Also, the iPhone had a huge advantage simply in that most people already owned phones, and so the iPhone was really just a cool upgrade from what they had, and can cost as little as $99 upfront. For the iPad to succeed, Apple will have to convince people that now they need to go out and buy a tablet computer for ~$500. At best, I see them dominating the eBook-reader and netbook markets, which are in themselves relatively small. Sales will never be on the same order of magnitude as the iPhone.
So, those wanting to or forced to use IE-only websites might also be forced to upgrade from XP. Welcome to the effects of proprietary lock-in.
Forced to upgrade? IE8 works just fine on XP and will continue to do so. It also doesn't have any of the exploits that IE6 has.
Also, how does it differ between proprietary and open source then? If you're using some 10 years old version of your Linux OS and it doesn't support some feature that the newer OS/kernel versions have, you're not going to be able to install programs that require said feature.
By the time MS discontinues support for IE8, XP will be more than a decade old, and Windows 8 will likely be nearing release. Yes, XP was a significant milestone in computing history, but you're already two major OS releases behind, let it go. I was a longtime XP Pro user, but after having upgraded to Win7, going back makes me cringe.
Still, I think I would rather pay $200 for a 3.0 GHz model, and not have the option of a slower model, than to pay $180 for a 2.4 GHz model while enthusiasts pay $900 for the 3.0 GHz model.
The pricing is part of the product strategy. If Intel could sell Core i7 Extreme's for $200 and still make as much money as they do now, they would. But, the reality is that the "enthusiasts" are effectively subsidizing the lower cost that you get for your "standard" model. Otherwise, your model would be more significantly more expensive and less competitive with, say, AMD's offerings.
The prototype is large and bulky, but if this thing could be made smaller, one day we could scan a book or magazine in seconds using a smartphone.
You lost me here. How exactly do I scan an entire book or magazine in seconds using only a smartphone. Somehow I imagine this technology is slightly more than software, unless cameras start coming with super-fast automated page turners attached.
Yes, I do. We've found out that, at the height of the cold war, the launch codes were unset/all-zeros. That's something I sure as hell should have known...
But then it wouldn't be a secret launch code.
On a related note, I would hope that a nuclear launch control would be designed to resist the key being brute-forced. In that case, who would have really guessed that the key was all zeros in fewer than n attempts? I just hope said zeros weren't written on a sticky placed underneath the keyboard.
How about all those malware filled crusty old porn surfing boxes that manage our power grid in their spare time?
I have a feeling not as many of these exist as you think. I'm no power grid expert so maybe I'm just naive, but I can't imagine that engineers are using the exact same machines to control the power grid as they for personal computing. I've been inside control rooms for water processing facilities and, typically, any computer designed to be in direct control of anything vital is built around that specific function. It's not like "Joe from I.T." decided to run the plant's control software on his laptop today.
This is not to say that vulnerabilities don't exist elsewhere, such as these same control systems being attached to internal networks, that then attach to more vulnerable computers.
Quite frankly. While stomach acid might work to some degree, it's absolutely unreliable and we're not even getting to where it gets stuck inside of you and you're going to be unconscious when they retrieve it.
It's not absolutely reliable, but you could definitely do worse. Gastric acid is largely Hydrochloric acid, which reacts readily with metals like lead and copper commonly used in electronics.
That being said, I really wouldn't recommend eating a USB flash drive. It may or may not actually be effective in destroying the data, could require surgery to remove, could add some nice heavy metals to your diet, could get you charged with destruction of evidence, etc. Much easier to just encrypt the data and memorize the key. Encryption won't get you charged with destruction of evidence and you can't (yet) be forced to turn over passwords to assist in your prosecution (5th Amendment).
It seems to me that, if indeed the bug is date-related, this could be tested by simply removing the network connection and changing the date to some arbitrary knwon-functional date (e.g. February 28, 2009). Unless, of course, the bug is causing some irreparable damage/state change.
The problem, however, seems to be with games that require an active network connection even to play single-player. My response to this is: what the hell is the world of videogaming coming to? Just the other day I pulled out a copy of Super Mario Bros. 3, and I can't imagine booting it up to an error screen because a verification server was no longer available to determine that mine was a legitimate copy, or because who would even want to play a game without trophies?!
Honestly, once you get beyond the "cool factor", a $15 TI-30 or equivalent scientific calculator is more than enough to get you through even Calc I. Having a calculator show you the graph of a function can be useful, but is by no means necessary to learn the material in the first place.
I believe that vandalism on Wikipedia can be limited. But would it really be possible to detect all kinds of vandalism?
