Only because 1. its input device is such (buttons not multitouch), and 2. it's cryptographically locked down to be such. There was no public $99/year developer program for the PSP like there is for the Xbox 360 and iOS devices. But neither the input device nor developer selectivity is relevant to graphical output. The PSP and the iPhone 3GS both have screen resolutions close to 480x300 pixels. Can you demonstrate a difference in maximum graphical complexity between the 3GS and the PSP?
The cryptographical lockdown would be a part of what I'm saying. What I was driving at is that on most devices apart from PCs, and certainly on any mobile device, there needs to be a sort of trade-off between graphics chip and CPU, therefore graphical output and general-purpose processing power. As both increase in power and complexity, their power requirements and thermal output increases, and likely not linearly. This means that making both of them powerful could possibly make my Nexus S outperform a current PC on benchmarks, but it would likely do so at the cost of having a ten-minute battery life and giving me a second-third degree burn on my leg. PCs can have the best of both worlds, as they can utilize practically unlimited power and heat dissipation is limited only by how fast the interface between silicon and LOX can conduct the heat away from the chip. Gaming consoles are in a unique position, being able to utilize as much power as they want, but having limited heat dissipation. Therefore, they too necessitate a trade-off of some kind regarding the choice between the complexity of the graphics chip and the CPU, but the leeway is much greater than on a mobile device. Hence using Xbox and PS3 as a platform for custom OS-es. But fundamentally, they need to pick an area of focus: general computing or graphics. This is why I termed these 'specialized'.
As for the iPhone/Pod: case in point. I refuse to go smaller than my 15.7" laptop, much less a palm-sized phone screen, regardless its resolution.
That's a rather good analogy, but with a significant flaw: states know the size of other armies almost exactly (satellite imagery allows them to discern the housing capacities of bases, and lets them detect aircraft, armor, navy, etc. from orbit, or at least a close approximation of their number, and possibly even type, armaments, defenses, etc. Plus, much of that information is public or obtainable, since it's private corporations that manufacture these units), while the number and type of exploitable vulnerabilities your opponent has is unknown, otherwise you would have patched that vulnerability, and it would no longer be exploitable.
I'd say that cyberwarfare is a sort of 'supplementary warfare', designed to shorten a war and lessen casualties by causing enough confusion and chaos that the enemy can't mount an effective defense and is forced to surrender. I'm not sure it has even a remote equivalent in terms of conventional warfare, other than SIGINT or electronic warfare, which are anything but conventional. Oh, and just saying: running Reaver will never make anyone into an enemy combatant, there's a specific set of criteria to be fulfilled. This is why the Taliban and al-Quaeda terrorists are 'free game': they are not combatants, but simple criminals, and as such, the Geneva Conventions don't apply. If soldiers catch one, and nobody's around... well, sucks to be that guy because shooting him dead won't be a crime.
The same as pouring sugar into gasoline tanks would be.
Your saboteur just "poured sugar" into the tank of every HMVV, jeep, tank, and vehicle on the eve of your invasion on the base nearest to your entry point. The defender is going to have a mighty hard time forming an effective defense with no mechanized infantry and armor. Even harder if the power grid and water pumps suddenly go down in a major city that necessitates the Army's assistance in supplying and policing the area (most countries armies double as disaster relief too). Oh, and factor in that the communication relays are suddenly transmitting garbage and white noise. To add insult to injury, you now have the blueprints of their newest tanks, so even if they manage to clean out the turbines and get them running again, your gunners will know exactly where to shoot to take them out in one hit, and you know exactly how long their air superiority fighters can stay in the air, how high they can climb how fast, etc. And for a final "Fuck you", your hackers broke into the enemy's central bank's network, along with a few other major banks in his country, and 'diverted' most of the country's funds, including all the foreign currency stockpiled on the central bank's accounts, to you a day or two after the first shot rang out, so the state as a whole is left penniless and unable to pay its army.
As a wise man once said, "Knowing is half the battle". Infrastructure is good 25% or more, so you're left with 25% at most that constitutes military might. Far fewer casualties on your side, and possibly fewer on the target side as well if the leaders recognize early on that they have lost the war before the first shot was fired (since they can't mount a proper defense due to the chaos and lack of funds). Cyberwarfare can certainly kill, but it need not do so, for the objective is to cripple the target so the army encounters less resistance.
