I'll grant you the PDF viewing (though it depends on the PDF - some would display on an 8" tablet just fine), but how is an 8" tablet not big enough for playing music? I play music on my smartphone with no problem. You don't need a large screen for this activity.
I cringe whenever someone says "this is awesome but unmarketable." Part of this was from my days working for Windows Magazine when marketing called a meeting and told us "You guys have a great product. We love your writing. We just can't figure out how to sell it so we're shutting you down."
Google being driven by the engineers thinking "here's something cool" is much preferable to Google being driven by marketing saying "this is what we can sell."
Because to Forbes, anything that isn't in strict pursuit of short term profits is a mistake. Google is sacrificing some short term profits by spending money on these projects. Forbes sees that as a problem, but Google sees the opportunity. The projects might crash and burn, but even if they do Google can learn from the technology developed and apply it elsewhere. Google-Five-Years-From-Now could benefit because Google-Now worked on self-driving cars even if Google-Five-Years-From-Now isn't selling self-driving cars.
Public transit isn't an option for me. Well, it is, but my trip from home to my son's school to my office takes me about 20 minutes (give or take a few minutes with traffic). Via bus, that same trip would take me 35 minutes. More if the bus I would need to take from my son's school didn't arrive immediately when I needed it to. (On non-school work-days, I'd be looking at a 19 minute bus trip versus a 5 minute drive.)
If I could set my car to drive the route (same route every weekday morning) by itself without any further input by me, it would free me up to nap, read, or talk with my son (face to face talking without focusing on what was on the road). Obviously, this technology is years down the line, but it'll be nice when it arrives.
It's a timing problem. If wait to invent it, somebody will beat you to it. But if you invent it too early, nobody will buy it before the patents run out. Companies are taken to task for being "Me too" organizations who let others pioneer and just follow up. Google might be trying out things that people might not want, but many times you don't know what people are going to use until after it's invented. I'd rather see Google trying new things and failing many times than deciding "We only do this one thing and that's it. Zero innovation from this point on." The latter is the path to stagnation.
No. Opportunity was designed for a 90 day mission. It's on 10 years now. So failing flash memory isn't going to be a problem if NASA's next Mars rover has a mission length of one year. If NASA is planning on a 10 year Mars Rover, though, they'll want to take this flash degradation into account. Somehow, I don't see a planned 10 year mission happening. A one year mission that lasts ten years? Possibly. But not a mission that is planned to last for 10 years.
I wonder if, ten years down the line, if there will even be a spot for console gaming. By that point, tablets might have enough power behind them to do anything a console could do and more. Imagine you load your favorite game, share it to your friends' tablets (I'm sure there will be DRM involved which we'll all rail about in 10 years), and play games that you would previously have played on consoles. Or, perhaps the tablet would auto-stream the video to your TV while a Bluetooth (or other wireless technology) game controller was used to control the action.
Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony's gaming divisions might survive by making "gaming systems" that are essentially massive libraries to ease game development. They might also open app stores - online game stores selling curated games.
Today's phone is more powerful than a computer was ten years ago. I can see a future where your "home computer" is just a docking station that you plug your phone/tablet into. Or, even better, you set your phone/tablet down on a table and the monitor, keyboard, and mouse auto-link to it and let you do work (or play games) using the keyboard/mouse/monitor all while your phone/tablet wirelessly charges.
Right now, if I make a website or web application, I need to test it on Chrome, a couple different versions if IE, and FireFox. If I have the time, I can test it on Safari and Opera as well. I also need to test my site/application on my laptop, a tablet, and a smartphone. The latter two in both Android and iOS. After all of this, I can rest assured that my web site/application will work fine - at least until someone comes in with a weird configuration that I didn't test and it all blows up*.
Now Microsoft is going to add in "Spartan" as a new web browser for me to test on? If they are going to sunset IE and switch to Spartan, that would be one thing. Yes, IE usage would remain for awhile but it would be a constantly dwindling population until it got small enough to simply ignore due to time constraints. If they plan on running with two different browsers, though, they're just making the lives of web developers everywhere even harder.
