what is also concerning is that Europe seems to be under threat from immigration from countries with ultra conservative values such as Pakistan.because fertility rates in Europe are far too low, below replacement level, there is a real danger of as well Europeans headed towards extinction, unless Europeans start having more children and stop allowing in this immigration invasion that is destroying Europe, by rapidly reproducing muslims.
So you think this is genetically transported? *This* is racism.
Do you use gas for cooking? If so, how much difference between the price of electricity used for heating the oven and stove and the price used for gas for the same purpose would there be? You also don't connect to a district heating system?
No, I use electricity for cooking. Gas just for heating (this is another 50 Euro a month.)
You're way under the average for the U.S. then. In 2010, the average annual electricity consumption for a U.S. residential utility customer was 11,496 kWh
Wow! I just got my yearly bill yesterday, my consumption in the last 12 months was 959 kWh. (I'm in Germany, this is electricity from pure renewable sources (mostly hydroelectric), I'm paying 22 Euro a month). OK, no AC here, no electrical heating either (except for water). I've been fairly power-conscient since moving last year though, mostly LED lighting, hardly any standby power for anything and I got rid of nearly all electrically powered kitchen utilities etc.
It's not about computer support here, I know. But the following quote (by Phil Agre, I'm sure the name will ring some bells here) just hits the attitude of arrogance of nerds and what's wrong with it just too well. For a while I had this actually printed and pinned to the wall.
Computer people are fine human beings, but they do a lot of harm in the ways they "help" other people with their computer problems. Now that we're trying to get everyone online, I thought it might be helpful to write down everything I've been taught about helping people use computers. First you have to tell yourself some things:
Nobody is born knowing this stuff.
You've forgotten what it's like to be a beginner.
If it's not obvious to them, it's not obvious.
A computer is a means to an end. The person you're helping probably cares mostly about the end. This is reasonable.
Their knowledge of the computer is grounded in what they can do and see -- "when I do this, it does that". They need to develop a deeper understanding, but this can only happen slowly -- and not through abstract theory but through the real, concrete situations they encounter in their work.
Beginners face a language problem: they can't ask questions because they don't know what the words mean, they can't know what the words mean until they can successfully use the system, and they can't successfully use the system because they can't ask questions.
You are the voice of authority. Your words can wound.
Computers often present their users with textual messages, but the users often don't read them.
By the time they ask you for help, they've probably tried several things. As a result, their computer might be in a strange state. This is natural.
They might be afraid that you're going to blame them for the problem.
The best way to learn is through apprenticeship -- that is, by doing some real task together with someone who has a different set of skills.
Your primary goal is not to solve their problem. Your primary goal is to help them become one notch more capable of solving their problem on their own. So it's okay if they take notes.
Most user interfaces are terrible. When people make mistakes it's usually the fault of the interface. You've forgotten how many ways you've learned to adapt to bad interfaces.
Knowledge lives in communities, not individuals. A computer user who's part of a community of computer users will have an easier time than one who isn't.
Having convinced yourself of these things, you are more likely to follow some important rules: Don't take the keyboard. Let them do all the typing, even if it's slower that way, and even if you have to point them to every key they need to type. That's the only way they're going to learn from the interaction.
Find out what they're really trying to do. Is there another way to go about it?
Maybe they can't tell you what they've done or what happened. In this case you can ask them what they are trying to do and say, "Show me how you do that".
Attend to the symbolism of the interaction. Try to squat down so your eyes are just below the level of theirs. When they're looking at the computer, look at the computer. When they're looking at you, look back at them.
When they do something wrong, don't say "no" or "that's wrong". They'll often respond by doing something else that's wrong. Instead, just tell them what to do and why.
Try not to ask yes-or-no questions. Nobody wants to look foolish, so their answer is likely to be a guess. "Did you attach to the file server?" will get you less information than "What did you do after you turned the computer on?".
