Except for the little fact that the "IP" probably isn't theirs. While there may be trademark violations, both with the VID, and some (but not all) chips having counterfeit labeling, there isn't much else. Sure, they're register compatible (no problem there, that's just like a software API), and illicitly using the FTDI drivers, but the silicon itself generally contains no FTDI IP. And there is no way for the driver to see what is engraved on the chip, just that it isn't 100% bug-compatible.
However, I expect to see this cause some changes in the clone chips. The most obvious one is "don't allow the PID to be changed to zero". Or they may move to cloning another type of chip other than FTDI and Prolific. All it takes is for one smart guy in China to come up with a new design, and suddenly everyone is using it.
This already happens more or less with pay-at-the-pump gas. Do you want a car wash? (Y/N) Do you want the special engine cleaning additive? [PLAY JINGLE] (Y/N) Do you want a receipt? (Y/N) (That last one is always fun when you DO want the receipt, but have been hitting "no" to all the stupid upsell options.)
The only thing "premium" about them is their insistence on using milled aluminum for their chassis, but even that comes at a huge price- most of the systems aren't very structurally sound
I'm guessing you've never had the pleasure of repairing an "aluminum"-era MBP? The case design that started back in the PPC era was flimsy as shit. Compared to that, the current models are built like tanks. And I also had a Pismo-era PowerBook, which was flimsier than that.
One major problem was that the optical drive would get out of alignment with the slot in front, and it would be unable to eject discs. Another problem was that the latch wouldn't close because dust or something clogged the little latch thingies. And then there was the surface treatment of the aluminum. There was such a wonderful pattern of pitting where the palms of my hands rested on the case. I had one PPC and two Intel of those, and they were all bad in the same way. I've had a unibody MBP for over two years now (the last of the 17" models, which I promptly downgraded to 10.6, and that isn't easy), and it's just fine, no pitting. And the lid never fails to close. The only place where the case is deformed is over the expresscard slot, which you can tell is a bit sagged if you run your finger along the edge.
I've also fixed my cousin's MBP (I think it's a 2011 15"), which somehow got dropped on the corner with the battery, so a couple of the battery cells popped up. I was able to replace it with a 3rd-party battery and a new hard drive (to replace the aging hard drive that had started to fail, the reason he needed me to fix it). Still built like a tank compared to the older aluminum generation.
But I'll agree with you about the current iMac generation. Not that I would touch an iMac (I always want a separate monitor with a desktop system), but holy crap the display is actually less replaceable than a laptop.
The "specs" on RAM limits usually under-represent the maximum possible. The reason is that when the specs are released, the chip sizes needed for that maximum likely do not exist, and Apple doesn't want to advertise something it can't test. If you check the lowendmac page (assuming I found the right one), it says there's a 16GB limit.
I vaguely recall that the reason Apple is pretty strict about this is because of the Mac SE/30, which didn't have 32-bit clean ROMs, limiting it to 8MB. The physical limitation was 32MB with 4MB simms, or 128MB with the very rare 16MB simms. (16MB simms were very expensive when new, the most memory you can put on a 30-pin simm, and only came out right before everyone switched to dimms.) They bought out the Mode32 product from Connectix, rather than produce a new ROM module, to avoid a class-action lawsuit. (FWIW, you can install a Mac IIfx ROM into an SE/30, removing this limit. If you ever find a IIfx, putting its ROM in an SE/30 is a better idea than trying to upgrade IIfx's unusual RAM.)
And I'm in northwest Austin near 183/620, so I share your pain. There's quite a few tech companies along Parmer in general. The dots on the map (with a few exceptions that may be the "special" places they wired like libraries, etc.) stop at 38th and Mopac, except for the Mueller area. I'm actually kind of surprised how they put so many blue dots east of 35, but then I guess the hipsters have been gentrifying the poor out of the east side lately. Lots of blue dots in downtown, too.
Since Google does a "fiberhood" at a time, it may be behind your house, but not behind every house in your neighborhood. Also, if the fiber is a backbone, you don't connect a customer to that. You can't just stick a drop in the middle of a fiber cable. As I understand it, they put priority on neighborhoods with the highest demand and the lowest construction issues.
Also, if you don't get it when they come around, they aren't bringing the backhoe back when you change your mind later. I think it's worth it to pay $300 for them to wire up your house. By the time they get to my house, I'll probably have moved back to San Antonio and be renting it out, and I'd pay the $300 just to be sure it gets installed to the house.