The PSP is a dedicated gaming console, isn't it? Sure, it has some browsing capability, but based on what I've seen, that took a backseat to gaming, so it's to be expected that specialized hardware/software outperforms generalized hardware/software in its own field. On the other hand, let's try watching a movie on a PSP without our eyes watering from the tiny screen. Sure, we can, but I'd rather not...
Personally, I'd rather have a more powerful laptop that doesn't need to leverage a cloud service, and provide connectivity via tethering my phone. That way I can have a more capable laptop to do the occasional heavy lifting when mobile (I've had to use my laptop recently to crack a PDF password (luckily just a three numeric characters) for a friend of mine while I was away from home in the university library), and throttle back the CPU to conserve power for a four-hour uptime (projected) when all I want to do is watch a movie or play a light game.
Not necessarily so. Granted, tablets are almost useless for generating content, except for taking quick notes and such, but they are rather useful for watching a movie on the road, reading an ebook, or giving a presentation to a client. Laptops are too bulky to use comfortably when mobile, and PCs are immobile to start with.
Tablets will get their own clientele, and will never kill off laptop/PC sales, simply because they can't get powerful enough. Each class of devices has its pros and cons, and therefore, their own market segment.
PC-s are the heavy artillery of computing: extremely powerful, but immobile. Quad-core graphics chips or no, you probably won't see someone rendering 3D models on a tablet, simply because they are not powerful enough to do what a PC's borbdingnagian graphics cards and n-core CPUs can do in a flash. Laptops are a sort of heavy in-betweeners: increasingly mobile but ultimately constrained by their batteries and trading processing power for uptime, increasingly powerful, but unable to match PCs due to power, heat dissipation and other constraints. They can be used for heavy lifting on the go, but should only be used thus if no better options are available. Tablets are the light in-betweeners: mainly fit for viewing content, not for creating it, they are ideal for sales people who can present media-rich demos to their clients, and top managers, who can use them to tie together various information sources on the go to make their decisions. Smartphones are the Swiss army knives: they can do anything in a pinch, but if there's a specialized tool, better use that. They are highly mobile computing platforms, almost exclusively for viewing content due to their small screens not leaving room for a virtual keyboard, but due to their always-on Internet connections, they can be used to look up information and communicate with other systems/devices on the go.
I expect that soon, as the novelty of the iPad and other tablets wears off, and youngsters recognize that these devices are not the end-all to their computing (playing Angry Birds) problems, each platform will find their own user strata, with laptops and smartphones once again becoming the most prolific, with PCs taking sort of a back row, and tablets being mainly relegated to consumption roles instead of general purpose use or content generation.
If that's the one about the possible compromise of the GCC compiler, I did. And it mirrors my point perfectly: you can't be sure there's no backdoor, unless you make it yourself from the ground up, and if that's not possible, just trust the chain.
If it's off-the-shelf it's not secure. You can't know that the chip factory isn't compromised, unless you inspect it
By the same logic, no product that you did not develop, including designing the CPU and any other chips, and fabricate yourself, down to the last individual resistor and diode, is secure. Which is patently absurd, since by this logic, any sort of secure device would be nigh-unaffordable, since you'd need to set up the entire fabrication chain to build just one prototype, requiring an absurd amount of capital. A notion highlighted by the recent story on how Chinese-fabbed US military chips apparently contain a backdoor on the hardware.
I never used Dropbox, so I assumed when people were talking about encryption that Dropbox automatically encrypts uploaded data, either with a self-supplied key or with one generated from your account password, and decrypts it for you upon later download. Which would be a potential data security breach. But uploading an already-encrypted file should be safe, since only the cyphertext may be stolen, and current encryption schemes can guarantee unbreakable security (unbreakable by the original definition of indechiffrable, that is unable to be read by an unauthorized party before its significance expires).
Um, my knowledge of encryption may be a little rusty. Don't you send the public key to Dropbox to have them encrypt the data you upload, and later use the private key decrypt it?
When using VPN, you're likely in control of both endpoints. With Dropbox, you're in control of your end, but you can't say the same about Dropbox's end, so they may potentially do anything to your data. [tinfoil=1] Like discard the key, act like they encrypted the data, and return a bogus success message, keeping your data in the clear.[tinfoil=0]
But hey, use what you like, just don't make stuff up to justify it
Hey, I listed completely, totally subjective points (IMHO). Maybe I didn't tag them as "In my opinion", but they are. Like I said, I like Gmail too, for its strong integration mainly, but I use Yahoo because I find it better for me.
