Thanks I know how standardisation works. It works through consensus. It works through producing an implementation neutral description of some functionality which is desirable for all browsers to have. It works by stakeholders agreeing to the standard in their common interests. It works from them designating people to steward the standard, beating out any inconsistencies or ambiguities that could lead to incompatibility and incremental improvements over time.
It does not work when one company, the predominant one unilaterally declares some feature to be a standard and proceeds to deploy that "standard" in a product without consensus, review or anything else. And that is exactly what Google is doing. The closest they have gotten to consensus is WebM and even that managed to hobble one of the most useful new features of HTML5. They've gotten nowhere with their other techs but as they're Google they'll be able to force things through whatever other people may want or not. In this matter they are just as dangerous as Microsoft ever were in their attempts to subvert the web, possibly more so.
It's not just about number of consoles sold but attach rate and other factors. Nintendo slapped a substantial markup on their console and didn't do enough to encourage 3rd parties. People weren't buying enough games (not surprising the amount of shovelware the platform enjoys) and so when sales dropped so did profits. And Nintendo has been notoriously awful on the online side of things so it couldn't profit there either from online subscriptions, movie rentals, full price games, DLC etc.
So yeah it sold more and a great many of those consoles are now gathering dust and Nintendo isn't making any money from them. I suspect the same will happen with the Wii U when that turns up but to a lesser extent. Big up front sales, 3rd party disinterest, shovelware, consumer apathy, and decline.
It's not even $25, it's $35. These are model B boards. I will not be surprised at all if they do cost £35 when VAT is added and then more for P&P. In fact if I were cynical I'd say the one easy way to make money of this endeavour is to overcharge for postage. Not a huge amount but maybe £1 or £2 more than is strictly necessary.
Plugins run as a separate process to Firefox now, so if it leaks you can kill the plugin container. You could also close the tab if it's responsive and clean up.
The problem here is that Google is introducing a bunch of technologies - WebM, WebP, SPDY, Dart, Nacl, PNacl etc. without submitting to standards bodies, without forming concensus from other browser makers to agree or disagree to use the tech and basically using the weight of their entire company to foist these standards onto the web whether they are ready for it or not.
What they're doing is not really that different from when Microsoft introduced VBScript or attempted to steamroller Office Open XML through approval. Google are subverting the web, introducing half-baked "standards" left and right which other browsers have no possibility of keeping up with and using it as a wedge to pretend that chrome is therefore the better browser for it. Even if Google usually drop some source code to cover their development that doesn't mean it's easy or necessarily desirable to integrate it with other browsers.
There are other more promising (IMO) color displays on the horizon that offer high refresh rates, full color, and utilize a passive display that draws *NO* power whenever it is showing a static image.
The only display I'm aware of that fits that description is Mirasol and refresh rates are high by comparison to e-ink but not to LCD. It's very easy to see the screen tear to shit through the various YouTube clips of it running. And that's not an artifact of YouTube since it's even visible on the Kyobo devices which appear to refresh from left to right instead of top to bottom. That said, for the purpose its intended for, a little tearing is still a radical improvement on glacial greyscale e-ink and it's perfectly adequate for light tablet use like browsing and so on. Give it a generation or two and maybe the refresh issues will be resolved satisfactorily that we see general purpose tablets using it.
People can "get in at the start" on this miracle by investing small fortunes and they'll receive continuous updates over the next 10 to 20 years how the device is close to manufacturing, and how nefarious powers are trying to "suppress" the device, and how Mr Rossi's eventual prosecution for fraud is all part of this conspiracy to silence him.
What is a windows device exactly? Microsoft marketing dept have invented this concept that Windows is somehow hardware. Its not. Windows is an OS. No more.
Something which is expressly and exclusively released as a Windows device of course. One course make the case that PCs in the traditional sense carry an expectation that they run random operating systems. The same is not true of consumer devices such a phones or tablets.
I buy computers (not Windows devices, or apple devices). I need them to do the things I want. Its my property. I can and should be able to do what I like with it.
And you still can. Doesn't mean Microsoft have to make it easy for you.
I think it was obvious that when they were talking of protecting the bootloader that they were talking about tablet style devices.
On one level you can hardly blame them - if you buy a Windows device, on what basis should you expect it to run something else. But on another level, why should they care if someone does? I doubt they subsidize the devices, and I'm certain that they or the manufacturer could put whatever legalese they liked on use of the device to refuse to replace them if they were bricked through unauthorised use.