Cherry picking. Partly they're going for neighborhoods with higher anticipated demand (and higher anticipated density), partly they're going for neighborhoods with physically easier installs. Just remember that when they choose your neighborhood (aka "fiberhood"), if you don't get the install done then, you're pretty much fucked until they pick your neighborhood for again a second chance. My understanding is they generally won't go back for the stragglers and wafflers who didn't sign up when they were doing that neighborhood, at least not if it means a backhoe roll would be involved.
So he didn't just want to be on the bleeding edge, he also wanted to be the first guinea pig to do it with Canadian plastic money? Sounds like we have a diligent idiot here.
The primary method is to send a browser user agent string that starts with "() { : ; } ; " and try to run a stupid (as in stupid people never remove them out of default installs) CGI script. Then when the shell gets invoked (either for a shell script CGI, or a dumbass system() call from another language CGI), the bug causes bash to execute whatever is on the end of the user agent string, before doing anything else. This is because the cgi-bin module takes all the various parameters of the HTTP request and sticks them into environment variables, and the bug executes environment variables before doing what it's been called up to do.
The easiest thing to do whether or not you can get a patched bash yet is to disable Apache's cgi-bin module.
But I do stream/download them, from the OTA signal. And (usually) in the maximum quality that you can get them (almost 6GB per hour). Most ISPs would have a shit fit if you tried to download.ts files all the time. And I'm not sure how you expect to watch HD with 5.1 audio on a shitty smartphone.
Undoubtedly you're the same lot who prefers Elementary starring Johnny Lee Miller and Lucy Lu, rather than The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes starring Jeremy Brett and David Burke.
You can add that new show "Forever" to the list. The main character and female sidekick are almost clones of JLM and LL's characters, with the "two hundred year old man" trope added in. I didn't want to like it, but added a record rule for it before the first episode ended. And I'll admit to liking the first season of Elementary, but the second season has languished in my DVR. It does have one major advantage over the BBC Holmes in that I actually get episodes of it every week as opposed to needing cable or waiting until PBS gets around to showing a few.
The same lot who prefer the modern Hawaii Five-O to the original 1970s series starring Jack Lord
I literally can not watch new Five-O. I tried a couple of times, but it's way too edgy and angsty.
Saturday morning was killed by cable, but the DVR will be the nail in the coffin. Unless maybe you ran a house-wide DVR server thingy that could embargo episodes one per week until after a specific time (which could still allow for pausing and backing up to see something again). This would of course have to be of old-but-good shows that you can't get firehosed five days a week. And not just Saturday morning, you could do this with various prime-time blockbusters of the past to show them on weekday evenings.
And waiting a week for a new episode of animation isn't completely dead, it's just gone underground to the people watching new episodes of anime from Japan. Yesterday morning I watched a live (untranslated) stream of the new episode of Log Horizon with a 4chan thread. (Then I watched the sub a couple of hours later when the usual suspects came through.) There's twenty-four more weeks of waiting to see what happens next week. Ironically, by the time the sub is ready in the US, it's... Saturday morning!
Never mind that Speedy Gonzales "remained a popular character in Latin America. The Hispanic-American rights organization League of United Latin American Citizens called Speedy a 'cultural icon'". It was the corporate gringos who decided that it was offensive, and their white guilt made them sweep Speedy under the rug.
Sports is (and always has been) an afternoon thing on Saturday. Well after 11am anyhow in the Central time zone, which I guess might mean a 9am game in Pacific.
Looking back at my MythTV's harvested OTA guide info, I noticed that "Good (Morning|Day) ($CITY|America)" seems to be one of the shows that takes up a lot of Saturday morning time slots. All four major networks and their local affiliates have some kind of morning newsy block starting at 6am, followed by the obligatory E/I block. It's one of those things that the more desirable demographics will turn on and leave on as they go around the house, and the commercials will play with nobody nearby to hit the mute button.
Then move to the border near a major US city* and get an ATSC television. I'm pretty sure the CRTC hasn't gone quite as far as jamming US broadcast TV.
*That's a joke, son, you're supposed to laugh. I know that's basically only Vancouver and the Toronto/London areas.
And then there was the Sid & Marty Krofft stuff. Particularly the acid-trip-mascot-costume stuff like H.R. Pufinstuff (which I was surprised to recently find out was a recycled mascot from the San Antonio Hemisfair world's fair).