You can detach the "compose mail" dialog to a separate window. You can make as many windows as you wish (or until you window manager/browser crashes.)
And if I want all my mail tabs in one window/tab, not every mail in a new tab? And labels are still displayed in the main inbox, while Yahoo folders take the message out of the root folder, so in the inbox, I only see unsorted messages. Granted, those total some 400 for me, but my point still stands, since other folders run into the 10,000s. All those messages in Gmail would make browsing almost impossible, unless I used the search box, which could strip context (one of my friends has an email provider who strips out the reply, so Gmail can't thread the messages like with others).
I like Google as much as the next guy, but for me, personally, Yahoo Mail is a better choice. I stand by my point that Gmail's strongest feature is the Android/Google integration (and maybe the puritan default UI), but in everything else, Yahoo has things down pat.
I wouldn't say Yahoo Mail is behind others. I have a Yahoo address, and I'm very pleased with the interface and the service, more so than with Gmail. They offer 500 fully functional disposable email addresses for SPAM decoys, unlimited storage space (not just very large and increasing, like in Gmail), keyboard shortcuts (something Gmail doesn't support at all) and tabs on the interface, so I can have several messages composing at once (again, no such thing in Gmail), and folders (very important for me, very useful, and not present at all in Gmail). And, for some reason, maybe because I've had my address since ~1995, I've received a free upgrade to Mail Plus, so I have very few reasons to complain.:)
Certainly, there are some quirks, such as only counting unread messages in the root folder in the unread total, but I've reported that, and will report it again. Plus, it's not such a bad thing that I can't live without it...
If anything, Yahoo is still the best web-based email service out there, outshining Gmail, which has Android integration on its side to make up for its shortcomings in the mail section.
Yes, he could. But it wouldn't mean anything, since the Outer Space Treaty has been observed so long (even if only out of lack of interest) that it has passed into customary law, and as a UN-treaty, it enjoys supremacy over domestic law of UN members. Now, I haven't seen the movie, so I don't know where the Dictator reigns, but if it's a UN country, it will observe the treaty or face the sanctions (and wrath) of the Assembly and the Security Council, and if it isn't, he won't be able to do jack shit without might, and the UNSC will have a few words to say about that.
You do realize that under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, no sovereign nation may claim extraterrestrial territories, right? This includes the Moon, asteroids, and other celestial bodies. The whole of outer space is considered the "common domain of mankind", and therefore must be used for the common good and betterment of humanity.
So no, the US won't be charging anything or evicting anyone...
You know, as long as the devices in one hospital keep the same time, it doesn't really matter if that time is off by any amount. The important thing is to have all clocks in one building showing the same time, so that the correct elapsed time can be told with just a quick glance. In a medical context, that's usually more important than the current local time.
That was one affair. Europe also lost spacecraft (Beagle Mars probe), and so did the US (Deep Space 2). Space exploration and rocketry is, by its very nature, a risky and failure-prone endeavour, hence the low and reluctant investment in the field.
The current space exploration roadmap features the Moon as well, but in two different scenarios, one in which it's the first stop after LEO, and one in which we go to the asteroid fields first, then to the Moon. Since the roadmap is spearheaded by NASA, there may actually be a chance of this, provided the next president doesn't axe the budget further, since the roadmap deadlines are approaching (I seem to remember 2020 for a Moon/asteroid base, depending on the path chosen, but I may be wrong).
There's not a lot of certification to be done, to be brutally honest. In fact, none, it's not a medical device as such, since it's not used to actually operate on the patient. As for conking out, the surgeon should still be able to complete the procedure, or they may fall back to using assistants in the heat of the moment. Those are always available...
Of course, I'm only speaking as a layperson regarding the certification. But that's what would be logical, just spray the thing with a fast-evaporating disinfectant, and be done with it, it doesn't have to deal with the patient or the surgeon directly anyway...
Take a CAT-scan, for example. They are done in 3D right away, so one could have a high-resolution scan of the affected area, and look at it on the monitor/over the surgical site (if we look ahead and imagine a holographic interface to boot, because why not), then take hold of the model with their off hand, and rotate it to look at it from different angles by rotating his/her hand, while the dominant hand keeps working, say, by holding a clamp. That seems very useful to me.