There is no such thing as unearned arrogance. If you're arrogant, you've been successful at something, and you have every right to think highly of yourself. It's a trait to be celebrated, not scorned. If you are humble, you see some value in prostrating yourself and exuding weakness. Unless you're religious, there is no reason to promote it as a positive trait.
The true character flaw though is when you extend this to things you're not successful or even good in and think that you're a better person just because you're good in your field. Others may be very good in *their* field. And even if they have no field they're really good in this does not mean you're a better human being. Maybe you're just an arrogant asshole that's good in computers. People won't tell you when they need you but that's it then.
And learning to be humble is not a sign of weakness. Fearing to appear weak is a sign of underlying weakness. If you're strong being humble is easy if you try. It's only unbearable if you're weak.
It's the same as with patience: If you treat every opportunity where you have to wait for something as an ideal opportunity to learn patience you can't fail at getting better at patience, which will make you happier and your life much easier. If you treat it as an opportunity to rage and to be impatient and to unnerve others you'll get worse and worse at it and be unhappy and someone nobody wants to have around.
Trying to be a good, humble, patient, friendly person is of course totally selfish. Nothing wrong with *that*, though.
Agriculture was fairly new a long time back. Actually growing things and feeding lots of people who themselves had no idea how to get from the seed in the ground to the bread they ate every day was a HUGE progress, especially because it allowed much more people to eat bread every day and still get some things done besides hunting for food.
"Computers" are like that. Walled gardens and appliances like the iPad are like the bread you buy and eat without having to bother with gathering food or putting seeds into the ground. It's called progress. It does not mean that nobody needs to know how to grow wheat -- somebody has to do it. But that the majority of the population can just buy and use something without having (and wanting to have) the slightest idea what makes it work is nothing but progress and is fully in line with all progress of civilisation.
I mean, if you *really* mean it and hate walled gardens and such: Grow your own wheat. Bake your own bread. Keep sheep and knit your clothing. Eat your own dog food please. Having your pizza delivered and complaining about walled gardens is just absurd and hypocritical. You're living in a walled garden all day long anyway and not seeing this is a kind of intellectual blindness.
For me, it doesn't matter so much how they impact typing speed, but the fact they free up half the screen from being obscured by a virtual keyboard that is appealing.
You can't be someone who ever has used a line editor.
Seriously, tapping away the virtual keyboard for more overview really isn't that hard (it's one tap, literally) and surely is easier than propping up that Surface thing with a non-adjustable screen angle and a floppy keyboard on anything else than a table. You won't be using that thing on your lap, believe me.
As always I'm totally surprised how people talk about a device nobody outside of MS has ever used, totally doing away with everything that is obvious even from the naked facts. It looks great in PR shots, but does it work great in your daily routine? Time will tell and I have my doubts.
But if it does, great. Both Apple and Google can use some true competitor.
Honestly, I think Surface will totally kill Android tablets (apart from customized versions like the Amazon Fire or small and cheap ones like the Nexus).
It won't kill the iPad though. Office has lost *much* of its importance in the last years. And for home/casual users Office is something they use for work, not for fun. There are many apps for the iPad and not so many at all for WinRT yet. And with the Surface Pro at the horizon and WinRT just filling the gap until Intel can deliver something better... Well, I don't think this thing will be a replacement for the iPad, especially if Apple will really come with a cheaper 7.85" iPad this month.
No, I think Google has to fear much more than Apple.
Anyway, I totally like this kind of true competition. The decades of 95% Windows were a total loss. We got PCs that got a bit cheaper and faster and hotter every year and now and then a fresh version of crappy/bloaty Windows, but compare that to what is happening right now with real competition on board and you can't fail to see that we had an almost total lack of innovation and progress in many years of PCdom. I'm so glad that this time is over now.
I think both Android and iOS could use a "guest mode", possibly accessible from the lock screen, which just allows you to use all apps without their stored data (using some temporary storage for cookies, history, etc.) and erases everything as soon as someone truly unlocks the thing.
