Although you state you're not looking for stack or infrastructure recommendations, I'd still recommend having a look at Google Mobile Analytics. They have an SDK for Android and iOS that makes it very easy to integrate in your apps.
5 or 11 pins in total to be precise. Whilst it is not a standard micro USB port, the Mobile High-Definition Link is a proposed standard in use by many phones today and supports power, audio, video, remote control and micro USB via a single port. Products that make use of it have been coming out over the last year or so and I suspect all major smartphones (apart from Apple's) will eventually use it.
Whichever. But, if a recompile is needed, either you make it idiot-proof (ideally, one-click, with a 99% success rate), or you lose 95% of PC users.
That idiot-proof method you wish for is already there. It's called a package manager and every major distribution has one. Ok, so it's not recompiling the software for you on the fly (in most cases) but that's because someone else has done that for you so you don't even need to think about it. It really couldn't be easier, either by GUI or CLI.
but does the binary have to run or just work if you configure; make; make install again?
First of all, if you do that it's no longer the same binary.
So? If most of your software is FOSS and can be recompiled, why do you care if it's the same binary or not?
Secondly, why would you place that burden on the user? The whole point of software is to solve problems for users, not to create new ones.
It's not often that burden is placed on the user; package maintainers for each Linux distribution generally take care of compiling and making sure the relevant libraries are in place. With every distribution upgrade I do there's been less and less reason to compile anything myself. In fact, IIRC, I've not compiled a single piece of third-party software for my use for at least a year or two.
A moving ABI really isn't a problem at all for the vast majority of Linux users, especially if most of the software we use is FOSS and available from a distribution's repositories. Now, that's not to say it doesn't cause a few headaches for package maintainers...
That was my first thought and for a traditional ~100 DPI screen, I'd agree.
Having now played with the new Macbook retina model, however, I can say the scaling does work very well at each of the available resolutions even though it's not 1:1, 1:2, etc. It's not as sharp as 1:1 or 1:2 but because of the high DPI, any scaling 'rounding errors' (for want of a better phrase) are far less perceptible.
I occasionally use my tablet / phone to control my media player but it's nowhere near as nice to use as a traditional remote control with physical buttons, simply because you have to take your eyes off the TV screen and look at the small screen in your hand. That's fine if you're listening to music, but it sucks for channel surfing and so on. With a decent tactile remote control you can easily feel for the most commonly used buttons without having to look at it.
I look forward to when we get tactile screens in our touchscreen devices. Until then, for TV at least, a decent traditional remote control is perfect.
Two problems I could imagine having with the Courier (if it existed) or similar style tablet...
1) Weight. I have a Galaxy Tab 10.1 and it weighs 565g / 1.25 lb (quite a bit lighter than the iPad) which is weighty enough that it can become a little uncomfortable holding it unsupported in the same position for too long, especially one handed and in landscape orientation. The Courier would have had two screens and to power them, maybe a bigger battery too. I'd guess that thing would be closer to 900g / 2 lb which takes it out of lightweight handheld device territory.
2) Form factor. Arguably what would be it's biggest selling point, but the hinged book form factor would require two hands to hold it properly when unsupported which doesn't allow you to easily use the touch screens, or at least would require some balancing against your forearm whilst clutching it in order to freely use the other hand. Tablets like the iPad and Android are incredibly easy to pickup and pass around freely, rotate between landscape and portrait for different media, etc. The Courier seems more like a desk device to me.
I don't see any big adverts on my screen when viewing the article but I do come across design problems like that from time to time. Can't you just zoom out (ctrl -) to get past it or close it though?
You're right that UK prices for this sort of thing suck, but you've missed the point about Apple's pricing and the Newegg price you quote for RAM is for 16GB, comparing to an 8GB upgrade from Apple.
Considering Apple have fantastic buying power and it doesn't cost them any more for their pick and place machines to solder 16GB chips than 8GB, the Apple tax is obvious whatever side of the Atlantic you are on.
