As first responders treated the wounded and the minutes ticked past, news organizations began vacuuming up Twitter and Facebook posts from around Boston and posting it on their Websites, along with 'regular' text updates. A Vine video-snippet of a bomb going off near the finish line, knocking a runner off his feet, ended up embedded into dozens of blog postings. When a disaster strikes, and many of those same news Websites post 'live updates' that incorporate tons of social-networking posts, they face accusations of exploiting the tragedy in the name of pageviews and revenue.
So, wait, are talking about "tech websites" or "traditional journalists" here? Because when I first heard about the explosions (from Twitter, naturally), I went to boston.com - which was in some kind of "low bandwidth" mode where they front page was only showing tweets related to the explosions.
"Traditional" media throughout the aftermath referenced tweets. NPR referenced the Boston Police Department's Twitter feed for updates. Local TV stations turned to Twitter, Vine, and YouTube to find videos of the explosion.
I guess only tech websites aren't "allowed" to mine Twitter? Because from what I could tell, everyone was doing that, from print to radio to TV to the web.
If you open the command prompt (I think you need admin) and type "powercfg -requests" it will show you what's keeping your PC awake. Though it tends to be a bit cryptic (if you see anything, you can just kill programs till you find the offender if it's not obvious).
Usually it's either Steam or Flash in one of my long hidden browser tabs that keep an open audio stream in the background.
It was Steam. Thank you! I'd never have guessed that an audio stream that Steam left open would prevent Windows from going to sleep. That has to be one of the least intuitive things ever.
The computer turns off shortly after you walk away, and turns on when you get back to where you were?
Well, it's supposed to. It may just be a driver problem, but Windows 8 only actually goes to sleep mode when it's supposed to maybe 50% of the time (and that might be high).
So instead I end up having to turn it off manually for the night if I don't want fan noise. I'd just manually tell Windows 8 to hibernate, but, well...
Windows 8 sucks so much, it can lift matter back past the event horizon of a black hole.
My favorite Windows 8-ism, and I swear this is true, is that they removed the ability to shutdown the computer.
No, really. They did.
There's still a "shutdown" option in the new "power charm." It even brings your computer to a power-off state. It just doesn't shutdown the OS.
Instead, "shutdown" logs you out (closing all your open applications), and then hibernates the machine rather than shutting down.
The concept is that this makes booting "faster" but in my experience, it's at best a wash. (I think booting fresh is slightly faster than restoring the entirety of memory.) In any case, you still have to wait for all your applications to restart when you log in, so what's the point?! Plus, generally when I choose "shutdown," it's because I want the OS is shut all the way down for some reason. If all I wanted to do was turn the power off, I'd just hibernate the machine.
Which brings me to my next point. The Hibernate option does not exist in the "Power charm." You can't Hibernate anymore. Apparently there's a setting somewhere that can reenable this feature, but searching for "hibernate" in the new Start Menu didn't find anything useful.
Anyway, long rant short: Windows 8 managed to break the ability to turn your PC off!
Offline mode is only useful if you know ahead of time you will be offline.
It's entirely useless when you don't know that Comcast is going to go and lose Internet access in your area for a day and a half, or for the half-hour outages that occur at random times.
The problem with always-on DRM is that it not only assumes that everyone will have an Internet connection, it also assumes that they're 100% reliable. They're not.
And the whole "must be online to be offline" thing that Steam does is just beyond ridiculous.
Sony doesn't make people buy a monthly subscription just to watch Neftlix, which is an important factor for me.
Doesn't yet. They have added a new feature called "PSN Plus" which is a monthly subscription and is required to access some basic functionality.
We're talking about Sony. They don't shy away from removing features in their console that users have been using. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if they make it so that NetFlix only works if you have PSN Plus.
Yeah, the key word is absurd though. I don't have a problem with unobtrusive DRM. I've only ever had Steam piss me off once, which honestly I feel is a fair trade off for the great deals and convenience it offers.
You've obviously never tried to use Steam without an Internet connection. It may not be "always on" in that you won't be kicked out of a game if you lose Internet access in the middle of playing, but you won't be allowed to start any games without an active Internet connection - even "DRM free" games bought through Steam.
And, sure, Steam has an "offline" mode. It can only be activated if you currently have an active Internet connection.