Very little at the moment. Makerbot produced parts look like glorified plastic coil pots, are only available in a handful of materials & colours and are not suitable for applications where they may be put under stress. They're fine for the odd job, e.g. you break some widget and have the time & patience to produce a replacement. It's certainly not going be much use for "pirate" toys or any other goods. Probably cost more to produce the copy than it would the original.
I would see sites like Shapeways posing a larger issue where the quality, finish and range of materials is larger. Some of the stuff on that site could spell danger for traditional manufacturers of stuff like smart phone accessories, jewellry, decorations and so forth where someone could go in and produce a copy which they sell themselves on commission.
The Irish government ignored expert advice that the voting machines used during trial elections were not suitable for more widespread use, lacking an auditable paper trail for one thing. Instead of heeding this advice they went and bought a bunch of these machines that a subsequent independent inquiry confirmed (again) were not suitable. So they've sat in warehouses for the last 6 years costing money just to store.
The amazing thing is it ever got as far as it did. Politicians of all people should be able to grasp the importance of fair and transparent elections. If a machine can be tampered with in an undetectable way then there is a huge incentive for people to do it. If a store can print out a slip of paper when I buy a chocolate bar then there is absolutely no excuse that a voting machine cannot do likewise.
Maybe the answer is to import a "device" consisting of thousands of chips soldered to it. Superficially the "device" might even do something such as light an led at the end of the tray. And then desolder & reuse them.
I want you to try to make a 25$ x86 computer. No pressure. Go ahead.
There are numerous off-the-shelf ARM / MIPS based SoCs for under $15 and I assume the Broadcom BCM2835 would be under that price too especially given Broadcom's prominent involvement with the project. So it's not hard to see how the bill of materials for the model A device could be $25 and the model B $35.
It is an attractive price to be sure and the project deserves to attract enormous community interest.
It's not just a question of connecting to a port but fooling whatever transparent proxy sitting in between you and the server to think this is just ordinary http traffic of some kind. Therefore it needs to include the standard http request header / data and the server needs to respond similarly. There are apps like httptunnel which will tunnel over http but you still need a server sitting on the other side which is responsive to such requests and redirects them to the proper service, in this case VPN.
There are a lot of pay / free VPN services out there so perhaps some of them do offer such a facility. But it'd be easy enough for the network to monitor traffic and decide to shut down a host if it turned out someone was amiss.
I can't imagine how the identification would work.
There is no reliable way for the proposed amount of traffic and user profile (tourists). I expect the wifi will prompt users to agree to terms of service on first use and then track the MAC to measure the duration of their session. The terms of service screen could also issue a cookie to recognize returning users.
The truly paranoid could counter these if they had to but I wonder why they would. If someone is that paranoid then maybe they shouldn't be using a free government funded wifi service in the first place. If the police wanted to spy on someone, how dumb do you have to be to use their service? Not only do they glean some amount of forensic data but they also probably know your exact location and could train cameras down on you and watch you do it.
It's not like it is hard to obtain internet in the UK from any number of cafes, pubs etc, which would afford far greater anonymity and less oversight than some blanket wifi which is likely to be locked down pretty tight and logged. Failing that, 3G keys and pay as you go tariffs are easy enough to obtain.
I expect any public wifi network will be locked down so the only things you can do on it are browse the web and a few other well defined actions. Last thing they would want is people leeching bandwidth to download movies, voip, or anything else of that nature. So I bet VPN is one of the first things they disable. Unless you can tunnel a VPN over http you probably won't get far. Even then I expect they put bandwidth caps on http traffic to stop or at least disrupt people trying to do that.
I have a FB account but I use it mainly to subscribe to feeds of companies. I have no real "friends" on there, just feeds. I like it that way. Even if someone were to bust into my account the amount of information about me is superficial and inconsequential. I also feel some comfort from living in Europe where there are some data protection and privacy laws in place to hold Facebook's feet to the fire if it came to it.
Personally I think if people want social media and don't want it "mined" then they're should use something like Diaspora. It's basically Facebook and Twitter mashed together with a federated model like Jabber. Individuals or groups can run their own "pods" which can interact with and expose data which is visible to other pods in the network. So if you don't trust joindiaspora.com with your data you can run your own but still be part of the system. It would be nice if someone bundled up Diaspora to be a "pod in a box" for companies, groups and individuals to install with a few clicks. It would hasten uptake considerably I feel.
I wonder how many bugs, worms, rodents, amphibians and assorted other animals are killed when some farmer runs a combine or plough over a field during the course of a year.
The allies were seriously contemplating a mainland invasion of Japan and the war was most certainly not over for either side. The casualties would have run into millions and Japan would have been left a wasteland, before being partitioned into Russian and US zones since Russia would likely have invaded too. So yes Japan and the allies benefited from a shortened war. I'm sure it didn't seem that way to Japan at the time or to the people unfortunate enough to die from the blasts but that's the reality of it.