Without strong AI, the system can only really look for statistical and language patterns for clues on vandalism.
If I replace an entire body section on the Fox News page with "GLENN BECK BLOWS GOATS", I would hope that a vandalism detector would flag this. If, however, I randomly insert the sentence "Glenn Beck has also been accused of inappropriate relations with barnyard animals" into a large section, then automated detection comes down to statistics or one hell of a clever context algorithm.
I'll second that. I'm very accident prone with my phones and I don't need/desire a fancy smartphone. My VX8300 was a tank. I was talking while doing the dishes once and dropped it into the water. Dried it out and it was fine. I ended up replacing it with an AX565 when I switched to Alltel a couple of years ago. Not fancy in the least, but it's been shockingly rugged, for a very non-rugged looking phone.
I once had a cheapo Samsung flip phone. I went out ATV'ing one day and ended up getting stuck in the middle of a particularly notorious mud-hole. While I was trying to get myself and the ATV to dry land it fell out of my jacket and into the muck. About a year later my cousin was doing some work in the area and found the phone under about 6 inches of dirt. I wish I had a cool story here about drying it out and it magically working again... but I don't.
They really have liquid sensors in them? That seems so... Orwellian. Does that not bother anyone else?
I can't quite figure out if this is flamebait, or if I'm just the only person who can't make a connection between liquid sensors in a consumer electronic device and a dystopian police state. If a liquid sensor bothers you so much, I hate to be the one to tell you, but... don't turn your iPhone around... there's even a camera!
So, no, to answer your question: it doesn't seem to bother me a bit.
Watch those Star Trek re-runs more closely, kids. There's a reason why only one person on the bridge has a computer that he can talk to: it'd be cacophonic chaos if everyone were talking at once.
Can you imagine trying to write software that not only accurately recognizes speech, but tries to intelligently follow conversations and wait until you're talking to it, specifically? So, the computer has to (1) only listen to authorized persons, (2) determine if what they're saying is a command. Sometimes in science-fiction, you get commands like "COMPUTER! [Do stuff]." But "computer" is a common noun that comes up in conversation, so it isn't always supposed to initiate commands. And considering the sensitive nature of the things that the computer can control, it seems like until you've got the software perfect, you'd have to get confirmations on commands, i.e. "Are you sure that you want to [do stuff]? Cancel or Allow?" Honestly, at that point, you might as well just carry a keyboard and a holographic command line. It's a hell of a lot cheaper.
And the school will produce their Acceptable Computer Use Policy where all of the above is authorized by the parent or other legal guardian of each student, and transferring the responsibility of any illegal acts upon the student or upon their parent or other legal guardian.
I'm sure that will be the case. However, the typical acceptable use policy is mainly focused on the school's ability to monitor "communications" and activities central to the computer itself. I'd be willing to bet that said policy doesn't do much to protect the school in taking covert pictures in a private location without consent. Furthermore, given that kids were expected to take the laptops home with them, it's not unreasonable to suggest that covert surveillance of the webcam would produce images that, let's just say, aren't legal for possession, even for the school board.
This story really sounds like a case of a school administrator or technology specialist trying to "bust" a student improperly using the laptop or committing some other school-related misdeed. Just like most cases of abuse of authority in schools, except that this particular individual has set the new high water mark for federal laws broken in the process.
That said... the laptops were provided by the school. Just like my employer, I'm sure the school made it clear that use of the laptops would be monitored, non-official use is verboten, etc.
Given that the laptops were assigned to students, I'm sure the school board was smart enough to at least get a standard Acceptable Use Policy, i.e. something to the effect of "communication and use may be monitored, etc". However, having the laptop take discreet pictures without specific consent is far and beyond "monitoring use" and borders on "covert surveillance of a private dwelling".
It's also easy to remove with any modern partition editor.
I've gotten a couple of drives second-hand with proprietary software "built-in". Open in GParted, delete all partitions, create one partition spanning entire drive. Fin.
Slashdot Mirror
... but if Google was so hardcore into efficiency, why the hell did they develop a new runtime for their Android that's based on Java?
Because the Java gets executed on the user's hardware. Google cares about efficiency insofar as it affects their own hardware requirements.
Also, the iPhone had a huge advantage simply in that most people already owned phones, and so the iPhone was really just a cool upgrade from what they had, and can cost as little as $99 upfront. For the iPad to succeed, Apple will have to convince people that now they need to go out and buy a tablet computer for ~$500. At best, I see them dominating the eBook-reader and netbook markets, which are in themselves relatively small. Sales will never be on the same order of magnitude as the iPhone.