8GB upgrade from UK retailer - £45 8GB upgrade from Apple UK - £160
8GB upgrade from USA retailer (Corsair from Newegg) - $58 8GB upgrade from Apple US - $200
What you say is true, there are certainly sites out there that really want to get round any measures a user puts in place to block certain behaviour, but if a site is doing stuff like that, would you really trust them to conform with legislation anyway? From my personal experience, the types of sites that exhibit this kind of behaviour are typically not high on my trust list.
And even if the legal repercussions of not conforming were enough to ensure these sites do conform, then why not just have legislation that requires sites respect a user's browser settings without undue hindrance, rather than requiring a site manually request user permission?
The fact that this legislation relies on trust, only applies to a subset of the internet, and is going to be ridiculously hard to police, makes me think it will achieve very little apart from annoying a lot of users and providing a false sense of privacy.
Javascript and Flash can easily be disabled via your browser's settings, just as cookies can, which makes this law kind of pointless. If you browser doesn't have 'per site' settings for this, there's more than likely an extension to provide that capability.
All this legislation does is force EU organisations (so no effect on anything outside of EU) to replicate the aforementioned browser cookie blocking functionality but using a method of trust instead of an explicit user setting tightly under a user's control. If users have privacy concerns regarding use of cookies, the only sane way to handle that is for users to take control themselves by disabling use of cookies in their browser settings and then whitelisting sites on a per site basis. We've had that capability since the introduction of cookies.
The EU could handle this situation much better by organising an information campaign to inform it's citizens of how to handle cookies themselves. At least then the users who want to take action can do so properly with the added benefit of applying to all sites globally, not just those trustworthy enough in the EU to bother conforming.
Looks like Android could potentially become open in the more traditional way, not just "Look it runs Linux and you can customize the home screen"; but from TFA it unfortunately sounds more like non-disclosure for a certain few.
Android as an OS is open. Android as a consumer product is unfortunately usually restricted due to carriers and device manufacturers customising the OS and then dropping support for the device as soon as the next model comes along. This does suck, and as you say, hopefully this move by Google will help solve this issue.
Until that day...
Maybe it's time to fork Android into LibreAndroid.
You're free to do so but maybe it's just easier to install the massively popular CyanogenMod.
I've been using HDDs for the last 20+ years and I think every single one I have owned has survived past the day I retire them (typically 3 - 5 years). I'm aware that statistically I've been rather lucky but the tipping point for me is whether I can buy an SSD, of decent size, that stands a good chance of surviving for at least 3 years, preferably a bit more. I've been watching this space for months / years and am still left with enough uncertainty to have prevented me from going SSD, until now anyway. I'm going to be purchasing a new laptop soon as my main machine I'm seriously considering taking the plunge with SSD (that speed is hard to resist!).
And yeah, I know backups are essential, regardless of storage tech, and I do have a very good and trusted backup routine, but for me that doesn't really effect my decision. Replacing a drive and restoring from a backup loses me time and money that I'd like to avoid where ever possible.
What's wrong with that? I think it's pretty cool to see classics like this ported to 'super slow Javascript'. Kind of puts things in perspective when a game I saved up to buy all those years back (after playing the hell out of a magazine demo) and also led me to save up more money to upgrade from my AdLib soundcard to a SoundBlaster Pro (so I could hear more than what seemed like white noise sound effects), is now fully playable in my web browser, for free, with no install, and barely touching my CPU.
Obviously not that hard to do. From the first sentence of the linked article:-
A type of wallpaper that prevents Wi-Fi signals escaping from a building without blocking mobile phone signals has been developed by a British defence contractor.
I just tried accessing the HTTPS URL as a test on Virgin Media and it simply times out. Not sure if that's due to blocking or maybe PirateBay just doesn't have SSL setup (although I'd presume they would)?