So if you forget to explicitly "go offline" before leaving home or lose Internet access for whatever reason, I hope you don't intend to play any games using Steam - because you won't be allowed to do it until you find a working Internet connection.
Apple does require the developer license, but to suggest that developing for Android or Linux or Windows does not require a computer and cost is incorrect.
I'm not trying to suggest that. Android tablets also doesn't fit the "PARC vision" because the vision as described in the article was being able to create new apps on the device itself. Although in the case of Android, I expect it would at least be theoretically possible to create an app for creating other apps, while such a thing is flat-out impossible on "official" iOS.
What I'm questioning is the claimed ability to "upload apps to the Apple app store for free" which, as far as I can tell, can only be true if you mean "priced at $0" and not "at no extra cost to the developer." In the PARC vision, all you need is the original device, nothing extra.
Trying to price the Mac Mini gets screwy, because you need to factor in the cost of a monitor and keyboard and mouse.
If you go with the cheapest options Apple provides for these when you order a Mac Mini, you'll balloon the price up to $1700. No, seriously, because the only monitor they offer bundled with the Mini is the $1000 27-inch Thunderbolt display.
Of course, you might have a display lying around, but it needs to support DisplayPort, so you might need to add an adapter...
Rather than play that game, I'm just sticking with the cheapest MacBook on their site, the $1000 one.
Even this is disingenuous because Apple doesn't in any way prevent a people from creating a good app uploading it to the store for free and let people download it for free.
You either have a different definition of "for free" than I do, or you're purposely using misleading language.
In order for me to start "uploading it to the store for free" I have to pay at least something like $1100 for specialized hardware and the developer account in addition to the tablet. And, yes, I'm counting the cost of a bottom-end, cheapest, entirely unsuitable for development work MacBook in this, because the PARC vision allows you to do development on just the tablet itself.
So, no, I can't just create a good app and upload it for free. I can upload it for $1000+$100/year, and allow other people to download it without cost to them, but if I want to create an app, I have an upfront cost of at least $1100 on top of the cost of the original tablet.
And that all assumes Apple doesn't simply reject the app for no particular reason.
And for all of Appleâ(TM)s corporate facilities worldwide, weâ(TM)re at 75 percent
The 75% figure doesn't include manufacturing, or Apple stores, or energy costs used shipping iDevices from China. It only refers to "corporate facilities," whatever that means.
It's fairly clear that it doesn't include manufacturing - which is contracted out anyway, remember, so it's not like Apple owns any factories - and it doesn't include retail. And since we're only talking buildings, it clearly doesn't cover energy spent shipping from China, let alone to Apple stores.
What, so only APPLE is allowed to run a sweatshop?
No, no, no. Apple doesn't run any sweatshops.
They contract that out. That way, they can be shocked - shocked! - to learn that their third party contractors are running sweatshops and hiring children. Plus they can "drop" the manufacturers who hire children, just to rehire them under a different name when people stop paying attention.
Plus, Apple's contractors have the best suicide-prevention nets in the industry! Who needs "livable working conditions" when you have suicide prevention nets?
No, no he wasn't. It was neither quick nor inventive. It was boring, predictable and obvious.
I don't know, given the president's horrible energy policy of blowing government funds on failed solar power companies, I think calling him out on running a gas-guzzling (or diesel-guzzling or whatever) limo is somewhat witty.
Predictable and obvious, I guess, but do remember that Obama is currently pushing to blow more of our money on "green" energy companies, despite A) the whole "massive deficit and debt" thing and B) the previous outcome when he tried that.
Java Web Start itself can also bring up an "are you sure?" dialog, which is different from the OS dialog. There's a generic universal "you downloaded this file off the Internet, are you sure you want to open it?" dialog that is shown in Mac OS X by Finder for all "non-safe" files.
The Java Web Start one I think only got triggered if your app was signed and requested not to run in the sandbox. If it was unsigned and didn't request to run outside the sandbox, I'm pretty sure JWS has always just launched the app without asking the user, based on the assumption that the sandbox made it safe.
Basically Mac OS X has a list of "safe" files that don't bring up an "are you sure you want to open this file?" dialog after it's been downloaded. The idea is that if you download a text file, you won't get a dialog warning you that the file is insecure when you try and open it.
