with-the-state.
That doesn't diminsh the fact that, when doing communications software on a global scale, something that counts as 'eh, bug' in silicon valley may involve a one-way trip to the basement of the interior ministry for a bunch of users somewhere; but secure communications is something where the 'default' option is somewhere between 'completely useless' and 'actively hostile'. Phone networks were never built with privacy or security(aside from anything needed for billing purposes) in mind; and they've since sprouted all manner of surveillance tools.
Just shrugging and saying 'Meh, the other guy is worse." isn't a good excuse; but it is worth remembering that people considering it to be a bug or vulnerability when eavesdropping succeeds is a pretty new feature.
One application that could be rather useful, for this standard(or even ones that use spectrum with even worse distance issues) would be the possibility of reducing the number of delicate connectors for devices that are docked/undocked frequently.
It's hard to beat copper for transferring power(yes, the various wireless charging schemes do work; but efficiency isn't pretty); but, particularly for low voltage, modest current, DC applications where ensuring safety is less of a challenge; you can use simple, robust, cheap connectors.
Connectors for high speed data are less pleasant, requiring some balance between very careful construction to allow high speeds over a limited number of lines and densely packing a whole lot of signal lines into something that still has to survive hundreds to tens of thousands of mate/unmate cycles and hopefully doesn't attract grit, pocket fuzz, and so on.
If you have a very high speed wireless link, even one with lousy penetration and high attenuation in air; you can potentially replace a complex and delicate data connector with one radio-transparent spot on the device chassis and one on the dock: no hole in the chassis, no connector to get damaged or full of crud, no fiddly pins getting bent or corroded; and since the two radios are very close together(ideally in a known position) power levels can be fairly low; and interference and noise would be less troublesome.
Given the issues with atmospheric attenuation; never mind walls, these very-high-speed wifi systems get rather less interesting at greater distances(though yes, SFP ports are creeping into APs, and that's consumer trash, not even some enterprise thing); but if the price isn't too high I'd be delighted to never see another laptop docking station connector again.
It doesn't help that a lot of the 'watches as jewelry' types are either looking for jewelry in a budget(in which case spending a large fraction of the purchase price on expensive and largely invisible electronics, rather than most of the money on the attractive case, is less than totally attractive); or looking for the 'timeless' and 'heritage' and so on that watch ads are always going on about.
While technologically pointless, your zillion-jewel-fiddly-mechanical-movement is going to be just as nifty for at least decades, barring abuse. Anything 'smart' will be old news in 18 months, at most; and archaic within a few years. That isn't terribly compelling.
It's almost as though a relatively small market got saturated; with some added bite from the (more limited; but substantially cheaper) 'fitness' bands that offer a much lower cost of entry to have an annoying gadget on your wrist and bothering you.
It certainly isn't new; but it is, arguably, even more glaring(and idiotic) now that 'mobile' is such a thing.
Yes, the graphic designer who thinks that he's god's gift to beauty because the site 'looks good' on his color-calibrated multi-thousand-dollar Eizo has always deserved a smack; but that's especially true now that it is more likely that his target audience isn't just viewing the results on a smaller, cheaper, screen than he is; but on a tiny smartphone LCD, backlight dimmed for battery life, with a mirror finish to pick up every stray reflection and hint of sunlight.
Form over function has always been a danger; and failure to test your output on a reasonable simulation of what people will actually view it on has always been a mistake; but the contrast is particularly glaring when the gulf between the sort of screens that 'content creators' tend to use and the average quality of screens site visitors are using is so enormous. It has always been there; but it has not always been so wide.
Remember those crazy, utopian, idealists who tried to design web standards so that content and presentation could be, and would be, cleanly separated; and thus easily adapted to the requirements of just about any user agent out there?
That dream isn't completely dead; but it sure doesn't get much respect from the cool kids(which can make the 'just impose your own CSS' trick pretty hairy on some of the touchier sites out there).
Since the internet has been running so smoothly lately, with absolutely no items of growing concern, I can understand why Cisco would be taking the chance to focus on frivolous, user-hostile, bullshit for a while, since all the real problems have clearly been solved...
Only if Intel misrepresented their product to Apple. If they did lie; that's going to be one unhappy conference call; but if they were chosen for being an adequate second source to reduce Apple's reliance on Qualcomm, rather than for being an equal or superior performer, this doesn't necessarily suggest that Intel failed to deliver what they promised.
I wish I could be more surprised; but that just isn't an option.