This would give you about 90% of all what you need from true multiuser capabilities with about 10% of the trouble. Most of the time you don't want or need a true user account. What you need is something that offers access to most apps in a "virgin" state without giving access to your data. A guest mode would fit that bill very nicely. At least iOS does a bit of this with the camera being accessible from the lockscreen even on a totally locked down device without giving access to the stored photos. Extend this to all apps and almost all complaints about lacking multi-user features would just evaporate.
I think a true multi-user system would open so many cans of nasty worms on what basically is an appliance that nobody with half a brain would try to implement this. What about sharing data? What about storage quotas? Do you need a superuser? But a guest mode, which would mean that you could hand over your tablet to anyone without having to fear him mangling with or looking at your data would be great and very easy to implement. And surely enough to hand over the thing to your children or your girl just to play a game or to browse the web.
Apparently you have not seen the new retina screen. Nothing prepares you for it because you can't see it on any monitor you have now. Letters look like they are carved in the glass with a diamond stylus. They just pop with sharpness you never knew you were missing.
Have you seen the actual letters MS based their fonts on? You can't tell from the way they look on your retina display, but in person each letter looks as if it emerged fully-formed from the head of Zeus. When I first laid eyes on the "A" I wept tears of sweet honey and was transported to a world of dazzling rainbows.
Doesn't help you a bit if what you're staring at is a print-sized PDF. The "retina" iPad still looks like a laser print then.
That is true, but it's because iPad is plainly not designed for use with a keyboard (much less a mouse!). It gives you the very basic capabilities, like entering text in textboxes, but you still have to rely heavily on touch. Consequently, few apps are designed to use the keyboard to its full extent when it's there.
At least you can select, cut, copy and paste from the keyboard, everywhere. You can also use basic Emacs editing shortcuts (iOS as inherited this from OS X, which inherited this from NEXTstep). Even more importantly, iOS fully supports international keyboard layouts, something that Android totally lacks (it just assumes you use an US keyboard).
On the other hand, something like Android fares much better, because Google has actually taken care to promote keyboard support throughout the OS - there are many useful keyboard shortcuts, like switching apps or keyboard layouts, and browser has a bunch of its own as well (e.g. Ctrl+L to activate the address bar).
Wow. So how do I switch to a German keyboard layout on a USB or BT keyboard in Jelly Bean?
Would be really great if the next version of Android would support keyboards with other layouts than US English. As iOS does since ages. And I'm pretty sure that WinRT will do the same.
If you're from the US you'll scoff at that, but this alone just guarantees Surface better sales than any Android hybrid in the rest of the world.
God, going from Score:3 (default) to Score: 5, Insightful to Score: 3 within minutes REALLY seems as if people don't like reasonable comments.
Reminds me of getting a dozen thumbs down on The Register just for pointing out that the iPhone 4s was eating every other smartphone for lunch in GPU benchmarks along with a link to Anandtech proving it answering comments that that iPhone were tech of yesteryear (and I even don't own an iPhone 4s).
I respectfully disagree that the primary problem is the data. Have you seen the comparisons of Apple's "virtual flyover" with Google's "street view"? Flyover looks nice for certain scenes, but others are full of bizarre Dali-esque digital artifacts and distortions.
Give me real photos from street level, any day.
Yes, but at least in Europe Google has already stated that it won't update StreetView. Won't happen. People don't like companies driving along in front of their houses and snapping photos. It's over. I don't know where you live, but in my city Streetview is already getting stale.
I think the next level is drones flying over the landscape and doing something like flyover from 300 feet. Next level, please.
I understand what you're saying, but: Isn't this just business? Yeah, it may look childish now and then but do you really expect multi-billion companies fighting over multi-bilion markets not trying to get in the lever at every crack they see?
Personally I think even all these silly lawsuits are basically a symptom of civilisation. There're are lawyers making lots of money here, yes. But isn't this basically a good, civilized way of fighting and of money well spent? Better than going and killing people anyway. Better than almost everything that was common in the past. Better than any *real* war. No people are losing their limbs or being killed here. No widows, no orphans, no people being pushed around in wheelchairs. Just business and things to bicker about on Slashdot.