To be honest, I've been waiting for this since day one. I'm even puzzled why Microsoft didn't release this to the industry world before the gaming world, since it has such potential in other areas too, especially if we can make the rest of the Stark Industries light and magic happen (reliable voice recognition and free-space three-dimensional holographic projection).
That way, surgeons (to stick with the article's example) would be able to view the data anywhere over the surgical site, architects and engineers would be able to manipulate models in real-time 3D view naturally, which would also enhance presentation to their clients, not just the design workflow.
K53TA, bought it last summer, and works perfectly, has a nice integrated numpad, almost five hours of battery power, and more processing power than you can shake a stick at with its AMD A4/A6 APU + Radeon HD6650M. The 15,7" screen offers plenty of real estate for business work and enough for most games even, looks clear and visible even in sunlight, and eats up surprisingly little power while remaining visible when dimmed back. Also looks quite professional with the dark brown housing, which is ribbed on all surfaces, so fingerprints don't show up either, unlike on glossy casings. Ports are in kind of a short supply though: 1xUSB 3.0, 1xUSB 2, 1xD-SUB, 1xHDMI, power on the left side, optical drive and 1xUSB 2.0, audio in-out on the right side, and that's it. And while the brown housing doesn't look half-bad, black might look even more professional, although this particular shade of brown plays some tricks on people's eyes, so they can barely tell the real color.
To be honest, there's a rather large difference between strategy and tactics. Strategy is defined centrally, in broad terms and vague goals; tactics is defined on-the-spot, or near the spot, so to speak, and in defined steps and clear-cut objectives. Tactics is the practice to the theory of strategy. Those who keep saying central planning will never work think of centrally planned tactics, where the general tells the gunner in the field how to move and fire; while those who say it will work think of central planning as strategy, where the general tells the colonel to meet up with him, who tells the lieutenant to secure the path, who tells the sergeant to take the hill, who shouts "Cover fire!" to his corporal, who the looks down his sights, picks his targets, and lets the lead fly. In the end, what happened defined centrally, but how the whole thing played out was not.
Slashdot Mirror
The PSP is a dedicated gaming console, isn't it?
Only because 1. its input device is such (buttons not multitouch), and 2. it's cryptographically locked down to be such. There was no public $99/year developer program for the PSP like there is for the Xbox 360 and iOS devices. But neither the input device nor developer selectivity is relevant to graphical output. The PSP and the iPhone 3GS both have screen resolutions close to 480x300 pixels. Can you demonstrate a difference in maximum graphical complexity between the 3GS and the PSP?
The cryptographical lockdown would be a part of what I'm saying. What I was driving at is that on most devices apart from PCs, and certainly on any mobile device, there needs to be a sort of trade-off between graphics chip and CPU, therefore graphical output and general-purpose processing power.
As both increase in power and complexity, their power requirements and thermal output increases, and likely not linearly. This means that making both of them powerful could possibly make my Nexus S outperform a current PC on benchmarks, but it would likely do so at the cost of having a ten-minute battery life and giving me a second-third degree burn on my leg. PCs can have the best of both worlds, as they can utilize practically unlimited power and heat dissipation is limited only by how fast the interface between silicon and LOX can conduct the heat away from the chip.
Gaming consoles are in a unique position, being able to utilize as much power as they want, but having limited heat dissipation. Therefore, they too necessitate a trade-off of some kind regarding the choice between the complexity of the graphics chip and the CPU, but the leeway is much greater than on a mobile device. Hence using Xbox and PS3 as a platform for custom OS-es. But fundamentally, they need to pick an area of focus: general computing or graphics. This is why I termed these 'specialized'.
As for the iPhone/Pod: case in point. I refuse to go smaller than my 15.7" laptop, much less a palm-sized phone screen, regardless its resolution.
That's a rather good analogy, but with a significant flaw: states know the size of other armies almost exactly (satellite imagery allows them to discern the housing capacities of bases, and lets them detect aircraft, armor, navy, etc. from orbit, or at least a close approximation of their number, and possibly even type, armaments, defenses, etc. Plus, much of that information is public or obtainable, since it's private corporations that manufacture these units), while the number and type of exploitable vulnerabilities your opponent has is unknown, otherwise you would have patched that vulnerability, and it would no longer be exploitable.