But on the other hand, they did do Land of the Lost, which seemed to have some sort of back-story behind those crystal panels, but I was never able to watch it regularly enough to figure it out. All I remember is the girl would always do something stupid, get lost and/or almost killed, but still somehow solve the plot of the week. Someday I need to find and watch that show properly. Those sleestak hisses were both stupid and cool, and so were their costumes, about on the level of Doctor Who stuff of its day (as if we would have known about Doctor Who back then).
I think you should put "educational" in scare quotes. Some of the crap that gets the E/I tag (aka HEY LOOK WE'RE SHOWING THAT EDUCATIONAL STUFF, SEE?) is hard to call either educational or instructional. Especially those "teens do teen things at school" sitcom shows (well "sit" anyhow, not much comedy). Mostly it's just three hours of "wildlife" (aka look at these random cute and token non-cute animals) shows. Which are also shoehorned onto the weather sub-channels on Sunday mornings. One of the channels here plays something called "Tomorrow Today" which seems to be some sort of Australian science snippets show that I was unable to trace the origins of. (and it's produced in 4:3 too) But at least it's showing actual science-y stuff, and not teens-being-teens. (TOOOOOTALLY TEEN!)
Another part of the downfall was when it was outlawed to advertise toys along with the show that those toys were based on, when a bunch of soccer moms got in a snit about that. That certainly reduced the interest in creating more than a few shows. Meanwhile, in Japan, that certainly hasn't hurt the chirlrrrrrren.
And we must also not forget the after-school block that was big in the '90s. I guess those got killed off by courtroom shows, adult talk shows, and celebritard gossip shows, because that's what I see when looking back to last Friday afternoon in my MythTV schedule (which was harvested from the actual OTA guide info).
But really, I'm going to have to say that pervasive cable TV and cable-only networks in the US was what really happened. Why get up early Saturday morning (or rush home after school) for your toons, when there are multiple channels showing them 24/7?
Slashdot Mirror
Except for the little fact that the "IP" probably isn't theirs. While there may be trademark violations, both with the VID, and some (but not all) chips having counterfeit labeling, there isn't much else. Sure, they're register compatible (no problem there, that's just like a software API), and illicitly using the FTDI drivers, but the silicon itself generally contains no FTDI IP. And there is no way for the driver to see what is engraved on the chip, just that it isn't 100% bug-compatible.
However, I expect to see this cause some changes in the clone chips. The most obvious one is "don't allow the PID to be changed to zero". Or they may move to cloning another type of chip other than FTDI and Prolific. All it takes is for one smart guy in China to come up with a new design, and suddenly everyone is using it.
This already happens more or less with pay-at-the-pump gas. Do you want a car wash? (Y/N) Do you want the special engine cleaning additive? [PLAY JINGLE] (Y/N) Do you want a receipt? (Y/N) (That last one is always fun when you DO want the receipt, but have been hitting "no" to all the stupid upsell options.)
The only thing "premium" about them is their insistence on using milled aluminum for their chassis, but even that comes at a huge price- most of the systems aren't very structurally sound
I'm guessing you've never had the pleasure of repairing an "aluminum"-era MBP? The case design that started back in the PPC era was flimsy as shit. Compared to that, the current models are built like tanks. And I also had a Pismo-era PowerBook, which was flimsier than that.
One major problem was that the optical drive would get out of alignment with the slot in front, and it would be unable to eject discs. Another problem was that the latch wouldn't close because dust or something clogged the little latch thingies. And then there was the surface treatment of the aluminum. There was such a wonderful pattern of pitting where the palms of my hands rested on the case. I had one PPC and two Intel of those, and they were all bad in the same way. I've had a unibody MBP for over two years now (the last of the 17" models, which I promptly downgraded to 10.6, and that isn't easy), and it's just fine, no pitting. And the lid never fails to close. The only place where the case is deformed is over the expresscard slot, which you can tell is a bit sagged if you run your finger along the edge.
I've also fixed my cousin's MBP (I think it's a 2011 15"), which somehow got dropped on the corner with the battery, so a couple of the battery cells popped up. I was able to replace it with a 3rd-party battery and a new hard drive (to replace the aging hard drive that had started to fail, the reason he needed me to fix it). Still built like a tank compared to the older aluminum generation.
But I'll agree with you about the current iMac generation. Not that I would touch an iMac (I always want a separate monitor with a desktop system), but holy crap the display is actually less replaceable than a laptop.