So, those wanting to or forced to use IE-only websites might also be forced to upgrade from XP. Welcome to the effects of proprietary lock-in.
Forced to upgrade? IE8 works just fine on XP and will continue to do so. It also doesn't have any of the exploits that IE6 has.
Also, how does it differ between proprietary and open source then? If you're using some 10 years old version of your Linux OS and it doesn't support some feature that the newer OS/kernel versions have, you're not going to be able to install programs that require said feature.
By the time MS discontinues support for IE8, XP will be more than a decade old, and Windows 8 will likely be nearing release. Yes, XP was a significant milestone in computing history, but you're already two major OS releases behind, let it go. I was a longtime XP Pro user, but after having upgraded to Win7, going back makes me cringe.
Still, I think I would rather pay $200 for a 3.0 GHz model, and not have the option of a slower model, than to pay $180 for a 2.4 GHz model while enthusiasts pay $900 for the 3.0 GHz model.
The pricing is part of the product strategy. If Intel could sell Core i7 Extreme's for $200 and still make as much money as they do now, they would. But, the reality is that the "enthusiasts" are effectively subsidizing the lower cost that you get for your "standard" model. Otherwise, your model would be more significantly more expensive and less competitive with, say, AMD's offerings.
Or they could open Google Taiwan. After all, they do speak the language.
I think they were interested in China more for the marketplace than not wanting to learn Spanish instead.
UMG to price new CDs Under $10
Single CDs will have the suggested list prices of $10, $9, $8, ...
Which of these prices do you think will be most common? Kind of like how iTunes just had tons of those $0.69 songs.
The prototype is large and bulky, but if this thing could be made smaller, one day we could scan a book or magazine in seconds using a smartphone.
You lost me here. How exactly do I scan an entire book or magazine in seconds using only a smartphone. Somehow I imagine this technology is slightly more than software, unless cameras start coming with super-fast automated page turners attached.
Good luck with that one. The copyright owners will be all over that.
Fixed that for you.
Yes, I do. We've found out that, at the height of the cold war, the launch codes were unset/all-zeros. That's something I sure as hell should have known...
But then it wouldn't be a secret launch code.
On a related note, I would hope that a nuclear launch control would be designed to resist the key being brute-forced. In that case, who would have really guessed that the key was all zeros in fewer than n attempts? I just hope said zeros weren't written on a sticky placed underneath the keyboard.
How about all those malware filled crusty old porn surfing boxes that manage our power grid in their spare time?
I have a feeling not as many of these exist as you think. I'm no power grid expert so maybe I'm just naive, but I can't imagine that engineers are using the exact same machines to control the power grid as they for personal computing. I've been inside control rooms for water processing facilities and, typically, any computer designed to be in direct control of anything vital is built around that specific function. It's not like "Joe from I.T." decided to run the plant's control software on his laptop today.
This is not to say that vulnerabilities don't exist elsewhere, such as these same control systems being attached to internal networks, that then attach to more vulnerable computers.
Quite frankly. While stomach acid might work to some degree, it's absolutely unreliable and we're not even getting to where it gets stuck inside of you and you're going to be unconscious when they retrieve it.
It's not absolutely reliable, but you could definitely do worse. Gastric acid is largely Hydrochloric acid, which reacts readily with metals like lead and copper commonly used in electronics.
That being said, I really wouldn't recommend eating a USB flash drive. It may or may not actually be effective in destroying the data, could require surgery to remove, could add some nice heavy metals to your diet, could get you charged with destruction of evidence, etc. Much easier to just encrypt the data and memorize the key. Encryption won't get you charged with destruction of evidence and you can't (yet) be forced to turn over passwords to assist in your prosecution (5th Amendment).
It seems to me that, if indeed the bug is date-related, this could be tested by simply removing the network connection and changing the date to some arbitrary knwon-functional date (e.g. February 28, 2009). Unless, of course, the bug is causing some irreparable damage/state change.
The problem, however, seems to be with games that require an active network connection even to play single-player. My response to this is: what the hell is the world of videogaming coming to? Just the other day I pulled out a copy of Super Mario Bros. 3, and I can't imagine booting it up to an error screen because a verification server was no longer available to determine that mine was a legitimate copy, or because who would even want to play a game without trophies?!
Honestly, once you get beyond the "cool factor", a $15 TI-30 or equivalent scientific calculator is more than enough to get you through even Calc I. Having a calculator show you the graph of a function can be useful, but is by no means necessary to learn the material in the first place.
int placeInternetExplorer() //chosen by fair dice roll
{
return 1;
}
I bet if we gave this same problem to 100 freshmen computer science majors, at least 1 of them would make the same mistake.