What's wrong about that? I love it. Give me more of that and more competition and more lawsuits. And less war and money spent on weapons instead. The day that wars will be fought and won or lost in a court will be the victory of civilisation. Give me more that and more different smartphones and tablets and map apps and whatever.
I'm not an Apple fanboi but the rap Apple is getting about that maps app (and the data behind it) is just unreasonable. I'm totally happy with another big company trying to gear up here. Having only Google as a supplier of that would be just sad. What's wrong with competition? Let Apple try and top Google or at least get far enough to be as usable as Google maps is. And really, it's not as if Google had no screw-ups ever. Google for it (lol).
Sometimes I look at comments everywhere and it seems as if people would be totally happy to see nothing but Google and Android everywhere. Be careful what you wish for! Competition is good. Luring away employees is good. I love to be lured away from the job I'm doing. Give me a better job and a harder task to solve and I'm happy.
I'm sure that Apple going for a solution of its own will make even Google better. There's nothing good about the complacency of being a monopoly. Really. Grow some brain, guys.
I doubt very much though that the EU will/can do very much here.
One part of the problem is that people are trusting Google more than almost any other company. Google often exercises restrain and good will and of course for most services doesn't charge anything (because its users are not its customers actually), so people are extremely forgiving.
I'm not sure about what will grow out of Google. I wouldn't be surprised though if Google were the first iteration of a more or less lenient super-AI of the future. If any of you have read the Culture novels by Iain M. Banks: The first Minds probably looked very similar to Google. If *this* will be the ultimate outcome, I'd say fuck the EU and hail Google.
What I find funny is a so called scientist saying the price should be raised, to keep people from wasting it. Oh, sort of like raising the price of gasoline to keep people from wasting it? LOL.
Works pretty good actually. With helium it would work even better since making it a bit more expensive would make recycling and extracting (instead of just releasing) it economically sound.
Anyway, helium is a finite resource, once released into the atmosphere is just goes away into space and since it is an element, there's no way to synthesize it. This should be more than enough reason to put some thought into using it because the market just totally doesn't care for what happens in a few decades.
I am not totally sure why these handset hacks are always such big news. What are the chances that this can happen to a normal person? One, you would need to have NFC enabled, which people may do, but at least I never do by default. Two, you need physical access to the handset. Has it not been the case for a very long time that if you lose your handset that someone can use it, NFC or no NFC? Oh, and they need to trigger the exploit 185 times before it worked. I think we are still reasonably safe.
The point is if you're actually using NFC the very device you're rubbing your phone against can run code on it, install software, whatever, without you actually noticing anything.
Yes, if you're not using NFC you're safe.
For establishing NFC this is very bad news. It's hardly used anywhere and can already take over your phone if you use it.
I have to agree here. How can you call something "personal" that has to sit under your desk? Something that you carry in your pocket all day long is much more personal.
Still, the term PC has nothing to do with the words "personal computer". It's another name for desktops, not a description.
Slashdot Mirror
what is also concerning is that Europe seems to be under threat from immigration from countries with ultra conservative values such as Pakistan.because fertility rates in Europe are far too low, below replacement level, there is a real danger of as well Europeans headed towards extinction, unless Europeans start having more children and stop allowing in this immigration invasion that is destroying Europe, by rapidly reproducing muslims.
So you think this is genetically transported? *This* is racism.
Do you use gas for cooking? If so, how much difference between the price of electricity used for heating the oven and stove and the price used for gas for the same purpose would there be? You also don't connect to a district heating system?
No, I use electricity for cooking. Gas just for heating (this is another 50 Euro a month.)
You're way under the average for the U.S. then. In 2010, the average annual electricity consumption for a U.S. residential utility customer was 11,496 kWh
Wow! I just got my yearly bill yesterday, my consumption in the last 12 months was 959 kWh. (I'm in Germany, this is electricity from pure renewable sources (mostly hydroelectric), I'm paying 22 Euro a month). OK, no AC here, no electrical heating either (except for water). I've been fairly power-conscient since moving last year though, mostly LED lighting, hardly any standby power for anything and I got rid of nearly all electrically powered kitchen utilities etc.