This sounds great. If they can get it to low enough price and don't intentionally cripple it to avoid it eating into their more mainstream product sales, it will be ideal for low power servers, car computers, etc.
BUT... it's not in the same league as the Raspberry Pi, not on price and not on application.
A NUC, with CPU, GPU, RAM, etc, (and presumably a profit margin?) is never going to be in same price range as the Raspberry Pi. It may not be in the 'hundreds and thousands range' (note the plural on hundreds) but I can't see this happening for $100 either. Maybe closer to $180 to start with. That alone puts it in a different league than the $30 Raspberry Pi, especially when it comes to education and the potential for it to be damaged. The raspberry Pi is almost disposable compared to this, making it ideal for use by children, for experimentation and hobbies.
And with regards to power consumption, a Raspberry Pi uses what, 2-3 Watts? The NUC, even with a low power mobile processor is never going to match this. Super low power consumption makes the Raspberry Pi useable for applications like small robotics, mobile or external projects where the only power source may be battery, solar, etc. You can run the Raspberry Pi off AA batteries for a decent amount of time.
Also, the fact this requires a fan means it will probably be broken within weeks, if not hours, once placed in hands of experimenting children unless they're simply used as traditional computer devices, in which case there's not much point in using this over a normal PC. The Raspberry Pi's are meant to be tinkered with, have pins for daughter boards that children can make themselves, etc. I can't see many school children making use of the NUC's PCIe expansion ports so easily and affordably!
I think the price point alone kind of rules this out from being widely used in education. Schools may be able to afford one or two per class if they're lucky, but what's the point? They most likely have at least that number of x86 PCs sitting idle in the same room? At least with Raspberry Pi you can have children working in pairs, with a device for each pair, or maybe over time, one each. And if they break it, it's not exactly the end of the world.
Slashdot Mirror
Although you state you're not looking for stack or infrastructure recommendations, I'd still recommend having a look at Google Mobile Analytics. They have an SDK for Android and iOS that makes it very easy to integrate in your apps.
5 or 11 pins in total to be precise. Whilst it is not a standard micro USB port, the Mobile High-Definition Link is a proposed standard in use by many phones today and supports power, audio, video, remote control and micro USB via a single port. Products that make use of it have been coming out over the last year or so and I suspect all major smartphones (apart from Apple's) will eventually use it.
That idiot-proof method you wish for is already there. It's called a package manager and every major distribution has one. Ok, so it's not recompiling the software for you on the fly (in most cases) but that's because someone else has done that for you so you don't even need to think about it. It really couldn't be easier, either by GUI or CLI.
So? If most of your software is FOSS and can be recompiled, why do you care if it's the same binary or not?
It's not often that burden is placed on the user; package maintainers for each Linux distribution generally take care of compiling and making sure the relevant libraries are in place. With every distribution upgrade I do there's been less and less reason to compile anything myself. In fact, IIRC, I've not compiled a single piece of third-party software for my use for at least a year or two.
A moving ABI really isn't a problem at all for the vast majority of Linux users, especially if most of the software we use is FOSS and available from a distribution's repositories. Now, that's not to say it doesn't cause a few headaches for package maintainers...
I locked it down so *only* those 2 things can use it. One of them is not the web browser...
But the other one is the web browser? ;)
... to get first post before it melts
That was my first thought and for a traditional ~100 DPI screen, I'd agree.
Having now played with the new Macbook retina model, however, I can say the scaling does work very well at each of the available resolutions even though it's not 1:1, 1:2, etc. It's not as sharp as 1:1 or 1:2 but because of the high DPI, any scaling 'rounding errors' (for want of a better phrase) are far less perceptible.
I occasionally use my tablet / phone to control my media player but it's nowhere near as nice to use as a traditional remote control with physical buttons, simply because you have to take your eyes off the TV screen and look at the small screen in your hand. That's fine if you're listening to music, but it sucks for channel surfing and so on. With a decent tactile remote control you can easily feel for the most commonly used buttons without having to look at it.