Between the ongoing and aggressive expansion of what software EULAs claim the right to restrict; and the truly amazing contractual terms you can impose without anyone saying mean things like 'unconscionable' or 'contract of adhesion'; what would you expect to happen?
This thing is loaded with firmware that never leaves the vendor's control(either legally, since the claim is that it is licensed not sold; or in practice, since it remains in frequent contact with HQ for the life of the vehicle); and Tesla is in a fairly strong position to impose whatever contractual relationship they want; since there isn't much of an aftermarket; and even if you do buy a used vehicle, and have no direct relationship with Tesla, you aren't exactly going to take the car down to the local garage when it needs service or parts.
It is a trifle interesting that they are feeling confident enough to push the restriction before they even have their 'tesla network' in place; but it is no surprise at all that they have decided to never let go of the product.
Especially if the guy you are trying to bribe purchased an ~$850 smartphone a short while ago; and had immediate access to at least one other device capable of filming its fiery suicide. He may or may not have been able to sensibly afford it; but if he could scrape up enough cash and/or credit to get the seller to hand it over it is unlikely that he considers $900 to be some amazing amount of money.
This is why most of the people involved with OCP are either companies that buy enormous amounts of server capacity; or suppliers who fear that they'll be discarded entirely if they don't participate.
CHRP cut directly against Apple's business of selling computers. OCP is gunning for servers and switches. Apple sells neither; but buys a lot of both given how much 'cloud' they are serving up these days.
Clearly they decided that it wasn't in their interests to participate(whether because they'd rather do it in house; or just because their margins allow them to sit back and adopt anything interesting once it matures); but OCP doesn't directly cannibalize Apple's business in the way CHRP did.
It's also a story about technical people who have options. If Apple's standards for their network were so exacting and impressive, it is pretty unlikely that they had anyone just clinging to the job because they didn't have much hope of finding another one.
If you are already considered good enough with the existing tech that unemployment isn't a serious concern; and your current employer is specifically denying you the opportunity to be part of the cool new tech, why would that inspire you to stay with them?
You can get real hotshots, if the project is interesting and/or the money is good(or the stock options are risky but have the possibility of being really, really, good); and you can usually find people to work with a given system, no matter how legacy, weird, or unpleasant, if the money is good enough; and you can also get people who are unambitious and pretty easy to keep happy; but getting all of those simultaneously is much, much, less likely, if possible at all.
I don't doubt that Apple was able to hire a new networking team; they can certainly afford it; but telling people "No, it is going to be your job to maintain this legacy system and we aren't going to touch the cool new thing" is not exactly a motivational speech.
Well, kinda-sorta-ish... If you adopt a definition of 'platform' that somehow excludes Linux and the BSDs, which, while certainly not the best option for all purposes, are trivially more 'open' than any proprietary platform; he might have a more reasonable point.
Despite some unpleasant attempts in that direction(Windows RT, the exciting new Windows Store, Cortana-integrated-into-all-sorts-of-things, etc.), MS isn't nearly as control-freaky as Apple is; and, while they have gotten worse about it, aren't quite as ruthless about terminating everything that isn't the most current version. They are also arguably less enthusiastic about lock-in than Oracle(because who could be more enthusiastic?); and offer compatibility with a much wider selection of 3rd party stuff than IBM; but that's hardly the same as 'most open'. It is true that they are hardly the least open; but 'most open platform' isn't really something you have a shot at when you ship many of your core products as binaries only under proprietary licenses.
It doesn't seem like much of a surprise that starting a fight between POSIX and NT ACLs is going to end badly; but this 'review' fails pretty dramatically at answering the question of how much of a problem this is.
If you can't, in practice, let the Linux side touch the Windows side, or vice versa, lest ugly and inscrutable things happen, then you might as well just run a VM. If you can actually do a variety of interesting things across systems, so long as you avoid a few edge cases, that is potentially more useful.
Honestly, the really surprising thing is that they are resorting to boring, old, legacy, 'government'; rather than trying to 'disrupt homelessness' by building a social/mobile/augmented reality 'app' where you compete to score points by harassing the undesireables with drones; and somehow get some in-app purchases and a gamified 'freemium' model in there.
Just demanding that state force be applied to people who annoy you is so...luddite. Not disruptive at all.
If the situation is so bad that they can't even maintain an air of forced cheer for the duration of an earnings call; it must be really, really, grim. Denying the seriousness of the situation is a basic managerial skill.