* Anyone who says "just code to standards and your web site/application won't have problems" hasn't coded anything too complex. There are always browser quirks and what works in one browser isn't guaranteed to work in another one. Though, usually, I've found that IE is the problem-browser (especially older versions) and Chrome/Firefox/etc work nicely with, at worst, minor issues.
I think the point was that Norse Security looked at this as if it was a criminal investigation as opposed to a political finger pointing match. If the police were investigating a crime and found that an ex-employee had posted angry statements about being fired prior to the crime being committed (Motive) and had the means and opportunity to do so, they would definitely be investigated as a suspect. Rightfully so, too.
Note that being investigated doesn't mean being charged with a crime. If the investigation showed that the person had a good alibi or uncovered evidence that pointed away from that person, then the police would drop that person from the list of suspects. If a company tried intentionally firing people to create a cover, they would risk those people having good alibis and not being suitable suspects.
Exactly. When the MPAA or RIAA claims that a shared song or movie is a lost sale, they will sue the person involved (or a person with the same IP address that they think is involved). Often, in these lawsuits they will "settle" for a $2,000 per instance fee.
If Sony had to pay $2,000 for each ticket sold given how much they made in opening day, Sony would be looking at $300 million+ in fines. Not a huge burden for Sony, but not chump change either.
I'll admit that when I first used XML, I started trying to use it for as much as possible. (Blame "Shiny New Technology" syndrome.) I had written stuff to databases before but I thought this technology would make so many things easier. Years later, when I'm reviewing my old code, I'm finding that removing the XML and moving the data to a database improves everything. XML definitely has its place, but it also has limits. Trying to export a million comments as an XML file is almost guaranteed to run into problems.
This makes me wonder if it would be possible to build a machine to sort perler beads. For those who don't know, these are small (under 5mm) plastic beads. You place them on a tray to make a design (Doctor Who, One-up mushroom from Super Mario Brothers, etc), then iron the beads so they melt and fuse. It's an inexpensive (relatively speaking) craft that can be really fun because of the wide range of design possibilities.
The major problem is that the cheapest way to get beads is by the tub. This is - as you might expect - a tub of various colors of beads... all mixed together. Want a black bead? You need to hunt through the tub to find one. Or you can do what we do and manually sort through thousands of beads and group similar colors together in another container.
The M&M sorting machine makes me wonder if you could make a machine that would sort the beads. You could even simplify it and only match a specific color bead. Incoming beads would either be sent to the "matching" tray or would go to the "doesn't match" pile. (The latter could be resorted to match another color, repeating until no beads were left.)
Anyone into robotics know how much a DIY project like this would cost and what level of expertise this would require? This might be an interesting project to tackle with my older son who is in his middle school Lego Robotics team.
In which case, the police can get a warrant to request the real name/address from BitLit. Either way, I don't see too many people writing their names in bookstore books in order to get a free eBook. Not when other piracy methods likely offer a more anonymous method of getting them.
Maybe he was talking about IKEA. Those stores seem like they are designed after mazes. Whenever I'm in there, I always get lost and can't find my way out. Every other store, though, no problem.
To get copies of in-copyright books, you need to deface the copyright page. If you can do that in a book shop without having to buy the book, then you live somewhere with very tolerant shopkeepers
Or, if you write your name in books in the bookstore without the shopkeeper seeing, you're also essentially confessing to the crime. The police will know each and every book you "claimed."
I wouldn't mind at all if North Korea were suddenly free and part of South Korea. Almost everyone in North Korea would be far better off. However, doing so by military force is utterly INSANE.