Firefox is an example of an open source app that gets usability. Compare Firefox to Mozilla that preceded it. It's a vast improvement in terms of usability, jettisoning menus, buttons and obscure advanced features and concentrating on delivering a premium browser experience. People who want extra features can install extensions but the default is minimalist. Problem with Mozilla (and now Seamonkey) is that it merged the functionality of a browser, HTML editor and mail app into a single executable and was subsequently very cluttered.
And subsequent iterations of Firefox have simply improved the experience.
If you want to reach the "99%" you use the social networking tools that most people use - Twitter, Facebook etc. Creating some other site is likely to make the movement more detached, less representative and marginal than it already is at this stage. Of course probably the best thing to do is just run a few pods on Diaspora or something where if one goes down, mirrors can pop up in other jurisdictions.
I also wonder if this entity will be as censorious as some sites which were prominently supporting OWS such as BoingBoing. And if not, how is this site (robo)moderated, how does it withstand DDOS attacks and all the other crap that commercial sites have spent years developing sophisticated defences against. And what's the point again?
Slashdot Mirror
It does not work when one company, the predominant one unilaterally declares some feature to be a standard and proceeds to deploy that "standard" in a product without consensus, review or anything else. And that is exactly what Google is doing. The closest they have gotten to consensus is WebM and even that managed to hobble one of the most useful new features of HTML5. They've gotten nowhere with their other techs but as they're Google they'll be able to force things through whatever other people may want or not. In this matter they are just as dangerous as Microsoft ever were in their attempts to subvert the web, possibly more so.
So yeah it sold more and a great many of those consoles are now gathering dust and Nintendo isn't making any money from them. I suspect the same will happen with the Wii U when that turns up but to a lesser extent. Big up front sales, 3rd party disinterest, shovelware, consumer apathy, and decline.
It's not even $25, it's $35. These are model B boards. I will not be surprised at all if they do cost £35 when VAT is added and then more for P&P. In fact if I were cynical I'd say the one easy way to make money of this endeavour is to overcharge for postage. Not a huge amount but maybe £1 or £2 more than is strictly necessary.
Plugins run as a separate process to Firefox now, so if it leaks you can kill the plugin container. You could also close the tab if it's responsive and clean up.
This is the model B which is $35. And I wouldn't be surprised if P&P + any applicable taxes makes it closer to $50.
What they're doing is not really that different from when Microsoft introduced VBScript or attempted to steamroller Office Open XML through approval. Google are subverting the web, introducing half-baked "standards" left and right which other browsers have no possibility of keeping up with and using it as a wedge to pretend that chrome is therefore the better browser for it. Even if Google usually drop some source code to cover their development that doesn't mean it's easy or necessarily desirable to integrate it with other browsers.
There are other more promising (IMO) color displays on the horizon that offer high refresh rates, full color, and utilize a passive display that draws *NO* power whenever it is showing a static image.
The only display I'm aware of that fits that description is Mirasol and refresh rates are high by comparison to e-ink but not to LCD. It's very easy to see the screen tear to shit through the various YouTube clips of it running. And that's not an artifact of YouTube since it's even visible on the Kyobo devices which appear to refresh from left to right instead of top to bottom. That said, for the purpose its intended for, a little tearing is still a radical improvement on glacial greyscale e-ink and it's perfectly adequate for light tablet use like browsing and so on. Give it a generation or two and maybe the refresh issues will be resolved satisfactorily that we see general purpose tablets using it.
I assume they are saying that there is some way of producing biomatter which can be turned into energy.
People can "get in at the start" on this miracle by investing small fortunes and they'll receive continuous updates over the next 10 to 20 years how the device is close to manufacturing, and how nefarious powers are trying to "suppress" the device, and how Mr Rossi's eventual prosecution for fraud is all part of this conspiracy to silence him.
What is a windows device exactly? Microsoft marketing dept have invented this concept that Windows is somehow hardware. Its not. Windows is an OS. No more.
Something which is expressly and exclusively released as a Windows device of course. One course make the case that PCs in the traditional sense carry an expectation that they run random operating systems. The same is not true of consumer devices such a phones or tablets.
I buy computers (not Windows devices, or apple devices). I need them to do the things I want. Its my property. I can and should be able to do what I like with it.
And you still can. Doesn't mean Microsoft have to make it easy for you.