I look forward to when we get tactile screens in our touchscreen devices. Until then, for TV at least, a decent traditional remote control is perfect.
Two problems I could imagine having with the Courier (if it existed) or similar style tablet...
1) Weight. I have a Galaxy Tab 10.1 and it weighs 565g / 1.25 lb (quite a bit lighter than the iPad) which is weighty enough that it can become a little uncomfortable holding it unsupported in the same position for too long, especially one handed and in landscape orientation. The Courier would have had two screens and to power them, maybe a bigger battery too. I'd guess that thing would be closer to 900g / 2 lb which takes it out of lightweight handheld device territory.
2) Form factor. Arguably what would be it's biggest selling point, but the hinged book form factor would require two hands to hold it properly when unsupported which doesn't allow you to easily use the touch screens, or at least would require some balancing against your forearm whilst clutching it in order to freely use the other hand. Tablets like the iPad and Android are incredibly easy to pickup and pass around freely, rotate between landscape and portrait for different media, etc. The Courier seems more like a desk device to me.
I don't see any big adverts on my screen when viewing the article but I do come across design problems like that from time to time. Can't you just zoom out (ctrl -) to get past it or close it though?
Android does multi-core just fine. He was stating that WP7 doesn't support multi-core.
You're right that UK prices for this sort of thing suck, but you've missed the point about Apple's pricing and the Newegg price you quote for RAM is for 16GB, comparing to an 8GB upgrade from Apple.
Considering Apple have fantastic buying power and it doesn't cost them any more for their pick and place machines to solder 16GB chips than 8GB, the Apple tax is obvious whatever side of the Atlantic you are on.
8GB upgrade from UK retailer - £45
8GB upgrade from Apple UK - £160
8GB upgrade from USA retailer (Corsair from Newegg) - $58
8GB upgrade from Apple US - $200
What you say is true, there are certainly sites out there that really want to get round any measures a user puts in place to block certain behaviour, but if a site is doing stuff like that, would you really trust them to conform with legislation anyway? From my personal experience, the types of sites that exhibit this kind of behaviour are typically not high on my trust list.
And even if the legal repercussions of not conforming were enough to ensure these sites do conform, then why not just have legislation that requires sites respect a user's browser settings without undue hindrance, rather than requiring a site manually request user permission?
The fact that this legislation relies on trust, only applies to a subset of the internet, and is going to be ridiculously hard to police, makes me think it will achieve very little apart from annoying a lot of users and providing a false sense of privacy.
Javascript and Flash can easily be disabled via your browser's settings, just as cookies can, which makes this law kind of pointless. If you browser doesn't have 'per site' settings for this, there's more than likely an extension to provide that capability.
All this legislation does is force EU organisations (so no effect on anything outside of EU) to replicate the aforementioned browser cookie blocking functionality but using a method of trust instead of an explicit user setting tightly under a user's control. If users have privacy concerns regarding use of cookies, the only sane way to handle that is for users to take control themselves by disabling use of cookies in their browser settings and then whitelisting sites on a per site basis. We've had that capability since the introduction of cookies.
The EU could handle this situation much better by organising an information campaign to inform it's citizens of how to handle cookies themselves. At least then the users who want to take action can do so properly with the added benefit of applying to all sites globally, not just those trustworthy enough in the EU to bother conforming.
Annular eclipses occur every 15 months on average.
NASA have a lot of solar eclipse stats for anyone interested.
I normally hate wearing watches but that is awesome!
Looks like Android could potentially become open in the more traditional way, not just "Look it runs Linux and you can customize the home screen"; but from TFA it unfortunately sounds more like non-disclosure for a certain few.
Android as an OS is open. Android as a consumer product is unfortunately usually restricted due to carriers and device manufacturers customising the OS and then dropping support for the device as soon as the next model comes along. This does suck, and as you say, hopefully this move by Google will help solve this issue.
Until that day...
Maybe it's time to fork Android into LibreAndroid.