Even if China didn't intervene, the fact that millions of South Koreans live within artillery range of the border with North Korea means that in a shooting war with North Korea we'd probably be looking at tens to hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties just for the South alone, and probably as many or more North Korean civilians just from economic hardships and displacement - and that's leaving out the North's ballistic missles, nukes/etc. So even if the worst case scenario doesn't occur, the minimum expected result is already horrific enough that no sane person would want to pursue it.
There would also be the North Korean people to consider. Even if we somehow freed North Korea from "Dear Leader" tomorrow, the North Korean people have been fed a steady diet of pro-North Korea propaganda for their entire lives. Following their leader is all they know. If North Korea came to America to "liberate" us from our government and install a North Korea style government, they would meet with resistance. (Our government isn't popular or perfect. But it is orders of magnitude better than NK's.) Even if we magically freed the North Korean people tomorrow, they would likely resist their new-found freedom as much as possible. It might be decades before they were used to freedom.
Maybe an animated series would be the best option. Not to mix Star Wars into a Star Trek thread, but I'm really liking what they're doing with Star Wars: Rebels. It's an animated series set just before the Rebellion began. The heroes are a group of "criminals" (as branded by the Empire) performing some shady actions while trying to do good and hurt the Empire. We know the big picture of where this Universe will head (Star Wars 4 - 6) and we know some big things that won't happen (our heroes won't bring down the Empire at all), but we don't know where the characters in this show are going which ads suspense. Any of the characters could die in any episode. Probably not (at least not so early in the series), but they could.
Imagine a similar Star Trek series that told the story of a crew of space pirates, smugglers, or something. A group that's morally ambiguous at best. A group that does good according to their view and who disagree with the Federation. You could vary stories from Them Vs. Federation tales (where each side could win the mini-conflict), visiting strange new worlds (but not with Federation rules in play), etc. This could be a very interesting series. (Not that I'm holding my breath as the current direction of Star Trek seems to be Big Stuff Blowing Up In Space.)
But if the Enterprise goes 100mph, it'll be going really slowly.
Maybe that's it. Star Trek 3 will be the first movie shot entirely in slow motion. (Don't worry Futurama fans. Star Trek 3 will be a crossover with Baywatch.)
I don't think all attempts to educate the users will be successful. However, if $HOTEL posted signs saying "To connect to our Wi-Fi network, connect to $OFFICIAL_HOTEL_WI_FI_NETWORK_NAME. Connecting to other networks could leave you vulnerable to $SCARY_SOUNDING_CONSEQUENCES", then they should be liable for users connecting to the wrong Wi-Fi network and having passwords/credit card numbers/etc stolen. The hotel chain doesn't need to take proactive measures of blocking all other Wi-Fi networks just in case those are malicious (and including the ones that the guests set up themselves using their cell phones). This a clearly a money grab with a security front analogous to a cheap Halloween costume.
Looks like the hotels are claiming this is security and performance related.
Mobile hotspots can be used to “launch an attack against [a hotel] operator’s network or threaten its guests’ privacy” by gaining access to credit card numbers or other personal data, the hotel group said in its petition.
Maybe. If the mobile hotspot is called "Marriot Free Wi-Fi" but is operated by someone collecting information on anyone who connects. Then again, this could happen anywhere. This is why you don't connect to strange wi-fi networks. If you must connect to your hotel's wi-fi network, make sure you're connecting to the right one, not just one with the same name. The solution here is guest education (post signs about which Wi-Fi network to connect to, etc), not running a jammer to block everyone else's Wi-Fi signals.
Multiple outside Wi-Fi hotspots operating in a meeting room or convention center can hurt the performance of a hotel’s Wi-Fi network, the group said.
My off-the-shelf router handles multiple wi-fi networks just fine. I connect to my Wi-Fi and my performance isn't degraded because my neighbors run Wi-Fi networks of their own. A hotel should be able to invest in the infrastructure to provide their own Wi-Fi that will work regardless of whether or not I turn my phone's Wi-Fi hotspot on.