The "specs" on RAM limits usually under-represent the maximum possible. The reason is that when the specs are released, the chip sizes needed for that maximum likely do not exist, and Apple doesn't want to advertise something it can't test. If you check the lowendmac page (assuming I found the right one), it says there's a 16GB limit.
I vaguely recall that the reason Apple is pretty strict about this is because of the Mac SE/30, which didn't have 32-bit clean ROMs, limiting it to 8MB. The physical limitation was 32MB with 4MB simms, or 128MB with the very rare 16MB simms. (16MB simms were very expensive when new, the most memory you can put on a 30-pin simm, and only came out right before everyone switched to dimms.) They bought out the Mode32 product from Connectix, rather than produce a new ROM module, to avoid a class-action lawsuit. (FWIW, you can install a Mac IIfx ROM into an SE/30, removing this limit. If you ever find a IIfx, putting its ROM in an SE/30 is a better idea than trying to upgrade IIfx's unusual RAM.)
But... but... but... you can't get Macs for $100 at the place that sells used off-lease Dells!
The best way to counteract the Slashdot Effect is to do what Slashdot did and make a horribly unusable beta.
And I'm in northwest Austin near 183/620, so I share your pain. There's quite a few tech companies along Parmer in general. The dots on the map (with a few exceptions that may be the "special" places they wired like libraries, etc.) stop at 38th and Mopac, except for the Mueller area. I'm actually kind of surprised how they put so many blue dots east of 35, but then I guess the hipsters have been gentrifying the poor out of the east side lately. Lots of blue dots in downtown, too.
Since Google does a "fiberhood" at a time, it may be behind your house, but not behind every house in your neighborhood. Also, if the fiber is a backbone, you don't connect a customer to that. You can't just stick a drop in the middle of a fiber cable. As I understand it, they put priority on neighborhoods with the highest demand and the lowest construction issues.
Also, if you don't get it when they come around, they aren't bringing the backhoe back when you change your mind later. I think it's worth it to pay $300 for them to wire up your house. By the time they get to my house, I'll probably have moved back to San Antonio and be renting it out, and I'd pay the $300 just to be sure it gets installed to the house.
Cherry picking. Partly they're going for neighborhoods with higher anticipated demand (and higher anticipated density), partly they're going for neighborhoods with physically easier installs. Just remember that when they choose your neighborhood (aka "fiberhood"), if you don't get the install done then, you're pretty much fucked until they pick your neighborhood for again a second chance. My understanding is they generally won't go back for the stragglers and wafflers who didn't sign up when they were doing that neighborhood, at least not if it means a backhoe roll would be involved.
So he didn't just want to be on the bleeding edge, he also wanted to be the first guinea pig to do it with Canadian plastic money? Sounds like we have a diligent idiot here.
let's replace it all with emacs
The primary method is to send a browser user agent string that starts with "() { : ; } ; " and try to run a stupid (as in stupid people never remove them out of default installs) CGI script. Then when the shell gets invoked (either for a shell script CGI, or a dumbass system() call from another language CGI), the bug causes bash to execute whatever is on the end of the user agent string, before doing anything else. This is because the cgi-bin module takes all the various parameters of the HTTP request and sticks them into environment variables, and the bug executes environment variables before doing what it's been called up to do.
The easiest thing to do whether or not you can get a patched bash yet is to disable Apache's cgi-bin module.
But I do stream/download them, from the OTA signal. And (usually) in the maximum quality that you can get them (almost 6GB per hour). Most ISPs would have a shit fit if you tried to download .ts files all the time. And I'm not sure how you expect to watch HD with 5.1 audio on a shitty smartphone.
I know you're halfway trolling, but...
Undoubtedly you're the same lot who prefers Elementary starring Johnny Lee Miller and Lucy Lu, rather than The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes starring Jeremy Brett and David Burke.
You can add that new show "Forever" to the list. The main character and female sidekick are almost clones of JLM and LL's characters, with the "two hundred year old man" trope added in. I didn't want to like it, but added a record rule for it before the first episode ended. And I'll admit to liking the first season of Elementary, but the second season has languished in my DVR. It does have one major advantage over the BBC Holmes in that I actually get episodes of it every week as opposed to needing cable or waiting until PBS gets around to showing a few.
The same lot who prefer the modern Hawaii Five-O to the original 1970s series starring Jack Lord
I literally can not watch new Five-O. I tried a couple of times, but it's way too edgy and angsty.