JNLP files were put in that list, presumably based on the assumption that Java was "secure." (Bad assumption!)
The fix was to remove them from the safe list, so now you'll get an "are you sure?" dialog from the OS itself rather than assuming Java is secure.
You mean "writable executable pages," not directory memory access. The reason Safari is faster than UIWebView is because it can use a JIT to compile JavaScript into native code. Doing this requires the ability to create a writable page of memory that can be written.
Apps in the app store aren't allowed to do this. iOS loads the app into memory, marks all the text section pages as read only, marks all the data section pages as no-execute, and only then passes control to the program. This means that an App store program can't run the JIT because it can't create a writable page that is executable.
However, even given that, I find it impossible that there's no way Apple could give UIWebView access to the JIT. It would just take some amount of effort to architect it and write it, and the end result would probably make their own Safari more secure, but why bother doing that when you can just make every other browser on the platform be unnecessarily slower?
But, but, Steam has an offline mode! That you must be online to enable. So if you lose your Internet connection, you lose the ability to play all your Steam games until it's back up again and you can "go offline." (As Steam itself won't even start if you don't have an Internet connection and aren't already in offline mode.)
So now I count Steam as being an "always connected" form of DRM. Strictly speaking, it isn't, in the sense that if you're already playing a game, you won't be kicked out. But if you try and start a game without being online or having the foresight to know that your Internet connection is going to die and going offline before that happens, you'll be locked out of your entire library.
I was going to say, the last time I tried to use Google's site blocking feature it didn't fucking work. Now I know why, they've "discontinued" it. Oh well, it was the only thing that made some searches readable.
The show is from the UK, which is in Europe, which means you do not get a disclaimer or a warning with every little detail.
Incidentally, there is a US version of Top Gear that airs on the History Channel. It basically removes all the "power lap" times and all the car reviews, and solely does the stunts (like turning an ambulance into a taxi) using three very boring and uninteresting Americans.
It includes warning banners indicating that the stunts are faked.
And is "brought to you by" American car companies, which is probably why they don't do car reviews.
If you read the article, this is a buffer overflow in the VM itself, overwriting internal VM structures. In previous cases you'd be correct, but this is an actual JVM flaw.
The issue is with the "sandboxing" feature of the Java browser plugin.
The sandboxing feature isn't unique to the Java plugin. It's a built-in part of the Java runtime. Any Java code can place other Java code into a security context and enable the Java sandbox for that code. It's just that about the only place you'll ever actually see this done is for applets.
Since you replied to the AC only to say you won't answer ACs, I'll reply logged in. Just for you.
Apple's fucked. They have no future. Their latest iPhone was a large "meh." It wasn't a flop, but it certainly wasn't the success that earlier versions were.
Samsung, on the other hand, is showing impressive growth in that sector. Apple pissed off Samsung and lost their best supplier of quality parts. As a result, all Apple products that were using Samsung parts are now much, much worse. The new "retinal MacBook" has screens that have a "burn in" problem and apparently tint horribly pink.
There's no hotly anticipated Apple release on the horizon. No one really cares what the next iPad will be. Every other tablet on the market meets its standard. The lackluster iPhone 5 release means no one cares about the next iPhone either. Apparently Apple still makes computers, but no one who isn't an Apple fan cares about those.
Where's the future for Apple? Unless they announce something big real soon now, Wall Street is absolutely right to dump them. Google Glass is going to release soon (maybe), what's Apple's answer to that?
Actually, I was more referring to the recent stuff with the Obama administration trying to explain why the Second Amendment doesn't exist and why we shouldn't worry about it. I guess I got my quotes mixed up.
Plus there's the whole "free to assassinate Americans when they're outside the country" thing. Clearly judicial process isn't something the Obama administration is terribly worried about.
Slashdot Mirror
As first responders treated the wounded and the minutes ticked past, news organizations began vacuuming up Twitter and Facebook posts from around Boston and posting it on their Websites, along with 'regular' text updates. A Vine video-snippet of a bomb going off near the finish line, knocking a runner off his feet, ended up embedded into dozens of blog postings. When a disaster strikes, and many of those same news Websites post 'live updates' that incorporate tons of social-networking posts, they face accusations of exploiting the tragedy in the name of pageviews and revenue.