The "security" and "performance" claims are garbage. The real reason is that they want to be able to sell you their Wi-Fi service for a ton of cash and it's hard to do this when you can bring your own Wi-Fi network in with you. As gurps_npc pointed out, if we let them do this, how long until they block all cell phone signals because it interferes with the "security and performance" of their phone system?
It depends. Can you afford a team of lobbyists to wine and dine government officials? If so, you can do anything you want to do. If not, keep your head down and keep obeying the corporate-written laws.
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I'll grant you the PDF viewing (though it depends on the PDF - some would display on an 8" tablet just fine), but how is an 8" tablet not big enough for playing music? I play music on my smartphone with no problem. You don't need a large screen for this activity.
I cringe whenever someone says "this is awesome but unmarketable." Part of this was from my days working for Windows Magazine when marketing called a meeting and told us "You guys have a great product. We love your writing. We just can't figure out how to sell it so we're shutting you down."
Google being driven by the engineers thinking "here's something cool" is much preferable to Google being driven by marketing saying "this is what we can sell."
Because to Forbes, anything that isn't in strict pursuit of short term profits is a mistake. Google is sacrificing some short term profits by spending money on these projects. Forbes sees that as a problem, but Google sees the opportunity. The projects might crash and burn, but even if they do Google can learn from the technology developed and apply it elsewhere. Google-Five-Years-From-Now could benefit because Google-Now worked on self-driving cars even if Google-Five-Years-From-Now isn't selling self-driving cars.
Public transit isn't an option for me. Well, it is, but my trip from home to my son's school to my office takes me about 20 minutes (give or take a few minutes with traffic). Via bus, that same trip would take me 35 minutes. More if the bus I would need to take from my son's school didn't arrive immediately when I needed it to. (On non-school work-days, I'd be looking at a 19 minute bus trip versus a 5 minute drive.)
If I could set my car to drive the route (same route every weekday morning) by itself without any further input by me, it would free me up to nap, read, or talk with my son (face to face talking without focusing on what was on the road). Obviously, this technology is years down the line, but it'll be nice when it arrives.
It's a timing problem. If wait to invent it, somebody will beat you to it. But if you invent it too early, nobody will buy it before the patents run out. Companies are taken to task for being "Me too" organizations who let others pioneer and just follow up. Google might be trying out things that people might not want, but many times you don't know what people are going to use until after it's invented. I'd rather see Google trying new things and failing many times than deciding "We only do this one thing and that's it. Zero innovation from this point on." The latter is the path to stagnation.
Or in human terms, it would be like having a life expectancy of 75 years and developing Alzheimer's at the ripe old age of 3,237.
No. Opportunity was designed for a 90 day mission. It's on 10 years now. So failing flash memory isn't going to be a problem if NASA's next Mars rover has a mission length of one year. If NASA is planning on a 10 year Mars Rover, though, they'll want to take this flash degradation into account. Somehow, I don't see a planned 10 year mission happening. A one year mission that lasts ten years? Possibly. But not a mission that is planned to last for 10 years.
Unfortunately, Opportunity let its Astro-Afro-Antarctico-Amer-Asian Auto Association membership lapse.
I wonder if, ten years down the line, if there will even be a spot for console gaming. By that point, tablets might have enough power behind them to do anything a console could do and more. Imagine you load your favorite game, share it to your friends' tablets (I'm sure there will be DRM involved which we'll all rail about in 10 years), and play games that you would previously have played on consoles. Or, perhaps the tablet would auto-stream the video to your TV while a Bluetooth (or other wireless technology) game controller was used to control the action.
Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony's gaming divisions might survive by making "gaming systems" that are essentially massive libraries to ease game development. They might also open app stores - online game stores selling curated games.
Today's phone is more powerful than a computer was ten years ago. I can see a future where your "home computer" is just a docking station that you plug your phone/tablet into. Or, even better, you set your phone/tablet down on a table and the monitor, keyboard, and mouse auto-link to it and let you do work (or play games) using the keyboard/mouse/monitor all while your phone/tablet wirelessly charges.