Well, that seems an awfully high standard for Microsoft to hold itself to.
Microsoft: Ranked 1st percentile with Freshmen CS Majors
I believe that vandalism on Wikipedia can be limited. But would it really be possible to detect all kinds of vandalism?
Without strong AI, the system can only really look for statistical and language patterns for clues on vandalism.
If I replace an entire body section on the Fox News page with "GLENN BECK BLOWS GOATS", I would hope that a vandalism detector would flag this. If, however, I randomly insert the sentence "Glenn Beck has also been accused of inappropriate relations with barnyard animals" into a large section, then automated detection comes down to statistics or one hell of a clever context algorithm.
I'll second that. I'm very accident prone with my phones and I don't need/desire a fancy smartphone. My VX8300 was a tank. I was talking while doing the dishes once and dropped it into the water. Dried it out and it was fine. I ended up replacing it with an AX565 when I switched to Alltel a couple of years ago. Not fancy in the least, but it's been shockingly rugged, for a very non-rugged looking phone.
I once had a cheapo Samsung flip phone. I went out ATV'ing one day and ended up getting stuck in the middle of a particularly notorious mud-hole. While I was trying to get myself and the ATV to dry land it fell out of my jacket and into the muck. About a year later my cousin was doing some work in the area and found the phone under about 6 inches of dirt. I wish I had a cool story here about drying it out and it magically working again ... but I don't.
for (i=0,i<p,i++){
found(googleCompetitor[i]);
googlePurchases(googleCompetitor[i]);
}
They really have liquid sensors in them? That seems so... Orwellian. Does that not bother anyone else?
I can't quite figure out if this is flamebait, or if I'm just the only person who can't make a connection between liquid sensors in a consumer electronic device and a dystopian police state. If a liquid sensor bothers you so much, I hate to be the one to tell you, but ... don't turn your iPhone around ... there's even a camera!
So, no, to answer your question: it doesn't seem to bother me a bit.
10 START COMPANY
20 COMPETE WITH GOOGLE
30 GET BOUGHT BY GOOGLE
40 GOTO 10
Watch those Star Trek re-runs more closely, kids. There's a reason why only one person on the bridge has a computer that he can talk to: it'd be cacophonic chaos if everyone were talking at once.
Can you imagine trying to write software that not only accurately recognizes speech, but tries to intelligently follow conversations and wait until you're talking to it, specifically? So, the computer has to (1) only listen to authorized persons, (2) determine if what they're saying is a command. Sometimes in science-fiction, you get commands like "COMPUTER! [Do stuff]." But "computer" is a common noun that comes up in conversation, so it isn't always supposed to initiate commands. And considering the sensitive nature of the things that the computer can control, it seems like until you've got the software perfect, you'd have to get confirmations on commands, i.e. "Are you sure that you want to [do stuff]? Cancel or Allow?" Honestly, at that point, you might as well just carry a keyboard and a holographic command line. It's a hell of a lot cheaper.
And the school will produce their Acceptable Computer Use Policy where all of the above is authorized by the parent or other legal guardian of each student, and transferring the responsibility of any illegal acts upon the student or upon their parent or other legal guardian.
I'm sure that will be the case. However, the typical acceptable use policy is mainly focused on the school's ability to monitor "communications" and activities central to the computer itself. I'd be willing to bet that said policy doesn't do much to protect the school in taking covert pictures in a private location without consent. Furthermore, given that kids were expected to take the laptops home with them, it's not unreasonable to suggest that covert surveillance of the webcam would produce images that, let's just say, aren't legal for possession, even for the school board.
This story really sounds like a case of a school administrator or technology specialist trying to "bust" a student improperly using the laptop or committing some other school-related misdeed. Just like most cases of abuse of authority in schools, except that this particular individual has set the new high water mark for federal laws broken in the process.
That said... the laptops were provided by the school. Just like my employer, I'm sure the school made it clear that use of the laptops would be monitored, non-official use is verboten, etc.
Given that the laptops were assigned to students, I'm sure the school board was smart enough to at least get a standard Acceptable Use Policy, i.e. something to the effect of "communication and use may be monitored, etc". However, having the laptop take discreet pictures without specific consent is far and beyond "monitoring use" and borders on "covert surveillance of a private dwelling".
Way too verbose. We want the numbers and a valid, non-emotive conclusion based on said numbers.
It's also easy to remove with any modern partition editor. I've gotten a couple of drives second-hand with proprietary software "built-in". Open in GParted, delete all partitions, create one partition spanning entire drive. Fin.