You're free to do so but maybe it's just easier to install the massively popular CyanogenMod.
I've been using HDDs for the last 20+ years and I think every single one I have owned has survived past the day I retire them (typically 3 - 5 years). I'm aware that statistically I've been rather lucky but the tipping point for me is whether I can buy an SSD, of decent size, that stands a good chance of surviving for at least 3 years, preferably a bit more. I've been watching this space for months / years and am still left with enough uncertainty to have prevented me from going SSD, until now anyway. I'm going to be purchasing a new laptop soon as my main machine I'm seriously considering taking the plunge with SSD (that speed is hard to resist!).
And yeah, I know backups are essential, regardless of storage tech, and I do have a very good and trusted backup routine, but for me that doesn't really effect my decision. Replacing a drive and restoring from a backup loses me time and money that I'd like to avoid where ever possible.
Runs smooth as butter on my ageing 2GHz Core 2 Duo, in Chrome.
What's wrong with that? I think it's pretty cool to see classics like this ported to 'super slow Javascript'. Kind of puts things in perspective when a game I saved up to buy all those years back (after playing the hell out of a magazine demo) and also led me to save up more money to upgrade from my AdLib soundcard to a SoundBlaster Pro (so I could hear more than what seemed like white noise sound effects), is now fully playable in my web browser, for free, with no install, and barely touching my CPU.
Obviously not that hard to do. From the first sentence of the linked article:-
A type of wallpaper that prevents Wi-Fi signals escaping from a building without blocking mobile phone signals has been developed by a British defence contractor.
I just tried accessing the HTTPS URL as a test on Virgin Media and it simply times out. Not sure if that's due to blocking or maybe PirateBay just doesn't have SSL setup (although I'd presume they would)?
The HTTP URL is redirected to Virgin Media's site blocked page.
Reminds me of a news clip I saw a few years back reporting on the valid use of the term 'black hole' by a commissioner who was then asked to apologise for what was apparently deemed racist by some. Very ridiculous
This sounds great. If they can get it to low enough price and don't intentionally cripple it to avoid it eating into their more mainstream product sales, it will be ideal for low power servers, car computers, etc.
BUT... it's not in the same league as the Raspberry Pi, not on price and not on application.
A NUC, with CPU, GPU, RAM, etc, (and presumably a profit margin?) is never going to be in same price range as the Raspberry Pi. It may not be in the 'hundreds and thousands range' (note the plural on hundreds) but I can't see this happening for $100 either. Maybe closer to $180 to start with. That alone puts it in a different league than the $30 Raspberry Pi, especially when it comes to education and the potential for it to be damaged. The raspberry Pi is almost disposable compared to this, making it ideal for use by children, for experimentation and hobbies.
And with regards to power consumption, a Raspberry Pi uses what, 2-3 Watts? The NUC, even with a low power mobile processor is never going to match this. Super low power consumption makes the Raspberry Pi useable for applications like small robotics, mobile or external projects where the only power source may be battery, solar, etc. You can run the Raspberry Pi off AA batteries for a decent amount of time.
Also, the fact this requires a fan means it will probably be broken within weeks, if not hours, once placed in hands of experimenting children unless they're simply used as traditional computer devices, in which case there's not much point in using this over a normal PC. The Raspberry Pi's are meant to be tinkered with, have pins for daughter boards that children can make themselves, etc. I can't see many school children making use of the NUC's PCIe expansion ports so easily and affordably!
I think the price point alone kind of rules this out from being widely used in education. Schools may be able to afford one or two per class if they're lucky, but what's the point? They most likely have at least that number of x86 PCs sitting idle in the same room? At least with Raspberry Pi you can have children working in pairs, with a device for each pair, or maybe over time, one each. And if they break it, it's not exactly the end of the world.
Or amongst a choice of others, my personal favourite, KeePass. It's free, open source and has ports for pretty much any desktop / mobile OS out there.