Right now, if I make a website or web application, I need to test it on Chrome, a couple different versions if IE, and FireFox. If I have the time, I can test it on Safari and Opera as well. I also need to test my site/application on my laptop, a tablet, and a smartphone. The latter two in both Android and iOS. After all of this, I can rest assured that my web site/application will work fine - at least until someone comes in with a weird configuration that I didn't test and it all blows up*.
Now Microsoft is going to add in "Spartan" as a new web browser for me to test on? If they are going to sunset IE and switch to Spartan, that would be one thing. Yes, IE usage would remain for awhile but it would be a constantly dwindling population until it got small enough to simply ignore due to time constraints. If they plan on running with two different browsers, though, they're just making the lives of web developers everywhere even harder.
* Anyone who says "just code to standards and your web site/application won't have problems" hasn't coded anything too complex. There are always browser quirks and what works in one browser isn't guaranteed to work in another one. Though, usually, I've found that IE is the problem-browser (especially older versions) and Chrome/Firefox/etc work nicely with, at worst, minor issues.
Also verbing - which as we all know weirds language/
I think the point was that Norse Security looked at this as if it was a criminal investigation as opposed to a political finger pointing match. If the police were investigating a crime and found that an ex-employee had posted angry statements about being fired prior to the crime being committed (Motive) and had the means and opportunity to do so, they would definitely be investigated as a suspect. Rightfully so, too.
Note that being investigated doesn't mean being charged with a crime. If the investigation showed that the person had a good alibi or uncovered evidence that pointed away from that person, then the police would drop that person from the list of suspects. If a company tried intentionally firing people to create a cover, they would risk those people having good alibis and not being suitable suspects.
Exactly. When the MPAA or RIAA claims that a shared song or movie is a lost sale, they will sue the person involved (or a person with the same IP address that they think is involved). Often, in these lawsuits they will "settle" for a $2,000 per instance fee.
If Sony had to pay $2,000 for each ticket sold given how much they made in opening day, Sony would be looking at $300 million+ in fines. Not a huge burden for Sony, but not chump change either.
I'll admit that when I first used XML, I started trying to use it for as much as possible. (Blame "Shiny New Technology" syndrome.) I had written stuff to databases before but I thought this technology would make so many things easier. Years later, when I'm reviewing my old code, I'm finding that removing the XML and moving the data to a database improves everything. XML definitely has its place, but it also has limits. Trying to export a million comments as an XML file is almost guaranteed to run into problems.
This makes me wonder if it would be possible to build a machine to sort perler beads. For those who don't know, these are small (under 5mm) plastic beads. You place them on a tray to make a design (Doctor Who, One-up mushroom from Super Mario Brothers, etc), then iron the beads so they melt and fuse. It's an inexpensive (relatively speaking) craft that can be really fun because of the wide range of design possibilities.
The major problem is that the cheapest way to get beads is by the tub. This is - as you might expect - a tub of various colors of beads... all mixed together. Want a black bead? You need to hunt through the tub to find one. Or you can do what we do and manually sort through thousands of beads and group similar colors together in another container.
The M&M sorting machine makes me wonder if you could make a machine that would sort the beads. You could even simplify it and only match a specific color bead. Incoming beads would either be sent to the "matching" tray or would go to the "doesn't match" pile. (The latter could be resorted to match another color, repeating until no beads were left.)
Anyone into robotics know how much a DIY project like this would cost and what level of expertise this would require? This might be an interesting project to tackle with my older son who is in his middle school Lego Robotics team.
In which case, the police can get a warrant to request the real name/address from BitLit. Either way, I don't see too many people writing their names in bookstore books in order to get a free eBook. Not when other piracy methods likely offer a more anonymous method of getting them.
Maybe he was talking about IKEA. Those stores seem like they are designed after mazes. Whenever I'm in there, I always get lost and can't find my way out. Every other store, though, no problem.