I'd say that cyberwarfare is a sort of 'supplementary warfare', designed to shorten a war and lessen casualties by causing enough confusion and chaos that the enemy can't mount an effective defense and is forced to surrender. I'm not sure it has even a remote equivalent in terms of conventional warfare, other than SIGINT or electronic warfare, which are anything but conventional. ... well, sucks to be that guy because shooting him dead won't be a crime.
Oh, and just saying: running Reaver will never make anyone into an enemy combatant, there's a specific set of criteria to be fulfilled. This is why the Taliban and al-Quaeda terrorists are 'free game': they are not combatants, but simple criminals, and as such, the Geneva Conventions don't apply. If soldiers catch one, and nobody's around
The same as pouring sugar into gasoline tanks would be.
Your saboteur just "poured sugar" into the tank of every HMVV, jeep, tank, and vehicle on the eve of your invasion on the base nearest to your entry point. The defender is going to have a mighty hard time forming an effective defense with no mechanized infantry and armor. Even harder if the power grid and water pumps suddenly go down in a major city that necessitates the Army's assistance in supplying and policing the area (most countries armies double as disaster relief too). Oh, and factor in that the communication relays are suddenly transmitting garbage and white noise.
To add insult to injury, you now have the blueprints of their newest tanks, so even if they manage to clean out the turbines and get them running again, your gunners will know exactly where to shoot to take them out in one hit, and you know exactly how long their air superiority fighters can stay in the air, how high they can climb how fast, etc.
And for a final "Fuck you", your hackers broke into the enemy's central bank's network, along with a few other major banks in his country, and 'diverted' most of the country's funds, including all the foreign currency stockpiled on the central bank's accounts, to you a day or two after the first shot rang out, so the state as a whole is left penniless and unable to pay its army.
As a wise man once said, "Knowing is half the battle". Infrastructure is good 25% or more, so you're left with 25% at most that constitutes military might. Far fewer casualties on your side, and possibly fewer on the target side as well if the leaders recognize early on that they have lost the war before the first shot was fired (since they can't mount a proper defense due to the chaos and lack of funds). Cyberwarfare can certainly kill, but it need not do so, for the objective is to cripple the target so the army encounters less resistance.
The PSP is a dedicated gaming console, isn't it? Sure, it has some browsing capability, but based on what I've seen, that took a backseat to gaming, so it's to be expected that specialized hardware/software outperforms generalized hardware/software in its own field.
On the other hand, let's try watching a movie on a PSP without our eyes watering from the tiny screen. Sure, we can, but I'd rather not...
Personally, I'd rather have a more powerful laptop that doesn't need to leverage a cloud service, and provide connectivity via tethering my phone. That way I can have a more capable laptop to do the occasional heavy lifting when mobile (I've had to use my laptop recently to crack a PDF password (luckily just a three numeric characters) for a friend of mine while I was away from home in the university library), and throttle back the CPU to conserve power for a four-hour uptime (projected) when all I want to do is watch a movie or play a light game.
Not necessarily so. Granted, tablets are almost useless for generating content, except for taking quick notes and such, but they are rather useful for watching a movie on the road, reading an ebook, or giving a presentation to a client. Laptops are too bulky to use comfortably when mobile, and PCs are immobile to start with.
Tablets will get their own clientele, and will never kill off laptop/PC sales, simply because they can't get powerful enough. Each class of devices has its pros and cons, and therefore, their own market segment.
PC-s are the heavy artillery of computing: extremely powerful, but immobile. Quad-core graphics chips or no, you probably won't see someone rendering 3D models on a tablet, simply because they are not powerful enough to do what a PC's borbdingnagian graphics cards and n-core CPUs can do in a flash.
Laptops are a sort of heavy in-betweeners: increasingly mobile but ultimately constrained by their batteries and trading processing power for uptime, increasingly powerful, but unable to match PCs due to power, heat dissipation and other constraints. They can be used for heavy lifting on the go, but should only be used thus if no better options are available.
Tablets are the light in-betweeners: mainly fit for viewing content, not for creating it, they are ideal for sales people who can present media-rich demos to their clients, and top managers, who can use them to tie together various information sources on the go to make their decisions.
Smartphones are the Swiss army knives: they can do anything in a pinch, but if there's a specialized tool, better use that. They are highly mobile computing platforms, almost exclusively for viewing content due to their small screens not leaving room for a virtual keyboard, but due to their always-on Internet connections, they can be used to look up information and communicate with other systems/devices on the go.