So, wait, are talking about "tech websites" or "traditional journalists" here? Because when I first heard about the explosions (from Twitter, naturally), I went to boston.com - which was in some kind of "low bandwidth" mode where they front page was only showing tweets related to the explosions.
"Traditional" media throughout the aftermath referenced tweets. NPR referenced the Boston Police Department's Twitter feed for updates. Local TV stations turned to Twitter, Vine, and YouTube to find videos of the explosion.
I guess only tech websites aren't "allowed" to mine Twitter? Because from what I could tell, everyone was doing that, from print to radio to TV to the web.
If you open the command prompt (I think you need admin) and type "powercfg -requests" it will show you what's keeping your PC awake. Though it tends to be a bit cryptic (if you see anything, you can just kill programs till you find the offender if it's not obvious).
Usually it's either Steam or Flash in one of my long hidden browser tabs that keep an open audio stream in the background.
It was Steam. Thank you! I'd never have guessed that an audio stream that Steam left open would prevent Windows from going to sleep. That has to be one of the least intuitive things ever.
The computer turns off shortly after you walk away, and turns on when you get back to where you were?
Well, it's supposed to. It may just be a driver problem, but Windows 8 only actually goes to sleep mode when it's supposed to maybe 50% of the time (and that might be high).
So instead I end up having to turn it off manually for the night if I don't want fan noise. I'd just manually tell Windows 8 to hibernate, but, well...
Windows 8 sucks so much, it can lift matter back past the event horizon of a black hole.
My favorite Windows 8-ism, and I swear this is true, is that they removed the ability to shutdown the computer.
No, really. They did.
There's still a "shutdown" option in the new "power charm." It even brings your computer to a power-off state. It just doesn't shutdown the OS.
Instead, "shutdown" logs you out (closing all your open applications), and then hibernates the machine rather than shutting down.
The concept is that this makes booting "faster" but in my experience, it's at best a wash. (I think booting fresh is slightly faster than restoring the entirety of memory.) In any case, you still have to wait for all your applications to restart when you log in, so what's the point?! Plus, generally when I choose "shutdown," it's because I want the OS is shut all the way down for some reason. If all I wanted to do was turn the power off, I'd just hibernate the machine.
Which brings me to my next point. The Hibernate option does not exist in the "Power charm." You can't Hibernate anymore. Apparently there's a setting somewhere that can reenable this feature, but searching for "hibernate" in the new Start Menu didn't find anything useful.
Anyway, long rant short: Windows 8 managed to break the ability to turn your PC off!
Offline mode is only useful if you know ahead of time you will be offline.
It's entirely useless when you don't know that Comcast is going to go and lose Internet access in your area for a day and a half, or for the half-hour outages that occur at random times.
The problem with always-on DRM is that it not only assumes that everyone will have an Internet connection, it also assumes that they're 100% reliable. They're not.
And the whole "must be online to be offline" thing that Steam does is just beyond ridiculous.
Sony doesn't make people buy a monthly subscription just to watch Neftlix, which is an important factor for me.
Doesn't yet. They have added a new feature called "PSN Plus" which is a monthly subscription and is required to access some basic functionality.
We're talking about Sony. They don't shy away from removing features in their console that users have been using. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if they make it so that NetFlix only works if you have PSN Plus.
Yeah, the key word is absurd though. I don't have a problem with unobtrusive DRM. I've only ever had Steam piss me off once, which honestly I feel is a fair trade off for the great deals and convenience it offers.
You've obviously never tried to use Steam without an Internet connection. It may not be "always on" in that you won't be kicked out of a game if you lose Internet access in the middle of playing, but you won't be allowed to start any games without an active Internet connection - even "DRM free" games bought through Steam.
And, sure, Steam has an "offline" mode. It can only be activated if you currently have an active Internet connection.
So if you forget to explicitly "go offline" before leaving home or lose Internet access for whatever reason, I hope you don't intend to play any games using Steam - because you won't be allowed to do it until you find a working Internet connection.
Unobtrusive my ass.
I'm shocked to learn that A) there's a limit and B) people find the feature even remotely useful enough to have hit the limit.
Apple does require the developer license, but to suggest that developing for Android or Linux or Windows does not require a computer and cost is incorrect.