Choose any two.
It's not about computer support here, I know. But the following quote (by Phil Agre, I'm sure the name will ring some bells here) just hits the attitude of arrogance of nerds and what's wrong with it just too well. For a while I had this actually printed and pinned to the wall.
Here it goes (from http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/how-to-help.html):
There is no such thing as unearned arrogance. If you're arrogant, you've been successful at something, and you have every right to think highly of yourself. It's a trait to be celebrated, not scorned. If you are humble, you see some value in prostrating yourself and exuding weakness. Unless you're religious, there is no reason to promote it as a positive trait.
The true character flaw though is when you extend this to things you're not successful or even good in and think that you're a better person just because you're good in your field. Others may be very good in *their* field. And even if they have no field they're really good in this does not mean you're a better human being. Maybe you're just an arrogant asshole that's good in computers. People won't tell you when they need you but that's it then.
And learning to be humble is not a sign of weakness. Fearing to appear weak is a sign of underlying weakness. If you're strong being humble is easy if you try. It's only unbearable if you're weak.
It's the same as with patience: If you treat every opportunity where you have to wait for something as an ideal opportunity to learn patience you can't fail at getting better at patience, which will make you happier and your life much easier. If you treat it as an opportunity to rage and to be impatient and to unnerve others you'll get worse and worse at it and be unhappy and someone nobody wants to have around.
Trying to be a good, humble, patient, friendly person is of course totally selfish. Nothing wrong with *that*, though.
Agriculture was fairly new a long time back. Actually growing things and feeding lots of people who themselves had no idea how to get from the seed in the ground to the bread they ate every day was a HUGE progress, especially because it allowed much more people to eat bread every day and still get some things done besides hunting for food.
"Computers" are like that. Walled gardens and appliances like the iPad are like the bread you buy and eat without having to bother with gathering food or putting seeds into the ground. It's called progress. It does not mean that nobody needs to know how to grow wheat -- somebody has to do it. But that the majority of the population can just buy and use something without having (and wanting to have) the slightest idea what makes it work is nothing but progress and is fully in line with all progress of civilisation.
I mean, if you *really* mean it and hate walled gardens and such: Grow your own wheat. Bake your own bread. Keep sheep and knit your clothing. Eat your own dog food please. Having your pizza delivered and complaining about walled gardens is just absurd and hypocritical. You're living in a walled garden all day long anyway and not seeing this is a kind of intellectual blindness.
Sorry, I meant hardware keyboards (over USB or BT).
For me, it doesn't matter so much how they impact typing speed, but the fact they free up half the screen from being obscured by a virtual keyboard that is appealing.
You can't be someone who ever has used a line editor.
Seriously, tapping away the virtual keyboard for more overview really isn't that hard (it's one tap, literally) and surely is easier than propping up that Surface thing with a non-adjustable screen angle and a floppy keyboard on anything else than a table. You won't be using that thing on your lap, believe me.
As always I'm totally surprised how people talk about a device nobody outside of MS has ever used, totally doing away with everything that is obvious even from the naked facts. It looks great in PR shots, but does it work great in your daily routine? Time will tell and I have my doubts.
But if it does, great. Both Apple and Google can use some true competitor.
Honestly, I think Surface will totally kill Android tablets (apart from customized versions like the Amazon Fire or small and cheap ones like the Nexus).
It won't kill the iPad though. Office has lost *much* of its importance in the last years. And for home/casual users Office is something they use for work, not for fun. There are many apps for the iPad and not so many at all for WinRT yet. And with the Surface Pro at the horizon and WinRT just filling the gap until Intel can deliver something better... Well, I don't think this thing will be a replacement for the iPad, especially if Apple will really come with a cheaper 7.85" iPad this month.
No, I think Google has to fear much more than Apple.