I expect that soon, as the novelty of the iPad and other tablets wears off, and youngsters recognize that these devices are not the end-all to their computing (playing Angry Birds) problems, each platform will find their own user strata, with laptops and smartphones once again becoming the most prolific, with PCs taking sort of a back row, and tablets being mainly relegated to consumption roles instead of general purpose use or content generation.
If that's the one about the possible compromise of the GCC compiler, I did. And it mirrors my point perfectly: you can't be sure there's no backdoor, unless you make it yourself from the ground up, and if that's not possible, just trust the chain.
If it's off-the-shelf it's not secure. You can't know that the chip factory isn't compromised, unless you inspect it
By the same logic, no product that you did not develop, including designing the CPU and any other chips, and fabricate yourself, down to the last individual resistor and diode, is secure. Which is patently absurd, since by this logic, any sort of secure device would be nigh-unaffordable, since you'd need to set up the entire fabrication chain to build just one prototype, requiring an absurd amount of capital.
A notion highlighted by the recent story on how Chinese-fabbed US military chips apparently contain a backdoor on the hardware.
No fears in that case, then.
I never used Dropbox, so I assumed when people were talking about encryption that Dropbox automatically encrypts uploaded data, either with a self-supplied key or with one generated from your account password, and decrypts it for you upon later download. Which would be a potential data security breach. But uploading an already-encrypted file should be safe, since only the cyphertext may be stolen, and current encryption schemes can guarantee unbreakable security (unbreakable by the original definition of indechiffrable, that is unable to be read by an unauthorized party before its significance expires).
Um, my knowledge of encryption may be a little rusty. Don't you send the public key to Dropbox to have them encrypt the data you upload, and later use the private key decrypt it?
Or am I misunderstanding you?
When using VPN, you're likely in control of both endpoints. With Dropbox, you're in control of your end, but you can't say the same about Dropbox's end, so they may potentially do anything to your data. [tinfoil=1] Like discard the key, act like they encrypted the data, and return a bogus success message, keeping your data in the clear.[tinfoil=0]
So yes, this is a valid, though aggravating move.
But hey, use what you like, just don't make stuff up to justify it
Hey, I listed completely, totally subjective points (IMHO). Maybe I didn't tag them as "In my opinion", but they are. Like I said, I like Gmail too, for its strong integration mainly, but I use Yahoo because I find it better for me.
You can detach the "compose mail" dialog to a separate window. You can make as many windows as you wish (or until you window manager/browser crashes.)
And if I want all my mail tabs in one window/tab, not every mail in a new tab? And labels are still displayed in the main inbox, while Yahoo folders take the message out of the root folder, so in the inbox, I only see unsorted messages. Granted, those total some 400 for me, but my point still stands, since other folders run into the 10,000s. All those messages in Gmail would make browsing almost impossible, unless I used the search box, which could strip context (one of my friends has an email provider who strips out the reply, so Gmail can't thread the messages like with others).
I like Google as much as the next guy, but for me, personally, Yahoo Mail is a better choice. I stand by my point that Gmail's strongest feature is the Android/Google integration (and maybe the puritan default UI), but in everything else, Yahoo has things down pat.
I wouldn't say Yahoo Mail is behind others. I have a Yahoo address, and I'm very pleased with the interface and the service, more so than with Gmail. They offer 500 fully functional disposable email addresses for SPAM decoys, unlimited storage space (not just very large and increasing, like in Gmail), keyboard shortcuts (something Gmail doesn't support at all) and tabs on the interface, so I can have several messages composing at once (again, no such thing in Gmail), and folders (very important for me, very useful, and not present at all in Gmail). :)
And, for some reason, maybe because I've had my address since ~1995, I've received a free upgrade to Mail Plus, so I have very few reasons to complain.
Certainly, there are some quirks, such as only counting unread messages in the root folder in the unread total, but I've reported that, and will report it again. Plus, it's not such a bad thing that I can't live without it...
If anything, Yahoo is still the best web-based email service out there, outshining Gmail, which has Android integration on its side to make up for its shortcomings in the mail section.
Yes, he could. But it wouldn't mean anything, since the Outer Space Treaty has been observed so long (even if only out of lack of interest) that it has passed into customary law, and as a UN-treaty, it enjoys supremacy over domestic law of UN members. Now, I haven't seen the movie, so I don't know where the Dictator reigns, but if it's a UN country, it will observe the treaty or face the sanctions (and wrath) of the Assembly and the Security Council, and if it isn't, he won't be able to do jack shit without might, and the UNSC will have a few words to say about that.