On one level you can hardly blame them - if you buy a Windows device, on what basis should you expect it to run something else. But on another level, why should they care if someone does? I doubt they subsidize the devices, and I'm certain that they or the manufacturer could put whatever legalese they liked on use of the device to refuse to replace them if they were bricked through unauthorised use.
Imagine what damage this will do to the industry
Very little at the moment. Makerbot produced parts look like glorified plastic coil pots, are only available in a handful of materials & colours and are not suitable for applications where they may be put under stress. They're fine for the odd job, e.g. you break some widget and have the time & patience to produce a replacement. It's certainly not going be much use for "pirate" toys or any other goods. Probably cost more to produce the copy than it would the original.
I would see sites like Shapeways posing a larger issue where the quality, finish and range of materials is larger. Some of the stuff on that site could spell danger for traditional manufacturers of stuff like smart phone accessories, jewellry, decorations and so forth where someone could go in and produce a copy which they sell themselves on commission.
The amazing thing is it ever got as far as it did. Politicians of all people should be able to grasp the importance of fair and transparent elections. If a machine can be tampered with in an undetectable way then there is a huge incentive for people to do it. If a store can print out a slip of paper when I buy a chocolate bar then there is absolutely no excuse that a voting machine cannot do likewise.
It'll still change every other week if there are bugs or security issues that warrant an update.
Maybe the answer is to import a "device" consisting of thousands of chips soldered to it. Superficially the "device" might even do something such as light an led at the end of the tray. And then desolder & reuse them.
I want you to try to make a 25$ x86 computer. No pressure. Go ahead.
There are numerous off-the-shelf ARM / MIPS based SoCs for under $15 and I assume the Broadcom BCM2835 would be under that price too especially given Broadcom's prominent involvement with the project. So it's not hard to see how the bill of materials for the model A device could be $25 and the model B $35.
It is an attractive price to be sure and the project deserves to attract enormous community interest.
There are a lot of pay / free VPN services out there so perhaps some of them do offer such a facility. But it'd be easy enough for the network to monitor traffic and decide to shut down a host if it turned out someone was amiss.
I can't imagine how the identification would work.
There is no reliable way for the proposed amount of traffic and user profile (tourists). I expect the wifi will prompt users to agree to terms of service on first use and then track the MAC to measure the duration of their session. The terms of service screen could also issue a cookie to recognize returning users.
The truly paranoid could counter these if they had to but I wonder why they would. If someone is that paranoid then maybe they shouldn't be using a free government funded wifi service in the first place. If the police wanted to spy on someone, how dumb do you have to be to use their service? Not only do they glean some amount of forensic data but they also probably know your exact location and could train cameras down on you and watch you do it.
It's not like it is hard to obtain internet in the UK from any number of cafes, pubs etc, which would afford far greater anonymity and less oversight than some blanket wifi which is likely to be locked down pretty tight and logged. Failing that, 3G keys and pay as you go tariffs are easy enough to obtain.
I expect any public wifi network will be locked down so the only things you can do on it are browse the web and a few other well defined actions. Last thing they would want is people leeching bandwidth to download movies, voip, or anything else of that nature. So I bet VPN is one of the first things they disable. Unless you can tunnel a VPN over http you probably won't get far. Even then I expect they put bandwidth caps on http traffic to stop or at least disrupt people trying to do that.
Personally I think if people want social media and don't want it "mined" then they're should use something like Diaspora. It's basically Facebook and Twitter mashed together with a federated model like Jabber. Individuals or groups can run their own "pods" which can interact with and expose data which is visible to other pods in the network. So if you don't trust joindiaspora.com with your data you can run your own but still be part of the system. It would be nice if someone bundled up Diaspora to be a "pod in a box" for companies, groups and individuals to install with a few clicks. It would hasten uptake considerably I feel.
I wonder how many bugs, worms, rodents, amphibians and assorted other animals are killed when some farmer runs a combine or plough over a field during the course of a year.
The allies were seriously contemplating a mainland invasion of Japan and the war was most certainly not over for either side. The casualties would have run into millions and Japan would have been left a wasteland, before being partitioned into Russian and US zones since Russia would likely have invaded too. So yes Japan and the allies benefited from a shortened war. I'm sure it didn't seem that way to Japan at the time or to the people unfortunate enough to die from the blasts but that's the reality of it.
From what I've seen in history, only democracies nuke civilians.
And it's a good job they did too. For practically everyone including Japan.
And subsequent iterations of Firefox have simply improved the experience.
I also wonder if this entity will be as censorious as some sites which were prominently supporting OWS such as BoingBoing. And if not, how is this site (robo)moderated, how does it withstand DDOS attacks and all the other crap that commercial sites have spent years developing sophisticated defences against. And what's the point again?