Handwriting doesn't cut it for straight text speed; but it is very handy for situations where you have text mixed with diagrams, equations, or the like. LaTex's ability to generate really pretty equations makes it worth it for final drafts; but if you are just trying to take notes in math class you have to be really good with the markup for that to feel natural; and unless you think in SVG drawing pictures with a keyboard is a bit tricky.
The harder problem, at least with the devices I've had the opportunity to use, is getting a computer stylus interface to equal or exceed the convenience of a few dollars worth of office supplies and boring paper. Having things auto-digitized is nice; but the slightest bit of input lag, software that doesn't know how to treat stylus input, calibration issues, or similar nuisances gets really bothersome really fast.
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So, what are the options for tinkering with the signal before passing it on?
Remote control meat puppet? Real-world RealPlayer experience, with all your attempts at motion suffering from unpredictable stuttering and buffering? The possibilities for creative signal processing are endless!
That would have been a more elegant solution; but why would Nintendo use a ~$70 FPGA to do something they can get a bottom-feeder ARM SoC to do; with the added advantage of being able to share the emulator software with any of their other products that are adequately powerful?
If cost-per-unit were the binding constraint, Nintendo would presumably be best served by building their own, hopefully less eccentric, version of the NES-on-a-chip hardware that you find under a glob top in the assorted 'famiclone' consoles of the world; but doing that would both make doing the design relatively expensive; and be useless for any of their products that don't have the resulting hardware embedded.
Emulation is kind of an ugly, brute force, approach; but it gives Nintendo the flexibility to add 'NES' to just about anything powerful enough just by providing a copy of the software.
It compares favorably with the 'nice consumer toy' lines from the various PC OEMs; but the problem is that Apple is selling this as a "Macbook Pro". As in, their punchiest mobile option for those 'creatives' and whatnot who use macs to do work.
There, the comparison is less flattering. By the standards of consumer laptops, it's undeniably gorgeous and likely to be off well above average quality; and it will be thinner and lighter than the mobile workstations of the world; but that doesn't change the fact that 16GB of RAM just isn't enough for some jobs; and (in a market where you can get 64GBs from the PC OEMs) Apple simply doesn't offer anything.
Back in The Old Days, every last somewhat-seedy mall kiosk carried a wide variety of 'shells' that were snap on replacements for the plastics of whatever Nokia was relevant at the time. As the number of phones that either have removable parts or are designed to survive without a case has declined, cases appear to have moved into filling a similar niche.
I suspect that the potential issue would be with replacement parts that are either copyright infringing knockoffs of iphone 7 components or provided with probably-not-trademark-approved logos and text designed to match the appearance of the iphone 7.
Any attempt to assert that fiddling with the hardware, in itself, is a crime would be overreaching bullshit of the highest order; but if the aim is to look as much like a different product as possible; it is pretty likely that some of the parts kits are on shaky ground in terms of copyright and trademark. Even then, though, it would be unusual for Apple to go after the end users for that; though a vendor offering cosmetic upgrades might well come under fire.
Wireless charging works surprisingly well; but its efficiency is pretty atrocious compared to the resistive losses you would see with any remotely appropriate cable and connector. Losses to heat in battery charging are the same either way; and AC/DC conversion losses are somewhat higher with wireless charging(conversion efficiency will be the same; but the losses in wireless transmission mean that you will need more power at the wall to deliver the same amount of power to the device).
It certainly has its uses, where the absolute power levels are low enough that the losses just don't matter much; or where specific considerations make exposed electrical connections a no-go; but the losses are substantial if you need to deliver significant power.
While I would very much like to see improvements in the security of these services; it's also worth remembering that the 'alternative' is usually either POTS or cellular, provided by the local monopoly and/or cozy-cooperator-with-the-state.
That doesn't diminsh the fact that, when doing communications software on a global scale, something that counts as 'eh, bug' in silicon valley may involve a one-way trip to the basement of the interior ministry for a bunch of users somewhere; but secure communications is something where the 'default' option is somewhere between 'completely useless' and 'actively hostile'. Phone networks were never built with privacy or security(aside from anything needed for billing purposes) in mind; and they've since sprouted all manner of surveillance tools.
Just shrugging and saying 'Meh, the other guy is worse." isn't a good excuse; but it is worth remembering that people considering it to be a bug or vulnerability when eavesdropping succeeds is a pretty new feature.
One application that could be rather useful, for this standard(or even ones that use spectrum with even worse distance issues) would be the possibility of reducing the number of delicate connectors for devices that are docked/undocked frequently.