You do realize that under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, no sovereign nation may claim extraterrestrial territories, right? This includes the Moon, asteroids, and other celestial bodies. The whole of outer space is considered the "common domain of mankind", and therefore must be used for the common good and betterment of humanity.
So no, the US won't be charging anything or evicting anyone...
You know, as long as the devices in one hospital keep the same time, it doesn't really matter if that time is off by any amount. The important thing is to have all clocks in one building showing the same time, so that the correct elapsed time can be told with just a quick glance. In a medical context, that's usually more important than the current local time.
That was one affair. Europe also lost spacecraft (Beagle Mars probe), and so did the US (Deep Space 2). Space exploration and rocketry is, by its very nature, a risky and failure-prone endeavour, hence the low and reluctant investment in the field.
The current space exploration roadmap features the Moon as well, but in two different scenarios, one in which it's the first stop after LEO, and one in which we go to the asteroid fields first, then to the Moon. Since the roadmap is spearheaded by NASA, there may actually be a chance of this, provided the next president doesn't axe the budget further, since the roadmap deadlines are approaching (I seem to remember 2020 for a Moon/asteroid base, depending on the path chosen, but I may be wrong).
There's not a lot of certification to be done, to be brutally honest. In fact, none, it's not a medical device as such, since it's not used to actually operate on the patient. As for conking out, the surgeon should still be able to complete the procedure, or they may fall back to using assistants in the heat of the moment. Those are always available...
Of course, I'm only speaking as a layperson regarding the certification. But that's what would be logical, just spray the thing with a fast-evaporating disinfectant, and be done with it, it doesn't have to deal with the patient or the surgeon directly anyway...
I'm not exactly sure...
Take a CAT-scan, for example. They are done in 3D right away, so one could have a high-resolution scan of the affected area, and look at it on the monitor/over the surgical site (if we look ahead and imagine a holographic interface to boot, because why not), then take hold of the model with their off hand, and rotate it to look at it from different angles by rotating his/her hand, while the dominant hand keeps working, say, by holding a clamp. That seems very useful to me.
To be honest, I've been waiting for this since day one. I'm even puzzled why Microsoft didn't release this to the industry world before the gaming world, since it has such potential in other areas too, especially if we can make the rest of the Stark Industries light and magic happen (reliable voice recognition and free-space three-dimensional holographic projection).
That way, surgeons (to stick with the article's example) would be able to view the data anywhere over the surgical site, architects and engineers would be able to manipulate models in real-time 3D view naturally, which would also enhance presentation to their clients, not just the design workflow.
K53TA, bought it last summer, and works perfectly, has a nice integrated numpad, almost five hours of battery power, and more processing power than you can shake a stick at with its AMD A4/A6 APU + Radeon HD6650M. The 15,7" screen offers plenty of real estate for business work and enough for most games even, looks clear and visible even in sunlight, and eats up surprisingly little power while remaining visible when dimmed back. Also looks quite professional with the dark brown housing, which is ribbed on all surfaces, so fingerprints don't show up either, unlike on glossy casings.
Ports are in kind of a short supply though: 1xUSB 3.0, 1xUSB 2, 1xD-SUB, 1xHDMI, power on the left side, optical drive and 1xUSB 2.0, audio in-out on the right side, and that's it. And while the brown housing doesn't look half-bad, black might look even more professional, although this particular shade of brown plays some tricks on people's eyes, so they can barely tell the real color.
The end goal is still defined centrally.
To be honest, there's a rather large difference between strategy and tactics. Strategy is defined centrally, in broad terms and vague goals; tactics is defined on-the-spot, or near the spot, so to speak, and in defined steps and clear-cut objectives. Tactics is the practice to the theory of strategy.
Those who keep saying central planning will never work think of centrally planned tactics, where the general tells the gunner in the field how to move and fire; while those who say it will work think of central planning as strategy, where the general tells the colonel to meet up with him, who tells the lieutenant to secure the path, who tells the sergeant to take the hill, who shouts "Cover fire!" to his corporal, who the looks down his sights, picks his targets, and lets the lead fly. In the end, what happened defined centrally, but how the whole thing played out was not.