Anyway, I totally like this kind of true competition. The decades of 95% Windows were a total loss. We got PCs that got a bit cheaper and faster and hotter every year and now and then a fresh version of crappy/bloaty Windows, but compare that to what is happening right now with real competition on board and you can't fail to see that we had an almost total lack of innovation and progress in many years of PCdom. I'm so glad that this time is over now.
I think both Android and iOS could use a "guest mode", possibly accessible from the lock screen, which just allows you to use all apps without their stored data (using some temporary storage for cookies, history, etc.) and erases everything as soon as someone truly unlocks the thing.
This would give you about 90% of all what you need from true multiuser capabilities with about 10% of the trouble. Most of the time you don't want or need a true user account. What you need is something that offers access to most apps in a "virgin" state without giving access to your data. A guest mode would fit that bill very nicely. At least iOS does a bit of this with the camera being accessible from the lockscreen even on a totally locked down device without giving access to the stored photos. Extend this to all apps and almost all complaints about lacking multi-user features would just evaporate.
I think a true multi-user system would open so many cans of nasty worms on what basically is an appliance that nobody with half a brain would try to implement this. What about sharing data? What about storage quotas? Do you need a superuser? But a guest mode, which would mean that you could hand over your tablet to anyone without having to fear him mangling with or looking at your data would be great and very easy to implement. And surely enough to hand over the thing to your children or your girl just to play a game or to browse the web.
Apparently you have not seen the new retina screen. Nothing prepares you for it because you can't see it on any monitor you have now. Letters look like they are carved in the glass with a diamond stylus. They just pop with sharpness you never knew you were missing.
Have you seen the actual letters MS based their fonts on? You can't tell from the way they look on your retina display, but in person each letter looks as if it emerged fully-formed from the head of Zeus. When I first laid eyes on the "A" I wept tears of sweet honey and was transported to a world of dazzling rainbows.
Doesn't help you a bit if what you're staring at is a print-sized PDF. The "retina" iPad still looks like a laser print then.
That is true, but it's because iPad is plainly not designed for use with a keyboard (much less a mouse!). It gives you the very basic capabilities, like entering text in textboxes, but you still have to rely heavily on touch. Consequently, few apps are designed to use the keyboard to its full extent when it's there.
At least you can select, cut, copy and paste from the keyboard, everywhere. You can also use basic Emacs editing shortcuts (iOS as inherited this from OS X, which inherited this from NEXTstep). Even more importantly, iOS fully supports international keyboard layouts, something that Android totally lacks (it just assumes you use an US keyboard).
On the other hand, something like Android fares much better, because Google has actually taken care to promote keyboard support throughout the OS - there are many useful keyboard shortcuts, like switching apps or keyboard layouts, and browser has a bunch of its own as well (e.g. Ctrl+L to activate the address bar).
Wow. So how do I switch to a German keyboard layout on a USB or BT keyboard in Jelly Bean?
(iPhone and Nexus 7 user here)
Would be really great if the next version of Android would support keyboards with other layouts than US English. As iOS does since ages. And I'm pretty sure that WinRT will do the same.
If you're from the US you'll scoff at that, but this alone just guarantees Surface better sales than any Android hybrid in the rest of the world.
But have this repeat year after year until the US has to import rice from China to feed its population will be less funny.
God, going from Score:3 (default) to Score: 5, Insightful to Score: 3 within minutes REALLY seems as if people don't like reasonable comments.
Reminds me of getting a dozen thumbs down on The Register just for pointing out that the iPhone 4s was eating every other smartphone for lunch in GPU benchmarks along with a link to Anandtech proving it answering comments that that iPhone were tech of yesteryear (and I even don't own an iPhone 4s).
I respectfully disagree that the primary problem is the data. Have you seen the comparisons of Apple's "virtual flyover" with Google's "street view"? Flyover looks nice for certain scenes, but others are full of bizarre Dali-esque digital artifacts and distortions.
Give me real photos from street level, any day.