Saturday morning was killed by cable, but the DVR will be the nail in the coffin. Unless maybe you ran a house-wide DVR server thingy that could embargo episodes one per week until after a specific time (which could still allow for pausing and backing up to see something again). This would of course have to be of old-but-good shows that you can't get firehosed five days a week. And not just Saturday morning, you could do this with various prime-time blockbusters of the past to show them on weekday evenings.
And waiting a week for a new episode of animation isn't completely dead, it's just gone underground to the people watching new episodes of anime from Japan. Yesterday morning I watched a live (untranslated) stream of the new episode of Log Horizon with a 4chan thread. (Then I watched the sub a couple of hours later when the usual suspects came through.) There's twenty-four more weeks of waiting to see what happens next week. Ironically, by the time the sub is ready in the US, it's... Saturday morning!
Then those stations probably run their E/I on Sunday mornings.
Speedy Gonzales, nope, making fun of Mexicans
Never mind that Speedy Gonzales "remained a popular character in Latin America. The Hispanic-American rights organization League of United Latin American Citizens called Speedy a 'cultural icon'". It was the corporate gringos who decided that it was offensive, and their white guilt made them sweep Speedy under the rug.
Sports is (and always has been) an afternoon thing on Saturday. Well after 11am anyhow in the Central time zone, which I guess might mean a 9am game in Pacific.
Looking back at my MythTV's harvested OTA guide info, I noticed that "Good (Morning|Day) ($CITY|America)" seems to be one of the shows that takes up a lot of Saturday morning time slots. All four major networks and their local affiliates have some kind of morning newsy block starting at 6am, followed by the obligatory E/I block. It's one of those things that the more desirable demographics will turn on and leave on as they go around the house, and the commercials will play with nobody nearby to hit the mute button.
Then move to the border near a major US city* and get an ATSC television. I'm pretty sure the CRTC hasn't gone quite as far as jamming US broadcast TV.
*That's a joke, son, you're supposed to laugh. I know that's basically only Vancouver and the Toronto/London areas.
And Bat-Mite.
Apologies to anyone who had happily forgotten about that little runt for years. But the "scrappy sidekick" trope was never not stupid.
And then there was the Sid & Marty Krofft stuff. Particularly the acid-trip-mascot-costume stuff like H.R. Pufinstuff (which I was surprised to recently find out was a recycled mascot from the San Antonio Hemisfair world's fair).
But on the other hand, they did do Land of the Lost, which seemed to have some sort of back-story behind those crystal panels, but I was never able to watch it regularly enough to figure it out. All I remember is the girl would always do something stupid, get lost and/or almost killed, but still somehow solve the plot of the week. Someday I need to find and watch that show properly. Those sleestak hisses were both stupid and cool, and so were their costumes, about on the level of Doctor Who stuff of its day (as if we would have known about Doctor Who back then).
I think you should put "educational" in scare quotes. Some of the crap that gets the E/I tag (aka HEY LOOK WE'RE SHOWING THAT EDUCATIONAL STUFF, SEE?) is hard to call either educational or instructional. Especially those "teens do teen things at school" sitcom shows (well "sit" anyhow, not much comedy). Mostly it's just three hours of "wildlife" (aka look at these random cute and token non-cute animals) shows. Which are also shoehorned onto the weather sub-channels on Sunday mornings. One of the channels here plays something called "Tomorrow Today" which seems to be some sort of Australian science snippets show that I was unable to trace the origins of. (and it's produced in 4:3 too) But at least it's showing actual science-y stuff, and not teens-being-teens. (TOOOOOTALLY TEEN!)
Another part of the downfall was when it was outlawed to advertise toys along with the show that those toys were based on, when a bunch of soccer moms got in a snit about that. That certainly reduced the interest in creating more than a few shows. Meanwhile, in Japan, that certainly hasn't hurt the chirlrrrrrren.
And we must also not forget the after-school block that was big in the '90s. I guess those got killed off by courtroom shows, adult talk shows, and celebritard gossip shows, because that's what I see when looking back to last Friday afternoon in my MythTV schedule (which was harvested from the actual OTA guide info).
But really, I'm going to have to say that pervasive cable TV and cable-only networks in the US was what really happened. Why get up early Saturday morning (or rush home after school) for your toons, when there are multiple channels showing them 24/7?
as it was a shitty OS
It was a pretty damn good OS... for the 1980s. When it was new, PCs were still using MS-DOS 2.x or so.
Yep, time for Apple to go to eleven. And as we all know, that's one louder than ten.