It's hard to beat copper for transferring power(yes, the various wireless charging schemes do work; but efficiency isn't pretty); but, particularly for low voltage, modest current, DC applications where ensuring safety is less of a challenge; you can use simple, robust, cheap connectors.
Connectors for high speed data are less pleasant, requiring some balance between very careful construction to allow high speeds over a limited number of lines and densely packing a whole lot of signal lines into something that still has to survive hundreds to tens of thousands of mate/unmate cycles and hopefully doesn't attract grit, pocket fuzz, and so on.
If you have a very high speed wireless link, even one with lousy penetration and high attenuation in air; you can potentially replace a complex and delicate data connector with one radio-transparent spot on the device chassis and one on the dock: no hole in the chassis, no connector to get damaged or full of crud, no fiddly pins getting bent or corroded; and since the two radios are very close together(ideally in a known position) power levels can be fairly low; and interference and noise would be less troublesome.
Given the issues with atmospheric attenuation; never mind walls, these very-high-speed wifi systems get rather less interesting at greater distances(though yes, SFP ports are creeping into APs, and that's consumer trash, not even some enterprise thing); but if the price isn't too high I'd be delighted to never see another laptop docking station connector again.
So, apparently Captain Obvious is moonlighting as the CEO of Microsoft. Always wondered what he did when he wasn't on the job.
It doesn't help that a lot of the 'watches as jewelry' types are either looking for jewelry in a budget(in which case spending a large fraction of the purchase price on expensive and largely invisible electronics, rather than most of the money on the attractive case, is less than totally attractive); or looking for the 'timeless' and 'heritage' and so on that watch ads are always going on about.
While technologically pointless, your zillion-jewel-fiddly-mechanical-movement is going to be just as nifty for at least decades, barring abuse. Anything 'smart' will be old news in 18 months, at most; and archaic within a few years. That isn't terribly compelling.
It's almost as though a relatively small market got saturated; with some added bite from the (more limited; but substantially cheaper) 'fitness' bands that offer a much lower cost of entry to have an annoying gadget on your wrist and bothering you.
I never would have expected that outcome.
It certainly isn't new; but it is, arguably, even more glaring(and idiotic) now that 'mobile' is such a thing.
Yes, the graphic designer who thinks that he's god's gift to beauty because the site 'looks good' on his color-calibrated multi-thousand-dollar Eizo has always deserved a smack; but that's especially true now that it is more likely that his target audience isn't just viewing the results on a smaller, cheaper, screen than he is; but on a tiny smartphone LCD, backlight dimmed for battery life, with a mirror finish to pick up every stray reflection and hint of sunlight.
Form over function has always been a danger; and failure to test your output on a reasonable simulation of what people will actually view it on has always been a mistake; but the contrast is particularly glaring when the gulf between the sort of screens that 'content creators' tend to use and the average quality of screens site visitors are using is so enormous. It has always been there; but it has not always been so wide.
Remember those crazy, utopian, idealists who tried to design web standards so that content and presentation could be, and would be, cleanly separated; and thus easily adapted to the requirements of just about any user agent out there?
That dream isn't completely dead; but it sure doesn't get much respect from the cool kids(which can make the 'just impose your own CSS' trick pretty hairy on some of the touchier sites out there).
Since the internet has been running so smoothly lately, with absolutely no items of growing concern, I can understand why Cisco would be taking the chance to focus on frivolous, user-hostile, bullshit for a while, since all the real problems have clearly been solved...
Only if Intel misrepresented their product to Apple. If they did lie; that's going to be one unhappy conference call; but if they were chosen for being an adequate second source to reduce Apple's reliance on Qualcomm, rather than for being an equal or superior performer, this doesn't necessarily suggest that Intel failed to deliver what they promised.
I wish I could be more surprised; but that just isn't an option.
Between the ongoing and aggressive expansion of what software EULAs claim the right to restrict; and the truly amazing contractual terms you can impose without anyone saying mean things like 'unconscionable' or 'contract of adhesion'; what would you expect to happen?
This thing is loaded with firmware that never leaves the vendor's control(either legally, since the claim is that it is licensed not sold; or in practice, since it remains in frequent contact with HQ for the life of the vehicle); and Tesla is in a fairly strong position to impose whatever contractual relationship they want; since there isn't much of an aftermarket; and even if you do buy a used vehicle, and have no direct relationship with Tesla, you aren't exactly going to take the car down to the local garage when it needs service or parts.