Yes, but at least in Europe Google has already stated that it won't update StreetView. Won't happen. People don't like companies driving along in front of their houses and snapping photos. It's over. I don't know where you live, but in my city Streetview is already getting stale.
I think the next level is drones flying over the landscape and doing something like flyover from 300 feet. Next level, please.
I understand what you're saying, but: Isn't this just business? Yeah, it may look childish now and then but do you really expect multi-billion companies fighting over multi-bilion markets not trying to get in the lever at every crack they see?
Personally I think even all these silly lawsuits are basically a symptom of civilisation. There're are lawyers making lots of money here, yes. But isn't this basically a good, civilized way of fighting and of money well spent? Better than going and killing people anyway. Better than almost everything that was common in the past. Better than any *real* war. No people are losing their limbs or being killed here. No widows, no orphans, no people being pushed around in wheelchairs. Just business and things to bicker about on Slashdot.
What's wrong about that? I love it. Give me more of that and more competition and more lawsuits. And less war and money spent on weapons instead. The day that wars will be fought and won or lost in a court will be the victory of civilisation. Give me more that and more different smartphones and tablets and map apps and whatever.
I'm not an Apple fanboi but the rap Apple is getting about that maps app (and the data behind it) is just unreasonable. I'm totally happy with another big company trying to gear up here. Having only Google as a supplier of that would be just sad. What's wrong with competition? Let Apple try and top Google or at least get far enough to be as usable as Google maps is. And really, it's not as if Google had no screw-ups ever. Google for it (lol).
Sometimes I look at comments everywhere and it seems as if people would be totally happy to see nothing but Google and Android everywhere. Be careful what you wish for! Competition is good. Luring away employees is good. I love to be lured away from the job I'm doing. Give me a better job and a harder task to solve and I'm happy.
I'm sure that Apple going for a solution of its own will make even Google better. There's nothing good about the complacency of being a monopoly. Really. Grow some brain, guys.
I doubt very much though that the EU will/can do very much here.
One part of the problem is that people are trusting Google more than almost any other company. Google often exercises restrain and good will and of course for most services doesn't charge anything (because its users are not its customers actually), so people are extremely forgiving.
I'm not sure about what will grow out of Google. I wouldn't be surprised though if Google were the first iteration of a more or less lenient super-AI of the future. If any of you have read the Culture novels by Iain M. Banks: The first Minds probably looked very similar to Google. If *this* will be the ultimate outcome, I'd say fuck the EU and hail Google.
Reality isn't a novel though...
What I find funny is a so called scientist saying the price should be raised, to keep people from wasting it.
Oh, sort of like raising the price of gasoline to keep people from wasting it? LOL.
Works pretty good actually. With helium it would work even better since making it a bit more expensive would make recycling and extracting (instead of just releasing) it economically sound.
Anyway, helium is a finite resource, once released into the atmosphere is just goes away into space and since it is an element, there's no way to synthesize it. This should be more than enough reason to put some thought into using it because the market just totally doesn't care for what happens in a few decades.
It looks as if Apple will comply by offering to sell you an adapter if you need one.
I'm not really sure if they'll get away with this.
I am not totally sure why these handset hacks are always such big news. What are the chances that this can happen to a normal person? One, you would need to have NFC enabled, which people may do, but at least I never do by default. Two, you need physical access to the handset.
Has it not been the case for a very long time that if you lose your handset that someone can use it, NFC or no NFC? Oh, and they need to trigger the exploit 185 times before it worked. I think we are still reasonably safe.
The point is if you're actually using NFC the very device you're rubbing your phone against can run code on it, install software, whatever, without you actually noticing anything.
Yes, if you're not using NFC you're safe.
For establishing NFC this is very bad news. It's hardly used anywhere and can already take over your phone if you use it.
I have to agree here. How can you call something "personal" that has to sit under your desk? Something that you carry in your pocket all day long is much more personal.
Still, the term PC has nothing to do with the words "personal computer". It's another name for desktops, not a description.
The Paperless Office will arrive while nobody is talking about it anymore. And in case you haven't noticed hardly anyone is talking about it.