I'm not trying to suggest that. Android tablets also doesn't fit the "PARC vision" because the vision as described in the article was being able to create new apps on the device itself. Although in the case of Android, I expect it would at least be theoretically possible to create an app for creating other apps, while such a thing is flat-out impossible on "official" iOS.
What I'm questioning is the claimed ability to "upload apps to the Apple app store for free" which, as far as I can tell, can only be true if you mean "priced at $0" and not "at no extra cost to the developer." In the PARC vision, all you need is the original device, nothing extra.
Trying to price the Mac Mini gets screwy, because you need to factor in the cost of a monitor and keyboard and mouse.
If you go with the cheapest options Apple provides for these when you order a Mac Mini, you'll balloon the price up to $1700. No, seriously, because the only monitor they offer bundled with the Mini is the $1000 27-inch Thunderbolt display.
Of course, you might have a display lying around, but it needs to support DisplayPort, so you might need to add an adapter...
Rather than play that game, I'm just sticking with the cheapest MacBook on their site, the $1000 one.
Even this is disingenuous because Apple doesn't in any way prevent a people from creating a good app uploading it to the store for free and let people download it for free.
You either have a different definition of "for free" than I do, or you're purposely using misleading language.
In order for me to start "uploading it to the store for free" I have to pay at least something like $1100 for specialized hardware and the developer account in addition to the tablet. And, yes, I'm counting the cost of a bottom-end, cheapest, entirely unsuitable for development work MacBook in this, because the PARC vision allows you to do development on just the tablet itself.
So, no, I can't just create a good app and upload it for free. I can upload it for $1000+$100/year, and allow other people to download it without cost to them, but if I want to create an app, I have an upfront cost of at least $1100 on top of the cost of the original tablet.
And that all assumes Apple doesn't simply reject the app for no particular reason.
Did they indeed ignore it? I was assuming manufacturing is part of their power needs. Do you have a link showing it's excluded?
Sure: the one from the article.
And for all of Appleâ(TM)s corporate facilities worldwide, weâ(TM)re at 75 percent
The 75% figure doesn't include manufacturing, or Apple stores, or energy costs used shipping iDevices from China. It only refers to "corporate facilities," whatever that means.
It's fairly clear that it doesn't include manufacturing - which is contracted out anyway, remember, so it's not like Apple owns any factories - and it doesn't include retail. And since we're only talking buildings, it clearly doesn't cover energy spent shipping from China, let alone to Apple stores.
What, so only APPLE is allowed to run a sweatshop?
No, no, no. Apple doesn't run any sweatshops.
They contract that out. That way, they can be shocked - shocked! - to learn that their third party contractors are running sweatshops and hiring children. Plus they can "drop" the manufacturers who hire children, just to rehire them under a different name when people stop paying attention.
Plus, Apple's contractors have the best suicide-prevention nets in the industry! Who needs "livable working conditions" when you have suicide prevention nets?
No, no he wasn't. It was neither quick nor inventive. It was boring, predictable and obvious.
I don't know, given the president's horrible energy policy of blowing government funds on failed solar power companies, I think calling him out on running a gas-guzzling (or diesel-guzzling or whatever) limo is somewhat witty.
Predictable and obvious, I guess, but do remember that Obama is currently pushing to blow more of our money on "green" energy companies, despite A) the whole "massive deficit and debt" thing and B) the previous outcome when he tried that.
Java Web Start itself can also bring up an "are you sure?" dialog, which is different from the OS dialog. There's a generic universal "you downloaded this file off the Internet, are you sure you want to open it?" dialog that is shown in Mac OS X by Finder for all "non-safe" files.
The Java Web Start one I think only got triggered if your app was signed and requested not to run in the sandbox. If it was unsigned and didn't request to run outside the sandbox, I'm pretty sure JWS has always just launched the app without asking the user, based on the assumption that the sandbox made it safe.
It's only not a bug in that it was by design.
Basically Mac OS X has a list of "safe" files that don't bring up an "are you sure you want to open this file?" dialog after it's been downloaded. The idea is that if you download a text file, you won't get a dialog warning you that the file is insecure when you try and open it.
JNLP files were put in that list, presumably based on the assumption that Java was "secure." (Bad assumption!)