Or, if you write your name in books in the bookstore without the shopkeeper seeing, you're also essentially confessing to the crime. The police will know each and every book you "claimed."
There would also be the North Korean people to consider. Even if we somehow freed North Korea from "Dear Leader" tomorrow, the North Korean people have been fed a steady diet of pro-North Korea propaganda for their entire lives. Following their leader is all they know. If North Korea came to America to "liberate" us from our government and install a North Korea style government, they would meet with resistance. (Our government isn't popular or perfect. But it is orders of magnitude better than NK's.) Even if we magically freed the North Korean people tomorrow, they would likely resist their new-found freedom as much as possible. It might be decades before they were used to freedom.
Maybe an animated series would be the best option. Not to mix Star Wars into a Star Trek thread, but I'm really liking what they're doing with Star Wars: Rebels. It's an animated series set just before the Rebellion began. The heroes are a group of "criminals" (as branded by the Empire) performing some shady actions while trying to do good and hurt the Empire. We know the big picture of where this Universe will head (Star Wars 4 - 6) and we know some big things that won't happen (our heroes won't bring down the Empire at all), but we don't know where the characters in this show are going which ads suspense. Any of the characters could die in any episode. Probably not (at least not so early in the series), but they could.
Imagine a similar Star Trek series that told the story of a crew of space pirates, smugglers, or something. A group that's morally ambiguous at best. A group that does good according to their view and who disagree with the Federation. You could vary stories from Them Vs. Federation tales (where each side could win the mini-conflict), visiting strange new worlds (but not with Federation rules in play), etc. This could be a very interesting series. (Not that I'm holding my breath as the current direction of Star Trek seems to be Big Stuff Blowing Up In Space.)
But if the Enterprise goes 100mph, it'll be going really slowly.
Maybe that's it. Star Trek 3 will be the first movie shot entirely in slow motion. (Don't worry Futurama fans. Star Trek 3 will be a crossover with Baywatch.)
I don't think all attempts to educate the users will be successful. However, if $HOTEL posted signs saying "To connect to our Wi-Fi network, connect to $OFFICIAL_HOTEL_WI_FI_NETWORK_NAME. Connecting to other networks could leave you vulnerable to $SCARY_SOUNDING_CONSEQUENCES", then they should be liable for users connecting to the wrong Wi-Fi network and having passwords/credit card numbers/etc stolen. The hotel chain doesn't need to take proactive measures of blocking all other Wi-Fi networks just in case those are malicious (and including the ones that the guests set up themselves using their cell phones). This a clearly a money grab with a security front analogous to a cheap Halloween costume.
Looks like the hotels are claiming this is security and performance related.
Maybe. If the mobile hotspot is called "Marriot Free Wi-Fi" but is operated by someone collecting information on anyone who connects. Then again, this could happen anywhere. This is why you don't connect to strange wi-fi networks. If you must connect to your hotel's wi-fi network, make sure you're connecting to the right one, not just one with the same name. The solution here is guest education (post signs about which Wi-Fi network to connect to, etc), not running a jammer to block everyone else's Wi-Fi signals.
My off-the-shelf router handles multiple wi-fi networks just fine. I connect to my Wi-Fi and my performance isn't degraded because my neighbors run Wi-Fi networks of their own. A hotel should be able to invest in the infrastructure to provide their own Wi-Fi that will work regardless of whether or not I turn my phone's Wi-Fi hotspot on.
The "security" and "performance" claims are garbage. The real reason is that they want to be able to sell you their Wi-Fi service for a ton of cash and it's hard to do this when you can bring your own Wi-Fi network in with you. As gurps_npc pointed out, if we let them do this, how long until they block all cell phone signals because it interferes with the "security and performance" of their phone system?
It depends. Can you afford a team of lobbyists to wine and dine government officials? If so, you can do anything you want to do. If not, keep your head down and keep obeying the corporate-written laws.