It is a trifle interesting that they are feeling confident enough to push the restriction before they even have their 'tesla network' in place; but it is no surprise at all that they have decided to never let go of the product.
Especially if the guy you are trying to bribe purchased an ~$850 smartphone a short while ago; and had immediate access to at least one other device capable of filming its fiery suicide. He may or may not have been able to sensibly afford it; but if he could scrape up enough cash and/or credit to get the seller to hand it over it is unlikely that he considers $900 to be some amazing amount of money.
This is why most of the people involved with OCP are either companies that buy enormous amounts of server capacity; or suppliers who fear that they'll be discarded entirely if they don't participate.
CHRP cut directly against Apple's business of selling computers. OCP is gunning for servers and switches. Apple sells neither; but buys a lot of both given how much 'cloud' they are serving up these days.
Clearly they decided that it wasn't in their interests to participate(whether because they'd rather do it in house; or just because their margins allow them to sit back and adopt anything interesting once it matures); but OCP doesn't directly cannibalize Apple's business in the way CHRP did.
It's also a story about technical people who have options. If Apple's standards for their network were so exacting and impressive, it is pretty unlikely that they had anyone just clinging to the job because they didn't have much hope of finding another one.
If you are already considered good enough with the existing tech that unemployment isn't a serious concern; and your current employer is specifically denying you the opportunity to be part of the cool new tech, why would that inspire you to stay with them?
You can get real hotshots, if the project is interesting and/or the money is good(or the stock options are risky but have the possibility of being really, really, good); and you can usually find people to work with a given system, no matter how legacy, weird, or unpleasant, if the money is good enough; and you can also get people who are unambitious and pretty easy to keep happy; but getting all of those simultaneously is much, much, less likely, if possible at all.
I don't doubt that Apple was able to hire a new networking team; they can certainly afford it; but telling people "No, it is going to be your job to maintain this legacy system and we aren't going to touch the cool new thing" is not exactly a motivational speech.
Well, kinda-sorta-ish... If you adopt a definition of 'platform' that somehow excludes Linux and the BSDs, which, while certainly not the best option for all purposes, are trivially more 'open' than any proprietary platform; he might have a more reasonable point.
Despite some unpleasant attempts in that direction(Windows RT, the exciting new Windows Store, Cortana-integrated-into-all-sorts-of-things, etc.), MS isn't nearly as control-freaky as Apple is; and, while they have gotten worse about it, aren't quite as ruthless about terminating everything that isn't the most current version. They are also arguably less enthusiastic about lock-in than Oracle(because who could be more enthusiastic?); and offer compatibility with a much wider selection of 3rd party stuff than IBM; but that's hardly the same as 'most open'. It is true that they are hardly the least open; but 'most open platform' isn't really something you have a shot at when you ship many of your core products as binaries only under proprietary licenses.
It doesn't seem like much of a surprise that starting a fight between POSIX and NT ACLs is going to end badly; but this 'review' fails pretty dramatically at answering the question of how much of a problem this is.
If you can't, in practice, let the Linux side touch the Windows side, or vice versa, lest ugly and inscrutable things happen, then you might as well just run a VM. If you can actually do a variety of interesting things across systems, so long as you avoid a few edge cases, that is potentially more useful.
Uber never misses an opportunity to come of like a bunch of insufferable assholes, do they?
Honestly, the really surprising thing is that they are resorting to boring, old, legacy, 'government'; rather than trying to 'disrupt homelessness' by building a social/mobile/augmented reality 'app' where you compete to score points by harassing the undesireables with drones; and somehow get some in-app purchases and a gamified 'freemium' model in there.
Just demanding that state force be applied to people who annoy you is so...luddite. Not disruptive at all.
If the situation is so bad that they can't even maintain an air of forced cheer for the duration of an earnings call; it must be really, really, grim. Denying the seriousness of the situation is a basic managerial skill.
Handwriting doesn't cut it for straight text speed; but it is very handy for situations where you have text mixed with diagrams, equations, or the like. LaTex's ability to generate really pretty equations makes it worth it for final drafts; but if you are just trying to take notes in math class you have to be really good with the markup for that to feel natural; and unless you think in SVG drawing pictures with a keyboard is a bit tricky.
The harder problem, at least with the devices I've had the opportunity to use, is getting a computer stylus interface to equal or exceed the convenience of a few dollars worth of office supplies and boring paper. Having things auto-digitized is nice; but the slightest bit of input lag, software that doesn't know how to treat stylus input, calibration issues, or similar nuisances gets really bothersome really fast.