The fix was to remove them from the safe list, so now you'll get an "are you sure?" dialog from the OS itself rather than assuming Java is secure.
Here's the video you were probably expecting to see where the "spins the phone" feature is actually demonstrated rather than just talked about.
I suppose that's kind of neat, but probably not worth a six minute video in which the feature being talked about is never actually shown off.
You mean "writable executable pages," not directory memory access. The reason Safari is faster than UIWebView is because it can use a JIT to compile JavaScript into native code. Doing this requires the ability to create a writable page of memory that can be written.
Apps in the app store aren't allowed to do this. iOS loads the app into memory, marks all the text section pages as read only, marks all the data section pages as no-execute, and only then passes control to the program. This means that an App store program can't run the JIT because it can't create a writable page that is executable.
However, even given that, I find it impossible that there's no way Apple could give UIWebView access to the JIT. It would just take some amount of effort to architect it and write it, and the end result would probably make their own Safari more secure, but why bother doing that when you can just make every other browser on the platform be unnecessarily slower?
I'm not even willing to trust Steam now.
But, but, Steam has an offline mode! That you must be online to enable. So if you lose your Internet connection, you lose the ability to play all your Steam games until it's back up again and you can "go offline." (As Steam itself won't even start if you don't have an Internet connection and aren't already in offline mode.)
So now I count Steam as being an "always connected" form of DRM. Strictly speaking, it isn't, in the sense that if you're already playing a game, you won't be kicked out. But if you try and start a game without being online or having the foresight to know that your Internet connection is going to die and going offline before that happens, you'll be locked out of your entire library.
I was going to say, the last time I tried to use Google's site blocking feature it didn't fucking work. Now I know why, they've "discontinued" it. Oh well, it was the only thing that made some searches readable.
The show is from the UK, which is in Europe, which means you do not get a disclaimer or a warning with every little detail.
Incidentally, there is a US version of Top Gear that airs on the History Channel. It basically removes all the "power lap" times and all the car reviews, and solely does the stunts (like turning an ambulance into a taxi) using three very boring and uninteresting Americans.
It includes warning banners indicating that the stunts are faked.
And is "brought to you by" American car companies, which is probably why they don't do car reviews.
AFAIK all these issues are not in the VM.
If you read the article, this is a buffer overflow in the VM itself, overwriting internal VM structures. In previous cases you'd be correct, but this is an actual JVM flaw.
The issue is with the "sandboxing" feature of the Java browser plugin.
The sandboxing feature isn't unique to the Java plugin. It's a built-in part of the Java runtime. Any Java code can place other Java code into a security context and enable the Java sandbox for that code. It's just that about the only place you'll ever actually see this done is for applets.
They've done it time and time again, and I'm sorry if it doesn't happen at the Call of Duty-style annual pace that you demand of them.
Correction: When Steve Jobs was leading Apple, they've done it time and time again.
He isn't any more.
I've seen nothing that suggests that current Apple is capable of innovating anything. They've done nothing innovative since Steve Jobs stepped down.
Since you replied to the AC only to say you won't answer ACs, I'll reply logged in. Just for you.
Apple's fucked. They have no future. Their latest iPhone was a large "meh." It wasn't a flop, but it certainly wasn't the success that earlier versions were.
Samsung, on the other hand, is showing impressive growth in that sector. Apple pissed off Samsung and lost their best supplier of quality parts. As a result, all Apple products that were using Samsung parts are now much, much worse. The new "retinal MacBook" has screens that have a "burn in" problem and apparently tint horribly pink.
There's no hotly anticipated Apple release on the horizon. No one really cares what the next iPad will be. Every other tablet on the market meets its standard. The lackluster iPhone 5 release means no one cares about the next iPhone either. Apparently Apple still makes computers, but no one who isn't an Apple fan cares about those.
Where's the future for Apple? Unless they announce something big real soon now, Wall Street is absolutely right to dump them. Google Glass is going to release soon (maybe), what's Apple's answer to that?
Actually, I was more referring to the recent stuff with the Obama administration trying to explain why the Second Amendment doesn't exist and why we shouldn't worry about it. I guess I got my quotes mixed up.
Plus there's the whole "free to assassinate Americans when they're outside the country" thing. Clearly judicial process isn't something the Obama administration is terribly worried about.